It is fitting to celebrate on our own way Valentine's Day, that annual pressure cooker of love and desire complete with chocolate treats and candlelight dinners. Or is that all it's made out to be? What else lurks on Valentine's Day?
We decided to take a romp through time and visit the Jeu de Paume in Paris at some point in the early 1940s when the Germans were busy stealing cultural property right and left, of varying degrees of quality. The Jeu de Paume served as a central repository of plundered goods of all kinds and shapes as long as they were of artistic and cultural interest.
The haul was so vast that it was possible to tease out works and objects and cluster them around a particular theme.
February 14 is a perfect excuse to create our own "museum of desire" borrowing for a minute or two works and objects plundered only to be recycled in Nazi collections or cast out because of their inferior quality onto the Paris art market where covetous eyes preyed on the lost property of mostly Jewish victims and their friends.
On display today are a selection of works and objects that the Germans chose to photograph which, in our view, depict some of today's mood swings. You be the judge.
Idealized woman from different places and different times
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| Picasso |
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| Attr. to David, R 1196 |
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| Venus-R 4437a |
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| R 4278 |
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| W. N. Gardiner-Arn 151 |
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| Watteau-R 866 |
Bénard-R 1231
Love awaits...... |
| Quiverdo-BoR 183 |
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| G. Vidal-Mer 97 |
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| Fr. School-Hal 31 |
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| After Baudoin?-Drey 24 |
Act III: The denouement....
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| Lavreince-W 138 |
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| Fr. School-Ti 3 |
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| Fragonard-WP 13 |
Act IV: Happy Valentine's Day
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| Van Dongen-MA-B 548 |
Key to the captions:
Arn=Arnhold
BoR=Botschaft Rothschild
Drey-Dreyfus
Hal=Halphen
MA-B=Mobel Aktion Bilder
Mer=Merzbach
R=Rothschild
Ti=Tinardou
W=Wildenstein
WP= Weil-Picard
For more information, go to www.errproject.org.
