German authorities have recovered a cache of modernist paintings from behind a stack of tin cans in a Munich apartment. Many of the works were presumably looted by Nazis as examples of “degenerate” work. You can see one of the recovered Chagalls here.
The pieces were in the apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, “son of a well-known Nazi-era art dealer.” That “-era” is doing a lot of work in that phrase, one suspects; according to the LAT article, Gurlitt père was “appointed by the Nazi regime” to deal with looted artwork, though the Guardian notes he had lost his post because he was half-Jewish. A complex story, perhaps.
The Guardian also suggests that Gurlitt fils got by over the years by occasionally selling off an unknown masterpiece.
Even very limited experience of the world of collectibles suggests it is full of these dark vortices, open secrets to the cognoscenti but unknown to the wider world, in which strange treasures abide.
I suppose we may be grateful the Nazis did not take the same preservationist attitude to degenerate physics they took to degenerate art. There’s rather a good description of the Nazi “anti-art” displays on Radio 4’s Front Row here.
{ 18 comments }
Phil 11.05.13 at 5:53 pm
Atomic physics wasn’t a done deal at the start of the war, though – they’d have needed to hang on to the actual Otto Frisch and the actual Fritz Peierls, not just keep their formulae in a cellar somewhere.
Guy Harris 11.05.13 at 6:39 pm
Surely Rudolf Peierls?
Bloix 11.05.13 at 9:21 pm
The linked article says that the German customs authorities raided his apartment in “spring 2011” but did not arrest him and even allowed him to continue to sell them. No explanation for how the paper learned of it – a leak? Given the article’s speculation that German officials sat on their hands in order to avoid “a huge number of claims for restitution,” it may be that they never intended to go public.
Phil 11.05.13 at 9:34 pm
Guy – of course. Entschuldigung.
Bloix 11.05.13 at 9:39 pm
PS- The father wasn’t “half-Jewish.” He was a German citizen, probably Protestant, with one Jewish grandparent. This made him a Mischling (mongrel) of the second degree – he could be married to a non-Jew, own property, and work, but faced legal discrimination in employment and the professions and presumably social discrimination more generally. He would not have self-identified as Jewish and he probably hated Jews as the cause of the discrimination he faced.
bad Jim 11.06.13 at 5:02 am
They did hold on to Heisenberg, who made gradual process building a reactor. He understood the concept of a nuclear weapon but thought it impractical, over-estimating by at least an order of magnitude the amount of uranium required, not knowing that, to a neutron, a nucleus is as big as a barn.
The original Entartete Kunst exhibition was so popular that the Nazis took it on the road. We can all be grateful that greed triumphed over ideology. (There was a nice sample at the Tate Modern the last time I was there, worth a visit all by itself.)
Tabasco 11.06.13 at 10:28 pm
“unknown masterpiece”
Is this not an oxymoron?
ZM 11.07.13 at 12:11 am
“German authorities have recovered a cache of modernist paintings from behind a stack of tin cans in a Munich apartment. Many of the works were presumably looted by Nazis as examples of “degenerate†work.
….
Even very limited experience of the world of collectibles suggests it is full of these dark vortices, open secrets to the cognoscenti but unknown to the wider world, in which strange treasures abide.”
I suppose dark vortices and degenerate culture are generally thought to be, to some degree, interrelated.
I think from a distant vantage point we find the cultural artefacts as strange treasures (is this what you mean? Those are pearls that were his eyes: Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.)
But I was recently rereading an essay on Gauguin in the Pacific (Pego’s Grave) positing him as being, for the islanders, a liminal figure that allowed him to escape from having to either conform to or fully contest their cultural norms, but also looking at what he did in melding his imagination with the pacific to create his paintings, and some of his more repellant and wrong actions – combined in a painting called The Spectre Watches Over Her. It concluded by looking at the statue that was placed on his grave, and that his grave would be unquiet.
I am not sure such work was ever meant to be “nice”.
Bloix 11.07.13 at 1:51 am
#7 – no.
“Masterpiece” is a translation of the German meisterstuck, originally the work done by a journeyman craftsman or artist to qualify him as a “master” in his guild. It evolved to mean an artist’s best work, and then as a hyperbolic expression of any extraordinary work. It doesn’t necessarily connote a work that is well-known or highly regarded.
dr ngo 11.07.13 at 5:14 am
#9 – My PhD supervisor always said that one’s dissertation should be a “masterpiece” in exactly this original sense of the word, good advice that I passed on to my own students in due course. Too many of us/them were trying to write “masterpieces” in the more contemporary sense, which was a mistake at that stage of our/their careers.
Zamfir 11.07.13 at 6:57 am
At what age did people generally become master? I thought (without much evidence) that in some professions you would become ‘master’ at a considerable age, and you would from then mostly oversee the work of others (while still taking credit, of course). So ‘master’ would be more analogous to a professor or department head, while a modern PhD is more a first step as journeyman.
In such circumstances, a masterpiece would really be the last, greatest work a good artist makes themself.
dr ngo 11.07.13 at 7:14 am
The Wikipedia entry on “master craftsmen” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_craftsman doesn’t specify ages, but does indicate that the Master of Arts (even before the PhD) was considered equivalent to the “Master” craftsmen in guilds. Your point (Zamfir) that nowadays a PhD only makes one a “journeyman” is a fair comment upon how structures (and standards) have evolved, but the idea remains the same: at some point in your career you produce a work or works that qualifies you as highly proficient in your profession, competent to share in the highest fellowship and to supervise apprentices. As for whether you then go on producing high quality work yourself, or live off the labors of those you now supervise – well, that choice has always been with us, hasn’t it?
Tim Worstall 11.07.13 at 9:46 am
Guild apprenticeships were for 7 years, weren’t they? At which point you produced your masterpiece and became a master?
Or have I got that garbled?
Collin Street 11.07.13 at 12:09 pm
No, you just left out a stage.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journeyman_years
Spend about another seven years working for day [“journey”] cash wages, either travelling or not, and then you get to apply for “master” status and work for yourself/manage your own shop.
ajay 11.07.13 at 5:20 pm
So you would expect to be a master craftsman some time in your late twenties or early thirties, then?
dr ngo 11.07.13 at 6:31 pm
And that’s about when I got my PhD. QED?
hix 11.07.13 at 8:22 pm
My mother had her craftsman master with 21 or 22. Thats probably 2 or 3 years early than the average today.
Eli Rabett 11.10.13 at 12:59 am
Phil forgot Lise Meitner
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