College of Art Knowledge

Pigment colors: Alizarin crimson

2012-03-07T09:56:00.002-08:00

From Wikipedia:
Alizarin or 1,2-dihydroxyanthraquinone (also known as Mordant Red 11 and Turkey Red) is an organic compound with formula C14H8O4 that has been used throughout history as a prominent dye, originally derived from the roots of plants of the madder genus.

Alizarin was used as a red dye for the English parliamentary New Model Army. The distinctive red color would continue to be worn for centuries (though also produced by other dyes such as cochineal), giving English and later British soldiers the nickname of "redcoat". In 1869, it became the first natural pigment to be duplicated synthetically.

Alizarin is the main ingredient for the manufacture of the madder lake pigments known to painters as Rose madder and Alizarin crimson. The term is also part of the name for a variety of related dyes, such as Alizarine Cyanine Green G and Alizarine Brilliant Blue R, and gave its name to alizarin crimson, a particular shade of red. The word derives from the Arabic al-usara "juice".

Occurrence
Alizarin occurs in the root of the common madder (Rubia tinctorum) and in various parts of Indian madder (Rubia cordifolia).

History
Madder has been cultivated as a dyestuff since antiquity in central Asia and Egypt, where it was grown as early as 1500 BC. Cloth dyed with madder root pigment was found in the tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun and in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Corinth. In the Middle Ages, Charlemagne encouraged madder cultivation. It grew well in the sandy soils of the Netherlands and became an important part of the local economy.

By 1804, the English dye maker George Field had refined the technique to lake madder by treating it with alum, and an alkali, that converts the water-soluble madder extract into a solid, insoluble pigment. This resulting madder lake has a longer-lasting color, and can be used more efficaciously, for example by blending it into a paint. Over the following years, it was found that other metal salts, including those containing iron, tin, and chromium, could be used in place of alum to give madder-based pigments of various other colors. This general method of preparing lakes has been known for centuries.

In 1826, the French chemist Pierre-Jean Robiquet found that madder root contained two colorants, the red alizarin and the more rapidly fading purpurin. The alizarin component became the first natural dye to be synthetically duplicated in 1868 when the German chemists Carl Graebe and Carl Liebermann, working for BASF, found a way to produce it from anthracene. About the same time, the English dye chemist William Henry Perkin independently discovered the same synthesis, although the BASF group filed their patent before Perkin by only one day. The subsequent discovery (made by Broenner and Gutzhow in 1871) that anthracene could be abstracted from coal tar further advanced the importance and affordability of alizarin's artificial synthesis.

The synthetic alizarin could be produced for a fraction of the cost of the natural product, and the market for madder collapsed virtually overnight. The principal synthesis entailed oxidation of anthraquinone-2-sulfonic acid with sodium nitrate in concentrated sodium hydroxide. Alizarin itself has been in turn Structure and properties
Alizarin is one of ten dihydroxyanthraquinone isomers. Its molecular structure can be viewed as being derived from anthraquinone by replacement of two neighboring hydrogen atoms (H) by hydroxyl groups (-OH).

It is soluble in hexane and chloroform, and can be obtained from the latter as red-purple crystals, m.p. 277–278 °C.

Alizarin changes color depending on the pH of the solution it is in, thereby making it a pH indicator.

Applications
Alizarin Red is used in a biochemical assay to determine, quantitatively by colorimetry, the presence of calcific deposition by cells of an osteogenic lineage. As such it is an early stage marker (days 10–16 of in vitro culture) of matrix mineralization, a crucial step towards the formation of calcified extracellular matrix associated with true bone.

Alizarin's abilities as a biological stain were first noted in 1567, when it was observed that when fed to animals, it stained their teeth and bones red. The chemical is now commonly used in medical studies involving calcium. Free (ionic) calcium forms precipitates with alizarin, and tissue block containing calcium stain red immediately when immersed in alizarin. Thus, both pure calcium and calcium in bones and other tissues can be stained. The process of staining calcium with alizarin works best when conducted in basic solution.

In clinical practice, it is used to stain synovial fluid to assess for basic calcium phosphate crystals. Alizarin has also been used in studies involving bone growth, osteoporosis, bone marrow, calcium deposits in the vascular system, cellular signaling, gene expression, tissue engineering, and mesenchymal stem cells.

In geology, it is used as a stain to indicate the calcium carbonate minerals, calcite and aragonite

Wednesday!

2012-03-05T11:31:00.000-08:00

I know I keep promising that I'm going to get back to a daily schedule of posts, and I know that weeks have gone by and there's been nothing regular about my schedule!

And I apologize! Stuff happens, abetted, I admit, by procrastination. There was a helluva lot of scanning of material I needed to do which I never did, and now I've got to get all that material back where it came from, so I've got 2 days of probably 12 hours a day spending my time scanning, and double checking to make sure I havne't missed any pages, etc.

So I'm going to spend the next 2 days doing that, will be all caught up on Wednesday, and will resume daily posts here.

And will finally have learned my lesson about procrastination - don't do it!

John Singer Sargeant

2012-02-08T14:15:00.000-08:00

John Singer Sargent (January 12, 1856 – April 14, 1925) was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings. His oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.

An American expatriate who was trained in Paris prior to moving to London, Sargent enjoyed international acclaim as a portrait painter, though not without controversy and some critical reservation; an early submission to the Paris Salon, his Portrait of Madame X was intended to consolidate his position as a society painter, but it resulted in scandal instead. From the beginning his work was characterized by remarkable technical facility, particularly in his ability to draw with a brush, which in later years inspired admiration as well as criticism for a supposed superficiality. His commissioned works were consistent with the Grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work, and devoted much of his energy to mural painting and working en plein air.

Early life
Before Sargent's birth, his father FitzWilliam (b. 1820 Gloucester, Massachusetts) was an eye surgeon at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia 1844-1854. After John's older sister died at the age of two, his mother Mary (née Singer) suffered a breakdown, and the couple decided to go abroad to recover. They remained nomadic expatriates for the rest of their lives.

Though based in Paris, Sargent's parents moved regularly with the seasons to the sea and the mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. While Mary was pregnant, they stopped in Florence, Italy because of a cholera epidemic. Sargent was born there in 1856. A year later, his sister Mary was born. After her birth, FitzWilliam reluctantly resigned his post in Philadelphia and accepted his wife's entreaties to remain abroad. They lived modestly on a small inheritance and savings, living a quiet life with their children. They generally avoided society and other Americans except for friends in the art world. Four more children were born abroad, of whom only two lived past childhood.

Though his father was a patient teacher of basic subjects, young Sargent was a rambunctious child, more interested in outdoor activities than his studies. As his father wrote home, "He is quite a close observer of animated nature." His mother was quite convinced that traveling around Europe, and visiting museums and churches, would give young Sargent a satisfactory education. Several attempts to have him formally schooled failed, owing mostly to their itinerant life. Sargent's mother was a fine amateur artist and his father was a skilled medical illustrator. Early on, she gave him sketchbooks and encouraged drawing excursions. Young Sargent worked with care on his drawings, and he enthusiastically copied images from The Illustrated London News of ships and made detailed sketches of landscapes. FitzWilliam had hoped that his son's interest in ships and the sea might lead him toward a naval career.

At thirteen, his mother reported that John "sketches quite nicely, & has a remarkably quick and correct eye. If we could afford to give him really good lessons, he would soon be quite a little artist." At age thirteen, he received some watercolor lessons from Carl Welsch, a German landscape painter. Though his education was far from complete, Sargent grew up to be a highly literate and cosmopolitan young man, accomplished in art, music, and literature. He was fluent in French, Italian, and German. At seventeen, Sargent was described as "willful, curious, determined and strong" (after his mother) yet shy, generous, and modest (after his father). He was well-acquainted with many of the great masters from first hand observation, as he wrote in 1874, "I have learned in Venice to admire Tintoretto immensely and to consider him perhaps second only to Michelangelo and Titian.

Continued tomorrow.

The Bauhaus

2012-02-01T12:07:00.000-08:00

From Wikipedia: The Staatliches Bauhaus, commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term About this sound Bauhaus, literally "house of construction" stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar. In spite of its name, and the fact that its founder was an architect, the Bauhaus did not have an architecture department during the first years of its existence. Nonetheless it was founded with the idea of creating a 'total' work of art in which all arts, including architecture would eventually be brought together. The Bauhaus style became one of the most influential currents in Modernist architecture and modern design. The Bauhaus had a profound influence upon subsequent developments in art, architecture, graphic design, interior design, industrial design, and typography.The school existed in three German cities (Weimar from 1919 to 1925, Dessau from 1925 to 1932 and Berlin from 1932 to 1933), under three different architect-directors: Walter Gropius from 1919 to 1928, Hannes Meyer from 1928 to 1930 and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe from 1930 until 1933, when the school was closed by its own leadership under pressure from the Nazi regime.The changes of venue and leadership resulted in a constant shifting of focus, technique, instructors, and politics. For instance: the pottery shop was discontinued when the school moved from Weimar to Dessau, even though it had been an important revenue source; when Mies van der Rohe took over the school in 1930, he transformed it into a private school, and would not allow any supporters of Hannes Meyer to attend it.Bauhaus and German modernismGermany's defeat in World War I, the fall of the German monarchy and the abolition of censorship under the new, liberal Weimar Republic allowed an upsurge of radical experimentation in all the arts, previously suppressed by the old regime. Many Germans of left-wing views were influenced by the cultural experimentation that followed the Russian Revolution, such as constructivism. Such influences can be overstated: Gropius himself did not share these radical views, and said that Bauhaus was entirely apolitical.Just as important was the influence of the 19th century English designer William Morris, who had argued that art should meet the needs of society and that there should be no distinction between form and function.Thus the Bauhaus style, also known as the International Style, was marked by the absence of ornamentation and by harmony between the function of an object or a building and its design.However, the most important influence on Bauhaus was modernism, a cultural movement whose origins lay as far back as the 1880s, and which had already made its presence felt in Germany before the World War, despite the prevailing conservatism. The design innovations commonly associated with Gropius and the Bauhaus—the radically simplified forms, the rationality and functionality, and the idea that mass-production was reconcilable with the individual artistic spirit—were already partly developed in Germany before the Bauhaus was founded. The German national designers' organization Deutscher Werkbund was formed in 1907 by Hermann Muthesius to harness the new potentials of mass production, with a mind towards preserving Germany's economic competitiveness with England. In its first seven years, the Werkbund came to be regarded as the authoritative body on questions of design in Germany, and was copied in other countries. Many fundamental questions of craftsmanship versus mass production, the relationship of usefulness and beauty, the practical purpose of formal beauty in a commonplace object, and whether or not a single proper form could exist, were argued out among its 1,870 members (by 1914).The entire movement of German architectural modernism was known as Neues Bauen. Beginning in June 1907, Peter Behrens' pioneering industrial design work for the German electrical company AEG successfully integrated art and mass production on a large scale. He designed consumer products, standardized parts, created clean-lined designs for the company's graphics, developed a consistent corporate identity, built the modernist landmark AEG Turbine Factory, and made full use of newly developed materials such as poured concrete and exposed steel. Behrens was a founding member of the Werkbund, and both Walter Gropius and Adolf Meier worked for him in this period.The Bauhaus was founded at a time when the German zeitgeist ("spirit of the times") had turned from emotional Expressionism to the matter-of-fact New Objectivity. An entire group of working architects, including Erich Mendelsohn, Bruno Taut and Hans Poelzig, turned away from fanciful experimentation, and turned toward rational, functional, sometimes standardized building. Beyond the Bauhaus, many other significant German-speaking architects in the 1920s responded to the same aesthetic issues and material possibilities as the school. They also responded to the promise of a "minimal dwelling" written into the new Weimar Constitution. Ernst May, Bruno Taut, and Martin Wagner, among others, built large housing blocks in Frankfurt and Berlin. The acceptance of modernist design into everyday life was the subject of publicity campaigns, well-attended public exhibitions like the Weissenhof Estate, films, and sometimes fierce public debate.Bauhaus and VkhutemasVkhutemas, the Russian state art and technical school founded in 1920 in Moscow, has been compared to Bauhaus. Founded a year after the Bauhaus school, Vkhutemas has close parallels to the German Bauhaus in its intent, organization and scope. The two schools were the first to train artist-designers in a modern manner. Both schools were state-sponsored initiatives to merge the craft tradition with modern technology, with a Basic Course in aesthetic principles, courses in color theory, industrial design, and architecture.Vkhutemas was a larger school than the Bauhaus, but it was less publicised outside the Soviet Union and consequently, is less familiar to the West.With the internationalism of modern architecture and design, there were many exchanges between the Vkhutemas and the Bauhaus The second Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer attempted to organise an exchange between the two schools, while Hinnerk Scheper of the Bauhaus collaborated with various Vkhutein members on the use of colour in architecture. In addition, El Lissitzky's book Russia: an Architecture for World Revolution published in German in 1930 featured several illustrations of Vkhutemas/Vkhutein projects there.History of the BauhausWeimarThe school was founded by Walter Gropius in Weimar in 1919 as a merger of the Grand Ducal School of Arts and Crafts and the Weimar Academy of Fine Art. Its roots lay in the arts and crafts school founded by the Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in 1906 and directed by Belgian Art Nouveau architect Henry van de Velde. When van de Velde was forced to resign in 1915 because he was Belgian, he suggested Gropius, Hermann Obrist and August Endell as possible successors. In 1919, after delays caused by the destruction of World War I and a lengthy debate over who should head the institution and the socio-economic meanings of a reconciliation of the fine arts and the applied arts (an issue which remained a defining one throughout the school's existence), Gropius was made the director of a new institution integrating the two called the Bauhaus.In the pamphlet for an April 1919 exhibition entitled "Exhibition of Unknown Architects", Gropius proclaimed his goal as being "to create a new guild of craftsmen, without the class distinctions which raise an arrogant barrier between craftsman and artist." Gropius' neologism Bauhaus references both building and the Bauhütte, a premodern guild of stonemasons.[10] The early intention was for the Bauhaus to be a combined architecture school, crafts school, and academy of the arts. In 1919 Swiss painter Johannes Itten, German-American painter Lyonel Feininger, and German sculptor Gerhard Marcks, along with Gropius, comprised the faculty of the Bauhaus. By the following year their ranks had grown to include German painter, sculptor and designer Oskar Schlemmer who headed the theater workshop, and Swiss painter Paul Klee, joined in 1922 by Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky. A tumultuous year at the Bauhaus, 1922 also saw the move of Dutch painter Theo van Doesburg to Weimar to promote De Stijl ("The Style"), and a visit to the Bauhaus by Russian Constructivist artist and architect El Lissitzky.From 1919 to 1922 the school was shaped by the pedagogical and aesthetic ideas of Johannes Itten, who taught the Vorkurs or 'preliminary course' that was the introduction to the ideas of the Bauhaus. Itten was heavily influenced in his teaching by the ideas of Franz Cižek and Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel. He was also influenced in respect to aesthetics by the work of the Blaue Reiter group in Munich as well as the work of Austrian Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka. The influence of German Expressionism favoured by Itten was analogous in some ways to the fine arts side of the ongoing debate. This influence culminated with the addition of Der Blaue Reiter founding member Wassily Kandinsky to the faculty and ended when Itten resigned in late 1922. Itten was replaced by the Hungarian designer László Moholy-Nagy, who rewrote the Vorkurs with a leaning towards the New Objectivity favored by Gropius, which was analogous in some ways to the applied arts side of the debate. Although this shift was an important one, it did not represent a radical break from the past so much as a small step in a broader, more gradual socio-economic movement that had been going on at least since 1907 when van de Velde had argued for a craft basis for design while Hermann Muthesius had begun implementing industrial prototypes.Gropius was not necessarily against Expressionism, and in fact himself in the same 1919 pamphlet proclaiming this "new guild of craftsmen, without the class snobbery," described "painting and sculpture rising to heaven out of the hands of a million craftsmen, the crystal symbol of the new faith of the future." By 1923 however, Gropius was no longer evoking images of soaring Romanesque cathedrals and the craft-driven aesthetic of the "Völkisch movement", instead declaring "we want an architecture adapted to our world of machines, radios and fast cars."Gropius argued that a new period of history had begun with the end of the war. He wanted to create a new architectural style to reflect this new era. His style in architecture and consumer goods was to be functional, cheap and consistent with mass production. To these ends, Gropius wanted to reunite art and craft to arrive at high-end functional products with artistic pretensions. The Bauhaus issued a magazine called Bauhaus and a series of books called "Bauhausbücher". Since the Weimar Republic lacked the quantity of raw materials available to the United States and Great Britain, it had to rely on the proficiency of a skilled labor force and an ability to export innovative and high quality goods. Therefore designers were needed and so was a new type of art education. The school's philosophy stated that the artist should be trained to work with the industry.Weimar was in the German state of Thuringia, and the Bauhaus school received state support from the Social Democrat-controlled Thuringian state government. From 1923 the school in Weimar came under political pressure from right-wing circles, until on 26 December 1924 it issued a press release accusing the government and setting the closure of the school for the end of March 1925.In February 1924, the Social Democrats lost control of the state parliament to the Nationalists. The Ministry of Education placed the staff on six-month contracts and cut the school's funding in half. They had already been looking for alternative sources of funding. After the Bauhaus moved to Dessau, a school of industrial design with teachers and staff less antagonistic to the conservative political regime remained in Weimar. This school was eventually known as the Technical University of Architecture and Civil Engineering, and in 1996 changed its name to Bauhaus-University Weimar.The Bauhaus DessauGropius's design for the Dessau facilities was a return to the futuristic Gropius of 1914 that had more in common with the International style lines of the Fagus Factory than the stripped down Neo-classical of the Werkbund pavilion or the Völkisch Sommerfeld House. The Dessau years saw a remarkable change in direction for the school. According to Elaine Hoffman, Gropius had approached the Dutch architect Mart Stam to run the newly-founded architecture program, and when Stam declined the position, Gropius turned to Stam's friend and colleague in the ABC group, Hannes Meyer.Meyer became director when Gropius resigned in February 1928, and brought the Bauhaus its two most significant building commissions, both of which still exist: five apartment buildings in the city of Dessau, and the headquarters of the Federal School of the German Trade Unions (ADGB) in Bernau. Meyer favored measurements and calculations in his presentations to clients, along with the use of off-the-shelf architectural components to reduce costs, and this approach proved attractive to potential clients. The school turned its first profit under his leadership in 1929.But Meyer also generated a great deal of conflict. As a radical functionalist, he had no patience with the aesthetic program, and forced the resignations of Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer, and other long-time instructors. As a vocal Communist, he encouraged the formation of a communist student organization. In the increasingly dangerous political atmosphere, this became a threat to the existence of the Dessau school. Gropius fired him in the summer of 1930.BerlinAlthough neither the Nazi Party nor Hitler himself had a cohesive architectural policy before they came to power in 1933, Nazi writers like Wilhelm Frick and Alfred Rosenberg had already labeled the Bauhaus "un-German" and criticized its modernist styles, deliberately generating public controversy over issues like flat roofs. Increasingly through the early 1930s, they characterized the Bauhaus as a front for communists and social liberals. Indeed, a number of communist students loyal to Meyer moved to the Soviet Union when he was fired in 1930.Even before the Nazis came to power, political pressure on Bauhaus had increased. The Nazi movement, from nearly the start, denounced the Bauhaus for its "degenerate art", and the Nazi regime was determined to crack down on what it saw as the foreign, probably Jewish influences of "cosmopolitan modernism." Despite Gropius's protestations that as a war veteran and a patriot his work had no subversive political intent, the Berlin Bauhaus was pressured to close in April 1933. Emigrants did succeed, however, in spreading the concepts of the Bauhaus to other countries, including the “New Bauhaus” of Chicago: Mies van der Rohe decided to emigrate to the United States for the directorship of the School of Architecture at the Armour Institute (now IIT) in Chicago and to seek building commissions.[a] Curiously, however, some Bauhaus influences lived on in Nazi Germany. When Hitler's chief engineer, Fritz Todt, began opening the new autobahn (highways) in 1935, many of the bridges and service stations were "bold examples of modernism" – among those submitting designs was Mies van der Rohe.The paradox of the early Bauhaus was that, although its manifesto proclaimed that the ultimate aim of all creative activity was building, the school did not offer classes in architecture until 1927. During the years under Gropius (1919–1927), he and his partner Adolf Meyer observed no real distinction between the output of his architectural office and the school. So the built output of Bauhaus architecture in these years is the output of Gropius: the Sommerfeld house in Berlin, the Otte house in Berlin, the Auerbach house in Jena, and the competition design for the Chicago Tribune Tower, which brought the school much attention. The definitive 1926 Bauhaus building in Dessau is also attributed to Gropius. Apart from contributions to the 1923 Haus am Horn, student architectural work amounted to un-built projects, interior finishes, and craft work like cabinets, chairs and pottery.In the next two years under Meyer, the architectural focus shifted away from aesthetics and towards functionality. There were major commissions: one from the city of Dessau for five tightly designed "Laubenganghäuser" (apartment buildings with balcony access), which are still in use today, and another for the headquarters of the Federal School of the German Trade Unions (ADGB) in Bernau bei Berlin. Meyer's approach was to research users' needs and scientifically develop the design solution.Mies van der Rohe repudiated Meyer's politics, his supporters, and his architectural approach. As opposed to Gropius's "study of essentials", and Meyer's research into user requirements, Mies advocated a "spatial implementation of intellectual decisions", which effectively meant an adoption of his own aesthetics. Neither van der Rohe nor his Bauhaus students saw any projects built during the 1930s.The popular conception of the Bauhaus as the source of extensive Weimar-era working housing is not accurate. Two projects, the apartment building project in Dessau and the Törten row housing also in Dessau, fall in that category, but developing worker housing was not the first priority of Gropius nor Mies. It was the Bauhaus contemporaries Bruno Taut, Hans Poelzig and particularly Ernst May, as the city architects of Berlin, Dresden and Frankfurt respectively, who are rightfully credited with the thousands of socially progressive housing units built in Weimar Germany. In Taut's case, the housing he built in south-west Berlin during the 1920s, is still occupied, and can be reached by going easily from the U-Bahn stop Onkel Toms Hütte.ImpactThe Bauhaus had a major impact on art and architecture trends in Western Europe, the United States, Canada and Israel (particularly in the White City of Tel Aviv) in the decades following its demise, as many of the artists involved fled, or were exiled, by the Nazi regime. Tel Aviv, in fact, in 2004 was named to the list of world heritage sites by the UN due to its abundance of Bauhaus architecture; it had some 4,000 Bauhaus buildings erected from 1933 on.Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, and László Moholy-Nagy re-assembled in Britain during the mid 1930s to live and work in the Isokon project before the war caught up with them. Both Gropius and Breuer went to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and worked together before their professional split. Their collaboration produced The Aluminum City Terrace in New Kensington, Pennsylvania and the Alan I W Frank House in Pittsburgh, among other projects. The Harvard School was enormously influential in America in the late 1920s and early 1930s, producing such students as Philip Johnson, I.M. Pei, Lawrence Halprin and Paul Rudolph, among many others.In the late 1930s, Mies van der Rohe re-settled in Chicago, enjoyed the sponsorship of the influential Philip Johnson, and became one of the pre-eminent architects in the world. Moholy-Nagy also went to Chicago and founded the New Bauhaus school under the sponsorship of industrialist and philanthropist Walter Paepcke. This school became the Institute of Design, part of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Printmaker and painter Werner Drewes was also largely responsible for bringing the Bauhaus aesthetic to America and taught at both Columbia University and Washington University in St. Louis. Herbert Bayer, sponsored by Paepcke, moved to Aspen, Colorado in support of Paepcke's Aspen projects at the Aspen Institute. In 1953, Max Bill, together with Inge Aicher-Scholl and Otl Aicher, founded the Ulm School of Design (German: Hochschule für Gestaltung – HfG Ulm) in Ulm, Germany, a design school in the tradition of the Bauhaus. The school is notable for its inclusion of semiotics as a field of study. The school closed in 1968, but the ′Ulm Model′ concept continues to influence international design education.One of the main objectives of the Bauhaus was to unify art, craft, and technology. The machine was considered a positive element, and therefore industrial and product design were important components. Vorkurs ("initial" or "preliminary course") was taught; this is the modern day "Basic Design" course that has become one of the key foundational courses offered in architectural and design schools across the globe. There was no teaching of history in the school because everything was supposed to be designed and created according to first principles rather than by following precedent.One of the most important contributions of the Bauhaus is in the field of modern furniture design. The ubiquitous Cantilever chair and the Wassily Chair designed by Marcel Breuer are two examples. (Breuer eventually lost a legal battle in Germany with Dutch architect/designer Mart Stam over the rights to the cantilever chair patent. Although Stam had worked on the design of the Bauhaus's 1923 exhibit in Weimar, and guest-lectured at the Bauhaus later in the 1920s, he was not formally associated with the school, and he and Breuer had worked independently on the cantilever concept, thus leading to the patent dispute.) The single most profitable tangible product of the Bauhaus was its wallpaper.The physical plant at Dessau survived World War II and was operated as a design school with some architectural facilities by the German Democratic Republic. This included live stage productions in the Bauhaus theater under the name of Bauhausbühne ("Bauhaus Stage"). After German reunification, a reorganized school continued in the same building, with no essential continuity with the Bauhaus under Gropius in the early 1920s. In 1979 Bauhaus-Dessau College started to organize postgraduate programs with participants from all over the world. This effort has been supported by the Bauhaus-Dessau Foundation which was founded in 1974 as a public institution.Bauhaus artistsBauhaus was not a formal group, but rather a school. Its three architect-directors (Walter Gropius, Hannes Meyer, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe) are most closely associated with Bauhaus.Furthermore a large number of outstanding artists of their time were lecturers at Bauhaus: * Anni Albers * Josef Albers * Herbert Bayer * Max Bill * Marianne Brandt * Marcel Breuer * Avgust Černigoj * Christian Dell * Werner Drewes * Lyonel Feininger * Naum Gabo * Ludwig Hilberseimer * Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack * Johannes Itten * Wassily Kandinsky * Paul Klee * Otto Lindig * Gerhard Marcks * László Moholy-Nagy * Piet Mondrian * Oskar Schlemmer * Lothar Schreyer * Joost Schmidt * Naum Slutzky * Gunta Stölzl

Art: Op Art

2012-01-24T00:01:00.000-08:00

From Wikipedia

Op art, also known as optical art, is a style of visual art that makes use of optical illusions.

"Optical art is a method of painting concerning the interaction between illusion and picture plane, between understanding and seeing." Op art works are abstract, with many of the better known pieces made in only black and white. When the viewer looks at them, the impression is given of movement, hidden images, flashing and vibration, patterns, or alternatively, of swelling or warping.

Historical context
Op art is derived from the constructivist practices of the Bauhaus. This German school, founded by Walter Gropius, stressed the relationship of form and function within a framework of analysis and rationality. Students were taught to focus on the overall design, or entire composition, in order to present unified works. When the Bauhaus was forced to close in 1933, many of its instructors fled to the United States where the movement took root in Chicago and eventually at the Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, where Anni and Josef Albers would come to teach.

Origin of "op"
The term first appeared in print in Time magazine in October 1964 in response to Julian Stanczak's show Optical Paintings at the Martha Jackson gallery, though works which might now be described as "op art" had been produced for several years previously. For instance, Victor Vasarely's painting, Zebras (1938), is made up entirely of curvilinear black and white stripes that are not contained by contour lines. Consequently, the stripes appear to both meld into and burst forth from the surrounding background of the composition. Also the early black and white Dazzle panels of John McHale installed at the This Is Tomorrow exhibit in 1956 and his Pandora series at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1962 demonstrate proto-op tendencies.

In the 1960s Arnold Schmidt (Arnold Alfred Schmidt) had several solo exhibitions of his large, black and white shaped optical paintings exhibited at the Terrain Gallery in New York. The term "Op" irritated many of the artists labeled under it, specifically including Albers and Stanczak. They had discussed upon the birth of the term a better label, namely perceptual art.

The Responsive Eye
In 1965, between February 23rd and April 25th an exhibition called The Responsive Eye, created by William C. Seitz was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The works shown were wide ranging, encompassing the minimalism of Frank Stella and Ellsworth Kelly, the smooth plasticity of Alexander Liberman, the collaborative efforts of the Anonima group, alongside the well-known Victor Vasarely, Richard Anuszkiewicz, and Bridget Riley. The exhibition focused on the perceptual aspects of art, which result both from the illusion of movement and the interaction of color relationships. The exhibition was enormously popular with the general public, though less so with the critics.[7] Critics dismissed op art as portraying nothing more than trompe l'oeil, or tricks that fool the eye. Regardless, op art's popularity with the public increased, and op art images were used in a number of commercial contexts. Bridget Riley tried to sue an American company, without success, for using one of her paintings as the basis of a fabric design.

The Op Art movement got a new lease of life in the first decade of the twenty-first century as new forms started once again emerging. In 2005, Indian artist, Devajyoti Ray started a new genre of art called Pseudorealism. Though the concept and the name of the movement was brought from the film-world, much of Pseudorealism depends on the intuitive use of colours and understanding the relationships between them.

How op art works
Black-and-white and the figure-ground relationship

Op art is a perceptual experience related to how vision functions. It is a dynamic visual art, stemming from a discordant figure-ground relationship that causes the two planes to be in a tense and contradictory juxtaposition. Op art is created in two primary ways. The first, and best known method, is the creation of effects through the use of pattern and line. Often these paintings are black-and-white, or otherwise grisaille, as in Bridget Riley's famous painting, Current (1964), on the cover of The Responsive Eye catalogue; here, black and white wavy lines are placed close to one another on the canvas surface, creating such a volatile figure-ground relationship that one's eyes begin to hurt.

Getulio Alviani chose aluminium surfaces, treated in order to create patterns of light which change as the watcher moves (vibrating texture surfaces). Another reaction that occurs is that the lines create after- images of certain colors due to how the retina receives and processes light. As Goethe demonstrates in his treatise Theory of Colours, at the edge where light and dark meet, color arises because lightness and darkness are the two central properties in the creation of color.

Color
Beginning in 1966 Bridget Riley began to produce color-based op art, however, other artists, such as Julian Stanczak and Richard Anuszkiewicz, were always interested in making color the primary focus of their work. Josef Albers taught these two primary practitioners of the "Color Function" school at Yale in the 1950s. Often, colorist work is dominated by the same concerns of figure-ground movement, but they have the added element of contrasting colors which have different effects on the eye. For instance, in Anuszkiewicz's "temple" paintings, the juxtaposition of two highly contrasting colors provokes a sense of depth in illusionistic three-dimensional space so that it appears as if the architectural shape is invading the viewer's space.

Stanczak's compositions tend to be the most complex of all of the color function practitioners. Taking his cue from Albers and his influential book Interaction of Color, Stanczak deeply investigates how color relationships work. "Stanczak created various spatial experiences with color and geometry; the latter is far easier to discuss. Color has no simple systematized equivalent. Indeed, there may be no way to describe it that is both meaningful and accurate. Descriptions of it (the color wheel or color solids, for example) are all necessary distortions. While color derives from the electromagnetic scale that corresponds to the magnitudes of energy expressed by musical pitch, in fact, the neurological occidentals by which we experience color make it seem multidimensional, while musical pitch (not timbre, volume, or duration) is experienced as a linear relationship...Stanczak's 'gift is for layering. He arranges transparent patterns upon patterns so that you see through them as gauziest screens, each one seeming to fold as if it moves.'"

Color interaction
There are three major classes of the interaction of color: simultaneous contrast, successive contrast, and reverse contrast (or assimilation).

(1) Simultaneous contrast may take place when one area of color is surrounded by another area of a different color. In general, contrast enhances the difference in brightness and/or color between the interacting areas...Such contrast effects are mutual, but if the surround area is larger and more intense than the area it encloses, then the contrast is correspondingly out of balance, any may appear to be exerted in one direction only.

(ii) In successive contrast, first one color is viewed and then another. This may be achieved either by fixing the eye steadily on one color and then quickly replacing that color with another, or by shifting fixation from one color to another.

(iii) In reverse contrast (sometimes called the assimilation of color or the spreading effect) the lightness of white or the darkness of black may seem to spread into neighboring regions. Similarly, colors may appear to spread into or become assimilated into neighboring areas. All such effects tend to make neighboring areas appear more alike, rather than to enhance their differences as in the more familiar simultaneous contrast, hence the term reverse contrast (Jameson and Hurvich, 1974). Note that in the interaction of color the constituent colors retain much of the own identity even though they may be altered somewhat by contrast.

Exhibitions
* L'oeil Moteur, art optique et cinetique 1960-1975, Musee D'Art Moderne et Contemporain, Strasbourg, France, May 13–September 25, 2005.
* Op Art, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany, February 17–May 20, 2007.
* The Optical Edge, The Pratt Institute of Art, New York, March 8–April 14, 2007.
* Optic Nerve: Perceptual Art of the 1960s, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, Ohio, February 16–June 17, 2007.
* CLE OP: Cleveland Op Art Pioneers, Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio, April 9,2011—February 26, 2012

Additionally, Bridget Riley has had several international exhibitions in recent years (e.g. Dia Center, New York, 2000; Tate Britain, London, 2003; Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2004).
[edit] Photographic op art

Although being relatively mainstream, photographers have been slow to produce op art. In painting, Victor Vasarely and Bridget Riley were producing large amounts of art and the same can be said for many digital artists, such as Kitaoka. One of the primary reasons for the lack of photographers doing op art, is the difficulty in finding effective subject matter. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, however, produced photographic op art and taught the subject in the Bauhaus. One of his lessons consisted of making his students produce holes in cards and then photographing them.
[edit] Artists known for their op art

* Yaacov Agam
* Josef Albers
* Richard Allen
* Getulio Alviani
* Anonima group
* Richard Anuszkiewicz
* Carlos Cruz-Díez
* Tony DeLap
* Günter Fruhtrunk
* Julio Le Parc
* Heinz Mack
* John McHale
* Youri Messen-Jaschin
* Reginald H. Neal
* Andreas Nottebohm
* Bridget Riley
* Jesús Rafael Soto
* Omar Rayo
* Arnold Alfred Schmidt
* Julian Stanczak
* Günther Uecker
* Victor Vasarely
* Ludwig Wilding
* Marian Zazeela

Titian

2012-01-16T15:00:00.000-08:00

Titian self-portrait, c.1567; Museo del Prado, Madrid

Tiziano Vecelli or Tiziano Vecellio (c. 1488/1490 – 27 August 1576 known in English as Titian was an Italian painter, the most important member of the 16th-century Venetian school. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno (in Veneto), in the Republic of Venice. During his lifetime he was often called da Cadore, taken from the place of his birth.

Recognized by his contemporaries as "The Sun Amidst Small Stars" (recalling the famous final line of Dante's Paradiso), Titian was one of the most versatile of Italian painters, equally adept with portraits, landscape backgrounds, and mythological and religious subjects. His painting methods, particularly in the application and use of color, would exercise a profound influence not only on painters of the Italian Renaissance, but on future generations of Western art.

During the course of his long life, Titian's artistic manner changed drastically but he retained a lifelong interest in color. Although his mature works may not contain the vivid, luminous tints of his early pieces, their loose brushwork and subtlety of polychromatic modulations are without precedent in the history of Western art.

Biography
Early years
The exact date of Titian's birth is uncertain; when he was an old man he claimed in a letter to Philip II to have been born in 1474, but this seems most unlikely. Other writers contemporary to his old age give figures which would equate to birthdates between 1473 to after 1482, but most modern scholars believe a date nearer 1490 is more likely; the Metropolitan Museum of Art's timeline supports c.1488, as does the Getty Research Institute.

He was the eldest son of Gregorio Vecelli and his wife Lucia. His father was superintendent of the castle of Pieve di Cadore and managed local mines for their owners. Gregorio was also a distinguished councilor and soldier. Many relatives, including Titian's grandfather, were notaries, and the family of four were well-established in the area, which was ruled by Venice.

At the age of about ten to twelve he and his brother Francesco (who perhaps followed later) were sent to an uncle in Venice to find an apprenticeship with a painter. The minor painter Sebastian Zuccato, whose sons became well-known mosaicists, and who may have been a family friend, arranged for the brothers to enter the studio of the elderly Gentile Bellini, from which they later transferred to that of his brother Giovanni Bellini.

At that time the Bellinis, especially Giovanni, were the leading artists in the city. There Titian found a group of young men about his own age, among them Giovanni Palma da Serinalta, Lorenzo Lotto, Sebastiano Luciani, and Giorgio da Castelfranco, nicknamed Giorgione. Francesco Vecellio, his older brother, later became a painter of some note in Venice.

A fresco of Hercules on the Morosini Palace is said to have been one of Titian's earliest works; others were the Bellini-esque so-called Gypsy Madonna in Vienna, and the Visitation of Mary and Elizabeth (from the convent of S. Andrea), now in the Accademia, Venice.

Titian joined Giorgione as an assistant, but many contemporary critics already found his work more impressive, for example in the exterior frescoes (now almost totally destroyed) that they did for the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (state-warehouse for the German merchants), and their relationship evidently had a significant element of rivalry. Distinguishing between their work at this period remains a subject of scholarly controversy, and there has been a substantial movement of attributions from Giorgione to Titian in the 20th century, with little traffic the other way.

One of the earliest known works of Titian, Christ Carrying the Cross in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, depicting the Ecce Homo scene, was long regarded as the work of Giorgione.

The two young masters were likewise recognized as the two leaders of their new school of arte moderna, which is characterized by paintings made more flexible, freed from symmetry and the remnants of hieratic conventions still to be found in the works of Giovanni Bellini.

In 1507–1508 Giorgione was commissioned by the state to create frescoes on the re-erected Fondaco dei Tedeschi. Titian and Morto da Feltre worked along with him, and some fragments of paintings remain, probably by Giorgione. Some of their work is known, in part, through the engravings of Fontana. After Giorgione's early death in 1510, Titian continued to paint Giorgionesque subjects for some time, though his style developed its own features, including bold and expressive brushwork.

From Padua in 1512, Titian returned to Venice; and in 1513 he obtained a broker's patent, termed La Sanseria or Senseria (a privilege much coveted by rising or risen artists), in the Fondaco dei Tedeschi and became superintendent of the government works, being especially charged to complete the paintings left unfinished by Giovanni Bellini in the hall of the great council in the ducal palace. He set up an atelier on the Grand Canal at S. Samuele, the precise site being now unknown. It was not until 1516, after the death of Giovanni Bellini, that he came into actual enjoyment of his patent. At the same time he entered an exclusive arrangement for painting. The patent yielded him a good annuity of 20 crowns and exempted him from certain taxes—he being bound in return to paint likenesses of the successive Doges of his time at the fixed price of eight crowns each. The actual number he painted was five.

Growth
It took Titian two years (1516–1518) to complete his Assunta, whose dynamic three-tier composition and color scheme established him as the preeminent painter north of Rome.

During this period (1516–1530), which may be called the period of his mastery and maturity, the artist moved on from his early Giorgionesque style, undertook larger and more complex subjects and for the first time attempted a monumental style. Giorgione died in 1510 and Giovanni Bellini in 1516, leaving Titian unrivaled in the Venetian School. For sixty years he was to be the undisputed master of Venetian painting. In 1516 he completed for the high altar of the church of the Frari, his famous masterpiece, the Assumption of the Virgin, still in situ. This extraordinary piece of colorism, executed on a grand scale rarely before seen in Italy, created a sensation. The Signoria took note, and observed that Titian was neglecting his work in the hall of the great council, but in 1516 he succeeded his master Giovanni Bellini in receiving a pension from the Senate.

The pictorial structure of the Assumption—that of uniting in the same composition two or three scenes superimposed on different levels, earth and heaven, the temporal and the infinite — was continued in a series of works such as the retable of San Domenico at Ancona (1520), the retable of Brescia (1522), and the retable of San Niccolò (1523), in the Vatican Museum), each time attaining to a higher and more perfect conception, finally reaching a classic formula in the Pesaro Madonna, (better known as the Madonna di Ca' Pesaro) (c. 1519–1526), also for the Frari church. This perhaps is his most studied work, whose patiently developed plan is set forth with supreme display of order and freedom, originality and style. Here Titian gave a new conception of the traditional groups of donors and holy persons moving in aerial space, the plans and different degrees set in an architectural framework.

Titian was now at the height of his fame, and towards 1521, following the production of a figure of St. Sebastian for the papal legate in Brescia (a work of which there are numerous replicas), purchasers pressed for his work.

To this period belongs a more extraordinary work, The Death of St. Peter Martyr (1530), formerly in the Dominican Church of San Zanipolo, and destroyed by an Austrian shell in 1867. Only copies and engravings of this proto-Baroque picture remain; it combined extreme violence and a landscape, mostly consisting of a great tree, that pressed into the scene and seems to accentuate the drama in a way that looks forward to the Baroque.

The artist simultaneously continued his series of small Madonnas which he treated amid beautiful landscapes in the manner of genre pictures or poetic pastorals, the Virgin with the Rabbit in the Louvre being the finished type of these pictures. Another work of the same period, also in the Louvre, is the Entombment. This was also the period of the three large and famous mythological scenes for the camerino of Alfonso d'Este in Ferrara, The Andrians and the Worship of Venus in the Prado, and the Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–23) in London,"...perhaps the most brilliant productions of the neo-pagan culture or "Alexandrianism" of the Renaissance, many times imitated but never surpassed even by Rubens himself."

Finally this was the period when the artist composed the half-length figures and busts of young women, probably courtesans, such as Flora of the Uffizi, or Woman at the Mirror in the Louvre (the scientific images of this painting are available, with explanations, on the website of the French Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France).

Titian's wife, Cecilia—a barber's daughter from his hometown village of Cadore—was a young woman who had been his housekeeper and mistress for some five years. Cecilia had already borne Titian two fine sons, Pomponio and Orazio, when in 1525 she fell seriously ill. Titian, wishing to legitimize the children, married her. The marriage was a happy one and Cecilia recovered and bore him two more children, both daughters. Only one of them, Lavinia, survived. Titian's favorite child was Orazio, who became his assistant.

In August 1530 his wife died giving birth to daughter Lavinia, and with his two boys plus infant girl he moved house, and convinced his sister Orsa to come from Cadore and take charge of the household. The mansion, difficult to find now, is in the Biri Grande, then a fashionable suburb, at the extreme end of Venice, on the sea, with beautiful gardens and a view towards Murano. In about 1526 he had became acquainted, and soon intimate, with Pietro Aretino, the influential and audacious figure who features so strangely in the chronicles of the time. Titian sent a portrait of him to Gonzaga, duke of Mantua.

Maturity
During the next period (1530–1550), Titian developed the style introduced by his dramatic Death of St. Peter Martyr. The Venetian government, dissatisfied with Titian's neglect of the work for the ducal palace, ordered him in 1538 to refund the money which he had received, and Pordenone, his rival of recent years, was installed in his place. However, at the end of a year Pordenone died, and Titian, who meanwhile applied himself diligently to painting in the hall the Battle of Cadore, was reinstated. This major battle scene was lost along with so many other major works by Venetian artists by the great fire which destroyed all the old pictures in the great chambers of the Doge's Palace in 1577.

It represented in life-size the moment at which the Venetian general, D'Alviano attacked the enemy with horses and men crashing down into a stream, and was the artist's most important attempt at a tumultuous and heroic scene of movement to rival Raphael's Battle of Constantine and the equally ill-fated Battle of Cascina of Michelangelo and The Battle of Anghiari of Leonardo (both unfinished). There remains only a poor, incomplete copy at the Uffizi, and a mediocre engraving by Fontana. The Speech of the Marquis del Vasto (Madrid, 1541) was also partly destroyed by fire. But this period of the master's work is still represented by the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin (Venice, 1539), one of his most popular canvasses, and by the Ecce Homo (Vienna, 1541). Despite its loss, the painting had a great influence on Bolognese art and Rubens, both in the handling of details and the general effect of horses, soldiers, lictors, powerful stirrings of crowds at the foot of a stairway, lit by torches with the flapping of banners against the sky.

Titian's unmatched handling of color is exemplified by his Danaë with Nursemaid, one of several mythological paintings, or "poesie" ("poems") as the painter called them, done for Philip II of Spain. Although Michelangelo adjudged this piece deficient from the point of view of drawing, Titian and his studio produced several versions for other patrons.

Less successful were the pendentives of the cupola at Santa Maria della Salute (Death of Abel, Sacrifice of Abraham, David and Goliath). These violent scenes viewed in perspective from below—like the famous pendentives of the Sistine Chapel Ceiling—were by their very nature in unfavorable situations. They were nevertheless much admired and imitated, Rubens among others applying this system to his forty ceilings (the sketches only remain) of the Jesuit church at Antwerp.

At this time also, during his visit to Rome, the artist began his series of reclining Venuses (The Venus of Urbino of the Uffizi, Venus and Love at the same museum, Venus and the Organ-Player, Madrid), in which is recognized the effect or the direct reflection of the impression produced on the master by contact with ancient sculpture. Giorgione had already dealt with the subject in his Dresden picture, finished by Titian, but here a purple drapery substituted for a landscape background changed, by its harmonious coloring, the whole meaning of the scene.

Titian had from the beginning of his career shown himself to be a masterful portrait-painter, in works like La Bella (Eleanora de Gonzaga, Duchess of Urbino, at the Pitti Palace). He painted the likenesses of princes, or Doges, cardinals or monks, and artists or writers. "...no other painter was so successful in extracting from each physiognomy so many traits at once characteristic and beautiful", according to The Catholic Encyclopedia. Among portrait-painters Titian is compared to Rembrandt and Velázquez, with the interior life of the former, and the clearness, certainty, and obviousness of the latter.

Titian's state portrait of Emperor Charles V (1548) at Mühlberg established a new genre, that of the grand equestrian portrait. The composition is steeped both in the Roman tradition of equestrian sculpture and in the medieval representations of an ideal Christian knight, but the weary figure and face have a subtlety few such representations attempt.

The last-named qualities are sufficiently manifested in the Portrait of Paul III of Naples, or the sketch of the same pope and his two nephews, the Portrait of Aretino of the Pitti Palace, the Eleanora of Portugal (Madrid), and the series of Emperor Charles V of the same museum, the Charles V with a Greyhound (1533), and especially the Equestrian Portrait of Charles V (1548), an equestrian picture which as a symphony of purples is perhaps the ne plus ultra of the art of painting. In 1532 after painting a portrait of the emperor Charles V in Bologna he was made a Count Palatine and knight of the Golden Spur. His children were also made nobles of the Empire, which for a painter was an exceptional honor.

The Rape of Europa (1562) is a bold diagonal composition which was admired and copied by Rubens. In contrast to the clarity of Titian's early works, it is almost baroque in its blurred lines, swirling colors, and vibrant brushstrokes.

As a matter of professional and worldly success his position from about this time is regarded as equal only to that of Raphael, Michelangelo, and at a later date Rubens. In 1540 he received a pension from D'Avalos, marquis del Vasto, and an annuity of 200 crowns (which was afterwards doubled) from Charles V from the treasury of Milan. Another source of profit, for he was always aware of money, was a contract obtained in 1542 for supplying grain to Cadore, where he visited almost every year and where he was both generous and influential.

Titian had a favorite villa on the neighboring Manza Hill (in front of the church of Castello Roganzuolo) from which (it may be inferred) he made his chief observations of landscape form and effect. The so-called Titian's mill, constantly discernible in his studies, is at Collontola, near Belluno.

He visited Rome in 1546, and obtained the freedom of the city—his immediate predecessor in that honor having been Michelangelo in 1537. He could at the same time have succeeded the painter Sebastiano del Piombo in his lucrative office as holder of the piombo or Papal seal, and he was prepared to take holy orders for the purpose; but the project lapsed through his being summoned away from Venice in 1547 to paint Charles V and others in Augsburg. He was there again in 1550, and executed the portrait of Philip II which was sent to England and proved useful in Philip's suit for the hand of Queen Mary.

Final years
The Death of Actaeon. In Titian's later works, the forms lose their solidity and melt into the lush texture of shady, shimmering colors and unsettling atmospheric effects. In addition to energetic brushwork, Titian was said to put paint on with his fingers toward the completion of a painting.

During the last twenty-six years of his life (1550–1576) the artist worked mainly for Philip II and as a portrait-painter. He became more self-critical, an insatiable perfectionist, keeping some pictures in his studio for ten years, never wearying of returning to them and retouching them, constantly adding new expressions at once more refined, concise, and subtle. He also finished off many copies of earlier works of his by his pupils, giving rise to many problems of attribution and priority among versions of his works, which were also very widely copied and faked outside his studio, during his lifetime and afterwards.

For Philip II he painted a series of large mythological paintings known as the "poesie", mostly from Ovid, which are regarded as among his greatest works. Thanks to the prudishness of Philip's successors, these were later mostly given as gifts and only two remain in the Prado. Titian was producing religious works for Philip at the same time. The "poesie" series began with Venus and Adonis, of which the original is in the Prado, but several versions exist, and Danaë, both sent to Philip in 1553.

Diana and Actaeon and Diana and Callisto, were despatched in 1559, then Perseus and Andromeda (Wallace Collection, now damaged) and the Rape of Europa (Boston, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum), delivered in 1562. The Death of Actaeon was begun in 1559 but worked on for many years, and never completed or delivered.

Another painting that apparently remained in his studio at his death, and has been much less well known until recent decades, is the powerful, even "repellant", Flaying of Marsyas (Kroměříž, Czech Republic) Another violent masterpiece is the Tarquin and Lucretia (Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum).

For each of the problems which he successively undertook he furnished a new and more perfect formula. He never again equaled the emotion and tragedy of the The Crowning with Thorns (Louvre), in the expression of the mysterious and the divine he never equaled the poetry of the Pilgrims of Emmaus, while in superb and heroic brilliancy he never again executed anything more grand than The Doge Grimani adoring Faith (Venice, Doge's Palace), or the Trinity, of Madrid. On the other hand from the standpoint of flesh tints, his most moving pictures are those of his old age, such as the poesie and the Antiope of the Louvre. He even attempted problems of chiaroscuro in fantastic night effects (Martyrdom of St. Laurence, Church of the Jesuits, Venice; St. Jerome, Louvre; Crucifixion, Church of San Domenico, Ancona).

Titian had engaged his daughter Lavinia, the beautiful girl whom he loved deeply and painted various times, to Cornelio Sarcinelli of Serravalle. She had succeeded her aunt Orsa, then deceased, as the manager of the household, which, with the lordly income that Titian made by this time, placed her on a corresponding footing. The marriage took place in 1554. She died in childbirth in 1560.

Like numerous of his late works, Titian's last painting, the Pietà, is a dramatic scene of suffering in a nocturnal setting. It was apparently intended for his own tomb chapel.

He was at the Council of Trent towards 1555, of which there is a finished sketch in the Louvre. Titian's friend Aretino died suddenly in 1556, and another close intimate, the sculptor and architect Jacopo Sansovino, in 1570. In September 1565 Titian went to Cadore and designed the decorations for the church at Pieve, partly executed by his pupils. One of these is a Transfiguration, another an Annunciation (now in S. Salvatore, Venice), inscribed Titianus fecit, by way of protest (it is said) against the disparagement of some persons who caviled at the veteran's failing handicraft.

Around 1560 Titian painted the oil on canvas Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria, a derivative on the motif of Madonna and Child. It is suggested that members of Titian's Venice workshop probably painted the curtain and Luke, because of the lower quality of those parts.

He continued to accept commissions to the end of his life. He had selected as the place for his burial the chapel of the Crucifix in the Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, the church of the Franciscan Order; in return for a grave, he offered the Franciscans a picture of the Pietà, representing himself and his son Orazio before the Savior, another figure in the composition being a sibyl. This work he nearly finished, but some differences arose regarding it, and he then settled to be interred in his native Pieve.

Titian was (depending on his unknown birthdate—see above) probably in his late eighties when the plague raging in Venice took him on 27 August 1576. He was the only victim of the Venice plague to be given a church burial. He was interred in the Frari (Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari), as at first intended, and his Pietà was finished by Palma the Younger. He lies near his own famous painting, the Madonna di Ca' Pesaro. No memorial marked his grave, until much later the Austrian rulers of Venice commissioned Canova to provide the large monument.

Immediately after Titian's own death, his son and assistant Orazio died of the same epidemic. His sumptuous mansion was plundered during the plague by thieves.

Printmaking

Titian himself never attempted engraving, but he was very conscious of the importance of printmaking as a means of further expanding his reputation. In the period 1517–1520 he designed a number of woodcuts, including an enormous and impressive one of The Crossing of the Red Sea, and collaborated with Domenico Campagnola and others, who produced further prints based on his paintings and drawings. Much later he provided drawings based on his paintings to Cornelius Cort from the Netherlands who engraved them. Martino Rota followed Cort from about 1558 to 1568.

Family
The Allegory of Age Governed by Prudence (c. 1565–1570) is thought to depict Titian, his son Orazio, and a young cousin, Marco Vecellio.

Several other artists of the Vecelli family followed in the wake of Titian. Francesco Vecellio, his elder brother, was introduced to painting by Titian (it is said at the age of twelve, but chronology will hardly admit of this), and painted in the church of S. Vito in Cadore a picture of the titular saint armed. This was a noteworthy performance, of which Titian (the usual story) became jealous; so Francesco was diverted from painting to soldiering, and afterwards to mercantile life.

Marco Vecellio, called Marco di Tiziano, Titian's nephew, born in 1545, was constantly with the master in his old age, and learned his methods of work. He has left some able productions in the ducal palace, the Meeting of Charles V. and Clement VII. in 1529 ; in S. Giacomo di Rialto, an Annunciation ; in SS. Giovani e Paolo, Christ Fulminant. A son of Marco, named Tiziano (or Tizianello), painted early in the 17th century.

From a different branch of the family came Fabrizio di Ettore, a painter who died in 1580. His brother Cesare, who also left some pictures, is well known by his book of engraved costumes, Abiti antichi e moderni. Tommaso Vecelli, also a painter, died in 1620. There was another relative, Girolamo Dante, who, being a scholar and assistant of Titian, was called Girolamo di Tiziano. Various pictures of his were touched up by the master, and are difficult to distinguish from originals.

Few of the pupils and assistants of Titian became well known in their own right; for some being his assistant was probably a lifetime career. Paris Bordone and Bonifazio Veronese were his assistants during at some point in their careers. Giulio Clovio said Titian employed El Greco (or Dominikos Theotokopoulos) in his last years.

Present day
The Flaying of Marsyas, little known until recent decades, Gallery in Kroměříž - Czech Republic

Two of Titian's works in private hands have been up for sale. One of these works, Diana and Actaeon, was purchased by London's National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland on 2 February 2009 for ₤50 million ($71 million). The galleries had until 31 December 2008 to make the purchase before the work would be offered to private collectors, but the deadline was extended. The other painting, Diana and Callisto, will be up for sale for the same amount until 2012 before it is offered to private collectors.

The sale has created controversy with politicians who said "the money, some of which came from government funds, could have been spent more wisely during a deepening recession." The Scottish government offered ₤12.5 million and ₤10 million came from the National Heritage Memorial Fund. The rest of the money came from the National Galleries in London and from private donations.

In 2011, A Sacra Conversazione: The Madonna and Child with Saints Luke and Catherine of Alexandria, was put for an auction at Sotheby's, and it was sold on 28. January 2011 for $16.9 million.

On 11 February 2009, an argument about Titian's age at death arose between British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and Leader of the Opposition David Cameron at Prime Minister's Questions, where Cameron was attempting to ridicule Brown's general factual accuracy. This debate spilt over onto Titian's entry on Wikipedia, when an editor from Conservative Party HQ altered Titian's dates to substantiate David Cameron's claim and then directed the BBC to the article for them to use as verification. Cameron later apologized and said the staff member had been "disciplined". The precise date of Titian's birth is uncertain (see above).

The reference was to Brown's comment on 30 January 2009 to the World Economic Forum in Davos:

This is the first financial crisis of the global age, and there is no clear map that has been set out from past experience to deal with it. I'm reminded of the story of Titian, who's the great painter who reached the age of 90, finished the last of his nearly 100 brilliant paintings, and he said at the end of it, "I'm finally beginning to learn how to paint", and that is where we are.

Rembrandt Van Rijn pt 1

2012-01-12T22:00:00.000-08:00

self portrait

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669) was a Dutch painter and etcher. He is generally considered one of the greatest painters and printmakers in European art history and the most important in Dutch history. His contributions to art came in a period of great wealth and cultural achievement that historians call the Dutch Golden Age, when Dutch Golden Age painting, although in many ways antithetical to the Baroque style that dominated Europe, was extremely prolific and innovative.

Having achieved youthful success as a portrait painter, Rembrandt's later years were marked by personal tragedy and financial hardships. Yet his etchings and paintings were popular throughout his lifetime, his reputation as an artist remained high, and for twenty years he taught many important Dutch painters. Rembrandt's greatest creative triumphs are exemplified especially in his portraits of his contemporaries, self-portraits and illustrations of scenes from the Bible. His self-portraits form a unique and intimate biography, in which the artist surveyed himself without vanity and with the utmost sincerity.

In his paintings and prints he exhibited knowledge of classical iconography, which he molded to fit the requirements of his own experience; thus, the depiction of a biblical scene was informed by Rembrandt's knowledge of the specific text, his assimilation of classical composition, and his observations of Amsterdam's Jewish population. Because of his empathy for the human condition, he has been called "one of the great prophets of civilization."

Australia: Art's a steal at Christmas time

2011-12-27T09:49:00.000-08:00

From Adelaide Now: Art's a steal at Christmas time
INSTEAD of considering what they've got for Christmas, some art collectors discover just what they've lost.

Christmas has proved an excellent season for great art thefts over the years, prompting the Art Loss Register to put together a list of treasures stolen while everyone was celebrating Christmas. The register is an international agency that tracks down missing artworks.

On Christmas Eve 1985, in Mexico City's National Museum of Anthropology, 140 Mayan and Aztec objects were stolen. That was when the museum discovered its alarm system had not been working for three years. About $40 million of gold and objects are still missing.

On New Year's Eve 1999, a thief cut a hole in the roof of the Ashmolean museum in Oxford, England, and climbed down a rope ladder, timing his break-in with celebratory fireworks for the new millennium to drown out any sounds. The thief made off with a $5 million painting by Paul Cezanne entitled View of Auvers-sur-Oise.

In 2002, Christmas thieves at Amsterdam's Van Gogh Museum stole a pair of his paintings after entering through the roof. They set off the alarm system but were gone by the time police arrived. The paintings have never been recovered.

Thieves in La Paz, Bolivia, decided to strip more than 100 religious artefacts from the Church of San Andres De Machaca on Christmas Eve. Art Loss Register has recovered two of the most valuable paintings.

Lord Elgin at Christmas 1798 set in motion a plan to record the Parthenon Marbles by taking plaster casts of them. When he discovered originals that fell off the Parthenon were being used for lime burning, he decided he would take the originals instead. The Elgin Marbles ended up in the British Museum, and the Greek Government is still arguing for their return.

The Art Loss Register says notable examples of stolen Christmas-themed artworks include Caravaggio's Nativity from a Palermo church in 1969. The painting, by one of Italy's greatest old masters, is valued in the tens of millions of dollars and never has been found. It is believed to be in the hands of the Mafia, although one informer says it was eaten by rats and pigs while hidden on a farm.

England: Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Stolen from Dulwich Park

2011-12-27T09:45:00.000-08:00

From Sudan Vision: Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Stolen from Dulwich Park

A Barbara Hepworth sculpture which is insured for £500,000 has been stolen by suspected scrap metal thieves from Dulwich Park in south London.
The bronze piece, called Two Forms (Divided Circle), was cut from its plinth overnight, Trevor Moore of Dulwich Park Friends said.

The price it could fetch as scrap metal would only be a tiny fraction of its value as a complete work.

Southwark Council is offering a reward for the thieves' arrest and conviction.
Mr Moore said it was thought they broke into the park through a gate off the South Circular.

'Sickening epidemic'
The piece was designed in 1969 and has been in the park since 1970.

A Southwark Council spokesman said it had been insured for £500,000.

A Hepworth piece from a collection in Bangor, north-west Wales, sold at Sotheby's last year for £445,250, nearly three times its pre-sale estimate.

Peter John, leader of Southwark Council, said: "The theft of this important piece of 20th Century public art from Dulwich Park is devastating.

"The theft of public art and metal is becoming a sickening epidemic.

"I would ask the Met Police and their metal theft task force to investigate this theft as a matter of urgency and would ask anyone with any information about the whereabouts of the sculpture to contact us or the police."

Barbara Hepworth was one of the 20th Century's most accomplished sculptors.

After meeting fellow artist Henry Moore at art college in Leeds, the two young students went on to create an international alliance with some of the world's leading artists including Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brancusi. This led to the moment when British sculpture joined the international avant-garde.

Hepworth's modernist abstract sculptures were inspired by the rolling hills of the West Riding where she was brought up. Her great innovation was to pierce the sculptural form; to make a hole right through the body of the sculpture.

Within months, Moore was doing the same and a new language for sculpture was created which continues to reverberate today.

The work that has been taken is a very good example of the revolutionary aesthetic style she developed.

Simon Wallis, director of the Hepworth Wakefield, a gallery which celebrates the work of the renowned sculptor, said: "There's no doubt it is a very significant work from the latter part of her career.

"This piece from 1970 was one of those powerful monumental late bronzes.
"It's an important piece and a very beautiful piece, and beautiful to see it in that outdoor setting.

"That's one of the reasons it's so sad that someone's whipped it for the scrap metal. It will be irreplaceable."

Southwark Council is offering a reward of £1,000 for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the thieves.

The theft comes a day after Scotland Yard launched its first dedicated unit to tackle the growing problem of metal thefts.

The crime is believed to cost about £700m a year.

Dame Barbara Hepworth, who died in 1975 in a fire at her studio in St Ives, Cornwall, is considered to be one of the UK's most important modern sculptors, with her work displayed in museums and public spaces around the world.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

2011-12-24T08:10:00.001-08:00

Regular blog postings begin on DECEMBER 26, Monday.

The man who saved The Resurrection

2011-12-23T21:23:00.000-08:00

From BBC News: The man who saved The Resurrection
A chance discovery has brought to light the little-known story of how a British Army officer risked a court martial in wartime Italy to save a painting the author Aldous Huxley once described as "the greatest picture in the world".

I opened a dead man's suitcase in Cape Town and was transported from today's Africa, via World War II Italy, to Renaissance Tuscany.

Inside I found a story of high art, bravery and love, all the more powerful because it is a story not widely known.

I was on Long Street, a boisterous city-centre shopping artery, exploring the upper floors of Clarke's, a venerable bookshop staffed by bibliophiles who lovingly tend roof-high displays of new titles.

Climb up the stairs at the back and you enter a booky world almost extinct in today's era of online, search-engine rigour.

Here second-hand works await discovery, all meticulously catalogued, some preciously protected in glass-fronted cabinets.

Staff walk to and fro across creaking floorboards and up half sets-of-stairs linking a maze of attics, all crowded with books.

Graham Greene was my research target, more specifically his links with Tony Clarke, founder in 1956 of what is arguably Africa's finest bookshop.

Clarke died in the 1980s but his effervescent successor, Henrietta Dax, allowed me to look through his remaining papers, higgledy-piggledy in a brown leather case.
Fighting tradition
Tony Clarke After WWII Tony Clarke founded what is arguably Africa's finest bookshop

Of Greene I found nothing but, as so often with research, the letters, notebooks, diaries and photographs drew me off down another thrillingly unexpected by-way.

The records were of a man who came of age in WWII.

There were doodled maps of El Alamein and photographs of Clarke as a young subaltern sitting smartly to attention in the Middle East in 1942 alongside fellow members of the Royal Horse Artillery.

The RHA is one of the army's smartest units - its gunners fire the ceremonial salutes in Hyde Park - and Clarke belonged to its oldest battery, the Chestnut Troop.

Its fighting tradition is proud, no more so than against Rommel's Afrika Korps and later on the long Allied slog up Italy.

The snapshots of Clarke's campaign are framed in black and white: here lean, sun-tanned Tommies lark about on a Mediterranean beach, there stones ring the grave of a fellow officer, a chum, on an Italian hillside.

A reconnaissance photograph of Monte Cassino shocked me.

Clarke was not involved in the fight to dislodge the Germans from its hilltop monastery but in his diary he describes how shocked he was as he drove underneath ancient walls hideously disfigured by bombardment.

It may have influenced what Clarke went on to do.

As the Allied advance continued, his unit took up a firing position near the town of Sansepolcro.

Unlike other famous Tuscan towns that are perched on hilltops, it lies down in a valley. I went there myself in the 90s and found its location memorably unmemorable.

It was standard then for allied artillery to soften up towns before ground troops went in, and Clarke was the officer responsible for Sansepolcro. His guns dug themselves into their firing pits, his gunners prepared their ammunition stocks.

But then some faint bell rang in his mind, a bell belonging to an age far from the madness of war.

Clarke - English, gay, art-loving - remembered an essay by Aldous Huxley. The author had not been shy with his superlatives, saying he had discovered what he called the world's "best picture".

In fulsome terms, the essay described the incredible power of The Resurrection, a fresco masterpiece by the Renaissance maestro Piero della Francesca.

"We need no imagination to help us figure forth its beauty,'' Huxley wrote. "It stands there before us in entire and actual splendour, the greatest picture in the world."

Clarke may not have remembered every detail of the essay but, just as his guns started firing, he remembered one key fact.

The Resurrection was located in Sansepolcro.

I can only imagine the risk he then took by withholding his order to fire.

He later said his commanding officer had come on the radio urging him to get on with it so he had to stall for time, peering at the town through binoculars and assuring his commander that he could see no German targets to go after.

It was a brave action. Had Allied infantry been ambushed as they advanced on Sansepolcro, his court martial would have been brutal.

But, for the love of art, he kept the guns silent. The Germans fled and the town was liberated the following day without any damage to the 500-year-old work of art.

As I left his shop, I thought of Clarke. Nowadays such an act would be spread across newspapers and picked over by script-writers.

But all that remains today is a Sansepolcro suburban street named in his honour, a few references in travelogues written long after the war and a suitcase of memories at the foot of Africa.

Oil painting stolen from art gallery

2011-12-20T21:25:00.000-08:00

From WPRI.com: Oil painting stolen from art gallery
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (WPRI) - An oil painting was stolen from an art gallery in New Bedford on Friday.

Sometime between the hours of 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. someone quietly walked into Crowell's Fine Art Galley and Fine Framing Studio on Acushnet Avenue in New Bedford and stole a painting off the front wall.

Police are now investigating the theft and are asking for anyone who may have seen the painting between the time of the robbery and now to contact the New Bedford Detectives Division.

The painting was done this year and is a 20-by-20-inch oil on canvas titled "The Fist, Adamsville, R.I." It's part of an exhibition by artist Evan Laporte; the exhibit is on display until January 31st of next year.

Police had no value for the stolen work of art, and calls to the gallery have gone unreturned; the gallery is closed on Sundays.

The day of outdoor art exhibits is over

2011-12-19T08:37:00.000-08:00

It used to be all an outdoor statue had to worry about was some bratty kid climbing on it and breaking off an arm accidently.

Now, the breaks are being done deliberately.

Thieves - organized thieves - have been going around stealing manhole covers (never mind that leaving a great hole in a street means not a few people have fallen in them and broken legs or even died), lead from roofs, and even entire statues - from where ever they may be - in graveyards, on federal land, anywhere.

And there's probably no way to stop them. The cost to place a guard on every piece of bronze or metal statuary everywhere in the country....unless they're willing to take minimum wage and work day and night....

Camera systems installed might help identify the thieves - but by the time the thief is arrested the priceless work of art (priceless in the sense that the original is the original and can never be replaced!) will be destroyed, melted down for its metal.

Sad days indeed.

UK: Artist set to craft replacement for stolen waterfront urn

2011-12-19T08:33:00.000-08:00

From the Barrie Examiner: Artist set to craft replacement for stolen waterfront urn
Barrie police continue to investigate after urn stolen from display
By LANCE HOLDFORTH
Barrie police are still looking for the culprits responsible for stealing a bronze urn from a lakeside art installation, but the artist who created it, John McEwen, is in the process of crafting a replacement.

The 200-pound urn was removed from McEwen's Babylon sculpture from the southern shore of Kempenfelt Bay on Nov. 18 after someone cut three support bolts and removed the piece.

"I do think it was a matter of new technology (tools)," McEwen said. "There's all kinds of reasons people steal things from vandalism to beer money."

The MacLaren Art Centre brought the sculpture to Barrie in 2003 as part of the Shoreline exhibit on loan from the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, which was to be removed a week after the urn was taken.

"It was stolen for it's scrap value I assume," McEwen said. "The timing of the theft was too bad because had a week gone by, it would have gone back to the McMichael."

Barrie police estimate the urn is valued at $60,000.

The 20-year-old installation has since been relocated to the McMichael in Kleinburg, and after recent approval, 66-year-old McEwen will begin crafting a replacement urn at his Hillsdale studio.

"The interesting thing about putting something in public is it stays there over time and becomes a part of a person's background," he said. "This is a relatively simple process."

McEwen is known to the international art community for his Searchlight, Starlight, Spotlight sculpture outside the Air Canada Centre in Toronto and his sculpture of a bronze canoe in front of the new Canadian embassy in Berlin, Germany.

The McMichael will add the installation to their outdoor exhibit in the spring after it has been fixed, but CEO Victoria Dickenson said even though McEwen is optimistic, she feels bad about the damage.

"With a sculpture, it's meant to be touched and appreciated and most sculptures are respected by the public," she said. "I can't speak for him (McEwen), but it's always disturbing for an artist to have vandalism on a piece of work."

The theft was a destructive display of misfortune, but Dickenson said she wonders how someone managed to steal such a large item.

"This was very deliberate. This wasn't accidental damage," she said.

"Someone would have had to have taken a truck and more than one person."

Director of development for the MacLaren Art Centre, Sue-Ellen Boyes, said vandalism is a downside of publicly displayed art.

"It's something that happens," she said. "It's an unfortunate and unexpected thing to have happened."

Although many Barrie residents enjoyed the installation before the theft, Boyes said she is relieved McEwen will be able to fix the sculpture.

"I think there is a long history of public art projects all over the world (which get vandalized)," she said. "He will be able to re-cast and re-attach a replacement urn to the piece."

Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 705-725-7025, or Crime Stoppers at 1-888-222-8477.

Cops look for painting after art heist

2011-12-13T10:36:00.000-08:00

From WPRI.com TV: Cops look for painting after art heist

$675 oil abstract vanished from gallery Fri.
By Bill Tomison
NEW BEDFORD, Mass. (WPRI) - It may not be the "Mona Lisa" or "The Scream," but 'The Fist" is worth several hundred dollars, and now New Bedford police are on the hunt for an art thief.

Someone stole the painting from Crowell's Fine Art Gallery and Fine Framing Studio on Acushnet Ave. sometime around noon Friday - removing the 20" x 20" oil on canvas right from the gallery wall.

Gallery owner Kate Levin said in a news release Monday that the Evan LaPorte painting -- an abstract work of mostly blue or teal, with greens and reds and yellows -- is valued at $675.

She said the painting - which is about the size of a large pizza box - vanished sometime between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. It was being featured in a solo exhibition by LaPorte which is running until Jan. 31.

Police are looking for the painting, and if you have any idea on its whereabouts you're asked to call the New Bedford Police Department at (508) 991-6300.

Time Keeps On Slipping Into the Future

2011-12-10T20:02:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the dearth of posts recently...I've been working on a project, wanted to devote all my time to it, and kept telling myself...it'll be done today so I can get back to blogging here tomorrow.

The next day it was... okay, it's definitely going to get done today....

Well, today it is done... so back to posting here on a daily basis tomorrow. (With the first post appearing tomorrow afternoon while I'm watching football!)

Thanks for your patience.

Art Terminology: Acanthus and Altarpiece

2011-12-06T00:19:00.000-08:00

Acanthus
Architecture: A prickly plant of the Mediterranean region with large, deeply cleft and scalloped leaves which are freely imitated on the capitals of the Corinthian and Composite orders and often used, in varying degrees of abstraction, to ornament moldings, brackets, friezes and so on.

Altarpiece
Architecture: A painted or sculpted panel or shrine placed behind and above an altar, also called a "reredos" or "retable." 14th and 15th century altarpieces are often very complicated, consisting of several panels or separate groups of sculpture.

An altarpiece consisting of three panels is called a tryptych, when it has more than three panels it is called a "poylptych". Some altarpieces have a decorated base, or pedella, and have "shutters" or "wings" which can be opened to reveal a series of "transformations" or "stages" to reveal other paintings or sculptures. The shutters are usually painted in rather subdued colors on the outside - monochrome imitations of sculpture ("grisailles") being common in northern Europe - but when opened up for the feast days of the Church, they offer a brilliant and sumptuous display pf color.

____________
Bibliography
From Abacus to Zeus, A Handbook of Art History
James Smith Pierce, 1977

Art Terminology: Abacus and Abbey

2011-12-04T08:10:00.000-08:00

Abacus
Architecture: The uppermost part of a capital, forming a slab on which the architrave rests.

Abbey
Architecture: A monastery governed by an abbot. The church of an abbey is called an "abbey church" and is usually planned to allow for the special requirements of the monks such as a deep choir or many altars.

____________
Bibliography
From Abacus to Zeus, A Handbook of Art History
James Smith Pierce, 1977

Prized works by Czech painter Emil Filla stolen

2011-12-02T02:11:00.000-08:00

From ArtHostage.com: Prized works by Czech painter Emil Filla stolen
Prague. One of the Czech Republic’s most famed Cubist painters is dominating the country’s headlines this week. Emil Filla, a leader in Prague’s avant-garde and an early Cubist painter, has been at the centre of three separate stories, including a theft of his works and a record setting auction .

First, on Friday 18 November, four of Filla’s works were stolen in the early morning hours from the Peruc Chateau, located about 50 km northwest of Prague, which houses a permanent exhibition of Filla’s works and where the artist spent several years after the second world war. According to Alica Stefancikova, the exhibition’s curator, the alarm system, which is directly connected to the Peruc police station, sounded at 4:04am on Friday morning. Although police arrived at the chateau within ten minutes, the thieves had already fled the scene.

The four oil paintings, all from the 1940s with the exception of one earlier painting, are estimated to be worth 50m to 80m Czech crowns, and the paintings are uninsured. “We preferred to invest in the preventative protection of the collections,” Stefancikova told The Art Newspaper after the theft. Besides an attempt to steal the works in 1992, when the perpetrator was arrested, no other attempts have been documented. The stolen works include Still Life With a Fruit Basket and Clarinet (Zatisi s klarinetem a kosikem ovoce), 1948, Woman with Picture Cards (Zena s kartami), 1946, Still Life with a fruit bowl (Zatisi s misami ovoce), 1946, and Blind man (Slepec), 1926.

According to reports in the Czech press, several frames were discovered in the nearby village of Bysen on Sunday 20 November. Whether they belong to the missing paintings is yet to be determined, according to Stefancikova.

At the same time, one of Filla’s works set a record on 20 November as one of the top 20 most expensive paintings ever sold at auction on the domestic scene. Dating from 1911, Filla’s Comforter (Utesitel) went for 11m crowns, almost double the starting price, at a sale held by Galerie Art Praha at the Hilton Hotel in Prague. Last year, Filla’s Still Life with a Bottle of Cherry (Zatisi s lahvi Cherry), 1914, sold for 16.25m crowns, ranking it as the highest-priced Filla work sold at a domestic auction. His Sculptress in the Studio (Socharka v ateleru) was among several Czech avant-garde works that brought Sotheby’s in London more than £11m, double the estimate, at an auction in June of this year.

Finally, on Tuesday 22 November, Filla’s 1913 canvas Two Women (along with The Dancer, a painting by Vincenc Benes and a bronze statue by Otto Gutfreund) was returned to the Czech Republic after having been seized while on loan in Vienna this past May as a result of a multi-billion crown claim against the state by a blood plasma firm. An Austrian appeals court refused to recognise the claim. Although the Filla painting has been returned to the Moravian Gallery in Brno (and the two other works to the National Gallery in Prague), Diag Human, the blood plasma firm who is behind the almost 20-year-long arbitration dispute, may challenge the final verdict according to a report on Cesky Rozhlas (Czech Radio).

As a result of the claims made by Diag Human, the Czech Ministry of Culture issued a ban on the loaning of art and cultural artefacts to international exhibitions this spring. Beyond a loss to the public sector of 1.2m crowns in six months, according to the Czech Radio report, the Czech Republic will be unable to participate in 58 international exhibitions in London, Paris and Houston, among other cities, which were slated to receive more than 1,000 works as loans this year and in 2012.

Case of the missing tusk reopened

2011-12-01T14:09:00.000-08:00

From the Marlborough Express: Case of the missing tusk reopened

The Marlborough Express is reopening a cold case of the elephant tusks which were reportedly stolen from a Marlborough art gallery.

The 1992 theft was mentioned in a news article last week, and piqued our curiosity. However, no-one in the Marlborough arts scene we have contacted has been able to shed much light on the subject.

One of the tusks was unearthed by police at the Kapiti home of convicted drug dealer Jack Webber, 49, also known as "Island Jack" and now presumed drowned.

An inquest is to be held into his death on December 19, along with that of his friend Hamish Kronfield, who went missing in May 1999 when their boat overturned near Passage Rocks, of the eastern side of Kapiti Island.

"Island Jack" first hit the headlines when he and two associates were arrested in 1995 on drugs and firearms charges.

The Dominion article said police also dug from the lawn a 40-kilogram elephant tusk, one of a pair stolen in 1992 from a Marlborough art gallery.

While on home detention, Mr Webber was caught trying to smuggle six packets of heroin into Rimutaka Prison.

He later supplied an undercover officer with morphine and cannabis worth more than $10,000. He was jailed again in 1996.

At the time, police said he had a criminal record going back to 1969, but "to friends and acquaintances he was a gentleman".

Chief coroner's office spokesman Steve Corbett said the inquest, to be held on December 19, was one of several that were part of a joint initiative by the chief coroner and the police missing persons unit to review older files to check if there was any new information and wrap them up.

If you have information about the tusks call reporter Simon Wong on 03 520 8926 or email swong@marlexpress.co.nz.

Theft at the former French president Museum

2011-11-27T01:42:00.000-08:00

From Art Media Agency.com: Theft at the former French president Museum
On the night of 19 November, a gold falcon was stolen from the Musée du président Jacques Chirac. The museum located in the village of Sarran in Corrèze, exhibits gifts offered to the former French president Jacques Chirac, when he was in office. The museum collection includes approximately 5,000 gifts that the former president received during his diplomatic trips, as well as official foreign politics and ambassador visits in France.

The stolen work of art was a gift from the Saudi Arabian government. It is the first theft that occurred in the museum since its opening in 2000 and authorities say it was probably committed by professionals. It is believed that the thieves forced their way into the museum, by breaking the lock of the door, and got out in less than two minutes. Only the yellow gold falcon, estimated at €152,000, was taken which is not the most expensive piece of the museum collection, but it was certainly the most flashy. It is decorated with 1,400 precious jewels (ruby, sapphire, etc.), but mostly diamonds.

UK: Chard art student's sketchbooks stolen from car in Ilminster

2011-11-27T00:38:00.000-08:00

From This is West Country: Chard art student's sketchbooks stolen from car in Ilminster

CHARD student is appealing for help in finding vital artwork stolen from her car.

Lil Patuck, 17, who is in the second year of her sixth form studies at Holyrood Academy, was gutted to find her Rover Metro broken into in Canal Way, Ilminster, last Wednesday afternoon.

"Whoever broke into my car took a bag which contained some sketch books which had about six months' artwork in them," said Lil.

"I'm really upset because it's going to take weeks of work to replace the sketches.

"I'm just hoping whoever took the bag might have thrown it away and someone may have picked it up."

Lil, who enjoyed a starring role as Rizzo in Holyrood's production of Grease earlier this year, said: "I'm hoping someone has my artwork at home, and will read this and hand it in."

Anyone who has Lil's sketchbooks is urged to hand them in at the News offices at 3a Fore Street, Chard, and we will pass them on to her.

FBI art crimes chief 'ordered theft of Monet and Sisley paintings from French gallery'

2011-11-26T20:33:00.000-08:00

From The Telegraph: FBI art crimes chief 'ordered theft of Monet and Sisley paintings from French gallery'

The men face maximum sentences of 30 years in prison for armed robbery at the end of the week-long trial in Aix-en-Provence. The leader's lawyer claims they were a bunch of bumbling art amateurs talked into the heist by the world's most notorious art detective bent on catching bigger prey.

At lunchtime on August 5, 2007, thieves dressed in blue overalls and ski masks burst into the poorly guarded Musée des Beaux Arts.

Their leader, Pierre Noël-Dumarais, then 60, pointed a Colt 45 at the welcome desk while four accomplices unhooked four paintings from the museum walls and stuffed them into black bin bags. Five minutes later, they made their escape in a blue Peugeot van.

In the boot were two Breughels – Allegory of Water and Allegory of Earth – Alfred Sisley's Avenue of Poplars at Moret and Claude Monet's Cliffs Near Dieppe. While their combined value has been estimated at 22 million euros, their stolen sale price would be no more than three million euros.

The French police had few leads bar DNA from a cigarette butt and a bin bag, but they would soon receive help from across the Atlantic.

Robert K Wittman, then FBI special agent and chief of its Art Crimes Team, first got wind of the paintings while undercover as a shady American dealer moving stolen art for crime syndicates and drug lords. He was told about the works by Miami-based Frenchman Bernard Jean Ternus, with links to Marseille's Brise de Mer Corsican mafia clan.

Now retired, "Bob" Wittman recovered around $300 million-worth of stolen art and objects in his 20-year career, including Geronimo's war bonnet, one of the original 14 copies of the US Bill of Rights, and works by Rembrandt, Rodin and Rockwell.

But the greatest unsolved art crime in history still eluded him, namely the 1990 theft from the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum in Boston of a long-lost Vermeer, two Rembrandts and five sketches by Degas worth around $500 million.

His pulse raced when his plump, shaggy-haired French connection, Mr Ternus, alias "Sunny" boasted that he could get hold of the Vermeer and a Rembrandt.

To "hook" Sunny, Mr Wittman invited him to a party on a Miami yacht, complete with bikini-clad models and staged the sale of five fake masterpieces to a Colombian drugs baron in exchange for gold and diamonds. The entire crew and cast were FBI agents, but Sunny fell for it.

This is where the version of events diverges.

Mr Wittman says that during subsequent conversations about the Rembrandt and Vermeer, Sunny offered him and his co-agents other works, including two Picassos and the Nice paintings.

"I had no idea about the Nice theft nor had I ever met or spoken to the defendants until after it occurred," Mr Wittman told The Daily Telegraph.

"We couldn't turn down (the sale offer) as they were all crimes."

However, Ludovic Depatureaux, the lawyer of the gang's alleged leader, Mr Noël-Dumarais, claims that Mr Wittman encouraged the theft by expressing an interested in "Dutch paintings".

"In autumn 2006, he effectively placed an order with Bernard Ternus, saying he was interested perhaps in Vermeer and Rembrandt, but in Dutch paintings in general, and had buyers.

"Wittman thought that (via the Nice thefts), he would infiltrate those who stole or still hold the Vermeer and Rembrandt. The Nice heist was just collateral damage.

"My client's modus operandi did not start from the premise: let's steal some paintings then find a buyer. They were a bunch of amateurish 'stooges' some of whom only met on the day of the heist.

"These canvasses disappeared in order to recover two key paintings belonging to US heritage. I'm not sure that the US would appreciate it if French agents acted likewise."

He said Mr Wittman was guilty of "police provocation" and that he would call for charges to be dropped.

Mr Wittman said: "In the US, we law enforcement officers used to call that 'throwing fecal matter against the wall and seeing what would stick'".

"I don't think anything I did 'encouraged' anyone to obtain Chechen hand grenades and semi automatic pistols in order to commit armed robbery. It is a fanciful defence at best, at worst, it is a defence of desperation used only when criminals are caught."

He denied they were amateurish. "They were good criminals, but terrible businessmen."

The trial runs until Friday.

New posting schedule

2011-11-21T17:50:00.001-08:00

Sorry for the long delay in posting - had some family issues.

The posting schedule for this blog - starting this Wednesday, Nov 23, will be Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays.

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LIVES - author's preface to Lives

2011-11-15T00:22:00.000-08:00

One more preface before we get to te nitty gritty.

PREFACE TO THE LIVES
I have no manner of doubt that it is with almost all writers a common and deeply-fixed opinion that sculpture and painting together were first discovered, by the light of nature, by the people of Egypt, and that there are certain others who attribute to the Chaldæans the first rough sketches in marble and the first reliefs in statuary, even as they also give to the Greeks the invention of the brush and of colouring.

But I will surely say that of both one and the other of these arts the design, which is their foundation, nay rather, the very soul that conceives and nourishes within itself all the parts of man's intellect, was already most perfect before the creation of all other things, when the Almighty God, having made the great body of the world and having adorned the heavens with their exceeding bright lights, descended lower with His intellect into the clearness of the air and the solidity of the earth, and, shaping man, discovered, together with the lovely creation of all things, the first form of sculpture; from which man afterwards, step by step (and this may not be denied), as from a true pattern, there were taken statues, sculptures, and the science of pose and of outline; and for the first pictures (whatsoever they were), softness, harmony, and the concord in discord that comes from light and shade.

Thus, then, the first model whence there issued the first image of man was a lump of clay, and not without reason, seeing that the Divine Architect of time and of nature, being Himself most perfect, wished to show in the imperfection of the material the way to add and to take away; in the same manner wherein the good sculptors and painters are wont to work, who, adding and taking away in their models, bring their imperfect sketches to that final perfection which they desire. He gave to man that most vivid colour of flesh, whence afterwards there were drawn for painting, from the mines of the earth, the colours themselves for the counterfeiting of all those things that are required for pictures.

It is true, indeed, that it cannot be affirmed for certain what was made by the men before the Flood in these arts in imitation of so beautiful a work, although it is reasonable to believe that they too carved and painted in every manner; seeing that Belus, son of the proud Nimrod, about 200 years after the Flood, caused to be made that statue wherefrom there was afterwards born idolatry, and his son's wife, the very famous Semiramis, Queen of Babylon, in the building of that city, placed among its adornments not only diverse varied kinds of animals, portrayed and coloured from nature, but also the image of herself and of Ninus, her husband, and, moreover, statues in bronze of her husband's father, of her husband's mother, and of the mother of the latter, as Diodorus relates, calling them by the Greek names (that did not yet exist), Jove, Juno, and Ops.

From these statues, perchance, the Chaldæans learnt to make the images of their gods, seeing that 150 years later Rachel, in flying from Mesopotamia together with Jacob her husband, stole the idols of Laban her father, as is clearly related in Genesis. Nor, indeed, were the Chaldæans alone in making sculptures and pictures, but the Egyptians made them also, exercising themselves in these arts with that so great zeal which is shown in the marvellous tomb of the most ancient King Osimandyas, copiously described by Diodorus, and proved by the stern commandment made by Moses in the Exodus from Egypt, namely, that under pain of death there should be made to God no image whatsoever.

He, on descending from the mountain, having found the golden calf wrought and adored solemnly by his people, and being greatly perturbed to see Divine honours paid to the image of a beast, not only broke it and reduced it to powder, but for punishment of so great a sin caused many thousands of the wicked sons of Israel to be slain by the Levites. But because not the making of statues but their adoration was a deadly sin, we read in Exodus that the art of design and of statuary, not only in marble but in every kind of metal, was bestowed by the mouth of God on Bezaleel, of the tribe of Judah, and on Aholiab, of the tribe of Dan, who were[Pg xxxix] those that made the two cherubim of gold, the candlesticks, the veil, the borders of the priestly vestments, and so many other most beautiful castings for the Tabernacle, for no other reason than to bring the people to contemplate and to adore them.

From the things seen before the Flood, then, the pride of men found the way to make the statues of those for whom they wished that they should remain famous and immortal in the world. And the Greeks, who think differently about this origin, say that the Ethiopians invented the first statues, as Diodorus tells; that the Egyptians took them from the Ethiopians, and, from them, the Greeks; for by Homer's time sculpture and painting are seen to have been perfected, as it is proved, in discoursing of the shield of Achilles, by that divine poet, who shows it to us carved and painted, rather than described, with every form of art. Lactantius Firmianus, by way of fable, attributes it to Prometheus, who, in the manner of Almighty God, shaped man's image out of mud; and from him, he declares, the art of statuary came. But according to what Pliny writes, this came to Egypt from Gyges the Lydian, who, being by the fire and gazing at his own shadow, suddenly, with some charcoal in his hand, drew his own outline on the wall.

And from that age, for a time, outlines only were wont to be used, with no body of colour, as the same Pliny confirms; which method was rediscovered with more labour by Philocles the Egyptian, and likewise by Cleanthes and Ardices of Corinth and by Telephanes of Sicyon.

Cleophantes of Corinth was the first among the Greeks who used colours, and Apollodorus the first who discovered the brush. There followed Polygnotus of Thasos, Zeuxis, and Timagoras of Chalcis, with Pythias and Aglaophon, all most celebrated; and after these the most famous Apelles, so much esteemed and honoured by Alexander the Great for his talent, and the most ingenious investigator of slander and false favour, as Lucian shows us; even as almost all the excellent painters and sculptors were endowed by Heaven, in nearly every case, not only with the adornment of poetry, as may be read of Pacuvius, but with philosophy besides, as may be seen in Metrodorus, who, being as well versed in philosophy as in painting, was sent by the Athenians to Paulus Emilius to adorn his triumph, and remained with him to read philosophy to his sons.

The art of sculpture, then, was greatly exercised in Greece, and there appeared many excellent craftsmen, and, among others, Pheidias, an Athenian, with Praxiteles and Polycletus, all very great masters, while Lysippus and Pyrgoteles were excellent in sunk reliefs, and Pygmalion in reliefs in ivory, of whom there is a fable that by his prayers he obtained breath and spirit for the figure of a virgin that he made. Painting, likewise, was honoured and rewarded by the ancient Greeks and Romans, seeing that to those who made it appear marvellous they showed favour by bestowing on them citizenship and the highest dignities. So greatly did this art flourish in Rome that Fabius gave renown to his house by writing his name under the things so beautifully painted by him in the temple of Salus, and calling himself Fabius Pictor.

It was forbidden by public decree that slaves should exercise this art throughout the cities, and so much honour did the nations pay without ceasing to the art and to the craftsmen that the rarest works were sent among the triumphal spoils, as marvellous things, to Rome, and the finest craftsmen were freed from slavery and recompensed with honours and rewards by the commonwealths.

The Romans themselves bore so great reverence for these arts that besides the respect that Marcellus, in sacking the city of Syracuse, commanded to be paid to a craftsman famous in them, in planning the assault of the aforesaid city they took care not to set fire to that quarter wherein there was a most beautiful painted panel, which was afterwards carried to Rome in the triumph, with much pomp. Thither, having, so to speak, despoiled the world, in course of time they assembled the craftsmen themselves as well as their finest works, wherewith afterwards Rome became so beautiful, for the reason that she gained so great adornment from the statues from abroad more than from her own native ones; it being known that in Rhodes, the city of an island in no way large, there were more than 30,000 statues counted, either in bronze or in marble, nor did the Athenians have less, while those at Olympia and at Delphi were many more and those in Corinth numberless, and all were most beautiful and of the greatest value.

Is it not known that Nicomedes, King of Lycia, in his eagerness for a Venus that was by the hand of Praxiteles, spent on it almost all the wealth of his people? Did not Attalus the same, who, in order to possess the picture of Bacchus painted by Aristides, did not scruple to spend on it more than 6,000 sesterces? Which picture was placed by Lucius Mummius in the temple of Ceres with the greatest pomp, in order to adorn Rome.

But for all that the nobility of these arts was so highly valued, it is none the less not yet known for certain who gave them their first beginning. For, as has been already said above, it appears most ancient among the Chaldæans, some give it to the Ethiopians, and the Greeks attribute it to themselves; and it may be thought, not without reason, that it is perchance even more ancient among the Etruscans, as our Leon Batista Alberti testifies, whereof we have clear enough proof in the marvellous tomb of Porsena at Chiusi, where, no long time since, there were discovered underground, between the walls of the Labyrinth, some terracotta tiles with figures on them in half-relief, so excellent and in so beautiful a manner that it can be easily recognized that the art was not begun precisely at that time, nay rather, by reason of the perfection of these works, that it was much nearer its height than its beginning.

To this, moreover, witness is likewise borne by our seeing every day many pieces of those red and black vases of Arezzo, made, as may be judged from the manner, about those times, with the most delicate carvings and small figures and scenes in low-relief, and many small round masks wrought with great subtlety by masters of that age, men most experienced, as is shown by the effect, and most excellent in that art. It may be seen, moreover, by reason of the statues found at Viterbo at the beginning of the pontificate of Alexander VI, that sculpture was in great esteem and in no small perfection among the Etruscans; and although it is not known precisely at what time they were made, it may be reasonably conjectured, both from the manner of the figures and from the style of the tombs and of the buildings, no less than from the inscriptions in those Etruscan letters, that they are most ancient and were made at a time when the affairs of this country were in a good and prosperous state.

But what clearer proof of this can be sought? seeing that in our own day—that is, in the year 1554—there has been found a bronze figure of the Chimæra of Bellerophon, in making the ditches, fortifications, and walls of Arezzo, from which figure it is recognized that the perfection of that art existed in ancient times among the Etruscans, as may be seen from the Etruscan manner and still more from the letters carved on a paw, about which—since they are but few and there is no one now who understands the Etruscan tongue—it is conjectured that they may represent the name of the master as well as that of the figure itself, and perchance also the date, according to the use of those times. This figure, by reason of its beauty and antiquity, has been placed in our day by the Lord Duke Cosimo in the hall of the new rooms in his Palace, wherein there have been painted by me the acts of Pope Leo X. And besides this there were found in the same place many small figures in bronze after the same manner, which are in the hands of the said Lord Duke.

But since the dates of the works of the Greeks, the Ethiopians, and the Chaldæans are as doubtful as our own, and perhaps more, and by reason of the greater need of founding our judgment about these works on conjectures, which, however, are not so feeble that they are in every way wide of the mark, I believe that I strayed not at all from the truth (and I think that everyone who will consent to consider this question discreetly will judge as I did), when I said above that the origin of these arts was nature herself, and the example or model, the most beautiful fabric of the world, and the master, that divine light infused by special grace into us, which has not only made us superior to the other animals, but, if it be not sin to say it, like to God. And if in our own times it has been seen (as I trust to be able to demonstrate a little later by many examples) that simple children roughly reared in the woods, with their only model in the beautiful pictures and sculptures of nature, and by the vivacity of their wit, have begun by themselves to make designs, how much more may we, nay, must we confidently believe that these primitive men, who, in proportion as they were less distant from their origin and divine creation, were thereby the more perfect and of better intelligence, that they, by themselves, having for guide nature, for master purest intellect, and for example the so lovely model of the world, gave birth to these most noble arts, and from a small beginning, little by little bettering them, brought them at last to perfection?

I do not, indeed, wish to deny that there was one among them who was the first to begin, seeing that I know very well that it must needs be that at some time and from some one man there came the beginning; nor, also, will I deny that it may have been possible that one helped another and taught and opened the way to design, to colour, and relief, because I know that our art is all imitation, of nature for the most part and then, because a man cannot by himself rise so high, of those works that are executed by those whom he judges to be better masters than himself. But I say surely that the wishing to affirm dogmatically who this man or these men were is a thing very perilous to judge, and perchance little necessary to know, provided that we see the true root and origin wherefrom art was born. For since, of the works that are the life and the glory of the craftsmen, the first and step by step the second and the third were lost by reason of time, that consumes all things, and since, for lack of writers at that time, they could not, at least in that way, become known to posterity, their craftsmen as well came to be forgotten.

But when once the writers began to make record of things that were before their day, they could not speak of those whereof they had not been able to have information, in a manner that there came to be first with them those of whom the memory had been the last to be lost. Even as the first of the poets, by common consent, is said to be Homer, not because there were none before him, for there were, although not so excellent, which is seen clearly from his own works, but because of these early poets, whatever manner of men they were, all knowledge had been lost quite 2,000 years before. However, leaving behind us this part, as too uncertain by reason of its antiquity, let us come to the clearer matters of their perfection, ruin, and restoration, or rather resurrection, whereof we will be able to discourse on much better grounds.

I say, then, it being true indeed, that they began late in Rome, if the first figure was, as is said, the image of Ceres made of metal from the treasure of Spurius Cassius, who, for conspiring to make himself King, was put to death by his own father without any scruple; and that although the arts of sculpture and of painting continued up to the end of the twelve Cæsars, they did not, however, continue in that perfection and excellence which they had enjoyed before, for it may be seen from the edifices that the Emperors built in succession one after the other that these arts, decaying from one day to another, were coming little by little to lose their whole perfection of design.

And to this clear testimony is borne by the works of sculpture and of architecture that were wrought in the time of Constantine in Rome, and in particular the triumphal arch raised for him by the Roman people near the Colosseum, wherein it is seen that in default of good masters they not only made use of marble groups made at the time of Trajan, but also of the spoils brought from various places to Rome. And whosoever knows that the votive offerings in the medallions, that is, the sculptures in half-relief, and likewise the prisoners, and the large groups, and the columns, and the mouldings, and the other ornaments, whether made before or from spoils, are excellently wrought, knows also that the works which were made to fill up by the sculptors of that time are of the rudest, as also are certain small groups with little figures in marble below the medallions, and the lowest base wherein there are certain victories, and certain rivers between the arches at the sides, which are very rude and so made that it can be believed most surely that by that time the art of sculpture had begun to lose something of the good. And there had not yet come the Goths and the other barbarous and outlandish peoples who destroyed, together with Italy, all the finer arts.

It is true, indeed, that in the said times architecture had suffered less harm than the other arts of design had suffered, for in the bath that Constantine erected on the Lateran, in the entrance of the principal porch it may be seen, to say nothing of the porphyry columns, the capitals wrought in marble, and the double bases taken from some other place and very well carved, that the whole composition of the building is very well conceived; whereas, on the contrary, the stucco, the mosaics, and certain incrustations on the walls made by masters of that time are not equal to those that he caused to be placed in the same bath, which were taken for the most part from the temples of the heathen gods.

Constantine, so it is said, did the same in the garden of Æquitius, in making the temple which he afterwards endowed and gave to the Christian priests. In like manner, the magnificent Church of S. Giovanni Laterano, erected by the same Emperor, can bear witness to the same—namely, that in his day sculpture had already greatly declined; for the image of the Saviour and the twelve Apostles in silver that he caused to be made were very debased sculptures, wrought without art and with very little design. Besides this, whosoever examines with diligence the medals of Constantine and his image and other statues made by the sculptors of that time, which are at the present day in the Campidoglio, may see clearly that they are very far removed from the perfection of the medals and statues of the other Emperors; and all this shows that long before the coming of the Goths into Italy sculpture had greatly declined.

Architecture, as has been said, continued to maintain itself, if not so perfect, in a better state; nor is there reason to marvel at this, seeing that, as the great edifices were made almost wholly of spoils, it was easy for the architects, in making the new, to imitate in great measure the old, which they had ever before their eyes, and that much more easily than the sculptors could imitate the good figures of the ancients, their art having wholly vanished. And that this is true is manifest, because the Church of the Prince of the Apostles on the Vatican was not rich save in columns, bases, capitals, architraves, mouldings, doors, and other incrustations and ornaments, which were all taken from various places and from the edifices built most magnificently in earlier times.

The same could be said of S. Croce in Gierusalemme, which Constantine erected at the entreaty of his mother Helena, of S. Lorenzo without the walls of Rome, and of S. Agnesa, built by him at the request of Constantia, his daughter. And who does not know that the font which served for the baptism of both her and her sister was all adorned with works wrought long before, and in particular with the porphyry basin carved with most beautiful figures, with certain marble candlesticks excellently carved with foliage, and with some boys in low-relief that are truly most beautiful? In short, for these and many other reasons it is clear how much, in the time of Constantine, sculpture had already declined, and together with it the other finer arts. And if anything was wanting to complete this ruin, it was supplied to them amply by the departure of Constantine from Rome, on his going to establish the seat of the Empire at Byzantium; for the reason that he took with him not only all the best sculptors and other craftsmen of that age, whatsoever manner of men they were, but also an infinite number of statues and other works of sculpture, all most beautiful.

After the departure of Constantine, the Cæsars whom he left in Italy, building continually both in Rome and elsewhere, exerted themselves to make their works as fine as they could; but, as may be seen, sculpture, as well as painting and architecture, went ever from bad to worse, and this perchance came to pass because, when human affairs begin to decline, they never cease to go ever lower and lower until such time as they can grow no worse. So, too, it may be seen that although at the time of Pope Liberius the architects of that day strove to do something great in constructing the Church of S. Maria Maggiore, they were yet not happy in the success of the whole, for the reason that although that building, which is likewise composed for the greater part of spoils, was made with good enough proportions, it cannot be denied any the less, not to speak of certain other parts, that the frieze made right round above the columns with ornaments in stucco and in painting is wholly wanting in design, and that many other things which are seen in that great church demonstrate the imperfection of the arts.

Many years after, when the Christians were persecuted under Julian the Apostate, there was erected on the Cœlian Mount a church to S. John and S. Paul, the martyrs, in a manner so much worse than those named above, that it is seen clearly that the art was at that time little less than wholly lost. The buildings, too, that were erected at the same time in Tuscany, bear most ample testimony to this; and not to speak of many others, the church that was built outside the walls of Arezzo to S. Donatus, Bishop of that city (who, together with the monk Hilarian, suffered martyrdom under the said Julian the Apostate), was in no way better in architecture than those named above. Nor can it be believed that this came from anything else but the absence of better architects in that age, seeing that the said church (as it has been possible to see in our own day), which is octagonal and constructed from the spoils of the Theatre, the Colosseum and other edifices that had been standing in Arezzo before it was converted to the faith of Christ, was built without thought of economy and at the greatest cost, and adorned with columns of granite, of porphyry, and of many-coloured marbles, which had belonged to the said buildings.

And for myself I do not doubt, from the expense which was clearly bestowed on that church, that if the Aretines had had better architects they would have built something marvellous; for it may be seen from what they did that they spared nothing if only they might make that work as rich and as well designed as they possibly could, and since, as has been already said so many times, architecture had lost less of its perfection than the other arts, there was to be seen therein some little of the good. At this time, likewise, was enlarged the Church of S. Maria in Grado, in honour of the said Hilarian, for the reason that he had been for a long time living in it when he went, with Donatus, to the crown of martyrdom.

But because Fortune, when she has brought men to the height of her wheel, is wont, either in jest or in repentance, to throw them down again, it came about after these things that there rose up in various parts of the world all the barbarous peoples against Rome; whence there ensued after no long time not only the humiliation of so great an Empire but the ruin of the whole, and above all of Rome herself, and with her were likewise utterly ruined the most excellent craftsmen, sculptors, painters, and architects, leaving the arts and their own selves buried and submerged among the miserable massacres and ruins of that most famous city.

And the first to fall into decay were painting and sculpture, as being arts that served more for pleasure than for use, while the other—namely, architecture—as being necessary and useful for bodily weal, continued to exist, but no longer in its perfection and excellence. And if it had not been that the sculptures and pictures presented, to the eyes of those who were born from day to day, those who had been thereby honoured to the end that they might have eternal life, there would soon have been lost the memory of both; whereas some of them survived in the images and in the inscriptions placed in private houses, as well as in public buildings, namely, in the amphitheatres, the theatres, the baths, the aqueducts, the temples, the obelisks, the colossi, the pyramids, the arches, the reservoirs, the public treasuries, and finally, in the very tombs, whereof a great part was destroyed by a barbarous and savage race who had nothing in them of man but the shape and the name.

These, among others, were the Visigoths, who, having created Alaric their King, assailed Italy and Rome and sacked the city twice without respect for anything whatsoever. The same, too, did the Vandals, having come from Africa with Genseric, their King, who, not content with his booty and prey and all the cruelties that he wrought there, carried away her people into slavery, to their exceeding great misery, and among them Eudoxia, once the wife of the Emperor Valentinian, who had been slaughtered no long time before by his own soldiers. For these, having fallen away in very great measure from the ancient Roman valour, for the reason that all the best had gone a long time before to Byzantium with the Emperor Constantine, had no longer any good customs or ways of life. Nay more, there had been lost at one and the same time all true men and every sort of virtue, and laws, habits, names, and tongues had been changed; and all these things together and each by itself had caused every lovely mind and lofty intellect to become most brutish and most base.

But what brought infinite harm and damage on the said professions, even more than all the aforesaid causes, was the burning zeal of the new Christian religion, which, after a long and bloody combat, with its wealth of miracles and with the sincerity of its works, had finally cast down and swept away the old faith of the heathens, and, devoting itself most ardently with all diligence to driving out and extirpating root and branch every least occasion whence error could arise, not only defaced or threw to the ground all the marvellous statues, sculptures, pictures, mosaics, and ornaments of the false gods of the heathens, but even the memorials and the honours of numberless men of mark, to whom, for their excellent merits, the noble spirit of the ancients had set up statues and other memorials in public places. Nay more, it not only destroyed, in order to build the churches for the Christian use, the most honoured temples of the idols, but in order to ennoble and adorn S. Pietro (to say nothing of the ornaments which had been there from the beginning) it also robbed of its stone columns the Mausoleum of Hadrian, now called the Castello di S. Angelo, and many other buildings that to-day we see in ruins.

And although the Christian religion did not do this by reason of hatred that it bore to the arts, but only in order to humiliate and cast down the gods of the heathens, it was none the less true that from this most ardent zeal there came so great ruin on these honoured professions that their very form was wholly lost. And as if aught were wanting to this grievous misfortune, there arose against Rome the wrath of Totila, who, besides razing her walls and destroying with fire and sword all her most wonderful and noble buildings, burnt the whole city from end to end, and, having robbed her of every living body, left her a prey to flames and fire, so that there was not found in her in eighteen successive days a single living soul; and he cast down and destroyed so completely the marvellous statues, pictures, mosaics, and works in stucco, that there was lost, I do not say only their majesty, but their very form and essence.

Wherefore, it being the lower rooms chiefly of the palaces and other buildings that were wrought with stucco, with painting, and with statuary, there was buried by the ruins from above all that good work that has been discovered in our own day, and those who came after, judging the whole to be in ruins, planted vines thereon, in a manner that, since the said lower rooms remained under the ground, the moderns have called them grottoes, and "grotesque" the pictures that are therein seen at the present day.

After the end of the Ostrogoths, who were destroyed by Narses, men were living among the ruins of Rome in some fashion, poorly indeed, when there came, after 100 years, Constantine II, Emperor of Constantinople, who, although received lovingly by the Romans, laid waste, robbed, and carried away all that had remained, more by chance than by the good will of those who had destroyed her, in the miserable city of Rome. It is true, indeed, that he was not able to enjoy this booty, because, being carried by a sea-tempest to Sicily and being justly slain by his own men, he left his spoils, his kingdom, and his life a prey to Fortune. But she, not yet content with the woes of Rome, to the end that the things stolen might never return, brought thither for the ruin of the island a host of Saracens, who carried off both the wealth of the Sicilians and the spoils of Rome to Alexandria, to the very great shame and loss of Italy and of Christendom.

And so all that the Pontiffs had not destroyed (and above all S. Gregory, who is said to have decreed banishment against all the remainder of the statues and of the spoils of the buildings) came finally, at the hands of that most rascally Greek, to an evil end; in a manner that, there being no trace or sign to be found of anything that was in any way good, the men who came after, although rude and boorish, and in particular in their pictures and sculptures, yet, incited by nature and refined by the air, set themselves to work, not according to the rules of the aforesaid arts, which they did not know, but according to the quality of their own intelligence.

The arts of design, then, having been brought to these limits both before and during the lordship of the Lombards over Italy and also afterwards, continued gradually to grow worse, although some little work was done, insomuch that nothing could have been more rudely wrought or with less design than what was done, as bear witness, besides many other works, certain figures that are in the portico of S. Pietro in Rome, above the doors, wrought in the Greek manner in memory of certain holy fathers who had made disputation for Holy Church in certain councils. To this, likewise, bear witness many works in the same manner that are to be seen in the city and in the whole Exarchate of Ravenna, and in particular some that are in S. Maria Rotonda without that city, made a little time after the Lombards had been driven out of Italy.

In this church, as I will not forbear to say, there may be seen a thing most notable and marvellous, namely, the vault, or rather cupola, that covers it, which, although it is ten braccia wide and serves for roof and covering to that building, is nevertheless of one single piece, so great and ponderous that it seems almost impossible that such a stone, weighing more than 200,000 libbre, could have been set into place so high. But to return to our subject; there issued from the hands of the masters of these times those puppet-like and uncouth figures that are still to be seen in the works of old.

The same thing happened to architecture, seeing that, since it was necessary to build, and since form and the good method were completely lost by reason of the death of the craftsmen and the destruction and ruin of their works, those who applied themselves to this exercise built nothing that either in ordering or in proportion showed any grace, or design, or reason whatsoever. Wherefore there came to arise new architects, who brought from their barbarous races the method of that manner of buildings that are called by us to-day German; and they made some that are rather a source of laughter for us moderns than creditable to them, until better craftsmen afterwards found a better style, in some measure similar to the good style of the ancients, even as that manner may be seen throughout all Italy in the old churches (but not the ancient), which were built by them, such as a palace of Theodoric, King of Italy, in Ravenna, and one in Pavia, and another in Modena; all in a barbarous manner, and rather rich and vast than well-conceived or of good architecture. The same may be affirmed of S. Stefano in Rimini, of S. Martino in Ravenna, and of the Church of S. Giovanni Evangelista, erected in the same city by Galla Placidia about the year of our salvation 438; of S. Vitale, which was erected in the year 547, of the Abbey of Classi di Fuori, and in short of many other monasteries and churches erected after the Lombard rule.

All these buildings, as has been said, are both large and magnificent, but of the rudest architecture, and among them are many abbeys in France erected to S. Benedict, the Church and Monastery of Monte Casino, and the Church of S. Giovanni Battista at Monza, built by that Theodelinda, Queen of the Goths, to whom S. Gregory the Pope wrote his Dialogues; in which place that Queen caused to be painted the story of the Lombards, wherein it was seen that they shaved the back of their heads, and in front they had long locks, and they dyed themselves as far as the chin. Their garments were of ample linen, as was the use of the Angles and Saxons, and below a mantle of diverse colours; their shoes open as far as the toes and tied above with certain straps of leather. Similar to the aforesaid churches were the Church of S. Giovanni in Pavia, erected by Gondiberta, daughter of the aforesaid Theodelinda, and in the same city the Church of S. Salvadore, built by the brother of the said Queen, Aribert, who succeeded to the throne of Rodoald, husband of Gondiberta; and the Church of S. Ambrogio in Pavia, erected by Grimoald, King of the Lombards, who drove Bertrid, son of Aribert, from his throne.

This Bertrid, being restored to his throne after the death of Grimoald, erected, also in Pavia, a monastery for nuns called the Monasterio Nuovo, in honour of Our Lady and of S. Agatha; and the Queen erected one without the walls, dedicated to the "Virgin Mary in Pertica." Cunibert, likewise, son of that Bertrid, erected a monastery and church after the same manner to S. Giorgio, called di Coronate, on the spot where he had gained a great victory over Alahi. Not unlike to these, too, was the church that the King of the Lombards, Luitprand (who lived in the time of King Pepin, father of Charlemagne), built in Pavia, which is called S. Pietro in Cieldauro; nor that one, likewise, that Desiderius built, who reigned after Astolf—namely, S. Pietro Clivate, in the diocese of Milan; nor the Monastery of S. Vincenzo in Milan, nor that of S. Giulia in Brescia, seeing that they were all built at the greatest cost, but in the most ugly and haphazard manner.

Later, in Florence, architecture made some little progress, and the Church of S. Apostolo, that was erected by Charlemagne, although small, was most beautiful in manner; for not to mention that the shafts of the columns, although they are of separate pieces, show much grace and are made with beautiful proportion, the capitals, also, and the arches turned to make the little vaulted roofs of the two small aisles, show that in Tuscany there had survived or in truth arisen some good craftsman. In short, the architecture of this church is such that Filippo di Ser Brunellesco did not disdain to avail himself of it as a model in building the Church of S. Spirito and that of S. Lorenzo in the same city.

The same may be seen in the Church of S. Marco in Venice, which (to say nothing of S. Giorgio Maggiore, erected by Giovanni Morosini in the year 978) was begun under the Doge Giustiniano and Giovanni Particiaco, close by S. Teodosio, when the body of that Evangelist was sent from Alexandria to Venice; and after many fires, which greatly damaged the Doge's palace and the church, it was finally rebuilt on the same foundations in the Greek manner and in that style wherein it is seen to-day, at very great cost and under the direction of many architects, in the year of Christ 973, at the time of Doge Domenico Selvo, who had the columns brought from wheresoever he could find them. And so it continued to go on up to the year 1140, when the Doge was Messer Piero Polani, and, as has been said, with the design of many masters, all Greeks.

In the same Greek manner and about the same time were the seven abbeys that Count Ugo, Marquis of Brandenburg, caused to be built in Tuscany, as can be seen in the Badia of Florence, in that of Settimo, and in the others; which buildings, with the remains of those that are no longer standing, bear testimony that architecture was still in a measure holding its ground, although greatly corrupted and far removed from the good manner of the ancients. To this can also bear witness many old palaces built in Florence after the ruin of Fiesole, in Tuscan workmanship, but with barbaric ordering in the proportions of those doors and windows of immense length, in the curves of the pointed quarter-segments, and in the turning of the arches, after the wont of the foreign architects of those times.

The year afterwards, 1013, it is clear that the art had regained some of its vigour from the rebuilding of that most beautiful church, S. Miniato in Sul Monte, in the time of Messer Alibrando, citizen and Bishop of Florence; for the reason that, besides the marble ornaments that are seen therein both within and without, it may be seen from the façade that the Tuscan architects strove as much as they could in the doors, the windows, the columns, the arches, and the mouldings, to imitate the good order of the ancients, having in part recovered it from the most ancient temple of S. Giovanni in their city. At the same time painting, which was little less than wholly spent, may be seen to have begun to win back something, as the mosaic shows that was made in the principal chapel of the said Church of S. Miniato.

From such beginnings, then, these arts commenced to grow better in design throughout Tuscany, as is seen in the year 1016, from the commencement made by the people of Pisa for the building of their Duomo, seeing that in those times it was a great thing for men to put their hands to the construction of a church made, as this was, with five naves, and almost wholly of marble both within and without. This church, which was built under the direction and design of Buschetto, a Greek of Dulichium, an architect of rarest worth for those times, was erected and adorned by the people of Pisa with innumerable spoils brought by sea (for they were at the height of their greatness) from diverse most distant places, as is well shown by the columns, bases, capitals, cornices, and all the other kinds of stonework that are therein seen.

And seeing that these things were some of them small, some large, and some of a middle size, great was the judgment and the talent of Buschetto in accommodating them and in making the distribution of all this building, which is very well arranged both within and without; and besides other work, he contrived the frontal slope of the façade very ingeniously with a great number of columns, adorning it besides with columns carved in diverse and varied ways, and with ancient statues, even as he also made the principal doors in the same façade, between which—that is, beside that of the Carroccio—there was afterwards given an honourable burial-place to Buschetto himself, with three epitaphs, whereof this is one, in Latin verses in no way dissimilar to others of those times:

QUOD VIX MILLE BOUM POSSENT JUGA JUNCTA MOVERE,
ET QUOD VIX POTUIT PER MARE FERRE RATIS,
BUSCHETTI NISU, QUOD ERAT MIRABILE VISU,
DENA PUELLARUM TURBA LEVAVIT ONUS.

And seeing that there has been made mention above of the Church of S. Apostolo in Florence, I will not forbear to say that on a marble slab therein, on one side of the high-altar, there may be seen these words:

VIII. V. DIE VI. APRILIS IN RESURRECTIONE DOMINI, KAROLUS FRANCORUM REX A ROMA REVERTENS, INGRESSUS FLORENTIAM, CUM MAGNO GAUDIO ET TRIPUDIO SUSCEPTUS, CIVIUM COPIAM TORQUEIS AUREIS DECORAVIT ... ECCLESIA SANCTORUM APOSTOLORUM ... IN ALTARI INCLUSA EST LAMINA PLUMBEA, IN QUA DESCRIPTA APPARET PRÆFATA FUNDATIO ET CONSECRATIO FACTA PER ARCHIEPISCOPUM TURPINUM, TESTIBUS ROLANDO ET ULIVERIO.

The aforesaid edifice of the Duomo in Pisa, awaking the minds of many to fair enterprises throughout all Italy, and above all in Tuscany, was the cause that in the city of Pistoia, in the year 1032, a beginning was made for the Church of S. Paolo, in the presence of the Blessed Atto, Bishop of that city, as may be read in a contract made at that time, and, in short, for many other buildings whereof it would take too long to make mention at present.

I cannot forbear to say, however, following the course of time, that afterwards, in the year 1060, there was erected in Pisa the round church of S. Giovanni, opposite the Duomo and in the same square. And something marvellous and almost wholly incredible is to be found recorded in an old book of the Works of the said Duomo, namely, that the columns of the said S. Giovanni, the pillars, and the vaulting were raised and completed in fifteen days and no more. In the same book, which anyone can see who has the wish, it may be read that for the building of this church there was imposed a tax of one danaio for each fire, but it is not said therein whether of gold or of small coin; and at that time there were in Pisa, as may be seen in the same book, 34,000 fires.

Truly this work was vast, of great cost, and difficult to execute, and above all the vaulting of the tribune, made in the shape of a pear and covered without with lead. The outer side is full of columns, carvings, and groups, and on the frieze of the central door is a Jesus Christ with the twelve Apostles in half-relief, after the Greek manner.

The people of Lucca, about the same time—that is, in the year 1061—as rivals of the people of Pisa, began the Church of S. Martino in Lucca from the design of certain disciples of Buschetto, there being then no other architects in Tuscany. Attached to the façade of this church there may be seen a marble portico with many ornaments and carvings made in memory of Pope Alexander II, who had been, a short time before he was elected to the Pontificate, Bishop of that city. Of this construction and of Alexander himself everything is fully told in nine Latin verses, and the same may be seen in certain other ancient letters engraved on the marble under the portico, between the doors.

On the said façade are certain figures, and under the portico many scenes in marble from the life of S. Martin, in half-relief, and in the Greek manner. But the best, which are over one of the doors, were made 170 years after by Niccola Pisano and finished in 1233, as will be told in the proper place; the Wardens, when these were begun, being Abellenato and Aliprando, as it may be clearly seen from certain letters carved in marble in the same place.

These figures by the hand of Niccola Pisano show how much improvement there came from him to the art of sculpture. Similar to these were most, nay, all of the buildings that were erected in Italy from the times aforesaid up to the year 1250, seeing that little or no acquisition or improvement can be seen to have been made in the space of so many years by architecture, which stayed within the same limits and went on ever in that rude manner, whereof many examples are still to be seen, of which I will at present make no mention, for the reason that they will be spoken of below according to the occasions that may come before me.

In like manner the good sculptures and pictures which had been buried under the ruins of Italy remained up to the same time hidden from or not known to the men boorishly reared in the rudeness of the modern use of that age, wherein no other sculptures or pictures existed than those which a remnant of old Greeks were making either in images of clay or stone, or painting monstrous figures and covering only the bare lineaments with colour.

These craftsmen, as the best, being the only ones in these professions, were summoned to Italy, whither they brought sculpture and painting, together with mosaic, in that style wherein they knew them; and even so they taught them rudely and roughly to the Italians, who afterwards made use of them, as has been told and will be told further, up to a certain time. And the men of those times, not being used to see other excellence or greater perfection in any work than that which they themselves saw, marvelled and took these for the best, for all that they were vile, until the spirits of the generation then arising, helped in some places by the subtlety of the air, became so greatly purged that about 1250, Heaven, moved to pity for the lovely minds that the Tuscan soil was producing every day, restored them to their first condition.

And although those before them had seen remains of arches, of colossi, of statues, of urns, and of storied columns in the ages that came after the sackings, the destructions, and the burnings of Rome, and never knew how to make use of them or draw from them any benefit, up to the time mentioned above, the minds that came after, discerning well enough the good from the bad and abandoning the old manners, turned to imitating the ancient with all their industry and wit.

But in order that it may be understood more clearly what I call "old" and what "ancient," the "ancient" were the works made before Constantine in Corinth, in Athens, in Rome, and in other very famous cities, until the time of Nero, the Vespasians, Trajan, Hadrian, and Antoninus; whereas those others are called "old" that were executed from S. Silvester's day up to that time by a certain remnant of Greeks, who knew rather how to dye than how to paint.

For since the excellent early craftsmen had been killed in these wars, as has been said, to the remainder of these Greeks, old but not ancient, there had been left nothing but elementary outlines on a ground of colour; and to this at the present day witness is borne by an infinity of mosaics, which, wrought throughout all Italy by these Greeks, are to be seen in every old church in any city whatsoever of Italy, and above all in the Duomo of Pisa, in S. Marco at Venice, and in other places as well; and so, too, they kept making many pictures in that manner, with eyes staring, hands outstretched, and standing on tiptoe, as may still be seen in S. Miniato without Florence, between the door that leads into the sacristy and that which leads into the convent; and in S. Spirito in the said city, the whole side of the cloister opposite the church; and in like manner at Arezzo, in S. Giuliano and S. Bartolommeo and in other churches; and in Rome, in the old Church of S. Pietro, scenes right round between the windows—works that have more of the monstrous in their lineaments than of likeness to whatsoever they represent.

Of sculptures, likewise, they made an infinity, as may still be seen in low-relief over the door of S. Michele in the Piazza Padella of Florence, and in Ognissanti; and tombs and adornments in many places for the doors of churches, wherein they have certain figures for corbels to support the roof, so rude and vile, so misshapen, and of such a grossness of manner, that it appears impossible that worse could be imagined.

Thus far have I thought fit to discourse from the beginning of sculpture and of painting, and peradventure at greater length than was necessary in this place, which I have done, indeed, not so much carried away by my affection for art as urged by the common benefit and advantage of our craftsmen. For having seen in what way she, from a small beginning, climbed to the greatest height, and how from a state so noble she fell into utter ruin, and that, in consequence, the nature of this art is similar to that of the others, which, like human bodies, have their birth, their growth, their growing old, and their death; they will now be able to recognize more easily the progress of her second birth and of that very perfection whereto she has risen again in our times.

And I hope, moreover, that if ever (which God forbid) it should happen at any time, through the negligence of men, or through the malice of time, or, finally, through the decree of Heaven, which appears to be unwilling that the things of this earth should exist for long in one form, that she falls again into the same chaos of ruin; that these my labours, whatsoever they may be worth (if indeed they may be worthy of a happier fortune), both through what has been already said and through what remains to say, may be able to keep her alive or at least to encourage the most exalted minds to provide them with better assistance; so much so that, what with my good will and the works of these masters, she may abound in those aids and adornments wherein, if I may freely speak the truth, she has been wanting up to the present day.

But it is now time to come to the Life of Giovanni Cimabue, and even as he gave the first beginning to the new method of drawing and painting, so it is just and expedient that he should give it to the Lives, in which I will do my utmost to observe, the most that I can, the order of their manners rather than that of time. And in describing the forms and features of the craftsmen I will be brief, seeing that their portraits, which have been collected by me with no less cost and fatigue than diligence, will show better what sort of men the craftsmen themselves were in appearance than describing them could ever do; and if the portrait of any one of them should be wanting, that is not through my fault but by reason of its being nowhere found.

And if the said portraits were not peradventure to appear to someone to be absolutely like to others that might be found, I wish it to be remembered that the portrait made of a man when he was eighteen or twenty years old will never be like to the portrait that may have been made fifteen or twenty years later. To this it must be added that portraits in drawing are never so like as are those in colours, not to mention that the engravers, who have no draughtsmanship, always rob the faces (being unable or not knowing how to make exactly those minutenesses that make them good and true to life) of that perfection which is rarely or never found in portraits cut in wood. In short, how great have been therein my labour, expense, and diligence, will be evident to those who, in reading, will see whence I have to the best of my ability unearthed them.

LIVES - Author's Preface to the Whole Work!

2011-11-13T00:16:00.000-08:00

PREFACE TO THE WHOLE WORK
It was the wont of the finest spirits in all their actions, through a burning desire for glory, to spare no labour, however grievous, in order to bring their works to that perfection which might render them impressive and marvellous to the whole world; nor could the humble fortunes of many prevent their energies from attaining to the highest rank, whether in order to live in honour or to leave in the ages to come eternal fame for all their rare excellence.

And although, for zeal and desire so worthy of praise, they were, while living, highly rewarded by the liberality of Princes and by the splendid ambition of States, and even after death kept alive in the eyes of the world by the testimony of statues, tombs, medals, and other memorials of that kind; none the less, it is clearly seen that the ravening maw of time has not only diminished by a great amount their own works and the honourable testimonies of others, but has also blotted out and destroyed the names of all those who have been kept alive by any other means than by the right vivacious and pious pens of writers.

Pondering over this matter many a time in my own mind, and recognizing, from the example not only of the ancients but of the moderns as well, that the names of very many architects, sculptors, and painters, both old and modern, together with innumerable most beautiful works wrought by them, are going on being forgotten and destroyed little by little, and in such wise, in truth, that nothing can be foretold for them but a certain and wellnigh immediate death; and wishing to defend them as much as in me lies from this second death, and to preserve them as long as may be possible in the memory of the living; and having spent much time in seeking them out and used the greatest diligence in discovering the native city, the origin, and the actions of the craftsmen, and having with great labour drawn them from the tales of old men and from various records and writings, left by their heirs a prey to dust and food for worms; and finally, having received from this both profit and pleasure, I have judged it expedient, nay rather, my duty, to make for them whatsoever memorial my weak talents and my small judgment may be able to make.

In honour, then, of those who are already dead, and for the benefit, for the most part, of all the followers of these three most excellent arts, Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting, I will write the Lives of the craftsmen of each according to the times wherein they lived, step by step from Cimabue down to our own time; not touching on the ancients save in so far as it may concern our subject, seeing that no more can be said of them than those so many writers have said who have come down to our own age. I will treat thoroughly of many things that appertain to the science of one or other of the said arts; but before I come to the secrets of these, or to the history of the craftsmen, it seems to me right to touch a little on a dispute, born and bred between many without reason, as to the sovereignty and nobility, not of architecture, which they have left on one side, but of sculpture and painting; there being advanced, on one side and on the other, many arguments whereof many, if not all, are worthy to be heard and discussed by their craftsmen.

I say, then, that the sculptors, as being endowed, perchance by nature and by the exercise of their art, with a better habit of body, with more blood, and with more energy, and being thereby more hardy and more fiery than the painters, in seeking to give the highest rank to their art, argue and prove the nobility of sculpture primarily from its antiquity, for the reason that God Almighty made man, who was the first statue; and they say that sculpture embraces many more arts as kindred, and has many more of them subordinate to itself than has painting, such as low-relief, working in clay, wax, plaster, wood, and ivory, casting in metals, every kind of chasing, engraving and carving in relief on fine stones and steel, and many others which both in number and in difficulty surpass those of painting.

And alleging, further, that those things which stand longest and best against time and can be preserved longest for the use of men, for whose benefit and service they are made, are without doubt more useful and more worthy to be held in love and honour than are the others, they maintain that sculpture is by so much more noble than painting as it is more easy to preserve, both itself and the names of all who are honoured by it both in marble and in bronze, against all the ravages of time and air, than is painting, which, by its very nature, not to say by external accidents, perishes in the most sheltered and most secure places that architects have been able to provide. Nay more, they insist that the small number not merely of their excellent but even of their ordinary craftsmen, in contrast to the infinite number of the painters, proves their greater nobility; saying that sculpture calls for a certain better disposition, both of mind and of body, that are rarely found together, whereas painting contents itself with any feeble temperament, so long as it has a hand, if not bold, at least sure; and that this their contention is proved by the greater prices cited in particular by Pliny, by the loves caused by the marvellous beauty of certain statues, and by the judgment of him who made the statue of sculpture of gold and that of painting of silver, and placed the first on the right and the second on the left.

Nor do they even refrain from quoting the difficulties experienced before the materials, such as the marbles and the metals, can be got into subjection, and their value, in contrast to the ease of obtaining the panels, the canvases, and the colours, for the smallest prices and in every place; and further, the extreme and grievous labour of handling the marbles and the bronzes, through their weight, and of working them, through the weight of the tools, in contrast to the lightness of the brushes, of the styles, and of the pens, chalk-holders, and charcoals; besides this, that they exhaust their minds together with all the parts of their bodies, which is something very serious compared with the quiet and light work of the painter, using only his mind and hand. Moreover, they lay very great stress on the fact that things are more noble and more perfect in proportion as they approach more nearly to the truth, and they say that sculpture imitates the true form and shows its works on every side and from every point of view, whereas painting, being laid on flat with most simple strokes of the brush and having but one light, shows but one aspect; and many of them do not scruple to say that sculpture is as much superior to painting as is truth to falsehood.

But as their last and strongest argument, they allege that for the sculptor there is necessary a perfection of judgment not only ordinary, as for the painter, but absolute and immediate, in a manner that it may see within the marble the exact whole of that figure which they intend to carve from it, and may be able to make many parts perfect without any other model before it combines and unites them together, as Michelagnolo has done divinely well; although, for lack of this happiness of judgment, they make easily and often some of those blunders which have no remedy, and which, when made, bear witness for ever to the slips of the chisel or to the small judgment of the sculptor. This never happens to painters, for the reason that at every slip of the brush or error of judgment that might befall them they have time, recognizing it themselves or being told by others, to cover and patch it up with the very brush that made it; which brush, in their hands, has this advantage over the sculptor's chisels, that it not only heals, as did the iron of the spear of Achilles, but leaves its wounds without a scar.

To these things the painters, answering not without disdain, say, in the first place, that if the sculptors wish to discuss the matter on the ground of the Scriptures the chief nobility is their own, and that the sculptors deceive themselves very grievously in claiming as their work the statue of our first father, which was made of earth; for the art of this performance, both in its putting on and in its taking off, belongs no less to the painters than to others, and was called "plastice" by the Greeks and "fictoria" by the Latins, and was judged by Praxiteles to be the mother of sculpture, of casting, and of chasing, a fact which makes sculpture, in truth, the niece of painting, seeing that "plastice" and painting are born at one and the same moment from design.

And they say that if we consider it apart from the Scriptures, the opinions of the ages are so many and so varied that it is difficult to believe one more than the other; and that finally, considering this nobility as they wish it, in one place they lose and in the other they do not win, as may be seen more clearly in the Preface to the Lives.

After this, in comparison with the arts related and subordinate to sculpture, they say that they have many more than the sculptors, because painting embraces the invention of history, the most difficult art of foreshortening, all the branches of architecture needful for the making of buildings, perspective, colouring in distemper, and the art of working in fresco, an art different and distinct from all the others; likewise working in oils on wood, on stone, and on canvas; illumination, too, an art different from all the others; the staining of glass, mosaics in glass, the art of inlaying and making pictures with coloured woods, which is painting; making sgraffito[2] work on houses with iron tools; niello[3] work and printing from copper, both members of painting; goldsmith's enamelling, and the inlaying of gold for damascening; the painting of glazed figures, and the making on earthenware vessels of scenes and figures to resist the action of water; weaving brocades with figures and flowers, and that most beautiful invention, woven tapestries, that are both convenient and magnificent, being able to carry painting into every place, whether savage or civilized; not to mention that in every department of art that has to be practised, design, which is our design, is used by all; so that the members of painting are more numerous and more useful than those of sculpture.

They do not deny the eternity, for so the others call it, of sculpture, but they say that this is no privilege that should make the art more noble than it is by nature, seeing that it comes simply from the material, and that if length of life were to give nobility to souls, the pine, among the plants, and the stag, among the animals, would have a soul more noble beyond compare than that of men; although they could claim a similar immortality and nobility in their mosaics, seeing that there may be seen some as ancient as the most ancient sculptures that are in Rome, and that they used to be made of jewels and fine stones. And as for their small or smaller number, they declare that this is not because the art calls for a better habit of body and greater judgment, but that it depends wholly on the poverty of their resources and on the little favour, or avarice, as we would rather call it, of rich men, who give them no supply of marble and no opportunity to work; in contrast with what may be believed, nay, seen to have happened in ancient times, when sculpture rose to its greatest height.

Indeed, it is manifest that he who cannot use and waste a small quantity of marble and hard stone, which are very costly, cannot have that practice in the art that is essential; he who does not practise does not learn it; and he who does not learn it can do no good. Wherefore they should rather excuse with these arguments the imperfection and the small number of their masters, than seek to deduce nobility from them under false colours. As for the higher prices of sculptures, they answer that, although theirs might be much less, they have not to share them, being content with a boy who grinds their colours and hands them their brushes or their cheap stools, whereas the sculptors, besides the great cost of their material, require many aids and spend more time on one single figure than they themselves do on very many; wherefore their prices appear to come from the quality and the durability of the material itself, from the aids that it requires for its completion, and from the time that is taken in working it, rather than from the excellence of the art itself. And although that does not suffice and no greater price is found, as would be easily seen by anyone who were willing to consider it diligently, let them find a greater price than the marvellous, beautiful, and living gift that Alexander the Great made in return for the most splendid and excellent work of Apelles, bestowing on him, not vast treasures or high estate, but his own beloved and most beautiful Campaspe; let them observe, in addition, that Alexander was young, enamoured of her, and naturally subject to the passions of love, and also both a King and a Greek; and then, from this, let them draw what conclusion they please.

As for the loves of Pygmalion and of those other rascals no more worthy to be men, cited as proof of the nobility of the art, they know not what to answer, if, from a very great blindness of intellect and from a licentiousness unbridled beyond all natural bounds, there can be made a proof of nobility. As for the man, whosoever he was, alleged by the sculptors to have made sculpture of gold and painting of silver, they are agreed that if he had given as much sign of judgment as of wealth, there would be no disputing it; and finally, they conclude that the ancient Golden Fleece, however celebrated it may be, none the less covered nothing but an unintelligent ram; wherefore neither the testimony of riches nor that of dishonest desires, but those of letters, of practice, of excellence, and of judgment are those to which we must pay attention. Nor do they make any answer to the difficulty of obtaining the marbles and the metals, save this, that it springs from their own poverty and from the little favour of the powerful, as has been said, and not from any degree of greater nobility.

To the extreme fatigues of the body and to the dangers peculiar to them and to their works, laughing and without any ado they answer that if greater fatigues and dangers prove greater nobility, the art of quarrying the marbles from the bowels of mountains by means of wedges, levers, and hammers must be more noble than sculpture, that of the blacksmith must surpass the goldsmith's, and that of masonry must be superior to architecture.

They say, next, that the true difficulties lie rather in the mind than in the body, wherefore those things that from their nature call for more study and knowledge are more noble and excellent than those that avail themselves rather of strength of body; and they declare that since the painters rely more on the worth of the mind than the others, this highest honour belongs to painting. For the sculptors the compasses and squares suffice to discover and apply all the proportions and measurements whereof they have need; for the painters there is necessary, besides the knowledge how to make good use of the aforesaid instruments, an accurate understanding of perspective, for the reason that they have to provide a thousand other things beyond landscapes and buildings, not to mention that they must have greater judgment by reason of the quantity of the figures in one scene, wherein more errors can come than in a single statue.

For the sculptor it is enough to be acquainted with the true forms and features of solid and tangible bodies, subordinate on every side to the touch, and moreover of those only that have something to support them. For the painter it is necessary to know the forms not only of all the bodies supported and not supported, but also of all those transparent and intangible; and besides this they must know the colours that are suitable for the said bodies, whereof the multitude and the variety, so absolute and admitting of such infinite extension, are demonstrated better by the flowers, the fruits, and the minerals than by anything else; and this knowledge is supremely difficult to acquire and to maintain, by reason of their infinite variety.

They say, moreover, that whereas sculpture, through the stubbornness and the imperfection of the material, does not represent the emotions of the soul save with motion, which does not, however, find much scope therein, and with the mere shape of the limbs and not even of all these; the painters demonstrate them with all the forms of motion, which are infinite, with the shape of the limbs, however subtle they may be, and even with breath itself and the spiritual essence of sight; and that, for greater perfection in demonstrating not only the passions and emotions of the soul but also the events of the future, as living men do, they must have, besides long practice in the art, a complete understanding of physiognomy, whereof that part suffices for the sculptor which deals with the quantity and the quality of the members, without troubling about the quality of colours, as to the knowledge of which anyone who judges by the eye knows how useful and necessary it is for the true imitation of nature, whereunto the closer a man approaches the more perfect he is.

After this they add that whereas sculpture, taking away bit by bit, at one and the same time gives depth to and acquires relief for those things that have solidity by their own nature, and makes use of touch and sight, the painters, in two distinct actions, give relief and depth to a flat surface with the help of one single sense; and this, when it has been done by a person intelligent in the art, has caused many great men, not to speak of animals, to stand fast in the most pleasing illusion, which has never been seen to be done by sculpture, for the reason that it does not imitate nature in a manner that may be called as perfect as their own. And finally, in answer to that complete and absolute perfection of judgment which is required for sculpture, by reason of its having no means to add where it takes away; declaring, first, that such mistakes are irreparable, as the others say, and not to be remedied save by patches, which, even as in garments they are signs of poverty of wardrobe, so too both in sculpture and in pictures are signs of poverty of intellect and judgment; and saying, further, that patience, at its own leisure, by means of models, protractors, squares, compasses, and a thousand other devices and instruments for enlarging, not only preserves them from mistakes but enables them to bring their whole work to its perfection; they conclude, then, that this difficulty which they put down as the greater is nothing or little when compared to those which the painters have when working in fresco, and that the said perfection of judgment is in no way more necessary for sculptors than for painters, it being sufficient for the former to execute good models in wax, clay, or something else, even as the latter make their drawings on corresponding materials or on cartoons; and that finally, the quality that little by little transfers their models to the marble is rather patience than aught else.

But let us consider about judgment, as the sculptors wish, and see whether it is not more necessary to one who works in fresco than to one who chisels in marble. For here not only is there no place for patience or for time, which are most mortal enemies to the union of the plaster and the colours, but the eye does not see the true colours until the plaster is well dry, nor can the hand judge of anything but of the soft or the dry, in a manner that anyone who were to call it working in the dark, or with spectacles of colours different from the truth, would not in my belief be very far wrong.

Nay, I do not doubt at all that such a name is more suitable for it than for intaglio, for which wax serves as spectacles both true and good. They say, too, that for this work it is necessary to have a resolute judgment, to foresee the end in the fresh plaster and how the work will turn out on the dry; besides that the work cannot be abandoned so long as the plaster is still fresh, and that it is necessary to do resolutely in one day what sculpture does in a month. And if a man has not this judgment and this excellence, there are seen, on the completion of his work or in time, patches, blotches, corrections, and colours superimposed or retouched on the dry, which is something of the vilest, because afterwards mould appears and reveals the insufficiency and the small knowledge of the craftsmen, even as the pieces added in sculpture lead to ugliness; not to mention that when it comes about that the figures in fresco are washed, as is often done after some time to restore them, what has been worked on the fresh plaster remains, and what has been retouched on the dry is carried away by the wet sponge.

They add, moreover, that whereas the sculptors make two figures together, or at the most three, from one block of marble, they make many of them on one single panel, with all those so many and so varied aspects which the sculptors claim for one single statue, compensating with the variety of their postures, foreshortenings, and attitudes, for the fact that the work of the sculptors can be seen from every side; even as Giorgione da Castelfranco did once in one of his pictures, wherein a figure with its back turned, having a mirror on either side, and a pool of water at its feet, shows its back in the painting, its front in the pool, and its sides in the mirrors, which is something that sculpture has never been able to do.

In addition to this, they maintain that painting leaves not one of the elements unadorned and not abounding with all the excellent things that nature has bestowed on them, giving its own light and its own darkness to the air, with all its varieties of feeling, and filling it with all the kinds of birds together; to water, its clearness, the fishes, the mosses, the foam, the undulations of the waves, the ships, and all its various moods; and to the earth, the mountains, the plains, the plants, the fruits, the flowers, the animals, and the buildings; with so great a multitude of things and so great a variety of their forms and of their true colours, that nature herself many a time stands in a marvel thereat; and finally, giving to fire so much of its heat and light that it is clearly seen burning things, and, almost quivering with its flames, rendering luminous in part the thickest darkness of the night.

Wherefore it appears to them that they can justly conclude and declare that contrasting the difficulties of the sculptors with their own, the labours of the body with those of the mind, the imitation of the mere form with the imitation of the impression, both of quantity and of quality, that strikes the eye, the small number of the subjects wherein sculpture can and does demonstrate its excellence with the infinite number of those which painting presents to us (not to mention the perfect preservation of them for the intellect and the distribution of them in those places wherein nature herself has not done so); and finally, weighing the whole content of the one with that of the other, the nobility of sculpture, as shown by the intellect, the invention, and the judgment of its craftsmen, does not correspond by a great measure to that which painting enjoys and deserves. And this is all that on the one side and on the other has come to my ears that is worthy of consideration.

But because it appears to me that the sculptors have spoken with too much heat and the painters with too much disdain, and seeing that I have long enough studied the works of sculpture and have ever exercised myself in painting, however small, perhaps, may be the fruit that is to be seen of it; none the less, by reason of that which it is worth, and by reason of the undertaking of these writings, judging it my duty to demonstrate the judgment that I have ever made of it in my own mind (and may my authority avail the most that it can), I will declare my opinion surely and briefly over such a dispute, being convinced that I will not incur any charge of presumption or of ignorance, seeing that I will not treat of the arts of others, as many have done before to the end that they might appear to the crowd intelligent in all things by means of letters, and as happened, among others, to Phormio the Peripatetic of Ephesus, who, in order to display his eloquence, lecturing and making disputation about the virtues and parts of the excellent captain, made Hannibal laugh not less at his presumption than at his ignorance.

I say, then, that sculpture and painting are in truth sisters, born from one father, that is, design, at one and the same birth, and have no precedence one over the other, save insomuch as the worth and the strength of those who maintain them make one craftsman surpass another, and not by reason of any difference or degree of nobility that is in truth to be found between them. And although by reason of the diversity of their essence they have many different advantages, these are neither so great nor of such a kind that they do not come exactly into balance together and that we do not perceive the infatuation or the obstinacy, rather than the judgment, of those who wish one to surpass the other.

Wherefore it may be said with reason that one and the same soul rules the bodies of both, and by reason of this I conclude that those do evil who strive to disunite and to separate the one from the other. Heaven, wishing to undeceive us in this matter and to show us the kinship and union of these two most noble arts, has raised up in our midst at various times many sculptors who have painted and many painters who have worked in sculpture, as will be seen in the Life of Antonio del Pollaiuolo, of Leonardo da Vinci, and of many others long since passed away. But in our own age the Divine Goodness has created for us Michelagnolo Buonarroti, in whom both these arts shine forth so perfect and appear so similar and so closely united, that the painters marvel at his pictures and the sculptors feel for the sculptures wrought by him supreme admiration and reverence.

On him, to the end that he might not perchance need to seek from some other master some convenient resting-place for the figures that he wrought, nature has bestowed so generously the science of architecture, that without having need of others he has strength and power within himself to give to this or the other image made by himself an honourable and suitable resting-place, in a manner that he rightly deserves to be called the king of sculptors, the prince of painters, and the most excellent of architects, nay rather, of architecture the true master. And indeed we can affirm with certainty that those do in no way err who call him divine, seeing that he has within his own self embraced the three arts most worthy of praise and most ingenious that are to be found among mortal men, and that with these, after the manner of a God, he can give us infinite delight. And let this suffice for the dispute raised between the factions, and for our own opinion.

Now, returning to my first intention, I say that, wishing in so far as it lies within the reach of my powers to drag from the ravening maw of time, the names of the sculptors, painters, and architects, who, from Cimabue to the present day, have been of some notable excellence in Italy, and desiring that this my labour may be no less useful than it has been pleasant to me in the undertaking, it appears to me necessary, before we come to the history, to make as briefly as may be an introduction to these three arts, wherein those were valiant of whom I am to write the Lives, to the end that every gracious spirit may first learn the most notable things in their professions, and afterwards may be able with greater pleasure and benefit to see clearly in what they were different among themselves, and how great adornment and convenience they give to their countries and to all who wish to avail themselves of their industry and knowledge.

I will begin, then, with architecture, as the most universal and the most necessary and useful to men, and as that for the service and adornment of which the two others exist; and I will expound briefly the varieties of stone, the manners or methods of construction, with their proportions, and how one may recognize buildings that are good and well-conceived. Afterwards, discoursing of sculpture, I will tell how statues are wrought, the form and the proportion that are looked for in them, and of what kind are good sculptures, with all the most secret and most necessary precepts. Finally, treating of painting, I will speak of draughtsmanship, of the methods of colouring, of the perfect execution of any work, of the quality of the pictures themselves, and of whatsoever thing appertains to painting; of every kind of mosaic, of niello, of enamelling, of damascening, and then, lastly, of the printing of pictures. And in this way I am convinced that these my labours will delight those who are not engaged in these pursuits, and will both delight and help those who have made them a profession.

For not to mention that in the Introduction they will review the methods of working, and that in the Lives of the craftsmen themselves they will learn where their works are, and how to recognize easily their perfection or imperfection and to discriminate between one manner and another, they will also be able to perceive how much praise and honour that man deserves who adds upright ways and goodness of life to the excellencies of arts so noble. Kindled by the praise that those so constituted have obtained, they too will aspire to true glory. Nor will little fruit be gathered from the history, true guide and mistress of our actions, in reading of the infinite variety of innumerable accidents that befell the craftsmen, sometimes by their own fault and very often by chance.

It remains for me to make excuse for having on occasion used some words of indifferent Tuscan, whereof I do not wish to speak, having ever taken thought to use rather the words and names particular and proper to our arts than the delicate or choice words of precious writers. Let me be allowed, then, to use in their proper speech the words proper to our craftsmen, and let all content themselves with my good will, which has bestirred itself to produce this result not in order to teach to others what I do not know myself, but through a desire to preserve this memory at least of the most celebrated craftsmen, seeing that in so many decades I have not yet been able to see one who has made much record of them. For I have wished with these my rough labours, adumbrating their noble deeds, to repay to them in some measure the debt that I owe to their works, which have been to me as masters for the learning of whatsoever I know, rather than, living in sloth, to be a malignant critic of the works of others, blaming and decrying them as men are often wont to do. But it is now time to come to our business.

LIVES - author's dedication to his patron, COSIMO DE' MEDICI

2011-11-11T00:12:00.000-08:00

TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND MOST EXCELLENT SIGNOR COSIMO DE' MEDICI, DUKE OF FLORENCE
My most honoured Lord,

Seeing that your Excellency, following in this the footsteps of your most Illustrious ancestors, and incited and urged by your own natural magnanimity, ceases not to favour and to exalt every kind of talent, wheresoever it may be found, and shows particular favour to the arts of design, fondness for their craftsmen,[1] and understanding and delight in their beautiful and rare works; I think that you cannot but take pleasure in this labour which I have undertaken, of writing down the lives, the works, the manners, and the circumstances of all those who, finding the arts already dead, first revived them, then step by step nourished and adorned them, and finally brought them to that height of beauty and majesty whereon they stand at the present day. And because these masters have been almost all Tuscans, and most of these Florentines, of whom many have been incited and aided by your most Illustrious ancestors with every kind of reward and honour to put themselves to work, it may be said that in your state, nay, in your most blessed house the arts were born anew, and that through the generosity of your ancestors the world has recovered these most beautiful arts, through which it has been ennobled and embellished.[Pg xiv]
Wherefore, through the debt which this age, these arts, and these craftsmen owe to your ancestors, and to you as the heir of their virtue and of their patronage of these professions, and through that debt which I, above all, owe them, seeing that I was taught by them, that I was their subject and their devoted servant, that I was brought up under Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici, and under Alessandro, your predecessor, and that, finally, I am infinitely attached to the blessed memory of the Magnificent Ottaviano de' Medici, by whom I was supported, loved and protected while he lived; for all these reasons, I say, and because from the greatness of your worth and of your fortunes there will come much favour for this work, and from your understanding of its subject there will come a better appreciation than from any other for its usefulness and for the labour and the diligence that I have given to its execution, it has seemed to me that to your Excellency alone could it be fittingly dedicated, and it is under your most honoured name that I have wished it to come to the hands of men.

Deign, then, Excellency, to accept it, to favour it, and, if this may be granted to it by your exalted thoughts, sometimes to read it; having regard to the nature of the matter therein dealt with and to my pure intention, which has been, not to gain for myself praise as a writer, but as craftsman to praise the industry and to revive the memory of those who, having given life and adornment to these professions, do not deserve to have their names and their works wholly left, even as they were, the prey of death and of oblivion. Besides, at the same time, through the example of so many able men and through so many observations on so many works that I have gathered together in this book, I have thought to help not a little the masters of these exercises and to please all those who therein have taste and pleasure. This I have striven to do with that accuracy and with that good faith which are essential for the truth of history and of things written.

But if my writing, being unpolished and as artless as my speech, be unworthy of your Excellency's ear and of the merits of so many most illustrious intellects; as for them, pardon me that the pen of a draughtsman, such as they too were, has no greater power to give them outline and shadow; and as for yourself, let it suffice me that your Excellency should deign to approve my simple labour, remembering that the necessity of gaining for myself the wherewithal to live has left me no time to exercise myself with any instrument but the brush. Nor even with that have I reached that goal to which I think to be able to attain, now that Fortune promises me so much favour, that, with greater ease and greater credit for myself and with greater satisfaction to others, I may perchance be able, as well with the pen as with the brush, to unfold my ideas to the world, whatsoever they may be. For besides the help and protection for which I must hope from your Excellency, as my liege lord and as the protector of poor followers of the arts, it has pleased the goodness of God to elect as His Vicar on earth the most holy and most blessed Julius III, Supreme Pontiff and a friend and patron of every kind of excellence and of these most excellent and most difficult arts in particular, from whose exalted liberality I expect recompense for many years spent and many labours expended, and up to now without fruit. And not only I, who have dedicated myself to the perpetual service of His Holiness, but all the gifted craftsmen of this age, must expect from him such honour and reward and opportunities for practising the arts so greatly, that already I rejoice to see these arts arriving in his time at the greatest height of their perfection, and Rome adorned by craftsmen so many and so noble that, counting them with those of Florence, whom your Excellency is calling every day into activity, I hope that someone after our time will have to write a fourth part to my book, enriching it with other masters and other masterpieces than those described by me; in which company I am striving with every effort not to be among the last.

Meanwhile, I am content if your Excellency has good hope of me and a better opinion than that which, by no fault of mine, you have perchance conceived of me; beseeching you not to let me be undone in your estimation by the malignant tales of other men, until at last my life and my works shall prove the contrary to what they say.

Now with that intent to which I hold, always to honour and to serve your Excellency, dedicating to you this my rough labour, as I have dedicated to you every other thing of mine and my own self, I implore you not to disdain to grant it your protection, or at least to appreciate the devotion of him who offers it to you; and recommending myself to your gracious goodness, most humbly do I kiss your hand.

Your Excellency's most humble Servant,
GIORGIO VASARI,
Painter of Arezzo.

------------------------

TO THE MOST ILLUSTRIOUS AND MOST EXCELLENT SIGNOR COSIMO DE' MEDICI, DUKE OF FLORENCE AND SIENA
My most honoured Lord,

Behold, seventeen years since I first presented to your most Illustrious Excellency the Lives, sketched so to speak, of the most famous painters, sculptors and architects, they come before you again, not indeed wholly finished, but so much changed from what they were and in such wise adorned and enriched with innumerable works, whereof up to that time I had been able to gain no further knowledge, that from my endeavour and in so far as in me lies nothing more can be looked for in them.

Behold, I say, once again they come before you, most Illustrious and truly most Excellent Lord Duke, with the addition of other noble and right famous craftsmen, who from that time up to our own day have passed from the miseries of this life to a better, and of others who, although they are still living in our midst, have laboured in these professions to such purpose that they are most worthy of eternal memory. And in truth it has been no small good-fortune for many that I, by the goodness of Him in whom all things have their being, have lived so long that I have almost rewritten this book; seeing that, even as I have removed many things which had been included I know not how, in my absence and without my consent, and have changed others, so too I have added many, both useful and necessary, that were lacking.

And as for the likenesses and portraits of so many men of worth which I have placed in this work, whereof a great part have been furnished by the help and co-operation of your Excellency, if they are sometimes not very true to life, and if they all have not that character and resemblance which the vivacity of colours is wont to give them, that is not because the drawing and the lineaments have not been taken from the life and are not characteristic and natural; not to mention that a great part of them have been sent me by the friends that I have in various places, and they have not all been drawn by a good hand. Moreover, I have suffered no small inconvenience in this from the distance of those who have engraved these heads, because, if the engravers had been near me, it might perchance have been possible to use in this matter more diligence than has been shown.

But however this may be, our lovers of art and our craftsmen, for the convenience and benefit of whom I have put myself to so great pains, must be wholly indebted to your most Illustrious Excellency for whatever they may find in it of the good, the useful, and the helpful, seeing that while engaged in your service I have had the opportunity, through the leisure which it has pleased you to give me and through the management of your many, nay, innumerable treasures, to put together and to give to the world everything which appeared to be necessary for the perfect completion of this work; and would it not be almost impiety, not to say ingratitude, were I to dedicate these Lives to another, or were the craftsmen to attribute to any other than yourself whatever they may find in them to give them help or pleasure?

For not only was it with your help and favour that they first came to the light, as now they do again, but you are, in imitation of your ancestors, sole father, sole lord, and sole protector of these our arts. Wherefore it is very right and reasonable that by these there should be made, in your service and to your eternal and perpetual memory, so many most noble pictures and statues and so many marvellous buildings in every manner.

But if we are all, as indeed we are beyond calculation, most deeply obliged to you for these and for other reasons, how much more do I not owe to you, who have always had (would that my brain and my hand had been equal to my desire and right good will) so many valuable opportunities to display my little knowledge, which, whatsoever it may be, fails by a very great measure to counterbalance the greatness and the truly royal magnificence of your mind? But how may I tell? It is in truth better that I should stay as I am than that I should set myself to attempt what would be to the most lofty and noble brain, and much more so to my insignificance, wholly impossible.

Accept then, most Illustrious Excellency, this my book, or rather indeed your book, of the Lives of the craftsmen of design; and like the Almighty God, looking rather at my soul and at my good intentions than at my work, take from me with right good will not what I would wish and ought to give, but what I can.
Your most Illustrious Excellency's most indebted servant,
GIORGIO VASARI.

Florence,
January 9, 1568.

LIVES OF THE MOST EMINENT PAINTERS SCULPTORS & ARCHITECTS

2011-11-09T12:10:00.000-08:00

For the next several weeks I'll be sharing chapters from the public domain book; LIVES OF THE MOST EMINENT PAINTERS SCULPTORS & ARCHITECTS
1912
BY GIORGIO VASARI:
NEWLY TRANSLATED BY GASTON Du C. DE VERE. WITH FIVE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS: IN TEN VOLUMES
LONDON: MACMILLAN AND CO. LD.
& THE MEDICI SOCIETY, LD. 1912-14

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE TO THIS EDITION
Vasari introduces himself sufficiently in his own prefaces and introduction; a translator need concern himself only with the system by which the Italian text can best be rendered in English. The style of that text is sometimes laboured and pompous; it is often ungrammatical. But the narrative is generally lively, full of neat phrases, and abounding in quaint expressions—many of them still recognizable in the modern Florentine vernacular—while, in such Lives as those of Giotto, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelagnolo, Vasari shows how well he can rise to a fine subject. His criticism is generally sound, solid, and direct; and he employs few technical terms, except in connection with architecture, where we find passages full of technicalities, often so loosely used that it is difficult to be sure of their exact meaning. In such cases I have invariably adopted the rendering which seemed most in accordance with Vasari's actual words, so far as these could be explained by professional advice and local knowledge; and I have included brief notes where they appeared to be indispensable.

In Mrs. Foster's familiar English paraphrase—for a paraphrase it is rather than a translation—all Vasari's liveliness evaporates, even where his meaning is not blurred or misunderstood. Perhaps I have gone too far towards the other extreme in relying upon the Anglo-Saxon side of the English language rather than upon the Latin, and in taking no liberties whatever with the text of 1568. My intention, indeed, has been to render my original word for word, and to err, if at all, in favour of literalness.

The very structure of Vasari's sentences has usually been retained, though some freedom was necessary in the matter of the punctuation, which is generally bewildering. As Mr. Horne's only too rare translation of the Life of Leonardo da Vinci has proved, it is by some such method that we can best keep Vasari's sense and Vasari's spirit—the one as important to the student of Italian art as is the other to the general reader. Such an attempt, however, places an English translator of the first volume at a conspicuous disadvantage. Throughout the earlier Lives Vasari seems to be feeling his way. He is not sure of himself, and his style is often awkward. The more faithful the attempted rendering, the more plainly must that awkwardness be reproduced.

Vasari's Introduction on Technique has not been included, because it has no immediate connection with the Lives. In any case, there already exists an adequate translation by Miss Maclehose. All Vasari's other prefaces and introductions are given in the order in which they are found in the edition of 1568.

With this much explanation, I may pass to personal matters, and record my thanks to many Florentine friends for help in technical and grammatical questions; to Professor Baldwin Brown for the notes on technical matters printed with Miss Maclehose's translation of "Vasari on Technique"; and to Mr. C. J. Holmes, of the National Portrait Gallery, for encouragement in a task which has proved no less pleasant than difficult.

G. du C. de V.

London,
March 1912.

Newly Discovered "Indian Combat" by American Artist Edmonia Lewis Acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art

2011-11-09T01:22:00.000-08:00

From Newly Discovered "Indian Combat" by American Artist Edmonia Lewis Acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art

CLEVELAND (November 1, 2011) — An outstanding American neoclassical work by the renowned 19th century sculptor Edmonia Lewis has been acquired by the Cleveland Museum of Art. The multi-figured Indian Combat ranks among the most ambitious of all free-standing American neoclassical sculptures. Born circa 1842 of African American and Native American (Objibwa) descent, Edmonia Lewis holds the distinction of being the first non-white American sculptor to achieve acclaim internationally. Indian Combat had been in the private collection of a Massachusetts family since the 1950s, and remained unknown to the art world until it surfaced late last year. The acquisition enhances the museum’s distinguished American art holdings and demonstrates the museum’s dedication to add works that strengthen its historic commitment to artistic excellence.

“Edmonia Lewis’s Indian Combat is a remarkable discovery. Its acquisition builds on the museum’s commitment to collect works of art that are both seminal to the careers of individual artists and also significant benchmarks in the history of art,” said C. Griffith Mann, the museum’s deputy director and chief curator.

Indian Combat depicts three Native American men engaged in spirited—yet graceful and balletic—combat with each other. Very few examples of neoclassical sculpture feature more than two figures, and virtually no other work exhibits such a complex integration of multiple protagonists. Conceived fully in the round, Indian Combat’s dynamic composition encourages the viewer to circumnavigate the piece in order to discover the details of the action. Having carved the marble herself—without the use of assistants that was the custom at the time—Lewis rendered a wide variety of complex textures, which can be seen in the moccasins, animal hides and loin cloths worn by the figures.

Lewis specialized in Native American themes, which were widely popular in 19th century American art and literature. Her most common subjects were inspired by The Song of Hiawatha, the epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who was her acquaintance. By contrast, Indian Combat seems to be entirely a product of the sculptor’s own imagination.

Mark Cole, PhD, Cleveland Museum of Art associate curator of American painting and sculpture, has studied Edmonia Lewis’s work since the early 1990s. “When I first saw Indian Combat, I recognized it immediately as a masterpiece, and truly Lewis’s tour de force,” he stated. “It’s a defining work by an artist who led such a fascinating and remarkable life.”

Lewis spent the bulk of her career in Rome during the mid-19th century and earned great renown for her marble carvings. She studied at Ohio’s Oberlin College— one of the first institutions of higher learning in the United States to admit women, as well as persons of color—from 1859-1863, and subsequently apprenticed in Boston before relocating to Italy in 1866. Her studio became an important destination for wealthy Americans and Europeans on their Grand Tours, several of whom became patrons. Highly sought-after in the marketplace, Edmonia Lewis’s works are in private and public collections in a number of countries, including the United States, England, Scotland and Germany.

Indian Combat will go on view in November 2011 (date TBD) in gallery 207 of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s 1916 building.

About the Cleveland Museum of Art

The Cleveland Museum of Art is renowned for the quality and breadth of its collection, which includes almost 45,000 objects and spans 6,000 years of achievement in the arts. Currently undergoing an ambitious, multi-phase renovation and expansion project across its campus, the museum is a significant international forum for exhibitions, scholarship, performing arts and art education. One of the top five comprehensive art museums in the nation, and the only one that is free of charge to all, the Cleveland Museum of Art is located in the dynamic University Circle neighborhood.

The Cleveland Museum of Art has a membership of more than 21,500 households and is supported by a broad range of individuals, foundations and businesses in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio. The museum is generously funded by Cuyahoga County residents through Cuyahoga Arts and Culture. Additional support comes from the Ohio Arts Council, which helps fund the museum with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans. For more information about the museum, its holdings, programs and events, call 888-CMA-0033 or visit www.ClevelandArt.org.

Police: Portland chef swiped $12K painting from gallery

2011-11-08T01:22:00.000-08:00

From Fox 12 Oregon: Police: Portland chef swiped $12K painting from gallery
PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) -

Police say a Portland chef is responsible for stealing a $12,000 piece of art from a gallery.

Gabriel Gabreski took the Christof Heuppi painting from an Oct. 7 private art show on Southeast 34th Avenue, officers say.

So far, officers haven't been able to locate that painting, an acrylic canvas measuring about four feet by three feet.

Art gallery owner Meg Hanson said she felt anger and frustration after the piece was stolen from her gallery.

"I'm upset. I'm angry. I feel violated. All of those things at once, but mostly it's a big loss," Hanson said.

Witnesses told Hanson they saw Gabreski walk in and grab the painting off the wall before walking out.

According to Hanson, two people at the event stopped Gabreski as he walked out, asking him what he was doing.

They say Gabreski simply smiled and said the owner gave it to him.

"I'm also angry that someone would come uninvited to a private event and intentionally walk out with something of value," Hanson said.

Officers ended up going to Gabreski's home later that night looking for the painting,but couldn't find it.

Gabreski is a chef at A Cena Italian restaurant in Sellwood. Attempts to contact the owner of the restaurant were not successful.

FOX 12 tried to contact Gabreski at his home in southeast Portland but we were told he was out of town.

Portland police say they had enough witness statements and evidence to charge Gabreski with one count of theft.

Gabreski's next court date is set for Oct. 21.

Art and antique photos released after stately home theft

2011-11-07T11:21:00.000-08:00

From BBC News: Art and antique photos released after stately home theft
Stolen painting and antiques Champagne and other fine wines were also taken

Pictures of artwork and antiques stolen from a stately home in Shropshire have been released by the police.

Paintings, antique furniture and more than 100 bottles of wine were taken in the burglary.

The police said they were not releasing the address where they were taken from for "security reasons".

Det Con Dave Bettison said: "I am appealing for information from fine art galleries and others who may be approached and offered these items."

The stolen items include a signed watercolour by Albert Neuhuys and a 19in (48cm) tall mantle clock.

The police said the exact value of the stolen property may run into "many thousands of pounds".

The break-in occurred sometime during the night of 3 October.

Suit to seek art of Dr. Death

2011-11-07T11:18:00.000-08:00

Detroit News: Suit to seek art of Dr. Death

Kevorkian's executor: Museum won't send paintings for auction
Mike Martindale/ The Detroit News

Southfield — The executor for the estate of assisted suicide advocate Jack Kevorkian will file a federal lawsuit today against a Boston-area museum, which has refused to hand over 17 paintings by the late pathologist.

Mayer Morganroth, Kevorkian's longtime friend and attorney, will seek triple damages against the Armenian Library and Museum of America (ALMA) for alleged theft and conversion of the oil paintings.

The artwork is scheduled to be auctioned off in New York City next week on behalf of Kevorkian's niece, Ava Janus of Troy, with a percentage earmarked for a charity benefitting children with cancer.

The goal, he said, is to have the legal battle brought to Michigan.

"It's ridiculous — ALMA is holding them captive," Morganroth said. "Because of his Armenian heritage, Jack thought that would be a good place and a safe place to keep them while he was away (in prison)."

Kevorkian, who died in June at age 83, was involved in 130 assisted suicides. He sparked an international "Right to Die" dialogue and went through five criminal trials before his conviction in 1999 in the death of Thomas Youk.

Morganroth said Kevorkian was concerned about the safety of his paintings after several were stolen from a California storage facility several years earlier.

"He would be rolling over in his grave at what they (museum officials) are doing," Morganroth said.

Morganroth said he and Kevorkian drew up a loan agreement with the museum in July 1999 that specifically laid out how the artwork was "the exclusive property of Dr. Kevorkian and on loan to ALMA."

"He went away to prison and got out in 2008. When he got paroled in 2010, he let them stay there for one show and then another," said Morganroth. "Then he got sick. About a year ago, we started talking about the possibility of selling off some of his collection in an auction."

Morganroth said he spoke with the initial curator, Gary Lind-Sinanian, about the auction more than two months ago and said he would be calling the museum back with the date the artwork was to be picked up.

"About a month ago I called back and was told I needed to speak to someone else there," said Morganroth. "Then suddenly nobody was returning my calls."

On Monday, Morganroth received a copy by certified mail of a lawsuit filed by ALMA in Middlesex County, Mass.

"It was incredible," said Morganroth. "They are basing their claim on comments allegedly made by Jack's sister, Flora, at one of their shows on how happy she was that his art had found a home. I don't know if she said that, but even if she did, she is not the owner of the artwork. And our binding agreement was that the art was on loan and nothing could be changed in that agreement without approval of Jack and me, or in Jack's absence — just me."

Morganroth said the auction Oct. 27-28 at the N.Y. Institute of Technology will go forward. "There are 120 items to be auctioned, including Jack's clothing, private papers, his (suicide) machine and some smaller paintings which he had at his apartment," said Morganroth. "And we will also have images of the paintings that won't be there."

Morganroth believes the legal battle with the museum has served only to increase the value of Kevorkian's art.

"What's ironic is Ava and I discussed possible charities Jack would have liked to support and we planned to make a donation from the auction to the museum," he said.

Visitors to the museum have reported the Kevorkian paintings are not even on display but "boxed up in a back room."

"This isn't about art, Jack or anything else," he said. "It's just about greed."

Sculptures from the Parthenon (Elgin Marbles)

2011-11-03T01:02:00.000-07:00

According to Thomas Hoving, author of Art For Dummiesm IDG Boioks, 1999, "Only a handful of Greek originals made it through wars, neglect, and the zeal of the early Christians to eradicate all marks of paganism."

"These noble stones," he continues, "exhibited in the British Museum and in Athens, resonate with that which is most noble and civilized in human nature. .. They are carved with a delicacy that has never been equaled.

The Parthenon is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their virgin patron. Its construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although decorations of the Parthenon continued until 432 BC.

It is the most important surviving building of Classical Greece, generally considered the culmination of the development of the Doric order. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of Greek art. The Parthenon is regarded as an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece and of Athenian democracy and one of the world's greatest cultural monuments. The Greek Ministry of Culture is currently carrying out a program of selective restoration and reconstruction to ensure the stability of the partially ruined structure.

The Parthenon itself replaced an older temple of Athena, which historians call the Pre-Parthenon or Older Parthenon, that was destroyed in the Persian invasion of 480 BC. Like most Greek temples, the Parthenon was used as a treasury. For a time, it served as the treasury of the Delian League, which later became the Athenian Empire. In the 5th century AD, the Parthenon was converted into a Christian church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

After the Ottoman Turk conquest, it was turned into a mosque in the early 1460s, and it had a minaret built in it. On 26 September 1687, an Ottoman Turk ammunition dump inside the building was ignited by Venetian bombardment. The resulting explosion severely damaged the Parthenon and its sculptures. In 1806, Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin removed some of the surviving sculptures, with the Ottoman Turks' permission. These sculptures, now known as the Elgin Marbles or the Parthenon Marbles, were sold in 1816 to the British Museum in London, where they are now displayed.

The Elgin Marbles include some 17 figures from the statuary from the east and west pediments, 15 (of an original 92) of the metope panels depicting battles between the Lapiths and the Centaurs, as well as 247 feet (or 75 m of an original 524 ft or 160 m) of the Parthenon Frieze which decorated the horizontal course set above the interior architrave of the temple. As such, they represent more than half of what now remains of the surviving sculptural decoration of the Parthenon. Elgin's acquisitions also included objects from other buildings on the Athenian Acropolis: a Caryatid from Erechtheum; four slabs from the parapet frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike; and a number of other architectural fragments of the Parthenon, Propylaia, Erechtheum, the Temple of Athena Nike and the Treasury of Atreus.

The Greek government is committed to the return of the sculptures to Greece, so far with no success.

King Tut's Golden Mask

2011-11-02T10:47:00.000-07:00

According to Thomas Hoving, author of Art For Dummiesm IDG Boioks, 1999, King Tut's Golden Mask is one of the ten greatest works of Western Civilization. I admit that I never thought of Egyptians as part of Western civilizaiton...but:

"This gold and lapis lazuli is the most evocative and smashing work of decorative art that's survived antiquity. It is perfect in execution and condition. Artistically, the mask ranks among the top portraits ever created - the gorgeous youth (he was 14 or so when he died) is portrayed as a king, a god, and a vulnerable teenager."

Tutankhamun (approx. 1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty (ruled ca. 1333 BC – 1323 BC in the conventional chronology), during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom. His original name, Tutankhaten, means "Living Image of Aten", while Tutankhamun means "Living Image of Amun". In hieroglyphs, the name Tutankhamun was typically written Amen-tut-ankh, because of a scribal custom that placed a divine name at the beginning of a phrase to show appropriate reverence.

He is possibly also the Nibhurrereya of the Amarna letters, and likely the 18th dynasty king Rathotis who, according to Manetho, an ancient historian, had reigned for nine years — a figure which conforms with Flavius Josephus's version of Manetho's Epitome.

The 1922 discovery by Howard Carter and George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon of Tutankhamun's nearly intact tomb received worldwide press coverage. It sparked a renewed public interest in ancient Egypt, for which Tutankhamun's burial mask remains the popular symbol. Exhibits of artifacts from his tomb have toured the world. In February 2010, the results of DNA tests confirmed that he was the son of Akhenaten (mummy KV55) and his sister/wife (mummy KV35YL), whose name is unknown but whose remains are positively identified as "The Younger Lady" mummy found in KV35.

Tomb
Tutankhamun's chest now in the Cairo Museum.Tutankhamun was buried in a tomb that was small relative to his status. His death may have occurred unexpectedly, before the completion of a grander royal tomb, so that his mummy was buried in a tomb intended for someone else. This would preserve the observance of the customary seventy days between death and burial.[26]

King Tutankhamun's mummy still rests in his tomb in the Valley of the Kings. On November 4, 2007, 85 years to the day after Carter's discovery, the 19-year-old pharaoh went on display in his underground tomb at Luxor, when the linen-wrapped mummy was removed from its golden sarcophagus to a climate-controlled glass box. The case was designed to prevent the heightened rate of decomposition caused by the humidity and warmth from tourists visiting the tomb.[27]

Discovery of tombMain article: KV62

Tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the KingsTutankhamun seems to have faded from public consciousness in Ancient Egypt within a short time after his death, and remained virtually unknown until the 1920s. His tomb was robbed at least twice in antiquity, but based on the items taken (including perishable oils and perfumes) and the evidence of restoration of the tomb after the intrusions, it seems clear that these robberies took place within several months at most of the initial burial. Eventually the location of the tomb was lost because it had come to be buried by stone chips from subsequent tombs, either dumped there or washed there by floods. In the years that followed, some huts for workers were built over the tomb entrance, clearly not knowing what lay beneath. When at the end of the Twentieth Dynasty the Valley of the Kings burials were systematically dismantled, the burial of Tutankhamun was overlooked, presumably because knowledge of it had been lost and his name may have been forgotten.

Exhibitions
Relics from Tutankhamun's tomb are among the most traveled artifacts in the world. They have been to many countries, but probably the best-known exhibition tour was The Treasures of Tutankhamun tour, which ran from 1972 to 1979. This exhibition was first shown in London at the British Museum from March 30 until September 30, 1972. More than 1.6 million visitors came to see the exhibition, some queuing for up to eight hours and it was the most popular exhibition in the Museum's history.[citation needed] The exhibition moved on to many other countries, including the USA, USSR, Japan, France, Canada, and West Germany. The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized the U.S. exhibition, which ran from November 17, 1976 through April 15, 1979. More than eight million attended.

In 2004, the tour of Tutankhamun funerary objects entitled Tutankhamen: The Golden Hereafter, consisting of fifty artifacts from Tutankhamun’s tomb and seventy funerary goods from other 18th Dynasty tombs, began in Basle, Switzerland and went on to Bonn Germany on the second leg of the tour. This European tour was organised by the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), and the Egyptian Museum in cooperation with the Antikenmuseum Basel and Sammlung Ludwig. Deutsche Telekom sponsored the Bonn exhibition.

In 2005, Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, in partnership with Arts and Exhibitions International and the National Geographic Society, launched a tour of Tutankhamun treasures and other 18th Dynasty funerary objects, this time called Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs. It features the same exhibits as Tutankhamen: The Golden Hereafter in a slightly different format. It was expected to draw more than three million people.

The exhibition started in Los Angeles, California, then moved to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Chicago and Philadelphia. The exhibition then moved to London[30] before finally returning to Egypt in August 2008. An encore of the exhibition in the United States ran at the Dallas Museum of Art from October 2008 to May 2009.[31] The tour continued to other U.S. cities. After Dallas the exhibition moved to the de Young Museum in San Francisco, followed by the Discovery Times Square Exposition in New York City.

In 2011 the exhibition visited Australia for the first time, opening at the Melbourne Museum in April for its only Australian stop before Egypt's treasures return to Cairo in December, 2011.

The exhibition includes 80 exhibits from the reigns of Tutankhamun's immediate predecessors in the Eighteenth dynasty, such as Hatshepsut, whose trade policies greatly increased the wealth of that dynasty and enabled the lavish wealth of Tutankhamun's burial artifacts, as well as 50 from Tutankhamun's tomb. The exhibition does not include the gold mask that was a feature of the 1972-1979 tour, as the Egyptian government has determined that the mask is too fragile to withstand travel and will never again leave the country.

A separate exhibition called Tutankhamun and the World of the Pharaohs began at the Ethnological Museum in Vienna from March 9 to September 28, 2008, showing a further 140 treasures. Renamed Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs, this exhibition began a tour of the US and Canada in Atlanta on November 15, 2008. It is scheduled to finish in Seattle on January 6, 2013.

Rich dad’s ‘frame & fortune’ forgeries

2011-11-01T01:32:00.000-07:00

From New York Post: Rich dad’s ‘frame & fortune’ forgeries

Talk about an artless exit.

A legendary Manhattan radio producer with a vast collection of paintings and sculptures has given a final, cruel sign-off to his estranged family -- from beyond the grave.

Himan Brown died last year at age 99, after an illustrious career that helped him amass a $40 million estate, including artworks intended to go to his kids after his death.

But instead of leaving his son Barry and daughter Hilda priceless paintings, Himan swapped out nearly two dozen works by Degas, Manet, Renoir and others with worthless forgeries, a new lawsuit alleges.

The deception went unnoticed until December, when Barry Brown finally got the art his father promised him.

“Had these paintings been authentic, they would have had significant value,” Barry Brown claims in a $27 million Manhattan federal court lawsuit against his own dad’s estate.

Himan and Mildred Brown were married for 34 years as he pioneered golden-age radio dramas like “Grand Central Station,” “Dick Tracy,” and “Inner Sanctum Mysteries.”

The couple collected art by the masters until they split in 1967. Many pieces graced the walls of their Central Park West home, and some were gifted to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Mildred got $1,500 in monthly alimony, the 1966 Corvair, and possession of 34 artworks in the divorce, including the 1921 Pablo Picasso piece “La Maternité.”

There was just one caveat, Mildred insisted: the 34 paintings and sculptures, a fraction of the overall collection, must go to the kids once Mildred and Himan were both dead.

“Throughout [Barry’s] life, his father would discuss the artwork with [Barry] and his mother,” according to court papers. “Himan Brown would review the artwork, the signatures on the artwork, and would represent unequivocally that the artworks were the authentic works of named artists and were very valuable.”

Himan retook possession of the 34 artworks, including “La Maternité” and a Renoir work titled “Paysages à Cagnes,” when Mildred died in 1974.

But the transaction did not go smoothly. In the years that followed, Barry, now 77 and living in Santa Rosa Valley, Calif., accused his dad of trying to sell off the inheritance Mildred secured for her kids. An ugly court battle ensued.

The 2002 case was ultimately dismissed.

The biggest clue: The forgeries all have the same stretchers -- the wood underneath the canvas -- which is an “inconceivable” coincidence, said lawyer Malcolm Taub.

As for what happened to the real paintings? Barry doesn’t know -- but he wants to find out where his dad hid them, or if they were already sold.

Only two significant works were real, according to court papers: The $10 million Picasso, and Armand Guillaumin’s “Rocks on Riviera,” which Barry and Hilda sold at auction last year for $120,000.

“At the end of the day, we have one painting,” Taub said.

His father’s betrayal is the final fracture in a decades-long family rift.

“There’s a lot of blood on the sand,” Taub said. “This is a tortured, tortured case.”

Who is Tobias Verhaecht?

2011-10-31T08:53:00.000-07:00

Tobie Verhaecht in Het Gulden Cabinet p 47

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tobias Verhaecht (Antwerp, 1561 – 1631) was a painter and draughtsman active in Antwerp, Florence and Rome. Primarily a landscape painter, his style is indebted to mannerist world landscapes of artists like Joachim Patinir with high viewpoints, fantastic distant perspectives and three-colour scheme. Before Verhaecht entered Antwerp's guild of St. Luke in 1590–91, he had already spent time in Italy, first in Florence, and then as a fresco painter in Rome. Peter Paul Rubens, who was a relative by marriage, studied with him around 1592, and another student was his own son, Willem van Haecht. Verhaecht is also known for his designs for prints.

Western Artists: Peter Paul Rubens

2011-10-30T16:50:00.000-07:00

Sir Peter Paul Rubens (28 June 1577 – 30 May 1640), was a Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects.

In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp that produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, King of Spain, and Charles I, King of England.

High life ends for couple who conned art world

2011-10-28T14:25:00.000-07:00

From the New Zealand Herald: High life ends for couple who conned art world
They look more like old hippies than the couple who conned the art world out of an estimated €30 million ($52.4 million). He sports worn jeans, a greying blond mane of shoulder-length hair, a moustache and a beard. Under the unforgiving neon lights of the Cologne courtroom, 60-year-old Wolfgang Beltracchi looks like a bizarre cross between Frank Zappa and King Charles the First.

Helene Beltracchi, his 53-year-old wife and accomplice, dresses in long flowing robes and her hair cascades to her waist in thick tresses. Before each court session, the two embrace passionately in front of the public and press.

Several German newspapers have described the couple as "highly sympathetic" despite the enormity of their crimes: Wolfgang and Helene Beltracchi have admitted to masterminding the biggest art forgery scandal in German - if not global - history. With Helene Beltracchi's sister, Jeanette Spurzem, and logistical expert Otto Schulte-Kellinghaus, they face charges of systematically duping the art world over 14 years.

The four are expected to be sentenced for their crimes today. They have confessed to supplying top auction houses, including Sotheby's and Christie's, with scores of forged paintings.

They claimed they were undiscovered works by famous early 20th century artists such as the German Expressionists Max Ernst, Max Pechstein and Heinrich Campendonk. Their victims included the American comedian Steve Martin, who was duped into paying about US$800,000 ($1 million) for a supposed Campendonk painting called Landscape with Horses.

Wolfgang Beltracchi, the promising art student from the north-western provincial town of Geilenkirchen, was the master forger.

Many of the 53 works the Beltracchis sold to art houses fetched over €500,000 apiece. The Beltracchis are believed to have enriched themselves to the tune of €16 million.

They spent their fortune on building an opulent villa in the southern German town of Freiburg and on lavishly restoring the country estate they acquired in southwest France. Neighbours said they were shocked by the couple's obsession with their wealth. The Beltracchis spent up to €17,000 a month on shopping, hotels and travel alone.

But, these days, Wolfgang Beltracchi sucks sweets in the Cologne court where the four have been on trial since the beginning of September. He even shares the occasional joke with the presiding judge.

The couple and their accomplices have cut a deal with Germany's justice authorities.

They have confessed to everything. In return they have been promised jail terms likely to amount to six years for Wolfgang Beltracchi and four for Helene. The others will probably get away with suspended jail terms. If the Beltracchis are lucky they will be allowed to work outside prison by day and spend only nights in a cell.

At their trial, the Beltracchis have even accused the world's art houses of themselves being consumed by "greed and depravity" in their relentless pursuit of sensational works capable of fetching sensational prices.

Yet their 14 years of meticulously planned deception are certain to go down as one of the biggest and most elaborate art frauds ever recorded. The Beltracchis started putting their expert forgeries on the market in 1995.

Helene Beltracchi managed to hoodwink the art world into believing she had been left the works by her grandfather Werner Jagers. She claimed he had bought them at the beginning of the Nazi era from the renowned Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim.

The couple went to extraordinary lengths to make their bogus claims appear convincing. Helene Beltracchi had herself photographed by her husband with her hair up, clad in a sombre black dress and pearls in front of several of the Jagers Collection paintings.

The black-and-white photograph was slightly out of focus and printed on pre-war developing paper.

Helene Beltracchi's impersonation of her grandmother, Josefine Jagers, took in all the art dealers and served as indisputable proof of the authenticity of the collection. "It was great fun," Wolfgang Beltracchi told judges.

To dupe prospective buyers, the Beltracchis bought up pre-war canvases which were then carefully sanded down and made ready for forgeries expertly applied, often with the help of a slide projector. The trick was made easier thanks to experts like Werner Spies, a celebrated Max Ernst authority and former director of the Pompidou arts centre in Paris.

Spies, who admits to having been wholly gullible, appears to have been completely taken in by the paintings and even vouched for their authenticity. In fact, the Jagers Collection never existed. Werner Jagers was a member of the Nazi party who had no interest in art. He made his money in the construction industry and died in 1992. Helene Beltracchi is the daughter of a lorry driver.

Wolfgang Beltracchi grew up as Wolfgang Fischer, later adopting his wife's surname. His father made a living out of restoring church paintings. He was a gifted art student but never completed his studies. His attempts to become an art dealer were also a failure.

"For years I lived on sex, drugs and rock'n'roll," he claimed at his trial. But his life changed dramatically when he met Helene Beltracchi.

Her background was working class. Her mother gave her money to buy books and told her that she would "make it" even without a proper education. Both appear to have had high aspirations which were frustrated.

The Beltracchis' elaborate con trick began to unravel in 2006 after the Lempertz auction house in Cologne was offered a painting by Helene Beltracchi's sister which was conclusively proven to be a forgery. The work, named Red Picture with Horses, was supposed to have been painted by Heinrich Campendonk.

The painting was sold to the Maltese company Trasteco at auction for €2.9 million. But Trasteco became suspicious and commissioned two art historians to investigate. Their findings led to scientific analysis of the paint. It found that the painting contained a colour which did not exist in 1914 when the work was said to have been completed.

Police arrested the Beltracchis in August last year as they were leaving their luxury villa to go out to dinner. Their two homes are now being sold and Wolfgang Beltracchi claims the €1 million remaining in his Swiss bank account has since been handed to the court authorities. But Wolfgang Beltracchi now apparently hopes the publicity from his trial may help him to further his own future career as an artist after jail.

As the presiding judge in Cologne revealed last week: "To clear up any confusion, Mr Beltracchi has agreed to take back all his forgeries and return them to their owners signed - this time - with his own name."

5-Minute History of Art Theft during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)

2011-10-27T02:20:00.000-07:00

From Art Info, The Secret History of Art (Noah Charney on Art Crimes and Art Historical Mysteries): 5-Minute History of Art Theft during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648)

Though largely a war fought between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire, the Thirty Years’ War featured an infamous incident of art looting when the phenomenally rich artistic and scientific collections of Rudolf II of Prague were stolen and scattered throughout Europe. While the war led to the inhibition of Habsburg supremacy, the decentralization of the Holy Roman Empire, and a decline in the influence of the Catholic Church, historians have noted that it exemplified Cato the Elder’s phrase bellum se ipsum alet, “the war will feed itself.” The major governmental powers behind the Thirty Years’ War were nearly bankrupted by disease, famine, and the cost of fighting. This resulted in unpaid troops who took out their hunger and frustration on the land that they passed. Troops began to ravage and loot any territory in their path, using extortion and other means to essentially self-fund the campaign. This problem manifested itself on a large scale, with army divisions resorting to such tactics, but also on a soldier-by-soldier basis.

Thirty Years’ War and the Sack of Prague (1618-1648)
When Sweden intervened in the war and overtook Prague in 1648, the marvelous collections of Rudolf II were stolen. Swedish troops sacked Prague Castle on 26 July 1648 and hauled the majority of the collection back to Sweden, where it was absorbed into the collection of Queen Christina of Sweden. Queen Christina would eventually be exiled from Sweden and while the majority of her collection remained there, she brought a large number of works with her: 70-80 paintings, of which 25 were portraits of her friends and family, which she had bought legitimately and at least 50 paintings that had been stolen from Prague.

This would prove important to the history of legitimate art collecting, as the best pieces from Queen Christina’s catalogue, 123 paintings forming its core, were passed on to the Duke of Orleans after her death. The sale of the Orleans Collection, primarily to settle the gambling debts of Louis Philippe d’Orleans, took place over several years in the 1790s. It represented the first of the great sales of aristocratic collections, many others of which would follow in a new era when the aristocracy could no longer support themselves in their traditional ways, through feudal service, and had to sell off the trappings of their nobility, art and castles and titles, in order to survive.

This directly gave rise to the art trade in the modern sense: not of kings and clergy commissioning large-scale works, but of nouveau riches merchants and industrialists now able to afford what the aristocracy no longer can. Scores of paintings that had been looted from Prague a century and a half earlier were sold at this time, including Tintoretto’s Origin of the Milky Way, bought for 50 guineas in 1800 and now at the National Gallery in London.

CT: Real Art Ways Celebrates 35 Years At Creative Cocktail Hour

2011-10-26T02:18:00.000-07:00

From Blogs.courant.com (Hartford, CT): Real Art Ways Celebrates 35 Years At Creative Cocktail Hour
It was the best of what Real Art Ways has provided to the Hartford area and beyond over the past 35 years...out-of-the-box, thought-provoking art, theater and music, food, drink and entertainment and a happy hour that attracts one of the most eclectic crowds around.

But Thursday's RAW's monthly Creative Cocktail Party was bigger than usual because it also served as the launch for the art collaborative's 35th anniversary.

" I started coming here 10 years ago, " said Sondra Celle, a West Hartford resident who remembered when she first came with friends who told her about an unusual happy hour in town. "I came because it is where my friends came, and honestly, what I find interesting is that even 10 years later I fit in because the crowd is made up of all kinds of people, young, old, professionals, students. "It's timeless."

"I kind of ended up getting dragged here," explained Middletown resident John Lamb who was with his girlfriend, Maria Pelletier of Windsor. "I come often," said Pelletier about the center known for its blend of mainstream and alternative art offerings that include theater, dance, music and visual arts. "So when he started dating me, he came too."

Besides the monthly party and the anniversary celebration, one of the big draws was the "Street Alchemy" exhibit by "Poster Boy," the pen name for artist, Henry Matyjewicz.

"It's not just me, it is several of us," said the camera-shy but very polite "Poster Boy" about his art he says is made in collaboration with several other artists who were also at the party. The exhibit landed on RAW's doorstep after Trinity College canceled the show because stolen materials are used in Matyjewicz's billboard-like montages that underscore social issues.

"I'm not surprised in the interest in my work," said the soft-spoken Matyjewicz. "The work is so timely."

"It is hard to say whether using stolen items is justified given what he is doing with them," said Kim Silverman, a Hartford court reporter who came with friends. "I think the social message, the controversy and the mystery of the artwork is part of its appeal."

Klimt painting expected to sell for $25 million

2011-10-26T02:11:00.000-07:00

in other words...the heirs didn't give a damn about the painting - all they ever wanted was the money they could get for selling it.

From Today.msnbc.com: Klimt painting expected to sell for $25 million
NEW YORK — A landscape painting by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt that had been stolen by the Nazis is expected to fetch more than $25 million when it is sold at auction next month, Sotheby's said on Thursday.

"Litzlberg on the Attersee," which was returned to the heirs of its Austrian owner, will be the main attraction at the Nov. 2 sale of Impressionist and Modern Art in New York.

"Klimt's landscapes are now considered to be one of the great icons of modern art," Simon Shaw, Sotheby's New York head of Impressionist and Modern Art, said in an interview.

"They are one of the most recognizable images and their appeal is truly a global one."

The work gained international attention earlier this year when Austria's Museum der Moderne Salzburg agreed to return the work to George Jorisch, the grandson of its owner. The decision followed a 2002 accord struck with Jewish organizations and the Salzburg city government to return assets stolen by the Nazis.

Jorisch, who now lives in Montreal, is the great-nephew of Austrian iron magnate Viktor Zuckerkandl, who was a great collector of Klimt landscapes. When he died in 1927 the work was inherited by his sister Amalie Redlich, Jorisch's grandmother.

Redlich was deported in 1941 to the Nazi created Lodz ghetto in Poland and never heard from again. Her art collection was seized by the Nazis, sold and ended up in the Austrian museum.

"People love a picture with a story behind it," Shaw said. "It always adds desirability when there is a story behind a painting."

Klimt painted the work in 1915, displaying a dramatic view of the countryside of Lake Attersee in western Austria, where he spent his summers.

"These landscape paintings were very affectionate to Klimt," Shaw said. "He left Vienna and his patrons and would paint these for himself. They were very daring because he explored different techniques that were very radical."

The experimentation Klimt showed in his landscapes makes them some of the most important and influential of his works and among the rarest.

"Few remain in private collections outside Austria which could ever be sold," Shaw explained.

Klimt's "Church in Cassone — Landscape with Cypresses," sold in February 2010 for $43 million in London, a record for a Klimt landscape.

"It is possible it could go into a great Asian collection," Shaw said about the painting on sale. "It is also possible that it could go into a great European collection. It has a genuine global appeal."

UK: Work by Welsh sculptor William Goscombe-John targeted by art thieves

2011-10-25T02:07:00.000-07:00

From Wales Online.co.uk: Work by Welsh sculptor William Goscombe-John targeted by art thieves

THE “national sculptor of Wales” is being repeatedly targeted by art thieves and not crooks trying to make a fast buck flogging metal to scrapyards – according to an arts charity.

This is the message being put out by statues charity the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association (PMSA) and they warn dozens of William Goscombe-John’s works are at risk.

His Joyance statue in Cardiff’s Thompson’s Park has been taken four times. The bronze has now been replaced with a plastic version.

And a memorial to his Swiss-born wife Marthe Weiss has been taken twice in London. The first time it was discovered at auction after being swiped from Hampstead Cemetery in 2001. Then it was stolen from inside a locked shed at East Finchley Cemetery in 2006. It remains missing.

PMSA deputy chairman Ian Leith said the Rodin-influenced artist’s works can be worth tens of thousands of pounds.

“It is quite clear Goscombe-John is in artistic demand,” he said. “Goscombe-John is a favourite and he is the key proof that these are being stolen for collectors as well as for metal.

“If you’re going into the middle of a pond in Thompson’s Park you are trying to find a sculpture, not just a piece of metal.”

Joyance was most recently replaced in February after being cut last year from the water fountain it stood on.

“Unless some organisation takes responsibility to audit and monitor thefts we’ll get the sculpture losses we deserve.”

Cardiff born Goscombe-John’s works appear all over Wales. Pieces can be found in locations including Aberdare, Aberystwyth, Bala, Cardiff, Caernarfon, Lampeter, Llanelli, Llansannan, Merthyr Tydfil, Mold, Monmouth, Penarth, Pontypridd and Wrexham.

His statues are also dotted around the rest of the UK and the globe. There are pieces at both St Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey.

“He is extremely important,” said Mr Leith. “You can’t get better than this. This is what I’m trying to say. People collect anything by him. There are books on him.”

He insisted “you can’t exaggerate” the importance of the artist, who died in 1952 aged 92. “He is the national sculptor of Wales, you could easily argue,” he said.

Richard Cook is the councillor for Cardiff’s Canton ward, where the statue stands. He said: “The original was taken about 40 years ago. That was made from bronze. Subsequent ones have been made from some base metal.

“And it has now been replaced with some sort of resin plastic that will hopefully be less attractive to thieves.”

Coun Cook said a “couple of copies” had been made so the statue could be replaced quickly.

A South Wales Police spokesman said: “Criminals are indiscriminately targeting metal objects for their scrap value. In some cases it is possible for objects to be targeted for their value as public art.”

Minnesota: Statue stolen in North Mankato

2011-10-25T02:04:00.000-07:00

From Mankato Free Press: Statue stolen in North Mankato

NORTH MANKATO — A statue on the CityArt Walking Sculpture Tour was stolen from North Mankato sometime Friday night or early Saturday morning.

Police say they discovered the sculpture, “The Farmer’s Wife,” missing early Saturday morning. It was in the 200 block of Belgrade Avenue.

The sculpture, valued at $6,000, was broken off at the base.

A reward of up to $2,200 is being offered for information leading to a conviction. The reward is offered by North Mankato, Mankato and area businesses. (Call 625-4141 for the North Mankato police.)

Two other statues in the art walk have been vandalized since being erected last spring — one in Mankato and one in North Mankato.

California: Stolen plaques to be replaced at Roseville’s Sculpture Park

2011-10-24T14:02:00.000-07:00

From Roseville, California: Stolen plaques to be replaced at Roseville’s Sculpture Park
On a recent afternoon in Roseville’s Sculpture Park, an art administrator rushed up to a young woman and child reading an informational kiosk.

The kiosk provides details on the bronze plaques mounted to four concrete sculptures in the park. But there’s a problem: the plaques are gone.

“Don’t be discouraged, we’re actually refashioning this park,” Judi Nicholson, with the City of Roseville, told the woman.

Through a joint partnership between the city and Roseville Arts, the nonprofit organization behind the Blue Line Gallery, students in Roseville can participate in a public arts contest intended to breathe life into the undecorated sculptures.

Fifth graders at any public, private or charter school or who are home schooled within city limits are asked to submit mosaic tile entries using construction paper to Roseville Arts. The theme is “Nature and Wildlife.” A panel of judges will select 96 winners and the tile installation will take place in spring 2012.

Between 1993 and 2003, children winners in a city-sponsored contest created bronze plaques that were installed in Sculpture Park at the base of the Cosmos Sculpture off Sunrise Avenue — the big red structure you can see from the freeway.

In the summer of 2010, the sculptures were vandalized and 33 bronze plaques stolen. The culprit was never found, nor were the plaques.

“We wanted, obviously, to protect the remaining plaques,” Nicholson said. “It’s kind of sad to think these kids thought it would be here forever.”

The plaques have been removed to be placed on public display in Roseville’s libraries, leaving space for a new public art display by local kids.

Nicholson and Roseville Arts CEO Julie Hirota happened upon just the person to oversee the project: 13-year-old Boy Scout Tyler Tate. The Buljan Middle School student was helping gallery volunteers move sand at the Westfield Galleria during an art installation in June.

Hirota talked with Tyler’s assistant scout master about possible service projects with the Boy Scouts, including the Sculpture Park art contest.

“That day Tyler said he was interested in doing that and he’s pretty much taken this on,” Hirota said.

Tyler joined Boy Scouts two and a half years ago, and is working on the project to earn his Eagle Scout rank.

“I really like art and I like helping out,” Tyler said. “And I wanted a challenge. (Kids) should try to take part because it’s helping the community and they get to see their art (in public), which is really cool.”

Hirota said partnering with the city and community groups such as the Boy Scouts is a valuable way to “beautify the entire city through public art.”

Coeur d'Alene public art display of great blue heron stolen

2011-10-24T13:54:00.000-07:00

Thieves have been targeting metal in practically every city in the US, not to mention around the world. They are quite brazen - they'll steal manhole covers and if that results in someone falling in and dying...what do they care? And if they are caught - they merely receive a slap on the wrist.

From The Republic (Columbus, Indiana): Coeur d'Alene public art display of great blue heron stolen
COEUR D'ALENE, Idaho — Police in Coeur d'Alene say they are investigating the theft of a public art piece of a great blue heron valued at $3,000.

The 3-foot heron made of scrap metal, steel and rebar perched on a basalt base. The base remains along with a foot of the heron that broke off.

The art stood in front of the Olympia Greek restaurant. Restaurant owner Eva Itskos says the artwork when whole towered about 8 feet.

The Coeur d'Alene Press reports (http://bit.ly/nCU8yh) that the 40-pound heron portion disappeared late Thursday or early Friday.

The heron art piece is one of 15 the city has installed as part of its Art Currents project.

The art on display is available for sale. Each piece is insured for $10,000.

Documents stolen

2011-10-18T01:24:00.000-07:00

From The Vermont Cynic: Documents stolen
appears one patron of Bailey/Howe did not visit the check-out desk.

The Bailey/Howe library was contacted by the National Archives group in mid-August and asked to examine Special Collections for items that may have been targeted for theft.

"At this point, we have identified 67 missing items, but we are still checking," said Jeffrey Marshall, director of research collections.

The documents were found among hundreds of documents from various universities in the apartment of Barry Landau, a New Yorker accused of conspiring to steal rare documents to sell for a profit, according to the Burlington Free Press.

Most of the documents taken from Bailey/Howe included autographs from President's Theodore Rooselvelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and William Howard Taft.

"They are not a great deal of research value, but because they are signed by a president, they do have some monetary value," he said.

When asked whether Landau visited Bailey/Howe, Marshall said he had no comment because state law and library policy protects the confidentiality of library users.

Right now, the library staff is reviewing their procedures and investigating technology that might improve security, he said.

"Part of our challenge is that we have a large open stack section that mixes with those looking in the private stacks," Marshall said. "It get's pretty chaotic sometimes. We try to watch closely."

Since the incident, the library is now requiring users to show a valid ID.

Marshall said that the staff was discouraged about what happened because they are there to help.

"We're all very disappointed," he said. "We exist to help people with their research. We try as much as we can to make their work easier, but when something like this happens, we feel betrayed."

During the court procedures for Landau, prosecutors said that UVM was a target for the suspects because of its lack of security, the Wall Street Journal stated.

"At some extremes, there's no watchdog" at archival institutions," Robert Goldman, a former federal prosecutor specialized in document and art related theft, told the Wall Street Journal. "A person comes in and is given the keys to the kingdom."

Some students said they were surprised that Bailey/Howe housed documents were worth stealing in the first place.

"I definitely had no idea that UVM had documents that important," sophomore Colby Daniels said. "Why are they even at UVM?"

Marshall said that the FBI will be returning the documents to Bailey/Howe's shelves, but he does not know when.

India blinks as art treasures disappear

2011-10-18T01:22:00.000-07:00

From Asia TImes: India blinks as art treasures disappear

NEW DELHI - The Indian art world received a hi-voltage jolt recently when two paintings by legendary Russian artist Nicholas Roerich worth US$2 million, earlier filched from the premises of the Indian Agriculture Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi, resurfaced at an auction-exhibition in London.

Depicting the incandescent Himalayas, both paintings were a part of a cachet of the prized works of Roerich, a brilliant artist who went to India in 1923 and stayed until his death in 1947.

Ironically, the heist came to light only when London authorities contacted IARI, whose officials were until then clueless about how the works had been pinched from under their noses and smuggled out of the country. The institute is now scrambling to "catch the
culprits and bring the works back to India".

The case is just one among countless others of priceless Indian antiques "disappearing" from government offices and museums, with the Indian government seemingly apathetic to theft of priceless heritage, despite the millions of dollars being spent on historical preservation.

Thousands of Buddhist and other antiques are smuggled out of the country each year to museums and private collections overseas. Even the Nobel prize medallion of late Nobel laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore wasn't spared when the museum in his hometown, Shantiniketan, West Bengal, was looted in 2004. Along with the medal, Tagore's priceless collections of antique jewelry, watches, paintings, citations and memorabilia were stolen. None was ever traced.

There was a similar uproar to this week's scandal in 2008 when a bronze figurine of the Goddess Parvati worth millions of dollars turned up at a New York auction. The rare antique - crafted in 1400 BC during the reign of King Harihara II - was considered a masterpiece of the Vijayanagar dynasty.

Historically important sites and under-guarded museums in India have been a fertile playground for antique smugglers for decades. In September 2006, 18 antique pieces disappeared from Patna museum in the the Indian state of Bihar while 200 antiques, including rare Jain statues, were recovered from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, the same year as cops nabbed smugglers preparing to leave the country.

Experts blame lackadaisical implementation of laws, the connivance of authorities, inadequate security and the lack of genuine documentation for the rampant theft.

Indian laws define any piece of art that is over 100 years old as "antique". The export and sale of such antiques is banned and punishable by law. However, it has become a thriving industry gnawing at the cultural roots of the country.

"The blanket rule is that all things over 100 years old qualify as antiques, and have to be registered with the Indian government," says Dr Prakash Nene, formerly with the National Museum, New Delhi. "But where are the technically-equipped professionals to undertake such a task? India is seriously deficient in such wherewithal. Besides, antiques are grossly undervalued in government priorities," he says.

"The problem with Indian laws governing antique thefts is that they are ridden with loopholes," says historian Radhika Ramseshan.

He cites the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act of 1958 as an example. Under the law anyone caught stealing from an ancient monument or archaeological site can get away with being fined a pittance - a meager 5,000 rupees (US$90) and imprisonment for up to three months or both. Similarly, says Ramseshan, the Antiquities Act 1972 proposes three years imprisonment for such crimes.

"Invariably, lawyers play up discrepancies between the two acts to get the guilty off the hook," she says. "These laws are ludicrous in their punition considering many stolen artefacts fetch far more staggering sums for the culprits. The culprits obviously don't mind paying the paltry fines. "

Art aficionados also partly blame the exponential growth of the Indian art industry. The domestic art market - teeming with talented artists whose works now routinely fetch astronomical prices worldwide - has witnessed remarkable growth in the past decade. Works by Indian maestros like F N Souza, Raza, Tyeb Mehta, M F Husain, Atul Dodiya and Anjolie Ela Menon can fetch prices in the millions of dollars.

The scramble for acquisitions has never been so aggressive. "There's awesome money chasing Indian art. It is a recession-proof industry," says Prateek Goyal, a Mumbai-based art buyer planning to launch a gallery soon. "Fueled by coverage in the global media, everybody wants a share in the Indian art pie," he says.

A report by arts institution OSIAN's Connoisseurs of Art released last June estimated the Indian market would be worth $400 million in 2010.

According to experts, trade in stolen art is the fastest-growing crime in the United States and the third-largest international criminal activity. Reports estimate some 30,000 pieces of art are stolen per year in Italy, with the 6,000 taken in France costing insurance companies some $3 billion and $5 billion per year.

Experts say art insiders are often involved in these illegal operations, as they have the technical knowledge and contacts to link with a demand.

Delhi-based art curator Shreya Juneja says museum employees are also usually hand-in-glove with the thieves.

More than anything else, the illicit trade in stolen antiquities is able to flourish with the connivance of dealers, collectors and museum curators, says Shreya. "They form a powerful lobby to dissuade the government from taking any punitive action. Besides, government bodies - like the Archeological Survey of India [ASI] and the National Crime Record Bureau - have little synergy on the issue. This makes non-compliance easier."

The problem isn't isolated to India. Heritage theft is also rampant across Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Iran, Pakistan and African countries.

In a more high-profile case of international art theft, India's former colonial masters Britain is home to numerous Indian artefacts, with ancient Indian art smuggled out of the country appearing in the catalogues of prestigious auction houses. India and Pakistan have been asking the British government for decades to return the purportedly cursed Kohinoor diamond, which is included in Britain's crown jewels.

The architecture of art theft, say experts, is different from other crimes as the items are relatively small and can be easily smuggled in or out of countries. Aggravating the problem is that most thefts are never even reported to the police.

"Victims of art theft fear that if the theft is publicized, other thieves will try to capitalize on their lack of security. Many also believe that publicity about the theft will have a domino effect on their sales," elaborates Goyal.

India also suffers from a lack of a proper bookkeeping. There are fewer critics, curators and catalogues than in the West, as well as no indices and or inventories. No inventory exists for Roerich's works in India and the Central Bureau of Investigation has found that several other works by the legendary painter are lying around the IARI in a state of neglect.

Given paltry state budgets for museum security, staff can hardly be blamed. Security measures like sophisticated CCTV cameras and other electronic surveillance equipment rarely feature in government's budgets.

One step forward would be following America's lead and creating an art theft department. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Art Theft Program is located at FBI headquarters in Washington DC. Agents are coached in art and cultural property investigations and assisted in art-related investigations worldwide with foreign law-enforcement officials.

Delhi could also plug legal loopholes to put pressure on auction houses abroad. Since many stolen antiquities find their way into the storerooms of international auction houses, it is critical that the Indian government use its international influence.

It is also a well-known fact that auction websites sell Indian antiques while keeping the sellers' identities private. This anonymity offers the perfect camouflage to culprits while making it simultaneously difficult for investigators.

Conservators say the real problem with India is an insouciance towards the country's rich history. Add porous laws and laughable budgetary allocations for art preservation and it is hardly a mystery why the jewels of Indian heritage continue to fall into the wrong hands.

French painting stolen during World War I returns home

2011-10-17T01:14:00.000-07:00

From News on the Wall: French painting stolen during World War I returns home
A famous painting by French Realist Jules Breton was returned by U.S. officials to France's US ambassador, François Delattre, on Thursaday. The painting, called “A Fisherman's Daughter/Mender of Nets” (Une Fille de Pecheur/Raccommodeuses de Filets) had been stolen by a German soldier during World War I.

The beautiful work of art, now insured for 140,000 euros, was handed by US officials to the French ambassador in a solemn repatriation ceremony at the French embassy in Washington. Commissioned by the northern French city of Douai in 1875, the painting hung in the local museum until September 15, 1918, when an unknown German soldier cut it out of its frame, while German forces were retreating from Douai. The German army took A Fisherman's Daughter and other 180 works to Belgium, and when the Belgium government wanted to return it to France in 1919, the painting just went missing.

Painted at the height of Breton’s career, the work of art shows a barefoot young woman wearing a white headscarf and looking as if her thoughts are elsewhere while mending a fishing net. Most of Breton’s works are displayed at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other museums in France.

The searches have begun in the 1920s. After A Fisherman's Daughter was put up for sale in a Zurich art gallery, in the US, back again in Europe in the Dutch city of Maastricht, then in Cologne (Germany), the last holder of the painting (Daphne Alazraki Fine Art gallery in New York), was alerted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators and returned the painting to Douai museum for free.

French Ambassador François Delattre said in a written statement: “Returning a painting to a museum is a significant contribution to the celebration of our cultural heritage and a gift to all future visitors who will enjoy the work of art, but it is also yet another symbol of Franco-American cooperation”. He sees this return “as a gesture of friendship by the United States toward the French Republic”.

Stolen Sir Peter Blake statue replaced with cheap copy

2011-10-17T00:17:00.000-07:00

From BBC News: Stolen Sir Peter Blake statue replaced with cheap copy
Artist Sir Peter Blake's only public sculpture is to be replaced with a replica after the original was targeted by metal thieves.

Bronze figures and shapes were stolen from his Life Is A Circus statue on Blackpool seafront in August.

He has agreed to let Blackpool Council install a replacement, which is likely to be made from metal-coated concrete.

Sir Peter told BBC News he did not mind what material his work was made from as long as "it looks about the same".

The artist, best-known for designing The Beatles' Sgt Pepper album cover, was speaking as he was unveiled as the patron of the John Moores Painting Prize, which is held in Liverpool every two years.

"It just is so silly to steal something just for the value of the bronze," he said. "You wouldn't get a lot for it. So it's such a daft robbery."

He added that he did not object to the use of a replica in the circumstances. "Having been damaged once, I suspect it would happen again," he said. "So I think it's probably the best thing to do."

Life Is A Circus consisted of a tower of four bronze figures holding shapes, all balancing on a horse.

The thieves cut off the sculpture at the elbows of the lowest figure. The remains, and a similar sister sculpture, were taken into storage for safe keeping.

The thieves carried off the top three figures and three giant shapes "Following Sir Peter Blake's approval, we will be re-casting the statues and replacing them back in the South Beach area," a statement from Blackpool Council said.

"For both security and cost reasons, these replacements will not be bronze but are more likely to be metallic coated. The old statues will be exhibitioned in a place around town where they can still be enjoyed but are also kept secure."

The decision comes a week after a £1.6m artwork installed in the pavement outside the Laing Gallery, Newcastle's main city art gallery, was damaged by thieves attempting to steal bronze parts.

Meanwhile, Sir Peter was announced as the patron of the John Moores Prize 50 years after he beat David Hockney to win the junior section.

The 79-year-old artist said the victory was a key moment in his emergence onto the art scene.

"Really, my career started to happen then," he said. "I won £250, which was quite a lot then, which in fact I gave to my dad who set up his own electrical business with it.

"I was teaching by then so I suppose I was managing OK, so looking back it was a good thing to have done."

He also helped judge the award in 2006. Entries are now being accepted for the 2012 prize, which has a £25,000 first prize and is judged anonymously. It is open to all UK-based artists working with paint.

The Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool is also hosting an exhibition of one of Sir Peter's alphabet series until 4 December.

Fiction: The Gathering of the Indigo Maidens

2011-10-16T20:07:00.000-07:00

PR Web: New Art Theft Mystery Explores Hispanic Human Trafficking
Wealthy widow Paloma Zubionda lives a safe life as an art collector—until she receives a shocking phone call from a woman begging for her help. Suddenly, Paloma finds herself involved in human trafficking and art theft in a thrilling new novel.

Wealthy widow Paloma Zubionda lives a safe life as an art collector—until she receives a shocking phone call from a woman begging for her help. Suddenly, Paloma finds herself involved in human trafficking and art theft in a thrilling new novel.

From Ecuador to sunny Southern California, from 1699 Quito to eighteenth century Mexico City and nineteenth century San Juan Capistrano, and from art collector Paloma’s childhood to her life as a wealthy widow, author Cecilia Velástegui takes readers on an epic journey through the history of indigenous Spanish Colonial art, modern day human trafficking, and how greed can become one’s downfall in her new novel “The Gathering of the Indigo Maidens” (ISBN 9780983745815, Libros Publishing, 2011).

Paloma Zubiondo lives the life of one of the beautiful people. In her beachfront Mediterranean home that overlooks the bay in Laguna Beach, she collects indigenous Spanish Colonial art, rare books, and plays the philanthropist. Her life is happy, safe, secure, disciplined. Like the proverbial ivory tower, her home is a fortress against the world’s evils.

Then Paloma’s peaceful existence is shattered by a ringing phone that turns into a hysterical female voice. The woman, who sounds identical to the indigenous nanny who had raised Paloma in her native land of Ecuador, implores Paloma to return the stolen “Immaculate Conception” painting from her collection in exchange for the woman’s release by her captors. At first, Paloma believes the call a hoax, and she cannot believe her painting was stolen. But a series of threatening calls, texts, and letters reveal things only Paloma’s beloved nanny could know.

Desperate to learn whether her nanny is truly a victim of human trafficking, Paloma enlists her friend, Jen, a psychologist and social activist, to help her. Soon the women are researching a mystery found in symbolic religious paintings, scouring history for clues that go back to an indigo-gathering maiden in colonial Quito 1699 and several other intriguing women throughout Latin American history. Eventually, the clues will lead them to the hiding place of the sex-slave caller, and more secrets will be revealed than they ever could have guessed.

“Gathering the Indigo Maidens” is an exceptionally well-written tale that keeps readers enticed from the first page. Reader Views proclaims the novel, “an incredible story that incorporates both the beauty and history of Spanish art into a modern story about the evils that come with greed in our society.” Comparable to bestselling historical thrillers like “The Historian” and “The DaVinci Code,” art and history spring to life aside modern-day human trafficking in the Hispanic world in this epic tale from Cecilia Velástegui’s pen.

About the Author
Cecilia Velástegui was born in Quito, Ecuador where she spent her childhood. She was raised in California and France, and she has traveled extensively to over fifty countries. Cecilia received her graduate degree from the University of Southern California, and she speaks four languages. She serves on the board of directors of several cultural and educational organizations, and she was nominated for the Arts Orange County Award. Velástegui is donating portions of the novel’s proceeds to support the Orange County Human Trafficking Task Force in its mission to aid victims of human trafficking.

“The Gathering of the Indigo Maidens” (ISBN 9780983745815, Libros Publishing, 2011) can be purchased through local and online bookstores.

The Shame of the Galleries: Stained Stein, Purloined Picasso

2011-10-12T11:01:00.001-07:00

From HuffPostArts: The Shame of the Galleries: Stained Stein, Purloined Picasso
San Francisco has been awash in art this season. Three major shows made the pioneers of modern art hard to avoid: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SF MOMA)'s "The Steins Collect," San Francisco Jewish Museum's "Seeing Gertrude Stein: Five Stories," and the de Young Museum's "Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso."

But instead of a wonderful learning experience, the shows were merely pictures at an exhibition -- a lost opportunity to look at the origins and meaning of art. A teachable moment consciously abandoned. By what they knowingly chose to ignore, these shows lied to us.

The Stein shows were the most egregious. In the early 20th Century, during the moveable feast in Paris and during the war in their homes in the south of France, the Stein family had befriended and supported many developing artists as they forged modern art's form. Their support was certainly welcome, though problematic and not without strings. The Steins had the opportunity to collect substantial pieces which became quite valuable.

The Bay Area, as a home of Gertrude Stein and with its sizable LBGT population, seemed an appropriate venue for the celebration of the Stein family collection. Gertrude Stein, and her long time partner Alice B. Toklas, were in one way at least models for out-of-the-closet lesbianism. Sadly, they were not models in other important ways, ways in which the museums conveniently chose to ignore.

Their collection, particularly of impressionists, was certainly dazzling. But all that glitters is not gold. The Stein exhibits left out some of the most salient facts about Gertrude Stein. How was Stein able to keep her magnificent collection intact and thrive in occupied France as a Jew and lesbian while gays and Jews were systematically rounded up and killed, and their possessions, especially art, seized?

Less heroic than her unabashed lesbianism was Stein's longtime support for Adolf Hitler. As early as 1934 she shared her admiration for Hitler in the New York Times Magazine, campaigning for Hitler to be given the Nobel Peace Prize:

"I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize," she says, "because he is removing all elements of contest and struggle from Germany. By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left elements, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity. That means peace."

This was not merely an aberrant position or just a championing of Hitler alone. She supported both fascist dictator of Spain Francisco Franco and the Nazi-backed Vichy government of France, comparing collaborationist traitor Marshal Pétain to George Washington. She intervened on behalf of captured Gestapo. Indeed, it was Alice B. Toklas who funded their friend and protector Bernard Fäy's breakout from prison. Fäy was charged with being a Gestapo agent responsible for deporting nearly 1,000 people to the concentration camps in Germany.

Yet the SF MOMA and the San Francisco Jewish Museum chose not to deal with this "complicated" issue. Instead they collaborated just as did Stein, closeting her Nazi sympathies and actions.

Not to be outdone, the Picasso exhibit at the de Young Museum was a model of obscurantism. There was not a single descriptive note to any of the works. I suppose we were even lucky the works were titled. But notes on their meaning, development, relationship, or the artists intent were remarkable by their absence. Unlike museums in Europe, the Barcelona Picasso Museum or the French National Picasso Museum (the very museum from whence these pictures originated), for example, we are given nothing explaining the politics and relationships which suffused his work, his support for the Left in the Spanish Civil War, his deep anti-fascism, his identification with the oppressed and his prominent membership in the Communist Party.

It is almost cruel to view Picasso's work without explanation, for instance his great "Massacre in Korea," his literal homage to Goya's "Third of May, 1808," without so much as a hint of its parentage or reference to the 1950 Korean War mass-killing of men, women and a large number of children by American and South Korean forces. Picasso, one of the most political of artists, has been neutered, shrink-wrapped, comodified and de-contextualized.

So at the end of the exhibitions, we are left with galleries empty of meaning. Three exhibits of stellar paintings that could have opened a window into their times and issues. But three museums without the courage or energy to look at the meaning and development of art. Form without substance...only pictures at an exhibition.

On travel til Wednesday

2011-10-08T16:20:00.001-07:00

I'm visiting elderly relatives in Box Elder, SD who do not have internet.

Will try to sneak out now and again to an internet cafe to post, but more than likely will not be posting until Wedneday.

South Africa: Art theft: Now you see it, now you don't

2011-10-06T01:04:00.000-07:00

From Mail&Guardian.com: Art theft: Now you see it, now you don't
The theft of three valuable bronze works from the Johannesburg Art Gallery has highlighted issues of security in South Africa's public museums and galleries, with lack of funding being blamed for many security shortfalls.

The artworks, King of the Universe by Ernest Ullman, Mourning Woman by Sydney Kumalo and Peter Pan by Romano Romanelli, were taken from storeroom on Sunday September 25, but the break-in was only reported to the media on Monday.

In January, a 19th-century bronze by French artist Jules Dalou, General Lazare Hoche, was stolen from the floor of the gallery, and has not been recovered. Four extra security staff were employed after the incident. The gallery has been targeted frequently over the years, with works such as El Greco's work on canvas Apostle Thomas yet to be recovered.

Concern has been raised about the fact that bronze sculptures are often targeted to be melted down.

Antoinette Murdoch, curator at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, said that the loss of artworks could not be measured in purely financial terms. "These artworks are important, and of immeasurable value. They are part of our history."

She agreed that security measures were probably inadequate, and suggested that, in general, it is difficult for public galleries and museums in South Africa -- those who are funded by local and national government, public donations and grants -- to convince those that hold the purse strings that that protection of artistic and cultural artefacts is a priority.

Not a priority
"We are aware of security issues, and we are doing what we can. We understand that there are other priorities, and when you compare something like this to issues like housing you can understand why this is not seen as a priority".

She added: "Art theft is rife in this country. Earlier this year there was a theft at the National Gallery. The artworks are insured, but it doesn't matter. They are irreplaceable."

Murdoch explained that there are no public galleries or museums in South Africa that match up to international security standards. "It's not a question of not knowing how to protect the artworks. This is a question of money. International models are sophisticated."

Steven Sacks, director of Arts and Culture for the City of Jo'burg, was not available for comment, but, in response to the theft, deputy director of museums and galleries Langelihle Mfupi issued a statement late on Tuesday pledging funds to improve security at the JAG.

Gordon Massie, managing director of Art Insure, a South African company that specialises in insuring artworks for museums, private collectors, corporates and auction houses, explained that art theft was on the rise in South Africa. "We have seen a spike in the number of artworks being stolen in South Africa, and not just artworks that just recyclable material thefts [such as bronzes]."

He also said that the value of South African artworks was rising quickly.

"During apartheid, South African art was ignored on a world stage. Prices remained low. Since the end of apartheid, and especially in the last eight years, there has been an explosion of interest which has pushed values up. We have seen this interest from local and international collectors.

Record prices
"At a time of global recession, South African works are setting records at auctions, and it's not just Irma Sterns."

He agreed that there was not enough emphasis on security and protection of valuable artworks in public galleries.

"Budgets are tight. And when local and government authorities are thinking about priorities, securing art is at the bottom of the pile."

He added that private and corporate collectors often had better access to adequate security than galleries and similar institutions.

Mark Read of the Everard Read Gallery in Johannesburg agreed.

"Private institutions and collectors and galleries shell out a lot of money for artworks and so protect them properly. In some public galleries the collections have been in storage for years, and people have come and gone, and so it's maybe easier to lose track."

He agreed that public institutions are at the mercy of funding issues.

"I don't believe that there's anyone in South Africa that would say that public galleries and museums are properly funded. And that goes for everything from salaries to new acquisitions to protecting and looking after the works they have."

He said that issues of preservation and security when it comes to museums and heritage sites have existed for decades. "It always appalled me that some of the most valuable treasures in the country are so poorly protected."

"The people who work for these institutions have passion and a real sense of duty. They do what they can. But they are in a difficult position."

The most recent annual report by Iziko Museums of Cape Town, who run the South African National Gallery and many other heritage museums, states that security systems are being upgraded and improved at all Iziko sites. These improvements focus on training of staff, access control, and alarm and CCTV systems. Iziko received funding from the department of arts and culture for this last year, but these costs would normally be covered by public donations.

In June this year a Barend de Wet bronze disappeared from its display that was located outside the gallery.

Murdoch said she was excited about City of Jo'burg's pledge, but still appealed to the public for support."We feel very strongly about what we offer in terms of art and culture. I believe that people who have access to their culture and heritage, and a chance to be educated about it, have a better quality of life. When something like this happens, it is part of our history that we lose."

To see a list of missing artworks, go here: http://artinsure.co.za/stolen-missing-art-a-55.html

Turkish PM requests stolen tiles from France

2011-10-05T21:11:00.000-07:00

From World Bulletin: Turkish PM requests stolen tiles from France
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan officially requested that a set of Ottoman-era tiles, stolen by France in the 1880s and presently in the collections of various French museums, be returned to Turkey by French authorities.

The call for the tiles' return follows a similar request made during the February visit of French President Nicholas Sarkozy, when the prime minister rebuffed accusations that the tiles had been a gift of the sultans to the French government. "No Ottoman sultan would sell or give as a gift the tiles from his father's tomb," Erdoğan declared at the time.

The tiles currently in French collections once decorated the tombs of Selim II and Murat III, as well the library of Mahmut I. Turkish authorities allege that the French archaeologists who were tasked with restoring the tiles in the 1880s instead secretly shipped them to France, amassing an extensive tile collection and sending the Ottoman government fake tiles in their place.

Suspicions that the real tiles were held in museums in France were first aroused in 2003 when a number of tiles, which were suppose to have been restored in France, were examined and removed by archaeologists during the restoration of Selim II's tomb. "They were made in Paris according to the writing on the back of the tiles," Ministry of Culture and Tourism Cultural Heritage and Museums (KVMGM) General Director Murat Süslü, told Cihan news agency. He added: "An investigation was launched when this was discovered. It was determined that all of the tiles were sent without permission to Paris and fake ones were brought and put in their place."

The prime minister's request for the return of the tiles, which are believed to be among the most well-preserved examples of İznik ceramic art, comes as part of a new Turkish campaign to reclaim many of the country's most treasured artifacts from museums abroad. Officials claim that by promising easier access to Turkey's collections and archeological sites in return for the swift return of illegally confiscated artifacts, they have reclaimed roughly 4,500 artifacts since 2000. They further assert that 885 of the artifacts have been reclaimed this year alone. According to Süslü, the tiles may be the next objects to return to Turkey. "We have requested the return of [the tiles] many times. Our correspondence is continuing.

Archeologists at the Antalya Museum joined the long-separated halves of the Weary Herakles statue, combining a lower section long in Turkish possession with an upper section that the Turkish government reclaimed earlier this month. The upper section had been in the possession of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts after it was smuggled from a dig site near Antalya in 1980. On Sept. 25, Weary Herakles returned to Turkey on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's plane, the last chapter in a long dispute between the Boston museum and Turkish authorities over the piece's origins.

Stealing Rembrandts at Weaver Library

2011-10-05T21:08:00.000-07:00

The same book as I shared the review of yesterday, but its an interesting article.

From EastProvidencePatch: Stealing Rembrandts at Weaver Library

About 50 art lovers or readers of true crime turned out Monday evening to listen to art security expert Anthony Amore discuss the book he co-authored with former newspaper editor Tom Mashberg called "Stealing Rembrandts."

Amore is a native Rhode Islander and 1989 graduate of the University of Rhode Island. After working for Homeland Security for 15 years, he said he wanted a “new opportunity,” so he took the position of Head of Security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA.

Amore, who described the Gardner Museum as “the best in the world in my estimation,” told the audience that 13 priceless works of art were stolen from the museum in 1990, “the largest property theft in world history,” according to his Web site. The thieves were two people disguised as Boston police officers who told the security guard they were responding to a disturbance. The guard let them in and the two fake cops stole 13 pieces of art.

Three of those stolen Rembrandts include “Storm on the Sea of Galilee” (worth $200 million), “Lady and Gentleman in Black," and an etching called "Self Portrait."

Amore said his book’s theme is to entertain people and educate those who steal. He claims art thieves are usually low-level thieves who are not very bright.

“Art theft is nothing like what you see in the movies,” Amore said.

Amore said the art theft from the Gardner Museum is a 21-year-old crime and the statute of limitations is up.

“We have a $5 million reward and we offer immunity,” Amore said.

To read more about other notorious art heists, visit the Stealing Rembrandts Web site. http://www.stealingrembrandts.com/

Book Review: Looking at Art Theft from the Thefts of One Artist's Work

2011-10-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

From The Dispatch, Columbus, Mississippi & The Golden Triangle: Looking at Art Theft from the Thefts of One Artist's Work

If you know about art heists from the movies, I hope you are not surprised to know that the movies have not instructed you factually on the matter. One of the themes in Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists (Palgrave) is to show just how wrong the movies get it, and it is a delight to find out. The two authors are well qualified to break our movie illusions. Anthony M. Amore is the head of security at the Isabella Gardner Museum, site of one of the most famous heists of paintings (including three Rembrandts) in 1990, still unsolved. He assumed the job fifteen years after the robbery, but has researched it and other art thefts in order to come closer to solving the case. He is joined here by Tom Mashberg, a longtime Boston investigative reporter who has written continuing coverage of the Gardner robbery. The Gardner heist has been covered extensively, and is not a main subject of this book, which is a look at modern art thefts simply by attempts at the covetable works of one artist. It's a good choice, looking at Rembrandt thefts, because there are lots of Rembrandt works; although many of the famous paintings have been downgraded to "school of Rembrandt" since there are doubts about their authenticity, there are still over 2,000 paintings, drawings, and etchings that survive. He did some huge studies, like The Night Watch, but most of his works are small and so they are portable. A genuine Rembrandt can get millions at auction, though of course such paintings are seldom on the block. About eighty Rembrandts have been stolen in the past century, and looking at these particular thefts allows the authors to review means and trends in art crime, and to counter our Hollywood illusions.

Take, for instance, the most widely held misconception about art theft: Dr. No did it. Dr. No, in the 1962 James Bond film of that name, has a Francisco Goya painting deep inside his headquarters; it was a painting that indeed had been stolen months before the movie was made, and Bond does a double take and says, "So that's where it went." Mashberg has interviewed Myles J. Connor, Jr., a sophisticated and intelligent man who was responsible for robbing Boston's Museum of Fine Arts of a Rembrandt in 1975. Connor's remarks on this and other subjects are a highlight of the book. Asked about a painting offered to some Dr. No, Connor replied, "Would the Sultan of Brunei or Bill Gates or H. Ross Perot or the Emperor of Japan want to purchase it on the black market? Just in order to own it for selfish reasons? To show to close friends and concubines in privacy? I've never believed in that scenario, tempting as it is." He goes on to say no one has ever approached him for such a heist-for-hire. The authors can't confirm any Dr. No thefts.

What they do find is that art heists are carried out by middle-level criminals, closer to mere burglars than to ranking members of the Mafia. They have little resemblance to the playboy connoisseur like Steve McQueen played in The Thomas Crown Affair, or Pierce Brosnan played in the remake. They are small-timers, mere handymen who are looking for cash, frequently for a drug habit. They are often laughably incompetent, like Carl Horsley. In 1973, he took two Rembrandts from the Taft Museum in Cincinnati; he was coming up in the world, as he had previously been an armed robber of gas stations. When he was in the museum making the theft, he knew he wanted Rembrandts, because he knew the artist's name. He grabbed two of them while ignoring two much more valuable ones hanging nearby. He later explained that he had gone for the bigger pictures because big would be worth more than small. He was caught, and imprisoned, and after his release he was soon in trouble for shoplifting for his drug habit. Not all the criminals are such bozos, but few of them are smart enough to really know what they are doing. Horsley was even dumb enough to have pride in the job. He said that when he heard a radio report of this crime, "I hate to brag, but when the man said, 'This was obviously done by professionals' - well, you take a certain pride in your work, and that was gratifying, to tell the truth."

The thieves also are not acrobats; rappelling into a high museum window is good for building tension in the movies, but such gymnastics are rarely used. It may seem counterintuitive, but the best time for taking paintings may well be in the daylight hours. There are lots of people around and the alarms are off. The thieves take advantage of the openness that is necessary in museums; if you want to steal gold or cash, for instance, you may well have to crack a safe. Artworks in museums or homes, however, are right there on the walls and people are welcome to get close looks at them. In 1972, thieves entered the Worcester Art Museum, dressed as workers. It was daylight, and visitors assumed that as they used their tools to remove several paintings, including Rembrandt's St. Bartholomew, they were just doing their jobs. They succeeded in rushing the paintings out of the building. Better than acrobatics or high-tech gadgetry is to have an insider helping in the theft; the authors say about 80% of such crimes have help from a museum employee.

Time and again, the authors show that getting into the museum and getting the art out is the easy part; few of the crimes described here are thwarted while the theft is actually in progress. It is in trying to make the crime pay that the thieves get caught. There is no market for stolen Rembrandts: "They are quite simply too famous to sell." There are, again, no Dr. No types ready to buy such loot. With a million dollar canvas on their hands, the thieves often come to realize that the best they are going to be able to do is ransom the pieces back to the museums. They can try doing this to a third party, someone who will accept a "reward" for turning in the paintings, but even that subterfuge exposes them to capture. Often the thieves give up even hope of ransom, and reveal where the authorities can pick up the paintings. The museums will cooperate with ransoms up to a point, with the biggest worry that masterpieces will be harmed as they are tossed into car trunks or hidden under mattresses.

It is surprising that some of the thefts described here are not for money. Ink drawings by Rembrandt snatched off the wall of the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard in 1937 were recovered, and their theft seems to have been nothing but a student prank. A theft in Moscow in 1927 involved religious paintings, which subsequently underwent ritual vandalism. The press accounts blamed "some sort of religious maniacs." One of the strangest of crimes here was performed by Myles Connor himself. He was facing charges in one art heist, and so he robbed a Rembrandt from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, and then offered to help the museum recover the Rembrandt in exchange for leniency in the first case. The brazen strategy worked.

Most of the stolen paintings are recovered, but there is an interesting bimodal aspect to the recovery. They are often found days or weeks after the theft, and if not then, then they are found a generation later, because statues of limitations expire, or the thieves die. Some of the paintings here are documented as being destroyed and gone forever, while most of the missing ones are simply out there somewhere, probably not being well cared for. Their absence and the damage to them represent real human losses. The authors have often combined these varied stories of thefts with a brief history of Rembrandt's wild arc of a career (including the sad descent). Interpol says that the underworld is bullish on art crimes (second only to trade in drugs and arms). The authors have given a fascinating review of a particular aspect of this particular crime, with introductions to a few remarkable, and mostly ordinary, criminals. You won't watch a movie art heist in the same way again.

Booklist: Money For Art - The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy

2011-10-01T13:16:00.000-07:00

Money For Art - The Tangled Web of Art and Politics in American Democracy
by David A Smith
Ivan R. Dee 2008

Description
Money for Art is the story of public funding of the arts in modern America - the risks and achievements inherent in the ongoing relationship among artists, art administrators, and the legislators who control spending. It is a story of noble intentions that have often foundered on the conflict between individual creativity and democratic expectations.

As David A. Smith shows, government funding of the arts in America has never followed an easy course. Whether on a local or national scale, political support for the arts has carried with it a sense of exchange-the expectation that in return for public money the community will benefit. But this concept is fraught with potential difficulties that touch upon basic tensions between the fierce vision of the individual artist and the standards of the community.

In emphasizing the developments since the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, Mr. Smith also shows how American art and artists have evolved in the last decades of the twentieth century. Many art observers will recall the heated controversy of the late 1980s and early 1990s over the Endowment's involvement with the photographers Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe, episodes that aptly represent the inevitable head-on collision of contemporary arts and national politics.

Mr. Smith reexamines and analyzes these clases between funding and freedom of speech as a prism through which to view the broad disagreement in America over ther meaning, purpose and plce of art in a democracy.

Central to his story are American definitions of egalitarianism and rights. What happens to art in a society that is increasingly, energetically egalitarian and rights-conscious, and how does this direction influence the task of funding art?

Should publically funded art support the "I" of the artist or recognize the "we" of community? And how can these frequently opposed interests be reconciled?

Money for Art tells how these circumstances have evolved and what their consequences are for art in America.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Traditions and Trends
2. Paint By Numbers
3. Momentum from Myth
4. A Great Society's Art
5. Surprise!
6. Paradise Lost
7. Supply-side Art
8. The Difference Between "Naked" and "Nude"
9. Rearranging the Chairs
10. An "I" or a "We"?
Epilogue: the Signature of Man
Notes
Index

Open Book: Hot Art, by Joshua Knelman

2011-10-01T11:55:00.000-07:00

From NationalPost: Open Book: Hot Art, by Joshua Knelman

Last April, two thieves broke into a Toronto gallery and ran off with three paintings worth $73,000. The sum was high enough to attract local attention in the press, but the incident represented little more than a good day’s work for members of the worldwide fellowship of art thieves.

It’s a grand fraternity, flourishing in a global culture where art has never commanded greater prices. In the United States, according to Joshua Knelman’s Hot Art: Chasing Thieves and Detectives Through the Secret World of Stolen Art, the “business of fine art is worth an estimated $200-billion annually.” The value of the amount of stolen art annually is — well, no one knows for sure. If there was even a vaguely useful figure, depend on it, Knelman would have obtained it. Seven years in the making, Hot Art is an engrossing and thorough study of the shadow side of art fairs, galleries, museums, auction houses, private and public collectors.

It began in 2003 when Knelman was researching a story about a burglary at a small art gallery for The Walrus magazine, research that led him to some strange contacts, including one thief who threatened Knelman serious injury if he wrote anything about his involvement in the art gallery theft. A curious feature of Knelman’s narrative is that he becomes part of the story at the very beginning and at the very end, while in between lies a fairly impersonal stretch of reportage. The episodes that involve Knelman are unsettling. Aside from the anonymous thief, an ever wary Los Angeles Police Department detective temporarily regards Knelman as a suspect in a gallery heist — claiming to be a journalist could be a very good ruse, he figures — and the organizer of a conference on art theft in Cairo demands extra payment on his hotel bill. Knelman refuses to pay that extra money and successfully stands his ground, but only after a blistering argument and another not so veiled threat to the author’s health.

Finally, near the end of the book, his main informant from the criminal world, “Paul,” seeks reassurance from Knelman that there will be enough material left over for his own book. Knelman tries to ease his concern on that score, although he doesn’t actually guarantee anything.

None of these episodes — not even the hotel confrontation, which, strictly speaking, has nothing to do with Knelman’s story — are gratuitous. They help to establish in an intimate and sometimes ironic way themes of innocence and guilt, including the guilt of depriving a crook of the rightful fruits of his experience.

The main story is told from the perspective of a handful of crusaders who battle not only the increasing sophistication and determination of art thieves but the indifference of their police colleagues and even the hostility of gallery owners who don’t want to change their ways. “The business of art is one of the most corrupt, dirtiest industries on the planet,” maintains one such crusader, a Toronto lawyer specializing in cultural property law named Bonnie Czegledi. “There are no regulations and theft is rampant.” Proper documentation of sales is often missing, and gallery owners often feel it is rude to inquire closely about the provenance of a work of art offered to them. “Nobody in the art world asks questions,” Paul informs Knelman.

There’s a certain acceptance in that world of what happened to the Toronto gallery last April — art theft has been in existence as long as art. The history of Egypt, for example, is the history of systematic plunder of its antiquities. Czegledi, a descendent of inhabitants of Hungary’s Carpathian Mountains, who have long been persecuted by Romanian authorities, is particularly sensitive about this political aspect of art theft. “There’s almost nothing left of my people except a few songs collected by Béla Bartók,” she says to Knelman. “The best way to destroy a civilization is to erase their cultural heritage. The Nazis, for example, understood that very well.”

It is greed, however, rather than politics that drives today’s plundering of art, and it is intensive police work that must counter it. Knelman’s other lonely crusaders include LAPD detective Donald Hrycyk, virtually the only member of that police department’s Art Theft Detail; Richard Ellis of Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Squad, a squad that includes Ellis and one partner; Robert Wittman, the first agent in the history of the FBI to investigate art theft full-time; and Julian Radcliffe, a corporate consultant on terrorism and kidnapping who founded the Art Loss Register. That register had its beginnings when Radcliffe realized, in Knelman’s words, that “the best way to curb international art theft was to create an international list of stolen artwork. Whoever assembled that list would be the master of the art world.”

As a counterpoint to these voices, the more or less reformed thief Paul gives his own perspective on the art racket, sometimes sounding grimly amused at the spectacle of art’s losing battle against theft. Hrycyk, for one, admits that “the vast majority of these cases are not solved.” There are different sorts of thefts, however. One kind of theft is the stealing of paintings from galleries and private residences — more than half the items on the Art Loss Register are from private collections. These sooner or later find their way into galleries and auction houses as legitimate items of sale. Another kind is the theft of very high profile paintings from museums. Paul warns criminals against this kind of theft because it draws a lot of police attention. “A good thief stays out of the spotlight,” he says.

It’s one thing to lift a famous Rembrandt, another to dispose of it. A gallery owner tells Knelman, “When a painting is stolen, it has to be laundered. There are two ways to do this. One is to send it to Japan or to another country very far away. The other way is simply to hide it somewhere for a very long time, until anybody who would recognize the stolen painting is dead or has long forgotten it.”

It is hard to believe that Rembrandt’s The Storm on the Sea of Galilee or Vermeer’s The Concert — two among the 14 paintings stolen in the famous 1990 heist from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum — will ever be forgotten.

Knelman leaves us no assurance that the scourge of art theft will abate any time soon. Closer regulation of the arts and antiques business might reduce theft by helping to dry up that market for stolen goods. Museums might redouble investment on alarms and securities systems in the almost fanatical mode of the Getty Center in Los Angeles, which has never suffered an incident of theft. Even that solution may not last for long, however, and not just because Getty Center-style security is very expensive. As museums become better secured, one expert tells Knelman, the way to steal art will be through armed robbery, in smash and grab mode. “The only thing thieves need to do is beat the alarm response time,” he observes.

We owe it to posterity, however, not to give up the attempt to secure art. Knelman, in this outstanding work of journalism, places the problem in perspective by quoting the FBI’s Wittman on the successful case of a stolen Rembrandt. “The Rembrandt that I recovered was 400 years old,” he says. “Do you know anyone who is 400 years old? Cultural property is permanent. We are fleeting.”

Bermuda Dunes, CA: Burglary investigation nets 3 people

2011-09-27T02:46:00.000-07:00

My Desert.com: Burglary investigation nets 3 people

BERMUDA DUNES — Three people were behind bars Friday as the result of warrants served in a residential burglary investigation that netted more than $100,000 worth of stolen property, including artwork and firearms, a Riverside County sheriff's captain said.

Philip Sena and Denise Swearingen of Bermuda Dunes and Rick Sena of La Quinta were arrested in a two-day search that netted property stolen from residences throughout the Coachella Valley, Capt. Raymond Gregory said Friday.

“The (recovered) property includes a number of distinctive art pieces, as well as a large cache of firearms,” he said.

Police served search warrants at a residence on Bermuda Dunes Drive in the Bermuda Dunes Country Club and another residence on Avenue 70 in the unincorporated area of North Shore. They found “large quantities” of property stolen from residences in La Quinta, Bermuda Dunes, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage and other communities in the Coachella Valley, Gregory said.

Philip Sena, 46, was detained on suspicion of possession of stolen property, being a felon in possession of a firearm, possession of a silencer, possession of a deadly weapon and committing a felony while on bail.

Rick Sena, 45, was detained on suspicion of possession of stolen property and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Swearingen, 41, was detained on suspicion of possession of stolen property.

The investigation, which is ongoing, was headed by the La Quinta Police Special Enforcement Team and the warrants were served with sheriff's investigators and personnel from other law enforcement agencies, said Gregory, who serves as the chief of police for La Quinta, which contracts for police services from the sheriff's department.

Anyone with information about other burglaries should call the sheriff's Indio station at (760) 863-8990 or email IndioStationriversidesheriff.org.

People also can contact Coachella Valley Crime Stoppers at (760) 341-7867. They can remain anonymous and may be eligible for a cash reward.

Suspect Sought in Case of Stolen Renoir Painting

2011-09-26T14:43:00.000-07:00

From Sudan Vision Daily: Suspect Sought in Case of Stolen Renoir Painting
HOUSTON -- An armed robber got away with a prized painting during a home invasion in west Houston and police are asking anyone who've seen the artwork to call them.
The Renoir painting was swiped earlier this month during a home invasion near Woodway and Chimney Rock.

Houston police and Crime Stoppers are asking for information leading to an arrest in the case of the stolen Renoir painting. And since thefts of big-time impressionist art are so unusual, they're confident that asking the community for help will turn up some leads.

The burglar took the Renoir painting from a home in the upscale neighborhood around Woodway and Chimney Rock near the Galleria back on September 8. The artwork called 'Madeleine Leaning on Her Elbow with Flowers in Her Hair' was painted by Pierre-Auguste Renoir in 1918. Today it's valued at around $1 million.

"It's a Renoir painting. It's highly recognizable. Someone who's in possession of that property can easily be identified," said Katherine Cabaniss, Executive Director of Crime Stoppers.

The suspect is described only as a white man wearing a ski mask. He had a black semi-automatic gun and pointed it at the victim and demanded money and jewelry. Then, police say, he pointed at the painting, and demanded it. He left with the painting still in its frame. The victim was not injured.

The Renoir stolen from the house was part of a private collection now housed at the Vaughan Christopher Gallery on S. Shepherd.

A neighboring business owner says there's been an extra constable presence there since the painting was stolen. And Cabaniss is confident that someone knows something about the case.

"It's unusual to see a burglary in which such unique property is stolen," she said.
Anyone with information on the suspect or the painting is urged to contact the HPD Robbery Division at 713-308-0700 or Crime Stoppers.

Crime Stoppers will pay up to $5,000 for any information called in to the 713-222-TIPS (8477) or submitted online at www.crime-stoppers.org that leads to the filing of charges or arrest of the suspect(s) in this case. Tips can also be sent by text message.

Ottawa, Canada: Thieves robbing gov't buildings of pricey artwork

2011-09-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

From CTV.News: Thieves robbing gov't buildings of pricey artwork

OTTAWA — Some people are stealing more than a just glance at artwork in government buildings.

Records kept by the Canada Council for the Arts show thieves have made off with pricey works of art on display in federal offices, airports and universities.

A list obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act shows more than $80,000 worth of art has disappeared over the years.

Not all of it was stolen.

One piece was sold at auction after someone at Montreal's Mirabel Airport mistakenly put it in the lost-and-found.

The government bought Canadian artist Ann Newdigate's tapestry, "Creatures of Habit," for $5,570. No one knows how much it sold for at auction, or where it is today.

"It was taken down by Transport Canada, and it was placed with goods from the lost-and-found department, and it was sold at auction," said Victoria Henry, director of the Canada Council Art Bank.

"So someone owns it, and has the name of the art bank, the label on it, for sure."

Henry said insurance covered the loss of the tapestry.

Other stolen works include paintings, photographs and soap stone sculptures.

The Canada Council Art Bank is the largest collection of contemporary Canadian art in the world, with around 17,000 works by some 2,500 artists in its working collection.

The entire collection was originally valued at $18 million. Now it is worth $70 million.

Companies and government departments and agencies can rent art from the collection to display in their offices and public spaces. It costs between $120 and $3,600 a year to rent a work of art.

The Canada Council says around 5,000 works are currently rented out to government offices, hospitals, schools and businesses.

The most valuable piece to be swiped was a small floor sculpture by Toronto-based artist Noel Harding. The 16-millimetre film-loop projection with moving props cost the government $13,055.

Henry defended the art bank's track record. She said only 201 works of art have been stolen since the art bank opened in 1972.

"We have rented well over 250,000 art works," Henry said.

"So it's a very limited number of works that have actually been lost or stolen during the 40 years that we've been in existence. So, it's a pretty good record."

Crooks struck CBC buildings most. The public broadcaster has been hit 16 times at its bureaus across the country.

Public Works has been robbed nine times at its Vancouver, Montreal, Gatineau, Que., Halifax and St. John's, N.L., offices. Thieves struck the Finance Department six times and the offices of the taxman five times.

Not even Public Safety Canada was safe. A soapstone sculpture by Inuit carver Enook Manomie and black-and-white photos by Robert Boffa were nabbed at two of the agency's offices.

"The public spaces are public," Henry said.

"I would say in all cases, there's usually in the lobby area some kind of a receptionist, if it's a government building, or a commissionaire in fact.

"So it is a bit of a surprise when a major work like that disappears."

Scenes of some other heists include immigration offices, hospitals, universities and colleges.

Meanwhile, around 100 works of art collectively valued at $413,884 have been damaged beyond repair.

Most of the too-damaged-to-display pieces were heavy fibreglass sculptures. Warehouses and loading docks were where most of the damage occurred.

Henry said many of those works simply deteriorated over time.

Artwork stolen from Port Angeles gallery

2011-09-22T12:36:00.000-07:00

From ww.peninsuladailynews.com: Artwork stolen from Port Angeles gallery
PORT ANGELES — Art created to honor the Elwha River restoration has been stolen from a downtown art gallery.

It is ironic that the person who took the artwork titled “Raven” chose that particular painting because it depicts a raven stealing the sun, said Gabrielle Glasen, the artist who created the painting.

Several video cameras at the Landings Art Gallery, 115 E. Railroad Ave., caught images of a woman with long black hair taking the artwork, Glasen said.

The Port Angeles Police Department has the gallery’s security tapes and will be reviewing them, said Officer Trevor Dropp.

The suspect is not known to police, Dropp said.

“Raven,” valued at $300, is part of a collection of six similar paintings created to celebrate the Elwha River dam removals and restoration to coincide with last week’s “Celebrate Elwha!” activities.

The collection, painted on log slices, depicts the animals that will most benefit by the return of salmon on the Elwha River, Glasen said.

In addition to the raven, they include a bear, eagle, otter, cougar and an orca, she said.

Since Friday, Glasen re-created “Raven” from a photo and put the replica in the place of the missing one to fill the empty space.

The raven painting “is about coming out of the void,” she said, adding that the raven is the void and the theft of the sun is symbolic of escaping the void.

The person who took the painting is in a similar void, Glasen said.

“She is in a dark place, and needs to come out of that dark place,” she said.

Glasen asked that the painting be returned to the gallery.

The downtown theft is not the first for Glasen.

Last year, the “Unipus,” a metal sculpture of a one-legged octopus, was stolen from its Front Street sidewalk pedestal.

After the theft was reported in the Peninsula Daily News, the “Unipus” was returned.

“It was really nice when the person who took Unipus brought it back,” she said.

“It’s all about giving back,” she said. “Stealing is not positive karma.”

East Bay man convicted in Hillsborough $100,000 art theft

2011-09-22T12:27:00.000-07:00

From Mercury News: East Bay man convicted in Hillsborough $100,000 art theft
REDWOOD CITY -- An Édouard Leon Cortés painting stolen from a Hillsborough home -- and worth at least $100,000 -- sparked an investigation that has led to felony convictions for an Emeryville man.

Jurors found Robert Alarid, 42, guilty Monday of identity and car theft in connection with a break-in at an Ascot Road home that came just days after the death of its sole occupant, police and prosecutors said. However, the jury deadlocked on one count of second-degree burglary, which prosecutors have since dropped.

Alarid faces nine years, four months in prison when he is sentenced Nov. 4. His co-defendant, Beverly Wilkerson Aldabashi, 43, got three years in prison when she was sentenced in May.

Prosecutors say the pair broke into Lee Kavanaugh's home on Aug. 18, 2010, just nine days after she had died at age 70 from natural causes. Her family discovered the theft upon stopping by the house to pick up some paperwork after her funeral. They realized the painting was missing, along with some antiques and Kavanaugh's 2003 Toyota Camry.

It was the car that eventually led police to arrest Alarid and Aldabashi. Investigators have not recovered the painting.

A member of Kavanaugh's family said it appears somebody read her obituary -- which detailed her birth in Massachusetts, work as an editorial assistant for Holt, Rinehart & Winston in Burlingame, and thousands of hours volunteering for various causes -- and then targeted the house.

Alarid is being held without bail in San Mateo County jail. A phone message seeking comment was not immediately returned by his defense attorney, Linda Bramy.

.Philadelphia: Artists love the crowds at the Doylestown Arts Fest

2011-09-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

From PhillyBurbs: Artists love the crowds at the Doylestown Arts Fest
It was Pam and Bill Marlin’s first year exhibiting at the Doylestown Arts Festival.

And even though they didn’t sell as much of their art — clocks and plaques with detailed images of people and scenes from Philadelphia carved out of wood — as they had hoped to, the Bryn Mawr couple said they had a good time.

“It was only our first show,” Pam Marlin said. “We didn’t know what to expect.”

The Marlins, who do business as ABI Woodworking, have been working on their art for a little more than a year. Pam Marlin said she and her husband went to several different arts festivals last year to see where they might want to set up shop this year, and the Doylestown Arts Festival was at the top of Pam’s list.

“The people were great. They had a lot of stuff,” she said.

Bill said, “It’s crowded. And it stays crowded.”

Artists John Mertz and Margaret Almon said the crowd generally seems very enthusiastic about the art.

“It feels like there’s a true appreciation,” said Almon, of Lansdale, who sells stained glass and mosaics under the name Nutmeg Designs.

Mertz, an oil painter from Bedminster who has shown his art at the festival for seven or eight years, said he’s reached a point where “a number of folks that I know expect me to be here year after year.”

The arts festival, which celebrated its 20th anniversary this year, draws thousands of visitors every year; organizers estimate that 10,000 to 20,000 people come to town.

“The weather’s been fantastic and that makes a difference,” said Donna Goetz, of Yardley, who makes and sells jewelry under the name Gypsy Jewels.

Goetz said she thinks Doylestown is an attractive town and she loves that the streets are closed and the artists’ tents are set up right in the middle of town. The shop and restaurant owners in town were very kind, Goetz said.

Bill Marlin said he likes that the tents are set up on only one side of each street. In some other festivals nearby, he said, tents are set up on both sides of the street and it “feels like you’re being funneled through” and “you’re going to be swept past booths.”

The Doylestown Business and Community Alliance, the local group that organizes the festival, gives “ample room for people to walk,” Bill Marlin said.

Goetz said the different musical acts and entertainers, who included this year popular Beatles cover band Almost Fab and “The First Lady of Musical Fitness” Miss Amy, seem to draw a lot of different groups of people.

Doylestown Township artisan Amy Turner said she loves seeing all the dogs people bring with them.

“That might seem silly, but I really love it,” she said.

Turner hand-weaves scarves from yarn made of dog hair, as well as more traditional materials like cotton, rayon and wool yarn.

Turner’s booth was set up in front of Finney’s Pub on South Main Street — in the middle of the main stages for musical performances — and she said it gets a bit loud when two musical groups are performing at the same time.

Turner and Mertz didn’t like that they had to take down their art and tents and put them away Saturday night, and then set them up again Sunday. Mertz said: “I’m getting too old to set up stuff all the time.”

Mertz and Almon said it was difficult to get set up Sunday morning — the day of the Univest Grand Prix.

“Everything was barricaded before we got here,” Almon said. Her tent was set up on Hamilton Street near the Plaza West parking lot.

Mertz said: “It was very difficult for vendors to come in, unload, then find a place to park. ... They could have done a better job on traffic control.”

Fact-check fears

2011-09-11T01:45:00.000-07:00

From Guardian.co.uk: Fact-check fears
I am just starting a book about lost works of art, called Lost Stolen or Shredded, or Has Anyone Seen the Mona Lisa? a few sections of which once formed a series on Radio 4. So extending and fleshing them out shouldn't be too hard? But it is. There is something about the process of starting a new piece of work that I find paralysing. It helps me, sometimes, to begin at the beginning, though every writer knows that you only write the beginning at the end, once you know what you have done. I have provisionally drafted a couple of opening paragraphs intended to pique interest, and signal what I am (probably) going to be doing later.

In first draft, my opening reads like this:

He collected absences. For him they were as intense, haunting and real as the presences that they shadowed. And so, on this day late in August of 1911, he had intentionally arrived that little bit late to join the queue, this slight boy-man of 28 with his friend Max, heightening the anticipation. They had rushed to Paris from Milan as soon as they heard the news, and as they attended the Omnia Pathé the previous night, noted with delight the way in which the film, like the ubiquitous newspapers, advertisements, candy wrappers, and postcards, proclaimed and even gloated over the hot topic of the day.

When they eventually entered the Louvre's Salon Carré, senses heightened by the delay, they approached the spot where the Mona Lisa had been displayed for generations. The crowd – all of whom had come on the same pilgrimage – pushed forward, and the little man, jostled, could hardly see. Taking his friend by the shoulder Max pushed to the very front, and they gazed at the wall in astonishment, as other onlookers paused to deposit flowers on the floor beneath, with notes of remembrance tied in silk ribbons.

He stood in front of the wall, rapt, those obsidian eyes staring. The painting, of course, was gone. That's why he was there. It had been stolen a week before, and the Museum had only just reopened to the public. The crowd had come expressly to see where it used to be, and now wasn't. For Franz Kafka, the Mona Lisa was in the process of joining that internal collection of what he called his "invisible curiosities:" sights, monuments, and works of art that he had missed seeing.

I'm not sure how much of this will survive into my final text, or indeed, how much of it works. There is something a little audacious – and unconvincing, I fear – about animating the figures of Max Brod and Franz Kafka beyond what the bare facts will allow. Never mind, all of this will be revisited at the appropriate time.

Checking through these paragraphs what astonishes me is not that they are not yet fully realised, but how many errors have crept in. How did that happen? Well, I'm still trying to unravel it, but the major mistakes are as follows: (1) Brod and Kafka arrived in Paris from Milan on September 8, not "in late August"; (2) they did not "rush" to Paris to see the empty space. They came to Paris on the way home to Prague, after a visit to Italy, because of "fear of the cholera," and to save time and money; (3) they did not go to the cinema before visiting the Louvre, they went to the Opéra Comique; (4) the Louvre was closed for nine days, not "a week".

In fact, there is little evidence that their visit to the museum was prompted by the theft of the painting, or that they were particularly struck by seeing the spot where the Mona Lisa used to hang. If you consult Kafka's travel diaries for the period, he notes the visit to the Louvre, and a "Crowd in the Salon Carré, the excitement and the knots of people, as if the Mona Lisa had just been stolen," but makes no further comment, devoting more attention to the Venus de Milo and the Borghese Wrestler.

Reference to Max Brod's biography of Kafka, too, casts serious doubt on the notion that the Mona Lisa, or rather the loss of the Mona Lisa, had a serious imaginative impact on Kafka. Brod never mentions the visit to the Louvre at all. Nor can I find the source of the notion that Kafka collected "invisible curiosities", though I am still looking.

My story is starting to unravel, alas. I rather liked it. How did I manage to get so much wrong in such a short passage? The answer, frankly, is that I don't entirely know. My normal method of composition, particularly when it involves a degree of research, is to read a lot of books, underlining passages that may be useful, and then to trawl the internet, cutting and pasting information into a file that I can then use for reference when I get down to work.

Everything in my first-draft opening passage was acquired in this way, and then put together so that the "research" doesn't stick out, and the reader is led easily into what is, after all, a fascinating story. But when I go back to all those notes, it is unclear what came from where, much less how and when. I simply cannot reconstruct my sources, and what I had taken to be accurate turns out to be embarrassingly sloppy.

Fortunately, I know I can be slapdash, and need to check and recheck my sources. I am at my most vulnerable when I believe I know what I am talking about. So I did what I should have done in the first place, and went back to the primary material. Kafka's Travel Diaries and Brod's Franz Kafka: A Biography are more reliable, for sure, than stuff one can cut and paste from the net. I should know better, but the temptation is considerable. I am not, after all, a historian doing original research. I am much more engaged by the construction of a lively narrative than by the methodical presentation of facts.

This overreliance on unreliable or unacknowledged sources is a common problem, and an increasing one, and can have dreadful consequences. A recent example in New Zealand concerned that excellent novelist Witi Ihimaera, best known for Whale Rider, which was made into a terrific film starring Keisha Castle-Hughes in 2002. In 2009, Witi, a man of considerable imaginative power and charm, published a novel called The Trowenna Sea, an account of Maori convicts transported to Tasmania in the 1840s. He – and his many readers in New Zealand – were soon astonished, and appalled, when Jolisa Gracewood's review of the book in the Listener, accused the author of plagiarism from a number of different sources, and cited 16 damning examples.

Witi Ihimaera could only own up, in the mitigated sense to which I have been alluding. He had been sloppy, got his notes mixed up, and eventually confused material emanating from others for his own work. He was nevertheless guilty, and happy – if that is the right work – to acknowledge it: "I am deeply sorry and take full responsibility for this oversight…. The authors I have managed to contact understand how it occurred and have accepted my apologies. The passages in question will be fully acknowledged in a future edition of the book." The book was withdrawn by Penguin, and Ihimaera vowed to buy up all available copies. (The few surviving copies are now uncommon and collectible, and the book has not been reprinted).

Ihimaera was roundly, and widely, and rightly, condemned, but I felt a distinct fellow feeling with him. His plagiarism emanated from the same slackness as my initial failure to check my sources, though I located my errors before going to print, and he did not. That is, of course, a major distinction: I know how sloppy I can be, and am duly vigilant, and Witi Ihimaera (was has had a problem with plagiarism once before) apparently does not. But ours are the sorts of mistake that are too easy to make. I expect we will see more and more of this, as the seductive but not entirely trustworthy world of information on the internet expands, and our habits of research and self-scrutiny contract.

Aboriginal artist Adam Hill's milk crate street art protest

2011-09-11T01:42:00.000-07:00

From Blogs.Mirror.Co.Uk, The Ticket: Aboriginal artist Adam Hill's milk crate street art protest

Proof that street art doesn't just come from a spray can, here is Aboriginal artist Adam Hill's work The Crate Land Grab which sprang up in a Sydney street recently.

The painter and cartoonist first exhibited the piece in the Black(s)town Cultural Initiative in 2009, in western Sydney.

My sister snapped this in Addison Road, Marrickville, in the NSW capital's inner-west, where it appeared temporarily one afternoon in the middle of August.

Using a very simple medium it carries a powerful sledgehammer commentary - 'Stolen'.

It is both confrontational and lyrical - a flimsily constructed but unignorable billboard to loss, an accusation left like a giant Postit note or a break-up letter too painful to be read aloud by the aggrieved.

In the block construction of The Crate Land Grab there is too, a vague parallel with the digitised graffiti of French street artist Invader, and of using street art as a means of rebellion.

Made up of 154 'borrowed' black and green milk crates you can read a lot into it.

A comment on Aboriginal land rights or the stolen generation of Aboriginal children perhaps? Or maybe on the Australian fixation with owning a home in the suburbs at the expense of the environment, an encroachment on the land that is sacred to the indigenous population?

Perhaps it's just about nicking milk crates... but I don't think so.

As a medium the milk crates represent both a commonly stolen item (popular with students and DJs) and also an everyday link to the home, the morning milk run and the consumer trappings of a happy life - things many Australians take for granted, but most black Australians don't.

Hill is an advocate of social justice, an inescapably confronting problem if you happen to be born an Aboriginal in Australia.

The 41-year-old once said: "It's really not important what we've done, rather, what is important is what we haven't done."

A Koori (east-coast urban Aboriginal) artist who says he relates to the Yolngu of North East Arnhem Land, Hill has held 14 solo shows, many in his hometown Penrith, and lived in various Sydney art studios for the past decade.

Adam Geczy from Sydney's Harrison Gallery wrote of the artist: "Hill's work is all oriented around land and place, above and below, and especially the way in which Australia has been defiled, and the ancient mores of Aboriginal peoples transgressed."

Keep fighting the good fight Adam.

Crimes of passion?

2011-09-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

From the Trinitonian: Crimes of passion?

by Michael Schreyach

The history of art is full of heists. A crafty theft captures the imagination. An evasive thief can even become a kind of counter-cultural hero, like Vincenzo Peruggia, the Italian handyman who nicked the Mona Lisa from the Louvre in 1911 and was on the lam for two years before being caught. Apparently, he wanted to repatriate Leonardo da Vinci’s masterwork to the painter’s native Italy. (Tidbit: Picasso was hauled in by the police for questioning about the case due to his association with another shady art thief).

Some thefts disappoint both the thieves and–obviously–the victims of their crime. The drawing recently stolen from an upscale hotel in Los Angeles may or may not be the authentic Rembrandt it was assumed to be. (Note to self: Make sure artwork is real before stealing it.)

These events bring to my mind other sorts of actions directed at artworks, particularly abstract ones. A few years ago, a woman planted a lipstick kiss (in homage, she claimed) on a painting by Cy Twombly. (If you haven’t been to Houston to see the Menil’s gallery of his works, go ASAP.) The woman was charged with vandalism, but only required to pay Twombly the symbolic sum of one euro in damages.

There are more extreme cases. A man slashed a large abstract painting by Barnett Newman in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum in 1986. (Check out his paintings on the Coates Library database, ARTstor.) The man returned in 1997 and knifed a second Newman painting. Why? Maybe he found the paintings threatening in some way, and his attacks were–in his mind–self-defense.

Newman often told a story to illustrate the intense effects his paintings could have on viewers. A painter friend of his got terribly agitated in front of Newman’s work. The man was so upset that he had tears in his eyes. Newman said: “What’s the trouble?” The friend responded: “You made me aware of myself.” Self-awareness, apparently, can be terrifying.

As an assistant professor of art history who teaches abstraction, I’m often asked: “But what does it mean?” I doubt I’ve ever given a satisfactory answer. I’ve never found it very useful to approach abstract artworks like I’m decoding a message. But I do think that abstract paintings can have a profound effect on those who view them.

In Newman’s story, it seems that coming to understand an abstract painting is a lot like coming to understand another person, or even oneself: it can be difficult. But what the process seems to involve is open acknowledgement, not cynical avoidance. Perhaps a painting by Newman asks viewers to acknowledge that to understand it (to understand its otherness), they must simultaneously come to know themselves in relation to it.

Newman’s “message,” if we decide to call it that, is that we don’t have to assume a skeptical position when it comes to the unknown, whether it’s the meaning of abstraction, ourselves or another person. If you don’t like that message, please–please!–don’t attack the art. But even if you do like it, don’t steal the painting.

Stolen Rubens Will Be Returned To Owners

2011-09-10T09:34:00.000-07:00

Caledonian Bear Hunt

Sky News HD: Stolen Rubens Will Be Returned To Owners
An oil painting by Flemish master Peter Paul Rubens will be handed back to its rightful owner in Belgium after being recovered in Greece - 10 years after it was stolen.

Greek police retrieved the 17th century work, called The Calydonian Boar Hunt, on September 1 after a tip-off.

"It is a huge success," said Culture Minister Pavlos Geroulanos.

"Our dogged pursuit of art thieves and looters of antiquities will continue.

"The message is that art thieves should take their business elsewhere - not Greece."

Mr. Geroulanos said experts at the Culture Ministry had authenticated the artwork and verified it was the painting snatched from the walls of Belgium's Museum of Fine Arts, in Ghent, in 2001.

"The painting was purchased as a Rubens, it was recorded as a Rubens in the catalogues and it was stolen as a Rubens," he said.

But questions about its authenticity have remained.

Since it was recovered art critics, including its Belgian owners, have suggested the unsigned oil sketch may be the work of one of Rubens' protégés and not the celebrated master.

During the theft, robbers also attempted to steal another work of art called The Flagellation of Christ.

Two Greek nationals, a 65-year-old art dealer and a 40-year-old television presenter, have been arrested and charged in connection with the case.

Police caught the suspects by posing as potential buyers.

Authorities in Athens have declined to give details of how the painting ended up in Greece.

"We believe that there are more (people) involved in this operation," said a senior police official.

Belgian diplomats in the Greek capital said they would be pursuing the "swift" return of the artwork to its rightful owners

Inaugural Houston Fine Art Fair attracts global galleries

2011-09-07T15:15:00.000-07:00

From YourRiverOaksnews.com: Inaugural Houston Fine Art Fair attracts global galleries
The Houston Fine Art Fair will be the first international fine art fair to be held in Houston, the third largest art market in the United States.

Held Sept. 15-18 at the George R. Brown Convention Center, the upcoming event’s 80 galleries from 13 countries will offer contemporary and modern masters, emerging artists and today’s art stars. Works will include painting, drawing, print, editions, installation, sculpture, and photography. This inaugural fair is designed for both novice and experienced collectors and will include seminars, artist and collector interviews.

“Houston’s thriving art scene offers a wide range of styles, from the hottest contemporary art stars, to blue chip artworks, big-name photographers, and the best national and regional artists working today,” said Fair Organizer Rick Friedman, President of Hamptons Expo Group Management. “Clearly the city’s collectors, institutions and art patrons are serious in their commitment to making Houston one of the major art centers in the country today.”

Cultural partners supporting the city’s first international fine art fair include The Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Houston Arts Alliance, Houston Center for Photography, Fotofest International, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, DiverseWorks, Project Row Houses, Art League Houston, Houston Museum of African American Culture, The Orange Show for Visionary Art, the McNay Art Museum and Artpace San Antonio.

“Based on the enthusiasm and incredible support we have received from the sophisticated art community here, we anticipate 10,000 visitors to the fair, with as many as 2,000 coming from outside of Houston,” says Fran Kaufman, Director of the Houston Fine Art Fair.

The fair will kick off with an Opening Night Preview Party on Thursday, Sept. 15th to benefit Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Glassell School of Art Core Program. The program awards one-year residencies to exceptional, highly motivated visual artists and critical writers who have not yet developed professional careers. The eight current and four new fellows will have their work shown at the fair, with all sale proceeds going directly to the individual fellows.

“Houston is an amazing city with a vibrant cultural community, says Pavel Zoubok, owner of New York’s Pavel Zoubok Gallery. “We are delighted to support this exciting new fair and look forward to expanding our circle of collectors, curators and friends there.”

Tickets include an on-site program of panel discussions on thought-provoking art-market topics featuring invited curators, critics and collectors. During the fair, the first annual Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to internationally known and critically-acclaimed artist Donald Sultan.

The fair is organized by Hamptons Expo Group Management, which also produces the annual art fairs ArtHamptons, ArtAspen and the San Francisco Fine Art Fair. For more information contact, www.houstonfineartfair.com or info@houstonfineartfair.com.

Wynwood art walk revs up for Art Basel

2011-09-07T15:07:00.000-07:00

Miami New Times Arts: Wynwood art walk revs up for Art Basel
The new art season is upon us. Wynwood art dealers, wringing their sweaty palms, are in a sniff over who did or didn't make the cut for Art Basel.

The galleries are cranking out dozens of fresh shows like the conveyer belt at Krispy Kreme. The food trucks will be out in droves this weekend, eager to feed the throngs to the delight of starving culture vultures and the dismay of dealers tired of choking on exhaust fumes, sweeping chicken and rib bones off their stoops, and flushing the drunks from their bathrooms.
Adriana Carvalho's Insomnia
Adriana Carvalho's Insomnia
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Fredric Snitzer Gallery
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Fredric Snitzer Gallery

2247 NW 1st Pl
Miami, FL 33127

Category: Galleries

Region: Midtown/Wynwood/Design District
Bernice Steinbaum Gallery

3550 N Miami Ave
Miami, FL 33127

Category: Galleries

Region: Midtown/Wynwood/Design District
David Castillo Gallery

2234 NW 2nd Ave
Miami, FL 33127

Category: Galleries

Region: Midtown/Wynwood/Design District
Alberto Linero Gallery

2294 NW Second Ave
Miami, FL 33127

Category: Galleries

Region: Midtown/Wynwood/Design District

Stop complaining, folks. You've got it made in a floundering economy. Selling art when the average mook can't pay for a tank of gas is a sweet deal. For us average drones living paycheck-to-paycheck, we depend on you for the monthly ration of free booze and entertainment.

After all, that's why the Second Saturday Art Walk has turned into the one night of the month when South Floridians of all strata turn out for the big show.

Beginning at 6 p.m. this Saturday, Wynwood galleries are back to the full-time business of elevating our city's cultural eminence, and business is booming. Here are our picks for this month's edition of the rollicking affair.

Borrowing its title, "Regular Lovers," from a Philippe Garrel flick, Sunny Suits's solo at the Fredric Snitzer Gallery (2247 NW First Pl., Miami) transports viewers into the private world of her friends and paramours.

Her photographs are cinematic in nature, convey a depth of authenticity, and bring to mind Nan Goldin's visual diaries. And not unlike the work of Garrel, Cassavetes, or even Fassbinder, her intoxicating oeuvre features the same characters making regular appearances.

In these works, she levels an unflinching gaze on her subjects, seeming to freeze fleeting moments of shared intimacy before they are lost.

Suits's photographs are unstaged. Even when her subjects glance at the camera, it is in direct response to her presence rather than a pose for the lens.

Like a director, keenly in tune with her cast of actors, she exudes a lingering out-of-frame presence that one can't help but experience.

Her engagement with her friends and lovers, and comprehension of the dynamics of the relationships between her subjects, lends the exhibit its true narrative. Suits presents an uncommonly frank and self-reflective window into the intimate world of her subjects in unguarded moments that results in starkly compelling works of a personal nature.

A soundtrack of music that Suits selected especially for the show will play throughout her exhibit. Call 305-448-8976 or visit snitzer.com.

Most people familiar with Karen Rifas's work recognize the South Florida artist for her beguiling site-specific installations employing thousands of stitched leaves cascading in curtain-like waves from a ceiling or arranged in web-like patterns engulfing entire rooms. Alluding to humanity's relationship with the environment, these charming, cerebral works evince Rifas's explorations of the rhythmic and chaotic changes that occur in nature.

In "Strung Out," her new show at the Bernice Steinbaum Gallery (3550 N. Miami Ave., Miami), Rifas continues her exploration of geometry through various colors of cords to create unique geometric patterns, forms, and spaces.

At times appearing not unlike cat's cradles stitched into corners of the gallery walls or cutting through large swaths of space in bold compositions, her daring pieces invite viewer interaction while questioning notions of perspective.

Her use of color and installations of nylon cord, stainless steel, or stitched leaves enables the artist to create volume with a spare amount of material. At times straight lines appear to be curved, while at others the cords oscillate and colors intensify almost as if twanged by an unseen harpist's hand.

For the opening, Rifas has invited dancers under the direction of the New World School of the Arts teacher Dale Andree to move within her ethereal structures.

Her work and the dance troupe's interaction with the individual installations are designed to heighten the sense of both the reductive and explosive nature of the forces at play.

Don't miss Rifas's new thought-provoking installations that often reference the spare and poetic work of Agnes Martin and the rhythmic lines and pulsating color of Piet Mondrian. Call 305-573-2700 or visit bernicesteinbaumgallery.com.

David Castillo, one of two Miami art dealers chosen to represent the 305 at Art Basel Miami Beach this year — the other dealer is Fredric Snitzer — has plenty of reason to rejoice.

The David Castillo Gallery (2234 NW Second Ave., Miami) is celebrating its sixth anniversary in Wynwood with "Crushed Candy," a group show featuring top talent from Castillo's stable of artists.

The exhibit includes work by Jonathan Ehrenberg, Shara Hughes, Meredith James, and the TM Sisters (Tasha and Monica Lopez de Victoria).

Castillo says the works displayed "test their mettle against the sweet ease of perception" and that their premise is "a studio practice as steadfast as iron and finished forms as urgent and fantastical as the future state of candy."

We're not sure what that means, but it's evident that Castillo is gearing up for his season-opening bash with a head of steam and that he gives good press release.

Ehrenberg, a contemporary fabulist, parlays his interests in set design, still life, pantomime, and Noh theater into videos and works on paper.

Reveling in color, texture, and pattern, Hughes's mixed-media-on-canvas works tinker with notions of the Theory of Relativity, says Castillo. The dealer adds that "her visual vocabulary is as tight as Etch A Sketch and Keith Haring" before concluding that "all Hughes's world is an imaginative holodeck, and her subjects and viewers equal players." Sounds like a shindig worth crashing. Call 305-573-8110 or visit davidcastillogallery.com.
Adriana Carvalho's Insomnia
Adriana Carvalho's Insomnia
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Fredric Snitzer Gallery
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Fredric Snitzer Gallery

2247 NW 1st Pl
Miami, FL 33127

Category: Galleries

Region: Midtown/Wynwood/Design District
Bernice Steinbaum Gallery

3550 N Miami Ave
Miami, FL 33127

Category: Galleries

Region: Midtown/Wynwood/Design District
David Castillo Gallery

2234 NW 2nd Ave
Miami, FL 33127

Category: Galleries

Region: Midtown/Wynwood/Design District
Alberto Linero Gallery

2294 NW Second Ave
Miami, FL 33127

Category: Galleries

Region: Midtown/Wynwood/Design District

Another space ready to pop champagne corks is the newly minted Alberto Linero Gallery (2294 NW Second Ave., Miami), where folks are salivating to roar into high season with a show called "September."

If you can navigate the rolling greasy spoons fuming the environs outside the door, pop in and check out the group show organized by art collective Pink Bastard.

It features the work of seven locals and is one of the few places still doing the free wine-and-cheese thing.

Curated by Adriana Carvalho, the show is meant to inform gallery crawlers about the artists' view of day-to-day vagaries of life in the Big Mango.

Participating artists include Eddie Arroyo, Adriana Carvalho, Charles Falarara, Kevin Foltz, Cory Foote, Kathy Kissik, Franklin Sinanan, and David Zalben.

Take a gander at Foote's black-and-white portrait and landscape snaps, which exude undertones of melancholy.

Zalben, who uses metal wire to animate life's simplicities, has created a collection of evocative wire poems.

And Carvalho transforms items such as metal and cloth products into enticing pieces that represent her dreams and fears and are freighted with social commentary. Look for her new series of works, including her Insomnia installation, which highlights the poetry of everyday life using a pillow and a rug. Call 305-587-0172 or visit albertolinerogallery.com

Van Gogh to Go

2011-09-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

From Sabotage Times: Van Gogh to Go

Earlier this autumn an exhaustive undercover police operation recovered five small 17th century masterpieces stolen to order six years ago from the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, Holland.
The paintings, collectively worth millions of dollars, were subject to an extraordinary criminal supply chain that involved not just the thieves, but a Dutch lawyer, a businessman and two further shady characters, as well as, of course, the buyer, who has not been uncovered. Sue Eades-Willis is perplexed why they bothered: she could have provided all five paintings in a couple of months for a few hundred pounds.

Eades–Willis is no criminal mastermind, but rather her studio of in-house painters and expert art restorers are very handy with paints and brush. Her company, Ruby Cavalier, is one of a growing number specialising in producing legitimate reproductions (which is to say unsigned and, to avoid copyright issues, by artists now dead for at least 70 years) of famous art works – not screen-prints or laser copies, but actual oils on canvas, “as close to the original as you can get, using the same materials, techniques and brushstroke,” as Mike Mitchell, marketing director for art repro service 1st Art, puts it. “These reproductions are produced by very good artists in their own right but those who, crucially, are able to put away their egos and leave their own artistic input out of the work. And they each specialise in a style or painter – we have one artist who just does the Mona Lisa.”

“I have Monets, some Renoirs and a Degas. You can see the disbelief on people’s faces. The first question they ask is ‘are these real?’”

One wonders whether he still finds that smile quite so enigmatic. After all, the process behind creating a reproduction takes, depending on the complexity of the original painting, anywhere up to eight weeks full-time and results in a work of art that, to all but the most highly-trained eye, is indistinguishable from the original. While fashion plays its part – Mitchell notes how a major exhibition or world-record auction often prompts high demand for a particular painting, while the Vermeer biopic Girl With a Pearl Earring led to countless orders for the work of the same name – Van Gogh and Monet remain the big sellers. Ruby Cavalier, in contrast, specialises in works by lesser known artists such as John William Waterhouse, Gainsborough and Singer Sargent, “paintings that, hung over one’s mantelpiece, invariably come across as being originals,” says Eades-Willis, revealingly.

All that may give the game away would be the small likelihood of the buyer actually owning a priceless masterpiece or perhaps the size of the painting: philistine though it may be, buyers are not above having their famous artwork resized to suit their decor. “Though we draw the line at anything that distorts the ratios of the original image,” says Eades-Willis. “Some people do say, ‘can’t you just cut a bit off?’ But that is to disrespect the original art.”

Such companies will see their demand spike in the run-up to Christmas – receiving a Da Vinci is hard to top. But the more typical reasons for using such services are simple: for those who love a particular painting, it is probably as close as one can get to owning it without being fantastically well-off; and in most cases, even that won’t buy what is invariably not for sale – many of the most famous or seminal works of art are owned by the state or by public museums that very rarely sell them, and usually only then to other museums rather than into private hands. “Buyers tend to be that passionate about a painting but, like most people, don’t realise that an oil reproduction is possible,” says Paul Williams, owner of repro company, the Impressionist Art Gallery. “I have several at home, mostly Monets, but some Renoirs and a Degas. You can see the disbelief on people’s faces. The first question they ask is ‘are these real?’”

“If it’s acceptable for music, literature or images on a movie screen to be endlessly reproduced, why is it unacceptable for a museum to hang such precise copies of masterpieces?”

But making an impression with your impressionists is not the only reason why a copy may be desired: period country houses like them to add to the atmosphere, while Paris and New York-based copyists Troubetzkoy Reproductions scored a good deal when commissioned to provide over 200 masterpieces for the remake of The Thomas Crowne Affair, which became necessary when the director’s request to film inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art were turned down. Work for the productions of Meet Joe Black and Mickey Blue Eyes, among other movies, has followed.

More seriously, global companies the likes of J P Morgan and Deutsche Bank, the latter of which has, with 50,000 works, the world’s largest corporate art collection, often commission reproductions for insurance purposes: known to own prestigious art pieces but unable, for security reasons, to display them in the headquarters lobby, a copy is a suitable stand-in. Private individuals may do the same. “They have these wonderful paintings in a vault and, ironically, can’t afford the risk to hang them,” says Eades-Willis.

In other words, you may be looking at a copy more often that you realise. Indeed, arguably the spread of such quality art copyists raises fundamental questions about the value of reproductions. If it is acceptable for music, literature, lines from a play or images on a movie screen to be endlessly reproduced without diminishing the quality or substance of their content, why is it culturally unacceptable for a museum to hang such precise copies of masterpieces for many more people to then enjoy?

The insistence on original specimens not only limits the public’s exposure to art – seeing a great work as a print or on a PC is not the same experience – but means many museums, unable to afford the original, are left full of second-rate or provincial work. Arguably, the art world’s argument that the only the single work that was handled by the original painter holds value is more a means of justifying the ticket prices or auction figures that such reverence brings – it makes little difference to the artistic communication of the work.

“It’s tragic that art has become so expensive. Art should be appreciated as widely as possible,” says Eades-Willis. “The problem is that there is, now more than ever, an element of snobbery in the art world – ‘I’ve got it and you can’t have it’. But that’s wrong. Everybody has a right of access to great art. Reproductions are one way to make that happen.”

CW Peale: The Staircase Group

2011-09-02T01:44:00.000-07:00

English: The Staircase Group (1795) (Portrait of Raphaelle Peale and Titian Ramsay Peale)

CW Peale: George Washington in the Continental Army

2011-09-01T01:38:00.000-07:00

Portrait of George Washington. Oil on canvas, 1779

CW Peale: George Washington as a Colonel

2011-08-31T01:34:00.000-07:00

One of 60 portraits of Washington by Peale. In this one, he is portrayed as a Colonel in the Virginia Regiment which served with the British in the French and Indian War.

CW Peale: Self Portrait With Angelica

2011-08-30T01:29:00.000-07:00

The woman is perhaps Rachel Brewer, his first wife (who bore him 10 kids and died when she was 46) and the girl is his daughter Angelica.

CW Peale: Portrait of John and Elizabeth Lloyd Caldwater

2011-08-30T01:24:00.000-07:00

Note that John's paunch has not been the equivalent of photoshopped... it is there for all to see. Those who could afford to eat well, typically did so, with paunches and flab proof that they were wealthy.

The child, in a dress, might be a boy or girl. It was the custom during this time period for boys to wear dresses until they were four or so, when they would be moved into knee pants.