Basquiat's "Hannibal" Found in NYC Warehouse

In something resembling a plot straight out of fiction, authorities have recovered a painting created by the late Jean-Michel Basquiat hidden in a New York City warehouse. Allegedly tucked away there by order of its Brazilian owner who has been accused of "illegal schemes" to make the money to purchase his fantastic collection, the painting is valued at over $8 million dollars.

The last known owner of "Hannibal" was Edemar Cid Ferreira, the former owner of the Banco Santos. He also happens to be one of the countries biggest art collectors. His bank went bankrupt in September 2005, leaving behind debts over $1 BILLION dollars. Ferreira has been convicted in Brazil on charges including money laundering and bank fraud. He was ordered to begin serving a 21-year sentence in December 2006, but was released while his appeal winds through the courts. Recently a Brazilian court ordered the seizure of $20 to $30 million dollars worth of art saying that it had been bought with ill-gotten gains. But, when they made the seizure "Hannibal" was nowhere to be found.

In August of 2006 a courier brought the painting from London into the U. S. via John F. Kennedy International Airport. There was no mention made of the contents of the package, and was valued at a mere $100 on customs declaration forms. Prosecutors filed papers on Wednesday to seize the 1982 painting in an effort to help Brazilian authories claim the work after its seizure in November.

So-what will become of the painting? Don't expect to see it anytime soon. Just like Ferreira himself, it will probably spend quite a bit of time behind closed doors. If we're lucky, maybe someday the Brazilian government will loan it to a U.S. museum (along with the rest of Ferreira's collection) for a tour. But, I wouldn't hold your breath.

Major Art Thefts in Europe

Somewhere in the world today there is a person, or group of people who have some pretty amazing loot in their hot little hands. Within the last month there have been two spectacular art thefts in Europe, and famous, irreplacable works by Picasso, Monet, Cezanne, Degas and Van Gogh have vanished.

The lastest happened just yesterday at the Emil Buehrle in Switzerland. A gang of three thieves threatened guards with guns before seizing the works. This latest theft is considered to be one of the world's biggest art thefts in the last 20 years. Two days earlier near Zurich, two Picasso paintings were heisted.

The police themselves have called the thefts "spectacular" as the small group of armed men grabbed the paintings and shaved them into a white vehicle parked just outside the museum.

The paintings stolen include Poppies near Vetheuil, by Claude Monet, Count Lepic and his Daughters, by Edgar Degas, Chestnut in Bloom, by Vincent Van Gogh, Boy in a Red Jacket, by Paul Cezanne, Head of Horse and Glass and Pitcher by Picasso.

Artists Tossed into the Street- 475 Kent Evacuated

If I was a resident of 475 Kent in NYC right now I would probably not have anywhere to live, and very little of my own possessions with me.

Last week was a very bad week for the artist community that has called the building home for years. Sunday, January 20th the community located in Brooklyn's waterfront neighborhood of Williamsburg was issued a Vacate Order by the NYC Fire Department at 7:30pm, being told that the building was unsafe and immediate action had to be taken.

It must have been a bomb, right? Or fire? Or unsafe wiring? I mean, 200 tenants given until 2:30 in the morning to get out in the middle of a 30 degree weather. Think again. The fracus was caused by what we all know and fear....two 10; diameter metal canisters containing grain used for making Matzo. Sakes alive! Alkida-you must be behind this travesty.

Turns out that the FDNY inspected the basement and noticed a Matzo bakery operating on the site...might I mention that the building, which is inspected quite often, has been home to said bakery for more than ten years. But, on that night the grain resulted in a "hazardous emergency" situation that gave the FDNY and the DOB license to vacate the building. When the landlord and several residents offered to alleviate the problem and remove the "dangerous" grain from the premisis they were told "they were not qualified to move the grain". Dangerous, dangerous grain.

Folks, can you say "follow the money". Talk about yelling fire in a theater. Here's a snippet from the press release sent out by the residents association....

"Upon the issue of the vacate order 200 people scrambled to rid 110 spaces of their most crucial belongings. The following day people were given 6 hours access to remove their belongings, tools and equipment, a scenario that for most people who had been in residence for 5 - 10 years with substantial equipment and installations was completely untenable. From there the scene snowballed.

On Tuesday January 22, tenants arrived with moving trucks at 10am having been told they would have another 6 hours access to the building. They found all entrances blocked by NYPD and FDNY and no one was allowed upstairs. Finally, at 1pm the leaders of each agency stood on the staircase and delivered their plan to the crowd:- residents would be allowed into the building six people at a time for one hour, followed by another group of six people each being granted one hour.

Do the math.

No, I'll do it for you. 200/6= 33.3 hours it would take to allow each person ONE hour access to collect their stuff.

Then they shut down the elevators, insuring that the task was impossible. People, in a panic that this would be their last chance to save their belongings, began to carry equipment and valuables down ten flights of stairs, creating a real hazard."

As of Wednesday, the grain has been removed. But, tenants are still being evicted. On Saturday night the building will be padlocked for the foreseeable future. Although requested repeatedly the DOB has never provided a complete list of the violations on the building. They do know that one of these violations is an inoperable sprinkler system, a problem that can mitigated with the presence of fire-guards while the system is repaired, allowing continued occupancy of the building.

Does this sound like total crap to you? It does to me. I'll say no more, I'll just close by giving you the last of the press release. And, if you've got a sheckel to share, you can go to http://www.475kent.com/ and help these poor folks out.


"Since the 1960's New York City's tacit urban renewal policy has been reliant on artist's moving into derelict buildings in less desirable neighborhoods. The city does nothing to bolster or support economic activity in these down and out areas, nor do they do anything to create affordable, legal, usable space for live/work entrepreneurs. 475 Kent is a prime example of this kind of turn-a-blind-eye urban renewal that has been a boon to the City of New York. A decade ago South Williamsburg was a dangerous neighborhood. Once artists take the initiative to live on the edge and restore and renew unused real estate in what were marginal areas the City becomes predatory. The transformation of Williamsburg by the artist community into one of New York City's most desirable neighborhoods encourages the city to move artists out as they calculate the tax revenue of luxury condo developers moving in. No one in any city agency cared about our health and safety ten years ago. Now that our building has become hot property the City is ready to muster all the powers of its many agencies to assist in the muscling of the property from the owners and the tenants. The tenants of 475 Kent Avenue call into question the hypocritical policies being put forth by the agencies of the City of New York. We cannot help but wonder what forces are driving this vacate and why the agencies are suddenly so concerned for out health and safety."

A Librarian's Treasure- Jean Preston's $8 Million Dollar Art Trove

I ran across a remarkable story in Reuter's today. Oh what I wouldn't have given to be first on this scene. I know that frankly, I wouldn't have been able to identify all these fantastic works, but what a thrill it must have been for the folks who walked in and found this cache in this little house!

LONDON (Reuters) - From the outside it's an ordinary, red-brick house in a terraced row, not unlike tens of thousands of others scattered across Britain.

But on the inside, Jean Preston's spartan Oxford home contained works of art of international significance, carefully acquired over a lifetime and haphazardly displayed.

Preston, a thrifty 77-year-old spinster who rode the bus and ate frozen meals, died in 2006. But art experts and auctioneers have now completed the sale of the exceptional works hoarded in her modest home.

The auctions have raised an estimated 4 million pounds ($7.95 million), according to valuers, about 20 times the price of the house they were kept in, stunning experts and Preston's relatives alike.

Among the treasures were two paintings by Fra Angelico, the 15th century Italian Renaissance master, that were the missing pieces of an eight-part altar decoration.

They were sold together for $3.4 million and are expected to be returned to the Uffizi Gallery, Florence's famed art museum.

"We knew we were going to a house that contained some important works," Guy Schwinge of Dukes art auctioneers in Dorchester, which helped with the sale, told Reuters. "But I was amazed to see quite how many treasures there were ... The Fra Angelicos were behind the bedroom door and we only spotted them on the way out."

Hanging in the kitchen was a 19th century watercolor by pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and in the sitting room, above an electric fire, a work by Sir Edward Burne-Jones.
Those two, estimated to be worth $2 million, have been saved for Britain and are expected to go on display at Oxford's Ashmolean Museum, Schwinge said.

Another hidden treasure was a rare edition of the works of Chaucer that was too big to fit on Preston's bookshelf and was found buried in a wardrobe. It sold for nearly $150,000.
"We often go to fabulous homes to evaluate artworks, but in this case the house was just so modest from the outside, and had very modest decor on the inside too," said Schwinge.
"It's just rare to stumble across something quite so breathtaking."

Preston, who worked as a librarian for much of her life, inherited many of the works from her father, a keen collector. Her relatives were stunned by the artworks she had tucked away.

"My aunt bought her clothes from a catalog, ate frozen meals and went everywhere on the bus," the Daily Mail newspaper quoted one of them as saying.

"Who would have thought she had the equivalent of a winning lottery ticket in her spare room all these years?"

Not Gone-Just Sick

I promise I haven't stopped writing. I've just had walking pneumonia for the last two weeks.

I have a new interest. Alma Mahler. She friggin rocks.

Seeing Water in a Different Way in NYC

Well, we might be in a drought situation in Georgia, but New York City has no concerns. Starting this summer (July to be specific) four giant waterfalls will be erected in the city that never sleeps.

The waterfalls, including one that will fall from the Brooklyn Bridge, are the concept of Danish artist Olafur Eliasson. "It's about seeing water in a different way," Eliasson told a news conference on Wednesday, unveiling plans for the waterfalls, which will range in height from 90 to 120 feet -- around the same as the Statue of Liberty from head to toe.

Three of the waterfalls will cascade into the East River and New York Harbor from free-standing scaffolding towers that Eliasson said were part of his artistic vision, mirroring the scaffolding towers that sprout up throughout New York. The falls will be in place from mid-July to mid-October.

The Circle Line Downtown boat company will offer free and discounted trips to give visitors a closer look at the waterfalls.

Eliasson said the tour boats would not be able to get as close to the water as tourist boats do to New York state's most famous waterfall, Niagara Falls, on the Canadian border. "It's quite a lot of water, it would not be good to go under," Eliasson said. The scaffolding will have a floating barrier at the bottom to stop small boats going underneath and a "shark cage" under the water to stop fish being sucked into the pumps that will take the water to the top. The pumps will be powered by renewable energy sources and the falls will be lit only by low-level lighting at night that Eliasson said would be "not Las Vegas-style." (thank God)

The waterfalls project will coincide with a retrospective of Eliasson's work, called "Take Your Time," which will run at the Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 between April 20 and June 30.

Eliasson is known for creating immersive environments that take their inspiration from nature and play tricks with viewers' perceptions. With "The Weather Project," Mr. Eliasson used mist, mirrors, and 200 monofilament light bulbs to create an image of a glowing sun in the Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. In a work called "Green River," in 2000, he poured nontoxic dye into a river in Stockholm, turning it green. In an early work called "Beauty" (1993), he created a rainbow in a gallery by projecting light across a fine mist of water.

Born in Copenhagen to Icelandic parents, Mr. Eliasson has long been interested in waterfalls, which form an important part of the landscape of Iceland. A piece called "Reversed Waterfall" (1998), which will be included in the P.S.1 exhibition, uses a system of pumps and basins to send water jetting uphill. In 2005, he created a 20-foot outdoor waterfall as part of an exhibition at Dundee University in Scotland.

Mr. Eliasson is one of a number of contemporary artists working on a scale that requires vast work spaces and fleets of assistants. According to a 2006 profile in the New Yorker, he has a 15,000-square-foot studio in a former train depot in East Berlin and employs about 40 people there, including mathematicians, technicians, lighting designers, and architects.

Can't wait. I didn't get to see Cristo's "The Gates" but I'm not missin this one. Imagine how cool it will be at night.

Lincoln Images Rediscovered

No, they weren't images of the Grand Review of the Armies, nor were they of the inauguration of Ulysses S. Grant- the three glass negatives previously mislabeled by the Library of Congress have recently been discovered to be of Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address.

The pictures, taken on March 4, 1865-just one month before Lincoln was shot at the Ford Theater show a rainy day and mud soaked crowds thronging the area around the podium where Lincoln was sworn in as the 16th President of the United States. A curator of the Library of Congress spotted the misidentification on Friday, January 4th while checking old logbooks and discovering the annotation 'Lincoln' in the margin. The Library of Congress was able to confirm by "careful visual comparison" with the two existing photos of the event that the images were in fact from Lincoln's inauguration.

Carol Johnson, a curator of photography at the Library of Congress was prompted to review the negatives after a patron altered her to the fact that while the photos were visually similar, they had radically different identifications in the Library's online Civil War photographic negative collection. Sadly, I haven't been able to find any note of the savvy patron who pointed this out-who I think should get some credit.

The Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division has updated the catalog records. To view the full set of photos, visit the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog at www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html.

Here are the photo links:
Soldiers and crowd: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpb.01430
Soldiers lining up: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpb.00601
Soldiers lined up: http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cwpb.00602
People arriving (previously known image used for comparison): http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsc.02927

Lichtenstein Outdoors in Miami

Best known as a painter, Roy Lichtenstein was also a prolific sculptor. He began making sculptural works in the early 1960's, just after his first exhibition of paintings at Leo Castelli Gallery. His earliest sculptures were renderings of utilitarian objects and mannequin style heads, both directly influenced by the representation of commercial techniques in his painting. As his career progressed, Lichtenstein's sculpture evolved with his painting. In the 1980's this convergence of media culminated in his monumental brushstroke sculptures. Evoking the movement and color of paint on canvas, these totem-like works suspend the artist's sweeping brushstrokes in midair.

If you find yourself in the Miami area before the end of May make sure to stop into the Fairchild Tropical Gardens which is currently exhibiting a series of Lichtenstein's beautiful pop sculptures. Much like the events that the Atlanta Botanical Gardens have done with Dale Chihuly and Niki de Saint Phalle in the past, the Art in the Garden series at Fairchild seamlessly blends the natural beauty of the gardens with stunning artwork.

I could write tons about both the gardens and the artist, but I'm in a time pinch today, so in the meantime I'll leave you to do your own hunting about both if you're interested.

Check out this awesome video about the exhibit at: http://miamibeach.plumtv.com/videos/art_basel_miami_beach_2007_roy_lichtenstein_fairchild