HELP! Ossobuco? Someone?

Bump

I cant help you.

Im just helping bump up your post.

Osso usually posts about this time of night..

I'll yell for her :wink:

thank you, greatly appreciated.

What a twisted tale!

Joe(and such colors... .)Nation

Hi, dvd. I'm much the fool on this myself, although at a quick glance, that all kind of rings a bell. After I post this, I'll read your post more fully.

The one person who knows about these matters here is Lightwizard, and he doesn't post all the time.

I'll pm him for you, as, as a newbie, you can't, and he may or may not have recommendations having to do with appropriate appraisal and related matters.

In any case, good luck, and welcome to a2k.




Also, thanks for the pm, rockhead.

that is very kind of you and once again, thank you all. I'm just really totally confused by the situation. I did speak with Martha O'Brien, John's widow, and a truly delightful lady. It would appear much litigation to follow, and I know it appears a "me me" question, yet I do desire to know where three copied originals fall in all this mess. I own "Recollections", "Summers Day", and "Castle View", all which appear as Victorian Lady in some form or another in the reproductions. It appears to be a real mess, yet I'm certainly no expert.

Thanks again

I'm going to try and post photo's of my original O'Brien paintings if that will help, Thanks again-dvd

I personally knew John O'Brien and was selling his work in a gallery in Sunset Beach, CA. in the early 2000's. Yes, his wife is really a sweetheart and the news reached me when I was at another gallery in Fashion Island, Newport Beach of his death. I knew about the cancer but we kind of lost contact when I moved on and was not selling his work.

It's really the same old story. Reproductions, regardless if they are on canvas and enhanced by the artist (unlike many artist, O'Brien did his own painting on the reproductions) very rarely hold any value. For insurance, you will only get what the original invoice states so that's what to insure them for. Your insurance company will likely tell you they are included in your home policy and no rider is required. I would photograph them as well as all possessions and keep the images, analog or digital, off the premises.

Sorry that there are still many people who don't realize when they buy a commercially marketed painting or reporductions, the chances of it appreciating are extremely slim. Most of them depreciate the second one walks out of the gallery door with the piece. They are nearly impossible to re-market which makes their value even lower.

That the artist has passed away can or cannot be a factor whether a professional appraiser would generate any documents with higher values than the original invoice. Often the custom picture frame can be over $500.00 and it's very difficult to sell as its basically garage sale merchandise.

These pieces of art are decorative arts -- they are traditional imagery meant to decorate homes and offices. They are not collectibles. I would hate to have to tell Mrs. O'Brien that there is virtually no chance any of the work will ever gain any value and because it all harks back to painting in the Romantic period, future art historians won't even look at it. They will become curiosities of the commercial upsurge of marketing in paintings and reproductions of the 1980's through present day and who knows how long people will overpay for this stuff. If I wanted to be blunt, they will be just barely this side of land fill.

There have been more than one Eubanks in the art industry -- it seems to draw this sort of person and I've alway known the ones to avoid. Lawsuits are not uncommon and criminal prosecution gets in the news but it doesn't tip off the general polulace that it is still caveat emptor.

Lightwizard,

Thank you for replying. The three paintings of John's that I own are all original oils, not reproductions, although I see my originals have been reproduced in many forms. All very large, approximately 50" X 60", each a little larger or a bit smaller. I purchased them in 1999 each painting had a average cost of $12,000 at that time. Martha told me that they are worth considerably more today. Given the legal issues surrounding the situation described in the LA Times article of old, and the fact that those issues are still unresolved I am very curious as to my paintings "real" value. It may be that until the dust settles the real value of these originals shall remain unknown. I sincerely appreciate your input, I am no expert by any means, just a fan. Thanks again. DVD

The original paintings, I'm afraid, are in the same boat. However, you'd be unlikely to get more than $1500.00 for one of his originals. Shocking? Did you purchase these from a gallery? If that gallery went through Eubanks to purchase them, the originals were likely marked up four times what O'Brien was paid. That's two times for wholesale for Eubanks' profit and then two times in the gallery, plus the two times on the custom frame. Art galleries often don't have their own framing facility and so must make a deal with a custom framer close by and mark it up 100%. I wouldn't confront Mrs. O'Brien with this because she's well aware of what all the commercial art marketers scheme is and John asked me several times about his dilemma of marketing himself, which effectively brought the prices down on the work, especially the originals. I don't want to tell you that I know what John would have been paid by Eubanks for those $ 12,000. originals but when I sold some at the gallery, I only marked them at $4,000.00.

Professional interior designers won't buy any of this commercially marketed art. They will generally frame up famous art images that fits into the decor, or maybe go to secondary market stores (like Lido Consignment in Newport Beach, a business that used to be next to mine on the Balboa Peninsula) and pick up pictures really cheap. Interior designers rarely run into a client who is an art collector and expert and they won't be buying any of this art.

The real value is if you can find any of the work for sale on E-Bay. The "real value" would be rather expensive to determine and will cost $500.00 or more to get an accredited appraiser to give you a document. In my opinion, not worth it. They will unlikely appraise them for more than 25% of what you paid for them, including the frame.

Dark clouds gather over 'Painter of Light'
Thomas Kinkade is probably one of the biggest scumbags in art history. Doubly so, because he played on people's religion to sell his crap.---BBB

Dark clouds gather over 'Painter of Light'
Oliver Burkeman in New York
Saturday March 25, 2006
The Guardian

Entrepreneur artist who hangs in one in 20 US homes accused of fraud and drunken antics

'There's always been starter art, but Kinkade is the lowest form of starter art I've ever seen' ... Hometown Lake (1997) by Thomas Kinkade

"There's over 40 walls in the average American home," a business manager for the artist Thomas Kinkade once said, "and Thom says our job is to figure out how to populate every single wall in every single home and every single business throughout the world with his paintings."
Kinkade's luridly idyllic landscapes, full of quaint cottages and glowing firelight, already hang in an estimated one in 20 US homes. "In the often hurried, unsympathetic and complex world we live in, the images Thomas Kinkade paints offer a place of refuge," his company's literature purrs. "A place where the transient things of life give way to the things that matter most ... faith and family, a loving home and the people who know and love us."

Art critics have long dismissed his work as a kitsch crime against aesthetics. But now the world has grown even more "unsympathetic and complex" for the artist, who describes himself as a devout Christian and has trademarked his "Painter of Light" soubriquet. In court documents and other testimony, he has been accused of sexual harassment, fraudulent business practices and bizarre incidents of drunkenness including a habit of "ritual territory marking" that involves urinating in public places.

'Misleading picture'

A court-appointed arbitration panel has ruled in favour of two former owners of Kinkade-branded galleries, ordering his company to pay them $860,000 (£500,000) for breaching "the covenant of good faith and dealing" and failing to disclose pertinent business information.

The panel found that his firm "painted an unrealistic and misleading picture of the prospects of success for a dealer", while using religious language to foster an atmosphere of trust.

Kinkade won two other claims, but six more are pending, including one from a Michigan man who says he lost $3m in assets, along with his marriage and most of his possessions, after the galleries he owned went broke. Other former employees and associates of the artist - in court testimony and in interviews with the Los Angeles Times - recounted how he had fondled a woman's breasts at a company event, and lashed out at an ex-colleague's wife who tried to help him when he fell from a bar stool.

Two former employees, Terry Sheppard and John Dandois, told the panel of further examples of Kinkade's unpredictable behaviour: bringing disorder to a Las Vegas performance by the illusionists Siegfried and Roy by repeatedly yelling the word "codpiece" from his audience seat, and urinating in public - in an elevator and on a model of Winnie the Pooh at a Disneyland hotel. "This one's for you, Walt," Mr Sheppard claimed the artist said as he did so.

Business empire

The allegations threaten to destabilise a business empire that made Kinkade at least $53m in personal income between 1997 and 2005, thanks to a complex system of art marketing. The cost of a Kinkade print changes depending on whether it is on paper or on canvas, and unsigned or signed; certain versions are "retired" from the market at critical moments to give them scarcity value. A team of "master illuminators" at Kinkade's galleries charge yet more to add real paint to his prints, enhancing his trademark glowing light effect on works with names such as Sunset on Lamplight Lane and Cobblestone Christmas. The pictures are also available in numerous other forms, printed on teddy bears, cushions, lounger chairs, T-shirts and Bible covers. Three years ago a residential community modelled on his painted homes was opened in California.

The artist - who once said of Picasso that "he had talent but didn't use it in a significant way" - has acknowledged that he went through a bad period.

"If during this period I ever offended anybody, I am sorry. Anyone who knows me knows I always try my best to be loving ... the good news is I learned many valuable lessons from that phase of my life," he wrote in an email to gallery owners this month. He blamed "disgruntled ex-dealers" for launching "media attacks" on him, but acknowledged in a separate statement that "there may have been some ritual territory marking going on".

He denied the harassment allegation, but said in a deposition: "You've got to remember, I'm the idol to these women who were there. They sell my work every day, you know. They're enamoured with any attention I would give them. I don't know what kind of flirting they were trying to do with me. I don't recall what was going on that night."

In his email he said that long after "this absurd negativity" had subsided, "I will still be here, sitting in front of my easel, trying my best to share the light."

'Such insistent cosiness seems sinister'

The critics on Kinkade

"A Kinkade painting was typically rendered in slightly surreal pastels. It typically featured a cottage or a house of such insistent cosiness as to seem actually sinister, suggestive of a trap designed to attract Hansel and Gretel. Every window was lit, to lurid effect, as if the interior of the structure might be on fire. The cottages had thatched roofs, and resembled gingerbread houses. The houses were Victorian and resembled idealised bed-and-breakfasts ... "
Joan Didion

"[One painting] features mountains and quiet shadows and the purple cloak of sunset, but it could just as easily have featured a lavishly blooming garden at twilight, or maybe a babbling brook spanned by a quaint stone bridge, or a lighthouse after a storm; it's hard to distinguish one Kinkade from the next because their effect is so unvarying - smooth and warm and romantic, not quite fantastical but not quite real, more of a wishful and inaccurate rendering of what the world looks like, as if painted by someone who hadn't been outside in a long time."
Susan Orlean, the New Yorker

"There's always been starter art, but Kinkade is the lowest form of starter art I've ever seen."
San Francisco gallery owner

Kinkade on the critics

"The No 1 quote critics give me is, 'Thom, your work is irrelevant.' Now, that's a fascinating, fascinating comment. Yes, irrelevant to the little subculture, this microculture, of modern art. But here's the point: My art is relevant because it's relevant to 10 million people. That makes me the most relevant artist in this culture."
Kinkade

· Sources: Where I Was From, by Joan Didion; the New Yorker; the San Francisco Chronicle

Lightwizard, I purchased well before Eubanks became involved, although I did purchase from a gallery which I believe Martha has current issues with. I'm sure you are aware of the situation and the gallery with which I am referring, located in Baltimore. A friend of ours had one of John's earlier works and the gallery that they purchased from sent eleven of John's paintings down to Florida for us to view-we chose three, this was in 1999.

Yes, it was a mistake to not self-publish but there are hundreds of giclee printers since the equipment has come down in price drastically. A printer isn't necessarily a good marketing person. Eubanks likely ran into problems in the distribution, the most daunting problem in marketing that art, and had to make deals with the cruise line auctions and overran the "limited edition" prints or did them in offset lithograph. To do this without reporting it to the artist is unforgivable and a good criminal case. It happens too many time in this sector of the art business. This is decorative art in that grey area between lithographed reproductions and serious art, when done in print is created by the artist themselves. The drawings, the plates, the inking and pulling of the print, not hired out "elves." Giclee is a sophisticated computer scanner and printer not much different than the technology of your computer printer, just more complicated and refined.

The unfortunate fact is that sometimes going into a more mass market with prints can actually devalue the original paintings.

The business aspect has always be anathema to artists, but many of them have become millionaires from that kind of marketing like Hiro Yamagata and Eyvind Earle. Yamagata once complained that he was now stuck with stigma of being a "mall artist." However, in the late 70's and early 80's an original was over $200,000.00. Now you'd be lucking to get $40,000.00.

There are also artist who were successfully marketed for maybe five years and then they have to find another way to make a living.

As far as "collectors" go, the people who pay a lot of bucks for this art with limited art knowledge are sometimes only driven by two of the seven deadly sins -- greed and pride.