.
Well-heeled dugup collectors who are also fanciers of little boys with tiny penises might be tempted by the sculpture of a mutilated one holding his cock on sale by Christies discussed by David Gill over on Looting Matters. This is Christies' Lot 139 “Pockmarked Pudgy Boy Grasping Poultry (stylistically probably 2nd cent. AD totally unknown origin, est 20-30000 green ones)” . This object has had an interesting modern history. An anonymous seller [1] sold it to anonymous collector [2] in a sale at Sotheby’s (9-10 July 1992, lot 527) when Sotheby’s still had a London saleroom (see Watson 1997 and Gill). According to the Christies' catalogue entry, the new buyer was not happy with it and only a few years later, soon after news about the raids at the Geneva Freeport was beginning to spark unease in the market for "dugup art", put it up for sale anonymously at Christie's, which still has a London salesroom (lot 116, 11 June 1997). The little boy was bought there by an anonymous buyer [3] who obviously also thought it did not give the indoor swimming pool the required cachet and sold it again through Christies, this time in New York (10 December 2004, lot 576). It was bought by somebody [4] who though is anonymous seems to be the “Massachusetts private collector” who is now putting it up for sale again at Christies.
Several points. This is not exactly a “work of art” that speaks to me personally; the boy is severely overweight – though maybe that is culturally relative bearing in mind where it is now. The bird seems schematically rendered. And its all broken and had its age-patina removed. What emotions (treating it as a “work of art”) is it supposed to arouse in the viewer? Stuck in a Massachusetts living room a marble dugup might give the superficial impression of the “class” of the current owner, I suppose - in association with the noble and "enlightened" denizens of the Grand Tour (a trip anyone with spare airmiles can do now in a matter of days). What is it supposed to be? A cock fight scene? Zoophilia?
More to the point, we are constantly told by the “unrestricted collectors’ rights” advocates that collectors are knowledgeable connoisseurs and scholars. According to this model, these knowledgeable and scholarly collectors “study” the objects of which they are curators in their homes and produce publications. Publications which allegedly the archaeologists and museum curators who do not know as much as they do about such things are incapable of. This is the constant leitmotif of a certain section of the “unrestricted collectors’ rights” lobbyists.
We can examine this claim with a specific example here. We have documentation that this object has now been through at least four private collections we can trace since it “surfaced” [from being “underground”]. None of those owners however is mentioned in the Christies’ catalogue as having published a paper in a peer-reviewed archaeological journal (or any other for that matter) about “The Pudgy boy with Poultry and Social Stratification in Second Century Apulia” or any such topic. Even anonymously. Total silence from the connoisseurs of dugups about what Mr X having this in his living room tells us about the “world of the ancients”, let alone its findspot. Equally, there is no mention made in the catalogue about any of these owners having done any research into the origins of the object and the original context from which it was removed.
We also hear that collectors buying dugups which have “recently surfaced” on the market give them a “good home”. They stress that by buying things of unknown origin, they are somehow “saving them” [from not being bought by a no-questions-asked collector, that is]. They stress the role of the owners of personal collections as stewards and curators of that which – they claim – museums cannot look after so effectively. They thus present their collecting as altruism rather than cupiscence.
But look at this documented example. We do not know how long Seller 1 had it [goodness knows where he got it and from whom (but see below) and when], but seller 2 curated it only five years. The person [3] who bought it from them looked after it for seven years, and sold it to a person [4] who took it to Massachusetts and kept it there in his collection only six years. This rapid changeover in owners hardly gives the impression of dedicated curation, it looks more like people impulse buying and selling on a whim or when they are bored with it (collectors' short attention spans again), like some might sell a car or abandon a family pet they can no longer be bothered to look after.
More to the point, we are constantly told by the “unrestricted collectors’ rights” advocates that collectors are knowledgeable connoisseurs and scholars. According to this model, these knowledgeable and scholarly collectors “study” the objects of which they are curators in their homes and produce publications. Publications which allegedly the archaeologists and museum curators who do not know as much as they do about such things are incapable of. This is the constant leitmotif of a certain section of the “unrestricted collectors’ rights” lobbyists.
We can examine this claim with a specific example here. We have documentation that this object has now been through at least four private collections we can trace since it “surfaced” [from being “underground”]. None of those owners however is mentioned in the Christies’ catalogue as having published a paper in a peer-reviewed archaeological journal (or any other for that matter) about “The Pudgy boy with Poultry and Social Stratification in Second Century Apulia” or any such topic. Even anonymously. Total silence from the connoisseurs of dugups about what Mr X having this in his living room tells us about the “world of the ancients”, let alone its findspot. Equally, there is no mention made in the catalogue about any of these owners having done any research into the origins of the object and the original context from which it was removed.
We also hear that collectors buying dugups which have “recently surfaced” on the market give them a “good home”. They stress that by buying things of unknown origin, they are somehow “saving them” [from not being bought by a no-questions-asked collector, that is]. They stress the role of the owners of personal collections as stewards and curators of that which – they claim – museums cannot look after so effectively. They thus present their collecting as altruism rather than cupiscence.
But look at this documented example. We do not know how long Seller 1 had it [goodness knows where he got it and from whom (but see below) and when], but seller 2 curated it only five years. The person [3] who bought it from them looked after it for seven years, and sold it to a person [4] who took it to Massachusetts and kept it there in his collection only six years. This rapid changeover in owners hardly gives the impression of dedicated curation, it looks more like people impulse buying and selling on a whim or when they are bored with it (collectors' short attention spans again), like some might sell a car or abandon a family pet they can no longer be bothered to look after.
This sort of rapid circulation without passing on any information of origins is it seems typical, we heard the other day of US antiquity dealer Richard Pearlman who admitted that the first ancient dugup coin he bought was rapidly sold again to get money for beer, but now he has "other examples" (which he then corrected to "another example"). So much for ephemeral personal collections as a means orf providing long term curation and care for antiquities preferable to the stable and documented collections of museums and other such institutions.
In any case, why would somebody who is engaged in an altruistic initiative of (they argue) public benefit be so shy about revealing their identity? One philanthropist might be publicity shy, or paranoid, but all four? Perhaps they had something to hide? Perhaps in fact they were all uneasy, even embarrassed, about owning this object for one reason or another? There is one factor that might support this interpretation.
Gill has recently published one of the Medici polaroids (there were 30 albums of them) seized in the Geneva freeport in January 1997. They document Medici's dealings in artefacts going back a number of years. The Geneva photo is less dramatically lit than the Christies one and suggests a piece more severely damaged than the auctioneers’ (also covered in dirt and grime), but it seems to me that they do in fact show the same object.
A Massachusetts collector who finds themselves the owner of an object in the Medici polaroids, which he is now trying to flog off before anyone realises, might well wish to remain anonymous. As might the could-not-care-less collector who subsequently buys it.
Photo: "Mutilated Naked Boy Holding Cock" (courtesy Looting Matters), ancient zoophilic porn (?) apparently sold by Giacomo Medici to unidentified buyer - compare this with what has surfaced on the London and New York markets now.
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