On 18 Aug, 2011 With
Artist Odd Nerdrum sentenced to jail Odd Nerdrum, one of Norway’s most famous and controversial artists, was sentenced to two years in prison on Wednesday after a local court in Oslo found him guilty of tax evasion. Nerdrum has earlier denied his guilt, and his defense attorney filed a quick appeal. The court’s prison sentence matched what state prosecutors had sought after mounting their case that Nerdrum had failed to declare around NOK 14 million in taxable income from the sale of paintings between 1998 and 2002. Nerdrum was also ordered to pay court costs of NOK 10,000. The 67-year-old artist, who boycotts Norwegian media and won’t allow his photograph to be taken or used, was not present when his…
Read More
On 18 Aug, 2011 With
Odd Nerdrum faces heavy fines and a prison term for alleged tax evasion. Odd Nerdrum is one of Norway’s most internationally known contemporary artists but now he faces heavy fines and a prison term for alleged tax evasion. He’s had to appear in court in Oslo this week, where prosecutors suggested his financing has been as creative as his paintings. Nerdrum himself admitted in court on Tuesday that he kept nearly USD 1 million in cash in a safe deposit box at an Austrian bank, and that he “wasn’t very good” with numbers or accounting requirements. He denies he’s guilty of tax evasion, though, calling the charges against him “nonsense.” The artist, whose works have been compared to those of…
Read More
On 24 Dec, 2010 With
Ten years later the embers of Canada’s biggest art scandal are still burning. Within 72 hours of the National Gallery of Canada reporting that it had purchased Voice of Fire, a huge abstract painting by American artist Barnett Newman for $1.76 million, the media, the public and the government went ballistic. The two-month furore that raged in the media and the House of Commons in March 1990 was Canada’s biggest art controversy. A 1996 book Voices of Fire: Art, Rage, Power and the State, edited by Bruce Barber, Serge Guilbaut and John O’Brian, chronicled the fiasco and tried to make sense of it. It all began March 7, 1990. “We rarely have a chance in today’s over-heated art market to…
Read More
On 3 Sep, 2010 With
York Avenue HQ Illegal antiquities In 1997, a Channel 4 Dispatches programme alleged that Sotheby’s had been trading in antiquities with no published provenance, and that the organisation continued to use dealers involved in the smuggling of artifacts. As a result of this exposé, Sotheby’s commissioned their own report into illegal antiquities, and made assurances that only legal items with published providence would be traded in the future. Price fixing scandal In February 2000, A. Alfred Taubman and Diana (Dede) Brooks, the CEO of the company, stepped down amidst a price fixing scandal. The FBI had been investigating auction practices in which it was revealed that collusion involving commission fixing between Christie’s and Sotheby’s was occurring. In October 2000, Brooks…
Read More
On 1 Jul, 2010 With
When Madame X was shown at the Salon of 1884 it became instantly a salacious painting and a scandal in French society as a result of its sexual suggestiveness of her pose and the pail pasty color of her skin. The “X” ofMadame X was actually Madame Gautreau (1859-1915) who’s reputation was apparently destroyed and John left France shortly to never truly regain his former standing as the darling of Paris. The size of the painting is enormous, measuring 82 inches by 43 inches or nearly seven feet tall (2 meters) — and with the underlying sensuality of the painting, in the time that it was done (if it isn’t still to some degree today), almost threatening to the viewer. When I…
Read More
