My wife loves to drag me to art museums. I love her and she is willing to go to my
baseball games so I go along with the plan – always with a good book in hand.
Together we have visited the Uffici, the British Museum, the
Musee d’Orsay, the Tate Modern, the National Gallery of Art, the Victoria &
Albert Museum, the Van Gogh Museum, the New York Museum of Modern Art, the
Vatican Museums, and the Louvre, to name a few.
I am not a student of fine art and would prefer to play in a
good poker game than see another masterpiece.
But let me hypothesize (in my naiveté) on the four major reasons for
visiting an art museum: 1) To enjoy a beautiful setting; 2) To be educated and entertained via a great
story about the history of the art; 3) To see beautiful paintings and
sculptures; 4) The pride of ownership or bragging rights of being able to say:
“I saw the original Starry Night by
van Gogh or Michelangelo’s Statue of David”.
Reason #1 comes down to relishing the beauty of the buildings
and grounds. Even if everything else is
a letdown, at least you have enjoyed something.
From my angle, the Vatican Museum had the most gorgeous setting of any
art museum I have ever visited.
Reason #2 – and this is big for me, is the museum tells an
entertaining and educational story. I think too many museums do a horrible job of
educating and entertaining. I walk by a
painting by Pablo Picasso and the only story or information available is “Pablo
Picasso 1901, Old Woman”. This museum curator would starve if she had
to make a living as a film writer. Granted
many art museums rent out the headsets with the recorded tours, but I have not
found these very well produced.
Reason #3 (see beautiful paintings and sculptures) can be
achieved by seeing the original or a
great replica. In today’s museums, most masterpieces must be viewed from a
distance – for the Mono Lisa which is only 30 inches by 19 inches, one can
generally not get closer than about 10 feet and you can't really see the
details very well from that distance. And because everyone wants to see
this masterpiece, you probably will have to fight the crowds and only get about 15 seconds
to study it before being pushed on to the next painting. I think I would enjoy
the beauty almost as much by spending more time and getting closer to a great
copy rather than fighting for this short glimpse of the original? In fact I
have an altered (I would say enhanced) copy of the Mono Lisa playing cards in
my poker room.
Let’s consider Reason #4 – the bragging rights associated with
seeing the original. But first, how does
one really know that it is the original?
In order to authenticate a piece of art, the qualified authority
frequently needs a high-resolution multispectral camera, a DNA test of the
paint, carbon dates from the canvas, studies
of the brushstroke patterns, and reviews of the known provenance of the work.
Every now and then a faint centuries old fingerprint can be found on the canvas
and this tends to seal the deal about who actually painted it.
If I put the original The
Card Players by Paul Cezanne (which sold at auction in April 2011 at a
record $273 million) and displayed it in the British Museum alongside a great
forgery, no one, not even the top experts in the world could tell the pieces
apart from the designated viewing area.
So I can see a beautiful replica and meet Reason #3 without
seeing the original. But what
satisfaction is there in bragging about having seen a near perfect reproduction? In this picture of the Mono Lisa, the coloring is amazing and her eyes seem to
follow you as you move around.
It is gorgeous, but here is my question: How much more
beautiful is the original than a high quality photo or a million dollar
forgery? I would suggest that on this
one dimension (Reason #3), the difference is negligible. (I expect plenty of criticism on this point
from art connoisseurs. Please don’t hold back.)
Which brings us to Reason #4 (bragging rights associated
with seeing the original). At least I think
I saw the original Mono Lisa at the Louvre.
Consider the Pride of Ownership for a stolen piece of
art. You can’t really brag about it (if
you do, you will get caught.) Few people want to buy a stolen piece of
artwork. The black market value for the
original Mono Lisa drops closer to its core value (its beauty) but without the
Pride of Ownership value of being able to brag about owning it. And even its beauty cannot be appreciated
much if you must hide the piece under your bed.
Back on August 21, 1911 when the Mono Lisa was stolen from
the Louvre the world feared that the painting had been lost forever. It turns out that Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia had
grabbed it during regular hours, and hidden it in a broom closed before walking
out with it under his coat after the museum closed. Nobody even noticed until the next day!
The day after it was stolen, a frequent patron of the museum,
walked into the Louvre and went to the Salon Carré where the Mona Lisa had been
on display for five years and noticed that it was missing. He notified the guards, but they were relaxed
because they assumed the painting was being photographed for marketing
purposes. A few hours later the museum authorities confirmed that the Mona Lisa
was not with the photographers – it was gone. The Louvre was closed for an
entire week to aid in investigation of the theft.
But after stashing the Mona Lisa in his apartment for two
years, Peruggia grew impatient and was finally caught when he tried to sell it
to the directors of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. It was exhibited all over Italy and then returned
to the Louvre in 1913. While the piece was
stolen, it had virtually no Pride of Ownership premium for the thief or any
potential buyers of the stolen loot.
And here is another interesting twist in the Pride of
Ownership Premium for this painting. The
massive world-wide publicity about the theft made the Mono Lisa more famous and
substantially increased its Pride of Ownership Premium and overall value. Today it is the most famous painting in the
world.
By the way, when I was at the Louvre, I didn't read or hear
a thing about its famous theft. The
Louvre likes to pretend that its visitors come to visit the museum only for Reasons
#1 (Venue) and #3 (Beauty) and not the more earthly Reasons #2 (Great Story)
& #4 (Bragging Rights).
John
Make sure and download a copy of Lucky and Good: Risk, Decisions and Bets for
Investors, Traders and Entrepreneurs.
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