A Legal Battle Between a Scholar and an Art Institute Over Valuable Research on Amedeo Modigliani Is Heating Up

Any time the prized work of Italian artist Amedeo Mogiliani—one
of the most expensive painters in the world—is involved in a
dispute, the stakes are high. The latest round of legal fighting
between a high-profile research institution and a famous Modigliani
expert is no different.

Just over two months after Modigliani scholar Marc Restellini
sued the New York-based
Wildenstein Plattner Institute, alleging that it was unlawfully
hoarding thousands of pages of his original research and planning
to make it all public, the institute has returned fire with a
scathing response and new claims of its own.

Restellini has been working on a Modigliani catalogue raisonné—a
comprehensive listing of all the known works by a particular
artist—for the past decade. In June, he asked the court to block
the organization from publishing his research and force them to
destroy any digital copies.

On August 14, the institute struck back in US district
court. (The new filing was first reported by The Art
Newspaper.) Restellini’s lawsuit, the organization said,
is “a belated and wrongful attempt to seize control over
scholarship that was researched, collected, and organized by
others, and to ‘own’ facts concerning the artist Amedeo Modigliani
that do not belong to him.” The institute alleges that Restellini
is angling to create “monopoly power for himself” over historical
information about the artist to maximize his own profit.

According to the suit, Restellini acknowledged more than seven
years ago that he is not the sole owner of the materials. In fact,
in 2013, the organization claims, he unsuccessfully attempted to
purchase the material from the group’s predecessor, the Paris-based
Wildenstein Institute, proving that even Restellini was aware he
was not the sole owner.

In legal filings, the institute characterized Restellini’s
dismissal of the Wildenstein Institute’s contribution to the
work—which included the cost of scientific analysis and extensive
staff research—as “revisionist history.” Among its counterclaims
against Restellini are charges of copyright infringement,
conversion, and false advertising.

Restellini’s attorney did not immediately respond to request for
comment.

How the legal battle shakes out could have important
implications for the soaring Modigliani market. The artist’s
distinctive portraits—which depict long-necked subjects with
almond-shaped eyes—have broken the $100 million mark twice at
auction in recent years.

Works are hard to come by given that the artist died at age 35
after being plagued with poor health throughout his life. Since
Modigliani’s death in 1920, his oeuvre has also been plagued by
rampant fakes, heated authenticity debates, and competing
catalogues raisonnés.

The current legal fight is rooted in the founding of the
Wildenstein Plattner Institute. Restellini first began his research
in 1997 with the support of the preceding entity—the Paris-based
Wildenstein Institute, founded in 1970 by art dealer Daniel
Wildenstein. After Daniel died in 2001, his son, Guy, also part of
the family’s art-dealing dynasty, oversaw the institute.
Restellini’s collaboration with Guy ended in 2014.

In November 2016, Guy
joined forces with German collector and technology entrepreneur
Hasso Plattner to launch Wildenstein
Plattner. It is focused on digitizing and increasing the
accessibility of art-historical documents. As part of the
merger, Wildenstein gifted Restellini’s papers to the newly formed
institute, according to Restellini’s court documents. Restellini
claimed the institute never sought or obtained permission to
transfer the material.

Much of the Wildenstein Plattner Institute’s recent 34-page
filing is devoted to blanket denials of Restellini’s claims, but it
also argues that the materials at issue are
not copyrightable and that they are a collaborative work under
French copyright law. 

The institute has asked the court to grant it a share of any
profits that result from Restellini’s use of the research. The
lawsuit claims that Restellini charges around €30,000 for each
Modigliani-based inquiry.

According to the legal papers, the Wildenstein Plattner
Institute had planned to make the so-called “Digital Modigliani
Archive” publicly accessible at no charge. Now, it has agreed to
suspend all of its work on the project until the legal battle is
resolved.

The post A Legal Battle Between a Scholar and an Art
Institute Over Valuable Research on Amedeo Modigliani Is Heating
Up appeared first on artnet News.