French police are releasing their files on Pablo Picasso. “Documents show that Picasso was spied on initially as a suspected anarchist, and later over his communist sympathies – before he became a prominent member of France’s Communist Party.”
Tag: 04.19.04
Koons Crack Challenges Restorers
When Seattle collectors Virginia and Bagley Wright unpacked their Jeff Koons piece “John the Baptist” for a show at their gallery, they discovered a large crack. “Produced in an edition of three with an artist’s proof, “Saint John” is one of the most prominent pieces from Koons’ celebrated 1988 “Banality” series of large-scale, ceramic sculptures. “Saint John” would be worth millions today were it not for the crack and might be worth millions in spite of it. That’s a serious appreciation, considering that Bagley and Virginia Wright purchased it in 1991 for $150,000.”
Nabokov: Plagiarist or Cryptomnesiac?
The allegation that Vladimir Nabokov may have lifted the plot of Lolita from another author’s work has Ron Rosenbaum fascinated. “It’s not so much a scandal as a literary mystery — a mystery about the mind of one of the great artists of our era. And second, the alleged scandal turns on the question of a literary-psychological term that was new to me, but that has now become one of my favorites: ‘cryptomnesia.'” The term mean just what it sounds like: it describes an author who has read another author’s work, but completely forgotten about it, to the extent that he appropriates the plot without ever realizing that he has done so.