Art appreciation and the British public in the dock
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Your support makes all the difference.Yesterday I brought you part of a trial in which a man is suing an art dealer for lying about a painting he had sold him. The unusual thing is that the painting was actually much more valuable than the art dealer claimed... but let's have another extract from this unprecedented case.
Counsel: So, Mr Betts, you found yourself the owner of a valuable painting quite by accident. You thought you had bought a cheap, charming, obscure work. You had actually bought a very fine example of the work of a well-known painter, George Romney. And now you have the nerve to sue the man who sold it to you on the grounds of misrepresentation!
Plaintiff: I certainly do. If I bought a single standard-class rail ticket to Brighton, and then found that I had been accidentally been given a first-class return ticket to Venice on the Orient Express, would I rejoice? No, I would not. Not if I wanted to go to Brighton more than Venice. In that case, the ticket would be useless to me.
Counsel: But then you would simply exchange the ticket. And my client, the art dealer, has offered to do this. He has offered to pay back the £3,000 you paid him for what now turns out to be a genuine George Romney painting, and yet you refuse the offer!
Plaintiff: But I like the painting. I want to keep it. I bought it because I liked it, not because it was a Romney.
Counsel: May I suggest a solution to this conundrum? Why not have an indistinguishable copy made of this painting? And keep the copy? And let my client have the Romney back again?
Plaintiff: It is a tempting idea, but I have grown to love this particular painting. I do not believe I could learn to love a copy of it.
Counsel: Than may I make another suggestion? It occurs to me that the whole trouble in this case springs from the fact that your painting was authenticated by experts as being a genuine Romney. Now, if the experts had another look and decided the painting was not after all by Romney...
Plaintiff: That would be wonderful. But the experts have already decided that it is a Romney.
Counsel: Oh, one set of experts, no doubt. But one can always find a set of experts who are prepared to swear whatever it is one wants them to swear.
Judge: Mr Ballantyne! What you are suggesting is monstrous! Would you have the court believe that a highly trained man will say in a court of British justice whatever he is asked to say?
Counsel: I would put it another way, m'lud. I would say that in any important case you will find a team of experts lined up by the prosecution to say a man is guilty as hell, and another team of experts lined up by the defence to swear blind that all the evidence points the other way. Caught between them, you will also find a jury who are baffled rigid and don't know what to think. This is the basis of all British justice.
Judge: Put like that, I can see you are quite right.
Counsel: It is also the basis of all British art appreciation, m'lud. Whenever there is a controversial work of art, you will find one team of experts to say it is a work of genius and another to say it is a load of rubbish.
Judge: And will the British public be baffled rigid also?
Counsel: No, m'lud. They will be bored rigid. The British public has no interest in art, only in artists.
Judge: That sounds very clever. Does it mean anything?
Counsel: Well, for instance, the British public knows on the whole who Ms Tracey Emin is because she appears on television and behaves brashly, but very few of them have ever seen anything she has done. She is much more famous than her works, because she has been clever enough to behave as an outrageous artist. She is following in the footsteps of such great performers as Salvador Dali and Picasso.
Judge: And what has all this got to do with George Romney?
Counsel: Absolutely nothing. Alas, George Romney had very little public persona at all. I believe he would have cut a very poor figure on television.
Judge: Well, well, well. The things one learns in court!
Plaintiff: My lord, might we get back to my case? Time is money.
Judge: Is it? In that case, let us adjourn for a few days. That should be worth a few bob.
The case continues.
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