Julia Latynina, Novaya Gazeta , February 13, 2014
On July 10, 2009, the well-known St. Petersburg collector Andrei Vasiliev received a call from his friend Leonid Shumakov and offered him a painting by the famous Russian impressionist Boris Grigoriev “In a restaurant” (option: “In a Parisian cafe”). The painting, according to Shumakov, was from the collection of General Timofeev, to whom she, in turn, came from the collection of the Russian avant-garde collector of the early 20th century, publisher, merchant, banker and bibliographer Alexander Burtsev, who was shot in 1938, and to Burtsev - directly from the author.
Andrey Vasiliev, a psychiatrist by training, began collecting Russian avant-garde back in the 1970s. He was not actually a dissident, but he had dissident friends, refused to testify at the Meilach trial, and received four years in the camps. In the camp, he wrote (without pawning anyone) an open letter confessing his guilt, and since there was already Gorbachev, he left. Vasiliev's collection is very literary and historically centric. “Landscapes and battles do not interest me,” says Andrey Vasiliev, “and Burtsev is my hero.”
On the same day, Shumakov sent Vasiliev a photo of the painting and another photo of her, from the pre-revolutionary edition of V.L. Burtsev "My magazine for the few". There were slight differences in the photographs, but this was a common thing, given the quality of pre-revolutionary retouching.
Vasiliev liked the thing, he bought it for 250 thousand dollars.
He didn't do any testing. “I am my own expert,” Vasiliev says.
It may surprise you, but in the narrow and closed world of professional collectors, the main thing in a picture is its provenance, that is, its origin.
In this case, it was impeccable, like that of the English queen: Vasiliev knew the late Timofeev well, he knew that he really bought many things from the Burtsev collection. Those who conceived the scam knew perfectly well not only the whole ins and outs of the very closed world of collectors, but also Vasiliev's personal tastes.
In March 2010, the painting went to Moscow for an exhibition of Russian artists who worked in Paris. This is also a common story: having bought a painting, the collector begins to bring it to light. It was then that an employee of the Grabar Center, Yulia Rybakova, called Vasiliev and said that they had this thing, and they recognized it as a fake.
"This is impossible! I bought it in St. Petersburg right from home! It's homemade!" - "Excuse me, there is chemical analysis." The colors in the picture were used in a way that was not at the beginning of the century.
Andrey Vasiliev went to Shumakov and asked where the painting came from. "From Elena Basner". Elena Basner is a well-known art historian, an expert at the Bukowskis auction house, and Vasilyev and Basner have known each other for thirty years. For the past few years, for a very good reason, they have not communicated. "Oh my God! But you said it was homemade!”
Andrei Vasiliev went to Basner with the same question: where did the thing come from? Elena Basner refused to answer the question about the origin of the thing, but at the same time she added that the thing was real and she was sure of it. "Understand, you do not leave me a chance, I will be forced to go to the police." - "Contact".
After Vasiliev turned to the police, to the “antique” department headed by Colonel Kirillov, Elena Basner was summoned for interrogation, to which she came together with an influential lawyer (former investigator) Larisa Malkova. During interrogation, she said that the painting was brought to her by a resident of Tallinn, Mikhail Aronson.
The police considered the case closed (in an informal manner, they explained to Vasilyev, “you will never leave the district”), but Vasilyev had already fallen into an investigative itch.
He went to Tallinn and found out that Mikhail Aronson was a hardened criminal. He was imprisoned for robbery, theft and drugs, and for the fourth time the case of his complicity in contract killing fell apart.
Three times convicted Mikhail Aronson willingly confirmed Basner's words and wrote a handwritten statement to the Vyborgsky District Court that he got the painting from his grandmother Gesya Abramovna, who lived in St. explanations on the website of the auction house Bukowskis).
This was not true, because by this time Vasiliev had tracked down the original from which the fake was written. It was kept in the Russian Museum, and got there not from the collection of General Timofeev, but from the collection of Professor Okunev bequeathed to the museum. The painting was never exhibited, but was described in a catalog in the 1980s. The catalog editor was Elena Basner.
It is clear that there was no smell of any criminal Aronson in this scam. And it smelled like an organized group of people with access to the closed funds of the Russian Museum (otherwise how to get access to a painting that has never been exhibited ?!), perfectly aware of the situation on the closed art market and confident in their impunity, influence and the ability to hush up the investigation. And this group is not just connected with crime, but is connected with it so tightly that it can convince the criminal Aronson to give deliberately false testimony and be sure that Aronson will not give it up, even if he has to sit.
In fact, the only mistake of this group was that they sold the fake not to a sucker and not to a manager from a state corporation, but to a well-known collector, and in addition, when everything was revealed, they refused to return the money. Apparently, they are used to impunity. It was a mistake: Andrei Vasiliev turned out to be a stubborn person. After fighting in vain for four years (the investigation was blocked both there and there), he asked for it this summer to see Bastrykin, who had come to St. Petersburg. And the matter was closed.
When I asked why Ms. Basner did not immediately tell Andrey Vasiliev the name of the owner of the painting, her lawyer Larisa Malkova replied: “Why did she have to do this?” When I asked why the Timofeev collection was originally called the provenance of the painting, Larisa Malkova explained that at one time Ms. Basner had seen the Timofeev collection, and in it, among others, this painting by Grigoriev.
“Subsequently, when she visited Kira Borisovna,” said Larisa Malkova, “who was decorating the work in the Russian Museum, she did not see this picture, and in response to her question, she said that there were still heirs. Therefore, when Aronson came to her and, without naming a name, said that it was from a very good Leningrad collection and that this painting was left as part of the inheritance of relatives, she thought by association that this was the same painting.
To my question, does it not seem to her that this whole story is invented from beginning to end and that Aronson simply was not in St. Petersburg at that time, lawyer Malkova was indignant: “Where did you get such information?”
When I called Malkova’s lawyer a few days later to clarify whether she meant the Timofeev collection or Okunev’s collection (Kira Borisovna was the name of Okunev’s daughter), Ms. Malkova hung up. "You are such a biased person that I don't want to talk to you," she said.
In any case, this does not change the matter: it is difficult to understand how Mrs. Basner could consider as belonging to someone the thing that at that time lay in the Russian Museum and was described there by Elena Basner herself.
On January 31, Elena Basner was arrested. (Andrey Vasiliev assures that from the moment when Bastrykin's investigators took up the case, he did not know what was happening, and did not want any pre-trial detention center for Basner.) This arrest caused terrible indignation among the liberal public, which generally boiled down to the fact that the composer's daughter, who wrote "Where the Motherland Begins", in principle, cannot be a criminal. “This is an insult to the entire intelligentsia,” said the head of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, and a petition in defense of Ms. Basner gathered more than a thousand signatures.
The argument that the titled expert and the composer's daughter cannot be involved in a scam by definition is, of course, deadly logical, but, unfortunately, there is an unpleasant circumstance that, in fact, makes the case of Elena Basner (who in the meantime was transferred to a home arrest) significant and important.
The Russian art market is full of fakes. “On the market, 7% are originals, the rest are fakes,” says Emelyan Zakharov, owner of the Triumph gallery, who went on a crusade against fakes ruining his business. Co-owner of Alfa-Bank Petr Aven, who is considered in narrow circles not only as a collector, but also as the number one expert, believes that there are fewer fakes - 20-30%.
But Aven has a peculiarity - they stopped wearing a fake one for him, because he takes it away and gives it to the police. Therefore, the Russians do not pester him with a fake, and from abroad he receives proposals at least twice a year. “The story is always the same,” says Petr Aven. - They send me, I say that it is a fake. They are outraged. I propose to make an examination in London, in the Tretyakov Gallery. Then they disappear."
I am holding in my hands the “Catalogue of forgeries of paintings”, published formally by Rosokhrankultura, but in reality by Vladimir Roshchin, a unique enthusiast, former sportsman and businessman, who became fascinated by this thankless occupation after he was paid a debt in Berlin in the early 90s with old Russian icons stolen in Yaroslavl. Instead of selling the icons further, Roshchin took them to the MUR, and they took him for a lunatic when he called on his cell phone and said that he had icons worth millions of dollars in his car, and please call back, because the money on the phone is running out.
There are five parts in the catalog, and they contain 960 (!) Paintings worth a hundred million dollars, and forged in only one way.
At a Western European auction, not one of the most famous, they buy a painting by a European artist of the late 19th - early 20th century: for example, at the Brun Rasmussen auction in Denmark in June 2004, they buy a painting by Edward Petersen for 17 thousand euros, retouch (for example, from a painting by Petersen a woman in European clothes was erased) and is being sold as a Russian artist, in this case, as the work of Joseph Krachkovsky.
“In 1917, all Russian art was nationalized and ended up in museum funds,” says Emelyan Zakharov. “Accordingly, when private ownership began 70 years later, the saturation of the Russian market with national art turned out to be lower than in any other country, and prices were higher.”
It is clear that the fake market cannot work without corrupt experts. You have to be a very high professional to know that the Neumeister von Langenmante bought at the auction can be passed off as Kustodiev, and the Skirgello bought at Bukowskis can be passed off as Repin. And of course, more people are needed to erase the excess, add the missing, add a signature.
Roshchin's catalogs (he also publishes catalogs of stolen paintings, "cradanins", and stolen orders) are in great demand. “Do you know where they are taken immediately? To the presidential administration, to the Duma and the Federation Council, to Gazprom, to Lukoil, ”Roshchin laughs. You can see them on his website. stolenart.ru.
Many times they called Roshchin and begged him to remove this or that picture from the catalog, demanded, threatened. After all, paintings are often given for birthdays, paintings are given bribes. And the people who gave the bribe honestly paid their million in the salon - they thought that the picture was genuine.
Roshchin's catalogs made a revolution in the lives of many people. One dealer, for example, went bankrupt. He had a dacha, a car, a wife, a house on Rublyovka - now there is nothing left. He was forced to sell everything when buyers of his paintings demanded a refund, kidnapping his wife as collateral.
In another case, one major collector, a Chechen by origin, looked through Roshchin's catalog and did not steal anyone. He simply called the driver, who loaded the paintings into the car and dumped them on the threshold of the dealer's house. The money was sent right away.
The organizers of the scams operate in a big way: they can spend several tens of thousands of euros in order to publish a luxurious catalog of an artist in which a fake is “stuck” in a big way. Of course, such catalogs are also compiled by experts. The cream of the artistic society. Flawless intellectuals.
“For twenty years, I bought two fake paintings,” says Peter Aven, “through an auction, and they hang with me as a monument to my own stupidity. After that, I do not buy a single painting without provenance. I have a lot of stories when they tried to deceive me. For example, they brought Saryan with paper, that this picture was from Saryan's house. I check: everything is correct, this picture is from Saryan’s house, but it was the work of one of his students.”
It rarely came to a public scandal, but in the few cases when it became public, the name of Elena Basner is sometimes mentioned. One of my interlocutors, a Moscow collector, whose name I do not name at his request (although this case is widely known in narrow circles), bought at the end of 2007 at the Bukowskis auction for 40 thousand euros a painting by the famous symbolist Nikolai Sapunov. “There was a note that Elena Basner confirms this work,” says the collector. The picture was brought to Russia, they made an examination, first at Artconsulting, then at GosNIIR - the picture turned out to be fake.
“We sent all these documents to Bukowskis,” my interlocutor says, “they sent us the expert Basner in response. She looked and said that the picture did not cause her doubts. Moreover, Ms. Basner did “her own” chemistry, and this examination of her showed that everything was fine!
The examination, brought from St. Petersburg by Elena Basner, was criticized in GosNIIR to the nines, but two years passed after the exchange of letters with Bukowskis, and it was impossible to return the money. “They deliberately delayed the deadline,” my interlocutor continues. When asked about the provenance of the painting, Bukowskis refused to answer, saying that it was a trade secret. The criminal case also had no prospects. “Elena Basner has a bad reputation,” notes Peter Aven.
Two years after this story, my other interlocutor, Viktor Spengler, also bought a fake painting with the expertise of Elena Basner. It was Martiros Saryan's painting "View of Mount Ararat" and he paid $120,000 for it. According to the dealer, the painting belonged to an Armenian family who bought it directly from Saryan. When Moscow experts recognized the picture as a fake, the dealer, contrary to the agreements, refused to return the money. Victor Spengler went to court, but lost due to a truly fantastic circumstance, which speaks a lot about the degree of impunity of counterfeiters, namely - the court found the painting to be genuine. “For some reason, the court did not take into account either the expertise of the Tretyakov Gallery or the expertise of the Grabar Center. He took into account only the expertise of the Russian Museum. And according to the Russian Museum, this thing is genuine,” says Viktor Spengler.
However, he does not make any claims against Elena Basner and blames only the dealer who did not fulfill the agreements. “I don't like the fact that a criminal case has been opened against an art critic,” he says. - Everyone has the right to make mistakes. It offends me when they say that Russia is now full of fakes. Viktor Spengler himself will open a center of expertise in the near future.
Vladimir Roshchin finds this position strange. “Yes,” he says, “experts are wrong, but why are some experts wrong so often? In the West, if an expert makes a mistake twice in a year, he is expelled from the expert league, but in our country?” In the end, all 960 paintings published in Roshchinsky's "fake catalog" received expert opinions, and no less highly professional experts (if they were not the same people) were needed to select them at the auction from the very beginning.
But these 960 paintings, let me remind you, are only a narrow part of the fake market. These are only Western European artists of the turn of the century, passed off as Russian contemporaries. Neither the fake Grigoriev, nor the fake Saryan, nor the fake Sapunov are included in this number. Can you imagine what actually hangs on the walls of the managers of Rosneft or Gazprom?
On the Russian market - the show-off market - there are huge easy and opaque money, and what show-offs are cooler than art? There is a demand - there is an offer. The market for fake paintings has become as big as the market for fake dissertations. It is difficult to expect that in a country where everything is sold and faked, art will avoid the common fate. Alas, corruption in the art market is quite integrated into other types of corruption: the confidence of swindlers in their own impunity, the courts that recognize fake paintings as genuine, and the ability to organize a fake chemical examination, not to mention the serial mistakes of "eminent experts", speak for themselves.
As a result, the show-off market “stood up”. People do not risk giving a bribe, which then turns out to be a fake. It is said that when people arrived in Moscow this summer to buy gifts for the birthday of Kazakh President Nazarbayev, they were specifically instructed not to buy paintings. Previously, paintings were given to Nazarbayev quite often, and, they say, some of them, alas, turned out to be from the Roshchi catalog.
In most cases, show-off buyers do not go to the police. They prefer to work things out in an informal way. Vasiliev's case is unique because it allows you to get things off the ground.
If the investigation shows real perseverance, then it will be able to get not only to the periphery of the scam, but also to the main organizers. After all, it is clear that although the number of fakes is very large, the number of groups that can do this is quite limited. It is unlikely that this is just one group of people, but it is also unlikely that there are more than three or four of them: this type of fraud requires too specific skills, deep education and good integration into the super-closed world of collectors and dealers.
The newspaper turned to the participants in the scandalous case for comment.
Natalia SHKURENOK
Andrei VASILIEV: “It seems to me that Basner is shielding someone”
In the context of the criminal case, there are two dates that, in my opinion, are of particular importance: in 2007, Elena Basner ordered a copy of Burtsev’s “My Journal for the Few” for 1914 from the rare book department of the National Library of Russia and took a photo of this work, which was called in the magazine "In a restaurant." And in February 2009, a certain person brought to the Grabar Center the very work that was later sold to me, and left it there for examination. The examination was carried out for almost four months, it turned out to be a fake, but the person who took the painting on June 18 refused to take an official conclusion. And already on July 6, Elena Basner photographs this work in her apartment, on July 10 Shumakov calls me, says that he has a still unknown work by Boris Grigoriev, and sends photographs - a photo from a magazine for 1914 and a photo taken four days back. Shumakov assures me that the painting is from the old St. Petersburg collection, that there are several more works by Grigoriev, and if I do not agree, it will be taken to Moscow
- Why didn't you order an examination of a work unknown to you?
There are a lot of works in my collection, and I have never done an examination. This work had an impeccable provenance (origin. - Approx. ed.), In my opinion, the picture came directly from the Burtsev collection through Nikolai Timofeev, whom I knew personally. Do you think that at Christie's and Sotheby's auctions, all works are accompanied by examinations? There is the most important thing - provenance and gentleman's agreement. I can give you a lot of examples of fakes, provided with official expertise.
- Didn't you know that the same work is stored in the Russian Museum?
I didn't know, because the museum had never exhibited it before. During the investigation, Elena Basner also stated that she did not know about the existence of such a work in the Russian Museum, although she accepted and described the Okunev collection, from which the work entered the museum in the early 80s. Tamara Galeeva, an art critic from Yekaterinburg, who worked on a large monograph on Boris Grigoriev, did not know - this also became known from testimony during the investigation.
- Why were you silent until 2011?
After returning from the Moscow exhibition, I spoke with Shumakov several times, he assured me that the work was genuine, and the experts were wrong. Only when the documents arrived from Grabar did he admit that he got the job from Basner. I was terribly indignant: we agreed with him that I would never take a job from a dealer or a museum art critic. And he asked to return the money, Shumakov handed over - they will not return the money, but they advise me to do an examination at the Russian Museum.
- Why do you have doubts about the Russian Museum?
When I saw a double of my work in the catalog of Grigoriev's exhibition, I began to ask the museum staff what they think of my work? Everyone said - outstanding work, all right! And when the picture was being examined, they began to say something else: yes, the thing is old, ten years old, but this is not Grigoriev. Then I received a draft of the examination, where there was the phrase: “Given the outward resemblance of pigments to Grigoriev’s reference works, pigments of a different composition were used that did not contradict the tenth years of the 20th century.” This has nothing to do with science! I called the museum and told about the examination of the Grabar Center, and this fragment disappeared from the final text of the official examination. Before writing a statement to the police, he came to Basner: Lena, I have no other choice. She assured me that I had an original, a fake - in Russian. I answered: if you want the situation to remain within the framework of human history, tell me who is the owner of the picture, then I will figure it out myself.
I was sure it wasn't her picture! But Lena refused. I wrote a statement to the police, an investigation began. During the investigation, Basner named the name of the owner - Mikhail Aronson, an Estonian citizen. Aronson came to St. Petersburg, wrote a statement to the police that the painting was his, which he inherited from his grandparents. Later I tried to find him in Tallinn: I wanted to hear from him the history of the painting. Didn't find it, but I was introduced to the police who ran into him. They only said that Aronson had been in prison several times. I don't have more information about him. At the end of September 2011, I received from the prosecutor's office a refusal to initiate a criminal case, and my ordeals began.
Why did the investigation take so long?
In a private conversation, the investigators openly told me: your case will either never be initiated, or will not leave the district, because Basner has a very influential lawyer. Indeed, the lawyer Larisa Malkova was for many years the head of the investigation of the Central District of St. Petersburg.
- They say that you have good connections with Bastrykin?
What is not attributed to me! Just in the summer of 2013, I read on the Internet that Bastrykin was holding a reception of citizens in St. Petersburg. He came, Bastrykin advised me to write a statement on the transfer of the case from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Main Investigative Directorate of the Investigative Committee. I spoke with investigators several times, the last time in December 2013. And only on January 31, 2014, I found out that Elena Basner had been arrested.
There is a suspicion that this whole story was promoted by investigators with your direct participation, so that “art historians in uniform” get the right to control museums, expertise ...
In my opinion, the state machine, even at the highest level, rarely works strategically, only in a tactical mode, solving specific problems. I do not exclude the possibility that this story may acquire some political connotations. Another thing is important: Elena Basner did NOT act as an expert and she is NOT being judged for an erroneous examination. She is facing charges of mediating in this fraudulent chain.
I feel terribly sorry for her - she is destroying her name, her reputation, and I cannot understand why. Perhaps she is shielding someone? It seems to me that the real culprit is in Basner's immediate circle.
Larisa MALKOVA, Elena Basner's lawyer:
Vasiliev and Shumakov are not newcomers to the art market. Therefore, it is difficult for me to imagine that Mr. Vasilyev paid Shumakov 250 thousand dollars just for a picture that he liked. We think that he showed the work to art historians, Shumakov, as we assume, turned to specialists, and they all came to the conclusion that the picture is genuine. Mikhail Aronson, the owner of the painting, turned to Basner because she is the official expert of the Bukowskis auction house on Russian art, her phone number is on the site. He called, came to St. Petersburg, they met, she really liked the picture. An employee of the Russian Museum, Yulia Solonovich, watched it with her, and she also liked the work. If we talk about the prospects of the case, they seem vague to me at the moment.
Evgenia PETROVA, Deputy Director of the Russian Museum:
Elena Basner and I broke up in 2003, she left of her own free will: we had disagreements about the creative freedom of the Russian Museum researchers, I won’t comment on anything else. But in the press comments on the arrest of Elena Basner, a lot of inaccuracies and fantasies immediately appeared: firstly, she was never an expert at the Russian Museum, we don’t even have such a position. And what does “world-class expert” mean? We have enough specialists whose qualifications are not lower than those of Elena Veniaminovna, many employees of various departments are engaged in scientific work. Secondly, it is not at all clear from which side the Russian Museum is attached to the whole history and why. I think because without the Russian Museum it would not be so interesting to talk about it. Speculation that a copy was allegedly created in the Russian Museum is untenable: Grigoriev wrote this work in 1913, Okunev bought it in an antique store in 1946 - during this time it could be copied as many times as you like. Between 1946 and 1983, when it was transferred to the Russian Museum, it could also be copied - private owners even then gave out their works for exhibitions, catalogs were not always made, nothing was recorded. The museum conducted an examination of its work at the same time that Vasilyev handed over his work to us. A lot of dirty foam has been whipped up around this story: we need to deal with its participants, and not discuss the Russian Museum.
Irina KARASIK, Doctor of Arts:
We have been friends with Elena Basner for more than 30 years, 25 of them worked together at the Russian Museum, often working on the same projects. She is a highly qualified specialist, enjoys undeniable authority in the scientific community, which once again confirmed the number and quality of letters in her defense. Lena excelled in various areas of our profession: scientific articles and reports, publications of archival materials, curatorial, expert, teaching activities, film scripts, popular lectures. Without her works, many of which became discoveries, the historiography of the Russian avant-garde is impossible today. Elena Basner plays a leading role in the study and interpretation of the late works of Kazimir Malevich. It was she who, having developed the idea of Charlotte Douglas on the need to revise the system of author's dating, finally deciphered the artist's hoax, substantiated and consolidated a convincing chronology. In 1999, the Russian Museum successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis “Painting by K.S. Malevich of the late period (the phenomenon of the artist's reconstruction of his creative path). Lena is involved in the most significant exhibitions of the Russian Museum. Through her efforts and under her leadership, the Museum of the History of the St. Petersburg Avant-Garde (Matyushin's House) was created in St. Petersburg. Both in life and in my profession, I do not know a more honest, independent, disinterested and considerate person. All the actions that Vasiliev speaks of were carried out without documents, the opinion about the authenticity of the painting was oral. No one twisted the hands of buyers. No pre-purchase testing was done. What is the crime? There could only be a mistake here.
Mikhail KAMENSKY, General Director of the Sotheby's Russia and CIS Auction House:
This situation is extraordinary for our artistic life: we practically do not initiate legal cases on the facts of the sale of falsifications of works of art. This story is the result of processes rooted in the 60s, when interest in the Russian avant-garde, in the collection of Russian icons, grew: the Russian avant-garde and the Russian icon turned out to be those conditional artistic currencies that were converted in the world. There was a flow of smuggling, very soon a large number of masters of falsification arose. In the late 1990s - early 2000s, our domestic market quickly surpassed the needs of the foreign market in terms of its capacity, appetites and passions - and the flow of counterfeits grew even more.
Among the experts working in the segment of the avant-garde art market, there are many worthy, knowledgeable and decent people, but they turned out to be puppets in the hands of those who brought fakes to them for many decades. Elena Basner is a person who knows things, objects, funds. But when an expert acts both as the author of the opinion and as an intermediary who makes a profit, moral and criminal issues may arise. By the way, the expert's fee is always significantly less than the share of participation in the transaction.
We, who work at Sotheby's House, quite often have to deal with objects that raise questions. Usually we immediately refuse such things. Sometimes we ask for proof. If there is no doubt about provenance, as a rule, they do not ask for an examination. But if serious suspicions arise after the purchase, we conduct examinations, if doubts are confirmed, we return the money. Elena Basner, Andrei Vasiliev, the Russian Museum - these are the names to which I am not indifferent, the fate of these organizations and people - the fate of our culture. But, unfortunately, everything reached such a degree that the explosion had to happen.
Former Russian Museum employee sued for selling fake Russian avant-garde painting
In St. Petersburg, a former employee of the Russian Museum will appear before the court, who is accused of selling a fake painting by an avant-garde artist, whose original is actually kept in the museum, for a quarter of a million dollars, the press service of the ICR reports.
59-year-old art historian Elena Basner is accused of committing a crime under Part 4 of Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (large-scale fraud committed by a group of persons by prior agreement).
According to investigators, in the summer of 2009, Basner entered into an agreement with the publisher Leonid Shumakov (he is now on the wanted list) and confirmed to the collector Andrei Vasilyev the authenticity of the painting by the Russian avant-garde artist of the early twentieth century Boris Grigoriev "In a restaurant" (1913). At the same time, according to the investigators, the art critic knew for certain that the canvas was a copy, and the original painting was in the State Russian Museum. Basner received $ 250,000 from Vasiliev and disposed of them at her own discretion.
In 2011, the painting was revealed to be a fake. Vasiliev filed a civil lawsuit against Shumakov, but lost the court due to the statute of limitations.
After the arrest of the art critic, Russian and foreign colleagues came up with a petition in her defense. "Elena Veniaminovna Basner has earned the boundless respect of her colleagues not only for her scientific research, but also for her honesty and integrity in the expert community," the appeal said. Basner's colleagues asked the court to choose a measure of restraint for her, not related to deprivation of liberty. It should be noted that since February 5, 2014, the art critic has been under house arrest. She faces up to 10 years in prison with a fine of up to 1 million rubles.
The criminal case with the approved indictment will soon be sent to court for consideration on the merits.
The Investigative Committee of St. Petersburg shocked the art world. Elena Basner, the first specialist in the international avant-garde painting market, the daughter of the cult Soviet composer who wrote Vladimir Putin's favorite song "Where the Motherland Begins", is suspected of cheating in the sale of a serious canvas. On January 31, a key figure from the absolute circle of urban culture was placed in the cell. Fontanka found out how the long-term case was moved by the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, and that the reputation of the Russian Museum was under attack.
www.bukowskis.com
The Investigative Committee of St. Petersburg shocked the art world. Elena Basner, the first specialist in the international avant-garde painting market, the daughter of the cult Soviet composer who wrote Vladimir Putin's favorite song "Where the Motherland Begins", is suspected of cheating in the sale of a serious canvas. On January 31, a key figure from the absolute circle of urban culture was placed in the cell. Fontanka found out how the long-term case was moved by the head of the Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, and that the reputation of the Russian Museum was under attack.
Since noon on February 1, the phones of most players in the antique painting market of St. Petersburg, Moscow, Helsinki, Amsterdam, London have undergone an anomalous connection within themselves. Collectors and intermediaries, salon owners and exhibition organizers, experts and fakers called up, emotionally discussing only one piece of news. Many have never been heard of by the general public, some are known on different continents. News.
According to the Investigative Committee of St. Petersburg, a former expert of the Russian Museum, an employee of the eminent auction house in Finland Bukowskis, the first world expert in Russian avant-garde painting, participated in a crafty scheme for selling a painting by the artist Grigoriev to a serious St. Petersburg collector Andrei Vasiliev.
From this point on, it is necessary to remember that Elena Basner is not just No. 1, the author of monographs and reviews, a specialist who is invited to lecture in New York, but at the moment Khardzhiev’s exhibition is taking place in Amsterdam, which she evaluated with an introductory article in the catalog. She is not only the daughter of the cult Soviet composer Veniamin Basner, whose melody “Where the Motherland Begins” is known to be loved and personally performed by Vladimir Putin.
Basner is a kind of our St. Petersburg symbol, proclaimed the cultural capital. Not Nikita Mikhalkov, of course. After all, in the north we have a “lower chimney and thinner smoke,” and yet Elena Basner was born within the real cultural elite. There are not only high ceilings in a spacious apartment with oak sideboards. Dmitri Shostakovich and others, who today have become our "Greek gods", stayed at her father's house.
From the point of view of the classical, albeit devalued in our time, intelligentsia, if Mikhalkov, Rosenbaum are ardent representatives of the establishment, then Elena Basner has become an integral part of the St. Petersburg spirit with its obligatory code of conduct. There are always few of them. Among them are historian Lev Lurie, art critic Alexander Borovsky and those whom the reader will remember for himself. Basner is a piece without which it is impossible to play "chess", and the creation of a myth is lame. Inserted into the environment as in a frame. In fact, it carries the stigma of quality in itself.
Basner's biography is extremely correct: from the Academy of Arts to the Russian Museum. Her forte is the pillars of the avant-garde Malevich and Goncharov. Basner is also involved in the art market as an expert. This is very typical, justified and not condemned. How to sew at home for a Soviet dressmaker. This is how they become successful museum workers. Basner is always sympathetic, cheerful and energetic.
Still, it is wrong to draw analogies, like Basner - "Pele in football" or "Coumarin in organized communities." Culture is not only a world of big money, where honest and not very engaged in sales and exhibitions. Each state has a visual presentation, and Russian painting is part of this national image. There is such an image in Angola, but it costs as much as Angola costs. And our most powerful visual image on the canvases of masters, of course, gave rise to a huge market.
But if in the USSR the avant-garde was on the outskirts of public consciousness, and in the 90s it was dragged across the cordon and exchanged for sneakers, today painting comes to us from there and is bought here for millions. There is little real painting, the new heroes have a lot of money, and even more ambitions. But if large sums are spinning around something, then corruption aggression is inevitable.
Initiates know that in the Russian Museum you can officially get an assessment of painting, and at the same time you can. And often by the same experts. Only without iconic seals, but with a stamp, for example, of the museum's personnel department, which will assure that such an art critic is working. It's like getting an amount in silver or banknotes. But with all due respect to the law, intent - the inner conviction of an expert - few could refute.
Basner left the Russian Museum long ago. She moved to the Matyushin House (a museum of the St. Petersburg avant-garde), and then a formal pension came. Her reputation allowed her to work with the most serious houses doing business in the arts.
In 2009, a banal story in this world began - the St. Petersburg collector Andrey Vasilyev bought from the classical intermediary Shumakov the work of the difficult artist of the early twentieth century Grigoriev. Vasiliev took it with history - from the collection of General Timofeev - and for 250 thousand dollars. Soon, at an exhibition in Moscow, where he sent the canvas under the television cameras of the Kultura channel, they reported that this work was known and that it was not Grigoriev at all, but a good copy of him.
Negotiations began with the mediator, he nodded at Basner. Basner was embarrassed, but denied. Vasiliev was not given a way out of the situation, and he turned to the authorities. The organs stared at the unfamiliar structure for a long time. Vasilyev won rare lawsuits for illegal inaction three times in court, after which the investigation of the Petrograd Regional Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs nevertheless opened a fraud case and transferred the materials to the State Investigation Department.
The saddest thing is that it also turned out that the Russian Museum has the same painting by Grigoriev.
When Basner was called, she came with a lawyer and briefly nodded at Aronson, an Estonian citizen. Like, he found a picture in his garage in the Vsevolozhsk district of the Leningrad region, showed Basner, and the expert gasped and later offered Vasiliev through an intermediary.
After that, the detective began to look like a feuilleton. The audit showed that Aronson has been convicted four times, in Tallinn he sells glass containers, but he did not visit Russia at that time.
Also, journalists. Basner gave indignant interviews, her lawyer Larisa Malkova accused Vasiliev himself of forgery, and in the meantime the case was suspended.
In August last year, within the walls of the Investigative Committee of the Leningrad Region on Torzhkovskaya Street, where the head of the department Alexander Bastrykin arrived, the next stage began. It is similar to the modern Russian TV series How Justice Triumphs. Vasiliev was at the reception. To the left of Bastrykin sat the head of the IC of St. Petersburg Klaus, to the right - the IC of the region Loskutov. Bastrykin listened and, instead of damaging, peered into the depths of history. Colleague Klaus agreed to take over the case.
Dozens of expertise have accumulated in the case. Forensic, independent, judicial. The final one reads: "The picture shown is definitely a professional forgery."
Beyond the brackets of this episode are reflections on the place of forgery. Note that there have always been fakes. Even during the lifetime of the masters of the Middle Ages. But this requires the original. If Grigoriev is real in the Russian Museum, and the fake is professional, then it could probably be performed inside the temple (of course, the main process does not take place next to the original, in modern realities an extremely high-quality photograph is needed).
And this is a completely different story. If you have a reference base and mister performer, then you have a joker. By the way, real fakers are not artists, but restorers. It's like a surgeon and a pathologist.
If the investigation does not stop at irresistible factors in the person of moral authorities, this fundamental answer may also come to light.
For the intelligentsia, the detention of Basner is a shock. For the rest of the antique world, this can break the established rules. With unpredictable consequences. Both for owners and museum workers.
Earlier, we heard the reaction of the director of the Russian Museum, Vladimir Gusev, to Vasiliev's statement. He said that the scandal was on the conscience of the collector. Deputy director Evgenia Petrova threatened to sue Vasilyev for libel.
In the meantime, investigators are assessing what they found during the searches over the past two days.
On February 2, Elena Basner must choose a preventive measure. Fontanka tried to talk to Andrey Vasiliev.
I learned about Basner from your own publication. I don’t want to comment now,” he replied. When asked if he knows where and when there will be a trial as a measure of restraint, Vasiliev said: - I don’t know, but if I were asked, I would be categorically against the arrest. Whatever happened in the past, I don't want this for Lena.
Elena Basner is the author of a beautiful patented method for detecting fake paintings. It is based on the hypothesis that before the beginning of the era of nuclear tests on planet Earth, that is, before Hiroshima, there were no “isotopes” on the canvases that appeared after 1945.
Now the history of the St. Petersburg subculture of antiques will also be divided into "before Basner's arrest" and after it.
Evgeny Vyshenkov, Fontanka.ru
"MK" became aware that there are claims to the art critic not only on the canvas "In the restaurant"
A high-profile criminal scandal is developing in St. Petersburg: the famous art critic Elena Basner is accused of fraud on an especially large scale. The reason is the canvas that the collector Andrey Vasilyev bought as the work of the avant-garde artist Boris Grigoriev "In a restaurant", which turned out to be a fake. When Vasilyev discovered that he had been deceived by $250,000 (that's how much the "dummy" cost), he decided to figure it out at all costs. The tracks led to Basner. However, as MK found out, not only Vasilyev holds a grudge against the eminent expert. There are other collectors who, by the grace of the daughter of a famous composer, became the owners of fakes.
The painting "In the restaurant" differs only in details from the original from the Russian Museum.
Option from non-existence
Before moving on to other "episodes" related to the falsification of works of art and the name of a former employee of the Russian Museum, art historian Elena Basner, let's dot the "i" in the Vasiliev case.
How did it all start? In 2009, Leonid Shumakov, general director of the Zolotoy Vek publishing house, offered the doctor Andrey Vasiliev to buy a painting by Boris Grigoriev. The prices for the avant-garde artist are going through the roof: just in 2009, the watercolor “Faces of Russia” (from the cycle of the same name) went to Sotheby’s for almost a million dollars, the painting is quoted even more expensive. And the canvas “In the Restaurant” seems to have come from “good home "(General Nikolai Timofeev), and "lit up" in 1914 on the pages of the publication "My Journal for the Few", which was published by the merchant of the 1st guild, bibliophile and collector Alexander Evgenievich Burtsev. And Vasiliev decided to buy a "picture with a biography" without A year later, she went to an exhibition in Moscow, where she was seen by an employee of the Grabar Center, Yulia Rybakova.The expert, as it turned out, had encountered her even earlier and recognized her as a fake: the examination showed that the paints used to create the canvas appeared after her death Grigorieva. Later, Vasiliev received another confirmation that he was given a fake, already in the Russian Museum. Vasiliev rushed to Shumakov, who explained that he had received the work from Elena Basner. The art critic herself, however, did not deny that she had dealt with such a picture. Here is what she told MK in August of the year before last (No. 26 020 dated 08/21/2012): “Three years ago they brought me a work in the authenticity of which I was absolutely sure. But I didn’t even give a written opinion!”
And in April 2011, an exhibition of Boris Grigoriev opened at the Russian Museum. I remember that vernissage very well: a sea of public, the best, textbook works by Grigoriev (far in beauty and power from the acquisition of Vasiliev) and an expensive weighty catalogue. In it, the twin brother of the very painting that the collector bought was found. "Paris Cafe" (1913), cardboard, watercolor, tempera, whitewash. 53.3x70.3. In the meeting of the timing "- learn from the signature. And here's what's important: "In the restaurant" is indicated as a variant of the work published in the publication. Here, for the only time, an object is mentioned, the origin of which is now so preoccupied by the Investigative Committee of St. Petersburg.
There is a version that the "Parisian Cafe" entered the Russian Museum in the 1980s, along with other works from the collection of Boris Okunev. The professor of ballistics bequeathed his collection to the State Russian Museum, and his daughter fulfilled her father's last will. He really could buy the work in some commission shop, where the thing could really get from the collection of Alexander Burtsev. The publisher played an important role in the fate of the artist. When the still unknown Grigoriev studied at the Academy of Arts, Burtsev began to involve him in the design of folklore and ethnographic collections. The experiments in Burtsev's journal echoed in Grigoriev's most famous cycles: Race (1918) and Faces of Russia (1923-1924). It is believed that it was during the "Burtsev period" (1910-1912) that Grigoriev's grotesque was born, which distinguishes his brilliant manner of writing. Burtsev obviously kept more than one work by Grigoriev. But then all his capital and property were nationalized during the revolution.
However, who has seen the painting "Parisian Cafe", except for the employees of the Russian Museum? Basner accepted Okunev's collection for storage at the State Russian Museum, and she also compiled a catalog for it. The Parisian Café did not make it to the recent vernissage at the Russian Museum and has never been exhibited before. As for the 2011 catalog, there is no signature of Elena Basner. The authors of the publication are former colleagues of the art critic - Irina Vakar, Vladimir Kruglov, scientific adviser - Evgenia Petrova. Let's get back to the last name.
After discovering a clone of his purchase in the catalog of the Russian Museum, Andrei Vasiliev turned to the police - before that he had hoped that the work was still real. The application was submitted in June 2011, but no progress was made in the case. He filed a lawsuit against Shumakov, whom, by the way, he has known for 30 years, but he was not satisfied due to the statute of limitations. He wrote to the Ministry of Culture: they promised to arrange an inspection of the Russian Museum, but "did not find serious grounds to send a commission." And then he came to the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin. The stubborn doctor turned out to be - apparently, he invested a lot of nerves, effort and money.
Elena Basner was arrested the next day after returning from Helsinki - January 31. She spent five days in a pre-trial detention center and is now under house arrest. All electronic media (computer, camera, flash drives) were confiscated. In parallel, searches were carried out at other antique dealers who may be relevant to the case. But the investigation now must be developing another person involved in the case - Estonian Mikhail Aronson. According to Andrei Vasilyev, Basner, in a conversation with him, said that he was the owner of the painting, and she was only an intermediary. The collector found out that he was a repeatedly convicted criminal. Basner, on the other hand, stated (through lawyer Larisa Malkova) that Aronson brought the painting to the Bukowskis auction house, where she works, and so the painting ended up with her.
Where are the threads of this crime? How many figures are involved in the dark story? Could, as Vasiliev claims, "someone's invisible hand" slow down the process so much that only Bastrykin could set the matter in motion?
But no one has yet canceled the presumption of innocence: what if Basner really made a mistake by taking the work that they showed her at face value? After all, we have not yet heard any confessions from her lips. So her colleague Irina Shalina claims that Basner "lives quite poorly, like everyone else." Could Elena Basner herself become a puppet in someone's cunning game? About 2,000 signatures were collected in defense of the art critic - among those who supported the entire artistic Petersburg, and not only. Who are they protecting?
Radioactive Expert
There is such an unspoken guild called "respectable people." Elena Basner entered it a very long time ago. The daughter of the cult Soviet composer Veniamin Basner, the author of the melodies “Where the Motherland Begins” and “At the Nameless Height”, grew up in the bosom of art and devoted herself to it. She chose the avant-garde as her specialty, explained it this way: she was attracted by its mysteriousness, taboo. She graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and in 1978 got a job at the Russian Museum. Over time, she became a senior researcher in the painting department of the second half of the 19th - 20th centuries. It was Basner who transferred many of Kazimir Malevich's works and curated the first international exhibition dedicated to the artist's work (1988-1991, Moscow-Leningrad-Amsterdam-Washington-Los Angeles-New York). Suddenly, in 2003, she resigned of her own free will and went to "free bread" - an expert at the Swedish auction house Bukowskis, then, since 2006, a leading researcher at the Museum of the St. Petersburg Avant-Garde (Matyushin's House).
A positive examination of Basner for Sapunov's work, which turned out to be a fake.
A couple of years later, Elena Veniaminovna made a sensational statement: she found a way to accurately analyze the paintings of the twentieth century. In 2008, a year before the start of the story with Grigoriev's ill-fated forgery, she patented her know-how. The secret of solving the main problem of examination, according to Basner, lies ... in radiation. The method involves measuring the levels of cesium-137 and strontium-90 isotopes. If there are many of them, then the picture was painted after 1945. The starting point is not accidental: the first nuclear explosion occurred in New Mexico in July 1945. Since the time of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, more than two thousand nuclear tests have been carried out in the world, so the radioactive elements released by them are now everywhere. In animals, trees, plants, soil. And in paints that are made from organic materials, too. The logic is this: if the picture is pre-war, there are no radioactive isotopes in the paints.
Several examinations confirmed that this sketch has nothing to do with Sapunov. Here is one of them.
No matter how fantastic the idea may seem at first glance, it has the right to exist. Yes, radioactive isotopes are scattered over the earth - somewhere their content is greater, somewhere less, but they are everywhere. And not only those that appeared on the planet as a result of nuclear explosions, but also those that exist in nature without any human intervention. By the way, the study of the latter with the help of radiocarbon analysis helped scientists in the 1990s to investigate the Shroud of Turin and prove that it was created no earlier than the 13th century. And then the results were reviewed several times, more than one year in a row. But one thing is radiocarbon analysis, it has been tested (although it fails), another is the method of Elena Basner. Does she have a device capable of doing this kind of analysis? What is the error percentage? All these questions remain up in the air - neither the restoration workshops nor the radiation experts have been able to confirm to MK that such a device exists and is capable of producing accurate results. True, not a single examination carried out through such an analysis could be found.
At this point, it is worth explaining why the art history community was so startled. More than that, scared. The fact is that many questions have long accumulated about the work of the expert community. The Russian market is full of fakes: different indicators of "contamination" are called - from 40 to 90%! And there are no legal proceedings in cases of fraud with works of art. The case of the Preobrazhenskys, if only to remember. Yes, the owners of the gallery, who sold fakes, were convicted, but, they say, only after they managed to slip a fake into the collection of Vladimir Putin.
“I have been cataloging fakes for five years and have over 1,000 unpublished cases. The antique market is filled with them! - I am sure the publisher Vladimir Roshchin, whose joint publications with Rosokhrankultura led to the denunciation of the experts of the Tretyakov Gallery. Art historians recognized more than 100 erroneous conclusions for themselves. After the scandal, the State Tretyakov Gallery stopped issuing expertise to private clients.
- Previously, experts were afraid of being seen in scandals of this kind. Catalogs of fakes have untied the hands of experts, they say: the human factor, sometimes, made a mistake, continues Roshchin. “Today, experts are a caste of the inviolable. This is the only profession where you can take huge money for your work. Of course, you shouldn't blame everyone. But in case of error, the experts do not bear any responsibility. Until the art scams stop, the market will not become civilized. The detention of Basner is a revolution! Maybe after that experts will become afraid to fool. After this story, the victims will line up with lawsuits against experts.
How many collectors hold a grudge against the experts of the Tretyakov Gallery? Who checked the absence of motives for these errors? Collectors are completely silent - they know that it is oh so difficult to find the truth. Most don't even try. On the other hand, an expert is only human. Who doesn't make mistakes?
We are people too! - stands up for colleagues art critic, employee of the Russian Museum Irina Shalina. — Knowledge of the subject and provenance is important, but there is something that lies beyond understanding, at the level of intuition. Expertise is not mathematics. No one will ever invent a way to uniquely identify, there will always be two people, one of whom will be “for”, the other “against”.
Mistakes or scams?
Basner was more often in favor.
So, she identified the picture of the Armenian artist Martiros Saryan “View of Mount Ararat” as the original. Basner put the work up for auction at Bukowskis, where Elena currently works, for $50,000-70,000. However, no one bought the landscape. Later, Moscow collector Viktor Spengler purchased the work for $120,000. Unlike Vasiliev, with a written conclusion signed by the deputy director of the State Russian Museum, Evgenia Petrova (who is exactly listed in the directors of the Grigoriev catalog) and Elena Basner. And after a while, the collector conducted several additional examinations: at the Grabar Research and Restoration Center and the Tretyakov Research Independent Expertise. The painting turned out to be fake. In the summer of 2012, the case was opened, but then closed.
Some media wrote about this "episode". About the next - no one and never. I’ll make a reservation right away: the collector, who in 2007 bought this fake through Bukowskis for 40 thousand euros, is not yet ready to reveal his name. However, through Vladimir Roshchin, MK got materials confirming another mistake of the St. Petersburg art critic. It concerns a work that was attributed to the theater artist Nikolai Sapunov, a painter, a student of Korovin and Serov, a stage designer who drowned in 1912. Basner considered that "the sketch was made in the style characteristic of the artist, in compliance with the basic compositional principles ...". The thing did not cause doubts in the art critic, she delivered a verdict: "It has a high artistic merit and an undeniable collection value." However, after some time, our anonymous person went to other expert institutions and everywhere received the opposite answer. Experts from GosNIIR, the laboratory of technical expertise "Art Consulting", the Institute of Geology and Geochronology of the Russian Academy of Sciences came to the same conclusion without saying a word. Moreover, they did not examine it by eye, but did “chemistry” and x-rays. And they found that the work could not have been done before the second half of the twentieth century. “Based on the work by S.Yu. Sudeikin “Harlequin Garden” from the collection of the Saratov State Art Museum,” the most authoritative of these organizations, GosNIIR, clarifies. Agree, all this looks suspicious. It seems that the authority of Elena Basner is crumbling like a house of cards. But the question here is not even in her and not in her accuser.
It's about the system. It is fake by nature. In theory, every act of sale, be it the purchase of chewing gum or Rubens, should be documented. But who in the antique world draws up checks and contracts today? Vasiliev does not have it, like thousands of other collectors, too. All in words. The antique market has long been semi-legal. It has been moving by inertia since Soviet times. And in the USSR it was possible, of course, to buy a work of art in a thrift store, but rarely worth it. The most relevant authors - the same avant-garde artists - were banned, which means they were present on the black market, like icons and everything else. More than 30 years have passed - but the market has not come out of the shadows. The problem is that there is no separate department that would control this environment. Rosokhrankultura was dissolved, and three and a half people are working on the issue in the Ministry of Culture. Law enforcement agencies do not really know how to act: there is almost no practice in investigating such cases. Now here's the Basner case. Indeed, a revolution.
After a year of almost complete silence Elena Basner, an expert under house arrest since January 2013 on charges of a fraudulent deal with a false canvas Boris Grigoriev, gave an interview to a St. Petersburg journalist Mikhail Zolotonosov Online 812'online.
A month before this, a conversation between Mikhail Zolotonosov and a collector was published. Andrey Vasiliev, who purchased the aforementioned painting by Boris Grigoriev and, having made sure that the painting was fake, and trying to return the $ 250 thousand spent on it, initiated legal proceedings against Elena Basner.
At the moment, the investigation is over, the materials have been submitted to the court, but the start date of the process has not yet been set. This story continues to traumatize the art community. Facts and evidence to this day are known only from the words of the warring parties, each of which, of course, stands on its own. At some point, it almost came to a split: someone stood for Elena Basner, a respected expert, the author of her own research and development on the dating of works of art, someone for Andrey Vasiliev, an intelligent and respected collector with a long experience.
There is only one detailed judicial precedent in the history of our art market - the Moscow case of antique dealers Preobrazhensky, convicted in 2008 for selling fake paintings by Russian Wanderers. However, it can be assumed that even the court will not put an end to this story, because the main problem around which passions boil is not the question of whether Elena Basner participated in "fraud on an especially large scale", but the problem of the expert's responsibility for his opinion and right collector to demand material guarantees of this responsibility. Legislation and public opinion do not give answers yet.
A year ago, The Art Newspaper Russia published a large material from which you can learn all the details of the story about the beginning of the Vasiliev case against Basner and the fake painting by Boris Grigoriev "In a restaurant."
The arrest of one art critic can ruin the reputation of everyone else
Elena Basner arrested on suspicion of counterfeit fraud
BIOGRAPHY
Elena Basner
Art critic
1954 — I was born in Leningrad. Daughter of composer Veniamin Basner
1978-2003 — Senior Researcher at the Department of Painting of the Second Half of the 19th - 20th Centuries, Curator of the Department of Art of the 20th Century at the State Russian Museum
since 2005— Expert of the Swedish auction house Bukowskis
since 2006— Leading Research Fellow of the Museum of St. Petersburg Avant-Garde
Elena Basner, together with Andrey Krusanov, developed a unique method for detecting fakes by the presence or absence of cesium-137 and strontium-90 isotopes in the product
On February 6, the Oktyabrsky Federal District Court of St. Petersburg placed art critic Elena Basner, a consultant at the Swedish auction house, under house arrest. Bukowskis, until 2003, a researcher at the Department of Painting of the Second Half of the 19th — 21st Centuries of the State Russian Museum. Basner is charged under Art. 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation "Fraud on an especially large scale", the maximum punishment is ten years in prison. The investigation believes that she recommended the collector Andrey Vasilyev to purchase from the publisher Leonid Shumakova painting by artist Boris Grigoriev "In a restaurant"(1913) worth $250,000. The collector claims that the work is a fake, and the original is stored in the storeroom of the Russian Museum under the name "Paris Cafe". To find out what was Basner's role in concluding the deal, whether her review of the authenticity of the painting was an expert's mistake, a delusion, or she really was an intermediary in the sale of a fake, remains to be investigated. Nevertheless, even now this criminal case may have a negative impact on the reputation of the expert community.
“Elena Basner was a link in the fraudulent chain. And certainly not the most important. She doesn't sound like an expert. The fact that she is a link in this chain, I found out after a year and a half! In a huge number of publications, there is a deliberate or unintentional distortion of this fundamental fact, ”said Andrey Vasiliev in a commentary to our newspaper. When asked what court decision in this criminal case he would be satisfied with, Vasiliev replied: “I will certainly be satisfied with a fair court decision. Ms. Basner herself, in a TV show on the NTV channel in August 2011, stated that the thing in the museum was not real, but she was selling the real one. The same is still said on the sidelines of the museum by her former employees and current friends. Even in my Facebook some lady Irina Arskaya, working in the graphics department of the timing.
Interestingly, back in 1986, the Russian Museum issued a catalog of works bequeathed to him from the collection of Professor Boris Okunev, where Grigoriev's painting was described "In a restaurant"(but there was no image). The catalog was compiled and prefaced by Elena Basner. Basner herself, according to her lawyer Larisa Malkova, does not plead guilty, noting that she only visually assessed the work, the authenticity of which she was sure, therefore she did not insist on an examination. Now the accused does not give comments, but a year and a half ago she told our newspaper the following (No. 05, September 2012, “Collectors dispute the expertise of the Russian Museum, up to the court”): “I was holding a picture (Grigorieva. - TANR) in her hands in July 2009 ... and since then she had no information about her fate: her movements, existence, possible change of owners. I don’t understand what claims can be made several years after the acquisition of the job, especially since Mr. Vasiliev is an experienced person and, it seems to me, he should be responsible for his decisions.”
The criminal case was initiated after Vasiliev met with the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation Alexander Bastrykin and personally told him the essence of the matter. According to Vasiliev, the collector made an appointment with him, and nothing connects them.
After the arrest of Elena Basner, the Russian Museum hastened to disown its former colleague, spreading the following statement: “Elena Veniaminovna Basner has not been working in the Russian Museum since 2003 and has never had the status of an expert, especially of an international level. Since 2003, she has not been connected with the museum in any way, and the museum does not bear any responsibility for her actions.”
However, in private, many colleagues from the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery and other Russian museums supported the arrested woman, sending the judge of the Oktyabrsky Court Elena Fedorova a petition asking for a measure of restraint not related to deprivation of liberty. “Elena Veniaminovna is one of the most famous and respected connoisseurs of Russian art; her works on the history of the Russian avant-garde can be called exemplary without exaggeration. However, Elena Veniaminovna Basner has earned the boundless respect of her colleagues not only for her scientific research, but also for her honesty and integrity in the expert community,” the document, signed by almost three thousand people, says.
Director of the State Hermitage Mikhail Piotrovsky, in turn, spoke about the arrest of Elena Basner: “I believe that this is an insult to the entire intelligentsia. Such measures, when a woman of the humanitarian profession is imprisoned, is a spit in the direction of the entire intelligentsia of Russia.”
Collectors look at this story from a slightly different point of view compared to the academic and museum community. We turned to the banker for a comment Petru Aven, a well-known collector of Russian art of the early twentieth century, with the question of what threatens this story to the expert community. “As a reason for the system to be interested in the work of experts at all, this story is wonderful. The “impeccable” reputation of most experts confuses many,” Petr Aven replied.
This is not the first court case in Russia that has arisen due to disputes over the authenticity of art objects. So, in 2008, the Tverskoy Court of Moscow passed a sentence on the spouses-antique dealers Tatyana And Igor Preobrazhensky(five years of imprisonment). The court found that they changed the signatures on the paintings of little-known European authors of the 19th century, belonging to the so-called Düsseldorf school, and sold them under the guise of masterpieces of Russian painters of the same era. Alexandra Kiseleva And Alexandra Orlovsky. In just five paintings, they earned $ 730 thousand. In connection with this story, the name of a well-known expert came up Vladimir Petrov However, his erroneous conclusions were recognized as a conscientious error, and he did not suffer criminal punishment. Doubts about the authenticity of art objects can also be resolved in civil proceedings. Yes, according to the claim Viktor Vekselberg The High Court of London allowed him to cancel the deal with the auction Christie's where did he buy the fake one "Odalisque" Boris Kustodiev. The painting was purchased in 2005 for 1.7 million pounds, which was a record for this artist. Now Vekselberg will be able to return the money paid. While blaming Christie's the court did not become negligent.
In the strata of St. Petersburg society, close to art and antiques - almost an earthquake. Only talk about the court verdict on. With her mediation, an expensive fake was sold. But the court acquitted Elena Basner, considering that there was no intent on her part, but it was a professional mistake during the examination.
The court decision sets an important precedent and opens the way for a wide stream of fake Russian art.
Psychiatrist and collector Andrei Vasiliev lives in the village of Komarovo near St. Petersburg. Now he is especially closed. He does not even want to wander along the shore of the bay. The story of the fake painting he acquired and the litigation, where the main defendant was art critic Elena Basner, were too hard for him. When he sued, he was not going to take revenge or even return the money.
The daughter of a Soviet composer worked at the Russian Museum until 2003, and then was an expert at the Swedish auction house Bukowskis. Elena Veniaminovna's specialization is precisely the avant-garde: Malevich, Goncharova and other great ones.
Basner was known only in professional circles until February 1, 2014, when she was detained in connection with the sale of a fake painting. Then the news was shocking. The entire community of art historians, museum workers, restorers closely followed the trials. Many are outraged. Arrest, like some kind of thimbler, a person who serves art! Yes, how is this possible?!
The hall of the Dzerzhinsky District Court of St. Petersburg is overcrowded during the sessions. And now the court finds Basner innocent. Again, this is incredible news for everyone.
No one can criticize the decision of the court, but perhaps the court was unable to present irrefutable evidence. There was fraud. Who made the fake painting and by whose order, who received the money from the sale - 250 thousand dollars - and where they went, has not been clarified. There was a crime, but no one answered for it.
“Basner’s acquittal upset our community. She is not the only one. Someone sued to unwind this knot, and the state says: everything is in order, live as you lived. It’s a shame,” said gallery owner Natalia Kournikova.
It's no secret that the number of fake paintings in the world is increasing. They are sold, bought, donated. They sell antiques - this is very profitable, third place after drugs and weapons. Fake works appear at auctions, galleries and even museums.
People who bought a fake prefer to remain silent. The antiques trade is a mysterious world where going to the police is not welcome. In Russia, only four times people who acquired fake paintings as a result of fraud went to court. And Vasiliev is one of them. Important for Vasiliev, and for the investigation, was the fact that it turned out where the standard of the painting, the original, from which the fake was made, was found.
Vasilyev bought Boris Grigoriev's gouache in 2009. But after a while it turned out that it was a fake. Such a conclusion was made even before the sale in the center of Grabar in Moscow. In the course of the investigation, new details began to emerge. The original painting by Grigoriev is in the Russian Museum. He did not exhibit, did not publish. And it was Basner who accepted this work from the Okunev collection in 1984 into the museum's collection. However, Basner herself assured that she had forgotten about it.
An alibi for Basner was provided by Estonian citizen Mikhail Aronson, previously convicted, marginal. Three non-Russians appear in the case - citizens of Estonia and Sweden. Investigators wanted to add to the case and history of the Swedish Bukowskis auction. There, at the suggestion of Basner, paintings were sold that had previously been recognized as fakes. But crimes committed outside of Russia cannot be considered by our police.
Forgeries are made by outstanding masters, well trained, experienced, with a firm hand, knowledge of art history, technologically literate. It is not easy to identify a fake using even the equipment that is available in the centers of expertise. They make alterations - they take the middle picture of an unknown painter and draw on it a few details and the signature of a famous artist. They work on old canvases, avoiding pigments and paints that appeared in the middle of the 20th century. There are many receptions. They age the thing. It is especially difficult to establish a fake in the case of graphics.
And an art historian, like any other person, can be wrong. Only in the West, if an expert makes a mistake twice a year, he is deprived of his license. And in Russia, an expert is not responsible for his words and written examinations. Experts are not licensed. If in the West experts are private, then in our country it is entirely employees of museums.
Only the Tretyakov Gallery apologized for the mistakes and closed the examination department. All other museums left. It is clear that this feeds the employees. Vladimir Roshchin used to publish catalogs of fakes. They thundered. Many crimes have come to light. But now they don't come out.
Elena Basner made mistakes in the examinations more than once, like other art historians - this is the human factor. Basner said in court that she had never been an art dealer.
The trial of Basner became historic because it confirmed that the art critic is not responsible for incorrect examinations and even mediation in the sale of fake works if there was no intent in his actions. But who's to say that there was intent? And if we take into account that Rosokhrankultura has been liquidated in the country... Special antiquarian departments have been removed from the police structures. Soon the flow of fakes will increase significantly. And, which is very disappointing, it will be a stream of fake Russian art.
