13 November 2015

Challenging customs

Ivory is a complicated subject, legally and morally. 

The killing of elephants for their tusks is abhorrent, and doing so and trading in the ivory are internationally outlawed.  Where it gets problematical is with art and antiques.  Since prehistoric times, ivory has been used to create objects of art, or components such as piano keys, or to ornament items such as jewellery or furniture, sometimes to only a very limited extent.  Opinions vary as to how such objects should be dealt with, from compulsory destruction, to make a point, to leaving alone, as any wrong involved cannot be undone, and issues of cultural heritage and scholarship can arise. 

Fortunately, I do not have to decide laws, just work with them.  For cross-border ivory movement, the starting point is an international treaty known as CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) on top of which individual states have their own related laws and regulations.  If those can be satisfied, licences are required for exporting and importing.  

I recently had a case where a highly respectable London dealer, specialising in Indian and South East Asian Art, had bought some 17th century Indian carved ivory Yali brackets at Bonhams in New York.  These small items, the largest only 15cm high, would have formed part of a processional mandapa (temple hall), an elaborate structure that carried sculptures through the streets during special festivals. The brackets are very rare, and examples can be found in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

Unfortunately, due to an error on the part of the dealer’s carriers, the items arrived at Stansted Airport with inadequate documentary evidence of the US export licence that had been obtained.  As a result the UK Border Force seized the brackets and prepared to destroy them.  Although there could have been a claim against the carriers, the dealer’s main concern was the preservation of these important items.  He demonstrated what had happened, and he even offered to donate them to a museum, but UKBF would not be moved. They said the dealer should have made a new retrospective application to the US, and that he was at fault for not doing so, although such an application appeared to be impossible. 

Enter the lawyers.  The dealer’s legal team consisted of no fewer than three art lawyers: the English barrister Jessica Franses, me as solicitor conducting the case, and US attorney Nicholas O’Donnell, the last being able to attest to the impossibility of a retrospective licence.  A tribunal appeal was launched in November 2013.  Statements were obtained, including expert evidence on the historic and cultural importance of the items, but the UK Government’s lawyers remained unmoved.  Finally, after almost two years, and just two days before the trial, the UKBF caved in and announced that the decision had been reviewed and that the brackets could be collected from the airport, where they had remained. 

There are a number of points to be made.  First, dealers and their agents and contractors must take the greatest care to get the paperwork right.  Secondly, customs organisations can be very strict and inflexible.  Thirdly, they will happily destroy valuable art and cultural heritage.  Finally, it can take a lot of time, effort and determination to get them to see reason and act fairly, but it can be done.

14 September 2015

Street art revisited: Art Buff

A couple of years ago we in the Fladgate art team put our heads together to consider the potential legal problems in trading in street art and produced this article: Street art: the legal issues
It was a topical subject because of the auctioning of Slave Labour, which I covered in my post Selling Banksy street art
Now it is topical again with Friday’s High Court judgment in the case concerning Banksy’s mural called Art Buff.  The artwork had been painted in Folkestone on the wall of an amusement arcade called Dreamland.  The owners of the business, the Godden Family, had the artwork cut out under the supervision of an art dealer Robin Barton who specialises in such trade, under the name Bankrobber.  It then came into the hands of the New York based Kessler Gallery who brought it to Art Basel in Miami where it was exhibited with a price of US$720,000.
Meanwhile, local forces gathered in Folkestone, a town not over-endowed with art.  Proceedings were brought by a local charity, Creative Foundation, which has the objective of regenerating the town through creativity and the arts.  The issue relied on was one that was anticipated in our article, in which we said:
In law, land includes buildings and fixtures, and once paint is on a wall, it becomes part of the land. Therefore, as soon as the artist creates his work, it belongs to the land owner. The owner for this purpose will be either a freeholder or leaseholder, and their respective rights and obligations regarding the art will depend on the terms of the lease, which would almost certainly have been drafted without any thought of street art.
It seems that in the Art Buff case, the Goddens were leaseholders, that is tenants.  The artwork having become part of the building, and therefore part of the land, and absent any other agreement, it belonged to the ultimate freeholder, who presumably was willing to co-operate with Creative Foundation.  The charity then succeeded in getting an injunction from the court for the returning of the work to Folkestone.

11 May 2015

The strange world of private art sales


20 January 2015

Sotheby's wins The Cardsharps case

We now have the keenly awaited High Court judgment in The Cardsharps case. 
This was a negligence claim against Sotheby’s who had advised a Mr Lancelot Thwaytes in 2006 that his painting of The Cardsharps was a copy of Caravaggio’s painting of that name, currently in the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas. Sotheby’s described Mr Thwaytes’ painting as being by a “Follower of Caravaggio” and, as a result, that was the basis on which it was auctioned by them, selling for £42,000.
The lady who bought it did so on behalf of her friend Sir Denis Mahon, who was described by the judge as “a lifelong Caravaggio scholar of great renown”.  In November 2007, at a party to celebrate his 97th birthday, Sir Denis announced to the world that after cleaning, restoration, extensive investigations, and input from other experts, it was clear that the painting was a replica painted by Caravaggio himself, and therefore worth many millions of pounds.  Needless to say, Mr Thwaytes was rather miffed to hear this.  He brought a claim against Sotheby’s for damages for negligence.  Rather than claiming and having to prove that Sir Denis had been right and Sotheby’s had got it wrong, which Sotheby’s and some experts still do not accept, the claim was that Sotheby’s failed to spot that the painting had “Caravaggio potential”.
As I have pointed out before (Coleridge Collar), it was not for the court to second guess whether or not Sotheby’s got it right, but whether they were negligent in reaching their conclusion.  The test is what a reasonable and competent art researching auction house would have done, and in this case the judge made clear that, for an auction house of Sotheby’s status, the standards had to be high.  He also held that it made no difference whether the art was just sent for research and assessment, rather than for sale.
In his 190 paragraph judgment, the judge concluded that Sotheby’s had not been negligent.  In response to particular claims, he held that Sotheby’s did not need to obtain external advice; that they were entitled to conclude that the quality was not sufficiently high to merit further investigation; and that nothing on the visual examination, the X-rays and the infra-red images should or would have changed Sotheby’s view.  The judge also held that had the painting been sold with conflicting expert views on its attribution, it might not have sold for much more than it did.
On a personal note, I happened to see the painting last month, where it currently hangs high in a corner of the Museum of the Order of St John, in London.  Aware of the case, I took particular interest in it, and I was not impressed.  I claim no expertise whatsoever, and admittedly the painting was badly lit, but I remarked to my companion that it looked very “flat” for an old master.  I was therefore interested to see from the judgment that Alexander Bell, Sotheby’s Joint International Head and Co-Chairman Worldwide in their Old Master Painting Department, told the court that he had concluded that the painting looked “flat and dead”.  Perhaps I’m in the wrong business!