[MSN] Christie's attempt to auction a painting by Mahmoud Said in Dubai that should have been hanging in the Egyptian Embassy in Washington focussed attention on the booming market for modern Egyptian art. Dena Rashed explores the seamier side of a growing busi

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The real McCoy
Christie's attempt to auction a painting by Mahmoud Said in Dubai that
should have been hanging in the Egyptian Embassy in Washington focussed
attention on the booming market for modern Egyptian art. Dena Rashed
explores the seamier side of a growing business 

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The appearance of Mahmoud Said's 1932 painting "The girl with the green
eyes" among works scheduled to be auctioned at Christie's on 31 October
raised many eyebrows. The oil painting on panel, which was bought by the
Egyptian government from the artist in 1950 for LE30, is supposed to be
hanging in the Egyptian Embassy in Washington. Christie's had placed an
estimate of between $50,000 and $70,000 on the portrait before it was
withdrawn from the sale after the Egyptian government enlisted the help of
Interpol. The sale of a second painting by Said, the "Girl with red
headscarf" of 1947, however, went ahead, together with 17 paintings by
Egyptian painters.

While details of how the painting left the premises of the Egyptian Embassy
in Washington are still being investigated, the case has cast a spotlight on
the growing popularity of 20th century and contemporary Egyptian art, and
the growing market for such works. Christie's has already held two auctions
of modern art from the Arab world and Iran, in May 2006 and February 2007.
The first netted sales of $2.2 million, the second $4 million. And the
highlight of the third sale is Egyptian artist Ahmed Mustafa's "Quranic
Polyptych", nine panels painted in 1995, which has a sale estimate of
$300,000 to $350,000.

The booming international market for contemporary work from the region has
inevitably impacted closer to home, with prices commanded by the first
generation of Egypt's 20th century pioneers skyrocketing. There are now more
collectors than ever, and more dealers to cater for them. Yet this growing
market exists in the absence of any clear rules. 

According to one collector, who deals occasionally, the market is at best
haphazard, and there is no obvious way to check the provenance of individual
works. 

"Many art books have tended to be written by amateurs, yet the market now
depends on these books," she told Al-Ahram Weekly, speaking on condition of
anonymity. And it is, she reveals, a burgeoning market. 

"I get people coming to my house and saying I want this number of paintings
for this amount of money. They want to hang them on the walls of their
villas because that's what their friends are doing. They get involved in
buying without really knowing anything about the paintings." 

This sudden interest in art, she says, amid her own collection which
includes works by Adham and Seif Wanly, Mahmoud Said, Bikar, Hamed Nada,
Gazebiya Sirry and others, can be dated back to the theft of a Van Gogh from
the Mahmoud Khalil Museum. Suddenly, she argues, everyone knew just how much
a painting could be worth, and they all wanted a piece of the action.

Works by local artists that might have sold for LE1,000 in the 1980s can now
command prices of LE100,000 and more. And it is not only dealers who are
attempting to profit from such price increases. If the market for relatively
recent Egyptian art is booming, so too is the market for copies of such art.

Last year Mai Maein shelled out LE1.6 million for 18 paintings. She did not
consult an expert before buying the pictures. "I trusted the source, a woman
who had a reputable name on the art scene, and a painter with whom she was
well acquainted. But after other people had seen the paintings and given
their opinions I realised that I had bought a collection of forgeries." 

The people from whom Maein bought the paintings were eventually sentenced to
prison terms of three and a half years, only to have the sentences
overturned on appeal. 

"I can't understand how this happened," says a disbelieving Maein. "The
widow of Abdel-Hadi El-Gazzar says the painting supposedly by him that I
bought is a fake, and she knows his paintings by heart. Hassan Suleiman also
testified that one of the paintings I bought, allegedly by him, is a
forgery. Yet still the accused were freed." 

During the trial, the prosecutor-general set up a committee to examine the
paintings. It consisted, says Mohsen Shaalan, head of the sector of fine
arts at the Ministry of Culture, of Hamdi Abdullah, Mohsen Attia and
Ezzeddin Naguib, all of whom agreed the paintings were forgeries. Not only
that, they were particularly bad forgeries. "The person who was responsible
really needed a basic painting course," says Shaalan.

One of the defendants in the case has since died, but Maein is still
appealing the verdict that quashed the sentence against a painter, who was
also involved in the sale. She could pursue the case in the civil courts in
an attempt to have her money returned but has opted against this.
"Basically," says Maein, "I am appealing because I want forgery to be
criminalised." 

Shaalan agrees that the case should end up in a criminal court. "Forging
paintings is as serious as forging money. These people ruin our heritage and
should be held to account. I hope that this case sets a legal precedent and
criminalises such forgery once and for all." 

The presence of copies, argues Shaalan, distorts the nascent art market.
"Forgeries impact on the entire art scene, on the painters as much as on
people who might want to buy art but who are now sceptical that what they
are buying is the real thing." 

Many people have an interest in the outcome of Maein's case, among them
other purchasers of forged works. "People who discover they have bought
fakes either remain silent, because they cannot prove it, or they circulate
the paintings back onto the market in an attempt to recoup their own outlay.
Maein preferred to take the long road and report the whole thing to the
police which, in many ways, is the hardest choice."

The collector and occasional dealer agrees. Since Maein's case hit the
headlines, many people have sought her help in checking that the paintings
they have bought are authentic. "Out of an average of 10 paintings I am
asked to look at each month five or six are fakes," she says.

What, though, should the owners do in such cases? Reporting the incident to
the police is, she says, often the last thing the buyers of forgeries
consider, not least because proving the authenticity or otherwise of works
of art is so difficult. Tracing the provenance of 20th century Egyptian
paintings is a near impossible task given the absence of documentation
establishing a history of ownership. And dead artists cannot vouch for their
own work. 

How, then, can she be so sure that so many of the paintings she sees are
forgeries? 

"We are talking about art," she says. "I feel it when I see the works. I
have studied art, I was taught by many of the painters involved and I have
been looking at their work for 30 years." 

Technology can also help in establishing authenticity. "We can do infrared
scans that reveal new layers or fresh paint and that help is sometimes
useful in uncovering forgeries," says Shaalan. In Maein's case, though,
expert opinion was considered sufficient. 

Wagdy Habashy, the former head of the Egyptian Civilisation Museum at the
Opera House and himself a painter, believes that rules for the copying of
paintings should be fixed so as to avoid future confusion. "There is no
problem in imitating art. Problems arise only when these copies are passed
off as the original." He also thinks it is time that a database of important
Egyptian works be compiled to help in establishing their provenance. 

"There has to be a solution. What we have now is not a real market. There
are no accepted criteria when it comes to prices, and in the absence of
transparency the market is prey to the whims of dealers," says Youssef
Kamel, son of the late painter Kamel Mustafa and a grandson of Youssef
Kamel. 

Fifteen years ago he switched from collecting antiques to collecting his
father's work. "I came to know families that were selling paintings. The
problem was that when people got to know that I was collecting my father's
work they started to raise the prices they were asking." 

Many dealers, he says, are far from professional. The prices they quote seem
to have little to do with the objects they are selling and they fail to
distinguish between major works and incidental pieces. In the course of his
collecting, Youssef has also encountered many forgeries of his father's
paintings. Criminalising the production of fakes, he argues, is the only way
to solve the problem. 

The informal nature of the art market, and the sometimes notorious secrecy
of collectors and dealers, all contribute to the problem. Yet without a
generally accepted way of tracing ownership and establishing a provenance
for works that come up for sale the dilemmas afflicting the market are bound
to persist. 

The Ministry of Culture is seeking to tackle the problem by creating the
infrastructure necessary to document works of art. "We try to encourage
painters and designers to come to us and document their work. We photograph
it so there is a pictorial record that will help in the future in
guaranteeing their property rights," says Shaalan. 

The ministry is also seeking to establish a system of certification, though
this is likely to prove problematic given how few works of art come with the
necessary documentation. Receipts are few and far between, and it is often
impossible for owners to prove exactly where a particular painting came
from. 

"I still buy paintings," says Maein, "but only those that come with the
relevant documents, and even then I want an expert opinion first."

Interest in art is booming, and for those with an eye for detail and
experience it will remain a lucrative area. "The market will continue to
grow," insists the dealer/collector, "and for many people art is an
investment. For others, though, it can be a form of money laundering. They
hang their cash on their walls and if anyone asks how they acquired so much
they can say oh, family inheritance. And in the absence of documents or any
generally accepted way of establishing provenance, who can contradict them?"


C a p t i o n : From top: Mahmoud Said's "The girl with the green eyes";
Youssef Kamel's "Provencial girl" from the golden jubilee, Faculty of Fine
Arts, Alexandria, Past, Present and Future 2007 ; from a private collection,
one of Seif Wanly's paintings illustrated in Naguib Mahfouz's novel Mirrors