\nDuring World War II, Cambridge University art historian Sir Anthony Blunt (1907-83) worked as a spy for the British counterintelligence Security Service, popularly known as MI5. After the war he was knighted and held several prestigious positions including Surveyor of the King’s Pictures, Director of the Courtauld Institute of Art and paid consultant for many international museums including the National Gallery of Canada. For the latter he acquired, in 1953, the painting Augustus and Cleopatra (c.1630), which Blunt had himself attributed to Nicolas Poussin, in 1938. Before Blunt, Poussin held considerably less stature in the canon of art history, but starting with his earliest writings, Blunt brought Poussin into the foreground of contemporary scholarship with a completed catalogue raisonné and a major survey at the Louvre in 1960. Pieced together from factual fragments and furtive fictions, not unlike Blunt’s own secret personality, the function of a ‘Poussin’ was authored during the twentieth century in a cloud of controversy and entwined with the persona of Blunt. At the nexus of this controversy one could investigate a double Anthony: one in the narrative of the painting and one in the narrative surrounding the painting. \n
\n\n\nSerendipitously, the classical iconography in the painting foreshadowed the modern double agent, or inversely as Carlos Ginzburg said: \"When causes cannot be repeated, there is no alternative but to infer them from their effects.\" Two key clues. First, if we believe Blunt and take this image to represent a meeting between the conquered Cleopatra and Emperor Augustus, then we notice immediately that the third person in the triangle of power is absent: Marc Antony, the queer lover of Cleopatra and adversary of Augustus. It is the absence and yet ghost of Antony that complicates love and creates a political body. Perhaps one can draw a parallel to another queer Anthony: Sir Anthony Blunt, who was publicly outed as a homosexual by the magazine Private Eye in 1979 as part of a case for his treachery and proof of duplicity. Second, the key to the painting is yet another element in between Augustus and Cleopatra, this time, however, it is not a lack but rather the present object of exchange. What is it that Cleopatra delivers to her conqueror Augustus—what is the motivation for the event and also the secret to the tableau? \n
\n\n\n In 1938, Blunt posited the theory, based on the narrative told by Cassius Dio, that the object is a pouch of love letters between Cleopatra and Julius Caesar that bear witness to Augustus’s uncle formerly holding Cleopatra in good graces. Of course, the contents of the pouch remain a mystery. (Even forensic X-rays of the painting cannot tell us more about its contents.) A year after discovering the painting and starting his career at the Warburg Institute, the war interrupted Blunt’s academic life. Among Blunt’s portfolio of tasks as a spy at the Ministry was the development and management of operation XXX, or TripleX. It would seem Blunt shifted his analysis of pouches in paintings to an analysis of pouches in reality. Blunt’s XXX programme devised a way to secretly intercept diplomatic pouches in transit which were supposed to have immunity from police and custom officers’ search and seizure rights. Furthermore, one of the first tasks conducted by Anthony Blunt as Surveyor to the King’s Pictures (the title for curator of the royal family’s art collection) was a discrete mission in 1945 to recover the private letters of the British monarch in fractured post-War Germany. The clandestine recovery of information was not a new practice for Blunt and, while it might seem odd for an art curator, it is illustrative of his double identity. \n
\n\n\nBy the 1970s, cracks started surfacing publicly in the dual identities of Poussin’s painting and Blunt himself. In 1971, the National Gallery of Canada revoked Blunt’s attribution of the painting to Poussin, demoting it to an unknown Italian painter. (Blunt would hold firm to his 1938 conjecture to the end.) This crisis of identity paled in comparison to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s parliamentary pronouncement, in 1979, that revealed Sir Anthony Blunt was a double agent for the Soviets since the very start of his career as an art historian at Cambridge—casting a blow to the legitimacy of both his ‘intelligences’. The British intelligence community already knew for decades that Blunt was part of the Cambridge Spy Ring, but Blunt had strategically negotiated immunity and secrecy in exchange for revealing information (a gambit that ultimately proved politically useless for the Ministry). In a 1979 BBC press conference a few days after Thatcher’s announcement, he tried to contextualise his actions as motivated by 1930s anti-Fascist impulses and a deep loyalty to his friends. Without remorse he read from a prepared statement: \"This was a case of political conscience against loyalty to country, I chose conscience.\" In the end, Blunt has remained an enigma, posing more questions than answers. Specifically, the question remains of whether he was such an ambitious curator because of his passion for art, or because his superlative professionalism was the perfect cover for his intelligence career. More generally, his narrative questions straightforward notions of agency, authorship and attribution that resonate beyond his particular circumstances.\n
\n\n", "author": "UNKNOWN ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/01-No6092/01-No6092-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 305, "width": 400, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 1, "id": "page_1", "title": "Augustus and Cleopatra ", "short_title": "02 No6092: Xray", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 10, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/02-6092Xray/No6092-Xray.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1456, "width": 2000, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "1976\nRadiograph produced by the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) in 1976 to forensically analyze the underpainting — pentimenti — of acquisition No6092. At this point in the painting’s story, the work had already been stripped of its Poussin attribution, but after several decades of suspicion, NGC curator Myron Laskin was starting to doubt his doubt. As his correspondence with peers reveal in the curatorial file at the NGC, he had started to reconsider Blunt’s attribution and possibly restore the painting’s authorship to Poussin. This radiograph was part of reopening of this analysis after a first wave of contestation by competing critics had ran afoul and subsided, and opinions were mounting in support of Blunt’s original claim. Three’s years later, with Blunt’s public outing as a double agent and homosexual, the case of No6092 become collateral damage.\n
\n\n", "author": "UNKNOWN ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/02-6092Xray/No6092-Xray-thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 212, "width": 303, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 2, "id": "page_2", "title": "A Newly Discovered Poussin", "short_title": "03 Blunt: Apollo", "type": "image", "tag_0": 3, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/03-Apollo/Apollo-P01.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2087, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/03-Apollo/Apollo-P02.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2087, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/03-Apollo/Apollo-P03.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2087, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/03-Apollo/Apollo-P04.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2087, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/03-Apollo/Apollo-P05.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2087, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "Apollo\nBlunt’s first declared attribution was the Cleopatra and Augustus painting in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first image reproduction of the painting. \n
\n\n", "author": "ANTHONY BLUNT ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/03-Apollo/Apollo-Thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 278, "width": 203, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 3, "id": "page_3", "title": "Note on Mr. McCurry's Visit", "short_title": "04 Blunt: McCurry's Visit ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 3, "tag_1": 4, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/04-McCurry/04-McCurry.png", "caption": "", "height": 1845, "width": 1500, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "16.7.1952\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "ANTHONY BLUNT", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/04-McCurry/04-McCurry-thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 246, "width": 200, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 4, "id": "page_4", "title": "Telegram: Send Express Poussin ", "short_title": "05 Blunt: Telegram ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 3, "tag_1": 4, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/05-Telegram/05-Telegram.png", "caption": "", "height": 1402, "width": 1500, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "27.9.1952\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "HARRY O. McCURRY", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/05-Telegram/05-Telegram-thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 187, "width": 200, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 5, "id": "page_5", "title": "Record of Work Done on Pictures ", "short_title": "06 NGC: Record ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 10, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/06-Record/06-Record.png", "caption": "", "height": 2444, "width": 1500, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "1952\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "HARRY O. MCCURRY", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/06-Record/06-Record-thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 326, "width": 200, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 6, "id": "page_6", "title": "Receiving and Shipping Picture", "short_title": "07 NGC: Receiving ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/07-Receiving/07-Receiving-P01.png", "caption": "", "height": 2296, "width": 1500, "type": "png" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/07-Receiving/07-Receiving-P02.png", "caption": "", "height": 2296, "width": 1500, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "1961 (with later glossing)\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "UNKNOWN", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/07-Receiving/07-Receiving-thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 306, "width": 200, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 7, "id": "page_7", "title": "Letter to Robert H. Hubbard Requesting Photo of Label ", "short_title": "08 Mahon to Hubbard", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/08-Mahon/08-Mahon.png", "caption": "", "height": 2081, "width": 1500, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "3.2.1965\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "DENIS MAHON", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/08-Mahon/08-Mahon-thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 278, "width": 200, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 8, "id": "page_8", "title": "Letter to Denis Mahon with Polaroid Photo of Label ", "short_title": "09 Hubbard to Mahon ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/09-Hubbard/09-Hubbard-P01.png", "caption": "", "height": 1771, "width": 1500, "type": "png" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/09-Hubbard/09-Hubbard-P02.png", "caption": "", "height": 1771, "width": 1500, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "17.2.1965\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "ROBERT H. HUBBARD", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/09-Hubbard/09-Hubbard-thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 236, "width": 200, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 9, "id": "page_9", "title": "Close Up of no6092 Label ", "short_title": "10 No6092: Label ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 10, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/10-Label/10-Label-P01.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1109, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/10-Label/10-Label-P02.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1109, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "No date\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "UNKNOWN ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/10-Label/10-Label-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 158, "width": 200, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 10, "id": "page_10", "title": "Letter to Robert H. Hubbbard ", "short_title": "11 Mahon to Hubbard", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/11-Mahon/11-Mahon-P01.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1864, "width": 1499, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/11-Mahon/11-Mahon-P02.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1864, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "27.3.1965\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "DENIS MAHON", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/11-Mahon/11-Mahon-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 249, "width": 200, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 11, "id": "page_11", "title": "Note on Two Paintings ", "short_title": "12 Laskin: Note", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/12-Laskin/12-Laskin.png", "caption": "", "height": 1219, "width": 1500, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "4.4.1968\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "MYRON LASKIN, JR.", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/12-Laskin/12-Laskin-thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 162, "width": 200, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 12, "id": "page_12", "title": "Letter to Konrad Oberhuber ", "short_title": "13 Laskin to Oberhuber ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/13-Oberhuber/13-Laskin.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1946, "width": 1501, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "25.3.1975\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "MYRON LASKIN, JR.", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/13-Oberhuber/13-Laskin-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 256, "width": 198, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 13, "id": "page_13", "title": "Letter to William H. Gerdts", "short_title": "14 Laskin to Gerdts ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/14-Laskin/14-Laskin.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1942, "width": 1501, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "9.4.1975\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "MYRON LASKIN, JR.", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/14-Laskin/14-Laskin-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 254, "width": 203, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 14, "id": "page_14", "title": "Letter to Louise d'Argencourt ", "short_title": "15 Miles to d'Argencourt ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/15-Miles/15-Miles-P01.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 3334, "width": 2576, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/15-Miles/15-Miles-P02.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1914, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "16.3.77\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "H.A.D. MILES", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/15-Miles/15-Miles-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 259, "width": 200, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 15, "id": "page_15", "title": "Letter to Myron Laskin, Jr. ", "short_title": "16 Lavin to Laskin ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/16-Lavin/16-Lavin.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1942, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "2.12.74\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "MARILYN LAVIN", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/16-Lavin/16-Lavin-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 258, "width": 207, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 16, "id": "page_16", "title": "Letter to Marilyn Lavin ", "short_title": "17 Laskin to Lavin ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/17-Laskin/17-Laskin.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1942, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "10.4.75\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "MYRON LASKIN, JR.", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/17-Laskin/17-Laskin-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 255, "width": 204, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 17, "id": "page_17", "title": "Memo: Italian School 17th Century, no6092 ", "short_title": "18 NGC: Italian Memo", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/18-Unknown/18-Unkown.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1942, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "18.2.85\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "UNKNOWN ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/18-Unknown/18-Unkown-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 259, "width": 195, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 18, "id": "page_18", "title": "Correspondence with Konrad Oberhuber ", "short_title": "19 Laskin to Oberhuber ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 4, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/19-Oberhuber/19-Oberhuber-P01.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1941, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/19-Oberhuber/19-Oberhuber-P02.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1941, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/19-Oberhuber/19-Oberhuber-P03.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1941, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "1975-1976\nThe archival documents #03-19 trace the history of the painting no6092 from its discovery by Blunt in 1938 to Blunt’s fall from grace in 1979. Five stages are represented in the life of the painting: \n
\n\n\n1. Attribution to Nicholas Poussin by Anthony Blunt (his first professional attribution) in an early article he published in Apollo in 1938. This journal article is also the first mechanical reproduction of the painting (#03);\n
\n\n\n2. Acquisition by National Gallery of Canada (NGC) Director H.O. McCurry in 1952-53, brokered by Blunt with rotating exhibition placement between the public galleries and the office of subsequent NGC Director Charles Comfort (#04-07); \n
\n\n\n3. Attack on the attribution of the painting in the 1950/60s best exemplified by Blunt’s rival Denis Mahon and de-attributed by NGC Curator Myron Laskin Jr. in 1971 (#08-12); \n
\n\n\n4. Apologia in the 1970s for the painting to be re-attributed to Poussin by most experts, including NGC Curator Laskin, who started thinking he originally made a mistake (#13-19); \n
\n\n\n5. Abandoned after Blunt’s public disgrace in 1979. Discussions about the painting evaporated with the personal attacks on Blunt effectively ending any momentum by the majority of the critics to reattribute no6092 to Poussin (#18).\n
\n\n", "author": "MYRON LASKIN, JR", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/19-Oberhuber/19-Oberhuber-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 259, "width": 200, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 19, "id": "page_19", "title": "Notes on Radiographs of Five Paintings by Poussin", "short_title": "20 Rees: Xrays", "type": "image", "tag_0": 6, "tag_1": 10, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/20-Jones/20-Jones-P01.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2016, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/20-Jones/20-Jones-P02.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2016, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/20-Jones/20-Jones-P03.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2016, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/20-Jones/20-Jones-P04.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2016, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 102, no 688, July Book\nThe establishment of the Chemical Laboratory of the Royal Museums in Berlin in 1888 was a milestone moment in the analysis of cultural artefacts for authenticity and attribution. Wilhelm Röntgen invented radiography in 1895 and within a year his former student, Walter König, used the technology to x-ray an oil painting. Documentation of the forensic analysis of artworks began in 1914 when Alexander Faber registered a German patent for the application of radiographic analysis to the examination of paintings. Eventually the method spread to Amsterdam and Paris. By the 1930s, it was being integrated into museum infrastructure and then academic institutions, including at the newly minted Courtauld Institute of Art under the technical eye of Stephen Rees Jones, the long-time director of the institute’s laboratory under Sir Anthony Blunt. X-rays were first employed to look under the skin of the paint to see traces of earlier versions of a painting (also known as pentimenti, Italian for repent) or of a different painting altogether. Originally called ‘shadowgraphs,’ radiographs however are not the only invisible wavelengths that can peek behind Parrhasius’s curtain. Researchers also analyze works of art using infrared rays, which penetrate the surface layer of paint and reflect off the underdrawing—paint being more translucent than graphite to the long waveforms of infrared. Under such analysis, a work’s authenticity can often be determined, since corrections and underdrawings usually signify the working processes of an original. Such a theory, however, does not easily apply to Poussin as his rational approach dictated carefully planned compositions that were not resolved at the layer of the paint. \n
\n\n", "author": "S. REES JONES ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/20-Jones/20-Jones-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 300, "width": 223, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 20, "id": "page_20", "title": "Radiograph of Nicolas Poussin's Landscape with a Woman Washing Her Feet ", "short_title": "21 Poussin: Xray", "type": "image", "tag_0": 2, "tag_1": 4, "tag_2": 10, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/21-Xray/21-Xray.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1309, "width": 2001, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "2016\nThe establishment of the Chemical Laboratory of the Royal Museums in Berlin in 1888 was a milestone moment in the analysis of cultural artefacts for authenticity and attribution. Wilhelm Röntgen invented radiography in 1895 and within a year his former student, Walter König, used the technology to x-ray an oil painting. Documentation of the forensic analysis of artworks began in 1914 when Alexander Faber registered a German patent for the application of radiographic analysis to the examination of paintings. Eventually the method spread to Amsterdam and Paris. By the 1930s, it was being integrated into museum infrastructure and then academic institutions, including at the newly minted Courtauld Institute of Art under the technical eye of Stephen Rees Jones, the long-time director of the institute’s laboratory under Sir Anthony Blunt. X-rays were first employed to look under the skin of the paint to see traces of earlier versions of a painting (also known as pentimenti, Italian for repent) or of a different painting altogether. Originally called ‘shadowgraphs,’ radiographs however are not the only invisible wavelengths that can peek behind Parrhasius’s curtain. Researchers also analyze works of art using infrared rays, which penetrate the surface layer of paint and reflect off the underdrawing—paint being more translucent than graphite to the long waveforms of infrared. Under such analysis, a work’s authenticity can often be determined, since corrections and underdrawings usually signify the working processes of an original. Such a theory, however, does not easily apply to Poussin as his rational approach dictated carefully planned compositions that were not resolved at the layer of the paint. \n
\n\n", "author": "UNKNOWN ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/21-Xray/21-Xray-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 137, "width": 198, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 21, "id": "page_21", "title": "Woman Painted at Palavas ", "short_title": "22 Courbet: Painting", "type": "image", "tag_0": 2, "tag_1": 3, "tag_2": 5, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/22-Courbet/22-Courbet.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1814, "width": 1501, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "1956\nGustav Courbet is most famous as the 19th-century painter who rebelled against the Academy and proselytized the Realist moment that painted everyday people and everyday scenes contra the mythological and heroic tableaus of History painting and Romanticism. As a militant Marxist his actions extended beyond the canvas; in 1870 Courbet recommended the Vendome Column in Paris be taken down as a symbol of Bonapartist Imperialism. As part of the Paris Commune, he followed through on the declaration but was imprisoned as a result and later lived out his life in exile. Whether he was a mischievous Marxist who flooded the art world with counterfeits during his life time, or he was duped by his studio assistants remains part of the puzzle in attempting to determine which paintings are authentically his. The painting Woman Painted at Palavas, acquired by Sir Anthony Blunt in 1956 for the AGO’s collection, is a special case: research has revealed three layers of signatures in the work. Courbet scholar Petra Chu has suggested the figure in the painting is not by Courbet, but that the signature might be authentic. This distinction, of course, follows 19th-century artist theories of authorship, later demonstrated by French artist Marcel Duchamp’s conceptualization of the Readymade, which challenged exactly the necessity of matching the signature and the production of the work—the former determining authorship exclusively as best exemplified in the Urinal signed by R. Mutt. Later French theorists Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida further explore the semiotic slippage of the signature and subjectivity. In 1955 Lacan purchased Courbet’s most famous painting Origin of the World (1866) and displayed it hidden in his private home until his death when it was transferred to the State as payment for inheritance tax. \n
\n\n", "author": "GUSTAV COURBET ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/22-Courbet/22-Courbet-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 301, "width": 241, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 22, "id": "page_22", "title": "Group of Shelterers During an Air Raid ", "short_title": "23 Moore: Painting I", "type": "image", "tag_0": 2, "tag_1": 3, "tag_2": 5, "tag_3": 6, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/23-Moore1941/23-Moore1941.png", "caption": "", "height": 1037, "width": 1500, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "1941 38.2 × 55.4 cm\nThere are conflicting stories how Anthony Blunt was introduced into the Canadian Museum system. A year before he was on retainer for the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) in 1948, he was secured by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). One theory is that Charles Vincent Massey–then-Governor General and driving force behind the founding of the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Library of Canada—introduced Blunt to the AGO’s first Director Martin Baldwin. Another source says it was University of Toronto professor Peter Brieger, who was originally at the Courtauld in the 1930s, who instigated the relationship. Blunt acquired several works of art for the gallery including the Courbet painting Woman Painted at Palavas, but is most famous for fostering the AGO’s significant relationship with Henry Moore. After curating the 50th anniversary exhibition for the AGO in 1950, Blunt brokered the acquisition of Moore’s sketch Group of Shelterers During an Air Raid, made while he was an official war artist in 1941 and Blunt was at MI5. This relationship blossomed into an entire wing of Henry Moore sculptures and Blunt even found the first Moore curator, Alan Wilkinson, a former student of his at the Courtauld. The first director of Conservation at the NGC also studied under Blunt at the Courtauld during this period and more directly under technical director Stephen Rees-Jones. The current Director of Conservation and Technical Research at the NGC, Stephen Gritt, was also educated at the Courtauld Institute for Art. \n
\n\n", "author": "HENRY MOORE ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/23-Moore1941/23-Moore1941-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 133, "width": 191, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 23, "id": "page_23", "title": "Two Women on a Bench in a Shelter ", "short_title": "24 Moore: Painting II", "type": "image", "tag_0": 2, "tag_1": 3, "tag_2": 5, "tag_3": 6, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/24-Moore1940/24-Moore1940.png", "caption": "", "height": 1230, "width": 1485, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "1940\nThere are conflicting stories how Anthony Blunt was introduced into the Canadian Museum system. A year before he was on retainer for the National Gallery of Canada (NGC) in 1948, he was secured by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). One theory is that Charles Vincent Massey–then-Governor General and driving force behind the founding of the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Library of Canada—introduced Blunt to the AGO’s first Director Martin Baldwin. Another source says it was University of Toronto professor Peter Brieger, who was originally at the Courtauld in the 1930s, who instigated the relationship. Blunt acquired several works of art for the gallery including the Courbet painting Woman Painted at Palavas, but is most famous for fostering the AGO’s significant relationship with Henry Moore. After curating the 50th anniversary exhibition for the AGO in 1950, Blunt brokered the acquisition of Moore’s sketch Group of Shelterers During an Air Raid, made while he was an official war artist in 1941 and Blunt was at MI5. This relationship blossomed into an entire wing of Henry Moore sculptures and Blunt even found the first Moore curator, Alan Wilkinson, a former student of his at the Courtauld. The first director of Conservation at the NGC also studied under Blunt at the Courtauld during this period and more directly under technical director Stephen Rees-Jones. The current Director of Conservation and Technical Research at the NGC, Stephen Gritt, was also educated at the Courtauld Institute for Art. \n
\n\n", "author": "HENRY MOORE ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/24-Moore1940/24-Moore1940-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 161, "width": 191, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 24, "id": "page_24", "title": "Email RE: Toronto Courbet question (4.5.2015) ", "short_title": "25 Chu: Courbet Signature", "type": "image", "tag_0": 5, "tag_1": 10, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/25-Chu/25-Chu.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1941, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "2015\nGustav Courbet is most famous as the 19th-century painter who rebelled against the Academy and proselytized the Realist moment that painted everyday people and everyday scenes contra the mythological and heroic tableaus of History painting and Romanticism. As a militant Marxist his actions extended beyond the canvas; in 1870 Courbet recommended the Vendome Column in Paris be taken down as a symbol of Bonapartist Imperialism. As part of the Paris Commune, he followed through on the declaration but was imprisoned as a result and later lived out his life in exile. Whether he was a mischievous Marxist who flooded the art world with counterfeits during his life time, or he was duped by his studio assistants remains part of the puzzle in attempting to determine which paintings are authentically his. The painting Woman Painted at Palavas, acquired by Sir Anthony Blunt in 1956 for the AGO’s collection, is a special case: research has revealed three layers of signatures in the work. Courbet scholar Petra Chu has suggested the figure in the painting is not by Courbet, but that the signature might be authentic. This distinction, of course, follows 19th-century artist theories of authorship, later demonstrated by French artist Marcel Duchamp’s conceptualization of the Readymade, which challenged exactly the necessity of matching the signature and the production of the work—the former determining authorship exclusively as best exemplified in the Urinal signed by R. Mutt. Later French theorists Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida further explore the semiotic slippage of the signature and subjectivity. In 1955 Lacan purchased Courbet’s most famous painting Origin of the World (1866) and displayed it hidden in his private home until his death when it was transferred to the State as payment for inheritance tax. \n
\n\n", "author": "PETRA CHU ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/25-Chu/25-Chu-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 259, "width": 200, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 25, "id": "page_25", "title": "Courbet Signatures", "short_title": "26 Fernier: Courbet Signatures", "type": "image", "tag_0": 5, "tag_1": 10, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/26-Fernier/26-Fernier.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2253, "width": 1501, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "La Vie et l'oeuvre de Gustave Courbet : catalogue raisonné\nGustav Courbet is most famous as the 19th-century painter who rebelled against the Academy and proselytized the Realist moment that painted everyday people and everyday scenes contra the mythological and heroic tableaus of History painting and Romanticism. As a militant Marxist his actions extended beyond the canvas; in 1870 Courbet recommended the Vendome Column in Paris be taken down as a symbol of Bonapartist Imperialism. As part of the Paris Commune, he followed through on the declaration but was imprisoned as a result and later lived out his life in exile. Whether he was a mischievous Marxist who flooded the art world with counterfeits during his life time, or he was duped by his studio assistants remains part of the puzzle in attempting to determine which paintings are authentically his. The painting Woman Painted at Palavas, acquired by Sir Anthony Blunt in 1956 for the AGO’s collection, is a special case: research has revealed three layers of signatures in the work. Courbet scholar Petra Chu has suggested the figure in the painting is not by Courbet, but that the signature might be authentic. This distinction, of course, follows 19th-century artist theories of authorship, later demonstrated by French artist Marcel Duchamp’s conceptualization of the Readymade, which challenged exactly the necessity of matching the signature and the production of the work—the former determining authorship exclusively as best exemplified in the Urinal signed by R. Mutt. Later French theorists Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida further explore the semiotic slippage of the signature and subjectivity. In 1955 Lacan purchased Courbet’s most famous painting Origin of the World (1866) and displayed it hidden in his private home until his death when it was transferred to the State as payment for inheritance tax. \n
\n\n", "author": "ROBERT FERNIER ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/26-Fernier/26-Fernier-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 453, "width": 301, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 26, "id": "page_26", "title": "Woman Painted at Palavas (detail) ", "short_title": "27 Courbet: Signature", "type": "image", "tag_0": 5, "tag_1": 10, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/27-Signature/27-Signature.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1500, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "1854/2016\nGustav Courbet is most famous as the 19th-century painter who rebelled against the Academy and proselytized the Realist moment that painted everyday people and everyday scenes contra the mythological and heroic tableaus of History painting and Romanticism. As a militant Marxist his actions extended beyond the canvas; in 1870 Courbet recommended the Vendome Column in Paris be taken down as a symbol of Bonapartist Imperialism. As part of the Paris Commune, he followed through on the declaration but was imprisoned as a result and later lived out his life in exile. Whether he was a mischievous Marxist who flooded the art world with counterfeits during his life time, or he was duped by his studio assistants remains part of the puzzle in attempting to determine which paintings are authentically his. The painting Woman Painted at Palavas, acquired by Sir Anthony Blunt in 1956 for the AGO’s collection, is a special case: research has revealed three layers of signatures in the work. Courbet scholar Petra Chu has suggested the figure in the painting is not by Courbet, but that the signature might be authentic. This distinction, of course, follows 19th-century artist theories of authorship, later demonstrated by French artist Marcel Duchamp’s conceptualization of the Readymade, which challenged exactly the necessity of matching the signature and the production of the work—the former determining authorship exclusively as best exemplified in the Urinal signed by R. Mutt. Later French theorists Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida further explore the semiotic slippage of the signature and subjectivity. In 1955 Lacan purchased Courbet’s most famous painting Origin of the World (1866) and displayed it hidden in his private home until his death when it was transferred to the State as payment for inheritance tax. \n
\n\n", "author": "GUSTAV COURBET ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/27-Signature/27-Signature-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 300, "width": 300, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 27, "id": "page_27", "title": "Invitation to Blunt Lecture (16.12.1965)", "short_title": "28 AGO: Blunt Lecture ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 3, "tag_1": 5, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/28-B-Lecture/28-Blunt-Lecture.png", "caption": "", "height": 1941, "width": 1500, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "1965\nCollection of Art Gallery of Ontario\n
\n\n", "author": "WILLIAM J. WITHROW ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/28-B-Lecture/28-Blunt-Lecture-Thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 259, "width": 200, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 28, "id": "page_28", "title": "Letter from Sir Anthony Blunt to William J. Withrow re: Stage I opening ceremonies (8.4.1974) ", "short_title": "29 Blunt: AGO Opening", "type": "image", "tag_0": 3, "tag_1": 5, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/29-B-Letter/29-Blunt-Retire.png", "caption": "", "height": 1817, "width": 1500, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "1974\nCollection of Art Gallery of Ontario\n
\n\n", "author": "ANTHONY BLUNT ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/29-B-Letter/29-Blunt-Retire-thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 242, "width": 200, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 29, "id": "page_29", "title": "An Apology for Poussin’s Augustus and Cleopatra: Sir Anthony Blunt’s Farewell Lecture at the Courtauld Institute of Art, 8 April 1974", "short_title": "30 Stankievech: An Apology ", "type": "video", "tag_0": 3, "tag_1": 7, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "type": "video", "caption": "", "uri": "https://vimeo.com/583652669/cab9cfe481" } ], "citation": "2016\nAn Apology is a 35mm slide projection that constructs the imaginary final lecture by Sir Anthony Blunt at the Courtauld Institute of Art upon his retirement in 1974. Blunt’s first public attribution occurred at the very start of his Art History career in 1938 with an essay published in the magazine Apollo claiming to have discovered Poussin’s Augustus and Cleopatra. After the war he brokered an acquisition between his MI5 comrade Tomas Harris, who was now an art dealer, and the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). From the start, his attribution was challenged by other formative Poussin scholars such as Denis Mahon and Jacques Thuillier, but he remained until his death unshaken in his original diagnosis. It seemed fitting to close his life’s work at the Institute by returning to the same painting that had only recently been stripped of attribution to Poussin by the National Gallery’s research curator Myron Laskin in the gallery’s 1971 report. Conscious that it was his final lecture, and thus bookending his career on the analysis of a single painting, Blunt starts with a slide of Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time—a painting in which the iconography illustrates the infinite cycle of life as personified in four figures: poverty, labour, wealth, and pleasure.\n
\n\n\nAfter the prologue, the body of the lecture is broken down into four parts:\n
\n\n\n1. Blunt lays out the original argument he drafted in Apollo;\n
\n\n\n2. He updates his 1930’s gaze with a forensic analysis of radiographs that his Courtauld colleague Stephen Rees Jones developed as well as a radiograph taken of Augustus and Cleopatra at the NGC;\n
\n\n\n3. He presents a survey of images by painters proposed by international scholars as alternative authors to the painting as logged in the “curatorial file” at the NGC;\n
\n\n\n4. He offers a self-reflective conclusion that meditates on the role of the shadow in Poussin’s compositions and aesthetic theories.\n
\n\n\nBlunt bolsters his connoisseur’s eye (relying on the conjectural Mancini/Morelli methods) with a conceptual analysis of Poussin’s thematic obsession with the shadow. Strategically differing from the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio and the Baroque spotlight which used light to focus attention on the key element of the tableau, Blunt argues instead Poussin often relies on an absent foci at the centre of his paintings—an absence Blunt argues that is not an emptiness but rather a very meaningful shade. It is with this argument that Blunt ties the controversial painting Augustus and Cleopatra to Poussin’s most famous painting, The Arcadian Shepherds, because, quoting an earlier essay by himself, ‘the exact nuance of the ideas expressed in the painting can best be seen by considering it in connexion with other pictures belonging to the same group.’ Structured using the same composition—a prostrated agent with the western setting sun casting their face in darkness—the geometric centre of both paintings locates the essential clue to the immaterial meaning of the tableaux. In the former, the black pouch with its secret contents and in the latter the inscription “Et in Arcadia ego” under the searching shepherd’s shadow. The lecture ends by recounting the Classical inspiration of the painting—Pliny the Elder’s account of painting’s origin as accidentally discovered when tracing the outline of a human shadow to preserve the memory of a lover going off to war—and contrasting Plato’s Cave of Shadows with the Greek term for painting, skiagraphia (which literally means ‘shadow painting’). With dramatic flair, Blunt ends the lecture not with an empty slide illuminating the classroom, but rather plunges the classroom into darkness with a full black frame. Here the slideshow automatically continues by looping to the first image: Dance to the Music of Time.\n
\n\n\nSlidelist: \n
\n\n\n01 Nicolas Poussin / Dance to the Music of Time / 1633-34 \n
\n\n\n02 Nicolas Poussin / Augustus and Cleopatra c.1624 \n
\n\n\n03 Nicolas Poussin / Augustus and Cleopatra (Label on back of stretcher) undated \n
\n\n\n04 Nicolas Poussin / Death of Germanicus 1627 \n
\n\n\n05 Nicolas Poussin / Comparison of Augustus + Germanicus \n
\n\n\n06 Nicolas Poussin / Nymph and satyr drinking (2 Versions) / 1626-28 \n
\n\n\n07 Nicolas Poussin / Martydom of St. Erasemus (Study vs. Altarpiece) / 1628-29 \n
\n\n\n08 Nicolas Poussin / Augustus and Cleopatra / c.1624 \n
\n\n\n09 Noel Coypel / Emperor Trajan during a public audience / 1699 \n
\n\n\n10 Marc Antonio / The Queen of Sheeba (after Giulio Romano) / c.1505\n
\n\n\n11 Nicolas Poussin / Venus Bringing Arms to Aeneas / c.1620 \n
\n\n\n12 Annibale Carraci / Remus Before Amulius / c.1590 \n
\n\n\n13 Alessandro Allori / Annunciation / 1584 \n
\n\n\n14 Nicolas Poussin / The Triumph of David (X-Radiograph) / 1631-33 \n
\n\n\n15 Nicolas Poussin / The Triumph of David / 1631-33 \n
\n\n\n16 Rembrandt van Rijn / The Anatomy of Dr. Tulp / 1632 \n
\n\n\n17 Rembrandt van Rijn / The Anatomy of Dr. Tulp (X-Radiographic Detail) / 1632\n
\n\n\n18 Nicolas Poussin / Augustus and Cleopatra / c.1624 \n
\n\n\n19 Nicolas Poussin / Augustus and Cleopatra (X-Radiograph) / c.1624 \n
\n\n\n20 Nicolas Poussin / Rape of the Sabine Women / 1633-34 \n
\n\n\n21 Jacques Stella / Rape of the Sabine Women / c.1650 \n
\n\n\n22 Nicolas Poussin / The Adoration of the Golden Calf / 1633-34 \n
\n\n\n23 Nicolas Poussin / Rescue of Young Pyrrhus / 1634 \n
\n\n\n24 Domenico Gargiulo / Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well / 1627 \n
\n\n\n25 Nicolas Poussin / Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well / 1648 \n
\n\n\n26 Nicolas Poussin / Rebecca and Eliezer at the Well / c.1665 \n
\n\n\n27 Michelango Cerquozzi / The Rehearsal, or A Scene from the Commedia dell’Arte / 1630-40 \n
\n\n\n28 Niccolò De Simone / Banquet of Absalom / c.1650 \n
\n\n\n29 G.B. Quagliata Triumph of David / c.1650 \n
\n\n\n30 Remy Vuibert / The Decree of Constantine / c.1630 \n
\n\n\n31 Charles Le Brun / The Queens of Persia at the feet of Alexander / c. 1660 \n
\n\n\n32 Charles Le Brun / The Death of Meleager / c.1658 \n
\n\n\n33 Peter Paul Rubens / War and Peace / 1629 \n
\n\n\n34 Anthony van Dyke / Portrait Charles 1 (Triptych) / 1635 \n
\n\n\n35 Benjamin West / The Departure of Regulus / 1769 \n
\n\n\n36 Benjamin West / Death of General Wolfe / 1770 \n
\n\n\n37 Nicolas Poussin / Augustus and Cleopatra / c.1624 \n
\n\n\n38 Nicolas Poussin / The Arcadian Shepherds / 1637-1638 \n
\n\n\n39 Nicolas Poussin / Comparison of Cleopatra vs. Shepherds \n
\n\n\n40 Darkness\n
\n\n", "author": "CHARLES STANKIEVECH", "threeObject": { "path": "data_store/30-Apology/", "file": "Projector.obj" } }, { "__index": 30, "id": "page_30", "title": "Courtauld Cocktail ", "short_title": "31 Stankievech: Courtauld Cocktail ", "type": "video", "tag_0": 6, "tag_1": 7, "tag_2": 9, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "type": "video", "caption": "", "uri": "https://vimeo.com/590342273" } ], "citation": "2016\nIn 1937 at the Courtauld Institute of Art, Stephen Rees Jones discovered that chemicals in the laboratory were being stolen to create improvised explosives to throw at fascist marches. The term ‘Molotov Cocktail’ comes from the Finnish resistance a few years later but, stemming from their use in the Spanish Civil War earlier in the decade, the British Home Guard disseminated information on how to make such guerilla weapons in case of an invasion in the impending war. One strategy utilized film strips as the fuse because, at the time, the nitrate base of film stock made it highly flammable. \n
\n\n", "author": "CHARLES STANKIEVECH ", "threeObject": { "path": "data_store/31-Cocktail/", "file": "Charles_MoltovLowres.obj" } }, { "__index": 31, "id": "page_31", "title": "Letter to Anthony Blunt about BBC Broadcast (22.7.1938) ", "short_title": "32 Burgess to Blunt", "type": "image", "tag_0": 3, "tag_1": 9, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/32-Burgess/32-Burgess.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1092, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "1938\nIn 1938, Anthony Blunt makes his first public attribution—Poussin’s Augustus and Cleopatra—and his longtime friend, Soviet comrade, and Cambridge colleague, Guy Burgess, invites him to give a talk on the BBC. The letter includes specific instructions on the arrangement of Blunt’s position in the room to ensure the clock is always in view, allowing Blunt to manipulate the programme according to the time. In connoisseurship, the key element of investigation is the analysis of temporality—if elements of a work are from different periods of time (e.g. the canvas is from one century but the chemical paint pigment is from another) then the work must be considered a forgery. Time must align. \n
\n\n", "author": "GUY BURGESS ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/32-Burgess/32-Burgess-Thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 221, "width": 300, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 32, "id": "page_32", "title": "The Secret Agent ", "short_title": "33 Stankievech: Secret Agent ", "type": "video", "tag_0": 7, "tag_1": 9, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [], "citation": "2016\nAt precisely 16:45 on the 15th of February, 1894, Martial Bourdin attempted to explode time during the first international terrorist attack in London. The outcome, however, was not a hole in time but a hole in his stomach, and the symbolic destruction of his left hand before his death half an hour later. During the last moments of his life, the French Anarchist revealed nothing about his identity or intentions. The failed attack occurred at the astronomical Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, which is the starting point for international time zones and, historically, was the site where colonial mariners would set their ships’ clocks before setting out to sea. The accuracy of onboard clocks determined the accuracy of their calculations for longitudinal measurements, and thus the entire grid of the modern world originated at this exact point, all colonised time measured as difference. Official theories suggest the target was a mistake, or that Bourdin was trying to dispose of the bomb in an unpopulated site. Joseph Conrad memorialized the event in his novel The Secret Agent (1907), which attempted to construct a fictional backstory to the mystery by imagining the plan was masterminded by “The Professor.” But even Conrad found it “impossible to fathom its origin by any reasonable or even unreasonable process of thought.” While it might seem surreal to connect Bourdin’s intentions were to blow up time itself, Walter Benjamin reminds us of a similar historical attack on time during the French Revolution: “On the first evening of fighting, it so happened that the dials on clock towers were being fired at simultaneously and independently from several locations in Paris.” Benjamin further reflects on split time: “A clock that is working will always be a disturbance on the stage. There it cannot be permitted its function of measuring time. Even in a naturalistic play, astronomical time would clash with theatrical time.”\n
\n\n", "author": "CHARLES STANKIEVECH ", "threeObject": { "path": "data_store/33-Agent/", "file": "Charles_Clock.obj" } }, { "__index": 33, "id": "page_33", "title": "The Criminal-King in the 19th Century Novel", "short_title": "34 Blunt: Warburg Journal", "type": "image", "tag_0": 3, "tag_1": 6, "tag_2": 9, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/34-B-King/34-B-King-P01.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2079, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/34-B-King/34-B-King-P02.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2079, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/34-B-King/34-B-King-P03.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2079, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/34-B-King/34-B-King-Thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 277, "width": 200, "type": "jpg" }, "citation": "1938\nWhile Anthony Blunt is most famously associated with the Courtauld Institute, as its longest standing Director, his first academic job in London was for the Warburg Institute. With the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, the Warburg Institute sought refuge in London and the Courtauld Institute provided the Jewish émigrés with a home. It was here that Fritz Saxl fabricated a job for Anthony Blunt: head of publications. One of Blunt’s first texts for the Warburg journal was a marginal note, far outside his typical research interests which were in the French and Italian Baroque. To understand the strangeness of the text, we could read the peculiarity of “The Criminal-King in a 19th Century Novel” as a personal examination of his political dilemmas. In his analysis, he marvels at Balzac’s audacity and genius to create a hero that is beyond good and evil, and in a topsy-turvy world where society is corrupt, the “evil” hero ascends to become the “highest agent of the secret police.” It is at this time, with the war imminent in Europe, that Blunt begins to think strategically about his political allegiances beyond intellectual Marxism and starts the navigation towards a significant position as an agent for the Security Service MI5—all the while working as a double agent for the Soviets. \n
\n\n", "author": "ANTHONY BLUNT " }, { "__index": 34, "id": "page_34", "title": "Connoisseurs and Secret Agents ", "short_title": "35 Lewis: Secret Agents ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 3, "tag_1": 6, "tag_2": 8, "tag_3": 9, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/35-Lewis/35-Lewis-P01.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2423, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/35-Lewis/35-Lewis-P02.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2423, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/35-Lewis/35-Lewis-P03.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2423, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "1961\nLewis’s book Connoisseurs and Secret Agents was one of the first academic texts to examine the connection between historical figures that conducted in parallel both art sales and secret diplomatic missions. Lewis produced original archival research on Cardinal Alessandro Albani for the book, and it was a novel contribution in its own right to a period that lacked primary research. Despite encouraging peer reviews at the time of publication, after Anthony Blunt’s exposure as a traitor to his country as a Soviet spy, Lewis expressed her opinion that Blunt purposefully suppressed the success of the book because it hit too close to home. Blunt was Lewis’s advisor when she was conducting the research for her book as a student at the Courtauld Institute where he was the Director for twenty-seven years.\n
\n\n", "author": "LESLEY LEWIS ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/35-Lewis/35-Lewis-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 323, "width": 200, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 35, "id": "page_35", "title": "BBC Panorama: The Queen's Gallery ", "short_title": "36 Blunt: BBC ", "type": "video", "tag_0": 3, "tag_1": 8, "tag_2": 9, "tag_3": 11, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "type": "video", "caption": "", "uri": "https://player.vimeo.com/video/577750854" } ], "citation": "1962\nIn this rare footage we see Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures, Sir Anthony Blunt, giving a tour of the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace in 1962. At this time Blunt was at the peak of his intellectual career and not yet unmasked for his double intelligence activities for both MI5 and the Soviets. What emerges here, in the heart of the British Empire, as casual banter about a portrait of King Charles I and a clock that “keeps perfect time,” takes on a certain duplicity when seen in the rear view mirror of archival footage. The curatorial tour ends with a particularly ironic twist as Blunt discusses the Royal Family’s Fabergé eggs, which were gifts from the Russian royal family and were famous not only for their exquisite craftsmanship, but also because each egg opens to reveal a secret surprise. \n
\n\n", "author": "ANTHONY BLUNT", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/36-BBC/36-BBC-thumb.mp4", "type": "video", "width": 320, "height": 240 } }, { "__index": 36, "id": "page_36", "title": "L'Hypothèse du tableau volé ", "short_title": "37 Ruiz: L'Hypothèse du tableau volé ", "type": "video", "tag_0": 2, "tag_1": 8, "tag_2": 9, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "type": "video", "caption": "", "uri": "https://vimeo.com/590025784" } ], "citation": "1978\nA collaboration between theorist and erotic writer Pierre Klossowski and filmmaker Raúl Ruiz, The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting presents a debate between an art collector and a disembodied narrator, set in a ghostly mansion where the scenes shift between paintings and recreations of paintings as tableaux vivants. On the surface, the film is a meditation on the symbols of secret societies but further reflection reveals the epistemological problematics of historic iconography, when the image is split between symbolic exchange and secret initiation. Six paintings are presented and lectured upon throughout the film, but the narrator’s theories can only be explained by postulating a secret, stolen seventh painting that would provide the key to unlocking the meaning of the series and thus the sex magick rite to which the images allude. Cinematographer Sacha Vierny, who also shot seminal works for Alain Renais, Luis Buñuel, and Peter Greenaway, uses carefully angled mirrors to follow a ray of light from one mise en scene to the next, tracking the narrative continuity through the light in each scene, by way of cinematic chiaroscuro. Literally bookending the exhibition opposite the National Gallery of Canada’s nº6092 the film is, as Raúl Ruiz claims, “a fiction about theory.”\n
\n\n", "author": "RAUL RUIZ ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/37-Hypothesis/37-Hypothesis-thumb.mp4", "type": "video", "width": 320, "height": 240 } }, { "__index": 37, "id": "page_37", "title": "Mondrian 63-96 ", "short_title": "38 Benjamin: Mondrian", "type": "video", "tag_0": 2, "tag_1": 8, "tag_2": 9, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "type": "video", "caption": "", "uri": "https://vimeo.com/583964503/0a8a28aa23" } ], "citation": "1986\nThe lecture by the alias “Walter Benjamin” titled Mondrian 63-96 parodies the discourse around objects that are not what they appear to be, and subjects who are not who they say they are. The exhuming of the persona “Walter Benjamin” as a pseudonym, by an eastern European artist/theorist in the 1980s, was a strategic move to question the hierarchy of original and copy while providing a novel position for the art critic. In this short video, an actor articulates an argument, trying to comprehend the paradoxes of duplicate paintings alongside paintings from the future that mysteriously hang in the current lecture hall. Taking the arguments to an extreme, the undead Walter Benjamin exclaims: “a copy is a meta-original.”\n
\n\n", "author": "WALTER BENJAMIN ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/38-Benjamin/38-Benjamin-thumb.mp4", "type": "video", "width": 320, "height": 240 } }, { "__index": 38, "id": "page_38", "title": "The conquest of space, Atlas for the use of artists and the military ", "short_title": "39 Broodthaers: Atlas", "type": "video", "tag_0": 8, "tag_1": 9, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "type": "video", "caption": "", "uri": "https://vimeo.com/590339061" } ], "citation": "1975\nMarcel Broodthaers was perhaps the first artist to colonize the role of the curator as an artwork, in his project Museum of Eagles. While maintaining his obsessions with surrealism, his work, over time, took on a role more critical of the history of European colonialism. The last artist book he made was the ridiculously small The conquest of space, Atlas for the use of artists and the military. \n
\n\n", "author": "MARCEL BROODTHAERS ", "threeObject": { "path": "data_store/39-Broodthaers/", "file": "Charles_AtlasBook.obj" } }, { "__index": 39, "id": "page_39", "title": "Der Bildatlas Mnemosyne (Taflen No79)", "short_title": "40 Warburg: Mnemosyne Atlas ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 6, "tag_1": 8, "tag_2": 9, "tag_3": 10, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/40-Warbug/40-Warbug.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2005, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "1925-29\nHeir of a successful Hamburg banking family, Aby Warburg devoted his life to scholarship. He is most famous for his library, which grew from a personal obsession and hovers somewhere between an idiosyncratic private library and a specialist research institution. Resistant to a Linnaeus taxonomy of knowledge that separates thinking into arborescent categories, Warburg continually rearranged his library pending a research problem. The result was a paranoid association of information across radically different disciplines: medieval astrology, 20th century technology, Renaissance gambling cards, Hopi Native Americans, etcetera. In the 1920s, Aby Warburg started his last project, the Mnemosyne Atlas [Der Bildatlas Mnemosyne]. It was a new way of organizing art history—less along lines of traditional disciplines—and instead offered a path across disciplinary borders based on his concept Ikonologie (icon + logic). The Atlas was Warburg’s final project that collected images from all time periods, arranged on large black screens. With this technique he attempted a new methodology for thinking about images, as they migrated across time, space and function to further shed the reliance on words for analysis and instead compose their own grammar. Comparisons have been made between Warburg’s Atlas screens and the “evidence boards” that populate police stations and cinema screens, based purely on the similarity of their formal characteristics. But the connection is not as remote as it first seems. While rarely known, the screens were actually not Warburg’s idea, although he did incorporate them into his unique methodology; they were first created and proposed to Warburg by his colleague Fritz Saxl after his time in the military, where he worked in the education unit and gleaned the idea of using the screens for didactic purposes.\n
\n\n", "author": "ABY WARBURG", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/40-Warbug/40-Warbug-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 300, "width": 224, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 40, "id": "page_40", "title": "Considerazioni sulla pittura ", "short_title": "41 Mancini: Pittura", "type": "image", "tag_0": 1, "tag_1": 2, "tag_2": 8, "tag_3": 9, "tag_4": 10, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/41-Mancini/41-Mancini-P01.png", "caption": "", "height": 2084, "width": 1500, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "Roma, Accademia nazionale dei Lincei, 1956 1620-1630\nFrom 1550-1590, a considerable amount of literature was written about the lives of artists—Vasari being a classic example. But by the 17th century the genre had almost completely ceased, with the masters Carracci and Caravaggio concern- ing themselves with observational strategies rather than speculation and theory. A radically new type of art criticism emerged in the ebb and flow of history, one which incorporated the empirical demands not only of a new art but also of a burgeoning field in the sciences, as developed through Galileo’s experiments that required repeatable results for verification. It took an amateur, meaning the first writer on art who was not an artist, by the name of Giulio Mancini to forge such a new field. It is no coincidence Mancini was, by vocation, a doctor for Pope Urban VIII and friend to Galileo in Rome. He also made a living as an antiquities dealer and thus was more concerned with the authenticity of the original than with artistic expression. Bringing together medical diagnosis with his concern for the art market, Mancini spawned the first theory of connoisseurship and art forensics. At the end of the 19th century, his theories again surfaced as the “Morelli Method,” which became the standard in the modern area for museum directors and art historians investigating questionable attributions. Mancini combined his observational skills as a doctor with the newly developed practice of analyzing the flow of handwriting to date a manuscript’s origin. In this new field of paleography, authorial uniqueness is revealed in the curve of each character, in the folds of each letter. For philosopher Gilles Delueze, writing in his book The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, “The Baroque refers not to an essence but rather to an operative function, to a trait.” Mancini understood how to look for traits that signalled individuality based on the distinctiveness of “curls and waves” in hair and the “folds and glint of drapes.” A close look at the historical survey of Nicolas Poussin’s critical literature finds the first text cited in the bibliography of Anthony Blunt’s Critical Catalogue is this writing by Mancini. If we believe Blunt’s attribution of painting no6092 to the early stage of Poussin’s career, it means the painting was com- posed at the exact same time as Mancini’s text, in the 1620s in Rome. The polyphonic voices of the Baroque fugue fold in on each other. \n
\n\n", "author": "GIULIO MANCINI", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/41-Mancini/41-Mancini-Thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 279, "width": 200, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 41, "id": "page_41", "title": "Mancini's Caratteri / Warburg's Atlas", "short_title": "42 Stankievech: Mancini / Warburg", "type": "image", "tag_0": 1, "tag_1": 7, "tag_2": 8, "tag_3": 10, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/42-S-Tafel/42-S-Tafel.png", "caption": "", "height": 2667, "width": 2000, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "2016\n‘Characters’ (caratteri). The word more or less as we use it goes back to about 1620. It occurs in the writings of the founder of modern physics, on the one hand, and on the other, of the originators respectively of palaeography, graphology and connoisseurship. ~ Carlos Ginzburg \n
\n\n\nCarlos Ginzburg tracks a historiographic epistemology from nomadic hunters and ritualistic diviners, through the connoisseurship of Giulio Mancini during the Baroque, into the genesis of the detective genre (apropos Voltaire, Poe, and Conan Doyle) applied by the pseudonymous writings of Giovanni Morelli, who in turn inspires Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. In short, he sketches a history of the human sciences as a conjectural method, where causes cannot be repeated and we must make “retrospective predictions.” While supposedly Morelli was never directly connected to Mancini, Ginzburg connects the 1620s with the late 19th century as two moments of state expanded control. Overlapping the methodologies of connoisseurship with those of detective work, he associates the conjectural problem-solving technique of the connoisseur with newly established colonial and capitalist means of controlling subjects through the pseudo-science of physiognomy, and the practical applications of fingerprinting and mugshots by state agents such as Alphonse Bertillon. \n
\n\n\nThe Warburgian screen hanging here diagrams all the characters—or suspects—in the exhibition no6092, subverting the traditional portrait with the criminal mugshot. It becomes blindingly obvious, in visualizing the names of canonized history, how white males have exclusively staffed institutional power. \n
\n\n", "author": "CHARLES STANKIEVECH", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/42-S-Tafel/42-S-Tafel-thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 266, "width": 199, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 42, "id": "page_42", "title": "Letter to Nicolas-Claude Fabri De Peiresc", "short_title": "43 Ruebens to Nicolas-Claude ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 1, "tag_1": 2, "tag_2": 9, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/43-Rubens/Rubens-P01.png", "caption": "", "height": 2604, "width": 1663, "type": "png" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/43-Rubens/Rubens-P02.png", "caption": "", "height": 2605, "width": 1679, "type": "png" } ], "citation": "1630\nWe know, from at least a 1702 report, that before the en plein air fashion of painting, spies under- took their gaze not only from under the cover of a tree’s shadow but furthermore under the cover of the personalities of landscape artists. The famous Mata Hari demonstrated that artists were a class that travelled internationally and often had access to an elite military and political class—without necessarily being part of such a class. Peter Paul Rubens could be considered an early example of the double persona of spy/artist. During the seventeenth century, his discretion as a famous artist proved essential to his undercover missions to England, to negotiate in secret instead of sending the official Spanish ambassador. Sitting alone for a portrait with a painter was not a strange scenario, and yet strategically it provided a discrete cover, where sensitive information could be discussed \n
\n\n\nin private without suspicion. There is little documentation (compared to his paintings) of this aspect of Rubens’ life—his correspondence being one of the only traces that remains. Note in this letter from 1630, his marginal sketches for the design of a tripod—seen here as a metaphor for his important conceptualization and execution of the tripartite peace negotiations between Spain, England, and Holland in 1629-30. \n
\n\n", "author": "PETER PAUL RUBENS", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/43-Rubens/Rubens-Thumb.png", "caption": "", "height": 313, "width": 200, "type": "png" } }, { "__index": 43, "id": "page_43", "title": "The Purloined Letter", "short_title": "44 Poe: Purloined Letter", "type": "image", "tag_0": 9, "tag_1": 10, "tag_2": 11, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P00.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P46.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P47.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P48.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P49.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P50.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P51.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P52.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P53.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P54.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P55.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P56.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P57.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P58.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P59.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P60.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P61.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P62.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P63.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P64.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P65.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P66.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P67.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-P68.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1823, "width": 1110, "type": "jpg" } ], "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/44-Poe/44-Poe-Thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 329, "width": 200, "type": "jpg" }, "citation": "Berlin: Internationale Bibliothek,\nEdgar Allan Poe’s short story The Purloined Letter is one of the earliest examples of detective fiction. While the story is narrated by an unknown observer, similar to the later Dr. Watson of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes series, the story in fact revolves around the pontification and sleight of hand of C. Auguste Dupin. Like Sherlock, Dupin is a freelance genius who uses his keen observation and philosophical acumen to solve the cases that confound state police. The story sets up three overlapping triads: the Narrator, the Detective and the Police Prefect; the King, the Queen and a Minister; and finally, the Minister, the Detective and a Decoy. In short, the Queen has received a scandalous letter and upon opening it, is surprised by the sudden entrance of the King and the Minister. As a result, she is unable to hide the letter. The opportunistic Minister steals the letter and holds it ransom. The police search the Minister’s body and apartment but cannot find the letter, and thus seek the abilities of Dupin. Dupin determines the Minister has hidden the letter in plain sight, in his apartment, by simply turning the envelope inside out and re-addressing the letter to himself. In order to subvert the Minister’s power, Dupin arranges a decoy outside the Minister’s apartment: a drunkard fires a gun in the street, allowing for a window of distraction during which time Dupin swaps the original letter for a facsimile. Poe’s story was a success, commercially but also critically, principally because he sets up a contrast between the methodology of Dupin and the Police as the difference between the poetic and the positivistic. For Poe, the Police operate according to a method where they can only “extend or exaggerate their old modes of practice” based on what they already know and observe, so that methods such as look- ing closer—even using a microscope—do not solve the problem. On the other hand, Dupin likes to think in the dark, wears darkened glass to hide his gaze and is thus able to navigate the intersubjective triad using a conjectural method versus the analytic procedure. He receives a significant cash award as a result. \n
\n\n", "author": "EDGAR ALLAN POE" }, { "__index": 44, "id": "page_44", "title": "Seminar on The Purloined Letter ", "short_title": "45 Lacan: Purloined Letter", "type": "image", "tag_0": 3, "tag_1": 5, "tag_2": 9, "tag_3": 10, "tag_4": 11, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/45-Lacan/45-Lacan-00.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2571, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/45-Lacan/45-Lacan-01.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2577, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/45-Lacan/45-Lacan-02.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2571, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/45-Lacan/45-Lacan-03.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2571, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/45-Lacan/45-Lacan-04.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2571, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/45-Lacan/45-Lacan-05.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2571, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "Écrits I, Paris: Éditions de Seuil, 1966 1956\nJacques Lacan chose, as the opening text to represent the canon of his writing, the seminar of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Purloined Letter. The text was written in 1956, the same year that Blunt brokered, for the Art Gallery of Toronto, the accession of a painting by Courbet with questionable attribution—its authenticity resting on a signature that, through forensic analysis, was revealed to be three signatures layered on top of each other. Lacan uses Poe’s short story to illustrate his thesis that the signifier—represented here by the titular letter—functions regardless of its message within an intersubjective triad. The thief remained hidden in plain view by turning the letter inside out and re-addressing the letter to himself. Breaking away from the infamous Oedipal triad that Freud and Lacan, in their heteronormative entrenchment, were obsessed with, it is curious to redirect our gaze to another Classical triad—the scenario of the Augustus, Cleopatra and a doubled Ant(h)ony. According to Anthony Blunt, the scene in the National Gallery’s painting occurs immediately after Augustus’s conquering of Egypt. Cleopatra’s lover Marc Antony has committed suicide with his sword, and Cleopatra submissively offers a black pouch to Augustus. Blunt theorizes the pouch is a collection of love letters written to Queen Cleopatra from Julius Cesar, Augustus’s uncle, produced to gain favour with Augustus. Of course we can never know what is actually in the pouch—like the Prefect’s positivist looking closer with a microscope, radiographs of the painting do not reveal an interior—but in a peculiar tripling of narrative, Anthony Blunt is himself positioned within the narrative of the painting, as a substitute Antony (both Antony and Anthony were queer). In 1945 Blunt, as the newly appointed Surveyor of the King’s Pictures (the regal title for Curator of the Royal Family’s private art collection), found himself dispatched on a secret mission to a conquered Germany in order to recover letters between Queen Victoria and her daughter, the Empress Frederick of Germany. He conducted three such missions in total, and used the immunity of the diplomatic pouch to smuggle the contents through Customs. \n
\n\n", "author": "JACQUES LACAN", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/45-Lacan/45-Lacan-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 343, "width": 200, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 45, "id": "page_45", "title": "Zinoviev Letter ", "short_title": "46 MI6: Zinoviev Letter", "type": "image", "tag_0": 9, "tag_1": 11, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/46-MI6/46-MI6-P01.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2332, "width": 1413, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/46-MI6/46-MI6-P02.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2332, "width": 1413, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/46-MI6/46-MI6-P03.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 2332, "width": 1410, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "1924\nThe Zinoviev Letter of 1924, “at once fascinating to connoisseurs and of real concern to the public,” is one of the most famous cases of British Intelligence and has continually resurfaced in pub- lic discussion every decade since its existence. The publication of Nigel West’s book The Crown Jewels—a book about documents passed on by the double agents known as the Cambridge Spies, of which Anthony Blunt was the most famous— inspired Parliamentary debate and an official report by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The scandal of the Zinoviev Letter, in short, is as follows: on the cusp of a national election in the United Kingdom, a letter was leaked to the press detailing commands from the central propaganda machine of the Soviet Union (Comintern) that the British proletariat should be agitated. The resulting fallout is difficult to assess, but the Labour government lost the election and theories proliferated, suggesting perhaps this was the first incident, in the 20th century, of a foreign state meddling in the election process of another sovereign state. The Soviets denied drafting the letter and the most recent official theory by the FCO proposes the letter was in fact a forgery by MI6 to scuttle the Labour government. To this day, the Secret Intelligence Service has not unsealed the documents around their research. \n
\n\n", "author": "ANONYMOUS / MI6 ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/46-MI6/46-MI6-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 330, "width": 200, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 46, "id": "page_46", "title": "Vienna Convention On Diplomatic Relations", "short_title": "47 UN: Vienna Convention", "type": "image", "tag_0": 1, "tag_1": 3, "tag_2": 11, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/47-UN/47-UN-P1.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1947, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/47-UN/47-UN-P2.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1947, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/47-UN/47-UN-P3.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1947, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": " 1961\nIn 1625, Hugo Grotius collected the thoughts of his predecessors together with his own to publish On the Law of War and Peace, which earned him the colloquial title of the father of International Law. Grotius essentially proposed that international society should be governed by mutual agreements and laws rather than by the force of warfare. A key concept in the manuscript is the idea of exterritoriality—or diplomatic immunity—for ambassadors while travelling in foreign states. It follows that, if the role of the ambassador is to maintain clear communication—especially during trying situations—the means of communication must also be clear, and confidential, between the ambassador abroad and the sovereign home state. Various acts and statutes have attempted to legalize reciprocal understanding between nations, but current law is based upon the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, ratified in 1961 by the member states of the United Nations. Article 27 of the treaty outlines, in purposefully vague terms, the inviolability of the diplomatic bag, which must not be opened nor delayed, as an essential component of healthy international relations. While not explicitly stated in the treaty, it is almost universally acknowledged that x-raying such a bag would violate the intention of the law, and so as a general rule is not conducted. A year after discovering painting no6092, the second world war interrupted Anthony Blunt’s academic life. Among Blunt’s portfolio of tasks as a spy during the war was the development and management of espionage unit Operation XXX, or TripleX. It would seem Blunt shifted his analysis of pouches-in-paintings to the analysis of pouches-in-politics. Blunt’s XXX program devised a method for the secret interception of diplomatic pouches, which are supposed to have immunity from police and Custom officers’ search and seizure rights while in transit. \n
\n\n", "author": "UNITED NATIONS ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/47-UN/47-UN-thumb.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 263, "width": 203, "type": "jpg" } }, { "__index": 47, "id": "page_47", "title": "Key to Wittgensteinhaus ", "short_title": "48 Wittgenstein Key", "type": "video", "tag_0": 9, "tag_1": 11, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "type": "video", "caption": "", "uri": "https://vimeo.com/590328604" } ], "citation": "1926-28\n‘What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence’, wrote Ludwig Wittgenstein at the end of his major treatise, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921). He later went on to develop his theory of language games, published posthumously in Philosophical Investigations (1953). In between formulating his two major treatises, Wittgenstein built his sister’s house in Vienna from 1926-28. A Gesamtkunstwerk, the house was entirely designed by Wittgenstein, from the master plan down to door handles and locks. Metaphorically, the key to the passage from a logical ordering and picture of the world as seen in the blueprint of the Tractatus to the pragmatic navigation of language games is literally the key to the Haus Wittgenstein— that small object whose purpose is to open and close spaces, lock and unlock social engagements. Arthur Danto in 1964 used Wittgenstein’s theory of language games in his seminal essay \"The Artworld.\" Arguing for an ‘interpretive model’ of aesthetics, a transcendent concept of art is pulled out of the museum and back into the world of the artefact; or inversely, as Alfred Gell asked in his anthropological essay \"Vogel’s Net,\" why not consider hunting traps as conceptual art? Danto ends his classic essay by defining the value of this new useful art, and in doing so he returns to the classic tale of Hamlet, and particularly the role of the famous scene in which the play-within-the-play is revealed as a mousetrap designed to catch his uncle. Here art is a play, a dangerous game, Danto argues, where \"as a mirror held up to nature, [it] might serve to catch the conscience of our kings.\" Today the most important keys are not to our houses; rather, they are the ones that lock and unlock our virtual lives: bank accounts, email, computers, social networks. Such keys reduce our language games down to single civilian passwords that define our subjectivity in direct contrast to the single key search terms typed by NSA officers. The social network exhibitionist versus the dragnet of an overzealous intelligence machine. \n
\n\n", "author": "LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN ", "threeObject": { "path": "data_store/48-Wittgenstein/", "file": "Charles_Key.obj" } }, { "__index": 48, "id": "page_48", "title": "no6092: The Purloined Letter ", "short_title": "49 Stankievech: Purloined Letter", "type": "video", "tag_0": 7, "tag_1": 11, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "type": "video", "caption": "", "uri": "https://vimeo.com/studiostankievech/no6092" } ], "citation": "2016\nno6092: The Purloined Letter consists of an encrypted digital image using the technique of steganography that is automatically emailed to the sender when they request the work by writing no6092@stankievech.net. Steganography is the tactic of hiding a secret message in unsuspected data.\n
\n\n\nThe artwork no6092: The Purloined Letter is based upon the painting catalogued under accession no6092 at the National Gallery of Canada and currently attributed to an anonymous painter under the title Augustus and Cleopatra c.1630- 1650. While the artwork no6092: The Purloined Letter and the NGC’s digital reproduction of the painting look incredibly similar, the digital artwork has changed every pixel in a calculated process to encrypt a secret message. The verisimilitude and yet the micro-differences are the very function of the work. \n
\n\n", "author": "CHARLES STANKIEVECH", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/49-S-Purloined/49-S-Purloined-thumb.mp4", "type": "video", "width": 320, "height": 240 } }, { "__index": 49, "id": "page_49", "title": "The Luxembourg Freeport: The Instruction Manual ", "short_title": "50 Arendt: Freeport ", "type": "image", "tag_0": 11, "tag_1": 0, "tag_2": 0, "tag_3": 0, "tag_4": 0, "tag_5": 0, "tag_6": 0, "tag_7": 0, "tag_8": 0, "images": [ { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P01.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P02.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P03.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P04.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P05.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P06.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P07.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P08.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P09.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P10.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P11.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" }, { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-P12.jpg", "caption": "", "height": 1125, "orientation": 1, "width": 1500, "type": "jpg" } ], "citation": "2013\nYves Bouvier, a second-generation broker and shipper of art, was arrested by Swiss authorities on suspicion of cheating a Russian oligarch of over $1 billion in inflated art sales, scandalizing the already unregulated art world with his conflation of the logistics of shipping with the speculation of art dealing. Bouvier is the force behind a network of exterritorial zones around the world called “freeports” (Geneva, Singapore, Hong Kong, Luxembourg). At the same time he stepped down (while claiming his innocence) a NATO ambassador was brought onto the small board of directors. While freeports exist for all types of tax-free holdings of assets around the world in the form of unmarked warehouses, Bouvier’s brand of the freeport combined the infinite secret shuffling of works around the world with luxury services such as private exhibitions rooms, laboratories for testing attribution, and framing services. Images are exchanged not for their iconography but are commodities themselves, traded in unregulated exchange networks for services such as bribery and corporate espionage. In the hypermarket of art speculation worth $60 billion dollars annually, paintings are bought and sold seeing neither the light of day nor the black of the tax line. The black box of the State’s diplomatic pouch morphs into the black box of the entrepreneur’s storage locker. \n
\n\n", "author": "DAVID ARENDT ", "thumbnail": { "uri": "assets/data_store/50-Arendt/50-Arendt-thumb.mp4", "type": "video", "width": 320, "height": 240 } } ], "ui": [] }