Van Gogh Museum rules out debate over 'lost' notebook

A man leafs through the pages of a book of drawings from Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh at the architecture academy in Paris on November 15, 2016. JACQUES DEMARTHON / AFP.

THE HAGUE (AFP).- Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum ruled out Tuesday a public debate over the authenticity of a book of sketches that an art historian has said belonged to the Dutch impressionist. Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, a University of Toronto academic, has declared the apparent find to be "the most revolutionary discovery" in the history of Van Gogh's work. But the Dutch museum says the sketches, said to be from the artist's stay in the French city of Arles, are fake. Welsh-Ovcharov's French publishers Le Seuil reproduced the drawings earlier this month in a book titled "Vincent Van Gogh, the fog of Arles: the rediscovered sketchbook."

The art historian says the drawings came from the Cafe de la Gare in Arles -- where Van Gogh stayed -- which "records that on May 20, 1890 Dr Felix Rey (who had treated Van Gogh's severed ear) visited the cafe on behalf of the artist" and left a large book of drawings. But the museum, which has already sought answers directly from the publisher, said that an open debate would not be helpful. "We will need to have all the hard facts first.

"We therefore call on the publisher and the author to provide a clear and open response to all our comments, to all the issues in need of clarification and to the questions raised," it said. "Until they have, we see no point in a scholarly debate and our contribution to the discussion ends here: we will no longer respond to further questions."

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Dutch National Museum of Ethnology says ancient Mixtec skull a forgery

The museum bought the piece in 1963 for the equivalent of around $20,000 (19,000 euros) and was seen as a striking example of ancient Mesoamerican art.

THE HAGUE (AFP).- An 800-year-old Mexican skull decorated with turquoise mosaic, for decades believed to have been a masterpiece of Mixtec indigenous art is a forgery, a Dutch museum and media said Saturday. The National Museum of Ethnology in the western university city of Leiden made the shock discovery after an intensive four-year study on the skull, one of only around 20 in existence world-wide. "Radiometric dating showed the skull and the turquoise are from the correct time period and origin and are authentic," the museum said on its website. "But alas: further investigation showed a 20th-century glue was used (to mount the mosaic)," the museum said.

The teeth are also false "as it was too well preserved for a skull that lay underground for centuries," Dutch daily Trouw reported. The museum bought the piece in 1963 for the equivalent of around $20,000 (19,000 euros) and was seen as a striking example of ancient Mesoamerican art. An investigation into possible skull-duggery was launched after the museum's conservator Martin Berger received a telephone call back in 2010 from a French colleague in Marseille, Trouw said.

The colleague told Berger they received a similar skull from a private collection and that person who donated the art had doubts about its authenticity. Berger and his colleagues travelled to a Paris-based laboratory where the Dutch-owned skull was analysed and where "we realised that ours was also a bit more 'modern' than we thought". Berger told the paper he suspected the fake was mounted by a Mexican dentist back in the 1940s or 1950s, when Mexican archeological sites were subjected to large-scale plunder and dealing in artworks like those of the Mixtecs was a lucrative business.

Asked whether he was disappointed by the revelation, Berger told the newspaper: "No." "In actual fact it's given us a bizarre story and that's exactly what museums want to do, to tell stories. "It remains as one of our masterpieces -- except, we've changed the information on the sign board." In any case, said Berger, the skull is only a "partial forgery". "The skull as well as the turquoise are unique archaeological material. Only, the Mixtecs themselves didn't do the glueing," he said. Similar Central American crystal skulls housed in museums in Paris, London and Washington, D.C. believed to have been pre-Colombian, were revealed to be fake in a scientific study published in 2008.

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Statue of the Virgin Mary, damaged and decapitated by the Islamic State group (IS)

A member of the Iraqi Christian forces Kataeb Babylon (Babylon Brigades), wearing a bandana with an inscription saying "Here I am, O Mary", stands guard carrying a Kalashnikov assault rifle by the statue of the Virgin Mary, damaged and decapitated by the Islamic State group (IS), in the Mar Benham Syriac Catholic monastery in the town of Khidr Ilyas, southeast of Mosul, on November 22, 2016. Iraqi fighters battling to oust the Islamic State group from Mosul captured the Catholic Mar Benham monastery on November 20, allowing its priests to return. Dating back to the fourth century AD, the monastery lies just 30 kilometres south of Iraq's second city which became a bastion of the jihadist group which swept across northern Iraq in 2014. SAFIN HAMED / AFP

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Too good to be true? Too Gogh or Not to Gogh?

Experts are currently at war over whether this 'lost' Vincent Van Gogh notebook is real?! Please check out this article link to learn more: http://artdaily.com/news/91646/Experts-war-over-whether--lost--Vincent-Van-Gogh-notebook-is-real#.WCzN67IrKUk

This picture taken on November 15, 2016, shows a book of drawings from Dutch post-impressionist painter Vincent Van Gogh displayed during a press conference at the architecture academy in Paris. JACQUES DEMARTHON / AFP. Article: by Fiachra Gibbons / with Jo Biddle in The Hague

Sotheby's to offer rediscovered Frida Kahlo painting!!!!

Sotheby’s to offer Niña Con Collar on 22 November. Estimate: $1.5 / 2 million. Photo: Sotheby's.

NEW YORK, NY.- On 22 November Sotheby’s will offer a remarkable Frida Kahlo portrait, the whereabouts of which have been unknown for decades. The only record of Niña Con Collar has been a black-and-white photograph taken by the artist’s friend Lola Álvarez Bravo who documented her early works. That picture was used as the work’s catalogue raisonné entry and has been the only documentation of the painting until now. In the summer of 2016 the work surfaced when Sotheby’s was approached by a former personal assistant of Kahlo’s who had been given the work as a keepsake by Diego Rivera the year after Kahlo’s death in 1954. Niña Con Collar will be offered as part of the Latin America: Modern Art sale with an estimate of $1.5 / 2 million.

Axel Stein, Sotheby’s Head of Latin American Art, commented: “I have known Niña Con Collar since 1988 when I saw the black and white photograph in the newly published catalogue raisonné. I never imagined it would surface and turn out to be such a beautiful and warm painting.”

With the subject’s direct stare from under her spreading monobrow and the rigid symmetry of a frontal pose, Niña Con Collar immediately recalls some of the artist’s most celebrated paintings. Indeed, with those elements as well as her dress and jewelry, Niña con collar is nothing less than the seed of many self-portraits that Kahlo will produce thereafter in her signature style.

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Rome in shock as another historic landmark vandalised

A man takes a picture of the Elephant statue. ANDREAS SOLARO / AFP.

ROME (AFP).- Police in Rome are examining CC-TV footage in a bid to identify vandals who damaged one of the city's most famous pieces of public sculpture, Bernini's Elephant and Obelisk. The landmark work, tucked away in a little square near the Pantheon, features an elephant carrying the obelisk on its back and was first placed in the Piazza della Minerva in the 17th Century.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini oversaw the sculpture of the elephant, which had the tip of its left trunk broken off in the overnight incident. The elephant was commissioned by the then pope, Alexander VII, to support an obelisk from ancient Egypt that had only recently been excavated. The damage to the Bernini elephant comes after fans of Dutch football club Feyenoord caused outrage in February 2015 by damaging a fountain created by the sculptor that stands at the bottom of Rome's fabled Spanish Steps.

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Austria busts gang selling fake Picassos

Portrait photograph of Pablo Picasso, 1908.

VIENNA (AFP).- Austrian police said Monday that they have busted a gang allegedly trying to sell off forgeries of famous artists such as Pablo Picasso for millions of euros (dollars). The six men were arrested in a hotel room near Vienna airport as they tried to pass off five Picasso paintings for 50 million euros ($55 million), police said. The buyer was in fact a police officer in disguise. Police commandos arrested the five Austrians and one Slovenian "in case they were armed," a statement said.

Subsequent raids in homes and cars found 14 fakes complete with forged artists' signatures and counterfeit certificates of authenticity signed by Picasso's son. Police also recovered 66 other works purported to be by 40 famous artists including Claude Monet and Gustav Klimt at the home of the Slovenian suspect. The arrests took place earlier this year but were only announced on Monday. The men, now on bail, said they believed the works were genuine, police said.

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Pablo Picasso's widow may have hidden artworks from son, court told

Claude Picasso, son of late Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, waits before for the appeal trial of Pierre Le Guennec (not pictured), accused of receiving stolen goods after being found in possession of paintings by Picasso, at the court in Aix-en-Provence, southeastern France on October 31, 2016. Le Guennec, a former electrician, and his wife were convicted to two years suspended sentence for receiving stolen goods regarding some 271 artworks by Picasso which Le Guennec claims were given to him by Picasso and his wife Jacqueline when he carried out work on their villa in Mougins in the 1970's. BORIS HORVAT / AFP. by Andrea Palasciano

AIX-EN-PROVENCE (AFP).- A retired electrician who kept nearly 300 Pablo Picasso artworks in his garage for almost 40 years told a French appeal court Monday that the artist's widow may have wanted to hide the works from his family. "Mrs Jacqueline Picasso had problems with (her step-son) Claude (Ruiz) Picasso," Pierre Le Guennec said in a trembling voice, presenting a new version of events to the court in the southern city of Aix-en-Provence. Le Guennec, convicted last year along with his wife of possessing stolen goods, said that Picasso's widow had asked him to store between 15 and 17 garbage bags containing artworks after the artist died in April 1973.

The 77-year-old said that some time later Jacqueline Picasso retrieved the bags but gave him one of them, saying: "Keep this, it's for you." Le Guennec said "maybe" the widow was trying to prevent the works from an estate inventory, and said he did not tell the truth in the earlier trial out of "fear of being accused, along with madame, of stealing these bags." Le Guennec, who was the Picassos' handyman, had previously testified to being given the drawings while the artist was still alive, in 1971 or 1972.

The couple's lawyer Eric Dupond-Moretti said he had learned the new version of events only a few days ago. Le Guennec said Jacqueline gave him the 271 works -- 180 single pieces and a notebook containing 91 drawings -- as a gift recognising the couple's devotion. He described the works as "drawings, sketches, (and) crumpled paper". Uninterested in the haul, Le Guennec said he put the collection in his garage and rediscovered it in 2009.

'Staggering lie' Claude Ruiz-Picasso's lawyer Jean-Jacques Neuer angrily denounced Le Guennec's testimony as a "staggering lie", saying the case involved the "art market's darkest and most powerful" forces engaged in an "international stolen art laundering" scam. Prosecutor Christophe Raffin asked the court to uphold the couple's two-year suspended sentences meted out in March 2015. A verdict is due December 16. "I don't believe the version that (the drawings) were a gift," Raffin said. "I think it's a theft from an ageing Pablo Picasso and from Jacqueline, more than ever focused on her husband." Addressing the couple, Raffin said: "One could wonder whether what has been presented to us as the truth today is not another lie. Mr and Mrs Le Guennec, you have lied on several points."

The defendants face a maximum jail time of five years and a fine of 375,000 euros ($410,000), or half the value of the pieces, whichever figure is greater, if the conviction is upheld. The collection, whose value has not been assessed, includes drawings of women and horses, nine rare Cubist collages from the time Picasso was working with fellow French artist Georges Braque and a work from his "blue period". Other more intimate works include portraits of Picasso's mistress Fernande, drawings of his first wife Olga and a drawing of a horse for his children.

The works were created between 1900 and 1932. The authorities seized them after Le Guennec tried to get them authenticated in 2010, showing them to Ruiz-Picasso, who represents the artist's six heirs. The Picassos immediately pressed charges, and the works were handed over to Ruiz-Picasso. No works were signed Neuer has pointed out that none of the works in Le Guennec's possession were signed, an unusual occurrence for Picasso who always autographed his work -- whether he gave it away or sold it.

Another lawyer for Le Guennec, Charles-Etienne Gudin, however, has said there were only a dozen works of value and that the rest was "very mediocre," insisting that Picasso never tried to sell them. One of the few plaintiffs to have known Le Guennec when he was employed by the Picasso family, the artist's granddaughter Catherine Hutin-Blay, acknowledged during the trial that the electrician did have a special relationship with the artist. Prosecutor Laurent Robert said Le Guennec was a pawn who was manipulated by unscrupulous art dealers trying to obtain works initially stolen by Picasso's former chauffeur. The investigation did not formally identify a thief or thieves.

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