Update Nazi Loot

The story is still unfolding, just how did post war art dealers acquire the treasures in their collections. The question remains the same, how do you undo the past, how do you change the wrongs of others, how do we go forward and respect the families of victims. Maybe there is no way to resolve the sins of the Fathers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/arts/29arts-ARTANDTHENAZ_BRF.html?ref=arts

Filed under: Art, Art News, Investing, On Art, Painting, Politics, nazi loot

Did You Buy a Fake on eBay?

Seven people have been indicted in an international art counterfeit scheme. The defendants sold art fakes prints by Miro, Warhol, Picasso, Chagall and others with certificates of authenticity.  Follow this link to the Federal indictment to find out more. http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/pr/chicago/2008/pr0319_01.pdf or click on the side bar, Seven Defendants Indicted.

What can you do if you bought one of these prints? Follow this link to the Department of Justice where you can file a complaint. http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln  The website also contains many more details about the case.

The Feds are seizing assets of the defendants that may total 4 million dollars and you might be able to get restitutions paid to you as a victim. But that being said realize this case is just starting and that could take years. You should file any complaints now; this will help you later on if you are a victim.

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Art Prints, Fake Art on eBay, How to, Investing, On Art, Uncategorized , Art Fakes, Art on eBay, Art Prints, Chagall, How to, Investing in Art, Miro, Picasso, Seven Indicted, Warhol

International Art Counterfeiters Sold Counterfeit Art on eBay

 

CNN Reports:On an international art counterfeit scheme involving the production and sale of counterfeit prints by artists including Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Marc Chagall resulted in the indictments of four Americans, two Italians and a Spaniard, federal authorities said Wednesday. The counterfeiters sold the art works on eBay. More:  http://edition.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/03/19/counterfeit.arts

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Investing, News, On Art , Buying Art, Counterfeit Art, Investing in Art

Fading Polaroid’s; the passing of instant photography

This morning I picked up on a story in the Boston Globe, a lead from Modern Art Notes. Instant Karma, the end of Polaroid, the End of an Era. Time has come to a stand still for the once cutting edge in modern photography. The instant image was a wondrous invention that changed and recorded the history of us. Those old photo albums with pictures of us as kids, grandparents and relatives we struggle to remember, thank god we wrote their names on the little white strips at the bottom of the film. And cameras that were best described as machines, a darkroom in a box. The noise of the camera operation and the smell of the chemical developers and that little pasty stick used to smear goo over the image to help preserve it, gone with time. Lost to the digital age, to an age where the physical processes of touch and smell are gone. On a recent photo shoot my son and I had our Polaroid backs for the two film cameras we brought with us. Soon the dash board of the car was covered with the pictures we took. Thinking back it reminds me of other trips I had taken with my family, pictures scattered around as evidence of good times, right now along for the ride. Make no mistake Digital Photography is the cutting edge today, it is how the industry works and it is improving and replacing more traditional photography all the time. Just look around for a photo business that processes film that hasn’t gone digital, from One Hour photos to gone in sixty seconds, they are gone. Digital has changed the market place much the way Polaroid did as a leader in the industry for many decades. Not only did they produce film for the Polaroid Land Camera they also made negative films that were and are still used by Professional Photographers today. These films allowed you to get the exposure right; you could see what you got when you took the shot. Now that may sound trivial in the today’s digital photography world but in it’s time it was fantastic leap in technology. A question that I ask myself all the time is this. What have we lost, removed from the physical processes of photography and what have we gained or what will we gain with new technology. Some of the loss is obvious, contact with chemicals, visual, and the slow development of the image. Touch; our hands are out of the process, we have other machines to do those things, no development, straight to print. And we have Photoshop and Lightroom which really do model the development process and image manipulation. The advancement in these new technologies, themselves are wondrous and efficient. For me the nostalgia of the past is found memories of those smelly Polaroid’s that recorded events, people and places. Maybe the smell even helped record the memory as much as the image. As a Photographer I never really liked the Dark Room, the Wet Process of photography, I loved to shoot the images. Hands in chemicals and working in the dark always seemed opposite of capturing light in that little box, that was trapped on the film. Only to be released by alchemy of the wizards and Polaroid was a Wizard in a box. Gone now like the wizards of the past, like Merlin who amazed King Arthur’s court. But new wizards like Harry Potter emerge and new magic is made and old stories will be told of times past around the camp fire.

For more on the story follow the links listed below. Michael Blanchard’s You Tube movie is worth a look http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM7FHnL8Pso He does a nice job telling the story about the end of Polaroid. His website listed below also is done very well and he has some very nice images. http://michaelblanchard.com/

Then there is the Save Polaroid site that is also very good. But I think if there is a future for the technology it will be at the hands of Fuji Film, they also make instant film, but not quite Polaroid. Maybe they will buy the rights to the Polaroid and we will get Fujiroid. http://www.savepolaroid.com/

So stock up the fridge, the old Polaroid only has a twelve month shelf life and then it is gone.

  http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2008/03/15/instant_karma/?page=full

Filed under: Art, Art News, Environment, How to, On Art, Photography, Uncategorized , History of Photography, Photography, Polaroid

Did That Tattoo Hurt?

            

 

• I am asked all the time; did that tattoo hurt?

 The answer is; it is all relative to the individual. But that doesn’t answer the question does it. The other day I finally got an appointment with Barbara, http://dancingbonesinkinc.com  it’s hard to get one these days and had her finish my dragon. He had been naked now for almost a year, no color. I was excited to finish him and tired that day too.

• So as I napped on the table he began to take on his new skin.

First she put in the shading; tattoos are like paintings, layers of color, of ink.

• As for the pain it is like a sweat bee buzzing over your skin.

Barbara has a smooth touch. She worked the entire dragon over once with the shading and then comes back with the color. By now after the first layer, about an hour, he is a little angry, starting to swell, tender. Now the main color, (red) goes over the all ready sensitive area that has had time to wake up.

• When the needles touch the skin the pain now is a little more like, a sting that intensifies while the she works.

In between while she refills the ink on her tip the pain quickly goes away and so go the process.

• Pain, rest, pain, rest.

I would describe the pain on a scale of 1 to 10 as a 3 but as I get tired the sensation seems to intensify.

• But once the needle is done the pain quickly leaves.

Now she has the base color in and is beginning to add more color, more shading.

• My poor dragon is tender and now this pain jumps up another notch, about a 4 or 5.

But again when she stops the pain goes away. I think we were into the process for about 3 hours and now I am even more tired. I am ready to be done, but Barbara isn’t, one last touch here and there to add more highlights. Damn artists always wanting to add that one last detail that will make the work pop.

• Finally we are done, my dragon has new cloths, new skin.

This is a large tattoo and now it is mostly numb, swollen and bleeding.

• To describe the finished tattoo now, it is like a sun burn.

It is warm to the touch and will stay that way for a couple days as it heals. Barbara applies ointment to the dragon and wraps him up to protect him.

• Over the night he will weep ink and blood.

The next day he is still mostly numb, a little sensitive to the touch. He will form armor over the next couple days, a scab.

• By the end of day two he will be more sensitive, the nerves in the skin are waking up, healing, but that will diminish too as the days pass.

I will keep his skin moist, so it stays flexible until he completely heals. I will wrap him up at night to protect him while I sleep for a few days, but I will always keep him covered with ointment and then cream until his skin is my skin.

• Later he will shed his armor, in flakes of color until he is healed.

Don’t pick at your tattoo she tells me very sternly, leave him alone.

• So for those of you who wonder does it hurt, yeah a little, it is a process, it is called earning your tattoo.

I am excited have him, it is a personal thing. He is my lucky dragon, happy and full of crap.

  http://dancingbonesinkinc.home.bresnan.net

Filed under: Art, Ink, Tattoo , Barbara Guran Eubank, Dancing Bones Ink Inc, Dragon Tattoo, Ink, Montana Tattoo Artists, Tattoos, Tattoos does it hurt

Re-Thinking Smithson’s Spiral Jetty

 

Last month I wrote about Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty threatened by an oil development proposal. Smithson’s Jetty is located in the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The proposal if allowed would permit an oil company to drill test holes near the Jetty site. I have followed the blog’s and news stories and have read about Smithson’s ideas about entropy, the natural system of decay, of systems running down. And I am not the only one who is now asking the question, is saving the Spiral Jetty what Smithson would have wanted? His ideas evolved around the thesis that all systems eventually run down, they waste more energy that is useful in sustaining them, and they decay. Should we then interrupt this premise to save, preserve or restore the Spiral Jetty for our own interests? If the intention of the work was to decay back into nature, which it is, shouldn’t we just leave it alone? Shouldn’t we let nature take its own course? The area Smithson chose in the first place already had decaying oil rigs from the 1920s, it was one of the reasons he built the Jetty where he did. The presence of the old oil rigs in decay, fit into the idea that Smithson was attempting to emulate in nature. Drilling today or not, really does not detract from his ideas and his intention, it is just another chapter in the eventual change of all things natural and manmade. Is it our own vanity that wants to save the Jetty, never mind what Smithson intended in the first place. Today he would have had in all reality the same environmental reaction to his proposal to build the Spiral Jetty as the Oil Companies are experiencing in their attempt to drill for oil. He would have never been able to secure the permits and permissions to build such a project in the Great Salt Lake for any reason, art or not. In fact if you follow the comments on the story across the web many people think the Jetty is just as destructive a presence as the oil rigs. I think, I think that Smithson saw this too when he chose the site to begin with. He knew then that the Jetty would be submerged most of the time when the area drought eased. He planned on the natural colors around the area caused by bacteria and other biological and environmental factors; he liked the pink shade of the water they created. He liked the juxtaposition of the oil rigs that created their own Oil Jetty. Is it our passion for the environment today that suddenly makes us so aware of the destructive nature of post modern and contemporary industrial development? Are we unable to see what the intended purpose of Smithson’s art really was because we filter it through our eyes of today? If our passion takes over, and we can not see what may be far more important we may miss the point. Real progress comes when we challenge ourselves, our beliefs when we ask the real questions and listen to the true answers, even if they are not what we want to hear. That is when we grow as artists and I know when I am growing because everything seems to challenge what I think I think. Those artists who came before us made their contributions to our development, but their ideas were in their time. It is up to us to answer the questions again and again for our time and those who follow us will have to find their own answer to the same questions. But should we not listen to the answers that Smithson gave us through his work and the questions he asked. Should we change the question, the answer to soot our needs our vanity today. Will a generation tomorrow undo what we did or didn’t do? Would you repaint a Van Gogh?

     

More on the Spiral Jetty:

 

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0268/is_n10_v32/ai_16097496

 

http://www.artfagcity.com/2008/01/30/breaking-spiral-jetty-threatened-by-oil-drilling-plans/

 

http://calebwaldorf.net/?q=node/3560

Filed under: Art, Art News, Earth Sculpture, Environment, News, On Art , Art, Earthworks, entropy, Environment, Oil, Robert Smithson, Salt Lake, Sculpture, Spiral Jetty

Another Montana Treasure: CENSORED or Not

This is not a national news story but it could be. George Ostrom a Montana Radio Broadcaster, Journalist, Author, Photographer and most of all a Montana Icon has been CENSORED. George was ordered not to air a story on Monday about a former station employee indicted on mail fraud charges. After 53 years at KOFI radio in Kalispell Montana, George is gone the Daily Interlake reported today. Dave Rae KOFI station manager ordered Ostrom not to read the story on air, or else he would be fired. I guess Dave Rae didn’t really didn’t know George Ostrom. But now it would seem that the story Rae wanted censored is not only out, but a bigger than ever. George is a staple here in Northwestern Montana; he is like sugar, flour, coffee and perhaps the best description salt. For more than fifty years he had delivered the news on air and in print. He sticks to the fundamentals of journalism, facts, facts and more facts. He delivers these facts in an original voice and style and he has always let the chips fall where they lay. Free speech is a fundamental right that I am sure George would defend to the death and no one will censor him at least not without a fight. Ostrom also writes a column in the Hungry Horse News a local, weekly paper, who has had among its editors a Pulitzer Prize winner Mel Ruder. Ostrom has penned a book of Photographs and stories Glacier’s Secrets, Beyond the Roads and Above the Clouds. George a member of the Over the Hill Gang, a group of old guy’s and gal’s who hike the trails of Glacier National Park, published a book of Photographs of the parks back country seldom seen by traditional visitors. These aren’t your typical Old Guy’s.

http://www.amazon.com/Glaciers-Secrets-Beyond-Roads-Clouds/dp/1560371226

Ostrom was elected into the Montana Broadcaster Hall of Fame, where he is sited as a Montana fixture for his decades of journalism and community work.

http://www.mtbroadcasters.org/hall_of_fame/glenn_ostrom.html

With today’s media and the endless commentary of the Bill O’Riley’s and the Rush Limbaugh’s, real journalism has lost; with the firing of Ostrom. Truth, facts and just plain reporting are things of a distant past, but not so with George. And the bigger question for all of us Artists, Writers, Actors and Journalists is, when the facts are uncomfortable should we just keep silent or should we seek out the truth. Well I applaud George for his continued courage to do the right thing and I’ll still read his column, even though I will miss his voice on the air.

Ostrom Terminated, by Chris Peterson Hungry Horse News http://www.hungryhorsenews.com/

Filed under: Art, Art News, Journalism, Media, News, On Art, Photography, Politics, Uncategorized , Censored, Daily Interlake, George Ostrom, Hungry Horse News, Journalism, KOFI, Media

Dumpster Diving and Robert Rauschenberg

Events have reached a new low for Robert Rauschenberg in Naples Florida. Seems he is the victim of a frugal trash hunter who has been caught recycling his art work.  Robert Fontaine a neighbor of Rauschenberg and the HW Gallery of Naples, Fla., improperly sold artwork under his name, complete with bogus certificates of authenticity, after Fontaine pulled discarded pieces from Rauschenberg’s trash. This may be better than gleaning aluminum cans out of the neighborhood trash bins and taking them to your local recycler. Rauschenberg filed suit to stop the sale of his work and to recover any monies gained through its sale. But the rub here is whose trash is it now. Yale Freeman, Fontaine’s lawyer contents that the Law of Abandonment applies to these found or discarded treasures. Depending on what the Florida court rules, this case could set a legal precedent that could impact all of us. I would still think that if the court rules that the art was abandoned, fraud charges about forged documents would stick. It just goes to show how untrustworthy some art dealers are. Other victims in this case are the buyer’s who bought the artwork thinking it was legitimate Rauschenberg’s. Fontaine one day saw this trash out on the curb and realized that is was Rauschenberg’s trash, says his lawyer. Fontaine then pulled out of the trash three roles of what are called chromes, which contained Rauschenberg’s signature. Fontaine’s lawyer say’s that his client is not trying to denigrate or degrade the artist in any way. But Fontaine is trying to sell the found work through his association with the Naples gallery. The report states that Fontaine is associated with the Aptivea gallery in Naples. To add insult to injury Fontaine received a 500 dollar grant from Rauschenberg to study art. While Fontaine was a student he put together a presentation of the found artwork for one of his art classes which he called “Walking with Bob”, say’s his lawyer Freeman. Maybe he should have called the presentation, “Walking all the way to the Bank without Bob”. So I guess that another man’s trash is another man’s treasure; maybe…

Yale, Fontaine’s lawyer say’s that his client thinks Rauchenberg is kind of really a nice guy! DUH, the nerve of this guy just frost’s my cake.

MORE: http://www.usatoday.com/money/2008-02-28-rauschenberg_N.htm

Filed under: Art, Art Marketing, Art News, Investing, On Art, Trash, Uncategorized , Investing in Art, Rauschenberg, Stolen Art