Why Does Bob Have Horns on His Head?

Bob Gesinus-Visser was both saint and sinner to Oskar Kokoschka. He bailed the artist out financially when the two met in Paris, and then, in 1933, invited him to his home in Rapallo, Italy. Here Kokoschka did two portraits each of Gesinus-Visser and his wife, Elizabeth. The artist and his patron eventually quarreled about money, however, and this may be why Bob Gesinus-Visser II (with Dog) remains unfinished. The “devil horns” on Bob’s head allude to this fight, while the gap-toothed grin, associated in Kokoschka’s work with childlike innocence, suggests forgiveness. The portrait is on view in our current exhibition, “Recent Acquisitions,” through October 16.

(Image: Oskar Kokoschka, Bob Gesinus-Visser II (with Dog), 1933, mixed media on canvas.)

SPOTTING FORGERIES: POINTERS FROM SCHIELE EXPERT JANE KALLIR

Jane Kallir, Co-Director of the Galerie St. Etienne and author of the catalogue raisonné Egon Schiele: The Complete Works, recently spoke about forgeries at the American Society of Appraisers conference. Noting that the Internet and rising art values have produced a seeming increase in the number of fakes on the market, she said that the Galerie St. Etienne sees an average of one Schiele forgery a week, or about 50 a year.

Kallir identified three categories of forgery:

• Works by other artists to which a forged signature has been added. Stylistically, these pictures have little in common with the famous artist’s work.

• Copies of known, authentic works, sometimes with slight modifications. Usually these can be identified by comparison with a photograph of the original, but some copies are so close that photographs alone do not suffice.

• Wholly original images aping or pastiching the artist’s style. This type of forgery is the hardest to pull off successfully, because it requires a keen understanding of the artist’s style and methods, and an ability to emulate them.

Experts spend years studying “their” artist’s work in order to understand the nuances of technique, style and development that distinguish genuine works from fakes. The good news, Kallir concluded, is that most forgeries are actually very bad and easy to detect. The reason more fakes are coming to light today is that works are being more carefully scrutinized, and expertise has greatly improved. This is one of the positive results of art’s rising value.

(Images from top: Egon Schiele, 1918; an example of Schiele’s 1918 signature style.)

FIRST SCHIELE SOLD TO US MUSEUM

Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Paris von Gütersloh was the first painting by the artist to enter a United States museum collection. In 1954, Galerie St. Etienne sold the oil painting for $1,500 to a donor who gifted it to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

(Image: Egon Schiele, Portrait of the Painter Paris von Gütersloh, 1918, oil on canvas. The Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Gift of the P.D. McMillan Land Co., 1954.)

Oskar Kokoschka’s monumental self-portrait, Knight Errant (1915), was featured in his first American one-man show, which Galerie St. Etienne mounted in 1940. The painting is now in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

Egon Schiele’s A Tree in Late Autumn, today in the collection of the Leopold Museum in Vienna, was sold by Galerie St. Etienne for $125 in 1941. The collector paid over two years in $13 installments.

We are celebrating our 75th anniversary with masterworks by Schiele, Klimt and others. Alternate Histories on view through April 11.

(Image: Egon Schiele, A Tree in Late Autumn, 1911. Leopold Museum, Vienna.)