Topic 1. The Gallery Opening & The Cocktail Party This subject is alas self-explanatory. Art and peanuts.

Topic 2. How genuine is a work of art? How do we describe whether we believe that an artist painted a picture himself, a sculptor carved it or whether he got help; or whether someone else did it, it was not by him at all. There is the famous and infamous sale room code which is quite helpful. Most of our time is spent in a sort of general who dunnit? But the answer is seldom as simple as it seems.

Topic 3.. Further thoughts on attribution and naming, on the ascription of authorship to works of art. Continued from Topic 2.

Topic 4. What's wrong with Modern Art? Maybe nothing much, but then why am I a dealer in (mostly) old stuff?

Topic 5 - Why does it cost so much? The vexed problem of Price and Value and a moral story.

Topic 6 - Further discussions on price, value, and attribution - an e-mail correspondence

Topic 7 The importance of Provenance (if any).

Topic 8 Art as the Common Denominator - a wide discussion of the universality of art at the end of the 20th century.and into the new millennium.Lecture given by AW to Convocation of Tufts University, USA

Topic 9 How to become an art dealer

Topic 10 More problems with authenticity - a reader's query about a wrong attribution. What to do about it.

Topic 11. The Wunderkammer or chamber of wonders. From the magpie, to the invention of museums to the eccentric collector.

Please do come back here another time - we will have more of these serious but slightly unconventional maybe even irreverent thoughts for you to click on to. If you agree or disagree with anything we have published, or if these articles just please you or annoy you, thrill you or anger you - please let us know. We should love to have some feedback and you can contact us by e-mail: info@wengraf.com

We put these essays up rather hopefully when we opened  in 1995 - this is an OLD site. At that time very few people had heard of the internet. but it now seems that some people do progress this far into the site and enjoy reading these articles. Therefore we shall continue to add to them from time to time.

Meanwhile to add a slightly incestuous note, some of these articles have been copied by Richard de Koster on his site On Connoisseurship but he has much more besides (he is a collector of such little pockets of wisdom) which you might find of interest. Click the link to have a look but make a bookmark first so that you can easily come back to us..

Alternatively if you get bored from here or any other page you can always press the Back button or return to Home Page? or the Alphabetical List to look at art.