Janet Writes

Ch-Ch-Ch-Check it: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/artworld/2009/02/23/090223craw_artworld_schjeldahl

So I finally got my shit together enough today to venture downtown to see the Andy Warhol exhibit. As an independent student at Concordia University, I can get half price admission. Or so I thought. Once inside, a sign reads: Students (30 years old and under) $7.50. Those fuckers. I went up to the attendant regardless, hoping they weren’t too vigilant about looking at one’s birth date. Turns out she was an age Nazi and, hence, refused my student card. I promptly refused to pay the full rate and left. While most people have completed post-secondary education by the age of 30, plenty go on to do post-graduate studies beyond their 20s, and, as a result, are as financially strapped as a teenaged undergrad. Probably more so. Those students are uber-funded by Ma and Pa these days, decked out in designer duds and equipped with the latest iPods, MacBooks and cell phones. Those of us 30-somethings are expected to take care of ourselves. Not that I am a full-time post-grad, but I plan to be next year. At least now I can get to reading a bit more of those Andy Warhol interviews in the book I’ll Be Your Mirror, which was given to me as a gift a while back, and to watching the documentary Superstar on one Andrew Warhola. I’ve been planning on getting to these tasks before seeing the exhibit. Anyway, the MMFA will be getting a nasty letter from me.

While avoiding work and trawling the Internet today, I came across a few more books I’d like to get my hands on…

1. Outcry by Henry James

2. The Horse’s Mouth by Joyce Cary [Recently scored a second-hand copy for $3.95!–ed.]

3. The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh by, well, obviously Van Gogh and edited by Ronald de Leeuw

Woman Reading, Carl Vilhelm Holsoe

The following are some books on art gathering dust on my bookshelf, which I do intend to read (honest):

-Art in Theory: 1815-1900 An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Ed. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood with Jason Gaiger (This is a rather large tome which I think makes me look smarter merely by having it on my bookshelf; however, I’m so afeared of it I mince around it and throw it furtive glances so as not to provoke it.)

-Renoir, My Father, by Jean Renoir (Yes, that’s Jean Renoir, the great French film director; I’m rather looking forward to this one; this book sits neatly among its NYRB brethren, and once I have enough of them I shall arrange them obsessive-compulsively in a ROYGBIV manner.)

-Modern Artists on Art, Ed. Robert L. Herbert

-Born Under Saturn: The Character and Conduct of Artists, by Margot and Rudolf Wittkower (Another NYRB Classic.)

-The Moon and Sixpence, by W. Somerset Maugham (A short novel based on the life of Paul Gauguin; a Penguin Classic, hurray, found in Chapters’ discount section for sixpence… Okay, not for sixpence, but for cheap.)

-On Painting, by Leon Battista Alberti (Another discounted Penguin Classic find, yippee!)

 Thoughts and ramblings on each to come…

Canadian Art magazine seeks applications for its editorial residency, in which the winning fine arts or art history student gets to hone his/her writing and editing skills. Up for grabs: $7,000 and a two-month summer position. This is a great art-publishing opportunity for aspiring critics and editors.

For more details, visit http://www.canadianart.ca/foundation/programs/residency/

Application deadline: April 1, 2008

Art theft remains a hot topic in the media of late, spurred by a recent audacious heist which took place in Zurich, Switzerland on February 10, 2008. In broad daylight, three men in ski masks snatched a Cézanne, a Degas, a van Gogh and a Monet, together estimated at $163 million.

Only four days prior, two Picassos were stolen, also in Switzerland. While the Picassos remain at large, it is reported the four Impressionist paintings were found Monday night in an unlocked vehicle in the parking lot of a psychiatric hospital.

Montreal’s own Museum of Fine Arts has been victim of theft, a major heist having occured in the ’70s wherein 18 paintings and 37 decorative pieces and jewelry were swiped. Included in the loot were a Delacroix, a Gainsborough and a rare Rembrandt. Only one painting and one piece of jewelry have been recovered. The Rembrandt alone is estimated today at $20 million.

The details of this theft make for a blockbuster Bond-esque screenplay, replete with ski-mask donning and sawed-off shotgun toting burglars, a covert entrance through a skylight (curiously disalarmed due to maintenance), hog-tied security guards (Okay, they may not have been “hog-tied” but they were tied up), and a mistakenly-tripped alarm at the last minute.

In the days following, the museum’s attempts to negotiate with the burglars involved anonymous photograph deliveries in manila envelopes, phone calls directed to public phone booths, drop-offs botched by the police, one stolen painting left in a bus station locker, and a strategically placed cigarette package on a sidewalk containing a stolen piece of jewelry.

Art Bites

• According to Interpol, only drug and weapons trafficking surpasses art theft as a criminal enterprise. It is estimated that more than $8.5 billion worth of fine art is stolen every year.
• Currently (2005) on the international scene, some missing works include 250 works by Marc Chagall, 271 Mirós and 355 Picassos. Interpol estimates that only one in five stolen artworks is ever recovered.