Sculptures

According to Gary Arseneau, a lithographer and art dealer in Fernandina Beach, Florida, half of the 120 works from the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation attributed to Auguste Rodin are simply fakes.

Rodin was France's great sculptors at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Century and has been much prized in the U.S before and after his death, which occurred in 1917.

Gary Arseneau has stressed that many Rodin works sold in the U.S were posthumous casts, which in his mind should be considered as fakes. Arseneau's argument is laid out in great details in his self-published 333-page book titled «Deception».

The posthumous Rodin works were cast and issued by the Musée Rodin, the Parisian museum in charge of Rodin's legacy. The museum has always referred to these posthumous works as «original editions» and similar casts belong to the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, a non-profit organisation in Los Angeles.

The main question is to determine whether the Rodin Museum has the right to sell posthumous casts of works by Rodin as «original» bronze sculptures. In his will Rodin authorized the French government to reproduce his sculptures from original plasters after his death and the State granted that right to the Musée Rodin. Still, according to many American museum curators, in issuing these posthumous Rodin bronze works, the French museum has been simply carrying out Rodin's wishes. Arseneau has been arguing that, by identifying these posthumous bronzes as «original editions» and forging Rodin's signature on them, the Musée Rodin has been violating the terms of the artist's will.

After the Second World War the Musée Rodin found a way to reintroduce the artist's work on the market due to increased demands from collectors. The works eventually became so valuable that the Musée Rodin kept making more of them.
In failing to identify such posthumous reproductions as such, many public institutions are thus misrepresenting what the works really are as people might come to the conclusion that they are by Rodin especially as the prices for these pieces are often in the six-figure region. Arseneau has claimed that museums and institutions wanted to avoid the word «reproduction» fearing that such description would undermine the perceived value of these pieces.

When often donated to museums, as many have been, these reproductions pay off in the form of generous tax write-offs and because the Iris and Gerald Cantor Foundation is also a major back-up of Rodin scholarship, Arseneau has been suggesting that knowledgeable scholars haven't raised the issues he has uncovered because they did not want to bite the hand that feeds them, the JournalNow Web site stressed on July 16th, 2000.

NOT ONLY RODIN'S WORK

In October 1994 a major Giacometti exhibition opened in the Malmö Konsthall in Sweden. Most of the bronzes came from the estate of Annette Giacometti, the artist's widow, and were lent by the Paris-based Association. In fact, most of the borrowed bronzes were posthumous casts, never seen or touched by Alberto Giacometti.

Some of these were even casts of early abstract works that the artist never executed in bronze. When he died Giacometti had left no instructions about posthumous casting and no one knows how he would have reacted about this.

Sculptors like Henry Moore or Barbara Hepworth, aware of the perils of posthumous casts, left specific instructions either forbidding or limiting such practice. Hepworth, who died in 1975, stated in her will that her studio was to be closed and work, even on editions already in progress was to cease.

Posthumous casts have multiplied as the demand for works by important artists has dramatically increased. The appearance of these pieces on the market has caused confusion among experts as well as novices regarding their value, both aesthetic and economic.

In addition, it has been a common practice to produce replicas of many 19th Century animal sculptures by Barye, Frémiet, Mène, Dubucand or others since the early 1900s. Usually reproduction rights in France run over 70 years after the death of an artist and hundreds of pieces, in fact mere reproductions were made throughout the 20th Century. As all these artists died before 1900, there were no problems regarding rights for the foundries involved in the production of these copies that flooded the art market. Worse, during the 1980s, when most French foundries had gone bankrupt, such reproductions were made in Asia or in countries where manufacturing costs were low and the quality of these was dramatically bad if not terrible especially regarding patina and chiselling. Those bronze pieces made for example in Thailand or Taiwan had in fact little to do with original works.

The main question is whether a collector wants to own originals or reproductions. Still, the main problem is to detect the originals among reproductions and that is a rather formidable task.

In 1974 the College Art Association, led by the late art historian Albert Elsen, adopted a comprehensive "Statement on Standards for Sculptural Reproductions and Preventive Measures to Combat Unethical Casting in Bronze" but in 25 years the situation did not really improve as institutions have gone along with posthumous castings without defining what the casts are and exhibiting them and having people try to appreciate them as originals. This has been particularly true of Rodin.

The case of Degas sums up why it is so difficult to pass judgement on the practice of posthumous casting. Degas never cast his clay and wax models of dancers, bathers and horses in bronze himself.

Still, if they had not been cast after his death they would have disintegrated. Given the awesome prices Degas's bronzes fetch - a cast of «Little Dancer 14 years old» sold for over $ 10 million at Christie's in 1988 and $ 12,3 million recently- the fact they are posthumous seems to have had no negative impact on the market.

During the long court battle, the Istratis removed 22 original plasters, including the «Large Cock» from Brancusi's sealed studio and it was believed they made copies of these before they were returned to the studio and later cast from them rather from Brancusi's original clay models, but the Istratis denied this.

Many prestigious art dealers, museums directors and art historians condemned the notion of making more Brancusis as «unthinkable and absolute heresy» and some of them went even as far as describing reproductions as forgeries apart from stressing that any new piece cast from a genuine Brancusi after the date of the artist's death on march 16, 1957 should be considered as a reproduction and presented as such.

Brancusi never permitted any of his assistants to work on his bronzes and Sidney Geist, his expert, said it was a sad fate that his sculpture should now be cast in series by two painters who never touched his work when he was alive.

It is generally accepted that Brancusi finished all of his sculptures himself but Istrati apparently told people otherwise saying that many of the later lifetime casts were not anymore touched by Brancusi himself adding that it was in his view a myth that Brancusi had been polishing each work himself. Ernst Beyeler, the Basel art dealer who brokered the sale to the Fondation Pierre Giannadda, a private museum in Martigny, Switzerland, of a stainless-steel «Large Cock» cast by the Istratis in the 1970s, notably said on his part that posthumous casts were quite legitimate.

In June 1995, at a Guy Loudmer auction in Paris, a posthumous bronze cast of the «Sleeping Muse II», with a top pre-sale estimate of $ 305,000, from an unidentified private collection, described in the catalogue as signed and numbered 2/8 from the Susse Foundry, went unsold. The word posthumous however did not appear anywhere in the catalogue description.

Posthumous Brancusis have been acquired by many museums, including the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena as well as a number of Japanese institutions. Even the Louvre Museum in Paris planned to commission a huge stainless-steel «Large Cock» as a centrepiece to I.M Pei's extraordinary pyramid addition to the museum until the art critic Pierre Schneider lashed out at such proposal in L'Express magazine describing the proposed sculpture as nothing but an approximation.

The latest battle for control of an artist's estate has been fought in French courts over Alberto Giacometti's legacy. The future of Giacometti's posthumous production has been hanging in the balance as well as the future of the artist's long awaited catalogue raisonné. Giacommeti deceased in 1966 and his widow, Annette, died in 1993.

The Association Alberto and Annette Giacometti, a private organisation founded by Mary Lisa Palmer, which controls Annette's estate, has been pitted against Bruno Giacometti, the artist's only surviving brother who has been supported by the Alberto Giacometti Foundation established in Switzerland in 1965 and which has only lifetime casts.

In July 1994, 14 posthumous Giacometti bronzes were sold in Drouot in July 1994 from Annette's estate for $ 5,47 million- «La Clairirière (9 personnages)» notably went for $ 1,060,777 while a lifetime cast fetched almost double that amount also in Drouot in June 1988.

Giacometti authorized Peggy Guggenheim to cast an edition of six bronzes from her plaster «Woman Walking» of 1932 and to sell them as she was concerned that the fragile plaster would disintegrate in the Venetian climate where she had her collection. Three years after Giacometti's death in 1966 she had an additional, unauthorized cast made from the original plaster. None of the casts carried foundry marks and several were unnumbered. The problem is that "surmoulages" (overcasts) were made from one of the bronzes without Peggy Guggenheim's knowledge and appeared in the U.S and Europe. Up to 100 illegal surmoulages made from finished bronzes were produced.

Regarding Rodin, some 700 subjects have been cast in bronze since his death and several experts have questioned the Musée Rodin's practice of casting the artist's plaster models of anatomical fragments, something which is much questionable.

Now, the only way to tell the difference between lifetime casts and posthumous ones created by the Alexis Rudier foundry in Paris, the artist's exclusive founder between 1902 and 1952, seems to be through the provenance. Still, lifetime casts should be considered as more valuable than posthumous ones.

Japanese Ryoei Saito paid $ 4,29 million at Sotheby's in New York for bronze casts of «The Burghers of Calais» made by the Rodin Museum in the 1980s
He later donated them to the newly formed Rodin wing at the Shizuoka Prefecture Museum outside Tokyo.

It has been estimated that at least 6,500 bronzes and possibly many more of 30 different subjects were cast by the Rodin Museum bringing it an income of between $ 2,5 million and 4 million a year.

B. Gerald Cantor, founder and chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, a financial holding company, and his wife, Iris, president of the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation, were one of the main customers of the Museum. They acquired 750 works and placed about 435 of these in 70 institutions around the world.

It was not until 1952 that France passed a law limiting the number of sculpture editions to 12. In 1968, the law was amended to require the name of the foundry on the sculpture and the number of casts. It was rehashed again in 1982 to refine the numbering system; Arabic numbers 1 through 8 being reserved for casts intended for the market while the Roman numerals I to IV were used for the so-called artist's proofs, which regarding the Musée Rodin, are reserved for cultural institutions. In addition, the date of the cast must be inscribed on the bronze. Sculptures are described as reproductions after 12 casts and must be labelled as such, according to a 1981 law designed to combat fraud in art transactions.

Those regulations had no impact on existing works such as Rodin's «Eternal Spring», of which between 50 to 100 different casts in four different sizes have been produced in both lifetime and posthumous versions.

Before settling on the Alexis Rudier Foundry in 1902, Rodin worked with 27 different foundries at a time when the concept of limited sculptures editions did not exist.

Until the 1970s, Sotheby's nor Christie's made distinction in their catalogue descriptions between lifetime and posthumous casts. Since then, the situation has improved somewhat.

In 1991 the New York State legislature passed a new sculpture law that was tacked onto the existing Arts and Cultural Affaires law, with civil penalties of up to $ 5,000 for tampering with a foundry mark or for not providing fill disclosure of information at the time of sale regarding the date of a sculpture, as well as its dimensions, medium, number of casts made and whether it was a lifetime or posthumous cast. A dealer or an auction would have to disclose clearly in writing whether the cast was authorized by the artist or by others.

According to Artnews, bronze is not the only material at issue. In 1990 the sculptor Donald Judd published an angry manifesto in a German art journal attacking the Italian collector Count Giuseppe Panza di Biumo for fabricating his plywood sculptures in Italy without any authorization.

All the more, the Guggenheim Museum bought some 300 works from Panza's collection, included some of the controversial pieces. The sculptor was discussing the matter with the Museum when he died in 1994.

There is also a tricky situation regarding bronze enlargements of de Kooning's sculptures which have been produced in limited editions at the Tallix foundry in Beacon, New York, while the artist incapacitated by Alzheimer's disease was in no position to supervise the production of such casts. Apparently, even if these casts cannot be considered as posthumous, de Kooning has nothing to do with such works.

Posthumous works and enlargements were condemned by the CAA guidelines as presumptuous and unethical on the part of those responsible and many sculptors have given the matter of posthumous casting serious consideration but others are inclined to allow such practice provided that it was done by relatives and carried out by a designated craftsman with whom they would have worked.

Artnews has quoted Kirk Varnedoe, director of the department of painting and sculpture at the Musuem of Modern Art, which owns a posthumous «Balzac» by Rodin as saying that the issue of posthumous casting was «the messiest subject alive».