The first person to basically only wrote what he wanted was the XVI century artist Salvator Rosa. Much of what we envision as if frozen in time axiom, most recently, it was different. And if a person engaged in collecting, knows how it developed in history, it is much better equipped to present day. Since last year I read in Moscow on a course of lectures on the history of collecting, and then with the audience we go to Europe, look at museums, and I read "visiting lecture.
- What happened to you, the person directly associated with the art, essentially nothing collect?
- At one time I was a young art began working at the Museum of Private Collections in the Pushkin Museum. Collecting himself was considered unethical. Especially people who are studying a private collection and, in general, to persuade collectors to send their collections to the museum. Since then I have a collection does not collect, although works of art in our house there. My wife is an expert on contemporary art, we are friends with many artists, and they give their paintings. Some things I have on young artists have bought, but only contemporary art, to make a gift to his wife. No, I can not be called a collector because the collector - a passion, but in my actions are no such passion.
- Last time among collectors, a new enthusiasm for collecting both old and contemporary art.
- Yes, a couple of years ago there was such a tendency, when collectors who all his life collecting old art, suddenly started to buy things quite modern. An example of this - the famous antique fair in Maastricht, Holland. Initially, there were works of old art, old masters, that she became famous. We have made works that are created just in 2005. And these things with pleasure bought by people that had gathered for many years, for example, Rembrandt and the small Dutch. They begin to see an extra kick, special interest in aesthetic value in the clash of different eras, sometimes diametrically opposed, and sometimes congruent.
You and I used to go to a museum where everything is hanging on the eras - classical system. But let's take the first museum in the world vanguard, by the way, created in Russia, and Russia should be proud of it - the Museum of Painterly Culture in Moscow. It was organized in 1920 by a completely different principle. Is guided by the professional tasks, which the artist puts before him. There was room, for example, in which the main theme was the line in the other - contour, spot, etc.
This principle can be extended to the history of art. The problem of color standing in front of Monet as well as to the artist in the Middle Ages. Or expressive things different epochs. Just imagine how awesome would look abstract expressionism paintings of Kandinsky's near the German Renaissance painter Grunewald. You can push the masters of different eras, but similar temperaments and get an interesting result, if you start to look from a different angle.
- But in the gathering, there is one more component - investment.
- There is a wonderful definition, which at one time gave a brilliant antiquarian Lord Dyuvin, who established the first sale of European art in America. He said: "However much you may have paid for this masterpiece, it is still a huge success." Old art - it is the aura that it lived, it already held a phenomenon in the history of art, a certain brand. There is less risk, invest more reliable. Modern art - is a name that can remain at the level at which you are now working with him, and can make a difference. And the risk, and gain higher.
But as said a prominent art historian Meyer Shapiro, the art market - it is not roulette. Not everything is predictable, but very much possible to think and calculate. The only question of time. A man who invested 82 million dollars in 1990, "Portrait of Doctor Gachet, Van Gogh, in general, this money is frozen in terms of investment. For the next ten years, prices have not increased, and even fell. What could be done only with the money during this time? And now the prices skyrocketed, and Van Gogh "weight by" times two. If you are a collector, and a passion, then you buy what is important for you now, takes off his last, only to have this thing. And if you're a professional art dealer or investiruesh a work of art, you must calculate such things.
- In addition to collecting stories you another rare specialty - art detective. How it all began?
- Started it all with the fact that at one time I did this exhibition, which was called "And the muse is not silent." That was in 1984, and was needed exposition about what happened during the war in the culture. It turned out that all the "shock" exhibits have already snapped up at the jubilee exhibition devoted to the Victory. Then I began to dig, trying to find something new, started going to the people in the archives. And this is one of the themes that emerged - Dresden Gallery, trophies, netrofei, salvation-unsaved. I talked with the elderly, which no one then was not listening, and gradually realized that this is a colossal operation to smuggle out of Germany's 2.5 million works of art, about the huge event in the history of XX century. We spend a life trying to figure out where and how Dürer painted any picture, and then 2,5 million pieces traveled half of Europe, and about it no one knows almost nothing. I started doing it "in the table along with my colleague, Konstantin Akinsha. Gradually we have many things are clarified, and in 1991, wrote in a New York journal "Art News" article that the USSR has a secret store-that the Schliemann gold had perished in the war and is not in America, like it was. In Russia, only "Nezavisimaya Gazeta" ventured to speak out and give us an interview published on the whole strip. It turned out that the topic we brought to book in 1995, which became a best-selling non-fiction from America to Japan, though, in Russian still there.
Gradually I started to ask for very specific things. For example, the Western Museum of fears that he had "a skeleton in the closet" - since the war is the picture, but its past remains unknown. Maybe it belonged to Jews murdered during the Holocaust, and the museum will be in an awkward position. It is better to know about this and avoid scandal. To do this, build things provenance, that is, its history, the path from inception to its current owner. My job is boring, I'm sitting in the archives and spy a story on the documents, but take only those things that interest me.
- Most of the stories connected with the Second World War. Another difficult issue that is constantly discussed in recent years - the restitution of art treasures.
- Works of art in the war - it is all very tragic, terrible subject. This problem began to address some of the Napoleonic wars, when they came to believe that we need contracts. Before there was a natural right of extraction. At the end of XIX century, Russia had initiated articles on the Hague Peace Conference that the art out of war. This formula invented by the great Russian lawyer Martens. Whatever happens, no reparations, no vengeance, looking for other ways to compensate for the loss, but do not touch the art on the territory of the defeated country. It's a vicious circle, and then people tried to stop him. XX century, unfortunately, tried to solve this problem differently. But now the first thing to do - is to show things, return them to the scientific revolution, let them professionals. Other solution I have at the moment no. And I think that the formula Martens ever done.
http://www.ng.ru/saturday/2007-06-15/13_sekrety.html
01.12.2009, 02:35
The history of collecting and art-detective
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