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The story of still life is not about looking, it’s about seeing. Still life asks us to stop and consider the world anew. Apples, Pears and Paint: How to Make a Still Life Painting, BBC 2014
Caravaggio: The Basket of Fruit is recognised as the first major work of Western still life. ibid.
Pliny’s words would set the tone on how still life would now be rated. It would be seen as vulgar. ibid.
It was in northern Europe that still life would fulfil its potential. ibid.
Cézanne: It was the antithesis of the realism that had dominated European art for centuries. ibid.
Cézanne had abandoned the fiction that a painting is a picture into reality. ibid.
Hundreds of fake paintings. Millions of dollars and a master forger who changed the history of art itself. Masterminds e16: The Forger’s Art
In 1986 the iron-clad system of provenance failed spectacularly as a master criminal fooled the world’s greatest art experts. And executed the most sophisticated forgery scam in the history of modern art. ibid.
Drewe now reinvents himself as a cultured art expert to get the respect he craves ... In the back pages of Private Eye magazine he uncovers a starving artist with the skills he needs: John Myatt. ibid.
‘I just thought to myself this is too good to be true.’ ibid. John Myatt
Drewe is not only alienating his wife, but his partner in crime as well ... Drewe’s hold on reality is beginning to slip ... He claims he is actually working for the British Secret Service selling the painting to raise money for covert weapons sales. ibid.
Drewe is finally found guilty and sent to prison for six years. ibid.
Police estimate there are still over a hundred and seventy of his forgeries corrupting collections around the world. ibid.
He was Ireland’s most famous mastermind. He became a living legend. He organised one of the biggest art heists in the world. Masterminds e19: The Dublin Job
Russborough House near Dublin, Ireland ... The paintings were protected by a sophisticated alarm system. ibid.
Of the one hundred paintings in the collection they had taken the eighteen most valuable works ... Sixty million in rare paintings. ibid.
The man behind the crime was Martin Cahill, a notorious Irish criminal gangster known as the General. ibid.
Cahill’s gang pulled off a series of successful jewellery and bank robberies in Dublin. ibid.
Cahill knew nothing about art, but he knew how to move stolen goods. ibid.
Cahill took the paintings to the hiding place in the Dublin mountains. ibid.
He still didn’t know how to turn his paintings into hard cash. ibid.
Undercover agents posed as would-be buyers. ibid.
The protestant buys were really undercover police. ibid.
Martin Cahill’s death was front page news. ibid.
A master forger’s [Ely Sakhai] ingenious crimes spanned three continents. Masquerading as a respected dealer he cons the art world’s elite. (Art & Forgery) Masterminds e51: The Art of Double Dealing
The mastermind behind the greatest forgery scheme in US history was a respected New York art dealer. Ely Sakhai had found a way to fool the art experts and make himself millions. ibid.
I was shamed and ridiculed for being artistic. The Sopranos s4e3: Christopher starring James Gandolfini & Lorriane Bracco & Edie Falco & Michael Imperioli & Dominic Chianese & Steven van Zandt & Tony Sirico & Robert Iler et al, Janice to Shrink
I need a Bohemian atmosphere. I’m an artist. Performance 1970 starring Mick Jagger & James Fox & Anita Pallenberg & Michele Breton & Ann Sidney & John Bindon & Stanley Meadows & Allan Cuthbertson & Anthony Valentine et al, directors Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg, Fox to Jagger
I think of the hymns of sang: I Vow to Thee My Country, Onward Christian Soldiers – battle-cries to the glory, the valour of war. Come the twentieth century British art would destroy that idea for ever. Jon Snow, The Genius of British Art: War, Channel 4 2010
Richard Nevinson was enthralled to the new face of war. His paintings said Bring It On. ibid.
But the censorship Nevinson suffered makes me think about the moral responsibility of the war artist. Is it to commemorate? Or to question? Or perhaps even to be downright critical? It’s a question war artists themselves had been dealing with ever since. ibid.
To commission was what to become 6,000 pieces of art by modern artists ... But [Kenneth] Clark had a vision that in the struggle for national survival British art would form the cornerstone of our national identity. Clark set up a panel: The War Artists Advisory Committee to Commission Artists to Document Life on the Home Front and Galvanise the War Effort. ibid.
As Clark said, ‘The true horror of this war was the threat imposed to the very fabric of Britain, its people and its landscape. This inaugurated the biggest official war art project ever – Recording Britain. It drew together artists of all kinds.’ ibid.
We often don’t want to confront the realities War leaves behind. But the more I look into Britain’s war art the more I think its overriding message is that the true cost of war is the price paid by the individual. The Dutiful Soldier and the sacrifice he or she is prepared to make. ibid.
We intend to sing the love of danger. The habit of energy and fearlessness ... We will glorify war – the world’s only hygiene – Militarism, patriotism, destructive gesture of freedom bringers … Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto, 1909
Hitler’s ruthless SS: masters of destruction and plunder. Their biggest heist was the amber room. It is the greatest piece of missing art in the world, and if found could be worth a quarter of a billion dollars. Could the amber room still exist? Mystery Investigator: Olly Steeds: Nazi Treasure, Discovery 2010
It took them [the Nazis] just two weeks to reach Leningrad. But in what appeared to be a well-planned operation they headed straight to seize the amber room. It took them just thirty-six hours to dismantle, and to pack it in twenty-six wooden crates and ship it to Konigsberg. With a German curator in charge the stolen panels were reassembled and put on display in Konigsberg Castle ... Not a single trace of amber was ever found. ibid.
Art represents an enormous and difficult part of the battle for restitution. David Baddiel and the Missing Nazi Millions, BBC 2007
From the Roman occupation of two thousand years ago to our own day the story of Britain is revealed through art. David Dimbleby, Seven Ages of Britain 1/7: Age of Conquest, BBC 2010
Donald McGill: McGill took a most proper part of daily British life – the postcard – and turned it rude. Rude Britannia II: Presents Bawdy Songs & Lewd Photographs, BBC 2010