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Peter Doig sued for disavowing 40-year-old painting
- darkstar999 10y agoThe article links to Peter Bartlow's youtube channel. I checked out some of the videos with an open mind, but he presents horrible evidence. Good luck, you're going to need it!! https://www.youtube.com/user/BartlowGallery/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/BartlowGallery/videos
- cm2187 10y agoYou know the whole painting business is a scam when the name of the person who painted the painting matters way more than whether the painting is beautiful or not... First world disputes. Not enough gold and diamonds in this world for people to spend their money on something futile. They need to create new "rare commodities", more tulips. Little to do with art.
- Nadya 10y agoYou would be a huge fan of 'Onement VI' or 'The Voice of Fire' by Barnett Newman. I think the man is a genius. I think his paintings are...well...the paintings speak for themselves, like Mr. Newman says.
- cm2187 10y agoOr Klein's monochrome. Actually I am less appaled by modern art than by the exercise of using random painting as a form of commodity to store value. Like keeping some paintings in a safe like if it was a gold bar. In a way everyone likes going shopping. What people like is spending too much money, not so much that they ruin themselves but enough that it still hurts. That's why people who cannot afford luxury products will still buy something small in a luxury shop. But how do you get that satisfaction when you have a billion in your bank account? Comes Mr Artist, or often Mr Art Dealer (or both) who will create a new rare commodity for you. Art is good, you don't have to justify it. In fact any critic of art is an uneducated idiot who lacks imagination and sensitivity. So Mr Art Dealer will sell you a painting for a few dozen millions, just enough that it still hurts you and provides you with the satisfaction to do shopping. I am not a socialist but it does feel like there is too much money in the system...
- dredmorbius 10y agoThere are entire classes of goods which serve as assets or stores of wealth rather than as goods in their own right. These require some (though not necessarily all) of the features of money: utility/value, portability, indestructibility, homogeneity, divisibility, stability, cognizability. What fine arts offer is (relative) indestructabilty (they don't simply fall apart hanging on a wall), they have a high creation cost -- workfactor, and particularly if of a dead artist, cannot be created again, though that depends on being able to detect forgeries. Art lacks homogeneity and divisibility, but with auctions it is relatively liquid and can be recognized ("cognizability") as a thing having value. These aren't wealth themselves -- the value is imbued by the market. But they are vehicles for moving wealth. Say, like stock options or Bitcoin.
- cm2187 10y agoBut there is something intrinsic in gold. Because of its physical properties (it doesn't oxidise, it's sort of eternal), and it is rare. A painting is more like fiat money. The painter can pull more paintings out of his ass (and some litterally do). And if the painter is dead, we'll find another fashionable genius. Feels more like tulips than gold.
- Natanael_L 10y agoTrading cards, really. In particular limited editions. The two are very similar overall even if they're typically in very different price classes.
- dwaltrip 10y agoYou don't think people inherently value art & beauty? That would be the "intrinsic" value of the painting. Now, if we were really getting down to it, I would argue there is no "intrinsic" value for gold (or anything else). It's only worth what value different people may assign to it, which depends on entirely on the historical, cultural, and technological context in which we live, and varies greatly from person to person. Sure, there are some aspects or properties of objects for which there is relatively high amounts of agreement about the valuation, however that doesn't make those properties or their valuations "intrinsic". And of course, there will never be 100% agreement about anything.
- megablast 10y agoSo not much different to cars, clothes, restaurants, almost anything.
- espadrine 10y agoCar purchases are about more than the product: durability, warranty and availability matter. The same goes for clothes. Restaurants are about the experience and health reputation. While I may purchase a lesser shirt from a known brand when a superior one was at the same price from a street shop, I may be justified in that choice because I cannot know in advance that the better shirt is as durable. I may even purchase an Arduino when a cheaper Chinese replica has the same specs, in order to contribute to their R&D. Of course, there will be some to knowingly spend on lesser products for fame's sake. But I'm not convinced this is the case here. Firstly, the owner may have been told he could make a fortune, and spent more than he could afford hoping to make that money back tenfold. Secondly, some markets act as implicit international currencies, such as gold, and tangible art. This is similar to owning a forged €500 bill.
- SixSigma 10y agoProvenance is highly valued in many real world objects. For instance The 10 most expensive guitars ever sold http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/02/11/the-10-most-expensive-guitars-ever-sold-in-pictures/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/02/11/the-10-most-e...
- ww520 10y agoWhat kind of BS case is this? Why wasn't it thrown out at the first chance by the judge? 5 millions for damage? So if Peter Doig was forced to admit ownership, he would have to pay 5 millions? And if he won, he would still have to pay 5 millions because his word caused the evaporation of the presumed value of the fake?
- dragonwriter 10y agoTo be thrown out, the judge has to view the disputed facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff and find that they still wouldn't have a case. If it takes weighing the relative evidence on both sides, no matter how big the imbalance there is, that's what a trial is for.
- charlangas 10y agoWeird coincidence. Just today I was reading about South Korean artist Lee Ufan who in another very rare case concerning authentication of his work decided that 13 paintings in an investigation are indeed his—even after a forger was arrested and confessed to having painted them himself. https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-a-forger-confessed-to-faking-millions-in-lee-ufan-works-now-the-artist-says-they-re-real https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-a-forger-confe...
- TheOtherHobbes 10y agoThat's hilarious. I suppose the next step is for an artist to "authenticate" works s/he couldn't possibly have created and which aren't even in question.
- sitkack 10y agoI routinely claim authorship of natural objects, like a cool summer breeze, "I made that." Related, lots of artists make forgeries of their own work.
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y agoI take it you're not up on the 1917 news, about that Duchamp character who bought a hardware store urinal, laid it horizontal and exhibited it as 'Fountain'? The more I look at it, the more I find the whole modern art ecosystem similar to bitcoin: abstrusely useless work arbitrarily attributed value by consensus, used for portable and state-independent storage of money.
- simonh 10y ago> ...abstrusely useless work arbitrarily attributed value by consensus I can't recommend 'Modern Art' highly enough. It's a card game by Reiner Knizia in which the players bid up the value of art works by various fictional artists. It's a classic and a firm family favourite of ours.
- fsloth 10y agoNot really that strange. Famous painters (at least rembrandt) were walt disneys of their time. they had workshops with lots of assistants who did the gruntwork and they assisted, oversaw and signed the works. So, one could argue this is in the same tradition - the artist recognizes that the works follow his methods and are so well executed that he will gladly sign them. There really is no difference in cartoons and traditional art in the sense that both are essentially works of formulaic conception. Cartoons make the formula simple and explicit, whereas in traditional painting the formulas are a bit more complex. http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/research/online-editions/17th-century-dutch-paintings/essay-issues-attribution-rembrandt.html http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/research/online-editions/1...
- frank_jaeger 10y agoWas anyone else floored by this? Even in the extremely unlikely scenario of Doig actually painting a piece he would disavow, how is the greater good served by going forward with the case? The can of worms the precedent would set are shocking. I would have a genuinely hard time proving my whereabouts 4 years ago, let alone 4 decades. This just seems like such an unreasonable expectation.
- cpncrunch 10y ago>how is the greater good served by going forward with the case? Because the person who bought the painting is losing millions of dollars. I'm surprised this has gone to court. Surely there must be easier ways of resolving the identity of the artist who painted this.
- matthewowen 10y agoFrom the article, it sounds like there are. It's pretty clear that it was painted by someone called Peter Doige, who has nothing to do with Peter Doig. But the owner of this painting isn't happy with that, and wants to appeal to authorities. At some point, courts are the authority you reach.
- Nadya 10y ago>It's pretty clear that it was painted by someone called Peter Doige, who has nothing to do with Peter Doig. I noticed the extra "e" on the painting too. Either that is common for Peter to sign, he changed his name to drop the "e", or he forgot how to spell his own name when he was 17. Or someone forged his name as a signature onto the painting but didn't know how to spell "Doig" and didn't bother to look it up hoping they could pass the painting off for millions of dollars.
- _quick_q 10y agoI'm confused by your comment. The article mentions an entirely different person (now deceased) with that name (Peter Doige) and his sister has supported the whereabouts (high school, prison, etc). Are you suggesting that the painting is (a) authentic Peter Doig, but he is lying about it, or (b) that it is a bad forgery?
- qq66 10y agoWow, regardless of the facts in this case, this highlights the possibility of a fascinating new type of "extortion" where one party can destroy an asset of another party's by disavowing its authenticity, and may be able to extract payment under this threat.
- Gibbon1 10y ago> extract payment under this threat. Well that would be simple blackmail.
- mjrbrennan 10y agoNope, blackmail is when you demand money or other things in return for not divulging information about someone, whereas extortion is obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats, which is what is described here.
- Gibbon1 10y agoBlackmail/Extortion -> Tweedledee/Tweedledum
- Turing_Machine 10y agoPicasso was apparently known to do this, not as a form of extortion but simply because he could sometimes be a butthead. The story, as I remember reading it, was that a dealer approached Picasso with some drawings and asked him to authenticate them. "All fake.", he said. A friend who observed this had his doubts -- they looked genuine enough to him. He gave one of his own Picassos to the dealer and asked him to try that one. "Fake.", said Picasso. The friend said "But Pablo, I saw you draw that myself! You gave it to me with your own hands!". Picasso's reply: "Anyone can do a fake Picasso. I sometimes do them myself."
- sverige 10y agoOr it could simply be viewed as a form of "rights management," where even though you already paid for a work of art, now that some time has passed, you have to pay the creator again. Oh, and for any copies of it that you make, whether you sell them or not. No, that's crazy. No one would ever agree to such a scheme. [/s]
- ndiscussion 10y agoI'm very confused.. let's say Doig did paint this, and he's denying it.. what kind of damages does he owe? Is he supposed to owe the difference in sale price between if he painted it, and if he didn't? Is he just supposed to acknowledge it publicly? If so, is that really the best use of the courts? Force someone to admit something that, in the end, has no bearing in the real world?
- vinceguidry 10y agoI imagine the court would simply issue an injunction forbidding him from disavowing authorship of the painting. No monetary reparations needed.
- CoryG89 10y agoCan a court really forbid you from doing such a thing? What if someone wants to create art but not be forced to put their name on it afterwards. This is just impossible?
- incompatible 10y agoI suspect that you can create art and release it anonymously, and nobody can force you to say you painted it. That would be covered in the US under freedom of speech, I think. On the other hand, claiming that you painted something that you didn't, or didn't paint something that you did, may be fraudulent?
- incompatible 10y agoPerhaps artists will be advised in future to refuse to deny or confirm that they painted anything, to avoid such lawsuits.
- CoryG89 10y agoRight? I could see being sued for claiming you painted something that you didn't. I think that is pretty standard faire. But the reverse? That sounds crazy to me. At any rate, my freedom of speech definitely covers both cases.
- aquadrop 10y agoWhat will his punishment be if the court will decide it's his painting? In that case price of the picture will be high again and no damage was done, so nothing to punish for :) P.S. Funny thing, nobody actually cares about the painting itself, how good/bad it is etc, kinda shows top-art industry state...
- teh_klev 10y ago>The plaintiffs, who include the correction officer and the art dealer who agreed to help him sell the work, are suing the painter for at least $5 million in damages and seek a court declaration that it is authentic.
- bllguo 10y agoThis is insane. They can't even prove he was at or ever went to said correctional facility! That should be enough to throw this out the window. I hope Doig gets suitable compensation for this waste of time.
- ezequiel-garzon 10y agoGrammar question for the native speakers: "The owner, however, disagreed and sued him, setting up one of the stranger art authentication cases in recent history." Why is stranger used here, and not strangest? Would you say it the same way? Thanks, and sorry for the digression.
- alanh 10y agoSo many replies here! In my opinion none of them make a case that either -er or -est is more grammatical than the other. Even if this case is not the singular strangest, that does not mean it cannot be a member of ("one of") the singularly strangest group of all the cases. That is, the phrase "one of the strangest cases" would ask the reader to imagine that there is a group of cases, each stranger than any case outside of the group, which contains the case in question. (There would presumably be a group of moderately strange cases and a group of uninteresting cases.) It is a phrase so lacking in precision — appropriate for a subjective statement — that it matters not at all if "stranger" is used in places of "strangest," as the NYT opted to do, except that "stranger" only implies the existence of _one_ group of cases that is less interesting than the one containing the Doig case.
- ww520 10y ago"one of the abnormal/extraordinary/unusual cases"
- Zikes 10y ago"stranger" implies "more strange than the mean" while "strangest" would be further out on the extreme.
- protomyth 10y agoit is one of a group so it gets -er because it is not the singular strangest
- rcthompson 10y agoIf you like, you can mentally replace "stranger" with "stranger than average".
- 10y ago
- wilwade 10y agoIf there is a right to be forgotten, perhaps there is a right to deny authorship as well?
- alanh 10y agoI of course want to reject this out of hand, but it's better to be thoughtful. PRO: - Enable changing of minds without being shackled to former identity? CON: - Now a statement that is incontestably true can be ILLEGAL and a LIABILITY if not immediately retracted - Historical revisionism - Memory hole
- dredmorbius 10y agoRepudiability is a feature of some systems, difficult with others. PGP-signed messages, for example, are not only authenticated and of proven integrity, but they are nonrepudiable, at least cryptographically. (Bad key management or other factors might affect any of these, but generally these are characteristics of the system.) Designing a system which does allow for encryption and authentication but also provides for repudiability would be interesting.
- Natanael_L 10y agoPerfect forward secrecy. Signal's 3DH key exchange does it. The authentication output is only meaningful to the original conversation participants, because the only discernable difference between a real and a fake authentication even with access to all user keys and ciphertext is provenance - you know this output originated from a direct response to your cryptographic challenge, but nobody else can be sure you didn't just compose it yourself. (Only the key-holders in a conversation between the "authenticatee" and challenger can generate valid looking answers for their specific pair of keys - either mutually between each other, or all by themselves in order to achieve repudiation)
- dredmorbius 10y agoClarifying: 3DH only assures authentication to the original participants itself. However if a message payload itself consisted of, say, a PGP-signed message, then that could be authenticated independently (either on receipt, or if/when the public key was disclosed).
- andrewclunn 10y agoNot sure if this is exposing an absurdity in the law, or in the art trade. Maybe both. All of this stinks of a publicity stunt to inflate the painting's value either way.
- dennisgorelik 10y agoThe whole story could have been designed to inflate the value of all Peter Doig's paintings. From that PR perspective it might make sense to actually pay $5M in damages in order to attract even more attention and sell the paintings on that hype.
- devishard 10y agoPeter Doig is being sued, the person making the claim says that the painting was painted by a Peter Doige. Note the "e".
- dragonwriter 10y agoNo, the person making the claim says that the painting was painted by Peter Doig, who, that person claims, was known as Peter Doige at the time. (The fact that there are records of an actual Peter Doige, who is now deceased, who has life events that fit the narrative of the person from whom the painting was bought, while there doesn't seem to be substantial evidence connecting Peter Doig to those events, or to ever having used the name Peter Doige, seems likely to a be problem for the plaintiff at trial, however.)
- Chris2048 10y ago> who, that person claims, was known as Peter Doige at the time This is the crux - is there any evidence of this? Is this based purely on the testimony of the claimant?!? How did this get to court!
- dragonwriter 10y ago> This is the crux - is there any evidence of this? Yes, though what's reported in the article is fairly weak indirect evidence, and there seems to be much stronger evidence on the other side. > How did this get to court! As soon as someone files a lawsuit, it "gets to court". The threshold for that is extremely low. Even for going to trial, the threshold is low: essentially, the complaint needs to state a legal claim and there needs to be some evidence from which one might conclude that the claim is true -- evaluating the relative credibility of that evidence against other evidence is what trials are for.
- Chris2048 10y ago> there needs to be some evidence from which one might conclude that the claim is true What evidence is there in this case?
- bennofs 10y agoHow can there be a punishment for not having perfect memory and remembering everything you ever created? That does not make sense to me, you'd have to prove that he actually knew that he created it and is intentionally lying to warrant any compensation for lost value, which sounds hard to me.
- Sanddancer 10y agoThat's one of the things the court decides. The plaintiff is saying that what Mr Doig said has caused him five million dollars in damages. One of the things that the jurors will determine is what the actual value of those damages are. They could decide $5 million, or they could decide $5.
- sparky_z 10y agoIf Fletcher had better evidence, this would be a fascinating court case. But as it stands, the fact that they've located the family of the real Peter Doige (talk about burying the lede) makes it laughably open and shut. >Mr. Doig and his lawyers say they have identified the real artist, a man named Peter Edward Doige. He died in 2012, but his sister said he had attended Lakehead University, served time in Thunder Bay and painted. >“I believe that Mr. Fletcher is mistaken and that he actually met my brother, Peter, who I believe did this painting,” the sister, Marilyn Doige Bovard, said in a court declaration. She said the work’s desert scene appeared to show the area in Arizona where her mother moved after a divorce and where her brother spent some time. She recognized, she said, the saguaro cactus in the painting. >The prison’s former art teacher recognized a photograph of Ms. Bovard’s brother as a man who had been in his class and said he had watched him paint the painting, according to the teacher’s affidavit."
- megablast 10y agoSure, but that does not explain the remarkable similarities between the 2 artists work.
- huuu 10y agoCan you point out some similarities? I'm looking at the paintings of Peter Doig but I have a hard time finding something that looks like the painting of Peter Edward Doige. The strokes, technique, use of color. They are all different.
- elcapitan 10y agoI have two books about Peter Doig and liked his pictures for quite some time, and I was also stunned seeing the picture in question attributed to him. Are there any other pictures of that other artist? Maybe I'm missing something. The closest resemblance seems to be the name.
- dagw 10y agoWell this picture is proposed be from when he was a teenager, before he ever went to art school and long before he became a professional artist. It's not unreasonable to assume that his art style and technique can have changed significantly since then.
- justinlardinois 10y agoThis has me wondering: could a situation ever possible happen to someone who was born in the 90s or later? Our lives are so much more documented in modern times that I can't imagine "a hole" in one's teenage years being possible.
- Sanddancer 10y agoIt would be a lot harder. This case pretty much only exists because neither party has the documentation need to prove or disprove that Pete(r) Doig(e) was or was not incarcerated during the timespan the painting was made. Nowadays, asking the prison and/or asking former employers is pretty much a triviality.
- serge2k 10y agoHopefully he easily wins. Then sues them. > now feels let down by someone he believes he helped, and wants to be proved right. Now feels upset he can't make a big payday on a painting he bought for a hundred dollars.