Ian Black in Stockholm, Guardian, Saturday January 13, 2001

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 424.

Puzzled Swedes fail to get the pictures

Empty white rectangles on the wall mark the spot in Sweden's national museum where the two Renoirs used to hang, though a Rembrandt snatched from the next room has already been replaced - temporarily - by another 17th century Dutch work.

It was late on the Friday before Christmas when something like a bank robbery shattered the cultured hush of Stockholm's waterfront, opposite parliament and the royal palace.

Masked men held off[11] unarmed guards at gunpoint and cut down the three pictures. Three weeks after one of the boldest crimes Sweden has ever seen, five suspects are in custody. But the motives of the thieves and, crucially, the whereabouts of these priceless works of art, remain a mystery.

Swedes, stunned by the museum theft, are asking uneasy questions about security and violence. "It was a shock for many people," said Hans-Henrik Brummer, the acting director of the fine arts gallery. "Things like that just don't happen here."

In extraordinary scenes, terrified visitors were held back in the lobby by one gunman while two others were busy on the second floor, where guard Dan Andersen - equipped only with a radio - was on duty in the old masters room.

"He was wearing a mask with holes for the eyes so I never saw his face," Mr Andersen recalled this week. "I went up and said: 'What the hell are you doing?' Then he pointed a gun at me and told me to lie down. He was very controlled."

The Rembrandt was a 20x30cm self-portrait painted in 1630. Seven larger works by the Dutch master were untouched.

In the next room, where a dazzling array of French impressionists are housed, the second thief used wire-cutters to quickly remove Renoir's Conversation and Young Parisian, both small and easily portable works.

Running down the marble stairs to the museum lobby, they joined the third robber, left via the front door and jumped into a speedboat. By the time police arrived, six minutes later, it was all over.

Initially, Stockholm police believed the crime had been commissioned by a wealthy collector willing to pay to keep the pictures for their private pleasure: clearly such famous works could never be sold or displayed openly.

But then came a new twist: police received a photograph of the pictures juxtaposed with a recent edition of a popular tabloid, along with a demand for several million kronor of ransom. Police and the museum insist that paying a ransom is out of the question.

Police admit the case is a bizarre combination of professional execution and clumsy amateurism.

Staff desperately hope the pictures will be returned. Police remain silent about the investigation, saying only that they believe the three pictures are still in Sweden and that more people are involved.

Additional Language Exercises

11. Fill in the spaces in the sentences with appropriate idioms, containing a word related to arts.

1. She can get money out of her father whenever she likes: she has got it down to a fine art.

2. What's the state of the art? – Well, we have done everything you told us to do, and we are waiting now for your new instructions.

3. The writer paints the simple country life in glowing colours and is clearly against living in a city.

4. The situation was catastrophic and the board required painting things in true colours.

5. They heard this morning that they had passed their examinations, so they've gone out to paint the town red.

6. You people only see what's happening on your own sector. You can't possibly get the whole picture.

7. "I'd better put you in the picture," he said. "Briefly, it is this. …"

8. I put forward my side of the argument as clearly and exactly as I could, but my opponent played to the gallery shamelessly and soon had the support of the crowd.

9. He is really a very clever man, but because he makes such an exhibition of himself at parties nobody can believe that he's serious.

10. Doctors of the old school could talk to you about your hobbies or else, not like these nowadays – concerned only with treating as many people as possible in the shortest possible time.

12. Below are some proverbs and their explanations. The explanations are presented in jumbled order. Match the former with the latter by attaching the relevant letter in the aligned boxes. Then share your opinion if these proverbs can apply to art.

Translation Exercise

13. Below is a coherent text. Translate it into English targeting the topical vocabulary and proverbs from previous exercises.

Philip was standing in front of some acknowledged masterpieces of the last decade. Utterly disillusioned, he couldn't size up[13] why people were not capable of sorting wheat from the chaff and why his own works had been turned down for shows, as if failing to compete with these insipid[14] and motley[15] pieces of art. Yes, other times, other manners, he thought with a heartsick[16] feeling of failure. On the other hand, he also had his worshippers. Everyone to his taste, you know. Yet, every now and then Philip was haunted by the sense of thwarted[17] ambition. He often fought the urge to rush to his studio and tear everything to tatters. Then, realising that it is easier to pull down than to build, he withdrew[18] to his studio to spend days and nights in exertion, creating what he thought would be his ultimate piece. "One must do the same subject over again, ten times, a hundred times. Nothing in art must appear accidental, not even a movement" and ninety per cent of inspiration is perspiration.

Now he peered at the scratchy drawing on the wall. He would willingly give credit where credit was due. Mere kitsch – that's what it was. In his mind's eye he returned to what he prided himself with – his own idea of composition and perspective, palette, avant-garde shading and chiaroscuro. Although beauty is in the eye of the beholder, his innovations could not go unnoticed. Good wine needs no bush and again Philip consoled himself that his paintings were just waiting for their time. Although it's believed that there's nothing new under the sun, Philip would hitch his wagon to a star. A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public to him are non-existent. These thoughts now led him out of that cathedral calm of the gallery. He was walking towards the studio with a thought - a thing of beauty is a joy forever. So far, he only had to spare himself enough time for art is long and life is so short.

Glossary for Part 3

Listening text

Ukraine, Visual arts

Over the centuries the Ukrainian people have evolved a varied folk art. Embroidery, wood carving, ceramics, and weaving are highly developed, with stylised ornamentation that represents many regional styles. Intricately designed Easter eggs have become popular in many countries that have Ukrainian immigrant populations.

With the introduction of Christianity in the 10th century, the various forms of Byzantine art (architecture, mosaics, frescoes, manuscript illumination, icon painting) spread rapidly and remained the dominant art forms through the 16th century. The beauty and supposed miraculous power of Ukrainian icons was recognized by the invading Poles and Russians, who removed two outstanding ones for veneration to Czestochowa and Vladimir, respectively.

The mosaics and frescoes of the churches of Kiev, notably the Cathedral of St. Sophia (11th-12th century), and the icons of the more distinctively Ukrainian school in Galicia (15th-16th century) are particularly noteworthy. Because such buildings evoked Ukrainian nationalist feelings, a number of outstanding churches, such as the Cathedral of St. Michael's Golden-Domed Monastery (early 12th century), now blissfully restored, were demolished by the Soviet authorities in 1934, and only international protests saved that of St. Sophia from the same fate.

Western European influences in the 17th and 18th centuries affected iconography and stimulated portrait painting, engraving, and sculpture. From Ukraine the Western trends penetrated into Russia, where many Ukrainian artists worked, especially after Ukraine lost its autonomy to Russia in the 18th century. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries the sculptor and rector of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Ivan Martos, and the portraitists Dmytro Levytsky and Volodymyr Borovykovsky were among the leading figures of the St. Petersburg Classical school of painting.

The Classicism and the emergent realism of the 19th century are best exemplified by the poet-painter Taras Shevchenko. New art movements are evident in the work of such 19th-century painters as the Impressionists Ivan Trush, Mykola Burachek, and Aleksander Murashko, the Postimpressionist Mykola Hlushchenko, and the Expressionists Oleksander Novakivsky, Oleksa Hryshchenko, and Anatoly Petrytsky.

The brief renewal of Ukrainian independence in 1918 fostered further avant-garde trends that reflected a resurgence of Ukrainian national traditions. Two schools developed: in painting, the Monumentalism of Mykhaylo Boychuk, Ivan Padalka, and Vasyl Sedliar, consisting of a blend of Ukrainian Byzantine and Early Renaissance styles; and, in the graphic arts, the Neobaroque of Yuriy Narbut.

Modernist experimentation ended in Soviet Ukraine in the 1930s, however, when both these schools were suppressed and Socialist Realism became the only officially permitted style. The Ukrainian avant-garde was rejuvenated following Nikita Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaigns of the late 1950s; it consisted mostly of Expressionists who wanted to illustrate Ukraine's tragic modern history. These artists, who included Alla Horska, Opanas Zalyvakha, and Feodosy Humenyuk, were again suppressed by the Soviet authorities in the 1970s and '80s.

A number of Ukrainian artists have won considerable renown in the West, among them Grishchenko, who began with Cubism and then turned to a dynamic form of Expressionism, and the painter and engraver Jacques Hnizdovsky, who developed a simplified style of realism. The sculptor Oleksander Arkhypenko, one of the pioneers of Cubism, who later experimented in Constructivism and Expressionism, was a major figure of 20th-century European art.