Flickr pic: bryce_edwards
Most deals are boring, but it’s still better than litigation in our opinion.
But once in a while an interesting lawsuit comes along and we wonder what might have been had we decided to become “litigators” (aside from not doing as well with the ladies, obviously).
Is it really all about international art deals gone bad, involving Romania, Norway, France, and Spain?
That’s what’s happening in a suit Cleary Gottlieb and Carter Ledyard are working on.
According to the New York Times,
Nothing says simplicity like the sculpture of Constantin Brancusi, the Romanian-born early modernist known for paring subjects down to their barest essentials.
But now a 1913 version of one of his most celebrated works, “Mademoiselle Pogany,” [Ed: pictured] a bronze bust of a young woman spare and streamlined as an egg, has ignited a baroque custody battle being waged in courtrooms in Manhattan, Oslo and Paris.
With two high-profile collectors committing millions to a bitter struggle over the prize, the legal dispute has widened a rift between elderly brothers whose family owned the statue for nearly a century, and recently led to the disappearance of the masterpiece itself.
Not only are collectors fighting over the brothers’ claims, but the Romanian government is also trying to repatriate it as a state treasure (which already held it for 24 years longer than it was supposed to, from 1976 to 2000, when its own Supreme Court ordered the national museum to return it to the brothers). Romania values the statue at up to $100 million.
Donald J. Kennedy of Carter, Ledyard & Milburn represents Christen Sveaas, a collector who has won some Norwegian suits validating his claims to the $38 million statue. Now he’s suing David Martinez and Studio Capital for tortious interference with the Sveaas contract to buy the statue. Sveeas is seeking $40 million in actual damages — his valuation of “Mademoiselle Pogany” — plus $40 million in punitive damages. Martinez, who is represented by Jonathan Blackman of Cleary Gottlieb, says he has his own contract to buy the statue from the other brother. Supposedly, he has possession, but no one is sure, which is part of the reason Sveaas is now suing in New York.
Martinez is no stranger to ultra-high-end art and art disputes. According to a New York Times piece from a few years ago, he
has amassed a vast collection over the last six years that ranges from a Manet self-portrait to one of Jackson Pollock’s classic drip paintings to Damien Hirst’s infamous shark submerged in a tank of formaldehyde. Only last month he purchased a different de Kooning from Mr. Geffen, a 1955 landscape titled “Police Gazette,” for $63.5 million.
Strangely, he also issued a statement through Shearman & Sterling, denying rumors that he had purchased another Pollock for $140 million.
If all the cases were like this, we might have had some interest in litigation.
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Shouldn't that headline read "Romanian Statue"???
Yes. Fixed, thanks. Shows what my focus is.
Shouldn't that headline read "Romanian Statue"???
Yes. Fixed, thanks. Shows what my focus is.