Will The Bayeux Tapestry Get Longer?

Many years ago, on a trip through Normandy, France, my wife was intent on seeing the Bayeux Tapestry, which can be found in the Musée de la Tapisserie de Bayeux in Bayeux, France.

It is a major historical document of history illustrating a turning point in what would be the future of England, but at that time, so long ago, I did not properly appreciate it. The Bayeux Tapestry as it is known, is not a tapestry at all. It is not woven but embroidered and measuring nearly 70 meters (230 feet) long, I facetiously termed it the longest dish cloth in the world!

The embroidery depicts events leading up to and including the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, led by William the Conqueror. It tells the story from the Norman perspective, focusing on William's claim to the English throne and the events surrounding the Battle of Hastings and the defeat and death of the Anglo-Saxon King Harold II. Here is the scene with the Death of Harold.

The style and workmanship suggest that it was made in England, commissioned by Bishop Odo of Bayeux who was William the Conqueror’s half-brother. He participated in the Battle of Hastings and was subsequently made Earl of Kent, given the task of guarding southeastern England. He also served as William the Conqueror's administrator and regent during the king's frequent absences. The embroidery is thought to have been made to adorn the cathedral being built in Odo’s bishopric of Bayeux and sent there around 1077. The first dated record of it in Bayeux is 1476 and it has not left France since.

Last month a missing piece of the textile with no embroidery, was found in the State Archive of Schleswig-Holstein. It had been in the estate of the textile archeologist Karl Schlabow (1891-1984) who worked for the Society for the Study of Ancestral Heritage (Das Arnenerbe) founded by Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to promote archaeological investigation of sites associated with early Germanic settlement. The goal was to trace a coherent history of superior Aryan culture. There was particular interest in the Bayeux Tapestry as it was thought, it might prove that the Normans had Viking heritage and therefore were of Germanic origin.

After the fall of France in 1940 the Nazis sent a team of experts in to examine the tapestry and Dr. Karl Schlabow, a member of the team, removed a small piece for his own study.

Now that it has been rediscovered, after a brief tour in Germany, the fragment will be returned to France, and the tapestry will get longer? Though there is speculation that it may have originally been even longer!

Do watch this entertaining 6-minute video to hear more from the curator of the Bayeux Museum and her amusing interlocutor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Nu79DDw03LM

Don’t, however plan a trip to see the tapestry too soon because the Museum is closing for a major renovation and will only open again in 2027.

Money, Money, Money!

Even before the lyrics from the musical Cabaret became familiar, we all knew “Money makes the world go round”. But these days and particularly in this country it has gone to such an extreme that it no longer makes any cents … no … sense!

The large auction houses do not represent the art market only one aspect of it. People in general do not want to read about aspects of everyone else’s day-to-day life, they are already living it. Therefore, the press writes headlines that everything is fabulous or, going to hell in a handbasket, whatever the extreme.

A line in a recent Art Net article reads, “According to Artnet’s data, last year there was a steep decline—44.2 percent year over year—in sales of trophy works at auction, or those sold for over $10 million.” A few sentences further on, “Still, sales in the $100,000-to-$1 million range remained resilient amid last year’s downturn, suggesting that profit-driven speculators are sitting back, and a broader collector base is interested in buying more affordable works they are passionate about…. That’s exactly the price bracket where younger collectors can participate much more actively.”

When I was a boy in the 1950’s my ambition (if I was old enough to have ambition yet) was to be a millionaire, in line TV shows like How to Marry a Millionaire. I just checked, and that would be the equivalent of 13 million dollars today. I presume kids now think that they want to be Billionaires. Well, that is about 77 times 13 million.

More statistics from the web: Currently it is calculated that there are only 3,028 Billionaires worldwide while there are 17 million professional artists. The United States account for 2.7 million artists, representing 1.6 % of all U.S. workers.

Now I know that to a great extent I am equating apples and pears because the art market consists of art through the ages, but today do you, reader, have enough money to spend more than a million dollars on a work of art or even $100,000? Probably a fraction of one percent of the world’s population would feel comfortable paying anywhere near that much.

Since most art dealers (there are over 21,500 listed in this country) and collectors do not speak of their sales or purchases except on the rare occasion of a specific example. The statistics all come from the best-known auction houses where the super-rich go to show off, competing with each other, hoping to hedge their risk from the stock market or filling in that one work missing from their collection. There are, of course, hundreds of auction houses in this country and thousands around the world that sell art. Yet when you look online you will probably find less than a dozen listed.

I have many friends who are artists and sell from hundreds of dollars to a few thousand. There are also many artists who are known by name and recognized in the press and sell in the same range and, yes, there are also some who sell for astronomical sums. I bought this small sculpture just because I found it satisfying and calming and I feel the same way years later. I bought it at a gallery in Santa Fe and it is by Jason R. Brown, he called it The Eye and it cost just under $750.

My point is that though in a recession or a time of uncertainty people have less discretionary income so all artists, like everybody else, will suffer. Obviously, there are very serious issues that we should be aware of and prepare for accordingly, but that the big auction houses are reported to have lost business should not be of concern. If you buy art that you love and can afford, the market headlines have no significance.

Return of The Gothic

No, this is not about politics, but about art. I keep telling my wife that we must accept change and that all the new features we have such as cell phones and computer programs that cause so much frustration, for everybody, also offer us advantages that we did not have previously. On the other hand, much that is new draws from the past.

An exhibition at the National Gallery in Oslo called “Gothic Modern: From Darkness to Light” delves into this concept. The show will be on there until June 15 before moving to its last venue, the Albertina in Viena. I learned about it from an article on Artnet written by Jo Lawson-Tancred called “How Art from the Middle Ages Inspired Modern Artists”.

Though I had not thought about this before, when some of the late 19th and early 20thcentury artists, like Edvard Munch (1863-1944) and Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) were cited, it seemed obvious. For instance Kollwitz’ etching depicting workers mourning the German Communist Karl Liebknecht who was murdered by state forces in 1919.

The press release from Oslo says, “The Gothic is often associated with elements of darkness and mysticism, the frightening and the inexplicable.” It’s hard to deny when you think of Edvard Munch and images like “The Scream”. Even more to the point might be “Ashes”, a vision of despair as two lovers separate after an amorous encounter. Furthermore, it is known that Munch made studies of Gothic cathedrals and their rose windows through which light penetrates darkness.

When the exhibition opened in October of 2024 the German newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine called it “the most daring exhibition of the year”. The show originated from the research of its guest curator, Juliet Simpson, of Coventry University, that had led to an international research project.

Quoting from the Coventry University Press Release, “… Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz, Vincent Van Gogh and Marianne Stokes pushed the boundaries of art and society by drawing inspiration from Gothic art.” Marianne Stokes (1855-1927) was an Austrian artist who emigrated to England. Her painting of 1908, “Death and the Maiden”, from the Musée d’Orsay certainly evokes all the features mentioned above about the Gothic, elements of darkness and mysticism, the frightening and the inexplicable.

A painting of an earlier date is included in the show and it is obvious why. It is an 1872 Self Portrait with Death Playing the Fiddle by Arnold Böcklin (1827-1901), lent by the Alte Nationalgalerie, Berlin. It looks directly back to images by Hans Holbein the Younger (circa 1497-1543).

As mentioned earlier there is a continuum but still, the artist that surprised me the most was van Gogh (1853-1890), who we usually associate with “Starry Night” and vibrant colors. The painting that was featured is his 1886 monochrome “Skeleton with Burning Cigarette” from the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. We are quite sure that van Gogh suffered from mental illness and his later work illustrates his fascination with mortality and the dark side.

Following its Gothic theme the show associates the morbid subjects in early 20th century art with examples in medieval art. Granted many of these themes have been repeated through time. As we all know, “there is nothing new under the sun”. Still, I like to look at and think about art from different angles and not be subject to doctrine. When we are guided by others, we can often make our own leaps to find personal insights.

An Art Prescription

Our local newspaper, The New Mexican, published an article from the Associated Press by Jamey Keaten. The headline reads, “Town lets Doctors Prescribe Free Museums as Therapy”.

We have all read how art can help people, but I have never seen a government move to recommend and subsidize it. This has occurred in a small-town called Neuchatel, beneath a medieval castle and a lake by that same name in the French speaking part of Switzerland. I like the way the article starts: “The world’s woes got you down? Feeling burnout at work? Need a little something extra to fight illness or prep for surgery?” … Neuchatel is offering its residents a novel medical option: Expose yourself to art and get a doctor’s note to do it for free.”

This pilot project is based on a 2019 WHO report that “found the arts can boost mental health, reduce the impact of trauma and lower the risk of cognitive decline, frailty and ‘premature mortality’.” So far, just 500 such prescriptions have been given out in this town, with a population of just under 45,000. If art can do that, it is worth the price … but here it is free. Think what it would save the government on medical aid. 

I thought that could never happen in this country, but I was wrong. The prestigious Stanford University also has a program for its community. It has teamed up with Art Pharmacy, an organization which according to its website, “enables personalized social prescribing services with healthcare, university, corporate, and government partners.”

https://www.artpharmacy.co

The Stanford program offers an arts prescription which is a set of engagements in the arts customized to your personal interest. Each engagement is called a dose. You are assigned to an Art Pharmacy Navigator who will get you free tickets or whatever other access you may need. After you have fulfilled your prescription, you can apply for a renewal. To me it sounds like a good way for student and teacher alike to cope with the stress of campus life.

There is a different program called CultureRx out of Massachusetts which has brought together 12 cultural organizations with 20 healthcare providers across the state allowing the latter to write prescriptions that might benefit their patients. The medical practitioners welcomed the plan as they saw the pleasure their patients got from enjoying the arts without the expense. I am guessing that most who are reading “Missives from the Art World” have the where with all to not have to worry about this expense but how many in the general population can afford the high entry costs for many museums or the price of theater tickets?
Another organization I never would have thought existed is Johns Hopkins University’s International Arts+Mind Lab (IAM Lab) an “interdisciplinary research-to-practice initiative accelerating the field of neuroaesthetics”. Their work focuses on “social prescribing” which includes art, music culture, nature, and social connections. All these have been shown to have important health benefits.

This concept is widespread if currently available only in small doses (pun intended). Arts on Prescription is a concept that has already been tested in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium and Germany, if on a small scale. There was an article a couple of months ago in The Atlantic magazine called “The Anti-Social Century”. Written by Derek Thompson the opening line was “Americans are now spending more time alone than ever. It’s changing our personalities, our politics and even our relationship to reality”. The article stresses how we need to interact with others and how the absence of this leads to so many problems. Art prescriptions can help individuals, and, as a result, our society by encouraging them to engage in a shared experience of visual or performing arts.

In a world that has been found to be fraught with more and more stress, it is heartening to learn that the healthcare community is beginning to explore the relief that can be brought through exposure to art.

Unusual Heists

I read about a very unusual heist on Artnet recently. It was an update on a 2019 story. But I could not let it slide since it involves a golden toilet. In this case, as far as we know, no secrets were flushed down it but rather it was just absconded with. Apparently, this toilet was not just gilded but cast in solid gold by the conceptual artist, Maurizio Cattelan. Remember him more recently of Banana fame?

https://www.geraldstiebel.com/2024/12/hard-to-believe.html

The work was part of an exhibition at the 18th-century Blenheim Palace in England where Winston Churchill was born.

The working Loo (known in this country as a toilet) weighed in at 98kg (216 pounds) and was attached to Blenheim’s existing plumbing. After just two days on exhibit five men broke into the Palace and ripped out the toilet which had been insured at the U.S. equivalent of six million dollars! This extraordinary event took the perpetrators just 5 minutes to enter and then leave with their booty in a Volkswagen which I presume was not a VW Bug!!

Blenheim staff brilliantly snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. They left the gaping hole in the bathroom cubicle and put back the police tape so when they reopened the exhibition visitors multiplied as people came to see the scene of the crime!

This story made me think of what other unusual heists there have been. Of course, there are the very well-known thefts like that of the Mona Lisa, or Edvard Munch’s The Scream and the group of paintings from the Isabella Gardner Museum. I am intrigued by some less celebrated stories.

According to fodors.com the earliest art theft in recorded history was in 1473. Hans Memling’s, The Last Judgment. Paul Beneke, a privateer ie pirate boarded a ship bound for Florence stole the painting and headed back to his native Poland. It was displayed in the Basilica of the Assumption in Gdańsk, Though Italy kept trying to get it back, it remains in that city’s museum.

Xiao Yuan is a thief you have to admire since he, himself, is an artist. He was also a librarian at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in China. He replaced 143 artworks with his own forgeries and said to have made 6 million dollars selling 125 of the works at auction. He further claimed that thefts from this museum were not unusual and that some of his paintings had been taken and substituted for inferior copies. Yes, there are thieves, as well as politicians, with extraordinary egos!

Everyone has something they think no one would, or ever could steal. We had a scrap metal sculpture that was a caricature of a dog holding a rifle. It was basically worthless, but I called it Wyatt for Wyatt Earp and put him on our portal near the front door to guard our home. Well, someone else liked it as well and it disappeared! A two-ton sculpture, however, is in a totally different category. Who can cart away a 4,000-pound piece of bronze. It turns out that in 2005 thieves stole Henry Moore’s sculpture called “Reclining Figure” from the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire, England, and, after cutting it up, sold this 18-million-dollar piece of sculpture for scrap metal for a whopping 2,000 dollars! Wonder what the equipment they used to cart away and chop up the sculpture cost them.

I will end with this story from the Columbia Journal of Law & the Arts: In 2006, Guinness World Records awarded Rembrandt’s Portrait of Jacob de Gheyn III the title of “Most Stolen Painting.” The painting earned the award, as well as the nickname “Takeaway Rembrandt,” “after being stolen four times in the last 53 years: the first time in 1966, three more thefts occurred in 1973, 1981, and 1983. The painting has been found in a luggage rack, on the back of a bicycle, and underneath a bench in a graveyard. Today, the Takeaway Rembrandt can be found hanging in the Dulwich Picture Gallery, hopefully with better security…”

Keeping Track of Your Collection

Many years ago, my wife and I met Mary Anne Goley, director of the Fine Arts Program of the Federal Reserve Board from its creation in 1975 until 2006. Besides caring for and displaying works owned by the Fed, Goley decided early in her career to create exhibitions showcasing the collections of the employees. I would guess there may have been some hesitancy at first but once one or two staff members agreed there were a flood of requests to have their collections shown. She found she had to come up with a prerequisite that I have found to be a useful definition of a collection … at least 20 items in the same category or area.

Once you have 20 to 30 works in your collection, be they old masters, stamps or fountain pens you find you need to organize them and identify each item. With my fountain pen collection this has proved quite an exercise since some pens are unmarked and for some, I need a magnifying glass to read where it might be identified somewhere on the pen. Even if you have your works of art on your walls there may be some in the closet or in a bank vault. At some point you will find yourself asking … Now where did I put that object? What was the name of that artist? Oh, the museum wants that for an exhibition, and I have no idea how the artist titled it?

You need a list, possibly with classifications. In the case of our Native American collection, we started out with albums neatly put together with photos and invoices. As the collection grew, we had to create separate albums for paintings, katsinas, pottery etc.

There are a number of programs out there for doing this. I found one online with a free version with which “to get started” but the subscriptions went up to $147/month! As an art dealer I was paying $99/month for a gallery inventory program but I was certainly not making use of all the possibilities it offered.

You must determine what you actually want to get out of such a program without it being overwhelming. What information do you think you will need to retrieve over time. Now here is a warning: I learned the hard way. With the gallery program I had been using I could have been stuck with it. Why? Because if you cancel you subscription your content disappears at the same time. So theoretically your heirs would also be tied to the program. Then there is always the danger that the company that has come up with the program goes out of business. Buyer beware!

Turns out that there is a very simple answer for most collectors, if not art dealers or museums, and that is to develop a spread sheet. I am not going to tell you that it can do all a software program can do for you, but if you find you need more than the basics you can always add another category column later. The only issue is how to create a spread sheet. I had an associate who was adept at that, but I am sure many of you can accomplish this on your own, and if not, it is not difficult to find someone to set it up for you. I learned to my surprise that you can even add images. After the spread sheet has been created you only have to fill in the blanks but don’t forget to hit “save”. Then you can pick the column, such as artist or location, to get the information you need ... as long, of course, that you entered it in the first place.

By the way, should you be interested, Mary Ann Goley published a book in 2020 called, “Democracy’s Medici: The Federal Reserve and the Art of Collecting”.  I might just order that!

What is Wrong with AI Art?

Today I will probably upset all my artist friends, but I am not sure what is wrong with AI art!

What is art? I might as well ask, what is life? In other words, it is a question with infinite answers. I believe creativity comes from the imagination or maybe a simpler idea would be thought. There is no imagination without thinking and from there extrapolation of that thought.

How do we express art. I watch children draw pictures and as soon as they are able, they draw or paint objects that they see i.e. people, objects, fruits and vegetables. Then they draw what they believe is funny such as a doll riding on a cat. That is the beginning of creativity.

As I understand it AI art is created in various steps. Here is one formula:

An artist enters a prompt into an AI art generator. The generator analyzes data to find patterns and examples of what the prompt describes. The generator uses the data to create an image or video. The artist can refine the image with additional prompts.

When Christies, this month, had the “first-ever auction dedicated to artificial intelligence generated art” 5,600 artists signed an open letter asking them to cancel the sale. They wrote:

"Many of the artworks you plan to auction were created using AI models that are known to be trained on copyrighted work without a license ... "These models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them. Your support of these models, and the people who use them, rewards and further incentivizes AI companies' mass theft of human artists' work."

What I don’t understand is that as long as they are not making exact reproductions why this is any different than one artist learning from another. Even a copy of a known artist’s work by their student can have value. It is not unusual to find several versions of the same painting from earlier centuries. The owner of these works, often museums, fight, metaphorically speaking, over who has the original.

It seems to me that using information about works of art to create something different is still the creative process. It all reminds me of the objections to photography. Photography, in the 19th and into the 20th century was thought of as just a mechanical process that lacked the intuitive mind of a true artist. Further there was concern that when color photography was perfected it would take the place of painting.

Neither ever happened because it is what we call the “eye” of the photographer and the painter and the way they see the world that is the creative process.

In summation, to me AI is just another tool of the trade.