Libé survey
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A year ago, the announcement of the discovery of a monochrome and a ready-made from the 19th century, from the Incoherent Arts movement, jostled the chronology of modern art, attracting the attention of Michel Onfray than Brad Pitt. But over the months, doubt has set in among the experts, troubled by the overly beautiful story and the opacity that surrounds this find. “Liberation” conducted its counter-investigation.
A quidam’s dump, a forgotten masterpiece behind a tarpaulin, an illustrious signature under the dust… The art dealer’s ultimate fantasy. Who has all the more reason to believe in it since miracles, it seems, exist. In recent years, a Caravaggio has been found under an old mattress in an attic in Toulouse, a section of a diptych by the Florentine master Cimabue discovered in a kitchen in Compiègne, a possible Rembrandt bought for 500 euros in a Belgian bar from an over-indebted layman.
Early 2021, the world echoed the enthusiastic echo of another prodigious discovery. At the bottom of a trunk unearthed in the Parisian suburbs reappeared a set of works attributed to the Incoherent Arts, an unclassifiable movement of the end of the 19th century, unknown to the general public but with a mythical aura for the initiated, who see in them the precursors of Dadaism and Surrealism, and whose artefacts were thought to have disappeared forever. The famous trunk, in addition to fifteen amusing paintings and engravings, contains not one but two potential masterpieces. Historical milestones, m…