"Hey, Steve, old friend. You better get your homo friend Geffen to shut his stinkin' trap."
Posted on 03/03/2007 5:48:33 AM PST by Puppage
LOS ANGELES -- A Norman Rockwell painting stolen from a suburban St. Louis gallery more than three decades ago has turned up in Steven Spielberg's art collection, the FBI announced Friday.
Rockwell's "Russian Schoolroom" was nabbed during a late-night burglary in Clayton, Mo., on June 25, 1973.
The Oscar-winning filmmaker purchased the painting in 1989 from a legitimate dealer and didn't know it was stolen until his staff spotted its image last week on an FBI Web site listing stolen works of art, the bureau said in a statement
After Spielberg's staff brought it to the attention of authorities, an FBI agent and an art expert from the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino inspected the painting at one of Spielberg's offices and confirmed its authenticity Friday morning. Early FBI estimates put the painting's value at $700,000, officials said.
"The second anybody said, 'I think we have that painting,' (our) office got a hold of the FBI," said Spielberg's spokesman, Marvin Levy.
Spielberg is cooperating with the FBI and will retain possession of the Russian Schoolroom until its "disposition can be determined," the bureau said.
The oil-on-canvas painting shows children in a classroom with a bust of communist leader Vladimir Lenin. It was nabbed in a gallery heist and then resurfaced briefly in legitimate art forums before disappearing again. At the time of the theft, the work was 16 inches by 37 inches.
Mary Ellen Shortland, who worked at the long-closed Clayton Art Gallery, recalled Friday that someone from Missouri paid $25,000 for the painting after seeing it during a Rockwell exhibition featuring mostly lithographs.
The client agreed to keep it on display, she said, but a few nights later someone smashed the gallery's glass door and escaped with the painting.
"That was all they took. That's what they wanted, that painting," Shortland recalled.
The gallery refunded the client's money, and there was no sign of the work for years. Then in 1988, it was auctioned in New Orleans.
In 2004, the FBI's newly formed Art Crime Team initiated an investigation to recover the work after determining it had been advertised for sale at a Rockwell exhibit in New York in 1989.
It wasn't immediately known whether Spielberg purchased the painting at that New York exhibit.
Spielberg is a long-time Rockwell collector. He helped found the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass., where he is also on the board of trustees.
"He's certainly one of the collectors of Rockwell," said Levy, who wasn't sure how many of the artist's paintings Spielberg owns. "We have a few in our office on the Universal lot."
Rockwell's work often resonates with people because much of
I wonder if that Pelicano guy did any Speilberg work for Hillary?
I think there's a movie in this story somewhere.
I would also like to know what the writing on the wall of the classroom says.
"Funny how this news comes out a few days after Spielberg hosts a fundraiser for Obama Osama Hussein.
Hillary just put Hollywood on notice..."
LOL!! You forgot the /s.
Actually, expensive stolen paintings go onto a hot sheet distributed to "reputable" art dealers. One of the ways that prominent art dealers remain "reputable" is by ensuring that the seller has clear title.
This definitely sounds like a Pellicano job contracted by Hillary from years ago. Hillary had this dirt in the can for a long time and was just waiting for the appropriate time to release it. This is a message from Hillary to Geffen.
‘An unusal composition, given most of Rockwell's canvases are generally in classic portrate format. To my eye, the key kid is the one in the back looking "off message" and "to his right" (ged it?) dreaming of what it could be.’
Rockwell was a master of the modern school of realism and a master at expressing everyday human emotions and American values.
I think it’s meaningful that the kids looking toward the Lennon bust appear obedient, soulless and unimaginative while the kid looking off to the right has his head held higher in prospective to the others and has a defiant air about him.
"Politically correct thinking will be rewarded. Politically incorrect thinking will be punished."
Puleeze, like you're going to just wake up Tuesday and decide you're going to buy a car without doing a little shopping around? Not one single kicked tire? No checking out the mileage or the engine? Not even bothering to ask your drunk brother in law what he thinks? Twenty years ago was not the Dark Ages.
Yeah, how they did not know it was stolen is pretty amazing considering most of the folks at auction were probably experts.
But what a great painting. The determination of the girl in front contrasting with the boy looking out the window is wonderful.
I see the boy in the third row as;
Even in a hard line Communist classroom, where all eyes MUST be glued to the front of the class, there is always that "dreamer" the one who thinks outside the box. That the human spirit cannot be contained, no matter how legalistic the ideology.
Knowing Rockwell's favorite message in most of his work, human nature exposed, it brings back many old Saturday Evening Post cover shots to my memory. I miss the America of that era.
Thanks for adding some sense to this thing. Who in the art world in 1973 would have been interested in a break in at the Clayton, Missouri gallery?
I'm sure the baseball Cardinals box scores made it to the West coast but not the local crime sheet.
It's definitely not long enough for that; I can perhaps puzzle it out if anyone knows where I can get a large image of the painting, but it doesn't have enough size or contrast for me to read it in the images I've seen.
I went looking to see if I could find an American classroom scene for comparison. I didn't, but I did come across this.
"...the bust of Lenin must have “sealed-the-deal” for Spielberg."
BWAAAAHAAAHAAAHAAA!
Soulless? Really? I don't see that at all. As much as Rockwell painted realism, I think he's just showing that whether its an American classroom or a Russian classroom, kids are kids and there's always one dreaming or looking out the window.
They can't track down (won't) illegal aliens, that cost us all billions
Sometimes I can't decide if you guys are for real or are just putting us all on.
By your logic, the FBI should stop investigating bank robberies until every last illegal alien is rounded up as well, right?
If I'm dealing with an established gallery I'm going to assume that they're one of the reputable ones. I can't see how Spielberg can be faulted for not conducting his own investigation into the painting if he had no reason to doubt the seller.
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