10 CommentsWhile the curators of the hallowed Metropolitan Museum of Art felt pretty confident when they dropped $45 million on a Renaissance Masterpiece, CU art history professor James Beck just called them suckers: he’s convinced that this painting’s a fake.
Read the full story in the Times.
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10 Comments
@Lance James Beck is fundamentaly immature and insecure. He typically rallies half-educated neophites to hysterics about non-issues in the art world. Because he lacks the aptitude for the science of Art Conservation and is so prejudice against true scholarship, he never really looks at the facts- starting with the art itself.
The real victims are his students, who will likewise never be taken seriously in the field.
@Jeff P there’s a crappy ArtWatch documentary on Beck and how all art restoration (save the Russian variety) is an evil, horrible thing. Seeing the shots of the Sistina before and after, it’s hard to argue.
But I just went to look at this on Thursday and it honestly doesn’t look very much like the known Duccio’s. The baby’s head is way too small and there’s a parapet in the foreground which is pretty anachronistic for Duccio.
@seriously? first step to being a conoisseur: take the core and be able to speak of literary and philosophical matters pretentiously
second step: take a cu bartending course and be able to mix a stiff cocktail
third: take “intro to conoisseurship”
@wonder what maryan ainsworth has to say about this… she’s a curator at the met and also an adjunct prof at columbia who teaches a course called “intro to connoisseurship”!
@Splogette! That story was awesome when it was news two days ago.
@art is never news
@wait a minute... where are the Splogs? i haven’t seen them in… months.
looks like they’re not reporting much news at all, since they were taken down when they succumbed to Bwog’s popularity.
@The motive? From the last paragaph of the Times article:
Professor Beck recently completed a book, “Connoisseurship in Crisis: From Duccio to Raphael,” to be published next month by European Press Academic Publishing in Florence.
@i am so in love with james beck.
@student according to what he told his class last fall, he tried to “warn” them well before the purchase.