The “main contract” is the final agreement between the two investors and Bjarne Melgaard, the provocative Norwegian artist who attracted attention at the 2011 Venice Biennale with an exhibition about the fictional movements of gay terrorists. It was supposed to be a contract that terminated all other contracts. .
By the time he signed the deal in 2020 that capped a turbulent rise in the art world, Melgaard was in financial trouble. He filled his Manhattan gallery with sex dolls and live tiger cubs. Wealthy collectors purchased his works. Norwegian curators have written that he is this generation’s answer to Edvard Munch.
But there was a dark side to Melgaard’s actions, he said, and a long-term addiction to meth and other drugs fueled his impulsive behavior.
He got a mink coat that he couldn’t afford. His production studio in New York collapsed, and former employees accused him of withholding wages, which he said was due to delays from investors. He has sued his mother and sister over money and criticized the Munch Museum, which canceled a solo exhibition due to the coronavirus pandemic.
“Bjarne was always pulling the rug out from under you, and he was definitely pulling the rug out from under the art world,” said New York gallerist Michael Egan, who exhibited Melgaard in 2012. ” and said that he admires Melgaard despite his eccentric behavior. “If there’s a moment where something gets extreme, he’ll find a way to get there.”
As Melgaard’s bills swelled with his growing fame, he became increasingly dependent on the financial support of Svein Roa Grande and Stein Lee, who had little experience of the art market. Both sides say they paid him nearly $10 million in exchange for artwork between 2008 and 2020, and the relationship continued through more than a dozen agreements, even as the artist continued to run into financial troubles. .
In 2020, Mr. Melgaard signed a master agreement outlining future financial terms between the parties. But in an attempt to invalidate the contract, Mr. Melgado filed a lawsuit last year alleging that Mr. Grande and Mr. Lee verbally pressured him into giving misleading details about the debt. Mr. Lee countersued, alleging that Mr. Melgaard had breached the main contract.
The future of the artist’s career may now be in the hands of a Norwegian court, which will begin hearing the case on Tuesday.
Melgado’s lawsuit alleges that the main contract includes about $500,000 in unpaid studio royalties, U.S. taxes, book projects and more, plus $16 million that Grande and Lee said they owed. It was supposed to be a life-saving measure, exempting Mr. Melgaard from nearby areas. (A lawyer for the investors said he did not discuss specific amounts.)
However, Melgaard said in an interview with the New York Times that he felt pressured to sign the contract, did so while intoxicated, and only later realized what he had signed. The right to create a series of sculptures. and the ability to object to the sale of one’s work. The value of the confiscated art is estimated to be in the millions of dollars, according to an email from then-studio manager Tim Smith that was included in Melgaard’s lawsuit.
“My biggest mistake is the same one that most artists make,” Melgaard, 57, said in a video interview from his Oslo studio. “You’ll do anything for your art.”
Wearing aviator sunglasses and a bleached buzz cut, he clutched the collar of his denim jacket and looked restless. Hidden on the shirt were the words “I Ruined My Life” printed on it.
modern sponsorship activities
While many artists rely on funding from galleries to subsidize their work, Melgado’s relationship with investors is reminiscent of the largely obsolete patronage practice that had its heyday during the Italian Renaissance. let It was at that time that influential families such as the Medici family financed Florence’s most famous artists such as Botticelli and Michelangelo.
Grande and Lee had hoped to develop such a relationship with Melgado when he moved from Barcelona to Oslo in 2008. Grande ran a shipping company and Lee made a small fortune selling duvets. Friends struck a series of deals with Melgaard and provided funding for his businesses. That amount initially included $20,000 a month to rent a large art studio in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, according to his lawsuit.
Despite funding from backers, Mr. Melgaard continued to overspend and racked up large debts that he believed his investors would cover. The main agreement was supposed to clear the air.
But Melgaard said he made a mistake by signing a contract that also gave his agent the authority to sign prints with his name on them.
“If you look at the contract I signed, you’ll see that no clear-minded person would sign it,” Melgaard said.
Melgaard said in his lawsuit that investors watered down the market by selling copies of his work in about 40 galleries across Norway, causing too much supply and causing prices to fall. He said some galleries are selling variations of his sculptures he didn’t approve of, such as the “Don’t Wanna See” version depicting a rat sitting on a concrete box, for prices exceeding $42,000. It is said that he was selling it.
Mr. Lee and Mr. Grande did not respond to these claims about Mr. Melgado’s work, but said in written statements to the Times that the evidence dispels Mr. Melgado’s claims.
“Bjarne Melgaard is a great artist, but his ability to convey facts is limited,” they wrote. “These are agreements that Bjarne himself started, but which he is now trying to walk away from to avoid heavy debt burdens from the US and Norway after two decades of reckless and out-of-control spending.”
The investors also said in court papers that Mr. Melgaard’s international reputation was due to their funds. “Artistic endeavors of this quality and pace would not have been possible without Grande and Lee’s funding,” his lawyers argued in court papers.
For a time in the 2010s, Melgado was a star in contemporary art. His auction market peaked in 2013, when an installation called “Kill Me Before I Do It Myself” sold for about $471,000, according to the Artnet database. The artist supplemented his six-figure sales with controversy and influence.
“He was a chaos machine,” said Egan, owner of Lamiken Crucible Gallery. His 2012 Melgaard show featured two tiger cubs tearing apart clothing from Supreme fashion brand. The cage housing the tiger was not fixed to the floor and rattled as the animal turned.
A year later, in 2013, dealer Gavin Brown displayed Melgaard’s large sculpture of the Pink Panther smoking crystal meth, alongside an assemblage of pornographic images, psychedelic patterns and expressionist paintings. The show received roundabout praise from critic Ken Johnson in The Times, writing, “Bjarne Melgaard is a projectile-spitting character who, like Linda Blair in The Exorcist, seems possessed by demonic forces.” ” he wrote.
Melgaard said he likes to push boundaries, sometimes to his detriment. “I’ve been canceled hundreds of times,” he said. “I was a functional drug addict.” Some of his works include hypersexualized images of black people, such as a chair whose main structure is a black female mannequin with its back exposed. are.
“What happened to Bjarne Melgaard?” Brown said he has exhibited the artist at least three times. “He took things as far as he could.”
tough battle
Melgaard said he turned a corner last year by getting sober and getting married. His husband works as his advisor and assistant. Now, Melgaard wants to straighten out his professional life by terminating his main contract.
But some legal experts say it’s difficult to break a signed contract, even if one party was signed while intoxicated.
Hilde Hauge, a law professor at the University of Bergen in Norway who is not involved in the lawsuit, said that under Norwegian law, a contract can be invalidated if a judge considers the terms to be unreasonable or unconscionable. He said that
She said an artist successfully sued a patron who had taken ownership of his entire art collection in exchange for previous financial support. But such decisions are rare.
“It is important to note that the bar for terminating a contract for reasons of unreasonableness is generally high,” Hauge said.
Smith, Melgaard’s former studio manager, said that the ten years he worked with Melgado were among the most rewarding and challenging periods of his career. Mr. Smith is a potential witness in the Norwegian case and is currently employed by Grande & Lee as a bookkeeper.
“When investors turned off the spigot, things got worse,” Smith said. “At some point, Bjarne’s actions became questionable. He lost important relationships with dealers, supporters and organizations.”
Melgaard, who has spent the past year taking steroids and wearing black leather jackets to look like the voluptuous man in the Tom of Finland illustrations, has decided to dabble in the fashion industry and pursue a career. We have focused on rebuilding.
He will launch a new perfume at Art Basel Paris this month in collaboration with the city’s Dover Street Parfums Market. And he continues to create art, albeit on a smaller scale, in the form of digital illustrations of rats on skateboards.
“My outlook is that this current case will be settled,” Melgaard said with a shrug, holding up his hand, which has the word “PAPPA” tattooed on it. He added: “I hope we can move on.”
