Foreigners (British History)

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Now that everyone is safely gathered in New York...

[Mick Harper]

Just time for a quiz though:

1. Who is being scammed?
2. What is the crime?

No, you gibbering jizzock, the Russian oligarch is the scammer.
No, you puddleheaded poltroon, there hasn't been a crime.

[Mick Harper]

It is not entirely clear what the status of the programme-makers is but, after an ad break, all is changed. Now, we discover, Yves Bouvier is not what we had been led to believe before the ad break.

He is in fact the owner of the vast underground Genevan vaults that hold billions of pounds of art belonging to the world's most secretive collectors. And, since he's the only person who knows who they all are and what they've got stashed, he's probably the single most important individual in the whole of the art world. Goodness.

The oligarch meanwhile has had a savage fall from grace. His prize asset, a something or other mine in Russia has gone kerplunk for some reason or other. And the two men are at daggers drawn for some reason or another.

You couldn't make it up, but they are. Who they are is not yet clear. I'll be back when I've found out.

[Mick Harper]

I finally finished watching it all. You have no idea how hard it is for me watching an hour and a half about something I'm not interested in but I have to pay careful attention to. It's like double maths first thing Monday morning.

I'll just appraise you of the silliest bit (until the very silliest bit at the end). There's another ad break and we know what that means--a change in fortune for Yves Bouvier. He is once more a Swiss chancer without a pot to pissoir in. He's lost the lot. How did he manage it? Well, gather round and I'll get Max Bygraves to tell you a story.

1. Dmitry Rybovlov's mine blows up in an 'environmental disaster second only to Chernobyl'. (I'm not saying it was arson, I'm not sayin it wasn't.)

2. There's a half a sentence in the Times about the Salvator Mundi costing $57-85 million. (The fact-checkers must have insisted on a wide spread because nobody knows.)

3. But it's enough to enrage Dmitry Rybovlov who paid Yves Bouvier $120 million for it. (He says.)

4. But it's enough for the Russian oligarch to pursue the Swiss cheese through every court in the land. (Apparently).

5. Which costs poor woebegone Yvie so much in cash and damaged reputation he has to sell his Swiss cash cow for next-to-nothing. (Even though the facts seem to indicate he's only adding to the billion dollars he's reportedly accrued from insider trading as the owner.)

6. Meaning the Geneva Treasure Vaults have passed into new ownership. (My guess is that it is either Dmitry Rybovlov or a consortium of Russian oligarchs or the Russian mafia or the FSB. To the extent these are different entities.)

But what has happened to the single most valuable artefact therein? Oh no, you don't get off that easily....

[Mick Harper]

It is is vital to understand that in the toppermost echelons of the art world

[Mick Harper]

The key to understanding the next bit is the deadly rivalry between the National Gallery and the Louvre and between Sotheby's and Christie's. The French thought they were the unchallengeable Leonardo-leaders on account of having the Mona Lisa but the BM came roaring back when the Queen handed over the Leonardo cartoons to its safe keeping. Did they appoint Anthony Blunt as curator... I can't remember.

The British Museum had a Leonardo Exhibition on the stocks for 2009 so they were suckers for the Salvator Mundi. They knew the price range was in the 80-100 million range, and the philistine British taxpayer wasn't likely to stump that up, so after the Lord Mayor's Show the painting went back to Geneva ready for its next outing.

This was a foray to turn it into the most expensive work of art ever sold at auction. You might think this would cost someone a lot of money but not if you've got two telephones. It works like this:

* The Genevan gang put together some choice works from the vaults and offered them to Christies. (Not Sotheby's who had, it will be recalled, been instrumental in levering the Salvator Mundi into the high eight-figures in the first place, all without money changing hands.)

* Christies were prepared to accept the one condition imposed on them--they had to waive their commission on... you guessed it, the Salvator Mundi.

* Come the day of the sale and the art world was packed in, standing room only, ready for a nine-figure auction. Everyone was confident the 100 million barrier would be broken. Gasps all round as the bidding went past 200 million. Then three hundred, then four hundred, but not 'do I hear five hundred million' because some sap had got it for four hundred and fifty. It was obvious what had happened, everyone agreed. Two of the world's super-rich had told their agents to 'buy it at any price' and gone off on their superyachts. What larks.

* After two of the gang had finished bidding against one another on the phone from Geneva, the painting went back to the vaults and rumours started, were started, about who was the victor/mug.

* Too rich for Russian oligarchs, said the cognoscenti. The smart money was on Mohammed bin Salman, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. Him being responsible for Islam's strict rules about it being impermissible to have graven images of human beings, especially ones who founded rival religions, makes this somewhat unlikely but the Saudis weren't denying it.

* President Macron believed it and approached MBS about lending the Salvator Mundi for the 2019 Leonardo Quincentennial Exhibition. (Da Vinci: April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519.) "Sure, Emmanuel, but first let's do some arms dealing." The negotiations went so well France confidently awaited the great day when the Salvator Mundi could finally be re-united with the Mona Lisa in their blessèd Louvre.

* Oh no, you'll never guess. The Saudis insisted the two should be in the same room facing off against one another but the French wouldn't wear this. There was no way they were going to allow the world's most expensive painting (which they didn't own) to be put on a par with the world's most famous painting (which they did) so the painting never arrived. That was their story anyway.

* To this day nobody apart from the scammers knows where the wretched thing is. Apart from me. And now you. My guess is the Salvator Mundi will never see the light of day. Far too valuable where it is. Still worth every penny of the eleven hundred bucks it cost in New Orleans. The Big Easy.

[Mick Harper]

So how to sum up this sorry tale? The first thing to say is that I cannot guarantee the bona fides of the TV documentary all this emanates from. (The 'facts', not my interpretations of them.)

It appears to be an independent production, made in 2021, about a matter of considerable public interest and shown -- in my case -- on a respected and well-funded cable channel (Sky Arts). No particular qualms there.

On the other hand, it is clearly a very expensive production. Filmed in London, Florence, New York and Geneva and in multiple locations in each city. All the talking heads -- and there are a great many of them -- are either participants in events stretching back twenty years, or experts commentating on them, all gathered together in c. 2021. That is a considerable feat.

I hadn't heard of a single one of them, though that is not in itself damning. All of them--with the possible exception of Yves Bouvier--are filmed sympathetically. The footage of the Christie's auction is clearly authentic.

The programme did not go in for editorialising. It did not come to a verdict about the authenticity of the Salvator Mundi. It did not (overtly) criticise the methods used by the National Gallery, Sotheby's or Christie's to authenticate the painting. It did not (overtly) question the honesty of any of the principals.

But it had no difficulty in making it quite clear they wouldn't have made a documentary about a long-lost Leonardo being identified, restored, sold to a wealthy art collector and resold to another wealthy art collector.

However it did not tell the same story I have told here. If it was a scam, they implied, it was a perfectly straightforward one. /ends

[Mick Harper]

A lot of people at my club have been waking me up to beg for a clarification of who was doing what to whom so they can go off and do it themselves. I told them I'm still not absolutely sure but I'll put up my best-guess on the AEL.

Original conspirators
Smooth American-based faker/dealer
Scatty Florence-based faker/art restorer
Russian-based oligarch down on his luck

Co-opted conspirators
Big time London-based official at the National Gallery
Small time Geneva-based crook
New York-based international auction house
Two anywhere-based plausible telephone fine art bidders

Well paid but non-criminal participants
British-based Leonardo scholars
London-based international auction house

Drawn in but entirely extraneous
French-based President
Saudi-based heir to the throne

[Mick Harper]

A bit ago I argued here that Vivaldi's Four Seasons was a twentieth century fake. This wasn't a discovery of mine though I gave it an AE veneer by pointing out it held a world record as the most recorded piece of music ever (or somesuch).

What I know about music can be written on the back of a piccolo so I asked people who do to listen to the Four Seasons and report back. Naturally none of them did. Finally, last night it popped up on Sky Arts so I had a listen. I got through the familiar strains of the first movement and nothing much was amiss (though I didn't believe Vivaldi was capable of thinking up such a hook or he would be better known at the time).

Then the second movement started and it sounded like an orchestra tuning up. Gotcha! A-tonal. It turned out they were tuning up (it was being performed on eighteenth century instruments). Then the second movement started for real and there it was. A cello (or a double bass in the higher register, I can't tell) kept playing these two notes discordantly. Such contrapuntal rubbish could not have been conceived in the nineteenth century let alone the eighteenth.

But who do I check with? They'll just say, "Oh, Vivaldi was always ahead of his time" or "J S Bach did something similar in his Opus 115" and I won't be able to say, "Fuck off, you dozy git." It's not easy being a polymathic philistine.

[Ishmael]

Deconstructing out "history," is going to prove a task requiring the work of generations.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

You wouldn't think watches are a fecund field for fakers but when they are worth several hundred million, they might well be. Listen to this delicious little confection everyone is giving the time of day https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m002hpf0

You won't know where to start when it comes to red flags but it's allegedly from when watches started.