From Private to Public: 354 New Classics For Art History
Is it justifiable to publish a man’s private art collection? This questions appears ridiculous considering the accusations against Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of an art collector responsible for the “degenerate art” program in the Nazi regime. More than 350 works are supposed to be stolen or disseized from Jewish collectors in the 1930s and are still awaiting their restitution, for which publishing is essential.
The rest, however, is paintings and drawings by Gurlitt’s great-grandfather, or, still delicate but legal, works that were ‘cleansed’ from German museums for not matching Nazi aesthetics. To include them these works in the case infringes on Gurlitt’s privacy — which right does the public have to know of them?
Journalists found the apartment in which he stored these paintings and published photos of it. If he gets the works back that are doubtless his own, he will have to face high insurance rates. Furthermore, the renowned TV show “Kulturzeit” on 3sat introduced a special part of their show dedicated to present these works that were hidden from the public. They called it “Gurlitt’s treasure chest”, which makes me think of something like MTV’s “Cribs”, but without even asking the host; “treasure chest” lets one think of a legendary pirate that has only survived in tales, which is why his private property became public domain.
Apparently, everybody — not only experts and those looking for their family’s lost art — has the right to see what a man had in his apartment. In times of total surveillance, we got used to the loss of privacy, or, in euphemistic terms, to the total availability of information.
However, focusing on those works that had to be publicised, what the public gains is the access to 354 (ongoing) works of art that were believed to be lost or totally unknown. Art historians working on such diverse fields like the Northern Renaissance, Realism or Neue Sachlichkeit find new material in the paintings and drawings by Dürer, Courbet or Dix. For art history and the dispossessed (and according to Jerry Saltz, http://newday.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/06/unknown-matisse-chagall-and-dix-artworks-found-in-nazi-looted-haul/, also lawyers), what has begun as an investigation on tax fraud has turned into an auspicious discovery.
Artworks publicised by the “task force” (a team consisting of renowned researchers and officials for restitution) can be found on http://www.lostart.de/Webs/DE/Datenbank/KunstfundMuenchen.html.
