L'ATELIER
ROBERT COANE
- THE CARAMEL AWARD -
for the
WORST
ART
DEAD OR ALIVE
and
Art-rageous Attacks Against Art and Artists
"Artistic standards were abandoned, the comfortable
cult of the mediocre prevailed,
and presentation became confused with substance."
-
J. D. Landis in Longing
the June 2002 CARAMEL -
Agence France-Presse Soldiers search a canal in Strasbourg for dumped art. |
Shredded!!!
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18th C. small silver boat retrieved from the Rhône-Rhine Canal |
16th C. Belgian silver and gold chalices retrieved from the Rhône-Rhine Canal |
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Starsbourg residence of Mireille Breitwieser, mother of art thief Stephane Breitwieser. |
A
hoard of stolen
art worth more than $1.4bn (£960m) has been destroyed - by
the mother of a French art thief. Mireille
Breitwieser cut up the works, including canvases by Antoine Watteau
and Peter Bruegel, after the arrest of her son Stephane for stealing
a bugle from a museum in Lucerne, Switzerland. Smaller
museums rely on the rumour that every picture is nailed to the wall
and alarmed Stephane
Breitwieser, 31, accumulated a collection of 172 artefacts, including
chinaware, pictures and statuettes, over seven years. Breitwieser,
currently in prison, stole the works in the years after 1995, travelling
across Europe to work as a restaurant waiter in different cities.
With his girlfriend Catherine Kleinklauss he visited regional museums
and smaller collections where security was less tight. Breitwieser
appears to have stolen works from museums in France, Switzerland,
the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and Belgium. The disaster has exposed the inadequacy of security arrangements at many regional collections in Europe. "Smaller museums rely on the rumour that every picture is nailed to the wall and alarmed - but they're not, it simply costs too much for the smaller collections to do that," said Ms Smith. UPDATE: We are gratefull to Nikolai Klein for bringing this story to our attention. |
"Nor wonder
how I lost my wits;
Oh! Celia, Celia, Celia shits!"
- Jonathan Swift
"YOU
HAVE THE NERVE TO DRESS UP A TURD AND CALL IT A CARAMEL" ...is the inspiration for our less than inspiring monthly award. Here we do NOT discriminate. There are no sacred cows. High and low beware! Our CARAMEL statuette is derived from the traditional cagané figure or 'shitter' from the northeastern Spanish region of Cataluña where no manger scene can be found without one. It's attributes are far more prosaic here. |
The
criteria, views and opinions expressed in the CARAMEL AWARD are exclussively
those of Robert Coane who is solely responsible for its
content and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of the other
participants in www.Atelier-RC.com or of the members of L'Atelier.
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THIEF |