art crime

An art collection at The Israel Museum in Jerusalem, showcases important art looted by the Nazis from France during World War II. While the 60,000 or so pieces of art looted (some by Hitler himself for the Third Reich) were returned after the war, some of it was never reclaimed, presumably because the owners were killed in the Holocaust, according to a New York Times article.

Over the years, the 2,000 unclaimed works have been stored and/or displayed at some of France’s most-famous museums, including the Louvre, Musée d’Orsay, and Centre Georges-Pompidou. But in 1997, an exhibit that would showcase much of the art in one place was recommended in order to aid French government’s restitution efforts.

“Looking for Owners: Custody, Research and Restitution of Art Stolen in France During World War II” is the result.

I only wish I had the ability (money, time and an airline ticket) to view the exhibit. I imagine viewing the artwork would be an emotional experience regardless of whether you had any personal connection to those involved in the Holocaust.

James S. Snyder, the director of the Israel Museum, puts it best. He told the New York Times, the exhibition “is a kind of memorial to our loss in Europe.”

Global Positioning Systems are all the rage these days. They can get direct you from your home to that new restaurant you’ve been dying to try. They can escort you through a tour at the Tower of London. And, now, they can help law enforcement track graffiti tags.

Police in Montclair, Calif., have used Graffiti Tracher Inc. to  spot and map tags around the city. With the aid of technology, the police are able to keep track of exactly how many tags any given graffiti tagger has throughout the city, thus making it much easier to compile evidence against the tagger.

So far the system seems to be working. Since implementing it in January the city has arrested three taggers — each responsible for about $4,000 in damages around the city.

If the system continues to stack evidence against illegal taggers leading to an increase of arrests, it would be one of the more successful systems on record. But I wonder if taggers, with their common desire to have their name up in more places than any other tagger, would take pride if they knew they were at the top of the police database.

The same graffiti, from different angles …

Found in Chicago’s South Side

Two of the Bay Area’s largest cities have launched new attacks on graffiti this week — and each is hoping to crack down on the illegal art form in a distinct way.

Last Friday the City of San Francisco announced it will give $250 to anyone who can provide police with information leading to the arrest of a graffiti artist. Last year, without the reward as incentive, the city arrested 238 taggers.

Neighboring San Jose, is taking a different approach. As part of it’s “Graffiti Eradication Week” the city is giving out free graffiti removal kits. The kits include a paint can with solvent spray, protective eyeglasses, sponges and rags.   

With both cities trying to get at the problem in a completely different way, I wonder which method will work best?  

Is the best practice a preventative approach – by removing graffiti artists from the streets they tag and putting them behind bars? Or is it better to use a reactive approach — by arming community members with the ability to take care of tags as quick and easily as possible?

Last week the arrest of notorious Boston-area graffiti artist, Spek, was big news in the street art world. If San Francisco’s approach leads to an increase in arrests, I would suspect it would have a greater impact among taggers than San Jose’s method. But with community members most concerned with removing the eye sores as soon as possible, San Jose’s approach may be favored by locals.

A Brooklyn-based public artist created “living graffiti” — street art made from living, breathing plants. Edina Tokodi carves moss into figurines such as frolicking deer and rabbits and posts them on street lamps, unused walls and other public spaces around the art-savvy Williamsburg neighborhood. 

Tokodi is particularly interested in the interactions passersby have with her work. She said on the Web blog, Inhabit, that her art is meant to be touched, felt and in turn remind the viewers of a more familiar, environmentally-friendly state to contrast their barren urban existence.  

“I think that our distance from nature is already a cliché,” Tokodi said. “City dwellers often have no relationship with animals or greenery. As a public artist I feel a sense of duty to draw attention to deficiencies in our everyday life.”

Another blogger says Tokodi’s art is the product of the expansion of the green revolution into every possible industry.

Maybe so. But some commenters seem to think that moss-covered bunnies are more appealing (and less offensive) than spray paint.

See photos of Tokodi’s artwork on the Inhabit web blog.

The Foreign Policy Journal has a Q&A with “Art Hostage,” a former dealer in stolen art and antiques, who now assists with stolen art investigations.

Here are five things I learned about art crime from the article –

1. The majority of art theft is from the private citizen.

2. For every $20 million Picasso painting that is stolen, there are hundreds of paintings stolen worth $20,000.

3. Stricter penalties, such as a mandatory sentence of 10 years may be the best way to deter art thefts.

4. If someone walked into a museum and stole a Rembrandt, they would get around three to five years in prison. But if you equate the value of the Rembrandt to other commodities the penalty would be much harsher — 25 years to life.

5. Before staging a heist, thieves would consider the blank spots in security, the location, the size and movability of the articles and the estimated response time of law enforcement.

For more from “Art Hostage,” visit his blogs Stolen Vermeer and Art Hostage.

Found in Chicago’s South Side

Two of paintings nabbed in the large art heist in Zurich last week have been recovered.

“Poppies near Vétheuil” by Claude Monet and ”Blossoming Chestnut Branches” (1890), by Vincent van Gogh were found in perfect condition in the backseat of an unlocked car in a parking lot of a mental hospital just a few hundred yards from the scene of the crime, according to this Associated Press story.

The museum director suspects the two paintings were abandoned because they were the largest of the four and their size made them too hard to transport.

Though the museum is very happy to have them back, they are anxiously waiting for news on Cezanne’s “Boy in the Red Waistcoat,” the most valuable painting in the collection.   

What is of particular interest in this story is that art experts have suggested the robbers were knowledgeable about the art world.

“Art experts have suggested that the robbers took advantage of what appeared to be an easy mark — a low-security museum — without knowing much about art or how difficult it can be to sell such well-known works.”

As said in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer’s Art To Go blog, “The question that pops up after the theft of prominent artworks rarely has an answer: What motivates these sticky fingers? Famous art is too hot to handle and impossible to move into the market.”

A new exhibit at the Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. marks an important step in the showcasing of graffiti art as fine art. Other museums and galleries have shown graffiti art in the past, but this particular show is hosted by none other than the Smithsonian Institute. And, it doesn’t get much more mainstream then the Smithsonian.

“Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture” exhibit features photography, paintings and videos influenced by hip-hop. Street artists Tim “Con” Conlon, 33, of Washington, D.C. and Dave “Arek” Hupp, 34, from Baltimore, were asked to paint four large panels tracing the history of graffiti from its roots in the 1970s until today.

“We are not glorifying the illegal activity, but we are acknowledging the larger impact this street tradition has had in contemporary art,” says Frank H. Goodyear III, one of the exhibition’s curators.

The exhibit marks an important step in the artists’ careers as well – it is the first time either of them have been featured in a major gallery, according to Smithsonian Magazine’s article on the exhibit. For Arek, who in the height of his career painted about 400 trains a year, having his work showcased in the museum is a chance to change people’s perceptions.

“People who think it is just vandalism are amazed when they see what we can do with spray paint,” he said.

This blogger’s post on the exhibit has attracted quite a lot of comments on both sides of the graffiti debate.

My favorite comment? Posted by JG:

“Simply put; graffiti is an ART form.
Where it is placed determines its legality.”

Boston and Salem-area community members are understandably pleased with the arrest of Spek, real name Adam Brandt, a 27-year-old graffiti tagger who has reportedly cost the community millions in damages. If they view his actions as a public nuisance and a form of destruction, then his arrest would be worthy of their praise. What I am not happy to see is the attack on the man behind the tags.

In one case, an editorial in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette News resorted to name-calling. It says, “The aesthetic crowd may consider graffiti an art form, but the decade-long tagging spree across eastern New England by a loser — self-styled “Spek” — illustrates the appallingly destructive nature of graffiti vandalism.”

Really? A loser? Is that all they’ve got? Aren’t newspapers editorials supposed to add fodder for intellectual debates and foster understanding? What does name calling accomplish or add to the public forum?