Tales from Maastricht - Front Page - European Fine Art Fair

For all its mannerly decorum--the teensy smoked-salmon sandwiches, the cappuccinos, the champagne, the chateau-bottled wines--the 15th annual European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) which opened in Maastricht, Holland, with a press reception on Mar. 5, was, when you get right down to it, a fair. As such, it had a fair's highlights, a fair's titillating spectacles, a fair's occasional lurches into kitsch, together with a fair's gossipy culture. What Maastricht also had this particular year, though, was something uncommon for fairs: a mission to regain art-market share for Europe.

The highlights first. The most notable of these was Rembrandt's Minerva, offered for $40 million by Otto Naumann, a Manhattan private dealer. For much of the first day, Naumann, neatly pin-striped and trimly bearded after the fashion of Britain's George V, stood in front of his painting, a beefy security guard to his rear, anchored in a puddle of light amidst cameras and TV interviewers. He surfaced on day two to talk about the dynamics of the fair.

"There are 30 people waiting for every space here," he said. "I told them if you let me jump the line I'll bring a great painting." He has been bringing such prizes ever since. "I had another Rembrandt a couple of years ago. It was only four and a half million. I sold it on the opening night. But that was a fluke. This one is here because I want all the museum directors to see it. I don't expect to sell it right away."

Naumann is on the committee at Maastricht nowadays, and he emphasized the role that fairs such as Maastricht are playing in the changing art market. "Even in this clandestine business," he said, "everything is much more open. If we know a gallery has better paintings back home, they're not invited again.... Everybody is bringing their best work-or they don't come back." David Tunick, another New York private dealer, sold Jazz by Henri Matisse, one of the most desirable artist's books of the 20th century, within a few minutes of the opening. The buyer wasn't even there-he had seen it at the Art Show in New York. "He telephoned," Tunick told me.

The London dealer, Leslie Waddington, who is also on the committee and acts as capo of the modern section, observed that the scrupulous Dutch distaste for red-in-tooth-and-claw Darwinism has made upgrading Maastricht a sensitive matter. "It's very hard to get rid of participants. We've got rid of 14 or 15. But it's taken five years," he said, cheerfully. Waddington then hustled me off to see a couple of photographs-brought by one of the better galleries, as it happens-which he felt did not belong there. Video and installations were no-shows at Maastricht, and photography was rare. When TEFAF says fine art, fine art is just what is meant.

There were also the inevitable glitches. In the published guide, Frans Jacobs, an Amsterdam dealer, was offering a van Gogh, Wheat Field with Sheaves, at $4.5 million. A note delicately observed, "The canvas was not painted in the highly expressionist manner so characteristic of van Gogh during this period." Too true. The attribution was so ferociously attacked that the painting was booted from the show.

It seemed, in short, business as usual at Maastricht. Except it wasn't. According to a survey that was commissioned by TEFAF and made public at the opening of the fair, Europe has seen a 7.2 percent drop in art business over the past year, business that has left Europe mostly for America. The research, based on figures provided by galleries and auction houses, was carried out by David Kusin, whose Houston-based firm specializes in art economics. The report went off like a shotgun, spewing an intimidating amount of raw numerical data, including the following:

The global market in fine art last year totaled 26 billion euros. The United Kingdom had the largest share of the European art market-56 percent of the total. France was next with 16.8 percent. The European art market, which directly employs 74,000 people, had total sales of 12 billion euros in that period. This represents a 7.2-percent loss of global market share in 2001.

The report's conclusion was that Europe's loss of global market share can largely be attributed to taxes and regulations, many of them created by the European Union. Maastricht was the site of the Maastricht Conference of 1992, at which the euro was created. So to observe a formidable sector of the art establishment launching a torpedo at the bureaucracy of the EU from one of the EU's own holy places was delicious.

A regulation viewed as especially problematic is droit de suite, a provision which mandates that artists or their heirs are entitled to a royalty every time a work is resold until 70 years after the death of the artist in question. While droit de suite necessarily involves only comparatively recent art works, other regulations have a broader application. Among these, either mentioned in the report or complained about on the floor, are VAT-Value Added Tax-and various wealth taxes and inheritance taxes. "Value Added Tax on imports is a tax levied on arts and antiques, payable at entry of the goods into the EU," the report notes. "When this tax was first introduced in 1995, the European Commission committed to reviewing its impact on the EU art market by the end of 1998. The review was carried out in 1999 by independent analysts who concluded that the tax had indeed led to a decline of EU competitiveness by comparison with outside countries. Inexplicably the European Commission concluded otherwise, ignoring the results of its own independent review."