
Di Donna Brings Jasper Johns’s Disappearance I to Art Basel

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Sotheby’s New York auction of Important Prints & Multiples will take place on 26 & 27 April. The exhibition opens to the public 22 April featuring:
Grossman LLP, a firm specializing in art law, won a court ruling against art dealer Fred Dorfman late last week. Dorfman had been the dealer for James Meyer, Jasper Johns’s former studio assistant who pled guilty in 2014 to interstate transportation of stolenJohns artworks (many of which were unfinished). Meyer received an 18 month jail sentence and was ordered to pay restitution. Of the 83 pieces of art Meyer stole from Johns, Dorfman sold 42 for a total of $9m, including $5.99m in “commissions” for Dorfman.
Grossman’s client, Equinox Gallery, purchased one of the stolen works for $800,000. In last week’s ruling, Judge George B. Daniels held that Equinox had adequately alleged the types of activity that can support viable RICO claims, the Court rejected Dorfman’s attempt to paint the alleged plot as “a discrete scheme with a narrow purpose”
“[Dorfman’s characterization of the fraud allegations] ignores the magnitude of Plaintiff’s allegation that Meyer and Dorfman worked in tandem to defraud more than twenty victims over six years to the tune of more than $9 million.”
Daniels ruling in Dorfman’s motion to dismiss allows Grossman to sue Dorfman for treble damages (i.e., $2.4 million) and attorney’s fees, as well as punitive damages on the fraud and civil RICO claims. According to Grossman, “this is an important ruling in the context of art-fraud cases, given the heightened pleading standard for such claims.”
Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel and Ambassador Carl Spielvogel are selling their collection of 90 works on paper (above from left to right: Magritte, Rothko, Pollock, Lichtenstein, and Johns) ranging from Degas, Matisse, Braque and Miró to Pollock, Newman, Rothko, Twombly, Lichtenstein and Freud. The entire collection is estimated at between $40 to $60m and will be sold across multiple sales:
Works featured in the Contemporary Art Evening Auction include
Works featured in the Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale:
It may be the ultimate irony that in a story about Jasper Johns’s Regrets series making their debut straight from the studio to MoMA, the octogenarian artist is unwilling to open up about any of his past connections. Not that Julie Belcove doesn’t try. From Robert Rauschenberg to former studio assistant James Meyer who was caught selling unfinished works through a New York dealer without the artist’s knowledge, Belcove keeps getting deflected in her answers. Here’s an example about the subject matter of this new series, a picture of Lucian Freud that Francis Bacon used as the basis of a self portrait:
It may be simply another coincidence that Bacon and Freud were once close friends but had a bitter break, mirroring the rupture between Johns and Rauschenberg more than half a century ago. Johns, though, insists any similarity is accidental. “I don’t know anything about their lives, so that wouldn’t be important to me,” he says.
Johns also claims never to have met either artist, though his friend Bill Katz, who was also close to Bacon (and who renovated the barns and Johns’ grand, stone house), recalls with a chuckle, “I remember introducing [Bacon and Johns] at lunch. When I tell Jasper things he thinks he doesn’t remember, he says, ‘Interesting if true’.”
Though Johns owns a small Freud painting, “a portrait of a poet”, he denies especially admiring either artist. “I don’t think it had anything to do with either of them,” he says before allowing, “You don’t know what happens in your unconscious.”
Jasper Johns: ‘Regrets belong to everybody, don’t they?’ (Financial Times)