New Circa online surveys / mental art thieves? (Friday 22 February 2008)
The art-college experience: how's it for you?
Circa has launched two new online surveys aimed at looking at the experience of past and present art students and their lecturers / teachers. Please have a look here for more information.
Driven round the bend?
compiled by Astrid Lucas
Only a few days apart, two Swiss museums have been victims of spectacular thefts.
Two Picasso paintings, Horse's head (Tête de cheval) and Glass and jug (Verre et pichet) were stolen from Pfaeffikon's Seedamm-Kulturzentrum, just outside Zurich. The paintings were on loan from the Sprengel Museum in Hannover.
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| Claude Monet: Poppies near Vetheuil - one of the two paintings recovered; image held here |
Three days later, on Sunday, 10 February four works were stolen from the private Emil Georg Bührle Museum in Zurich. The works stolen were Paul Cezanne’s Boy in the red waistcoat, Edgar Degas’s Ludovic Lepic and his daughter, Vincent van Gogh’s Blooming chestnut branches and Claude Monet’s Poppy field at Vetheuil . Like a bank robbery, three men, one armed, held up the museum while it was still open. Fortunately, none of the 15 persons present in the gallery were hurt. Art theft is not in itself unusual, but the method used for the last theft came as a shock to the art world .
With a combined estimated value of 112,000 000 euro, the four paintings are, however, un-saleable on the art market, according to Lukas Gloor, Director of the Bührle collection. Indeed, they are too famous to be sold. So, why a such an act? Perhaps for ransom, or in exchange for drugs or weapons. Or...: Two of the four paintings turned up a few days later in a car parked at a psychiatric clinic a few hundred metres from the Museum; it is possible they were there since the time of the heist. (The heist itself was a bit of a 'return to arms' for the Bührle Museum: Emil Bührle apparently made his fortune selling arms to the Germans during WWII.)
This new museum robbery is the most significant for a few years in Europe. The two thefts raise questions about museum security, particularly in Switzerland. Says Guido Balmer, spokesperson for the Swiss Police's Federal office: “ Switzerland is a point of trade and transit of art works. It's a perfect target for bandits.”
This latest spate of art heists recalls some of the famous thefts and vandalisms in major galleries, such as :
Hole in Monet's painting...
Between the 6 and 7 July 2007, by night, a painting by the master of Impressionism was vandalized in the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Five teenagers, four boys and one girl forced, open a door to the Museum. Drunk, one of them punched the “Argenteuil Bridge (Le Pont d'Argenteuil), just before escaping when the alarm sounded. The result : a hole measuring 10 cm x 3 cm in the 1874 painting. The vandals were arrested a few days later, thanks to the security cameras in the museum.
Red lipstick kiss planted on a white Cy Twombly
On 19 July 2007, at the Lambert Foundation in Avignon, a women who wore red lipstick kissed a white monochrome painting by American artist Cy Twombly. Rindy Sam, who herself is an artist, justified her act as “a love act and an artistic act”. Unfortunately for her, it wasn't to the taste of the artist and the owner of the painting. Sam was fined 1500 euro for criminal damage and given 100 hours of community service. Bourgeois, the brand of lipstick used by Sam, provided the ingredients for the lipstick, to help restorers to erase the damage.
Edward Munch, a prized target.
The works of Norwegian expressionist artist, Edvard Munch have unfortunately been the victims of several thefts. The Scream with an estimated value of 80,000,000 euro, has been stolen many times. First in February 1994 during the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer; it was recovered a few months after, and in 2004 it was again stolen from the Munch Museum, where thieves also stole Munch's The Madonna. The Madonna had also already been stolen previously, in 1990 from the Kunsthuset Gallery in Oslo.
Andres Serrano
Andrews Serrano is another artist who is no stranger to vandalism and controversy. At the end of September 2007, during the exhibition The History of sex in Lund, Sweden, a gang of Neo-nazis (according to the police) came into the museum, which was not secure, to vandalize Serrano's works. About half of the work was destroyed, with estimated damage of 200,000 euro. The scene was filmed by the gang and put on You Tube.
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