One more piles onto the Tate-trustee painting purchase dustup
ABOVE: detail from The Hypocrisy of Myners by Mark D, an honorary member of the Stuckists, a group of contemporary anti-conceptual figurative painters who have been vocal in their outrage about the Tate’s acquisition of a work by one of its trustees.
Richard Dorment, the Telegraph’s art critic, wrote a column in yesterday’s paper defending the Tate Modern against accusations of impropriety in purchasing Chris Ofili’s The Upper Room. Ofili was, at the time of the purchase, a trustee on the Tate’s board of directors, and the coziness of the deal has angered many. (Most outspoken in their anger have been the Stuckists, a group of “Remodernist” painters who reject the lofty conceptualism of much of the current Tate philosophy; the Turner Prize is a favourite target. Stuckist co-founder Charles Thomson was even so kind as to comment on our little entry on the subject from last week.) Dorment says that the scale and the high quality of The Upper Room completely justify the price that the Tate paid, and that many other institutions would have snapped it up for much more if they had been given the chance. In that sense, Dorment says, the Tate got a bargain.
Certainly some people have been irked by the £700,000 paid for the work, and it is, no matter what scale one chooses to measure it on, a lot of money. Dorment argues, and we find it convincing enough, that Ofili worked on the piece, essentially with no other income, for about four years, and that had he chosen to split the paintings up and sell them off, he could have gotten much more overall. We’ve said before that we believe artists need to get paid what their work is worth, and at the going market rate, the Tate probably did get the installation for a reasonable price. But for God’s sake, that’s not the point. The problem is twofold: first, you don’t buy stuff, whether an installation piece or a shopping cart full of doorknobs, from someone who sits on your board of directors. It just isn’t done. No matter how careful everyone was, and regardless of whether Ofili left the room or plugged his ears when the board discussed the purchase, public institutions can’t get away with that kind of thing. Second, Ofili was publicly encouraging other artists to donate their work to the Tate for nothing while his agent was wheedling the board to raise more than £100,000 from private donors to seal the deal. First rule of Public Relations, Tatesters: it’s not what really happened, it’s what people perceive happened, and in this case it stinks.
There’s a lot of misinformation put forward by the defenders of the Ofili purchase. The current defence is that it’s really good art, it was a bargain and trustees work has been bought in the past. By arguing on that basis it ignores the points which cannot be answered. Some of these are:
1) the duplicity of asking other artists to donate work (backed in the press by Ofili) in 2004 because of a shortage of funds, while secretly on a major fund-raising drive to buy a trustee’s work.
2) the bad example now set by a trustee that donated work is not the artist’s most important work, but secondary work, thus undermining the Tate’s appeal
3) The Nolan principles of conduct in public life by which trustees are bound: these include Openness and Selflessness
4) The price, which in 2003 Serota said would have to come down (i.e. he thought it was too high). It didn’t come down, and now the same price is being claimed as a bargain.
Other mitigating factors are falsely advanced, such as:
5) he had no other income for three (not four) years. When the Upper Room was exhibited in 2002, four other large paintings were sold for £200,000 each, i.e. around £400,000 to Ofili.
6) The work was offered below market value. The market value at the time was 12 paintings @ £50,000 and 1 @ £150,000, which makes £750,000, which was the price it was initially offered to the Tate for. There was a discount of 20% subsequently, but the Museums Association says Museums should expect 10% as a matter of course. The extra 10% (i.e. £75,000) is well worth the resulting publicity and consequent boost to Ofili’s market rate. His auction prices are now double what they were previously. From 1998-2004 (i.e. covering the period of negotiations) Ofili’s auction prices fell by 24%.
Other important issues regarding the purchase are not addressed, particularly “insider trading”:
7) A trustee’s spouse purchased an Ofili painting after the purchase was decided but before it was announced. Serota said this was not privy information as it was common knowledge in the art world. Tate Chairman Paul Myners said mention of the Ofili purchase was omitted from trustee minutes on the Tate website because it was confidential information.
8) Five benefactors giving over 50% of the purchase price also bought their own private Ofili painting, according to trustee minutes, and were able to do so on the basis of insider knowledge with the obvious presumption that the price of the work would go up through the Upper Room purchase which they were enabling.
See www.stuckism.com for more info.
I dropped across this blog whilst researching the trouble at the Tate - and I would like to add this comment
I love The Upper Room and would hate for it to go abroad - but rules are rules and someone should take responsibility for this slur on the very wonderful Tate
The Tate Modern is, in my humble opinion, one of the wonders of the modern art world - and as such it should be above criticism. Period.