Modern art in a museum: our version of the Delphic oracle. How can we know ourselves with this? Matthew Collings, This is Civilisation IV: Uncertainty
The burning issue for us is uncertainty. ibid.
Hitler’s Degenerate Art Show highlights in a peculiarly horrific bizarre and sick way something that’s been there all along with modern a art – its deliberate outsidedness, its refusal to be normal. ibid.
Guernica had become the icon of modern art’s goodness. ibid.
Why a painting by Willem de Kooning looks like a De Kooning is because of the way it’s done: that fantastically battered impacted look is achieved by constantly working at it. ibid.
The abstract expressionists were profoundly disillusioned with modern society. ibid.
How do we respond to abstract art? Matthew Collings, The Rules of Abstraction, BBC 2014
Abstract art has been around for a hundred years now. ibid.
All of [Gustav] Klimt’s paintings are profoundly Theosophical. ibid.
Kandinsky is the Lord of Abstraction. ibid.
Rothko committed suicide ... The meaning of the paintings is different. ibid.
A new popular audience is obsessed by contemporary art. But I think they are being sold something that isn’t really there: an all-in package of spirituality, depth and profundity. I am afraid the official institutions of contemporary art are just lying about this stuff. Matthew Collings, The New Statesman 24th November 2003, ‘The Bottom Line’
The art world: glamour, wealth, intrigue. Beneath the surface there is a darker place, a world of high stakes and gambles. Fake or Fortune s1e1: Monet, BBC 2011
We help one man in his struggle to try to prove his painting is by ... Monet ... In the art world Monet means money. ibid.
Even for a Monet to get to auction it first has to be approved by a very powerful family: the Wildensteins are a family dynasty of billionaire art dealers ... No Monet is ever sold in a major auction house without being listed. ibid.
A painting both generations of Wildensteins have rejected. But Philip thinks they may have overlooked something. 82-year-old David Joel has been fighting a long battle to get his painting accepted ... La Bords de la Seine a Argentueil. ibid.
Monet was one of a group of revolutionary artists who breathed new life and light into art. He brought painting out of the confines of the studio and into the open air ... There was one painting that started it all ... Impression: Sunrise. And this is where Impressionism gets its name. ibid.
The evidence is stacking up ... Professor John House knows the genuine article and knows how to spot it ... ‘I’ve never had a moment’s doubt it was painted by Monet.’ ibid.
It seems outrageous that they [Wildenstein] can just defy international opinion like that. ibid.
This story began with a magical discovery at an Antiques Roadshow ... The rubbish tip find ... The name Winslow Homer is hugely important. Fake or Fortune? s1e2: Homer
In the nineteenth century in America frankly this man has got no equals. ibid.
He was perhaps the first American impressionist. ibid.
Since the auction it’s been locked in a safe ... Lawyers are involved on both sides ... The value probably gone up. ibid.
There was one faker of the twentieth century who left all others standing. His name was Han Van Meegeren. He conned the art world out of about £65,000,000. Fake or Fortune s1e3: Van Meegeren, Philip Mould
Twenty-one of his fakes have now been identified. And I suspect there are more lurking out there. ibid.
He later confessed to faking seven old masters. Crucially the Courtauld’s picture was not amongst them. ibid.
Including works by the artist van Meegeren dared for forge – the seventeenth-century master Vermeer. ibid.
Van Meegeren managed to fool the experts by his painstaking use of seventeenth-century materials. ibid. Fiona Bruce
Rembrandt ... This painting will bring us within touching distance of one of the greatest artists who ever lived. Fake or Fortune? s1e4: Rembrandt
Lot 185 Rudd’s Auctioneers, Cape Town: Follower of Rembrandt: Portrait of a Man in Oriental Costume. Oil on Panel 49 x 37 cm. Approx £800 – £1,200. ibid.
Rembrandt became famous as the master of the human face. ibid.
It is estimated that by the end of the war one third of all the world’s art treasures had been looted by the Nazis. ibid.
So much was stolen it is estimated that art worth up to £20,000,000,000 remains missing. And the Nazis stole art not only from the Jews but from anyone they considered to be an enemy of the state. ibid.
A painting that has had a question mark over it for decades … It certainly looks like a Degas: one of his dancers. Fake or Fortune? s2e1: Degas and the Little Dancer, BBC 2012
1880s: Degas was frequently attending ballet performances. ibid.
‘There are some serious queries as well … The signature goes very woolly after the ‘D’ … Concerned both about the draughtsmanship, the construction of it … [and] the face.’ ibid. expert
An authentic work by Degas. ibid.
We explore a group of paintings once thought to be by Britain’s greatest landscape painter – Turner. For over 60 years they have been condemned as fakes. Fake or Fortune? s2e2: Turner: A Miscarriage of Justice?
Margate Jetty was cut down on all four sides. ibid.
We hunt for a painting hidden within a painting … Could it be the work of Sir Anthony van Dyck, the man who revolutionised English art? Fake or Fortune? s2e3: Van Dyck: What Lies Beneath
Celebrated French painter Edouard Vuillard whose works usually sell for hundreds of thousands of pounds - and yet here it was in a country saleroom for a fraction of a price. Fake or Fortune? s3e1: Vuillard, BBC 2014
Two possible works by this quintessential English artist ... and ends with a painting restored to its rightful place as a work by one of England’s finest artists. And there’s more good news ... Yarmouth Jetty was also likely to have been painted by John Constable. Fake or Fortune? s3e2: Constable
Is this picture the bargain of a lifetime? Or a very expensive gamble on the notorious Russian art market? Fake or Fortune? s3e3: Chagall
And they [Committee] are declaring your painting is fake. ibid. Bruce
Our two paintings are Imaginary Landscape by ‘a follower of Gainsborough’ at the Courtauld and A Portait of Joseph Gape by an unknown artist at the St Albans’ Museum. Fake or Fortune? s3e4: Gainsborough
Over a third of all Gainsboroughs are now in America. ibid.
Imaginary Landscape: a Gainsborough drawing that has been over-painted by somebody else ... The portrait: Gainsborough. ibid.
We’re on the trail of three small oil paintings by Britain’s best loved modern artist. Fake or Fortune? s4e1: Lowry
L S Lowry is one of the most frequently faked artists. ibid.
Lowry’s work is deceptively simple. Almost primitive. A classically trained painter who resented being billed an amateur, Lowry’s work broke with convention: he called them dreamscapes. ibid.
‘I am a simple man and I use simple materials.’ ibid. Lowry
Could a painting hanging in a Welsh castle be a work by the impressionist master Pierre-Auguste Renoir? Fake or Fortune? s4e2: Renoir
The art world can be a law unto itself. ibid.
Small church is home to the largest painting we’ve ever looked into on Fake or Fortune? But who painted it? Fake or Fortune? s4e3: A Mystery Old Master
It all suggests to me that this is Italian, a late Renaissance-period painting … It all seems to point to Venice. ibid. Philip
Francesco Montemezzano – he did work with Tintoretto but is more closely associated with Paulo Veronesi. ibid.