Last March, after the death of my grandmother Bülbül Solitreo Lectionis, né Carpentier, I, together with 23 cousins and assorted aunts and uncles gathered in Barcelona for a memorial ceremony. Held at the baronial Paraninfo Posquières, the event was a bittersweet reminder of our family's glorious past. I would be dishonest if I did not add that the ceremony was also an expression of our promiscuous present for we have been scattered and dismembered to the four corners of the earth by the ambiguous advantages of our prosperity.
After the speeches and prayers and giant platters of carciofi alla giudia we made our way to the splendidly imposing Casa Lectionis on Via Laeitana, just a few blocks from Ciutadela Park. It was there where my grandmother lived for over sixty years, forty-five of which as an embittered widow.
Rummaging through the crawl space beneath the attic, a room the Spaniards call the cucaracha aseo, I found an old cardboard box covered with cobwebs and ash. I was astonished by it's contents.
When last inventoried in 2002 by Dr. Alphonse Kurth, associate curator of prints and drawings at the Museo de las Cosas Sin Peso, Micah Carpentier's Song of Degrees, the famous series of hand-drawn paper sacks, numbered precisely 1,673 bags. Since then seven bags were discovered in a private collection in Buenos Aires though three have since been discredited as fakes. One thousand six-hundred and seventy-seven has therefore been the accepted number for almost a decade.
I was sure then and I am sure now that the box I discovered at Casa Lectionis contained genuine, previously unknown Carpentier bags. It has been an uphill battle trying to convince the vested interests within academia to accept my conclusion. The museum world has been equally obtuse and recalcitrant. Too many people have too much at stake to challenge the sacred sum of 1,677.
The auction record for a Carpentier bag was set in 2009 when the last bag was placed on the market. The work was sold to an anonymous collector (most people suspect it was the Pardishah of Mirkānu) for $365,000. In other words, within that ratty, mildewed box were bags worth over two million dollars.
I really don't care about the money. I simply resent being taken for a swindling greedy knave cashing in on the fame of a long dead relative.
Micah Carpentier discussing the work of Los Angeles artist, David Schoffman
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| Bülbül Solitreo Lectionis, artist and year unknown. |
After the speeches and prayers and giant platters of carciofi alla giudia we made our way to the splendidly imposing Casa Lectionis on Via Laeitana, just a few blocks from Ciutadela Park. It was there where my grandmother lived for over sixty years, forty-five of which as an embittered widow.
Rummaging through the crawl space beneath the attic, a room the Spaniards call the cucaracha aseo, I found an old cardboard box covered with cobwebs and ash. I was astonished by it's contents.
When last inventoried in 2002 by Dr. Alphonse Kurth, associate curator of prints and drawings at the Museo de las Cosas Sin Peso, Micah Carpentier's Song of Degrees, the famous series of hand-drawn paper sacks, numbered precisely 1,673 bags. Since then seven bags were discovered in a private collection in Buenos Aires though three have since been discredited as fakes. One thousand six-hundred and seventy-seven has therefore been the accepted number for almost a decade.
I was sure then and I am sure now that the box I discovered at Casa Lectionis contained genuine, previously unknown Carpentier bags. It has been an uphill battle trying to convince the vested interests within academia to accept my conclusion. The museum world has been equally obtuse and recalcitrant. Too many people have too much at stake to challenge the sacred sum of 1,677.
 |
| from The Song of Degrees, number 1,678, Micah Carpentier, date unknown |
I really don't care about the money. I simply resent being taken for a swindling greedy knave cashing in on the fame of a long dead relative.
Micah Carpentier discussing the work of Los Angeles artist, David Schoffman
