How not to buy a Rembrandt

Picture: Wales Online

Two big Rembrandt deals have been announced recently. Both reveal wastefulness and foolishness in public art acquisitions.

The UK government has placed a temporary export block on Catrina Hooghsaet (above), which is being sold from Penrhyn Castle. The Telegraph reports that a private buyer has agreed to pay £35m plus sales tax of £660k. The painting is exempt from sales tax, so presumably £660k is due on agent's fees of £3.3m. UK buyers have until 15 February to register interest in buying the picture. 

I hope no one does. The picture has been openly marketed for years; the Rijksmuseum came close to buying it. There was ample opportunity to negotiate a friendly deal without the need to pay millions to Sotheby's. I don't begrudge dealers' mark-ups or agents' fees, which are fairly earned in a competitive market. But British institutions have a woeful history of waiting until the last minute and then declaring a national emergency, when a bit of foresight would save millions. If anyone wanted it, the should have said so earlier. They will seem incompetent if they only raise their hands now. 

The other element I find objectionable is the smoke-and-mirrors approach to funding acquisitions. An element of tax that's been deferred could potentially be removed from the sale price, making it cheaper for a British public collection to buy the picture. But the real cost to the UK taxpayer doesn't actually change. It makes no financial difference if the tax is collected and then spent on a painting, or if the tax isn't collected in the first place. But it does give an artificial incentive to buy pictures subject to tax deferral, which is an arbitrary way of choosing acquisitions. I've written more about it here, and discussed on the BBC's One Show here.

Finally I don't think it's the best way to spend £35m. It's a fine picture, and I'm a great Rembrandt fan. But it's not one of his best, and we've got quite a lot in the UK already. Spend the money on other things, and please try to buy wholesale not retail. Lots of great pictures are sold for surprisingly modest prices, and £35m could fill some serious gaps in British public collections.

Picture: Dutch News

The French and Dutch governments have jointly bought this pair of full-length portraits by Rembrandt from the Rothschilds for €160m. The Dutch came up with €80m shortly after buying a Adriaen de Vries bronze for almost $28m, yet they are so short of funds for operating costs that they have to close at 5pm each day to cater for private events. When you consider the value of the Rijksmuseum's entire collection, there is no way that they money they're getting from plutocrats and celebrities can cover the cost of capital for the public asset they are exclusively enjoying. But every day the oiks are kicked out in the late afternoon so the privileged few can party away in evening. 

It's a chronic problem in the art world that money can be raised from public funds and private donors for big acquisitions and flashy extensions, but no one wants to pay for more modest acquisitions or for the running costs of all the new wings. The Dutch government should have spent the €80m on opening later so the public can enjoy what's already there. 

My other concern with this dumb deal is that the pictures will be shared in perpetuity, meaning that these large and fragile pictures will be moved between Paris and Amsterdam every few years. There will always be minor damage when big pictures like this are shipped hundreds of miles. But what happens if they become too fragile to move? And what happens if the museums disagree on restoration? Or if one museum wants to lend them elsewhere, to the Louvre Lens for example? What will happen if the Louvre wants to rent them out to a foreign museum? Or if the two countries fall out. It is inconceivable in the medium term, but forever is a long time and who knows what will happen in 300 or 500 years. Shared ownership of art is an absolutely terrible idea. When a crisis happens, it will seem obvious in retrospect. But right now the deal is being naively praised as 'saving' the Rembrandts, as if any other buyer would destroy them. I'd certainly be sorry to see them disappear to a private collection, but I'd be much happier if they'd both been bought by the Getty or the Kimbell. 

Privatisation at the National Gallery: a reflection, and a modest proposal

The National Gallery has outsourced its security; the guards' strike was an abject failure, as AHN explains. The Union had a weak hand, and played it badly. The National Gallery always held all the cards, but they mismanaged the situation spectacularly. They unfairly dismissed an employee, but not just any employee. They sacked a union rep during one of the most contentious negotiations, which was a fantastically stupid move that caused the situation to escalate. 

The NG brought the strike on itself. Outsourcing is still a bad idea, but its implementation was handled incompetently. There is a serious lack of basic managerial competence and basic savvy. It is not simply that a senior individual made the decision to sack the union rep, but also that the management structure allowed the decision to be taken—it's a collective failure. And then it was compounded by upholding the decision on appeal. Morons. And where was the expertise from the Trustees, who are meant to provide outside guidance? The board seems stuffed with dilettantes who relish the social cachet but don't bring much to the table. I'm always appalled when the board minutes record their delight with the progress of restoration, which few of them are even qualified to judge. 

I'm not ideologically opposed to privatisation. My objections to outsourcing one of the key functions of the gallery are practical. But I do understand the need to save money and operate more efficiently, so in the interests of constructive engagement let me suggest a better candidate for outsourcing: conservation. The NG's conservation department has, in its history, done incalculable damage. Most of the collection has been drastically over-cleaned, given the collection a different appearance from museums in Europe that have been more cautious. 

The conservation department is expensive, powerful and dangerous. It holds great institutional power at the NG (the Head of Conservation was interim director before Nicholas Penny). It should be subservient to the curators. And it is dangerous, because its institutional authority means that it is immodest and subject to groupthink, promoting its bad ideas elsewhere—like the appalling overcleaning of the Leonardo's Virgin & Child with St Anne in the Louvre, promoted by NG conservator Larry Keith.

An internal conservation department has a natural incentive to create work for itself; who is going to say that nothing currently needs to be done, so they should take a holiday? On the other hand, it may on occasion have too much work to do, such as preparing pictures for a big exhibition, which incentivises haste. Given the lumpiness of the work schedule, it is a natural candidate for outsourcing. The day-to-day work of inspecting pictures annually ought more properly to fall to the curatorial department, which ought to have the skills to inspect pictures physically for damage and identify conservation work required. Outside consultants can be brought in to assist as required. 

The internal cost of cleaning a small picture is £34,500, which is far above commercial rates. And the NG is less competent than many independent conservators. They are now having to crowdsource to raise the funds to keep the conservation department going. Enough! Close it down. Save the money, and hire contractors. If they don't have the money, restoration will have to wait - which is not necessarily a bad thing, given the disastrous consequences of their historic haste. 

Two great books

Reading bad books is miserable, but it's fun to review them. Good books are the opposite. I read more of them, but review fewer. I feel compelled to set out the flaws of bad books, to warn others. But a review of a good book succeeds simply by winning it some new readers. So here are some brief notes on books I've loved.

Noel Malcolm's Agents of Empire: Knights, corsairs, Jesuits and spies in the sixteenth century Mediterranean world (Allen Lane 2015 £30) is one of the most astonishing books I've ever read, and I think it will become a classic. It is a kind of microhistory that traces the family history of the Brunis and Brutis who hailed from present-day Albanian territory. But unlike most microhistory, it isn't telling the story of everyday folk. These people were involved at the edges of grand affairs of state, engaged in the Battle of Lepanto and the Council of Trent. There's also fascinating material about the mediation between empires at the frontier between Christendom and Islam, and between the great powers in the Mediterranean and beyond. I suspect this kind of history will be imitated, but I doubt others will rise to Malcolm's level. The breadth of knowledge and depth of research is awesome, but it is organised by a powerful intellect. He moves easily between the minutiae of diplomatic language schools and shrewd judgments on the Mediterranean balance of power.

I expected to dip into this book, but I was  utterly enraptured and read every page avidly. 

R. Taggart Murphy Japan and the Shackles of the Past (Oxford University Press 2015 £20)

Japan brings out the worst kind of punditry. There are so many colourful anecdotes about its history, culture and economy that journalists can spin a good story without much analysis at all. The first half of Murphy's book is an excellent concise history of Japan. But it really comes alive in the second half. He writes confidently and knowledgeably about all facets of Japan, and is particularly sophisticated in his understanding of economics and finance. But his ability to explain cultural phenomena like gender relations and stay-at-home youth that impressed me most, because it stood out from anything else I've read on the subject. He is also excellent—and scathing—about the 'Japan hands', the coeterie of U.S. 'experts' who advise on all matters Japanese, who promote each others' work and reinforce each others' prejudices. 

I'm a bit of a Japanophile, but this is one of the few books I'd recommend unreservedly. Alex Kerr's Dogs and Demons is another, particularly on culture. And Richard Koo is strong on the Japanese economy. I'm also a great fan of Japanese literature; Natsuo Kirino is my current passion. Other recommendations would be appreciated. 

My great fiction discovery is Edward St Aubyn's Patrick Melrose novels. They sounded a bit too 'misery memoir' for my taste, but I'm glad I gave them a go, for they are fabulous. Wonderfully well written and wickedly cutting, their style is oddly detached from the sadness they describe. I've only read the first two so far. In the second volume our hero is off his head on drugs for most of the book, yet still evinces our sympathy and manages a good deal of dry humour. Wonderful, and one of the few really excellent recent novels I've found. I have enjoyed few of other the recently-hyped novels I've tried.

On Art Galleries and Swimming Pools

This summer I learned to swim, and it prompted reflection on the similarities between swimming pools and art galleries. No, really ... bear with me. In both spheres, officials fret about declining public interest and propose more and more official interventions to curb decline. Swimming participation has fallen sharply, and officialdom thinks it's because we can't use our smartphones in the pool (I'm not making this up). Museums are in a constant panic about becoming 'irrelevant', so they enthuse about technology. Government cuts mean both swimming pools and museums are being outsourced and privatised. And a fetish for 'engaging new audiences' is offputting to serious swimmers and serious art enthusiasts alike. 

Drastic cuts to local government funding mean that councils can't afford to maintain opening hours or facilities at either swimming pools or museums. In museums we're just starting to see the effect, with outsourcing of security and reduced hours to facilitate private hire. Swimming pool operations have been outsourced for some time, with bad results. Private operators demand a monopoly on learning to swim sessions, which are pricey and profitable. That means not only that swimming clubs and other operators can't provide lessons, but also that fewer lanes are available for actual swimming. As a learner myself, I can say that it did me no favours. I only had a couple of unofficial lessons. Learning to swim is about practice, and that is curtailed when lanes are closed (especially when the slow lane at the end is closed - I needed the security of the edge when I started). At one swimming pool I use, there is sometimes just one lane of eight available for lane swimming. 

The contractual relationship between councils and outsourced operators means there's no one to hold accountable or to complain to. The operator says they're following the contract, and the council is unable to change agreed terms. We will see more of this in museums; some already close early for private events. Don't be surprised when you find your local museum closed for the day because they've got a wedding on. But it's not just a lack of money that's at fault; it's also how the money is spent.

The London Aquatic Centre is the pool used for the 2012 Olympics. It's one of only two 50m indoor pools in London, and it is brilliant. But the main competition pool is given over to something called 'extreme aqua splash' every Sunday afternoon. There is actually a separate training pool that could be used. But instead the main pool is turned into a play area for half the weekend. In the brief window before aqua splash the pool is chronically crowded with lane swimmers who are squeezed out for most of the day. Fun for kids has been prioritised at museums and swimming pools, partly because 'kids are the future', so we must 'engage' them. Trouble is, it doesn't work.

When I was a child our local swimming pool had a water slide and a wave machine, and it was fun to splash about. But there was no pressure actually to learn to swim. So I didn't, and it was a quarter of a century before I got back in a swimming pool. As with swimming pools, so with museums. Engaging kids has become a messianic project, to the exclusion of adult enjoyment. And when they grow up, they will look at museums as places only for kids. Why would they think museums are places for grown ups, when they know them only as places where they went to play? 

The ideology of inclusion means that neophytes are led to expect facilities to be organised around them. This blog post expresses frustration at the demand that faster swimmers give way to slower people. And here is another swimmer frustrated with the prejudice against supposedly-elitist competitive swimmers. As a new and slow swimmer, I agree with them both. The reluctance to enforce rules in case it puts anyone off is actually offputting. You have to have an induction session before you can use the gym, but you can just turn up at the pool. It's hard for pools to work effectively without shared norms, and it's hard for new swimmers to know how to behave when the rules aren't explained. I found this indispensable guide online; I wish I'd known sooner.

We've seen this before. Librarians were among the first to fret about their coming irrelevance. Local authorities turned libraries into 'ideas centres', and ditched the books for computers and community centres. It just accelerated the decline. When they became places to hang out rather than, um, libraries, the case for maintaining them became weaker. Local authorities are slashing hours and closing branches. Swimming pools and museums seem set on the same trajectory. I suspect the answer is really simple. Do less. Less extreme aqua splash, fewer lane closures. Keep the doors open, the pool clean and prices low. But what group of interested professionals will conclude that they need to step back? Instead they think it's about innovation, technology and consumer expectations.

Brian Sewell

I'm truly saddened by the death of Brian Sewell, saddened to a degree I've never before felt for some one I never met. He was a giant among critics. Brian—for he will always be Brian to me—was a really great writer with a unique prose style, and his acerbic criticism stood out from the consumer reports written by some of his peers. But the strength of his criticism came from his extraordinary knowledge of art. Sewell was famous for his put-downs, but his brilliance really came through in his enthusiasms. He had both a good eye and a deep knowledge of art history that he shared generously. 

I'm saddened a second time by the obituaries, because they emphasise too much his barbs and too little his enthusiasms. I'm struck by how everyone notes that Brian was often wrong. Of course he was sometimes wrong. But the judgment of 'wrong-ness' is sometimes made with a finality that implies that he was objectively WRONG. That contrasts with Brian's own criticism. For all its vitriol, his controversial judgments were thoughtfully presented. He was consciously goading the panjandrums of officialdom, which is quite different from demanding obeisance to conventional wisdom. Strong words are fitting when trying to overturn consensus; they are unnecessary and even censorious when demanding deference to convention. 

The goading worked, and the panjandrums hated him. It is simply astounding that people felt moved to sign letters in protest at an art critic, and that high officials sought to get him sacked because they disliked his criticism. It underlines the need to challenge the sensitive bullies with identikit taste.

Brian' rich vocabulary and sophisticated writing made demands of his readers, but rewarded us amply. He believed in his audience. His Christmas 'books of the year' showed the breadth of his reading, recommending recondite and expensive academic texts to the readers of what became a free local paper. And he even taught art history in prisons, which I think tells you more about the man than any number of encomia. Brian's autobiography will, I think, stand the test of time. It's not only a window on a fascinating life. It's also one of the best autobiographies I've ever read. I was put off by reports of its salaciousness, but when I finally summoned the will to read it I found the discussion of sex to be frank, yes, but also authentically integrated into the life. He is a rarity among writers for his ability to write about sex without awkwardness. 

I desperately hope that his criticism will last too, although it's not a model that can be followed. You see some people who try, but you can't emulate Brian's style or form without first mastering the content - having a solid grounding in art history and a great eye. 

Something is missing from a great show of ancient bronzes...

Picture: Amazon

Jens M. Daenher & Kenneth Lapatin (eds) Power and Pathos: Bronze sculpture of the Hellenistic World J. Paul Getty Museum 2015 £42.91

I'm sorry I won't be able to see this show, currently at the Getty, but the wonderful catalogue is some consolation. This is what an exhibition catalogue should be: erudite essays, comprehensive entries for all exhibits, proper detail on condition and provenance, and great illustrations. I find these sculptures thrilling. Even if you know nothing of their context, they are immensely powerful works of art. But there is an extra frisson from sensing a connection with an ancient civilization far removed from ours, but feels so accessible through these universal masterpieces. If I have one criticism of the catalogue it's that this sense of wonder is dulled by a sometimes ponderous writing style. Oh, to see the exhibition in the flesh!

Most ancient bronzes have been melted down for scrap, but the precious survivals reveal them as a pinnacle of art history. Power and Pathos brings together some of the greatest. Some were discovered in the renaissance, and some may even have been handed down the generations from antiquity. A surprising number have been found quite recently, and the exhibition is an opportunity to assess them in the context of more familiar sculptures. But one of the greatest recent discoveries is missing. 

Picture: Cleveland Museum of Art 

The Apollo Sauroktonos only emerged in 2004 when it was bought by Cleveland Museum of Art. They say it may be a sole surviving bronze by Praxiteles, one of the greatest ancient sculptors. The catalogue gives short shrift to the idea it's by Praxiteles himself; there's just not enough evidence for that claim. But it's not actually in the exhibition, so we lose the chance to compare it with the canon of ancient bronzes. Sculptures have been brought from all over Europe for this show, but the Apollo Sauroktonos hasn't made it from Cleveland to Los Angeles. 

 

It's a controversial sculpture. It was bought from a dealer that has broken the law in the US and Egypt, and its provenance is vague. Most suspicious of all is Cleveland's own secrecy; it refused to allow an academic access to its files on the sculpture. But technical evidence indicates that it was excavated a long time ago, and no specific claims have been made for restitution. That didn't stop the Greek government leaning on the Louvre and demanding its exclusion from an exhibition on Praxiteles. I don't know if specific threats were made over the Power and Pathos exhibition, but the chilling effect of Greece's threat to the Louvre may have been sufficient. 

 

Looting of antiquities is an especially pernicious crime. It is so much more than property theft; it permanently deprives humanity of irrecoverable evidence of our history. Context is vitally important. But our rightful outrage at looting shouldn't stop us asking: does stigmatisation of antiquities without provenance stop looting? And what should we do with all the antiquities that lack provenance? Should they be hidden from view, never sold or loaned?

 

The debate has been distorted by moral and political grandstanding. Countries demanding restitution are not innocent victims heroically seeking to protect art and history. Italy wants to hoard everything found on its territory, but fails to protect and display what it has. Greece has made no claim for the Cleveland sculpture, yet it uses its power to stop its exhibition. Antiquities without provenance are being treated as 'dirty', as if the objects themselves have bad juju. Superstitious thinking doesn't stop looting. It stops scholarship.

That said, the Cleveland Museum of Art has behaved despicably. If the sculpture is clean, why are they so secretive? My request for information was simply ignored, and scholarly requests for access have been denied. That's not the behaviour of a serious scholarly institution with nothing to hide. Maybe they deserve to be called out and ostracised, their requests for loans boycotted. That seems like cutting off our nose to spite our face, but if peer institutions think the acquisition was unethical they should come out and say so. Instead everything is done in secret. Greece acts behind the scenes, threatening to deny loans if anyone borrows the Apollo. Other museums are too timid to criticise either the Greek government or the Cleveland curators. And the Cleveland Museum of Art keeps its lips sealed. Whatever your views on the antiquities trade, secrecy won't do anything to advance the debate.

Ivan Fallon on the Lloyds/HBoS merger: bad deal, worse book

Picture: Spencer House

Ivan Fallon Black Horse Ride: The inside story of Lloyds and the banking crisis The Robson Press 2015 £25

In the great room of Spencer House, pictured above, Gordon Brown is said to have persuaded Lloyds TSB's unwilling chairman to buy their ailing rival HBoS. Black Horse Ride shows that Lloyds was already keen on the takeover; the idea was theirs, and Brown merely promised to remove obstacles to a deal that proved disastrous, and ended with Lloyds being bailed out by the government. I worked for Lloyds at the time, albeit in a lowly role far removed from the board's strategising. The idea that they were the unwilling stuffee never seemed credible to me; their desperation for a big deal was palpable. I heard some astonishing stories at the time, but I am more discreet than the directors who spoke to Ivan Fallon for his account of the background to the merger. I'm grateful to Fallon for busting the persistent myth that Gordon Brown forced the deal on Lloyds, though that is the limit of my gratitude. The book is a real stinker. It's badly written, ill-informed and cravenly tells the story on behalf of Lloyds' board.

He says that Lloyds wanted nothing to do with whizzy financial products, but CEO Eric Daniels spearheaded an expansion of Lloyds's markets business. I was hired as a risk manager in their Products & Markets business, which was keen to bring in outside expertise to support its growth. It was too little, too late to have had much impact on its profits—either positively in the boom years, or negatively afterwards. But that side of their strategy is wholly neglected. Lloyds was an odd mixture of conservatism and risk-taking. Its corporate book was less risky than its competitors, and it avoided sub-prime mortgage lending. But it pursued a number of high-risk acquisitions (most of which were not concluded), and risked its reputation by selling payment protection aggressively, resulting in huge compensation payments. Incredibly, Fallon thinks payment protection was a good product.

I suspect the problem is not merely that Fallon is ignorant of finance, but also that he doesn't know what he doesn't know. He repeats things that he's only half understood, seemingly without realising there's anything more to it. The book is littered with errors of fact and misunderstandings. He thinks banks lend to each other with terms up to five years (five days would be a relatively long term for inter-bank lending, p. 50). He doesn't know the difference between assets and liabilities, claiming that securitisation would have reduced gearing by "removing liabilities and replacing them with bonds" (p. 155; securitisation removes assets from the balance sheet). He thinks there would be 'no risk' if the government funded Lloyds to purchase Northern Rock, because it would be backed by securities. And he claims it was 'mathematically impossible' for money market funds to repay less that par. I don't know what he means by 'mathematically impossible'.

Some of the writing is merely careless, and the proliferation of minor errors make me suspicious of the whole book. He describes Spencer House as the ancestral home of Lady Diana. It's an irrelevant piece of background fluff, but it's not even altogether accurate as her family has rented it out for generations. He adds the superfluous detail of the guests going 'next door' for dinner, when in fact the dining room is downstairs from the great room. Finally, the writing style itself can be excruciating. I laughed aloud at the description of the charity 'Wellbeing of Women' as one that "researched obstetrical and gynaecological issues of great importance to women and their ability to give safe delivery to their babies" (p. 89).

Fallon had unique access the the protagonists, but he was ill-equipped to ask the right questions or understand the answers. I'm aware that my review seems one-sided and excessively harsh. But books like this are written for a general audience; the specialists who read them rarely write reviews. As a result they get an easy ride, and Fallon seems to have felt no pressure to carry out even elementary fact-checking. That does his readers a disservice and deserves to be called out, all the more so when this may stand as the definitive account of an important story. This book does not deserve the attention of posterity.