Guelph Treasure still in limbo. Stolen Nazi Art some say was sold legally

BERLIN — It’s a medieval treasure trove worth an estimated quarter of a billion dollars, filled with gold crosses studded with gems and intricate silverwork. For years, it’s been at the centre of a dispute between a Berlin museum foundation and the heirs of Holocaust-era Jewish art dealers.
Read Full Story Here

Judge orders Flea Market Renoir returned to Museum

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A long-missing Renoir is headed back to the Baltimore Museum of Art, from which it had been stolen more than 60 years ago. A federal judge in U.S. District Court in Alexandria on Friday ordered that the 135-year-old "On the Shore of the Seine" be returned to the museum, rejecting a Northern Virginia woman's claim that she bought it for $7 in 2009 at a West Virginia flea market, didn't know it was stolen and deserved to keep it.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema's decision abruptly ended an intriguing art drama whose unlikely main character has been Martha Fuqua, 51, a Loudoun driving instructor. In the fall of 2012, Fuqua tried auctioning off her alleged flea market discovery under the anonymous name "Renoir Girl" until records surfaced showing the painting had been stolen in 1951 from the Baltimore museum. The revelation prompted the FBI to seize the Renoir from the auction house and ask the federal court to determine ownership.

The BMA argued that, regardless of whether Fuqua found the Renoir at a flea market, no one can have legal title to stolen artwork.

Brinkema agreed in her ruling, granting summary judgment in favor of the BMA. She said the museum had overwhelming evidence that the painting had been stolen in November 1951 and that Fuqua offered not a "scintilla" of proof to the contrary.

Brinkema's decision cancels a trial that had been scheduled for next week and wipes out what could have been a useful windfall for Fuqua, who in 2009 filed for bankruptcy, citing debts of more than $400,000.

Fuqua did not show up at the hearing Friday. Reached by phone for a reaction, Fuqua seemed confused. "Reaction to what?" she asked. "I don't even know what the judge's ruling was."

Told the judge had ruled against her, Fuqua said: "Darn." Then, she added: "Well, I guess I gotta wait for my lawyer to call me." Asked if she was disappointed, she said, "Of course."

Many of Fuqua's family acquaintances have cast doubt on her flea market story, telling The Washington Post that they remember seeing the Renoir in the 1980s and 1990s at the Fairfax County home of her mother, Marcia Fouquet, who attended art college in Baltimore at the time of the painting's theft in 1951. (The mother passed away in September at the age of 85.)

Her attorney, T. Wayne Biggs, who tried persuading the judge that the museum's evidence that the painting was stolen was not properly authenticated, declined to comment after the hearing.

Marla Diaz, the BMA's attorney, said that she was "delighted" by the judge's ruling and that the museum has plans to display the piece.

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that began in the early 1920s, and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. The aim was to "resolve the previously contradictory conditions of dream and reality." Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created strange creatures from everyday objects and developed painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself.
Surrealist works feature the element of surprise, unexpected juxtapositions and non sequitur; however, many Surrealist artists and writers regard their work as an expression of the philosophical movement first and foremost, with the works being an artifact. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement.
Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I and the most important center of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe, eventually affecting the visual arts, literature, film, and music of many countries and languages, as well as political thought and practice, philosophy, and social theory.

Max Ernst, The Elephant Celebes (1921), Tate, London

Guggenheim Dali Liquid Desires

Birth of Liquid Desires (La Naissance des désirs liquides), 1931–32. Oil and collage on canvas, 37 7/8 × 44 1/4 inches (96.1 × 112.3 cm). The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 76.2553.100 © 2013 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

By the time Salvador Dalí joined the Surrealist group in 1929, he had formulated his “paranoid-critical” approach to art, which consisted in conveying his deepest psychological conflicts to the viewer in the hopes of eliciting an empathetic response. He embodied this theoretical approach in a fastidiously detailed painting style. One of his hallucinatory obsessions was the legend of William Tell, which represented for him the archetypal theme of paternal assault.¹ The subject occurs frequently in his paintings from 1929, when he entered into a liaison with Gala Eluard, his future wife, against his father’s wishes. Dalí felt an acute sense of rejection during the early 1930s because of his father’s attitude toward him.

Here father, son, and perhaps mother seem to be fused in the grotesque dream-image of the hermaphroditic creature at center. William Tell’s apple is replaced by a loaf of bread, with attendant castration symbolism. (Elsewhere Dalí uses a lamb chop to suggest his father’s cannibalistic impulses.) Out of the bread arises a lugubrious cloud vision inspired by the imagery of Arnold Böcklin. In one of the recesses of this cloud is an enigmatic inscription in French: “Consigne: gâcher l’ardoise totale?”

Reference to the remote past seems to be made in the two forlorn figures shown in the distant left background, which may convey Dalí’s memory of the fond communion of father and child. The infinite expanse of landscape recalls Yves Tanguy’s work of the 1920s. The biomorphic structure dominating the composition suggests at once a violin, the weathered rock formations of Port Lligat on the eastern coast of Spain, the architecture of the Catalan visionary Antoni Gaudí, the sculpture of Jean Arp, a prehistoric monster, and an artist’s palette. The form has an antecedent in Dalí’s own work in the gigantic vision of his mother in The Enigma of Desire of 1929. The repressed, guilty desire of the central figure is indicated by its attitude of both protestation and arousal toward the forbidden flower-headed woman (presumably Gala). The shadow darkening the scene is cast by an object outside the picture and may represent the father’s threatening presence, or a more general prescience of doom, the advance of age, or the extinction of life.

Lucy Flint

-->

Downtown Los Angeles supports local artists

Over the past 20 years, Downtown Los Angeles has been transformed from a burned out ghetto in many cases, to a thriving upscale artists community with new apartments, lofts and artists studios. Quite a few buildings that used to be occupied by wayward pigeons and rodents, are now ultra clean modern tech type of dwellings and studios with for rent signs letting temporary or permanent resident seekers know they are available. In addition to artists who use paints and a canvas, the film and video industries are milling around the area using various properties as locations for tv and film/music video shoots. One example of a successful artist who is experiencing art sales via galleries and online is the Mixed Media artist Clara Berta who creates large size works for commercial and residential interiors.

Artists Website

Artists Blog

While there are many artists who create landscapes and portraits, the interesting thing about mixed media is that it scares many artists as they are not sure where to start. The medium allows the artist to express themselves in a free manner and hold nothing back. Clara is exactly that as she lets go and creates impressive works that are pure feeling and passion. Use the links above to visit her site and blog and remember to support your local artists! :)


-->

New Record Set at Art Auction Francis Bacon

A cameraman films Francis Bacon's 'Three Studies of Lucien Freud' on display at Christie's on October 14, 2013 in London, England. (Photo by Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images) | Peter Macdiarmid via Getty Images.

NEW YORK (AP) — A 1969 painting by Francis Bacon set a world record for most expensive artwork ever sold at auction.

"Three Studies of Lucian Freud" was purchased for $142,405,000 at Christie's postwar and contemporary art sale on Tuesday night. The triptych depicts Bacon's artist friend.

The work sold after "6 minutes of fierce bidding in the room and on the phone," Christie's said in a statement. The price includes the buyer's premium. Christie's did not say who bought the painting.