I’m A Loser, Baby

Officials at the Met dispute the claims that the Duccio is a fake:

The museum said the work, attributed to Duccio di Buoninsegna, “is considered by virtually every expert in the field to be a keystone in the history of Western art.”

It said it “carefully examined” the tempera and gold on the wood panel before buying it in 2004 in the most expensive purchase ever by The Met.

Curator Keith Christiansen said The Met conducted technical examinations, including using X-rays and infrared reflectography and studying pigment samples that established its Renaissance origins.

He said two authoritative conservators also studied the painting.

“They not only gave it a thumbs-up, they said, ‘Boy, we are lucky,'” he said.

Christie’s auction house, which arranged the sale, said, “We and all current authorities on Duccio are entirely satisfied by the attribution of the panel to Duccio.”

But Beck stood his ground.

“They’re trying to say the consensus agrees with them, and that’s correct. But the consensus was poorly informed. The consensus also said the world was flat before 1492,” he said.

. . .

Beck offered to dispute the question of its authenticity with The Met and its experts.

“I’d be glad to debate them — in front of the picture,” he said.

“There’s nothing to debate. Absolutely not,” Christiansen shot back. “Is everyone in the world an idiot except him?”

Meanwhile, the Post’s art critic (yes, they have one!) sheds light on Beck’s history:

Beck has never shied away from controversy. Though last decade’s cleaning of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel won almost universal praise, Beck was the lone voice calling for the work to be halted.

His latest claim is that this much-ballyhooed “Madonna and Child,” which has figured in many of The Met’s posters over the past year, was not painted in Siena around 1300, but probably somewhere else in the 1880s.

Equally plausible is that the work is misattributed. As to that, you’d expect that the first thing The Met would determine, when they bought the work, was whether it is 100 or 700 years old. This is easy to do.

In fact, Beck seems to take great pleasure in loudly proclaiming that every expensive painting is a fake:

A Raphael painting bought by Britain’s National Gallery this month for 22 million pounds ($41.7 million) is a fake, a U.S. art professor says.

The gallery secured the “Madonna of the Pinks,” which it called the most significant Old Master in any British collection, after a fight to keep it in the country.

But James Beck, Professor of Art History at Columbia University in New York and the President of ArtWatch International, told Friday’s edition of the Times the gallery had paid “a record price for a fake.”

“They haven’t done their homework,” Beck said. “It’s a disgrace. The National Gallery never checked any of them physically.

“When you’re spending government money, or anyone’s money it’s an omission. Frankly, it’s a kind of arrogance of the Establishment.”

That’s from February 2004 . . .