[Nettime-nl] Hinkende Bode: Art and the blimp bank of of Dirk Scheringa: DSB

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de geillustreerde versie staat op:
http://limpingmessenger.wordpress.com/2009/05/20/292/

Art and the blimp bank of of Dirk Scheringa: DSB

May 20, 2009 by The Limping Messenger/De Hinkende Bode | Edit
An earlier post of the Limping Messenger of May 6th. 2009 about the  
armed robbery of the Scheringa Museum in the Netherlands The museum  
of lootings and the looting of museums) displayed a picture of one of  
the two works of art that had been stolen, a Salvador Dali gouache of  
1941. I already mentioned I was not sure whether I had found the  
right picture of that dali work, and yesterday I did find the correct  
picture on a special page of the website of  the DSB bank – related  
to the Scheringa Museum – that has only recently be published.

[image]
[caption]
‘Adolescence’ (1941) van Salvador Dalí, gouache painted on a page of  
the French magazine ‘Pour Vous.’ The fusion of images is a mountain  
landscape that is at the same time a portrait of a famou actress of  
that time Betty Stockfeld., while it displays at the same time a  
mother and child sitting at the waterside. (a fragile work mounted in  
a gilded frame under glass; 45 x 30 cm).
[/caption]
[image]
[caption]
‘La Musicienne’ (1929) van Tamara de Lempickan (1898-1980), the  
Scheringa Museum, an “Art Deco” painting (116 x 73 cm).
[/caption]

The web page of the bank also reveals that the rare work by Dali has  
been personally acquired from a Parisian art dealer by Dirk  
Scheringa, the owner of the DSB bank and gives detailed of the  
vulnerability of the gouache in its gilded frame. Tips of the  
whereabouts of the artworks can be communicated to the bank of  
Scheringa via this web page. One wonders whether The DSB bank and its  
related web of financial firms in the field of mortgage and insurance  
has also insured these two artworks and for which amount of money.  
This last question of mine relates to recent  written-questions  
asked  by a member of  the dutch parliament Jolande Sap of the Green  
Left party (GroenLinks) to the minister of Finance Wouter Bos (social  
democrat party/PvdA). Jolande Sap (an economist who says she has an  
allergy for injustice) wanted to know whether the mortgage activities  
of the DSB bank involving frequent over-validation of real estate  
property and related high commission fees for the bank or its  
intermediaries leading to subsequently risks for their clients, was  
not going beyond the existing rules and what it socially acceptable.  
The answer of the Finance minister was – as to be expected – evading,  
though between the lines one can read that the controlling bodies of  
the Dutch government for the financial world (The National Bank and  
the AFM) will be enhancing their scrutiny on such issues and in some  
needed cases, will put sanctions on deviating financial institutions.  
Earlier this year (April 13)  a national television critical  
consumers program Radar had exposed some of the practices of the DSB  
bank and its (art collecting) director Scheringa, and that is not  
all. For some reason this bank founded in 1975 and named after his  
founder Dirk Scheringa, plus the word ‘Beheer’ (meaning: management,  
control, supervision) keeps coming in a negative way in the news.  
Last week it became known that a newly appointed director of the  
bank, a former liberal party (VVD) minister of Defense, Frank de  
Grave, left his new position within a period of two months, which is  
a rare phenomenon in the bank world and this has given rise to  
speculations of  him finding some skeletons in the closet, or worse,  
in the safe.
So, to come back to the Dali gouache and the other stolen artwork  
(Lempickan’s painting ‘La Muscienne’), have they been insured  
according to the same alleged DSB principles of validation? A press  
statement as published in the NRC/Handelsblad said that the value of  
the works has not been released. The blog arthostage (which claims to  
be the only that “reveals the truth about art crime investigation”)  
comes up with at least some price indication of the Tamara de  
Lempickan painting and states that it was traded at the Impressionist  
& Modern Art, Part One auction of Sotheby’s in May 2002, for US $  
2,649,500 and, when I do read their somewhat vague blog-post  
correctly, later  acquired for 3 million dollar by Scheringa.
As the value of a house may still has some objective criteria,  
especially now after the ‘housing bubble’ has been deflated by the  
‘financial crisis’ it helped to create, the value of an art work is  
known to be ‘what a fool wants to pay for it.’  The ‘trading of wind’  
is an old Dutch craft (windhandel) and one need not be surprised when  
a modern form is practiced in the windy quarters of the northern  
province of Holland where Dirk Scheringa has set up his quarters. Art  
collections are often used as safety reservoirs for speculative  
economic activities, as there can be big differences between the  
acquisition costs and the actual taxation value at a later point in  
time. Scheringa’s collection is still a modest enterprise  
encompassing just over one thousand art objects centred around the  
idea of ‘realism’ in modern art  as represented by surrealists and  
magic realists. The collection is now housed in a former school  
building in the small village of Spanbroek, but a new accommodation  
is under construction nearby and scheduled to open in 2010. If it is  
still a total private collection museum of Dirk Scheringa is  
difficult to say, several foundations have been created around the  
collection and the DSB bank and its sub-division DSB Vastgoed (DSB  
Real Estate) is the development company of the new museum building.  
Scheringa is known as a weaver of complex organizational tapestries  
not just in the banking and insurance world, but also as the main  
financer of a succesful football club in the region, AZ (they won the  
national professional football competition this year). Dirk Scheringa  
has many assets to juggle before he will have drifted out of sight …

[image]
[caption]
De Zeppelin / The Blimp (1933). Artist: Carel Willink (The  
Netherlands 1900-1983). Collection: heirs Carel Willink Located until  
06-01-2008: ‘Scheringa Museum For Realisme’ Spanbroek The  
Netherlands. (with a “magical realist” apparition)
[/caption]
NB the word ‘blimp’ may not be anymore known today, so here are two  
possible meanings:
blimp (as in “Colonel Blimp”) n. : (British) any elderly pompous  
reactionary ultranationalistic person (after the cartoon character  
created by Sir David Low)
blimp (as in “airship”) n. : a small nonrigid airship used for  
observation or as a barrage balloon

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