The
Rothko Case was the protracted legal dispute between Kate Rothko, the daughter of the painter
Mark RothkoMark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz , was a Latvian-born American painter and printmaker. He is classified as an abstract expressionist, although he himself rejected this label, and even resisted the classification as an "abstract painter".- Childhood :Mark Rothko was born in Dvinsk, Vitebsk...
, the painter's estate
executorAn executor, in the broadest sense, is one who carries something out .Executor is also a legal term referring to a person named by a maker of a will, or nominated by the testator, to carry out the directions of the will...
s and the directors of his
galleryAn art gallery or art museum is a space for the exhibition of art, usually visual art.Museum can be public or private but what distinguishes a Museum is the ownership of a collection. Paintings are the most commonly displayed art objects; however, sculpture, photographs, illustrations,...
:
Marlborough Fine Art.
Details
Shortly before his death in 1970, Rothko made gifts of certain key paintings that he had retained to his two children, believing that his key patrons would pay inflated prices for the works following his death. Therefore, financial security would be provided to his children. However, following his death, Rothko's children were notified by the gallery's founder, Frances Kenneth Lloyd, that under the terms of the agreement made with them in 1956 and renewed in 1969, the gallery owned all of Rothko's paintings.
Following Rothko's suicide in 1970 the three executors for the estate agreed to sell 100 works to Marlborough for a total of $1,800,000 while a further 698 works were consigned to the gallery for sale at a fixed commission of 50%. Of Rothko's three executors one, Bernard Reis, was a director of Marlborough and a second,
Theodoros StamosTheodoros Stamos , was a Greek American artist. He is one of the youngest painters of the original group of abstract expressionist painters , which included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko.-Biography:Theodoros Stamos was one of the original and youngest...
, was an artist represented by the Gallery. However only $200,000 was paid upfront to the estate. In the year following Rothko's death the value of his work more than doubled while early works were selling at auction for over $80,000. In 1971 Kate Rothko sued to release the estate from the sale agreement and have the paintings returned to the family.
In the following case it was revealed that, when still a struggling artist with a young family, Rothko had agreed to a deal with the gallery that all of his paintings would be sold through the gallery in exchange for a set monthly fee. These kinds of terms were not unheard of, as
Pablo PicassoPablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso was a Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor. Commonly known simply as Picasso, he is one of the most recognized figures in 20th-century art...
had had a similar deal with his gallery in the 1920s.
It emerged from the trial that the gallery defrauded Rothko and his estate through various methods. The gallery had filtered payments for works through accounts in
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
and
LiechtensteinThe Principality of Liechtenstein is a doubly landlocked alpine microstate in Western Europe, bordered by Switzerland to the west and south and by Austria to the east. Its area is just over 160 km² and it has an estimated population of 35,000...
to ensure that values were under-presented. During the 1960s this led to a huge underestimate by the artist on the value of his works. As a result, he agreed to consignments of dozens of paintings to the gallery and collectors without appreciating the full value. It was also revealed that the gallery had been stockpiling works to ensure a heightened value in the market after his death. The 100 paintings 'sold' by the estate through Marlborough had been retained by the gallery and were quickly 're-sold' for 5 to 6 times the declared value. Certain directors at Marlborough were convicted of defrauding the Rothko family and the Gallery was ordered to pay over $9 million in 1975 and costs and return 658 paintings it held by the artist. Marlborough disputed the return of the paintings.
In film
Thirteen years after his death, Mark Rothko's tale aired as a television movie:
The Rothko Conspiracy, a co-production of the BBC and Lionheart Television. The filmmakers based their work on the 1978 book,
The Legacy of Mark Rothko, on interviews and the trial transcripts.
,
External resources
See Gerstenblith, Patty. Art, Cultural Heritage, and the Law. Pp. 336-344. Carolina Academic Press, 2004/2008. ISBN 9781594600999.
http://books.google.com/books?id=ZFOQAAAAMAAJ&dq=author:Gerstenblith&pgis=1, http://www.amazon.com/Art-Cultural-Heritage-Law-Materials/dp/1594600996.