After seven years, more than 1,500 court filings, and a fire that may or may not have damaged any art, billionaire collector Ronald Perelman’s $410 million legal standoff with his insurers has finally reached a courtroom, reports The Art Newspaper.
At issue are five paintings by Cy Twombly, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and others, that survived a 2018 fire at Perelman’s East Hampton estate. They were, however, exposed to smoke and sprinklers, which Perelman claims stripped them of their market appeal—what he described in filings as their “oomph.”
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The insurers, underwriters at Lloyd’s of London, did not accept that argument. Not only do they dispute the claim that the works suffered any detectable damage, they also allege that Perelman quietly attempted to sell some of them.
The case raises a common question in the art market: How do you measure intangible losses, a so-called aesthetic “oomph?” In court, Perelman’s legal team leaned on scientific testimony to suggest that damage may lurk beneath the surface. Jennifer Mass, president of Scientific Analysis of Fine Art, testified that invisible chemical degradation could shorten a painting’s “lifespan.” That argument, while difficult to disprove, is even harder to appraise.
Such cases are hardly new. In the 1990s, the City of Amsterdam accused a restorer of overpainting a vandalized Barnett Newman. In 2017 Salvator Mundi sold for $450 million despite concerns that excessive restoration had obscured Leonardo’s hand—if it was ever there to begin with. In both examples, perception, not condition, was the true battleground.
Perception, of course, is also shaped by time and money. And the longer these cases drag on, the more each side’s version of reality begins to calcify. “You are scratching a sore point in the art world,” said London restorer Simon Gillespie, pointing to the rising legal costs around attribution and valuation. “I’ve frequently heard that it’s easier to say no.”
In Perelman’s case, the stakes were higher than just insurance: Court filings show that many works from his collection—more than 70—were sold after Deutsche Bank issued a margin call. Some of the contested paintings had served as collateral.
That adds another wrinkle: Market values are moving targets. An appraiser assesses the value as of the date of the loss, according to Linda Selvin, director of the Appraisers Association of America. But if market conditions change, one side may seek an updated appraisal. With litigation lasting years, it’s no surprise that the courtroom starts to resemble a trading floor, just slower and more expensive.
The trial also pulled back the curtain on Perelman’s financial arrangements, despite attempts to keep documents sealed. Disclosure fights like this are a staple of long-running art lawsuits, where one claim often snowballs into others. The hope is that if you wait long enough, maybe the problem will quietly disappear. It rarely does.
As of now, neither Perelman nor the insurers have commented publicly.