The Precious Reality of Woke Socialism: DIE

"We acknowledge that we are all living off the taken ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. We acknowledge the extraction of brilliance, energy and life for labor forced upon people of African descent for more than 400 years. We celebrate the resilience and strength that all Indigenous people and descendants of Africa have shown in this country and worldwide."                        "We carry our ancestors in us, and we are continually called to be better as we lead this work…. We envision a nation in which…all physicians are equipped with the consciousness, tools and resources to confront inequities and dismantle white supremacy, racism, and other forms of exclusion…."                                       American Medical Association

"[The AMA’s proposed strategic plan] is rooted not in science and the medical ethics of the Hippocratic Oath but in a host of Marxist ideologies that devalue the lives of our most vulnerable patients and seek to undermine the nuclear family which is the single most critical institution to child well-being."

Dr. Michelle Cretella, executive director, American College of Pediatricians

Gender equity in medicine ... AAMC

It's simply yet another manifestation of the mammoth sway in society of its latest zeitgeist, an 'awakening' of conscience so burdened with guilt that the sins of the fathers have been visited upon their sons, their daughters, their grandsons, their granddaughters, their great-grandsons and great-granddaughters burdening all of society with collective guilt and responsibility for what humanity has embarked upon since time immemorial; taking advantage of others to advance one's own well-being.

 

The social-cultural miasma of collective guilt handed down through the generations, finding all those who have moved forward in life at the ostensible and frequently real manipulation and oppression of others who themselves have learned to bask in their victimhood, found guilty as charged. If anyone is an art lover, in Canada the National Art Gallery housing priceless art collections to be admired and enjoyed, now is meant to be viewed through the lens of a JEDI&A lens (Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Accountability). Do not, under any circumstances, view art henceforth for its own authentic qualities in the search for aesthetic beauty and originality.

 

AAMC

According to the American Medical Association, doctors must now inform their patients with a preamble, elocuting in the instance of patients of Native American background, that they were historically "dispossessed by the government of their land and culture". As for people living in straitened economic circumstances presenting with illnesses, they too are to be addressed with the explicating admission that "people underpaid and forced into poverty as a result of banking policies, real estate developers gentrifying neighbourhoods, and corporations weakening the power of labour movements among others, have the highest level of coronary artery disease".

 

In the time-consuming process of earnestly convincing patients that the medical profession is on their side in indignant fury over the rough ride that life has given them thanks to the powerful selfishness of the entitled class and the colour-white tyrants, doctors might very well lose track of their obligation within the medical profession of addressing the patient's symptoms to find a medical diagnosis, in their brain-straining efforts at placing themselves at the service of diversity, inclusion and equity (DIE). In the process helping their patients to do just that.

 

University campuses give full throttle to 'woke' culture. Academia has embraced its politics, encouraging students and staff alike to take up the cause of underdogs everywhere, castigate the self-perceived vision of innocence, replacing it with communal guilt and cast those entities named as guilty-as-imagined to be beyond the pale, to be exorcised from polite society. The formidable icons of Western heroism, the principals behind the most meaningful measures of civilization's advance are now to be viewed as reprehensible white saviors who sacrificed the lives and cultures and heritage of indigenous peoples for white gain. 

Their crimes against society may be centuries old, but the current white-privileged are their spawn and as guilty of oppression and discrimination as their forbears, irrespective of their remedial actions and conscientious acts of present-day consciousness. The woke politicization of science, academia and government has soared in an evolutionary cultural volcanic eruption of caustic blame melting the rock-solid core of democratic civilization as we were fond of knowing it. 

In Canada, research scientists working on cutting-edge technological advances will be turned down for government funding research grants should their completed funding applications under assessment reek of insufficient dedication to equity, diversity and inclusion considerations. Consideration of criteria such as qualifications and skills and work ethic and experience are now irrelevant when faced off against minority rights and entitlements to equality treatment in all spheres of influence; qualifications recognized as secondary skills, shields behind which exclusion appallingly skulks.

In Canada recently, a Lakehead University professor was granted $1.2 million for her research studying the efficacy of Indigenous healing in the prevention of cancer. She proposed that the medical, scientific community should focus on matters from a different perspective altogether: "Think of cancer as a symptom of colonialism". Upon which a governing party Member of Parliament -- who before re-assignment to the Indigenous Services ministry was the Minister of Health -- congratulated the Lakehead professor and wrote: "I look forward to hearing and learning from  your work and findings".

 

 

Bottoms Up!

"With modern technology, some of the art of distilling has been lost. So to go back and see where it all came from was eye-opening."
"I thought, '[Plague water, how could that possibly taste good?' But in fact it tastes like the base for chartreuse."
"Some combinations of botanicals create surprising results -- they just make each other pop, in a way we didn't expect."
Jon Kreidler, founder, Tattersall Distilling, Minneapolis

"Herbs were the only medicine you had [in the Medieval era]. But plants are ephemeral and seasonal, so you'd put them in alcohol to have something shelf-stable."
"[As distilling became an industrial enterprise], a lot of amazing spirits went by the wayside."
Amy Stewart, author The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks

"As I was touring the space, people would ask me what type of alcohol they would have consumed at these parties."
"We thought it would be fun to not just talk about alcohol in the period rooms, but to offer a taste as well."
"We realized we needed to contact real professionals [to achieve that practical end]."
Nicole LaBouff, curator, Minneapolis Institute of Art

Gallery: Rare books and manuscripts from the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine at the U of M feature historic food and drink recipes.   Carlos Gonzalez – Star Tribune

So that's how it began; public curiosity twigging a curator's interest in collaborating with a local brewery to produce beverages that would reflect those available during a much, much earlier era as medicinals that later morphed into sociable party spirits. The collaboration between the University of Minnesota and the Minneapolis Institute of Art and Tattersall Distilling has brought an entirely new focus on potable alcoholic beverages.

It's a serendipitous twinning that has produced award-winning gins, bitters and liqueurs. Next up: plague water.

What's plague water? A tonic to ward off diseases, produced by apothecaries of the Medieval era; a combination of angelica root, gentian and other herbs. That alcoholic concoction has now been revived by Tattersall, in the spirit of re-discovery, enterprise and art. The craft distilling industry is expanding enormously, and as it does, it intersects with an alert and fascinated group of historians focused on the role of alcohol in everyday life of the times.

Carlos Gonzalez – Star Tribune   Plague Party is a cocktail made with the historic spirits Plague Water and Aqua Mirabilis, pineapple juice, lime juice and honey sage syrup at Tattersall Distilling.

Scholars are alert to the distiller's efforts enabling them to acquire a better understanding of how and what people ate and drank in the distant past. For their part, distillers are re-discovering their own history. Tattersall has made good use of the large inventory of the Wagensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine, at the University of Minnesota where, among its 72,000 volumes -- some of which date back to 1430 -- are hundreds lingering on the curative properties of roots, weeds, seeds, metals and ... animal parts.

Rare books and manuscripts from the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine at the U of M feature handwritten food and drink recipes. Top Ð The Modern Art of Cookery Improved or Elegant, Cheap and Easy Methods of preparing moft of the Dishes in Vogue, Ann Shackleford, 1767. Middle Ð Book of Receipts, Ann Ward, c. 1724. Manuscript. Bottom Ð Art of Distillation.     Carlos Gonzalez – Star Tribune

The curative properties of these varied products of nature reflected the function of Medieval medicine in mixing and matching the ingredients into a concoction for optimum efficacy. When the ingredients were mixed with alcohol as a preservative, the resulting spirits led to combining sugar into the mix to create cocktails, leading to the industrial production of alcoholic beverages by distillers. In perusing the ancient recipes, a few dozen were chosen for re-creation.

Milk punch for example, currently a popular drink among bartenders, is made through adding citric acid to milk to have it curdle, them skimming off the solids so all that is left appears a yellowish, slightly sweet liquid mixed with alcohol. Plague water's renaissance saw some creative substitutions since some ingredients were simply unavailable or not to be used because they were discovered to be toxic. Plague water has a pleasant, earthy, herb-infused flavour.

Three cocktails made with historic spirits at Tattersall Distilling are Plague Party, Saffron Bitters Tonic and Clear Skies Ahead.   Carlos Gonzalez – Star Tribune

Master Craftsman Extraordinaire

"I take my time. I take a long time. There is no more room in my house [full of paintings on the walls]."
"My replica is exactly the same in every little tiny detail. At the end, I'm happy. I search always the ways to make it better."
"I take great joy in them [the art work he produces]."
"I'm trying to make an exact same copy in the condition it used to be when the artist just finished the painting. I'm not only replicating, I'm restoring too."
"I needed to express myself."
Cosimo Geracitano, Coquitlam, British Columbia

Cosimo Geracitano, 71, paints replicas of masterpiece art in his Coquitlam, B.C., home. (cosimogeracitano.com)

He is retired, now 71, once skilled at repairing electrical motors and generators which is what he did for a living. But when he was a young boy, living in the village of Bivongi in Reggio Calabria, Italy, a place where his father still lives, art fascinated him. His fascination with painting compelled him as a boy to paint. The first painting he completed was that of a ship. He had dreamed of such a ship which would take him far away from the village.

And eventually a ship did just that, bringing him far from Italy, and over the seas to begin the rest of his life in Canada. His was not a privileged background where he might envision attending a school of art. Which never stopped him from painting for pleasure until he reached 40 years of age. After which his life was consumed with work and family and the painting passion was laid away. But he returned to painting once he reached his 60s.

Cosimo Geracitano is surrounded by his replica paintings of masterpieces at his home in Coquitlam, B.C. Mark Yuen / Postmedia

He is now the proud possessor of some of the world's great paintings, the original work of the world's greatest baroque and renaissance artists. Paintings sublime and incandescent with the beauty of their conception and the perfection of their execution. Paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Vermeer, Raphael, Vincent van Gogh, Sandro Botticelli, Canaletto, Michelangelo.  An incomparable selection and a wonderful collection, all in the possession of a modest, retired middle-class gentleman.

Geracitano's home is covered in his replicas. (cosimogeracitano.com)

And these paintings caress the walls of an ordinary house made extraordinary by their presence. There are, in this house 45 paintings, 18 of which are located in the living room, others dispersed throughout the house, but each of which is world-renowned and each encapsulating the most exalted of authors, subjects and visual splendours.

Mr. Geracitano has them in his private possession, representing his very own collection simply because of his own natural talent. His was not the original creative vision, the inspiration, the artistic voice and precise hand that created each of these treasures. But this self-taught craftsman acquired by his very own effort and affinity the technical ability to reproduce each of them, and in so doing lives surrounded by some of the most sublime artistic treasures the world has ever known.

Cosimo Geracitano admiring his replica painting of Primavera by Sandro Botticelli at his home in Coquitlam, B.C. Mark Yuen / Postmedia

From a scintillating reproduction of the Sistine Chapel ceiling of God creating Adam, courtesy of Michelangelo and replicated on the ceiling of his living room, to the Salvator Mundi painted by Leonardo, to a John Constable, spanning the years from the 14th century to the 19th, he has assembled them all. He has himself visited some of the museums where these masterpieces hang and where staff allowed him to sit in contemplation before them, even permitting him on occasion to take his own photographs of them.

He is constant to the mediums used in the execution of the originals, whether painted on canvas, wood or copper, mixing his own colours from the primaries of red, yellow, blue adding white. A grid assists him in laying out the image to be copied. For, he needs to express himself, and he is doing just that in his most current work, a Claude Monet and A Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, giving himself six months for the completion of each.

Cosimo Geracitano, a replica painter is working on recreating the Allegory of the Planets and Continents by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, at his home in Coquitlam, B.C. Mark Yuen / Postmedia

Art Transcending Political Correctness

"Whether this was done out of ignorance or not [an official apology from the university is due] that this piece was approved for display."
"As a Muslim community, we feel greatly offended, concerned and disappointed."
"This has already provoked Muslims and has caused very upsetting reactions, and several students' responses and behaviour [sic] towards this is extremely alarming and is starting to make some students feel unsafe at OCAD."
"This is serious and we do not take it lightly."
Muslim Student Association, Ontario College of Art and Design University

The controversial piece. Twitter

"Why does someone need to disrespect a whole religion and the way of life of billions of people?"
"...The intent does not change the blatant disrespect to our Islamic faith and the objects, places and symbols we hold dear to our heart."
"Picking up customers in my taxi that swear I hate them and want to kill them simply because I am Muslim or having my mother or my sisters followed and abused for wearing the hijab makes me live a certain anxious and protective lifestyle."
OCAD student, part-time taxi driver

"We understood she was speaking from within her own cultural practices and experiences."
"We didn't feel we could put up the work without any information. We've been working with her [the artist] the last couple of days. We've been in discussion."
"So for her, no name and no statement means the work has to come down. [Despite the controversy raging around the work] that doesn't mean we're shutting the dialogue down. The university supports the right to artistic expression."
Natalie Majaba Waldburger, show co-curator, OCAD professor

"We respect the Muslim Student Association has their opinions, and this is an important dialogue around this piece."
"It's a matter of looking at both sides."
Christine Crosbie, OCAD media and communications manager

The Ontario College of Art and Design University in downtown Toronto.Peter J. Thompson/National Post/File

The controversy at the Ontario College of Art and Design University in downtown Toronto emerged as a result of a Muslim art student's statement piece to be hung at the campus for a special show. The piece was untitled and there was no attribution revealing the name of the artist. As for the art piece itself it was a green Islamic prayer mat. Rather different than most such mats in that etched upon the mat was the black outline of a nude woman, recumbent.

It hung among the other exhibits until a complaint was received by the college, which then removed the prayer mat and in its place hung a notice from the curators and show jurors stating: "the intent of the work that was previously hanging in this space" was to be clarified, the decision made to  "remove it temporarily ... until a statement from the artist can accompany it."

 Reference was made to "the concerns of a number of OCAD University student groups", and concluding with a rather delicate apology should concern have been caused either by the artwork's removal or its inclusion prior to removal in case either "has caused anyone harm." And since the complaint emanated from the ever-watchful eyes of Muslims demanding its immediate removal, and an investigation launched, a bit of panic ensued.

Affront to an Islamophobia-sensitive-prone minority; what a ghastly turn of events!

Yet the controversial piece fit right in with the spirit of the show titled Festival of the Body. The artist originally allowed her name to be attached to the piece, reconsidered, and then had it removed. Lest one wonder why an artist would decide to detach herself from a piece she designed with a purpose for a special event expressing her belief both in her religion and her art, consider the danger she would be placing herself in through connection with a piece of art that enraged her religious peers.

At the same time the university administration is also sensitive to the issue of primary importance in the west known as freedom of speech.

As a fascinating corollary to this incident the school displays a piece of art titled Immersion (Piss Christ), a 1987 photograph by American photographer Andres Serrano. This piece shows a plastic crucifix submerged in a tank of the artist's urine. Christians have denounced, vandalized or threatened harm to the photographer every time the photo has been exhibited over the last three decades.

"We’ve seen the same impulse for self-censorship in the West before … Given the seriousness of the violence, such self-censorship is understandable; it’s also a step backward at a time when we need to reassert the importance of free expression by artists, activists, journalists and editors alike."
Andres Serrano, art photographer

As for the controversial prayer mat which has engendered so much attention, ensuring that the OCAD University special show was a resounding success judged by reaction and presumably attendance, the artist did in the end, give context to her piece, which was re-hung, name still withheld, along with her statement: "If the body was created halal (permissible) when did we make it haram (forbidden)?"

Reparations, Reputation, Restitution

"In the aftermath of World War II, the human costs had been colossal, art wasn't really a priority."
"It's taken this time, now with various anniversaries -- and the last survivors that are of prewar years are leaving us, aren't they?"
Simon Curtis, director, Woman in Gold

Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold Left, a 1907 portrait by Klimt, is the center of this exhibition at the Neue Galerie and is also the focus of a movie that opened this week. Right, Adele Bloch-Bauer, the subject of the painting, around 1910. Credit 2015 Neue Galerie New York

"These artworks are the last great prisoners of war, aren't they?"
Ronald Lauder, billionaire cosmetics heir

During the dreadful years when Austrian-born Adolf Hitler turned Germany and the Axis countries that joined him into a mechanized, seemingly-unstoppable war juggernaut, his Third Reich busied itself with plans to destroy the lives of all the European Jews they painstakingly gathered together in death camps.

Even as the clouds of death and destruction began to gather over Europe, however, the property of Jews was confiscated with the state taking possession, even while Jews were being completely disenfranchised, terrorized, identified with Yellow stars, fired from all professions and gathered into ghettoes.

While some property has been returned to rightful owners, and the government of Germany has made efforts to recompense Jews who survived the Holocaust, time cannot be turned back to restore life to six million Jewish souls who perished after suffering dreadful privation and tortuous humiliation.

 Restitution of property, of notable works of art were the last thing on the minds of those who found the means by which they could escape death. Now, almost seventy years after the end of World War II, it is estimated that up to 100,000 art works remain unaccounted for.

One wealthy Austrian family headed by Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, an industrialist, had commissioned Gustaf Klimt to paint a portrait of his wife Adele, known for hosting salons of avant-garde artists and intellectuals in their palatial home. Gustaf Klimt, over the years had painted a few portraits of Adele Altmann. Those paintings hung in the Bloch-Bauer home.

Adele willed her portraits to the Belvedere Museum in Vienna.

She died in 1923 of meningitis, and her husband hung all of the Klimit artwork in her bedroom. Until, in 1938 the paintings and all of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer's possessions and his business interests were confiscated by the Nazis.

Most of the Bloch-Bauer family escaped Europe, finding refuge in North America. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer travelled to Switzerland where he lived until his death in 1946.

The painting that had originally been titled Adele Bloch-Bauer I, was re-titled Lady in Gold by the Germans who were proud to display it in an exhibition during the war. With the name of its Jewish model Aryanized, the painting moved from the ranks of 'corrupt' art to artistic masterpiece.

All subsequent attempts by the surviving Bloch-Bauer family, descendants of Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, to reclaim the family property were rebuffed.

The Austrian government pointed out that Adele Bloch-Bauer had willed the paintings to their regal Belvedere Museum and they represented the proudest art possessions of the country. The country considered the painting, Adele Bloch-Bauer I, "Austria's Mona Lisa", one of the museum's most prized possessions.

And then an investigative  journalist, Hubertus Czernin -- whose reputation had been made when he was involved in revelations that former United Nations chief Kurt Waldheim, who later became Austrian president, had a Nazi past -- discovered documents suggesting that Adele Bloch-Bauer's will hadn't been legally binding.

At that juncture, one of Adele Bloch-Bauer's descendants, Maria Altmann, now deceased, sought the aid of a young lawyer whose grandfather was the composer Arnold Schoenberg who had been an acquaintance of her aunt's. Randol Schoenberg engaged in filing a claim with an Austrian art-restitution panel on behalf of the family, which was spurned.

He then took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, winning the right to sue the Austrian government for the return of the five Bloch-Bauer family paintings by Gustaf Klimt they possessed. An Austrian arbitrator ruled in January 2006 that the paintings be returned to the family, and the five paintings then left Europe, much to Austria's dismay, for North America.

Four of the paintings were sold at auction and are now in private collections. One of the paintings can still be viewed by the public. The most celebrated of the five paintings was sold to Ronald Lauder for a whopping $135-million. That painting hangs now in the Neue Galerie on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. This is a gallery gifted to New York by Mr. Lauder as a display venue of art and design of early 20th Century Austria and Germany.

There is a certain satisfaction that at least one of those luminous paintings has a public face. Perhaps all of the paintings deserve to be displayed in a publicly-accessed gallery. Austria's loss is America's gain, and this is where the satisfaction lies; that a country allied with Germany whose fuhrer was Austrian, both of which destroyed European Jewry, is denied the privilege of enjoying art immortalizing a Jewish woman.

Henry Goodman and Tatiana Maslany with a copy of Klimt’s “Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I.” Credit Robert Viglasky/The Weinstein Company

And now, moviegoers can see the drama played out on screen in the film production of The Woman in Gold, the film that tells the drama of the family's efforts to have Austria remit to them property illegally and criminally confiscated by Nazi Germany, and which Austria 'inherited' after the war ended, proudly displaying the five Klimt paintings for sixty years.

The Saleability of Cutesy Genius (For a Good Cause)

"She doesn't have to do it. We always ask her: 'Do you want to paint today?' and if she says yes, we'll set it up."
"The only thing is that we try to maintain the focus. She wants all the colours out all the time, so if she says after two minutes, 'I'm done', we try to encourage her."
Daryl Swart, music producer

"Some of it ['art' produced by a 4-year-old] is interesting. I would be remiss if I said we have a genius here. Sometimes you put paint down. Sometimes it happens to be interesting."
"We don't know whether it's good art. It has to address a particular knowledge base."
"I'm not sure I'm right there. Sometimes things just feel right."
Gerald Hushlak, professor of painting, University of Calgary

"There is something pure about a child who is not thinking too hard, and can just feel it rather than thinking about it."
"At the same time, we started looking at her paintings and we were seeing that they were turning out really nice."
Kristy-Anne Swart, photographer

Jen Gerson/National Post    Four-year-old Cosette Swart has raised almost $4,000 for World Vision by selling 40 of her abstract paintings.

"Looking at the work, I think there are things that are important to point out that are valid. The work is imbued with a sense of freedom, it represents a sense of innocence. It looks very fresh, and it's certainly playful. That's something most people actually look for in their life."
"Children are really adept at presenting an unbridled creativity, sometimes."
Dick Averns, instructor, Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary

Now that really is taking artistic license. It's similar to swooning over the non-representational 'art' work of a 'genius' like Mark Rothko and calling it authentic artistic vision, when what it actually  represents is the ability of those who profess to know artistic genius when they see it, persuading skeptics that it is art. When someone like Jackson Pollock producing sheer unadulterated crap and raking in millions for the effort, gulling people lacking their own aesthetic appreciation of art that what they're viewing is the genuine thing.

But then, a lot of people think that abstract art is wonderful because they've been told by art experts that it is. On the other hand, perhaps the colours and their juxtaposition on a canvass appeal to the colour sense and personal style of people who feel that spending outrageous sums of money for work that is heralded as fresh and new and groundbreaking, entering a wonderful new era of artistic expression reflects well on their taste, their values, if not their smug belief that they've scored really well on acquiring a piece of investment junk.

In Calgary there is a little girl of four, Cosette Swart, whose parents are absorbed in the belief that their child is an artistic prodigy. Cosette's mother Kristy-Anne speaks of her child's 'latent genius' and the objective quality of modern art. Subjectively the question is, is it art? The artistic geniuses of antiquity to the modern era did produce fabulous works of art. But once abstract imagery began to influence the art world, art itself began to degenerate when modernists painted splotches of colour with no discernible form or intent.

Jen Gerson / National Post  Four-year-old Cosette Swart pictured here in her art studio, also known as 

her family's Calgary kitchen, with mother Kristy-Anne Swart.

The family of this child has set up a website, and there they feature the paintings that this little girl produces. They are, needless to say, for sale. The proceeds of which are to benefit charity. The family says that their precocious little girl's art has intrigued people to the extent that 60 of her paintings have found homes at prices between $15 and $275 each. Little Cosette has taken to spreading paint on her canvas with the use of a plastic fork. Sounds about average for a child her age, experimenting with colour and imagery.

Already, even at age four Cosette is a veteran for her interest in art began at age three when the plight of disadvantage children in Africa moved her to declare she had a wish to help the "poor people". Now that is an insight that one would be hard put to relate to the introspective charitable impulse of a three-year-old. Certainly not without some adult prompting. And nor is Cosette the first very young child whose dabbling in art has earned her recognition by the media, resulting in an avid interest by prospective art aficionados.

It's just that most people who have an instinctive reaction to and love for what they consider to be authentic and creatively beautiful art -- recognizably representational art -- might wonder if there wasn't a bit of parental pride gone amok here. Transferring personal aspirations and pride to offspring. Not that this alone wholly represents what is occurring here in hailing a new artistic genius, since the experts in artistic expression themselves have a lot to answer for.

And here's one answer by Erin O'Connor, managing director of the Contemporary Calgary gallery who noted "the honest art of a four-year-old has a super-high feel-good factor". Given a modest financial investment, buyers take possession of a "fresh unique piece of contemporary art that has a great story behind it". And she said it without the whisper of a blush.

But it does go a long way to explaining why it is that some skeptics on seeing a hugely expensive acquisition by a national gallery of art scoff that their child could produce something just as good.

Barnett Newman work, Voice of Fire. National Gallery of Canada

Bewitched

"Something happened between me and the child. It was like a mirror."
"I was both its guardian and its hostage."
"I had a smile on my face like I never had before. When I got home, there was a moment of euphoria. I let out a big shout. I took photos. I felt like a superman."
"I may sound like a fool, but I would speak to it."
Patrick Vialaneix, Paris, France

"When he walked into my office he had a suitcase with him, ready to be sent to jail.
"I had to say to him, 'Hold on, the statute of limitations may have come into play'. He hadn't even heard of that concept."
Franck Dupouy, lawyer for Patrick Vialaneix

It's not all that difficult to understand a connection made by an impressionable child with a painting whose subject entrances him, making a lasting memory for him of a young boy in period costume, holding a bubble in his hand, transcendentally haunting him into his adult years, to recall the painting of the boy, a boy with a physical resemblance to his own image in a mirror. He might have imagined himself having lived before, and having been painted by a master.

That young boy that could have been himself in an earlier incarnation hundreds of years ago, could have been the son of one of the most famous artists of all time. Rembrandt van Rijn's painting The Night Watch is considered to be one of the most famous artworks of all time. Painted in 1641-41, hanging in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Rembrandt's country of origin, it is beyond price, unique and treasured. If it were to disappear, it would represent a calamity of immense proportions.

On the other hand, the master's paintings, if and when any come on the market, go for tremendous sums. They are costly acquisitions for any museum, public art gallery or private collector. The young boy who grew into an adult remained fascinated with his memory of having seen Child with a Soap Bubble when he saw it first at age 13 at the time that his mother took him to the museum where it was being exhibited.

He would travel often as he grow up, from his home in nearby St-Raphael to see the painting, gazing at it, in the full melancholy of its presence. Why he had never sought a photograph of the painting, or even a reproduction is inexplicable; to do so might have satisfied his yearning to possess it. Instead when he was 28, working as an alarm systems technician he took advantage of studying the Draguignan museum's security system.

On a Bastille Day holiday he hid in a museum closet awaiting the museum's evacuation of staff. He was aware that the movement detector would give him a mere two seconds to cross the room where the painting hung. Leaping across the dark room, feeling his way along the walls, he reached the painting and the second he unhooked it from the wall the alarm went off. He ran out of the building, placed the Rembrandt in a garbage bag and drove home with the painting on the back seat of his car.

Handout   One of the "selfie" Polaroid pictures Patrick Vialaneix took with the stolen Rembrandt.

 

Then he exulted in his possession of the treasured 17th-Century Dutch masterpiece. He took a self-portrait of himself standing before the painting. Then he carefully wrapped the painting and hid it under his bed. Soon afterward he married. His possession of the legendary painting gave him great concern for its physical stability, worried about conserving it, even while he was troubled and in great turmoil over its possession.

He moved constantly hoping to find conditions not too dry not too damp, not susceptible to fire to protect and conserve the painting in optimum condition. That was, after all, incumbent upon him as the possessor of a unique and rare -- and for him, psychologically troubling - artwork of amazing provenance. He told no one, keeping the painting well hidden from scrutiny, taking it out to survey it only when he was alone in the house.

He convinced his wife the painting represented a portrait of his dead father as a child. A year ago, becoming seriously ill, he determined to rid himself of the painting. Not return it to the museum where he had taken it from, however, though a friend placed him in touch with an insurance agent who claimed he could aid him in returning he painting to the museum when he could share a possible reward.

Eventually Mr. Vialaneix accepted a cheque cut for $59,000, transferring Child with Soap Bubble to an intermediary, free at last from the responsibility of its presence. Soon afterward press reports wrote of two men arrested attempting to sell the painting. He finally told his wife the truth. Then he saw a lawyer. He took the uncashed cheque to a police station, spoke to the police for hours to convince them he was telling the truth.

He felt empty inside when he surrendered the painting: "I had lost something previous. I had also lost 15 years", he said of the length of time he had kept the painting. If convicted as a suspect who may have conspired to sell a stolen work of art, he will face a maximum jail sentence of ten years. It may help him that the painting is considered by art experts not to be a Rembrandt, after all.

Defying BDS Calls, Promoter Shuki Weiss Brings Big-Name Performers to Israel

March 6, 2014 8:01 am

Author:

Josh Hasten / JNS.org

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Madonna performs in Tel Aviv on May 31, 2012. Photo: MDNA.

JNS.org – While Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters has in recent years acted as a de facto frontman for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, urging fellow artists against performing in Israel, Shuki Weiss Promotion and Production Ltd. for nearly 35 years has brought the biggest names in entertainment to the Jewish state for historic live shows.

Musical guests attracted to Israel by the company have included Metallica, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Radiohead, Madonna, David Bowie, and Eric Clapton. The trend continues this summer, with Neil Young, Soundgarden, and the Pixies all signed by Weiss to perform in Tel Aviv, and The Rolling Stones tentatively booked by Weiss but still unconfirmed.

“I’m not getting the message from the artists that they are feeling the pressure [from the BDS movement]. While that might have been true in the past, that’s not the case today,” Oren Arnon, the head promoter for Weiss’s company, tells JNS.org.

Weiss has also signed the international circus troupe Cirque du Soleil, which is bringing its “Quidam” performance to Tel Aviv this summer.

Promoting and producing live performances in Israel, in the dangerous and unstable neighborhood that is the Middle East, comes with significant financial risk, says Arnon. When the security situation becomes heated and artists decide to cancel their shows, “we lose millions [of dollars],” he says.

That was the case during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, when the popular British electronic music band Depeche Mode canceled their Israel show over concerns for their safety. (The band did make up for it by performing in Israel several years later.)

Over the past several years, some artists have canceled their planned Israel shows not due to security fears, but as a result of the pressure levied by members of the BDS movement. Yet Arnon says of what he calls the “many” artists who haven’t backed out, “We’ve had many positive experiences with conscientious and intelligent artists who choose to come and see for themselves rather than cave to the propaganda.”

If Weiss can confirm the band’s appearance, The Rolling Stones would be the biggest name to perform in Israel this summer. BDS groups have already taken to social media, calling on the Stones to boycott the Jewish state.

Whether or not she directly felt the BDS pressure, last year popular R&B singer Alicia Keys ignored the campaigns targeting her Israel performance and gave a concert in Tel Aviv that Arnon says was simply “incredible.”

Arnon admits that BDS “in many ways can be seen as nonviolent and legitimate,” but says art “is supposed to address issues that bother and disturb [people].”

“What BDS is saying is ‘just shut up—don’t use your art for good or for bad,’ which is something we [at Shuki Weiss Promotion and Production] have a hard time agreeing with,” Arnon says.

Arnon says Weiss’s company was behind the 2006 Israel concert by Roger Waters, a massive show was moved from its original venue to the Neve Shalom “Oasis of Peace” village, where Arabs and Jews live together. The vision was to play at a location symbolizing hope and peace between the two peoples. It was only after the show was announced that Waters was introduced to the BDS movement, according to Arnon. But Waters chose to play in Israel anyway, and after performing there decided to become one of the BDS movement’s biggest supporters based on his firsthand experience of the country.

“Whether you or I agree [with Waters’s decision to support BDS] doesn’t matter,” Arnon says. “I don’t think I am trying to put words in anyone’s mouth. I don’t think it’s legitimate to prevent people from educating themselves, and it’s also not legitimate to shove one specific set of beliefs down an audience’s throat. Everyone is entitled to obtain his or her own opinion, how they see fit.”

While Waters came away with one particular conclusion, many other artists who come to Israel see the country in a positive light, says Arnon. He cites various co-existence projects musicians are exposed to when they visit Israel, including work done by an organization called “Heartbeat,” which brings Jerusalem-area Jewish and Arab youths together to play music in order to “let go of the fear they might have of each other.”

“We’ve taken artists to see [Heartbeat’s work] together and given artists the opportunity to come and express their thoughts,” Arnon says. “Israel is a democracy and artists can go on stage and say what they want to say. That’s what the arts have been about the last few centuries.”

Arnon feels it would be best for both the Jewish and Arab public in Israel if artists would choose discussion over boycotts. While he says singers are entitled to boycott, he has a problem with those who say, “Don’t go there and play for your fans, and don’t engage with them.”

“Bottom line, come here and tour and see the facts,” Arnon says, conveying his message to potential artists considering performances in Israel. “Our success is having an artist tour, understand the difficulties, and understand that bad things happen here similar to anywhere else in the world. We encourage them to come instead of not showing up.”

Dropping a Han Dynasty Vase

"Although the museum can't speak directly to intentions, evidence suggests that this was a premeditated act. This destructive act is vandalism and disrespectful to another artist and his work, to Perez Art Museum Miami, and to our community."
Perez Art Museum Miami spokesperson

Chinese artist Ai Weiwei's ''Colored Vases'' are shown at the Perez Art Museum Miami, Florida in this December 3, 2013 photo.   Credit: Reuters/Zachary Fagenson

It can be said, in a sense, that there is a glut on the market for ordinary, albeit ancient earthenware pots from China, produced in huge numbers for the practical household purpose of holding grains, oils, whatever a homemaker of long ago times required to make use of a storage vessel. They can be had for a relatively modest cost for connoisseurs of such objects. Unlike their more glorified cousins, thrown and glazed by masters of the art, from the same period, whose more rare works command extremely high prices for they are rare gems of antiquity.

A display was mounted just recently by the Perez Art Museum in Miami. The display consisting of some art works by one of China's most famous living artists who is also an activist protesting his country's stringent communist authoritarianism. He is feted in the West as much for his art as he is for his representation as a 'prisoner of conscience' in the Peoples Republic of China.

The presentation of his artwork in Miami consisted of a triptych, three images of the artist engaged in theatre art, demonstrating how disposable precious art objects of the past, highly regarded for their creative grace and aesthetic beauty are, and perhaps the message that his own art of here and today is equally priceless as he is regarded as a master.

Ai Wei Wei, the celebrated Chinese artist is a compelling figure of artistry and resistance against oppression and corruption, a symbol beloved of the West. Arrayed on a table before the three photographs were a sampling of his own artwork, ancient vases of doubted value, but transformed into extremely valuable pieces of art because Ai Wei Wei took those clay vases and 'painted' them, giving them his priceless imprimatur.

The first frame of the three photographs show the artist holding a vase, the second shows him deliberately freeing it from his grasp and the final frame is of the vase smashing to smithereens on a hard surface, before his feet. The performance is no doubt considered a masterpiece of theatre art. A powerful message of breath-taking arrogance.

Destroyed: Maximo Caminero is seen holding up the $1 million vase

A Miami artist was so inspired by the actions and the fame of the Chinese artist that he entered the Perez Art Museum, approached the Ai Wei Wei installation and selected one of the artist's vases. And he then proceeded to imitate precisely what the Chinese artist had done with that priceless vase he smashed to make an enduring statement. Maximi Caminero was resolved to express his own enduring statement.

His dismay that the artists of Miami are overlooked in favour of giving exposure to a foreign artist who really doesn't need a leg up with his art to add to his fame.

Mr. Caminero, having lifted one of the "Coloured Vases" in the display was asked by a Museum guard to replace the vase. In response, Mr. Caminero emulated the artist whose work he held by smashing the piece on the ground, a piece purportedly valued at $1-million. Which certainly lent weight to his statement.

Mr. Caminero stated afterward that he deliberately destroyed the vase "for all the local artists in Miami that have never been shown in museums here". A laudable goal to some, a despicable act of art-pillage to others.

He stated further that he was protesting Miami's museums and galleries that "have spent so many millions now on international artists", giving scant attention to local talent. "It's the same political situation over and over again. I've been here for 30 years and it's always the same" he said. Surely, if Ai Wei Wei could label his act of desecration "Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn", to make an artistic statement, another artist could feel entitled to do the same to Ai Wei Wei's art...?

It was an act of pure iconoclasm, the purpose of the original act, an expression of new ideas and values challenging the old.

Mr. Ai had engaged himself usefully in investigating the shoddy construction of schools that contributed to the deaths of countless Chinese schoolchildren when their classrooms collapsed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, and for that he deserved applause and admiration. He became a goad in the side of Beijing, perhaps enough of one to ensure that future such events would not occur, that corruption in design and building materials will be halted, as a result of his activism.

When Mr. Ai was informed of Mr. Caminero's act of defiance and blame of neglect on the part of Miami's art cognoscenti by smashing one of his 'priceless' vases, just as Mr. Ai had smashed one of his country's priceless heirlooms to make a point, he was not very pleased. "The argument does not support the act", he said.

"It doesn't sound right. His argument doesn't make much sense. If he really had a point, he should choose another way, because this will bring him trouble to destroy property that does not belong to him."

Depends ... on whose ox is being gored ... or ... whose vase is being destroyed.

 The Indomitable Human Spirit

"I only sat with her for an hour, an hour and a half -- we had a cup of tea together -- and at the end of that meeting, I realized that ... we should do it because she was so remarkable and her story was much bigger than just being a Holocaust story.
"I don't think of this film as a Holocaust film at all."
Malcolm Clarke, film Director

Mr. Clarke is a Montreal based director of documentaries. He is also the recipient of an Oscar, for one of his previous films that won the best documentary short category in 1989 for You Don't Have to Die. That film chronicled the life of a child with cancer who, while busy with his own life-and-death battle became an inspiration for other young children with the disease.

And Mr. Clarke has been nominated once again for an Oscar. This time for the inspiring documentary The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved my Life. This time his subject is an old, a very old woman. She is a Holocaust survivor, living in London. Her name is Alice Herz-Sommer, and she is 110 years of age. She is also a pianist, was once a concert pianist. And at the ripe old age of one hundred, ten years, she still plays piano.

Ms. Herz-Sommer has lived in London's Belsize Park since 1986, where she receives daily visits from her closest friends, her grandson Ariel Sommer and daughter-in-law Genevieve Sommer. (Photo : The Times/Richard Pohle) 

She is also bright-eyed and enthusiastic, and lives in her own tiny apartment. In the film she is described as the world's oldest living pianist. And just incidentally, the world's oldest Holocaust survivor. She says in the film that her optimism, a natural characteristic of her temperament, and her love of music has kept her alive as long as that incredible number of years, despite the dread adversity of her earlier experiences.

Skilled musicians were in demand in the death camps. Alice Herz-Sommer was interned with her young son at Theresienstadt, paired with the Auschwitz death camp. Jewish musicians were a special category in those camps, valued for their talents and exhorted by their Nazi jailers to provide entertainment for the camp inmates. They would also be on hand when new transports arrived, to greet them with the music they played.

A reassurance to new arrivals that all would be well, that this was meant to be a temporary passage, not an end to life. After all, if anything diabolical were to be planned, would there be exquisite music to greet and entertain them? Music was meant as an extension of life, if not for most inmates, then certainly for those talented Jews for whom music was as integral as breathing. As it was for Alice Herz-Sommer.

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BIRTHDAY GIRL: Alice Herz-Sommer pictured on her last birthday.

 

"Music saved my life and music saves me still", is one of her comments to be heard in the film. Music, she emphasizes, helped her to survive the darkest moments. "She says in the film there's beauty even in the bad things in life, you just have to know where to look for it", Frederic Bohbot, founder of Montreal's Bunbury Films, explained.

The Lady in Number 6, Malcolm Clarke says, represents above all, the indomitability of the human spirit.

Alice Herz-Sommer, the 'Lady in No 6' (photo credit: courtesy)

Beyond a Shadow of Doubt

"What do these people want from me? I'm just a very quiet person. All I wanted to do was live with my pictures."
"Now they are taking everything from me."
"There is nothing I have loved more in my life than my pictures."
"Saying goodbye to my pictures was the most painful of all."
Cornelius Gurlitt, Munich

This is a elderly man, a recluse by habit and inclination, incapable of forming normal emotional links with other human beings. His link to life has been the art collection that his father before him, Hildebrand Gurlitt, amassed before, during and after the Second World War. The elder Gurlitt was in fact employed on an art contract of sorts for the Third Reich, to trade 'degenerate'-designated art, art held to deviate from tradition reflecting the modernist school, which Adolf Hitler loved to hate.

It was a lucrative business, that. Though the modern art so detested by the modern world's most notorious would-be-but-failed artist, who turned instead to a campaign for Aryan world domination, could have been destroyed, practicality stepped in and whispered in the ear of the truculently odious man that money, a lot of it, could be realized to further his aspirations, with the sale of the despised art. And this is where Gurlitt senior came in.

He was himself a discriminating art collector, with an eye for art considered degenerate by the degenerate mind of the Fuhrer and he knew also, like the other three dealers granted the Nazi imprimatur for collecting-and-trading for the regime that desperate Jews hoping to fund their escape would surrender their treasure trove of art and other valuables for desperately steep discounts; what other choice had they than to relinquish what could be summarily requisitioned and mostly was?

That was then, when Hildebrand Gurlitt saw fit to align himself profitably with the reign of an implacable monster set out to destroy an entire ethnic-religious community initially by stealth and soon enough openly and viciously. A lover of art, he amassed for his own delectation his very own private collection. And on his death his only son inherited that collection. A son introverted by nature, finding gratification in his own love of art and rejection of human contact.

Mr. Gurlitt, the son, now 80, was content to live his anonymous life, fondling his treasures, admiring and valuing and treasuring them as his very own. These were 'lost' or unknown works by the great masters of traditional and modern art, among them Picasso, Chagall, Gauguin and countless others, to a total of 1,280 paintings of unbelievable value.

It was a mere happenstance that made his presence known to German authorities when customs officers questioned him and the funds he carried on his person returning to Germany from Belgium. Checking his identification on computer, they discovered no trace of a Cornelius Gurlitt, a German citizen living in Munich, and made further enquiries, finally acquiring a legal permission to inspect his apartment.

DPA/ Staatsanwaltschaft Augsburg

Max Liebermann's "Riders on the Beach," painted in 1901, is also part of the collection.

The discovery of those countless stacks of valuable works of art immediately drew attention to the potential that they might represent a treasury of wartime art theft, a thriving industry of the time, resulting in around a hundred-thousand works of art and antiquities missing, unaccounted for, and being searched out by the inheritors of those who had originally owned them.

The discovered paintings are held to likely have a tainted provenance; that is, many of them are doubtless represented by Jewish owners under duress to dispose of them, forced by circumstances to do so, if they weren't outright confiscated by the Nazi authorities. Others may be works of art legitimately bought and owned by Mr. Gurlitt's late father. Whatever they represent, to him they represent the reason for his existence.

DPA/ Staatsanwaltschaft Augsburg

The collection includes this painting by Wilhelm Lachnit, "Mädchen am Tisch". The artist's paintings were labelled by the Nazis as "degenerate art".

He is said to be a highly intelligent man of gentle persuasion. Perhaps it is beyond his imagination to attempt to restore some of the paintings of questionable provenance to their rightful owners; perhaps he cannot imagine how he might embark on such a journey to rectify a very old situation that may or may not trouble his conscience. But trouble his conscience it must.

His failing health has given impetus to the need to sell off a few of his treasures. The most recent of the pieces sold was a painting by German artist Max Beckmann, The Lion Tamer, which realized $1.17 million at auction in 2011. Its proceeds would go far to ensure he had ample funds to pay for his living and medical needs. And something must have twinged his conscience for he had agreed to hand over 45% of the proceeds to the Jewish family who were the painting's original owners.

AFP -- Italian painter Canaletto, city of Padua

"He wasn't just weird these last few years; he's always been that way", said the caretaker of the building where Mr. Gurlitt lives. He lived quietly, without visitors. So quietly that enquiries were made whether his apartment was empty and for sale. For the 29 years Christine Echter, the building caretaker worked there, she had never seen anyone enter that apartment but for Mr. Gurlitt's sister who died six years ago.

Cornelius Gurlitt was 23 years of age when his father Hildebrand died. "Even then, he was considered an eccentric fellow", Karl-Heinz Hering who worked for the father as an assistant at the Dusseldorf Kunstverein, the area's leading art museum, remembered. He recalled that, but not that the family enjoyed ownership of a large private art collection.

After weeks of notoriety and claims and counter-claims, German prosecutors involved in investigating the art trove have concluded that the art should be returned to Cornelius Gurlitt, once confirmation is made they are his private collection and not items taken by the Nazis from their rightful owners.

A prosecutor in Augsburg has tasked a newly-established force to identify the owners as soon as possible, returning to Mr. Gurlitt those artworks that belong him him beyond a shadow of doubt.

A work by Antonio Canaletto is shown on a computer screen during a news conference on the Munich art stash. Photo by AP

The Beautiful Mystery of the Codex Seraphinianus

By Mark O'Connell

A page of the Codex Seraphinianus, by Luigi Serafini

Rizzoli

If you manage to lay your hands on a copy of Codex Seraphinianus and flip through its almost 400 pages of lavish illustration and handwritten commentary, the only words you will have any chance of understanding—depending on what sort of shape your Latin is in—are those on the title page. This is because the entire text of the book is written in an invented language, and alphabet, which nobody has ever been able to decipher.

And quite a few people have tried: the Codex has had a cult following since its original publication in Italy in 1981, and is often referred to as the world’s weirdest book. The book, which is the work of the Italian architect and designer Luigi Serafini (who is still with us, but has remained inflexibly committed to not explaining a damn thing about it), will be republished in a new edition by the art publisher Rizzoli later this month. It’s not the sort of thing that easily lends itself to classification, but probably the most accurate way to describe it would be as an encyclopedia of an invented alien civilization. It contains hundreds of carefully organized illustrations of plants, animals, people, machines, dwellings, cities, agricultural procedures, clothing, sexual practices, rituals, and so on.

It’s a lavish miscellany of weird specificity; because of its combination of absurdity and inscrutable precision, reading it is a feverish experience—although “reading” is exactly the wrong word, because that is an activity the book doesn’t permit. Rather, you simply look at it; you look at its diagrams of copulating couples gradually fusing together into crocodiles, at its drawings of egg-helmeted doctors rolling the flesh-pelts from supine bodies and trussing them up on hooks while detached skeletons observe, at its colorful bestiaries of impossible creatures (fish with brooms for tails, little snakes that double as shoelaces). And then you look at the accompanying text, with its lines and lines of beautiful and completely indecipherable script. And the experience is one of a book that makes perfect sense—that lays out an entire world in extensive empirical detail—but (crucially) not to you, because you don’t have the experience or the linguistic tools to understand it.

If you’ve read any Borges, you’ll probably find yourself thinking of his story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” in which the narrator becomes obsessed with an encyclopedia of an obscure planet named Tlön, which turns out to be the invention of a bunch of intellectual pranksters, possibly including Bishop Berkeley. (An interesting essay on Codex Seraphinanius that appeared in The Believer a few years ago uses the Borgesian comparison as an entry-point.) You might also find yourself thinking of some of the bizarre creations of Clive Barker and, in particular, Guillermo del Toro. The Voynich Manuscript—a mysterious 15^th-century volume handwritten in an unknown language and alphabet—often gets mentioned in discussions of the Codex, too, and is likely to have been an influence on Serafini. There’s also, unmistakably, a fungal whiff of ’70s psychedelia off the whole production, although its strangeness is much richer and more rigorous than that might suggest.

Up until fairly recently, Codex Seraphinianus had been very difficult to find, and signed copies of the first edition have sold for thousands. I’ve only read it—or failed to read it—in a PDF copy, which I found online and downloaded to my iPad’s Kindle app, which obviously is precisely the worst way to experience the book. (And what exactly constitutes rarity, by the way, now that almost any text can be found and obtained with a quick flurry of keys and a single click? Is it now more or less a synonym for expensiveness?) But even swiped and pinched and peered at through that high-res glaze, the Codex is still a disorienting and provocative vision of inscrutable otherness.