Caitlin Willis on "Graffiti in Contemporary Rome: Why Reductive Solutions will Fail and Why that's a Good Thing" (The Journal of Art Crime, Spring 2013)

In the Spring 2013 issue of The Journal of Art Crime, Caitlin Willis writes on "Graffiti in Contemporary Rome: Why Reductive Solutions will Fail and Why that's a Good Thing":

Graffiti is an area where there is not a clear delineation between art and crime; rather the two fields not only intermingle but, in fact, depend upon the other. The illegal, anti-authoritarian elements of graffiti allow the medium to retain its authenticity, to remain unaffected by the dominant power. Yet the largely discredited Broken Windows theory links such minor crimes to larger ones and is used as the basis for the policies of many police forces worldwide. Of particular interest to this paper is the importance of the theory in anti-graffiti efforts, as it has led to the complete and utter demonization of graffiti. Such policies have rendered the walls of Rome into a battleground between the mayor, Gianni Alemanno, and the local writers. many graffiti writers are appalled that the mayor claims concern for Italian patrimony and cultural heritage while daily destroying the innovative work of contemporary Italians. Graffiti can elevate the aesthetics of a neighborhood and, indeed, be a gift to a community. The terminology used to describe "legitimate" art can easily and appropriately be used to analyze the lines, forms, colors, and dynamism of graffiti. Graffiti is art experienced in the galleries of streets, walls, rooftops, trains, and bridges. It is an art form aware of itself, looking back on its own history to discover inspiration and to impart essential skills while stretching forward to ever-greater creativity and innovation.

Caitlin Willis is a freelance art reporter living and working in New York City. She is a graduate of Fordham University and the 2011 ARCA Certificate Program. A retired street artist, Caitlin enjoys passionately defending non-traditional art forms and smashing to bits misguided pretension.

The ninth issue of The Journal of Art Crime, edited by Noah Charney and published by ARCA, is available electronically (pdf) and in print via subscription and Amazon.com. The Associate Editor is Marc Balcells (ARCA '11), Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of Political Science, John Jay College of Criminal Justice -- The City University of New York.

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BBC's Amanda Ruggeri: Exhibit in Rome showing recovered objects of stolen cultural property on display at Castel Sant'Angelo until November 5

Exhibition banner outside Castel Sant'Angelo
(Photo by Catherine Sezgin)

Here's a link to a BBC article by Amanda Ruggeri ("See the story behind the stolen treasures") on the exhibit at the National Museum of Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome exhibiting objects of stolen cultural property recovered by Italy. Capolavori dell'archaeologia: Recuperi, ritrovamenti, confronti (Masterpieces of archaeology: Recovery, findings, comparisons) will be open until November 5, 2013 (closed every Monday).

Items include large pieces of a 1st Century BC Pompei villa fresco recovered from the J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu; the head and extremities of a Morgantina acrolith recovered from the University of Virginia's Art Museum; and the Euphronios krater recovered from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ms. Ruggeri writes:

The exhibition, which includes dozens of works of art, serves as a sobering reminder of how widespread and damaging looting in Italy has been. One display points out that when an item is looted, the problem isn’t just that it risks disappearing into the hands of a private collector, winding up abroad or being damaged. (One popular way to transport looted vases, for example, is to deliberately break them into shards and reconstruct them later, as fragments are easier to hide and move.) The irreversible loss is the item’s context. Without knowing where the piece was found, at what depth, or near which other objects, it is all but impossible to fully reconstruct the piece’s history, use and meaning.

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"Art Predators and The Rediscovered Heritage ... the story of recovery" at the National Etruscan Museum in Rome's Villa Giulia shows archaeological fruits of 20 year investigation

Here's a link to a video showing an exhibit, "Art Predators and The Rediscovered Heritage .. the story of recovery",  at the National Etruscan Museum at Villa Giulia in Rome (September 29 through December 15, 2012) of recovered stolen antiquity objects recovered by Italy's Carabinieri Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage (Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale), the Justice Department, and archaeologists in an investigation lasting more than two decades.

The Villa Giulia-Museo Nazionale Etrusco is located north of the Piazza del Popolo in the western outskirts of the Villa Borghese (a really long walk from the Galleria Borghese as I once found out).

These hundreds of works of art were stolen by grave robbers in clandestine excavations in Etruria, Puglia, Sicily and Calabria (Google Translation of article by Irene Buscemi, "Predatori d'arte e patrimonio ritrovato in mostra a Roma", September 30, 2012, Il Fatto Quotidiano).  These amphora, kylix (pottery drinking cups) and bronzes were illegally sold in the 1970s and 1980s by merchants and traffickers to famous foreign museums (Getty Museum in Los Angeles, The Metropolitan in New York, and institutions in Australia and Japan).  Two archaeologists, Daniela Rizzo and Maurizio Pellegrini, assisted in the project and curated the exhibit.  Many of these objects were seized from a warehouse in the Free Port of Geneva in 1995 (for more information you may refer to "The Medici Conspiracy" (Public Affairs, 2006) by historian Peter Watson and Italian journalist Cecilia Todeschini).  The Carabinieri used polaroid photographs, charts, and documents found in this investigation to recreate the illicit trade that funneled objects through art collectors and auctions houses such as Sotheby's in London.

Here's a link to the exhibit at the Villa Giulia.  The exhibitors explain here that for the first time the National Etruscan Museum of the Villa Giulia is presenting some archaeological materials chosen from among 3,000 artifacts seized in 1995 by the Carabinieri Cultural Heritage Projection from the Free Port of Geneva and returned to Italy after a long legal battle based upon documents found in the raid that allowed the Carabinieri and prosecutors to reconstruct the trafficking routes and illegal excavations.  In this illegal operation, objects were illegal dug up out of the ground, moved from Italy to Switzerland, cleaned and then provided paperwork to market the objects to international museums:

The exhibition aims to raise awareness of the general public the hard work done in recent years by the Judiciary, flanked by Carabinieri Cultural Heritage Protection, with the Guardia di Finanza and the archaeologists of the Superintendent [Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici dell'Etruria meridionale], which has led to some important results, perceived not only through a high number of artifacts recovered, by especially in the significant drop in illegal excavations at the archaeological sites of Cerveteri, Vulci, and Tarquinia, once the subject of real raids [translated with the help of Google].

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Irish Artist Michelle Rogers Secures Release of 14 Paintings Seized by Police at Gallery Suspected of Tax Fraud and Money Laundering

Michelle Rogers' Lampuedusa (200 x 300 cm)

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

Fourteen paintings by Irish artist Michelle Rogers seized by police in a raid of a gallery in Rome two years ago were finally released to the artist in March.

Rogers' paintings were held in police custody when a gallery's inventory was taken as part of a police investigation into tax fraud and money laundering.

"The court believed that the paintings belonged to the gallery owner and my fight over the last two years was to get them to realize that the paintings belonged to me," Rogers explained.  "Eventually, after a lot of work by my lawyer and requests from my embassy in Rome, the courts accepted that the art work was mine."

The more than one dozen paintings ranged from 100 x 80 cm to 200 x 300cm.

Michelle Rogers, who also lives part-time in Rome, traveled to Bosnia in 1993 and exhibited works reflecting on the theme of the 9/11 attacks in North America.  Lampeudusa, according to her website, "explores the plight and flight of immigrants of Italy."

Wanted in Rome reported (Return of Michelle Rogers paintings in Rome) that the 14 paintings by Rogers had been exhibited at the Aequalias Contemporary Art Gallery on via Margutta when they were seized in an investigation of the owner, Massimo Micucci, suspected of tax fraud and money laundering for Silvio Scaglia, the billionaire owner of Italian telecommunications company Fastweb.

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List of artworks recovered by the Carabinieri TPC in Rome in March 2012 -- 41 years after they were reported stolen from a private residence in the same district

Guido Reni's Judith and Holofernes

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog editor

Earlier this month, the Carabinieri's del Reparto Operativo Tutela Patrimonio Culturale di Roma (TPC, Division for the Protection of Cultural Heritage) recovered 37 paintings that had been stolen from a private residence in 1971. The artworks hadn't left Rome's Parioli neighborhood from where they had been stolen.  Apparently, a couple had purchased 37 of the paintings twenty years ago in a private sale.  When the husband died, the 50-year-old widow placed four of the paintings in an auction sales catalogue.  In a routine operation, a Carabinieri officer had matched those images to the TPC's stolen art database which contains more than 3 million stolen artworks.  Eleven paintings stolen in 1971 were found in the woman's home in Rome and another 26 works in another home located outside the city.

The Carabinieri TPC provided a list of the most important recovered paintings (translated here):

A pair of paintings of oil on canvas attributed to Luca Giordano, rural landscapes, 49x76 cm;

Peter Paul Rubens' Christ on the Cross

Oil on canvas, Giuseppe Ruoppolo (1631-1710), still life with fruit, 50x38 cm;

Oil on canvas, Philipp Peter Roos/Rosa da Tivoli (1657-1706),  Three putti playing with a goat, 97x134 cm;

Oil on canvas, Andrea Meldolla/Lo Schiavone (1510-1563), Venus and Love, 98x123 cm;

Oil on canvas, Salvator Rosa (1615-1673), lake landscape with soldiers, 36x70 cm;

A pair of oil on canvas paintings, Antonio Diziani (1737-1797), country market, 40x60 cm;

Oil on canvas, Giulio Carpioni (1613-1678), Bacco and Arianna, 63x53 cm;

Oil on canvas, school of Paolo Caliari/Il Veronese (1528-1588), Scene with Saints, martyrs and angels, 75x62 cm;

Oil on canvas, Guido Reni (1575-1642), Judith and Holofernes, 39x30 cm;

Van Dyck's Portrait of a Knight

Oil on canvas, Pietro Longhi (1702-1785), carnival scene, 33x40 cm;

Oil on canvas, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), Christ on the cross, 47x27 cm;

Oil on canvas, Antoon Van Dyck (1599-1641), Portrait of a Knight, 36x28 cm;

Oil on canvas, Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732-1806), Portrait of a Lady, 40x33 cm;




Tempera on wood panel with gold background, Berlinghiero Berlinghieri (late 12th century - 1236), Madonna with Child, 69x39 cm;

Tempera on wood panel with gold background, school of Pisa, Madonna with Child, 52x40 cm;

Nicolas Poussin's Baptism of Christ

Oil on canvas, Pieter Van Laer (1599-1642), rural scene with ladies and knights, 52x66 cm;

Oil on canvas, Giovan Battista Recco (1615-1660), still life with fish, 53x70 cm;

Oil on canvas, school of Caravaggio, depicting still life with fruit, 40x66 cm.


Oil on canvas, Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665, Baptism of Christ, 50x66 cm; and

Tempera on wood panel, Taddeo Gaddi (1290-1366), Crucifixion, 55x23 cm.

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Would you have recognized these paintings as stolen if they had been in the home of a friend?

The Carabinieri TPC listed the images of the paintings recovered earlier this month from a home in Rome's Parioli district because these are the paintings which were stolen from another house in the same neighborhood more than 40 years ago.  A Carabinieri officer recognized the images in an auction sales catalogue in a routine check against the TPC's stolen art database of more than 3 million artworks.  Thirty-seven paintings were recovered.

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Carabinieri's TPC (Division for the Protection of Cultural Heritage) Recovery of 37 Paintings Stolen from a private residence in Rome in 1971

Press conference photo from Comando Carabinieri Tutela
Patrimonio Culturale in Rome on March 8, 2012 

by Catherine Sezgin, ARCA Blog Editor

On March 9th Tom Kingston for The Guardian reported "Stolen paintings recovered in Rome 40 years after art heist" which you can read here.  Nick Squires reported from Rome for the Daily Telegraph here.  Noah Charney wrote about the discovery in his column, The Secret History of Art.

Where were the paintings found in Rome? "Italian police find stolen paintings hanging in a house in the same district of Rome from where 42 works disappeared."

The Parioli district is an elegant residential area which also includes the Villa Giulia and the Galleria Borghese.  Thieves had not shipped the paintings out of the country.  Eleven of the paintings were likely on display in a private home for two decades.  How many guests spent the night or ate dinner in this home of stolen paintings, never recognizing the paintings as stolen or maybe not knowing or remembering that another residence had been burglarized in 1971 in the same area? Interpol's Stolen Art Database had a record of these paintings but access to this information is limited.  Public access to Interpol's Stolen Art Database was not made available until 2009.  The public has limited access to the inventory of millions of paintings reported stolen to the Carabinieri.

How did the police find the stolen paintings? The owner, a widow, put four of the paintings up for sale.  In a routine check between for sale items and the stolen art database, Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale (TPC, translated to the Carabinieri Cultural Heritage Protection Operations Department) identified the four paintings as stolen in 1971.

Here's the link to the press release by the carabinieri on the recovery of 37 of 42 paintings dated from the 13th to the 19th century which were stolen from a private residence in Rome.  The TPC's investigation started in the first week of February in coordination with the Public Prosecutor of Rome. The woman tried to sell four of the paintings at auction was arrested for possession of stolen property.

Tomorrow's post will feature the images of the most recovered paintings as provided by the Carabinieri TPC. Would you recognize these artworks as stolen if you saw them hanging on the wall of a friend's house?

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