September 11, 1999

CONTENTS:

Nazi Paintings Posting

+++++++++moderator's reply++++++++++++

IFCPP Announcement

Smithsonian Given Historic Asian Art Trove

Russians rebuilding 'Amber Chamber' known as 'Eighth Wonder of the World'

TSARSKOYE SYELO, Russia (September 9, 1999 11:00 p.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - Russia's Amber Chamber was known as the Eighth Wonder of the World until the Nazis carted it off to Germany during World War II. More than half a century later, the famed gleaming panels of "northern gold" are still missing but Russian craftsmen are rushing to rebuild the room in all its original Baroque splendour, with a little help from the old enemy. Russia's cash-strapped Culture Ministry has just signed a funding deal worth $3.5 million with Germany's Ruhrgas AG to help speed up and complete the reconstruction of the chamber. Housed in the Yekaterinsky Palace outside Russia's former imperial capital of St Petersburg, the room is meant to be completed by 2003, the 300th anniversary of the city's founding. "The Amber Room is one of the great monuments of world culture and also a symbol of the huge cultural losses suffered by Russia during World War II," Culture Minister Vladimir Yegorov told reporters before this week's signing ceremony. "This agreement (with Ruhrgas) is a pioneering project for German and Russian relations," Yegorov said. Amber chamber mirrors complex Russo-German relationship The chamber, which covers 1,080 square feet and was inlaid with six tons of exquisitely crafted amber and Italian mosaics, closely mirrors the tumultuous history of relations between Russia and Germany. Built by German craftsmen, the original Amber Chamber was sent as a gift to Russian Tsar Peter the Great from Prussia's King Frederick William I in 1716. Peter's daughter, Tsarina Elizabeth, later had the room assembled in her newly built palace in the village of Tsarskoye Syelo, 15 miles south of St Petersburg, where it remained until the German army invaded Russia in 1941. The Russians managed to rescue many of the precious furnishings from the room, including amber jewelry boxes and tables, but the Nazis seized the panels and shipped them off in 27 crates to the German city of Koenigsberg in East Prussia. The Amber Chamber was last seen in 1945, shortly before advancing Soviet troops took Koenigsberg and renamed it Kaliningrad. It remains a Russian city to this day. Both Russians and Germans have spent decades searching for the chamber. Some experts believe it was destroyed by bombs in 1945 but many more think its panels were hidden, perhaps in a mine or underground bunker. Two years ago, German police found a mosaic belonging to the Amber Chamber but nothing more has since come to light.

Restitution of looted treasures still a thorny issue

Ruhrgas cash gives big boost to reconstruction effort

Buddha heads roll in theft from Cambodia's ancient temples

Thai police had good reason to be suspicious of the 10-wheel truck that lumbered across the Cambodian border, headed for their capital, Bangkok. For one thing, the two men in the cab looked dust-covered, as if they had been working in a quarry. For another, the truck was carrying such a heavy load that its tyres were nearly flat. What the police found inside was a priceless treasure: an entire sandstone wall from the 10th-century Banteay Chhmar temple in a remote corner of north-west Cambodia. It had been skillfully cut into 119 pieces, each carefully numbered for eventual reassembly. The devastation of the temple was another sad reminder that the ancient temples of Cambodia - particularly those in the Angkor Wat complex - are under siege by gangs of organised bandits that often include army soldiers and top military brass. Most of the ancient relics find their way to shops in Bangkok frequented by Western collectors. Although pillaging is nearly as old as the temples themselves, antiquity specialists say the theft of Buddha heads, lintels, bas-reliefs and sandstone walls has reached epidemic levels in recent months, partly because of the regional economic crisis. Police say about 10 freelance gangs work in the 39-square-kilometre Angkor area. Until Angkor was occupied by the Thais in 1431 and eventually abandoned, the city was the seat of power of the Khmer Empire, whose influence stretched over half of South-East Asia for several centuries. Its complex of palaces and temples is often compared in splendor to Machu Picchu, Peru's "lost" Incan city. The Angkor temples are off limits between sunset and dawn but bandits have little difficulty entering the complex at night - despite the presence of 400 temple guards, who are sometimes paid to look the other way. The bandits know exactly what ancient piece they are after, investigators say. "It's like cutting a diamond," said Uong Von, the Siem Reap representative for the Antiquities Department. "If the stone cracks or splinters, the piece is going to lose its value. These people have skill, and they know what they are doing. "And certainly there's no doubt that top [military] brass are involved." Throughout the Angkor complex, hundreds of headless or limbless statues stand as silent symbols of the looting and destruction that have taken place here since 1860, when Henri Mouhot discovered the forgotten city of Angkor. Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge guerilla army, which ran Cambodia from 1975 to 1979, used stolen Angkor antiquities to help finance its war. The Vietnamese army that overthrew Pol Pot stole so much from Angkor that the booty was often spirited away in armoured personnel carriers. And now some members of the Cambodian Army have become so bold in pillaging the temples that they don't even bother to change out of their uniforms when stealing. Officials at Aspara Authority, the government agency that oversees the Angkor temples, said four temples in the complex had been pillaged in recent months. At least 40 items were stolen, ranging from Buddha heads no bigger than a doughnut to bas-reliefs weighing up to 130 kilograms or more. Investigators say the pillaging is mostly financed by Thai businessmen. They contract with Cambodian brokers, who make arrangements with the appropriate Cambodian army officers and temple guards. The men who do the actual cutting and chiselling may make only $A7.50 to $A15 for a piece that could eventually fetch thousands of dollars.
- Los Angeles Times
http://www.smh.com.au/news/9909/07/text/world11.html

Rembrandt Found After Reward Raised

Rare Van Gogh steps on to the open market

A LITTLE-KNOWN sister picture to a Vincent van Gogh on loan to the National Gallery from the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam is to be sold. The picture, A Pair of Shoes, is one of five studies of heavily worn footwear that Van Gogh painted in 1886 or 1887 while living in Rue Lepic in Montmartre, Paris. It is being sold by Christie's on behalf of a Belgian collector and is one of a scant few Van Goghs still likely to come on the market. In view of this, Christie's estimate on the picture, at UKP.1.2 to UKP.1.6 million, seems modest. Jussi Pylkkänen, Christie's director, said: "There are no precedents for the sale of a picture like this. The highly colourful pictures from the South of France have more glamour, and this has a different appeal." The painting, which has not been seen in public since 1947, originally belonged to Albert Aurier, a French writer and critic who was the first significant figure to identify Van Gogh's talent. Writing in the Mercure de France in January 1890, six months before Van Gogh's suicide, Aurier wrote of "the ingenuity of his concepts" and continued: "This robust and true artist, with the brutal hands of a giant, with the nerves of a hysterical woman, with the soul of a mystic, so original and so alone in the midst of the pitiful art of our time." It is known that Van Gogh wrote to thank Aurier and sent him a landscape in gratitude. The writer and critic collected at least six paintings by Van Gogh. The bulk of his collection was sold in 1914 and formed the core of the Van Gogh collection in the Krõller-Müller Museum in The Netherlands. Like the canvas in the National Gallery, A Pair of Shoes was painted over an earlier work. There is a confidently signed "Vincent" in bright red, which Mr Pylkkänen interprets as showing that the artist was well pleased with the work. The painting will be shown at Christie's in London in the first week of December.
(Times of London)