If you’re curious what the expression “casual racism” refers to, you need look no further than conversations about food. I’m thinking of things like when a white-owned restaurant gets referred to as the “elevated” version of the “ethnic” cuisine it’s riffing on, or even just why Americans will pay more for Italian food than Korean….
An untitled painting by Jean-Michel Basquiat sold on May 15th for $110.5 million at a Sotheby’s auction. To which the only sensible response is – so what? Imagine for a moment that it was not a painting that had been purchased, but rather a yacht. Suddenly the interest, for most people, is gone – “billionaire purchases…
There are two great paintings titled “Return of the Prodigal Son,” one by Rembrandt and one by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo – neither of which is housed in its painter’s country of origin. The Rembrandt version is housed in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, while the Murillo is housed in the National Gallery in Washington D.C….
Much of German artist Anselm Kiefer’s work can be captured (to the extent that art can ever be described with total accuracy) in a single word: ruin. Kiefer, born in southwest Germany in 1945 just two months before the end of World War II, has dedicated a large portion of his oeuvre to reckoning with…
Recently, it was reported that artwork stolen by the Nazis that was slated to go up for auction in Austria despite legal (and moral) claims from the rightful owners. Well, today, it has been reported by Artnet that the “owner” of the painting has withdrawn the work from “just hours before the auction was due…
According to a Guardian report, a painting stolen by the Nazis is set to be auctioned by the Im Kinsky auction house in Vienna next week. Van der Helst’s “Portrait of a Man,” a 17th century Dutch Master work, was stolen from the collection of Adolphe Schloss in 1943, a Jewish-German businessman who lived in…
Most of us in journalism didn’t go into the profession only to write stories about people behaving badly, or only to rail against injustice, or only to point out all of society’s flaws. But too often the magnetic pull of the negative becomes the default definition of “news” and journalism fails to make enough room…
It’s not a normal story of art stolen by the Nazis being restored to its rightful owners. When it comes to Max Liebermann’s “Basket Weavers,” the unwitting Israeli purchaser of the looted painting was himself a Holocaust survivor, as was the American to whom it was returned this week. “This was not a legal case…
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