You judge. Here are some scholarly takes, pro and con, along with more photos. It doesn’t look right to me, but many art experts now say yes. About three million pounds is at stake, according to The Telegraph. Since there are only about 35 other Vermeers in existence, and the last one was sold eighty years ago, I suspect it will go for more, no matter what the doubts.

My take: Researchers spent about ten years studying the picture. If it takes so long to tell the difference, spend your money elsewhere.

When the barricades that France’s protectionist auctioneers had erected to prevent the reform of their art market were finally stormed in late 2001, it seemed as though revolution was in the air. Many people believed that “les Anglo-Saxons”, as the French refer to Sotheby’s and Christie’s, were about to sweep their smaller, local competitors aside.

The logic was simple. The 456 licensed French auctioneers (commissaires-priseurs), who had been legally protected against foreign competition since 1556, would be no match for the two international giants now that the latter were allowed to hold sales in France for the first time. However, the reality has proved very different and in less than two and a half years Paris has evolved into the world’s most unpredictable and fiercely competitive art market centre.

And how can the French possibly compete?

The local auctioneers have survived by using their contacts, particularly among lawyers who arrange estate sales, and in some cases by reorganising and bringing in outside investors, which the law reforming the market allowed them to do for the first time. ArtCurial is a new creation, an alliance of three well-known French auctioneers – Francis Briest, Hervé Poulain and Remy Le Fur – with the Dassault aviation and newspaper dynasty and the Monaco real estate millionaire and art collector Michel Pastor. Its main specialities are modern art and vintage cars, and last year it came in third behind Christie’s and Tajan [another French firm] with sales of £41.7 million.

My take: European culture isn’t dead, it is simply oversubsidized and overprotected. Here is the full story. Here is an article about how the French have an unjustified fear of being bought out by foreigners.

Note also that Coca-Cola has postponed and possibly shelved its plans to compete with the leading French mineral waters. The British version of the product, Fasani (a terrible name, no?), turned out to be purified tap water. It is now an open question whether the French release will ever see the light of day.

Addendum: Daniel Drezner points out that McDonald’s is more popular in France than elsewhere in Europe. I blame expensive French food, high labor costs through regulation, and bizarre opening hours (i.e., your favorite place is usually closed). But if you think that French haute cuisine has been harmed, you haven’t eaten in Helene Darroze, where last night I had one of the finest meals of my life.

Before leaving for Paris I had the chance to give a talk on Latin American art in Tucson. While preparing I spent some time browsing Google Images for fun. One of my favorite Cuban painters is the expressionist Tomas Sanchez, I like the lusciousness of how he paints forests.

Here is another Sanchez. Manuel Mendive has a more primitivist style, here is my favorite Mendive. If you would like something more avant-garde, try Jose Bedia.

Here is one place to buy some reasonably priced Cuban art.

And how about the economics in Cuba?

State-run galleries sell selected works to tourists and pay artists a percentage, but successful artists like Sandra Ramos and The Carpinteros (Dagoberto Rodriques and Marco Castillo) prefer to deal directly with collectors, inviting them into their homes and studios where they do business in dollars that allow them to support their entire families. The opening week of the biennial is a feeding frenzy of foreign buying with collectors arriving in tours organised by US museums or European travel agencies. (The US allows importation of Cuban art and educational materials.)
With such considerable interest in the biennial, the State has been quick to recognise the potential of the market: an art auction at the biennial raised more than $100,000 to benefit a children’s cancer hospital, with an anonymous collector from Monaco paying $11,000 for a drawing by Kcho, an artist whose signature motif is a simple boat that might be interpreted as an allusion to Cubans’ efforts to escape the island. Somehow Kcho has been co-opted as a quasi-official artist, painting backdrops for Castro speeches and occupying a huge government house.

The bottom line: Censorship or not, if you tax everything else heavily, a good deal of talent will go into the art market. Alex and I wrote about this in our paper An Economic Theory of Avant-Garde and Popular Art, or High and Low Culture (PDF).