Provenance

An insurance company is selling a new policy that insures the ownership of art. "Their brainchild, art title protection insurance, 'transfers risk to a third party so that people can buy and sell art with the confidence that there is not a World War II claim, an import-export issue or a lien or judgment against the artwork'." Los Angeles Times 07/14/06

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Where to begin? Are these types of policies designed to protect the artwork or are they simply to protect whoever pays the premium? I believe I can safely say that most artists don’t care about their own physical property rights (we dig the intellectual ones, though) or even so much that of their collectors. We are more concerned with the longevity of the actual piece of artwork in the public mind. A famous story of eighties' artist Basquiat describes how he guilted a patron into returning a previously purchased painting so that the artwork would have the opportunity to be sold to a more distinguished collector. Anyone that knows much about the history and personality of Basquiat understands that his actions were not motivated by money. At this stage in his career, he had money (though he rarely spent any). He only cared about legacy.

To whom does the stolen artwork go if all relative family members that could claim ownership are extinct (for example: WWII did wipeout over 6 million Jews)? Does the work stay with the current incorrect owners or does ownership revert to the surviving family of the artist? What if they are gone as well? Stolen inheritances are always suspect, because who is to say the current plaintiff would have actually been named to inherit the work if the war had not occurred. That’s the point though, isn’t it? The war did occur and disrupted history. I pay enough in sales tax, property tax, vehicle license fees, and income tax… do we need to add a reparation tax? Reparations are mostly associated with concepts of back-pay for slave labor; but stop to think about the money spent to track-down the provenance of questioned artworks. Who profits from the chase? Attorneys. Detectives. Art Experts. Attorneys… did I mention Attorneys? The fear of WWII’s anti-Semitism forced many surviving Jews to convert to Christianity; their descendants lost an entire culture due to the war. To whom do they direct their lawsuits?

What is worst that Klimts painting was stolen by terrible people in a war and now hang in national museums or that Klimt paintings were destroyed? What is more important the survival of ownership or the survival of culture? Why is it that the owner of Klimt's now-destroyed painting "Women Friends" has never stepped forward with a lawsuit for losses inflicted by war and invading forces? Its not that I take a cavalier attitude towards the importance of art so much as it is an indifference to ownership. As an artist, what do I care which individual has claim to my work? As long as I am alive, I can always produce more. I only care that the piece is still in the public eye after fifty or a hundred years. Dwelling on the pure monetary value of artwork is a problem when the importance of a painting has more to do with the current auction rate, rather than the cultural significance. – DN