Oct 18, 2012 | news
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The empty space where Matisse’s “La Liseuse en Blanc et Jaune” used to be.
Next to a painting by Maurice Denis. |
Turns out the life of an art thief might not be all that glamorous after all. The problem with stealing something so rare, is that it can be very hard to get rid of when it’s something everyone is looking for, plus close to impossible to sell for all the money it’s really worth.
In the recent heist at the gallery in Rotterdam, the thieves stole seven works by Picasso, Monet, Gauguin, Matisse, and others estimated at being worth more than $100 million at auction. This article today on Fox News doubts whether the thieves even have a plan. If they don’t the works they stole can become more of a burden that they were worth to steal in the first place.
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“Reading Girl in White and Yellow”
Stolen Matisse work from 1919 |
One illegal art trafficker tried for 20 years to sell a statue of Nero’s mother stolen from Pompeii before it was announced as recovered last Thursday.
After drugs and illicit arms sales, art theft is the third most profitable crime in the world. A lot of stolen art is never found, and experts say that for criminals with connections, the lesser known pieces hardly have any trouble making a return for the thief who stole it.
But according to a recent CBS article, these thieves weren’t the savvy type, and mostly managed success through brute force, yanking the paintings from the walls, leaving only white space and broken hanging wires behind.
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“Charing Cross Bridge, London”
Stolen Monet from 1901 |
They set off the alarm at 3am on Tuesday morning, and even though officers were on the scene within five minutes, the thieves were already gone. Some say this is probably due to the location of the gallery, placed right next to three main highways. Tire tracks were visible outside the emergency exit that played a part in the supposed getaway route.
Twenty-five officers have been assigned to the case but right now the getaway car hasn’t been found and there are no suspects. The Kunsthal museum was shut down only the day of the theft. The director of the museum, Emily Ansenk released this as a part of her statement Tuesday:
“These are unique works which have already been exhibited all over the world, are well documented and were now being exhibited together for the first time ever. We, the Kunsthal, and the Triton Foundation Board are deeply shocked by what has happened, but we will not allow it to defeat us. We have all decided that the exhibition will go ahead as usual tomorrow.”
All images from this NYTimes slideshow.
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Oct 14, 2012 | art history, news
Even though Jacques-Louis David (pronounced Daaav-EED, I know, it’s French and weird) was considered to be the greatest painter of the 18th century. A Frenchman who worked mostly in a neoclassicist style, he’s not much discussed in my art history classes aside from “the guy who painted ‘The Death of Marat’.”
Surprisingly though, his history painting “Oath of the Horatii” is what comes up first under his Google artwork page, depicting a scene in early Rome where three brothers agree to sacrifice their lives for the city, placing civic loyalty over everything else. These historical themes were useful for David, as a vehicle to actively support the French Revolution, since loyalty to state is what’s most important here too.
“The Death of Marat,” number two for David according to Google, also has ties to the Revolution and is said to be the most well-known image that came from it. Jean-Paul Marat was a French revolutionary leader and journalist who had a skin condition that was helped by a bath. Which is why here he lies in the tub, holding out a piece of paper that in French reads, Because I am unhappy, I have a right to your help.”
Marat was stabbed in the bath by his political enemy Charlotte Corday who did not bother fleeing and was eventually tried and executed for his murder. You can’t see her here in the painting, but her name is also written on the piece of paper Marat holds, as he’s writing with his last breaths – a martyr for the Revolution.
Napoleon Crossing the Alps comes in at number three for David on Google, showing the breadth of his political alignment throughout his career and life – he aligned with the new ruler after being imprisoned.
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| Oath of the Horatii, 1784, Louvre |
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| Death of Marat, 1793, Royal Museums of the Fine Arts of Belgium |
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| Napoleon Crossing the Alps, 1800, Château de Malmaison |
And now it’s a happy art history Sunday!
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Oct 10, 2012 | art history, painting
Socrates had a theory about how we know things exist – I’ve been trying for a while to find a way to explain so it makes sense, but this excerpt from
HistoryforKids.org (not embarrassed:) breaks it down better than I could:
He thought that everything had a sort of ideal form, like the idea of a chair, and then an actual chair was a sort of poor imitation of the ideal chair that exists only in your mind. One of the ways Plato tried to explain his ideas was with the famous metaphor of the cave. He said, Suppose there is a cave, and inside the cave there are some men chained up to a wall, so that they can only see the back wall of the cave and nothing else. These men can’t see anything outside of the cave, or even see each other clearly, but they can see shadows of what is going on outside the cave. Wouldn’t these prisoners come to think that the shadows were real, and that was what things really looked like?
I like to think that art developed alongside this same kind of idea – beginning at creating exact replications of reality for documentation purposes, evolving and evolving into billions of beautiful interpretations until the invention of photography slingshot substantive art into billions of other possibilities, but all the other types – the Untitled’s with no beginning or ending or purpose now have an easy way out with clicks of technology.
A chair started out as just a chair and became interpretations of what a chair looked like – sometimes colorful sometimes abstracted – and then moved into the concept of sitting down, resting and comfort, and now has moved into realms of design, rethinking how we’re able to manipulate the construction of chairs in the first place.
I want to create a series out of this thought, posting artworks that focus on an item or idea and move from the most realistic to the most abstract representations of that thing in art, as we move chronologically. If you think I’m missing a work that belongs in the line – if I leave out your favorite representation of a char for instance – and you want me to add another piece to the post, send it on over!
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Van Gogh Chair, 1888-1889
for more works by Van Gogh, check out the Van Gogh Gallery here🙂 |
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| One and Three Chairs by Joseph Kosuth, 1965
This is another kind of concept along the same lines – how many ways can you represent the same thing? |
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“Kitchen Chair” by Küchenstuhl, 1965
found here
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Man in a Chair, 1983-5
A portrait of Baron Thyssen by Jean-Antoine Watteau
(from the Tate catalogue) found here
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Roy McMakin, paintings with chairs & sculptures of chairs, 2006, installation view
Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery, New York and James Harris Gallery, Seattle, Photo: Mark Woods
found here
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Rocking Wheel Chair By Mathias Koehler
found in this post with a lot of other cool chairs |
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