Mark of Elena Basner. Elena Basner: “I received money for mediation in the operation Basner elena veniaminovna court session

Five years ago, collector and psychiatrist Andrey Vasilyev bought Boris Grigoriev's painting "In a Restaurant" for $250,000. Boris Grigoriev is an expensive and well-known artist in the world (in 1919 he fled from Soviet Russia, no one interfered with Grigoriev’s work in Europe, and he died a natural death in 1939), he spoke of himself as follows: “Now I am the first master in the world ... I am not afraid of any competition, any order, any topic, any size and any speed. 250 thousand is not the ceiling for Grigoriev. Vasiliev liked the painting and bought it without a written expert opinion.

In 2010, Vasiliev gave the painting to an exhibition of Russian artists working in Paris (it was the cross year of Russia and France). There she was seen by an employee of the All-Russian Art Scientific and Restoration Center named after. Grabar Yulia Rybakova, who told Vasiliev that not long before the purchase, the painting was examined by them and did not receive a positive conclusion. The owner did not attach much importance to the information: the expert assessment of authenticity is a delicate matter, it relies more on taste and "observation", disagreements among experts are not uncommon. "I'm my own expert!" - Vasiliev later stated, explaining why he neglected the examination when buying.

In 2011, Vasilyev nevertheless gave his Grigoriev (acquired, to be more precise, without accompanying documents and expert assessments) for official examination at the State Russian Museum. He talks about it this way: “Literally a week later, all the technologists there said that the picture was beautiful and the most real. The thing was in the Russian Museum for research from March to early June 2011, and at the same time a large exhibition of Grigoriev opened there. Catalogs come out, and - oh, horror! - I see in them my own painting, which, it turns out, has been in the vaults of the Russian Museum since 1983. I feel like I'm being played with thimbles."

The gouache "Paris Cafe", very similar to "In a Restaurant", only a few centimeters smaller, was not at the first large solo exhibition in Russia by Boris Grigoriev in the spring of 2011, it was only included in the catalog. The work entered the State Russian Museum as part of the collection of the Leningrad collector Boris Okunev. The gift was cataloged by an experienced art critic Elena Selizarova and a young museum employee Elena Basner. Basner, according to Yevgeny Petrov, deputy director for science at the Russian Museum, had nothing to do with the graphic part of the Okunev collection, since she worked in the painting department and was interested in “the cool avant-garde of the Malevich type” (15 years later, Elena Basner defended her Ph.D. thesis based on the new dating of a number of works by Kazimir Malevich). In 1986, Okunev's collection was shown to the audience and a catalog was released, in which there was a textual description of Grigoriev's gouache marked "version".

The work of Boris Grigoriev "Parisian cafe" from the collection of the State Russian Museum (cat. No. 56. Variant of the composition "In a restaurant"). 1913. Source: art1.ru

The origin of Vasiliev's work "In a Restaurant" is not exactly known. For $250,000, he bought it from book publisher Leonid Shumakov. Shumakov learned that Elena Basner had Grigoriev's painting for examination, the owner of which was interested in selling it, and sent Vasiliev her photograph. Basner, in turn, the picture was brought by a certain Mikhail Aronson from Tallinn. Aronson, says Basner, found her phone number on the website of the Bukowskiś auction house, where she works as a consultant on Russian art. He said that the thing comes "from an old Leningrad collection", and showed a page of the almanac "My Journal for the Few" with a reproduction of the painting "In a Restaurant" (the almanac was published in 1912-1914 by the St. Petersburg collector and philanthropist Alexander Burtsev). The collection of works by Boris Grigoriev was purchased from Burtsev by psychiatrist Timofeev, whose house Elena Basner visited in the mid-1980s. She was sure that Aronson was referring to this "old meeting."

The seller named the price: $180,000. Shumakov brought Basner 200 thousand and took the painting. Small discrepancies between the reproduction from "My Journal for the Few" and the picture did not alert the buyer, who was not aware of the participation in the transaction between Basner and Aronson.

After the exhibition in 2011, in the catalog of which Vasiliev saw a painting similar to the one he bought, he turned to the police. The case sluggishly dragged on for three years and ended due to the statute of limitations, but a year ago, after a personal appeal from the injured collector to the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Alexander Bastrykin, Basner was arrested.

According to popular belief, about half of the paintings by Russian artists on the market are fakes. Basner herself judges the market more harshly: “Something like 70 percent. They forge everyone - from Repin to Anatoly Zverev. Emelyan Zakharov, co-owner of the Triumph Gallery, claims that only seven percent of the market is genuine, the rest is fake (according to a Novaya Gazeta article that is very uncomplimentary to Basner). With the support of "Triumph" and Rossvyazokhrankultura, five volumes of the "Catalogue of forgeries of paintings" have already been published, and about a thousand more obviously fake paintings have not been published. Many fakes had conclusions of the leading experts of major museums about authenticity, which were later refuted.

Painting bought by Andrey Vasiliev. Source: kulturmultur.com

A good fake is rarely made from scratch. In general, the mass practice of falsification requires the sacrifice of a relatively inexpensive painting by a little-known European artist. The signature and minor fragments change (for example, a Finnish hut is written down, a church is drawn instead), and that's it - a new Savrasov, Makovsky or Shishkin appears on the market at a cost up to a hundred times higher than the source. Not only the collections and reputations of experts suffer from fakes. The history of both Russian and European art is blurred, and over time, the number of reference works includes the devil knows what.

Ten years ago, the leading expert of the Tretyakov Gallery, Vladimir Petrov, immediately refused several dozen of his conclusions. At about the same time, the well-known art dealers of the Preobrazhensky spouses were arrested, who were engaged in turning the European masters of the second row. The case received a response, according to rumors, a fake picture got into the Kremlin. It is known for certain that out of 34 paintings sold by the Preobrazhenskys to the same person, 15 turned out to be fakes, for five of them the investigation was able to “watch” the entire production chain. The following year, Rosokhrankultura banned state museums from engaging in commercial expertise.

Experts of the largest auction houses also can not give a 100% guarantee. In 2005, at Christie's auction, Konstantin Korovin's "Nude in the Interior" (or "Odalisque") set a record. It was bought by Viktor Vekselberg's Aurora Foundation for almost three million dollars (£1,688 million) - more than seven times higher estimate (pre-sale estimate). The provenance of the painting was excellent - it was sold at the same Christie's in 1989. Unfortunately, in 2009 it was published in the "Catalogue of forgeries of paintings" with negative expert opinions from the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery and the Scientific and Restoration Center. Grabar. According to the court, the auction house returned three million pounds to the buyer - the cost of the painting, the premium and a million pounds of costs.

Emelyan Zakharov believes that the turnover of the counterfeit market in the zero years was no less than that of the drug trade. Most fakes, with or without expertise, retain the status of the original for a long time: it takes many years before a work from a mediocre collection hits the market again. After a while, the origin of such work is very difficult to establish.

Fake paintings not only confuse the history of art, as "new" works by great masters appear at the expense of the destruction of works by lesser known artists. Fakes, as well as the exposure of erroneous or false examinations, primarily harm investing in works of art that are steadily growing in price. The estimate of the Odalisque that Vekselberg got in 2005 was about £200,000, and when it was first sold in 1989, it was about £20,000, ten times less. Who and where brought it to Christie's in 1989 is unknown.

Comparison of enlarged fragments. On the left - a reproduction of Grigoriev's work, published in the almanac "My Journal for the Few", on the right - a work from the collection of the State Russian Museum. Source: art1.ru

It is also unknown who and when could copy Grigoriev's painting "Paris Cafe". The Russian Museum claims that since 1984, when it was in the funds of the State Russian Museum, it was technically impossible to do this. It is also impossible to find out whether a picture really similar to it was in the collection of psychiatrist Timofeev or was found in the garage as an inheritance from her grandmother - this version was suggested to the investigation by Latvian citizen Mikhail Aronson. The deceived buyer, however, is not interested in Aronson. He believes that it was Basner who sold him a deliberately fake painting and should be punished. For the edification of all unscrupulous experts.

Vladimir Petrov - it is not entirely clear whether in jest or in earnest - proposed to nationalize all uncontrollably walking old art, so that one could calmly reattribute and clear away the rubble of inauthentic things. By the way, such a large number of fakes of Russian artists is explained not only by the craving of collectors for the domestic, but also by the nationalization of private collections in the early years of Soviet power. Compared to Western art, most of the reference works by Russian artists of the 19th century still belong to the state. And the normal situation for a large museum is two or three percent of the collection on display, the rest is securely hidden in storerooms and is available only to specialists. As, for example, the ill-fated Grigoriev's painting, which has never been exhibited.

There won't be enough real Grigorievs for everyone. That's why fakes. No amount of regulatory action will be able to stop the desire of many to own the growing in price "original", even if the original does not allow public display of poor preservation or the Criminal Code. And transactions in this market take place without the participation of the state and are regulated only by trust and reputation.

Popular love for this or that artist usually manifests itself several decades after his death. Suddenly there is a queue, prices rise, and new works emerge from oblivion. In addition to Shishkin and Aivazovsky, craftsmen willingly produce fresh Russian avant-garde - less pictorial skill is required here. Maxim Kantor's "Drawing Tutorial" describes a whole artel for the production of the avant-garde. Many characters in this novel written almost from nature continue to work in contemporary art even today, somehow not noticing that everything modern that it once had has long since disappeared...

Let's assume a utopian situation. Since it is impossible to immediately identify and ban every single fake, which happens to hang in museums, it would be possible to legalize the market for fakes! It will find a job for many unclaimed today graduates of art universities. Not just to paint something Cezanne, but to make a new Cezanne, almost a real one - an exciting thing! Surely the work of the yet unknown master of fakes, who will be able to reproduce Kuindzhi's radioactive lunar path without Photoshop, will go like hot cakes. And the most spiritually rich will begin to copy the most difficult - Malevich, creatively reproducing craquelures and microscopic unevenness of the paint layer, behind which, as some believe, a revolution in art is hidden.

"Black Square" - in every home! According to Shishkin - every housewife! If such slogans will be guided by the obscure masters of culture, who are aging the freshly painted Larionovs and Grigorievs, and the not more famous apprentices of sovrisk, with all their puppy strength, once a year inventing something “relevant” for the basement gallery; if every inhabitant can buy in the market, or better in the museum, a real, inexpensive copy of Matisse smelling of fresh oil - in the bedroom, Goncharova - in the kitchen, Deineka - in the office, and in the toilet - Richter, then art will show its true value. Not connoisseur, not investment, but simple-minded artistic.

Reproduction of a painting by Boris Grigoriev in the almanac My Journal for the Few. 1914

Modern art, ennobled by the decades that have passed since its heyday, will go into the DIY sphere. Do-it-yourself kits will be sold in an assortment: with a sealed jar - Piero Manzoni, with an aluminum saucepan, a fly and a stencil - Ilya Kabakov, with a mirror and a disposable camera - Francisco Infante.

But this is just a utopia. It will not work to invest in obviously fake Grigorievs.

And today, the bottom line is the destroyed reputation of Elena Basner, the author of an unmistakable radiocarbon method for identifying fake paintings painted after 1945, the top-quality fake “In a Restaurant” that has lost its crazy price and the museum status of its possible original “Paris Cafe” that is not questioned , which no one ever saw: they say that directly from the storerooms of the Russian Museum, the painting was sent to an exhibition somewhere in Argentina.

IT'S NOT SHE'S FAULT

Two years of litigation in the case of Elena Basner came to an end. The eminent ex-employee of the Russian Museum and art critic was found not guilty of fraud.

The meeting in the Dzerzhinsky District Court was held to a full house: Basner came to support several dozen people, mostly art workers.

Hearing the verdict, which was announced by the judge Anzhelika Morozova, Elena Basner could barely stand on her feet - the art critic was shocked. Obviously, she did not expect such a favorable outcome for herself. The hall welcomed the judge's decision with applause.

The court considers all the circumstances of the crime to be unproven, - Anzhelika Morozova explained.

In particular, the prosecutor failed to prove that Basner could have had any benefit from the crime with which she was accused. And the investigation’s reference to the fact that an art critic of her level could still distinguish the original from the unfounded fake.

STRANGE CALLS

The state prosecutor demanded for Basner four years in a penal colony and a fine of five hundred thousand rubles. The Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee for St. Petersburg promised to appeal the verdict, a Komsomolskaya Pravda correspondent reports from the courtroom.

When selling the painting, Basner knew for certain that the original work was in the Russian Museum, - Sergey Kapitonov, a representative of the Main Investigative Committee of the Investigative Committee for St. Petersburg, commented after the meeting. - In 1984, she participated in the adoption of this painting by the museum.

In addition, the investigation relies on the fact that a couple of months before the sale of Grigoriev's painting to the collector Vasiliev, Basner called the mobile photographer of the Russian Museum from her mobile phone.

She asked him to photograph the original painting, Kapitonov emphasized. - These photos were subsequently discovered during a search on Elena Basner's personal computer.

LEFT WITH A FAKE

Basner came to the dock at the request of the collector Andrey Vasiliev. In July 2009, he bought for eight million rubles an unknown painting by the cult artist - emigrant Boris Grigoriev "In a restaurant". Elena Basner, an employee of the auction house Bukowski, gave her an expert assessment. The seller was a certain Estonian citizen Mikhail Aranson.

Vasiliev soon suspected fraud, but no one returned the money back to him. Then he turned to law enforcement agencies for help. After a long investigation, in January 2014, the art historian was detained on suspicion of fraud. At first, Basner was placed under house arrest, but later the court released her on bail.

According to investigators, Basner sold the fake work "In the Restaurant", knowing that the original painting is stored in the Russian Museum.

Original painting by Boris Grigoriev "Paris Cafe". She is also known as "In the restaurant"

Elena Veniaminovna, who, by the way, is the daughter of the famous composer Basner, did not admit her guilt. In the last word, the expert stated that she herself was a victim of deception.

Finally, I was convinced that I made a mistake only in the investigator's office, - the defendant asserted. - When they showed me two pictures: a real one and a fake one.

The difference, by the way, is visible even to the naked eye, manifests itself in the details.

It seems that Andrei Vasilyev will not part with a fake. The judge ordered the collector to return the painting, for which he gave 250 thousand dollars.

Of course, I congratulate Elena Veniaminovna on her victory, - the deceived collector tried to save face. But I'm glad the case went to trial. So the court clarified the fact that it was not the artist Grigoriev himself who made a copy of his painting. And I'm more than sure that the fake was made directly

Investigators will appeal the verdict.

This story goes back to 2009. Then, according to the investigation, some unidentified persons and Estonian citizen Mikhail Aronson decided to sell a copy of the painting by avant-garde artist Boris Grigoriev "In a restaurant." The well-known St. Petersburg art historian Elena Basner was supposed to act as an expert. The mediator was the publisher Leonid Shumakov. A buyer for a canvas measuring 50x70 cm was found quite quickly - it was a local collector Andrey Vasiliev. The deal amounted to about 8 million rubles.

Three years later, at an exhibition in Moscow, Vasiliev learned from other experts that the painting was not genuine, and the original work was in the vaults of the Russian Museum.

The fact of forgery was later confirmed by experts. In their opinion, the paint layer in Grigoriev's painting does not match the original, and significant late interventions were also revealed on the canvas. The experts were also surprised by the use of pencils along with pastels.

In January 2014, St. Petersburg investigators opened a case on the fact of fraud in the sale of a fake painting "In a Restaurant". Mikhail Aronson and Elena Basner became its defendants. If the former managed to avoid criminal liability due to the fact that he was in Estonia, then fate was not so favorable to the art critic. Basner was detained and placed in custody.

According to investigators, the art critic knew perfectly well that the original painting was kept in the vaults of the Russian Museum and, using her authority, decided to take part in the sale of a fake.

During a search in Basner's apartment, all computers and a laptop were confiscated. Subsequently, they were examined by an investigator. On the laptop, he found a folder with the word "Grigoriev", inside - a photograph of the same painting.

The Basner trial was consistently followed by increased attention from the press, as well as from the art historians and collectors. Judge Anzhelika Morozova had a lot of questions. Does an expert have the right to make a mistake? And, if he allowed it, did he do it maliciously? After all, on the one hand, Basner is an art critic with vast experience, on the other hand, as some witnesses claimed, Grigoriev's paintings are typologically similar, which means that they are not so difficult to confuse.

Elena Basner herself at the hearings claimed that the news that the drawing was fake was a real blow to her. Allegedly, she was sure of the authenticity of the picture, and what happened was the result of a common mistake. According to Basner, Aronson personally brought the painting to her and the canvas made a “wonderful impression” on her.

In addition, the art historian had the feeling that she had seen this work somewhere. Basner was convinced of her mistake only in the investigator's office, when she saw both works - both genuine and fake.

The public prosecution and the collector Vasiliev insisted that Basner was not at all mistaken. The victim at one of the meetings stated that the name of the person behind the sale of the fake painting "In the Restaurant" was unknown until the last moment.

“I didn’t know Basner was behind the sale. If I knew this, I definitely would not have acquired this painting, because I did not have confidence in it, ”Vasilyev emphasized.

At the announcement of the verdict in the building of the Dzerzhinsky District Court of St. Petersburg, a pandemonium was initially expected. The presentiment did not disappoint - the Rosbalt correspondent counted about fifty people in the hall of judge Angelica Morozova. The intrigue lasted more than an hour. Finally, Morozova said: "Having assessed the totality of evidence, the court comes to the conclusion that Basner Elena Veniaminovna is innocent." Smiles shone on the faces of those present, claps were heard, and a couple of people had tears in their eyes. The judge continued.

“The investigating authorities proceed from the assumption that the defendant was certainly aware that the original was in the funds of the Russian Museum. The commission (about 20 years ago) packed 366 drawings, and one of the restorers drew attention to the painting because the packaging was deformed. Basner, most likely, did not know about its existence. It is also an indisputable truth that Basner did not study this drawing, ”Morozova concluded.

The prosecution's evidence, according to the judge, is contradictory. Basner, who was not the initiator of the sale of the canvas, was allegedly guided by a subjective impression when evaluating the painting.

“Undoubtedly, the deal was beneficial for her as an intermediary, but the investigation did not provide evidence that she received the money,” the judge emphasized.

Basner is acquitted due to the absence of corpus delicti in her actions. Vasiliev's civil suit for the amount of 16 million rubles was denied.

As soon as the reading of the verdict was over, Basner's support group rushed to congratulate the acquitted. But the famous art historian was no longer in the hall. Elena Veniaminovna ran with might and main along the street, followed by a large group of journalists.

A well-known art historian, consultant of the Swedish auction house Bukowskis is accused of fraud: according to investigators, Basner, who is currently under house arrest, is involved in the sale of a fake painting by Boris Grigoriev to collector Vasiliev. However, most of her colleagues are confident in Basner's innocence. We have noted three main versions of this confusing story.

Version one. scam

Recall the version repeatedly stated in the press by Vasiliev: almost five years ago, he, a well-known art dealer and owner of an impressive collection of Russian art of the early 20th century, bought Boris Grigoriev’s painting “In a Restaurant” from the publisher and art critic Leonid Shumakov for 7.5 million rubles. The provenance of the painting presented to the buyer was as follows: it used to be in the collection of General Timofeev, which, in turn, came from the famous collection of Alexander Burtsev, who published a reproduction of the painting exactly a hundred years ago in his album “My Journal for the Few”. More than a year later, before giving the work to the exhibition, the new owner, according to him, suddenly found out that even before the deal, experts from the Grabar Art Research and Restoration Center had found “pigments of a later origin” on the canvas and admitted that they were dealing with a fake of extremely high quality. And in 2011, a personal exhibition of Grigoriev took place in the Russian Museum: a reproduction of the painting “In a Parisian Café” was published in the catalog for it, strikingly similar to the acquisition of Vasiliev. Further, in the Vasilyevsky version, a world-class expert appears, among other things, a leading specialist in the late Malevich and the creator of the Museum of the History of the St. Petersburg Avant-Garde Elena Basner. After initiating a criminal case at the request of Vasiliev, Shumakov said that he acted as an intermediary in the transaction, and he received the picture from her. The investigation, which dragged on for almost three years and at some point was terminated due to the expiration of the limitation period, unexpectedly resumed on the direct instructions of the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, Bastrykin. After Basner's arrest, Vasiliev's version of declaring himself the victim of an "organized criminal group" was widely circulated by the media. The apotheosis was the broadcast of publicist Yulia Latynina on the Ekho Moskvy radio and her subsequent article in Novaya Gazeta: the journalist, to summarize her lengthy arguments, argued that it was nothing more nor less than a whole “museum mafia”, simultaneously reproaching the liberal intelligentsia, who came to the defense of Basner, who was at that time in the pre-trial detention center, in illegibility when it comes to "their own".

Version two. Error

The main "trump card" of the plaintiff, designed to prove that Elena Basner had criminal intent, is the fact that she allegedly knew perfectly well that the storerooms of the Republic of Moldova kept the same supposedly genuine painting by Boris Grigoriev, which ended up in the museum from another extensive collection - Boris Okunev: the defendant, they say, described it with her own hand 30 years ago - from here Vasiliev's supporters draw far-reaching conclusions, according to which the manufacture of fake copies allegedly takes place directly in the museum. At the same time, Basner’s colleagues specify that the art historian wrote an introductory article to the catalog and, since she was engaged only in painting, did not study and describe the painting “In a Parisian Cafe”, which, being written in tempera on cardboard, was listed in the drawing department. This work, by the way, has never been exhibited, and according to the assumption of some knowledgeable people, it may even be the author's version of the picture, which was the bone of contention.

Version three. Revenge or order

The version of the "order" is associated with the radiocarbon method invented (together with another expert on Russian avant-garde Andrei Krusanov) and actively promoted by Basner to identify fake paintings, moreover, painted in oil after 1945. The bottom line is that immediately after Hiroshima and the first nuclear tests in the 40s, new isotopes of cesium-137 and strontium-90 began to appear in nature. As journalist Alexander Timofeevsky wrote on his Facebook, these substances “accumulated in plants, including flax. Natural linseed oil is used as a binder in oil paints. In papers written before 1945, there are no such isotopes and cannot be. This immediately cuts off a huge number of fakes, including those that have legalized the market. Many important collections can tragically thin out, the market can collapse. It is clear that this is never forgiven. Advisor to the chairman of the board of Rosnano, Mikhail Slobodinsky, put it even more clearly: “A wild threat to the fake market. Huge market. Criminal. After the patent, Lena began to fear for herself and her family. Not in vain". Another conspiracy theory, much more vague, is that we are witnessing the preparatory stage of some kind of cunning attack on the Russian Museum in general and on its current leadership in particular. Even if we imagine that this version has a real basis, we can only guess about the reasons and goals of such an impressive multi-move.

"In a Parisian Cafe"

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 a resident of Tallinn had brought the painting to her. 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.

Elena Basner

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. They can be seen 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 recognized the picture as 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 fully 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. This is hardly 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.

Andrey Vasiliev

The newspaper turned for comments to the participants in the scandalous case

Andrey Vasilyev: “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. […] 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 auction house "Sotheby's Russia and the CIS":

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. […]