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from the do-you-have-anything-to-declare? dept.
In December 2009, a small painting by Edgar Degas was quietly stolen from the Cantini museum in Marseille, France. Museum staff discovered Les Choristes was missing when they arrived in the morning, and the prosecutor suggested it could be an inside job because the painting had been unscrewed from the wall and there was no evidence of a break-in. An investigation was launched, but nine years went by and the 1877 painting — worth an estimated $1 million — wasn't seen again.
That was until last Friday, when French customs agents happened to check a bus parked at a highway stop about 18 miles east of Paris. The officers opened a suitcase in the luggage compartment, and there it was: vibrant pastels in red, orange, and yellow, depicting a chorus from the opera Don Juan. In the lower left hand corner: Degas' signature. The agents asked the bus passengers who owned the suitcase. No one claimed it.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday February 26 2018, @02:10PM (2 children)
Art theft could be made obsolete. We'd still have the problem with historic paintings, might never be able to scan them in sufficient detail to recreate them perfectly. Yet scanning is the best tool we have to preserve valuable paintings against time and chance.
With a quick search I found two small scans of the stolen painting: https://theartstack.com/artist/edgar-degas/les-choristes-1877 [theartstack.com] and https://wikimonde.com/article/Les_Choristes_(Degas) [wikimonde.com] Likely some rent seeking group has bigger, better scans, but are holding them back for money, trying the old copyright model of selling copies. Probably slapped copyright notices and warnings that it's illegal to upload the file all over whatever digital package they're offering. Particularly ironic that they can do that to works of art for which the copyright has clearly expired. Degas died in 1917.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday February 26 2018, @02:51PM
Yes, in the same way that theatre is now obsolete because you can video and put anything online.
I agree with you that photography and digitization, as well as other forensic recording techniques, do bridge a gap that just because something is stolen doesn't mean we can't know what it was. But even so, art museums still exist for reasons, and to be in the presence of the original can be a moving experience that no copy can truly replicate. (Otherwise, why not simply have digital museums online - no need to go anyplace.) At least, that's my experience when I go to museums - there is often something about the work itself that makes it worth the trip. Photography I'm less sure of - can a near perfect photographic duplication replace an original? I'm not into viewing photography, much, so I don't know.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 26 2018, @06:24PM
In a similar fashion, I don't need to repair my car. I can just watch a video of someone repairing a car. Virtual reality is usually not an adequate replacement for reality.