The heir of the dynasty of collectors Joe Nahmad is suing the auction house Phillips
ARTinvestment.RU   08 июля 2020

The dispute centered on the cancellation of the guarantee on the painting, owned by the Nahmad and it's for sale

the Lawsuit was filed in the court in new-Йорке a month ago, June 9, however, the details of the case appeared in the media only this week.

so, according to the case materials, the company JN Contemporary Art LLC in which Joe Nahmad, intends to obtain from the auction house at least $7 million compensation for revoked Phillips ' guarantee of the sum of $5 million for a painting of Rudolf Stingel, which was to be auctioned this spring. The guarantee was provided by the auction house provided by the Nahmad irrevocable bid of $3 million for one of the works of Jean-Мишеля Basquiat, sold at the evening auction of Phillips in June 2019. A bet was then made, but was overbought other bidder, who eventually got the picture.

the auction house said that the guarantee came from-за changes in the work environment in a pandemic, that is, for reasons beyond his control, however, the plaintiff claims that Phillips uses the crisis caused by the coronavirus, as a "pretext" to with impunity does not carry out his part of the bargain, "as it believes that the current market position of the works of Rudolf Stingel greatly weakened".

But for the revocation of the guarantee, the auction house has enough reasons: at the conclusion of the agreement on guarantees of $5 million for the work Stingele this assessment seemed quite fair: in 2018, a similar work of his authorship was sold at Sotheby's for $6.5 million But now the market situation has changed dramatically. And not only from-за pandemic. The most damage to the market caused Stingele investigating the sensational case of art-дилера Inigo Filbrich engaged in the sale of works by this artist, and recently arrested by the FBI for fraud. The weakening of the artist's market is confirmed by the statistics of its recent sales: of the 44 paintings Stingele exposed on the auctions since the beginning of 2018, 9 works were not sold, and only four of the 36 paintings sold went at a cost above the upper boundary estimeyta.

in Addition to the charges in default of agreement, the lawsuit JN Contemporary Art LLC also contains a very complicated claim about the conditions of sale for Basquiat, in which the guarantor of the price involved Nahmad. According to the materials of the case, the owner or one of the owners of the works could be the owner of the parent company Phillips Russian businessman Leonid Fridland. And in the opinion of the representatives of Nahmad, "this means that the defendant or Friedland received the full amount in 3 802 000 pounds without paying anything to the owner of the work. And if the plaintiff's [Nahmad] not made his bid, in his opinion, no other bidder would not make the first bet ... and the picture would not be sold."

the Prospects of the claim are not yet clear. For example, it is not explained how the name of the owner of the work may affect the payment of a fee to the auction house and based on what belief of the plaintiff that the work was sold only because of his bet, if the bet was outbid by another buyer. The prosecution does not take into account information about possible changes to the conditions of sale of work Stingele that Leonid Friedland personally handed the Nahmad via WhatsApp messenger because, according to the plaintiff, is a means of communication, "notis a legally recognized method of communication". The publication of details of the claim gives everyone a unique opportunity to be "behind the scenes" art-рынка and see in action the mechanism of speculative pricing and guaranteed prices and rates.

the Material was prepared by Maria Kuznetsova, AI

Source: news.artnet.com