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LONDON—United Nations peacekeepers have vandalized prehistoric art in the Western Sahara, spray-painting graffiti over the artwork at Devil Mountain, known throughout the area as a place of cultural significance, the Times (London) reports. The U.N. officers who sprayed the graffiti also signed and dated their work. "I was appalled. You’d think some of them would know better..." said Julian J. Harston, the U.N. representative of the secretary-general for Western Sahaha in charge of the mission there. "They will not enjoy the action we have taken. We will report it to the troop-contributing countries. We can move them." He said he also would seek funding from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (Unesco) to remove the graffiti.

Senseless Act

A homeless man attacked the painting of Samuel Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds on Wednesday with a hammer.

I Was Wrong

Cy Twombly was NOT pleased that a woman loved his painting so much that she kissed it. In fact, he was "devastated." The fact that art vandalism is a crime is undisputed by this author. However, to call her vandalism "Rape" is a bit much. We live in an age where raping a woman is not even called RAPE anymore. The term has been neutered to be called "sexual assault" -- whatever that means. One cannot RAPE an artwork. Well, I guess one could, but that would be rather odd and something I would not like to imagine. It's a sad thing that there may be permanent damage done to this painting. Perhaps try alternative words like "tragedy," or "destroyed," or "ruined," or "demolished," if one still has a penchant for the dramatic, but I think it's time some people got over themselves and leave the word "Rape" for the real thing.

Cy Twombly Would Probably Love Her for It

News Article

Cy Twombly, Leda and The Swan; 1962 Oil, pencil and crayon
on canvas 6' 3" x 6' 6 3/4" (190.5 x 200 cm)

View Cy Twombly's brief biography at ArtNet's Research Library.

Stolen Painting Found in Spielberg's House

LOS ANGELES, March 5, 2007— The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said Friday it has found a Norman Rockwell painting, Russian Schoolroom, which was stolen in 1973, in the home of film director Steven Spielberg. But the entertainment industry mogul is not a suspect.

The painting was stolen from a Norman Rockwell exhibition in Clayton, Missouri, and did not surface until 1988, when it was sold at auction in New Orleans, Louisiana, the FBI said.

In 2004, FBI agents determined that the painting had been advertised for sale at a Norman Rockwell exhibition in New York in 1989.

While they followed leads, Spielberg's staff saw an FBI theft notice and realized that the painting, which in the meantime had found its way into the film director's collection, had been stolen.

Spielberg's staff immediately brought the painting's current location to the FBI's attention, officials said.

Spielberg purchased the painting in 1989 from a legitimate dealer and did not become aware that it was a stolen work of art until last week.

"Mr. Spielberg is cooperating fully with the FBI and will retain possession of the Russian Schoolroom until its disposition can be determined," an FBI statement said.

Copyright 2007 Agence France-Presse

SOURCE

Picasso's Paintings Stolen from Granddaughter's Home

From Artinfo.com:

"PARIS, Feb. 28, 2007— Two paintings by Pablo Picasso worth a total of $65 million were stolen from the Paris home of the artist's granddaughter, police said Wednesday.

The works, a painting of Picasso's daughter called Maya with Doll and a portrait of his second wife Jacqueline, were stolen in the night of Monday to Tuesday from Diana Widmaier Picasso's flat in Paris' up-market seventh district." ...more.

Maya with Doll, 1938

Thinker Recovered

From Artinfo.com....

Rodin Thinker Found After Dutch Heist

THE HAGUE, Jan. 22, 2007—A Rodin Thinker, one of seven bronze statues stolen from the garden of the Singer Laren Museum near Amsterdam last week, was found badly damaged on Jan. 19, police said.

The statue, the only one of the seven yet to be recovered, will be returned to the museum as soon as it is allowed by the authorities conducting the investigation.

Dutch police arrested two men on Jan. 18 in connection with the theft of the statues a day earlier. The thieves smashed through the museum's garden fence with a vehicle Wednesday and ignored iron statues, indicating they may have been after the bronze for their value as metal.

The museum said the statues cannot be sold on the commercial art market as they are well documented. It did not disclose their value.

The museum is in the former home of late U.S. artist and steel heir William Singer.

Copyright 2007 Agence France-Presse

Somebody's Not Thinking

Some art thieves made off with seven Rodin bronze statues from a museum in Amsterdam, one of which was The Thinker. Luckily, there are several of these. To make things even more ignorant, the police think they were after the value of the metal--which implies they will be melting them down. I guess they don't want to try their hand at the Black Market Art world, or they have absolutely no clue about the value of these works--or worse yet, don't care.

The Thinker is a timeless piece, to be sure. What I love about Rodin is what a "painterly" sculptor he is, his knowledge of anatomy, and his flexibility in expression of anatomy. When I say he is a "painterly" sculptor, I'm referring to the surface treatment of his sculptures. He doesn't make everything clean and shiny, and even though his work is in hard material, the forms are expressed softly and expressively. These qualities also make his work seem more "animated" and alive. His work looks effortless in terms of anatomy. It looks as though he could sculpt the figure accurately blindfolded. He's also not afraid to keep things loose (such as hair) or distort forms slightly in terms of proportion (usually the terminating points--head, hands, feet). He understands mass, weight, volume, expression, gravity, poetry, and beauty.

The Thinker is positively iconic; but I have preferred many others over this sculpture. One of my favorites is The Kiss, which most people are familiar with. He understands sensuality and eroticism very acutely, and even created wonderful watercolors incorporating these subjects. Besides The Kiss, one of my favorite sensual pieces of Rodin's is The Eternal Idol. While he grasps sensuality and eroticism, tragedy is not lost on him either. The Burghers of Calais shows off his virtuosity with expression and surface treatment and shows the great sadness and resolution of the subject. Finally, he captures personality in an astute and humorous way. One of my favorite portraits is Naked Balzac, a sculpture of the 18th century writer Honore de Balzac.

Passion exudes from Rodin's art. He took the classical idea about the sculpted human figure and made it modern in a way that I personally believe still has no parallel.

The Eternal Idol


The Burghers of Calais
(click to see large image)

Naked Balzac

Famous Mural Mysteriously Painted Over

This is an outrage. I hope someone figures out who did it. There is a photogallery of the artist's other works on this article's page.

I'm Starting to NOT like Dale Chihuly

This is ridiculous. Can you imagine if Caravaggio sued his various copiers-of-style, or Rembrandt, or Rubens? You can definitely tell we are living in the 21st century. People can be such babies. Chihuly could just step down from his ivory tower for just a minute and make BETTER work than anybody if he is the 'master' that he proclaims to be. Whatever happened to just being happy with being better and flattered that people wanted to copy you? Now artists have to sue each other? It's very unbecoming. A house divided against itself cannot stand--and we artists have to stick together. Sad.