Slashdot Mirror
FBI Offers $25K Reward For Andy Warhol Campbell's Soup Painting Heist (networkworld.com)
coondoggie quotes a report from Networkworld: The FBI today said it was offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the recovery of seven Andy Warhol paintings stolen from the Springfield Art Museum in Springfield, Missouri. The collection, which has been owned by the Springfield Art Museum since 1985, is set number 31 of the Campbell's Soup I collection and is valued at approximately $500,000. Each painting in the screen print collection measures 37 inches high by 24.5 inches wide and framed in white frames, the FBI stated. The FBI says that seven of 10 Andy Warhol paintings Campbell's Soup I collection, made in 1968, were taken. Since its inception, the FBI's Art Crime Team has recovered more than 2,650 items valued at over $150 million.
Seems to me that if the FBI has $25k to offer in reward money, it would be better spent on recovering the stolen cars of people who can barely make ends meet and needed their cars to get to work.
Or is that not how these things work?
If someone assaults you and breaks your leg, should your health insurance pay to find and arrest the guy who did it? If a serial arsonist is going around torching homes, should individual victims pay for the police to track him down?
It's curious you'd mention Pollock, because some of his works look like cans of paint randomly thrown onto a canvas. Not all of them, but some certainly do.
I agree with you completely. There's a Pollock at the museum in Omaha that looks for anything like a cat puked on the canvas.
OTOH, a famous Pollock painting will draw you in, and have a sort of fundamental emotional appeal that keeps you wondering why the painting is so engaging.
Scientific American once did an analysis of some of Polluck's paintings, along with other painters who painted in the same style but which aren't as successful as Pollock.
The analysis found that Pollock's paintings have a fractal quality that other painters (in the same style) don't have, leading to the conjecture that it's this quality that makes his paintings so engaging.
There's a Picasso at the Currier Gallery of Art which I think is awful and completely pointless, yet I can stare at Guernica all day.
And finally, if you ever go to the Detroit Institute of Art you'll find Fuseli's The Nightmare, which is completely and totally ho-hum in any reproduction, including images on the internet, but which is captivating when seen in person.
(And I was astonished when I saw my first real Rembrandt portrait (the one at Omaha). These are also ho-hum from a distance and through the internet, but to see one in person... wow!
Many people don't get why art is so pleasing. I suspect it's because they only have 2nd hand exposure, through reproductions, the internet, TV, and so on.
So in summary, I agree with you completely, but note that "art is where you find it". Not every work of every master is a masterpiece, and if you dig in the dirt you'll eventually uncover a few treasures.