June 15, 2021 • 46 mins
When you get a bunch of artistic types together into a community – aka, the art world – some intrigue and mystery are bound to arise. Listen in as Chuck and Josh cover strangeness around Van Gogh, Caravaggio, Raphael, and Vermeer – plus don’t miss Hilter!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's here somewhere.
So this is Stuff you should know, the Art World edition.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, you know what, I just realized. We record these
in two's and we just recorded the Pog's episode, right,
and you didn't say welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I didn't have.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Missed opportunity for a great dad joke.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
That sounds like something I would skip though, even had
I thought of it, Or I don't know that I
would have pulled the trigger.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
On I think or I could see you pulling the
trigger and then making fun of yourself, right, but.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I would have just been engaged in self loathing for
the rest of the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well, retroactively, I'm gonna say, I hope everyone enjoyed the podcast.
Now let's talk about art mysteries.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I love this one, man, this is great. This reminds
me of a Stuff you Should Know episode from years back.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
For some reason, Well, it's because we don't do these
top lists anymore. Are part of it, you know. Very
famously we used to have top tens on our old
House Stuffworks website, of which usually there were maybe seven
decent entries, so we never did I don't think we
ever did a full ten on anything. Maybe somebody could
probably correct us, but this one actually came in at seven.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
They didn't even try.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And I don't even know. We may do like five
of these. We haven't even figured it out yet.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
We'll see. We're gonna play it fast and loose. I
think that's another reason why it reminds me of an
old stuff You should know episode Fast and Loose. Yeah,
fast and loose. First you got the fast, then you
got the loose.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
But never furious because he wants to be mad. I
don't know they should have called out series Fast and Loose.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
That. I think I've heard it before that that series
is the highest grossing movie franchise in the history of
film like worldwide.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah. You know what's funny is at one point we
were this is years ago, we were talking with Ludicrous
about doing something with a network, and I, uh, because
he's he's a local guy here in Atlanta, And I
talked to our boss and said, what's he what's he
doing these days? Like I haven't heard any music? And
he went he makes fast and furious movies, like that's
(02:31):
his job now, Yeah, because he's just getting rich off
of making these movies, like.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I can't even imagine. And plus also, I mean they're
pretty it's pretty involved movie making. I would guess, like
I'm sure because there's so many stars involved that, you know,
the shooting schedule for each one isn't necessarily you know,
a year long endeavor or anything like that, and they
probably have it down to like a pretty fast science
by now. But like, I would think that would eat
(02:58):
up a pretty decent amount of your time. I'm shooting
one of those films every few you know, a couple
of times, well, I guess every few years.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I only saw one of those.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I think, Man, I'm slowly like degenerating into Bob Newhart. Man,
have you known?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Man? Good?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, you could degenerate into worse things than that. But
I mean, like I've really I'm really hitting that new
Heart note these days.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I've noticed that's a great note. I love it. I've
always wanted Bob Newhart as my podcasting partner.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So well, you you've you've there, you go, You've got it, buddy.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
All right. Number one on the list you want to
talk a little cut of Agio.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
So Caravaggio is my new favorite painter. Oh yeah, not
just because he was a scummy lowlife swordsman from the Murderer. Yeah. Uh,
he was a gambler. He would he had weapons charges
against him while he was alive. He was not a
(03:58):
good guy by any stretch of the imagination. Very troubled
person is a really polite way to put it. But
if you look at his art, like, I had no idea,
I've seen like so many works of his art and
I never pieced together that they were the same person.
And then when I really started to read some criticism
of his work, I'm like, oh my god, this guy
(04:19):
he's considered one of the fathers of modern art. And
this guy was painting at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
the early sixteen hundreds, and just like POGs, he burned
hot and bright and fast and furious.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Actually, sadly, oh that's right, that wasn't even forced. Nice work,
Bob so. Michelangelo Marisi de Caravaggio was an Italian Baroque painter.
He at one point in sixteen oh six, killed a
man name Ramuccio Tomasani and said I got to get
(04:55):
out of here because I'm in big trouble now, and
went to went away from Rome and fled to Malta,
where he had a pretty brief but I guess notable stay.
He was only there about six months and kind of
hiding out and quickly hooked up with the Knights of
Malta and was briefly one of the Knights of Malta,
(05:19):
like for a month. Yeah, and painted one of his
most famous paintings there, the oil on canvas twelve feet
by seventeen feet, the Beheading of John the Baptist.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, it was an altarpiece for the Order of Saint John,
also known as the Knights of Malta. They were going
to again put this behind the altar in their church
on Malta, and it was actually his little entry fee.
They charged an entry fee, usually money to their initiates.
They accepted, yeah, but they accepted this altar beeces giant
(05:53):
painting of Saint John the Baptist being beheaded, and it
was actually I mean, as far as the car Vaggio goes,
especially toward the end of his life, it's actually fairly
tame because there's not you know, like jets of blood
spurting out. It's a pool of blood that's being shown.
He paints some really violent stuff and and like you
(06:15):
said that that kind of that. He was a master
of light and shadow. It's called Kira scuro and and
he used it to really dramatic effect, including in that painting,
and in fact, one of the other paintings that you
might have seen of his chuck it's called Judith beheading Halofernes.
Have you seen it? I have so Judith, the woman
(06:38):
who's in that painting, the woman who modeled for that
for Judith, that was the woman that he killed. Bernuccio
TOMISONI over.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Right, did you know that I did?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Oh? You did? Okay?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Well, at any rate, they really in this House of
Works article they called it a petty squabble and that
that really doesn't the story.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah. Another explanation I saw was that it was over
a tennis wager. And this is real tennis, not lawn tennis,
and real tennis is kind of like this kooky mix
between squash and racquetball and tennis, and it's all indoors
and there's like horse sheds basically involved that you can
(07:23):
play off the roofs of it's really interesting stuff. And
he used to play that a lot too, But so
it was either over a wager or it was over
this woman.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Her name was what was it, Judith.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
No Felide Felide I believe was the actual woman's name
who modeled for Judith. So he ends up on Malta.
He becomes a knight, and when he becomes this night
he paints this altarpiece and he signs his name in
the pool of Blood, which you're like, well, he's an artist.
That seems like something an artist would do, not Caravaggio.
This is actually the first and only work of his
(08:00):
that he ever signed, which a lot of people are like, Okay,
wait a minute, let's examine this.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, And it kind of took a while for it
to be even very visible because it underwent some restorations
over the years, and in the nineteen fifties they did
a restoration where they really could see the signature and
what it said I don't know about for the first time,
but like super clearly at least, and it said F
(08:24):
period god, F mitche lang M I C H E
l A N G. And then you know, of course,
everyone's like, well, what does this mean because there is
no F in his name. It's not like his initial.
Is he saying, you know, hey, screw Michelangelo, myself, screw me,
(08:47):
or I'm screwed. No, no one really said that. They
thought that F. There are a couple of different theories.
Thought it was shorthand for fratter or which means brother,
because he was one of the knights, and maybe he
just meant like brother Michelangelo or whatever. And then some
other people said no, maybe it means stands for fesset fec,
(09:09):
which is Latin for did, translating basically into I did it,
and it's spelled out in blood, kind of confessing to
his crime.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Right, So that's kind of like where the mystery comes in.
Was he confessing to the crime of murdering Renuccio Tomosoni?
From what I saw most I can't say most, but
the art historians and critics that I saw basically said no,
he almost certainly wasn't doing that. For one, everybody knew
that he did it. He'd already been coated in absentia.
(09:40):
That's so it's not like he was confessing to it.
Although you can make the case that he was confessing
in the Catholic sense of the word. Do you know
what I mean right like before God, Yeah, exactly, or
de Bear's.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
That painting still hangs at Saint John's Co Cathedral in Multitude.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Okay, yeah, yeah, well, I mean it was the altar piece,
like they like, it was a big deal that they
got their hands on it, because he was a celebrated
painter at the time already in his lifetime. But the
other interpretation that he was saying f as in Freighter
or Brother Michelangelo about himself, that's probably the likelier version
because he was at the time seeking a pardon from
(10:21):
the Pope so he could return to Rome, and by
saying like I'm in this holy order, I'm basically like
a Catholic holy man now a leader of the church
because the Order of Saint John, the Knights of Malta
have inducted me. He was basically shouting at loud and
proud by signing that one particular very holy painting that
(10:45):
he did.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
But they said, nice, try, buddy, and they kicked him
out for being a quote foul and rotten member end quote.
So it didn't work.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
A month after a month, dude, he lasted a month
in the Order of Saint John's. And it's not like
they ran around willy nilly inducting people like they basically
had no idea that they had. What was Vic's last
name in The Shield?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Victay Beck, No, not victay Back, I don't know. I
didn't watch The Shield, Oh you didn't.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
It was good. I rewatched like the last seven episodes
the other night, over a couple of nights. It still
holds up, actually, But anyway, they didn't realize that they
had inducted him, the guy from the Shield, and they
figured it out pretty quickly. So he made his way
back from Malta to I believe sicily on his way
to Rome, and I think he actually got a pardon
and got into yet another squabble, another sword fight, and
(11:41):
sustained some wounds, and between infected wounds, they think he
got a staff infection, lead poisoning. He apparently had gone
rather mad from being exposed to the paints that he
painted with, and then sun exposure sunstroke on the beach
in Tuscan. He finally killed him, and so it goes,
(12:02):
yes it does, but his paintings are still just amazing.
I can look at him all day, you know, Yeah,
me too.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I like this. I like this stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
I do too, So that's Caravaggio.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
How about Vermire, Well, I think we should take a break.
Oh gosh, and we'll be back right after this. All right,
(12:40):
we had a great cliffhanger with Vermire. Vermire, the very
famous Dutch artist Johannes Vermire, had a very famous painting,
a lot of very famous paintings, but one in particular
that has had a bunch of names over the years.
In fact, it did not get the name Girl with
a Pearl ear Ring until the twentieth century. It was
(13:00):
called everything from a Girl with a Turban to Girl
with an Earring, had lots of different names because it
was not officially titled by Vermir Noor dated even though
they think it was around sixteen sixty five.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah, he was just like this, this dude who lived
in delt in the Netherlands and never left his hometown
and had a wife and fifteen kids fifteen, yeah, fifteen kids,
and just kind of painted and he made probably a
comparatively small number of works. I think around thirty six
(13:36):
are attributed to him, and there's a theory that as
many as a fifth of those were done by his
oldest daughter, Maria. But he's kind of like this enigma
at the time, not just personally, but also the stuff
he was painting. There was a huge movement among the
Dutch painters at the time that they would paint like these,
(13:59):
you know, horror, thick healscapes or there was a lot
of like obvious narrative and symbolism just all over the paintings.
There was just a lot going on. Vermere went a
different way where he would almost peek in on very
normal daily life and capture like these these really just
(14:20):
kind of boring her otherwise mundane moments. But he did
it in a way that this guy was like the
Master of light. He makes he makes Thomas Kinkaid look
like puke as far as like you know, light Master.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
He goes So girl with a pearl earring. Everyone has
seen it, Like I said, it's very famous. It's a
young girl looks to be sort of like mid teenage
years looking over her shoulder, she's wearing a dress, she's
wearing that turban. Very prominent ear rings, large pearl ear
rings and pearls factored into quite a few of his
works over the years, and it's one of those paintings
(14:58):
where the eyes follow you supposedly, which we've talked about
in one of our short Stuff episodes on Mona Lisa.
I think so, yeah, it's you know, the effect of
the eyes following, which doesn't happen in all paintings with eyes.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Oh no, the Mona Lisa's eyes actually don't follow you.
I think that was the big reveal of that one,
was it. Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:18):
All right, So he paints his painting, and then, of
course the mystery of this one is who is this person.
There has been speculation that it might be a mistress.
A lot of people think it was his daughter, Maria,
who would have been about fifteen or sixteen, and like
you said, who some people believe painted about a fifth
(15:39):
of the works attributed to him, because about a fifth
of his collected works aren't I mean this sounds mean
to say, but they aren't as they aren't up to
snuff compared to us other works, so they sort of
stand out from the rest, so they think that they
may have been Maria's good painting.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Still, yeah, there's still a lot better than anything I
could say.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, it's not like there were stick fit years, you know,
out of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
They're like this Vermere seems off.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
But you know, if you've there was a nineteen ninety
nine novel from Tracy Chevalier, The Girl with a Pearl Earring,
and then the two thousand film adaptation starring Scarlett Johansson,
who was perfectly cast. She looks, you know, quite a
bit like The Girl with a Pearl Earring. But this
was historical fiction. If you've seen that movie and you're like, no,
she was the family's maid's assistant and love interest to Vermire,
(16:28):
that was just I don't even think that was based
on anything. It's just historical fiction.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Yes, from what I've seen, the art critics and historians
basically tend to think that there was no person that
this was modeled on. There. It wasn't even necessarily his daughter.
And in fact, it was kind of a trend at
the time a painting called a trony, which was an
imaginary figure, a person who didn't actually exist, and the
(16:56):
point was to kind of show off things like costumes
and jewelry, which is ostensibly the point of that painting.
But the thing is the Vermire, the face that he did,
and where the place that he put her, Like we
were talking about how she gets compared to Mona Lisa.
(17:16):
She's called the Mona Lisa of the North. Mona Lisa
is like sitting back in the painting. The girl with
the pearl earring is like right in the foreground, like right,
there's very little between you and her, and she's turned
around and her mouth's open, which apparently was very unusual
for painting Dutch painting at the time, and it looks
like she's going to say something. I guess that that
(17:36):
is what entrances people with this image that you know,
what's she going to say? What did he capture her
about to say? You know, it looks like she's turning
around like oh, and you know this other thing I
hadn't told.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
You maybe she was an improv comedian. And she was, yes, yes,
and you never know. But this is a mystery they'll
never be saw, which I like those kind of mysteries
when it comes to stuff like this.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, and I saw that argued as well, that it
was like, you know, if we knew who she was,
it would just it would we would lose a lot
of the interest in.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
It, and we would have found out by now.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I think, yes, yeah, and you're right, we probably won't
ever know. But because of this so like it wasn't
like very well thought of or nobody really thought much
of it until nineteen ninety five and the National Gallery
used it as the poster for their big exhibit. But
since then a lot of people have really kind of
examined it. And I hadn't noticed this before, but I
(18:33):
saw it, pointed out Chuck. If you look at the
pearl earring. First of all, it's improbably large, is how
I saw it described, like the ear couldn't physically hold
up a pearl that size. But then secondly, it's really
basically made with two brushstrokes. Both of them are reflecting light.
One is from the light source and then the lower
(18:53):
one is reflecting the light off of the caller. And
it's pretty amazing that, you know, we talk about this
the girl with the pearl earing this pearl itself is
is like a kind of a cultural icon too, and
it's basically just two brushstrokes, which is kind of goes
to show how great Vermir was.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Have you ever seen Tim's Vermuir the documentary? I have not, Oh, Chuck,
You've got to see it. It's directed by Teller from
Penn and teller, which makes you think, like, how did
he direct if he doesn't talk, you know, but he
somehow did.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
I think.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
It's about what that's just a bit and it's about
It's about a guy who basically figured out that Vermir
somehow projected images that he built in real life onto
a canvas and then painted him that way. And he
actually replicates a Vermir like perfectly. It's really just one
of the better documentaries you'll ever see.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, so what do you think?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And rafe yell, Yeah, so the mystery here and this
is one of our This actually has a Simpsons crossover
as well, which is kind of fun because Raphael painted
a very famous painting called Portrait of a young Man
and is largely described as one of the most famous,
(20:15):
if not the most famous pieces of art to go
missing during the plundering of great art in World War
Two by Hitler in The Gang. And this is a
crossover with The Simpsons in that in the Fighting Hellfish
episode when Grandpa Abe and Burns are stealing art, this
is one of the paintings Portrait of a young Man. Oh,
(20:37):
it's one of the paintings that they stole. Wow, Which
shows that you know Simpsons writers back then at least
were definitely doing their work, like their research work, because
that's a nice little easter egg, I think.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, totally. Doesn't it even talk? Doesn't it say something
like someone's guilty conscience or something. I don't remember making
that up.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I don't know. I don't remember. I mean, it's been
a long time since I've seen that one. But it
was one of the great episodes, I think.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
So the Portrait of the young Man, which they think
was a Raphael self portrait, and actually we have no
idea what the colors were because the only photographs we
have of it were in black and white. But he
used to hang in the Prince's zar Torski Museum in Poland,
along with two other really important paintings, Leonardo's Lady with
(21:22):
an Ermine, which is a scout stoat I can't remember,
kind of a weasel like animal, and then Rembrandts Landscape
with the Good Samaritan. And all three of those and
everything else in the Prince's zar Torski Museum were swiped
by the Nazis when they came to Poland and placed
in the office of a guy named Hans Frank who
(21:43):
was the head of the government for the Nazis in Poland, right.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, And you know, they almost they almost got these
hidden away successfully when Poland was being invaded. They knew
that the art was going to be plundered, and so
those three paintings were actually rescued by the Prince hidden
away in a house in a place that I can't
even pronounce, Sienawa. I'm not sure what that is. But
(22:09):
they were ultimately found by the Gestapo and handed over
to Frank and Frank. You know, they were supposed to
go to Hitler. Hitler's going to open a museum, the
Furia Museum, and Lenz and Frank actually kind of kept
it for a little while, hung it in his residence,
and then eventually this thing went to Germany and then
(22:30):
Austria for a little while, and then back with Frank
in nineteen forty five.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Which seems crazy improbable that they would end up back
with him, but they did. And the Allies came in
to Poland, I guess, and arrested Hans Frank in nineteen
forty five, and they were able to find the Lady
with an Ermine and the landscape with the Good Samaritan,
but the portrait of the young Man was nowhere to
(22:55):
be found.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Yeah, they found a lot of other stuff too.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Sure, they definitely did. But the three most important pieces
in the Prince's Zartarski Museum were those three, and two
were recovered, one wasn't. And it's very odd to think
that they were separated at any time, or that it's
even odder to think that two were kept together, but
one wasn't. And so because the portrait of the young
(23:18):
Man was not recovered, and it's a Raphael who's you know,
one of the great Italian Renaissance painters, it's considered maybe
the most important piece to go missing in World War two.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, and they, you know, along with I think over
eight hundred other artifacts they got from him, and they
could not go on to question him very long because
he was executed just a year later. And since then
there have been a lot of rumors about where this
thing ended up. Who has it, a lot of speculation
that maybe a private collector in another country has it.
(23:53):
I think in twenty twelve there was a false report
that it was supposedly in some bank vault, and they
really don't know. It's just sort of one of those
great mysteries of a disappeared painting, and my money is
on a private collector probably has this thing stashed away.
But you would also think that at some point somebody
would talk.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
You would think so, and you know, maybe they will eventually.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Unless it's really sashed.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Well, some people think it was destroyed, and that movie
Monuments Men, right, they show the Nazis igniting it with
the flamethrower in a cave with a bunch of other
art and there, you know, there's a whole camp that says,
now this thing is it's gone forever. So they did
something to it, because the Nazis were known not just
plunder but also destroy art as well, which just one
(24:38):
more reason to love them Nazis.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, and I think this is oil on panel, so
it's I don't think this could even be like rolled
up in a tube and put under your bed or anything.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, I would guess not. No, I didn't realize it
was on panel, but that makes sense. But the the state,
the National Museum in Krakow bought the entire Princess ark
Torsky collection from a private colle elector for one hundred
million euros back in twenty sixteen, and that I know,
and that included the rights to portrait of a young
Man in case it's ever found, And for now it's
(25:10):
just they have the original frame hanging empty in the
in the gallery.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, that's it turns out that's a thing I didn't
know as a thing in ty frames in galleries. It's
kind of sad.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, it's sad. It's very poignant. It says, come home,
come home. We're leaving the light on for you, come home,
just like Motel six. That's right right, top bro call,
we'll leave the lne out for it. All right.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Well, that means it's time for another break and we'll
be back right after this to talk a little bit
about Van Goch.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
So Chuck before I launched into saka go away type,
tie rade onto you? Is that how you accurately pronounce
his name?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I don't know it was. It was from the filmmaker
who dare not speak his name. It was from a
Woody Allen movie. I think it was in the most
problematic movie Manhattan, when he's with Diane Keaton and some
obnoxious person says Van or I think it's Dian Keaton,
says Van Goch, and he's you know, he's incense. He's
like Van Gock, like how pretentious.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
So okay, So instead we're just gonna go with Van
Go like everybody else, right, yeah, sure, okay, and we can.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Cut all that out if we want to. Don't even
want to talk about Woody Allen, that's.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Fine, sure, sure, I hear you. So Van Go was
most he was just such a sad, tragic figure out
for this guy so much after learning more about him,
we should do an entire podcast on him, if you
ask me, I agreed, But instead here we're going to
talk about his death because there is a mystery surrounding
his death. He's very famous for having cut off his ear.
(27:02):
He definitely did that, and I had always learned that
he did it to impress a sex worker who he
was enamored with, and he definitely did give her his
ear after he cut it off, But that's not why
he cut it off. He cut it off in a
fit of angst, basically after having an argument with his
friend Paul Gogan, who he was living with in Arles
(27:24):
in the south of France, and he said, well, I'm
going to make some sort of lemonade out of this
lemon I just gave myself, and he took it to
his I guess hopeful girlfriend, and I believe she was
not that impressed with it.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, so he suffered from definitely depression. There is speculation
that he had bipolar disorder. Yeah, I saw that too,
was you know, just sort of long suffering as an artist,
he didn't He only sold one painting before he died
in eighteen ninety at the age of thirty seven. And
the story he goes is that he shot himself in
(28:02):
the chest with a revolver. But it gets a little
more complicated than that. And in what year was the book?
In twenty eleven, there was a book written called Van
go Colon the Life written by Stephen I'm gonna say,
Maifa okay and Gregory white Smith, And it seems like
(28:23):
they sort of launched this idea or at least really
put it in the public forefront that he was actually
killed almost certainly accidentally, by one of two boys, younger
gentleman that he was hanging out with that day.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Right. So here's the thing, Like, there's a lot of
circumstantial evidence that supports that theory that it was killed
by two boys.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Aye by it.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
There's also it's also circumstantially plausible that you know, Van
God died by suicide as well. But even if you
take his story and start digging into it and the
statements that he made supposedly made, apparently everything we know
about it comes from the owner of the inn where
he rented a room's thirteen year old daughter at the time,
(29:13):
as a witness to all this. But even if you
take what he supposedly said, it still doesn't add up
that number one, he shot himself in the chest, and
most importantly, the number two, the gun that he shot
himself with could never be found and instead of actually,
you know, finishing the suicide, completing the suicide, he couldn't
(29:36):
find the gun after he shot himself in the chest
and just walked back to his room where he died
after suffering twenty more hours, but still to the end
claiming that he had done this himself. Even if you
take all that together, it seems like, no, this's something
really fishy going on here.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Yeah, so this bullet misses all of his internal organs
very improbably because it deflected off his rib cage, and
he walked, like you said, to the doctor who they
didn't have a surgeon on duty, so they couldn't remove
the bullet. He lived a total of thirty hours after
the shot and died of infection. Got to talk with
(30:14):
his brother, you know, was speaking to people, so as
he had every opportunity to say that these two boys
that I was hanging out with that I was drinking,
and I say boys, I think they were maybe late teens,
early twenties.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
No they were sixteen.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Oh okay, I saw early twenties and another thing. Oh yeah,
but you know, hanging out getting drunk with them. One
of these boys, Renee Sacratan, had a gun that apparently
misfired a lot, and he liked playing with this thing.
He liked to play cowboys, supposedly he did. And so
(30:49):
it all just seems and even his statement, he he said,
he didn't say I shot myself. He said, do not
accuse anyone. It was I who wanted to kill myself.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah, which is a very official year as well.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yeah, sure, it's ambiguous, I think as far as like,
because the idea is that maybe he was accidentally shot,
and then after he was shot, he was like, this
is kind of what I wanted all along. You know,
I've been heading down this road towards suicide and then
now it's just done for me.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
So what seems to have happened is that this gun
possibly that it wasn't actually murdered or any kind of
premeditated murder, more like a manslaughter where Renee and his
brother guests Don were messing around and accidentally Basically he
had seen a wild Bill Cody Wild West show the
(31:42):
year before and became obsessed with it, so that's what
he was doing with a gun and playing cowboy, and
that they had accidentally shot him with this gun that
was kind of you know, known to misfire. So the
thing was that the gun was never found. Renee went
back to school like right after that, which was still
(32:02):
in the middle of summer break from what I saw,
and the town seems to have circled the wagons around
this these boys because you know, Van Go was an outsider.
He was not very well thought of. He used to
get really drunk and argue with the locals in the
cafe and the and everything like basically every night. And
(32:23):
these boys came from like a good well to do family.
So for many years like that was just the thing,
like like it just happened, and then slowly, little by
little it seems to have trickled out some support for
this idea, like no, like van Go wasn't anywhere near
this field. He said that he had shot himself in
he was actually on the road to the Secraton's house.
(32:43):
And then finally years later, Renee Secraton said that, you know,
he it probably was his gun and that vang Goo
had somehow gotten hold of it. It seems it seems
likely that he was shot by them, whether accident or not.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, these two authors, they put forth some other circumstantial evidence,
like that the bullet went in at a weird angle
that would not have been the angle if you shot
yourself in the chest, that his more recent works were
a little more upbeat and a little more positive, and
that he was not in that kind of mindset at
(33:20):
the time, and that he had had recently even written
his thoughts about suicide, that he thought it was sinful
and immoral. And so they sort of use all this
as evidence that he would not have done it himself
and that it was you know, they believe it was
an accident. His last words, very sad, were the sadness
will last forever, he spoke to his brother, Which that's tough.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Yeah, it is. I really do want to do an
episode on him.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
And I think sek Gatma came out in the fifties
even and denied it right, like finally once and.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
For all he did. He did, but he also he
also said that it probably was his gun and that
somehow Van Goll had gotten it.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Right, but hey, my fault.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
No, But to also to back pedal and be like,
it probably was my gun, because that was another thing
and everybody's like, where did Vang get a gun? Van
go didn't have a gun, no, and no one would
have given Vang a gun. Y. Yeah, he was the
guy who got drunk every night and had cut off
his ear before that was like they no one in
town would have given him a gun. So the fact
(34:21):
that he even admitted that it was his gun is
probably as close as Renee Serkatan ever came to confessing
publicly about it, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, and it makes sense what he said was do
not accuse anyone like that really seems like he's trying
to cover for these kids that he didn't want to
get in trouble.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, because if he wanted to die, but it was
also he didn't want to die by his own hand,
Like this is kind of a lucky gift in a
very strange way.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
You know. Yeah, I'm going to that immersive van Go
thing in July.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Where is that?
Speaker 1 (34:56):
It is at here in Atlanta. It's at the Pullman
Yards over in Kirkwood where they're shoot Like every movie
in Atlanta shoots there, right, Yeah, so yeah, it's supposed
to be pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
It's very very neat. Sounds neat, I mean, like do
it basically? They just make the stars come out whenever
you come in, And I think so. I think you
sit in this yellow chair.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
I think that's the deal. I think you go in
and you are surrounded by projected art in different ways
from what I can get, that's all.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
I got to check that out. Man, thanks for telling
me about it.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, it looks kind of cool, all.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Right, Chuck. You want to finish out talking about Hitler.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Don't you mean Hilter?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Did you know there is Hilter? Oh my gosh, yes,
in the headline in.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
The headline, did Hilter really do these paintings? Do these
paintings that I feel bad, but like, did Hilter really
do these paintings?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
That's great?
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Oh yeah he did them.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, Hilter did these paintings. So we're talking not about
Hilter but about Hitler, Adolf Hitler in particular. And as
everybody knows, Hitler was a frustrated artist. You know, people
have made a lot of hay about how possibly the
world would be a totally different place had he been
accepted into the Vienna Academy of Arts. And he came well,
(36:20):
I don't want to say he came close, but he
made two different attempts in one year to be accepted,
and they basically looked at his stuff and said, look, man,
you you have the skill of a draftsman. Maybe you
should go into architecture, like, but you're not going to
be an artist. And that was a direct quote. But
(36:44):
this was a huge deal for him. I think I
read that in Mine COMF. I haven't read Mine comp
but I read an article by somebody who read Mine
comp and said that he said it was like a
bolt from the blue, and that you know, he was
pursuing this dream that his father would like beat him
out of. Like his father enrolled him in a technical school.
He's like, no son of mine's going to be an artist.
(37:06):
He would beat him up whenever he brought he brought
the idea up. And so finally, after his father died
and then he nursed his ailing mother until she died,
he got up the gumption and did like go and
enroll in art school. And apparently, he, being Hitler, who
I guess had been fairly bonkers his whole life, just
(37:27):
knew that he was destined to become an artist. So
the idea that he was rebuffed not once but twice
by this Vienna school. These people were like the people
the guardians of what is art and what is not,
and they were telling him what you got is not.
That was a huge deal to him.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
It was a very big deal. And it's funny, it's
just now occurring to me that there was sort of
a similar thing with Manson's rejection as a musician, yeah,
by the music industry. I never really kind of really
thought of that parallel. But in nineteen oh nine Hitler
is trapesing around Vienna and he is selling watercolors copied
(38:07):
from postcards to tourists. So if you've ever traveled to Europe,
he was one of those guys that was down by
the river, the river bank, yeah, in a van, selling
these and literally copied from postcards. So he did that
for a little while, made a little bit of money,
because you know, if you look at his art, it's
it's way better than I could do. It's you know,
(38:29):
it's okay, but like modern and it's hard to tell
if modern art critics like so much goes into looking
at a Hitler painting and reviewing it, like it's really
hard to kind of separate those things. But the general
thought is is that he had nothing exceptional about him
at all. It was he was the kind of artists
that would sell stuff down by the river to tourists.
(38:51):
He was they were fine, he was capable, but they
were copycat paintings. He was copying things. He had no
point of view. He did this in nineteen thirteen as
well in Munich, painting Munich city scapes and landscapes and
selling them the tourists. And then in nineteen fourteen got
hauled in by the police of all things, for failing
(39:12):
to register for the military.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah. And then he went down and registered, and then
they gave him a physical exam and he failed it.
They said it was too weak to fire a weapon. Yeah,
So they arrested him so that they could humiliate him basically,
and then when World War One came around, he enlisted
and they say, we need everybody we can get, come
(39:37):
on in, and even Hilt right, yeah, yeah, even Hilter.
Hilter did this army thing.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
So when he rose to power in Germany, one of
the things he did was he had his works collected
and destroyed. I'm not exactly sure what the thinking was
behind that, I guess because he knew it wasn't very
good and he needed to focus on his political career
rather than his artistic career, or have everybody else focus
on it. But to no avail, because I saw a
(40:08):
nineteen thirty six critic or a critic wrote in nineteen
thirty six that his style was prosaic, utterly devoid of rhythm, color, feeling,
or spiritualism. Yeah, and this was before he I'm sorry,
or spiritual imagination. And this was before he had really
become an obvious threat. This is nineteen thirty six, So
(40:31):
even back then, even without hindsight, people thought his stuff
wasn't very good. So, yeah, he had his stuff destroyed,
and that's it was kind of a footnote for a
very long time that he was an artist, and no
one really cared after his death.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yeah, I mean this, and that was one of the
major reasons that he was such an art plunderer during
the war and stole as much art as he could
from real famous artists and famous paintings, because he had
all this backstory as a failed artist, and it was interesting.
I did see that like one of his major I mean,
(41:08):
because he wasn't an utter failure at first. He had
a backer early on. I think he was a Jewish Man, yeah,
which was really interesting, and there was I don't know, man,
it's there's a lot of speculation about what that all
meant to him, and like people try and draw parallels,
just like some of the paintings I saw, I mean,
(41:29):
some of it feels like a stretch. Definitely, like the
you know, the cold the cold streets of Munich, like
were painted like clearly with a future cleansing in mind
to make it look like this, and.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
That's a stretch.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah, some of that stuff seems like a stretch. But
you could definitely read into the backstory, at least I
think with some accuracy.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Yeah, And even if like you can't necessarily suss out
like the future from from his paintings, you can make
a pretty strong case that his artistic ambitions being utterly crushed, Yeah,
had some sort of driving force or impact on a
psyche at the very least. Sure like that and his
(42:13):
later political career and dictatorship did not exist in a vacuum.
I don't think you can possibly make the case that
they were just unrelated in any way.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
No. I think any sociopath you can look at their
past and see the dots connected, you know. Yeah, So,
like you said, there was this kind of just was
the deal for a long time, and then in like
anything else, like people wanting to get original Charles Manson
music reels, in the early late nineties early two thousands,
(42:42):
there was a market for Hitler's work. I think in
two thousand and nine a British auction house someone paid
one hundred and fifty grand for fifteen early sketches and watercolors,
including a self portrait, And then in twenty fifteen some
unnamed investors paid four hundred and fifty one thousand dollars
for a set of watercolors. I think there were twelve
(43:03):
or thirteen yeah, that survived.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Yeah. The problem is is because he didn't have a
style of his own that he was copying postcards that
he didn't have any formal training and that he was
he lacked like a lot of creativity or any creativity.
It seems like it's really hard to say this is
a Hitler and this is a fake. And there's been
(43:28):
developed a really, really enormous market of fakes because anybody
who's like a passingly good artist in watercolors of street
scapes and landscapes could drum up something and be like,
this is a Hitler and it would be really difficult
to say yes it is or no it's not.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, what kind of a garbage human do you have
to be to think I'll do Hitler forgeries and try
and sell them to garbage humans that want to collect them.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Yeah. And it's not like the you're even fetching like
ten million dollars apiece. We're talking like you might get
ten thousand dollars for it for your your Hitler forgery.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Unbelievable, but totally believable.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
So that's the mystery of the Hitler paintings. Did he
do this?
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah? Did he do those paintings?
Speaker 2 (44:20):
You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (44:21):
I got nothing else? That was a good five. I
think we have committed to doing a robust episode on
the Gardner Museum heist, because that's a good one and
that was on this list and way underplayed.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
For sure, So keep an ear out for that, everybody.
And since I said keep an ear out for that,
think it's time for listener mail. Yeah. I'm gonna call this.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Middle names because we had a little discussion in our
John Mure episode about how Emily and I and our
friends justin Melissa one night, we're going by our middle
names as a joke, and I had the theory that
you have no emotional connection to your middle name if
you don't have a reaction when you hear it. Set
out loud and I just meant sort of the non
(45:10):
dominant name. It didn't necessarily mean middle names, because my
brother goes by his middle name, Scott is his middle name,
and some people do that. It's a thing, and certainly
Amy does. She said, I was listening to the show
and at the end you were chatting about using middle
names and how you don't have an emotional connection when
you hear it. I have an interesting situation that everyone
everyone in my family uses their middle names. So I've
(45:32):
always been called Amy ever since I was born, but
my first name is Helen. This causes an interesting situation
at airports and doctor's appointments where they refer to me
as Helen, and I always have to remember that they're
talking to me. A big fan of the show, kept
me curious and my curious spirits satisfied over the last
three or four years, and it's such a comfort knowing
there's always another episode to listen to. Best wishes from
(45:53):
the UK. They're always so nice and that is sure, Amy, Helen.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Amy, Thanks Helen, Amy. We'll just call her Amy as
is customary.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah, because we say Helen, She's like, who.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Wow. I can't wait until they read my listener mail,
says Amy. If you want to be like Amy and
get in touch with us for whatever reason, you can
send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and
there's Charles w Chuck Bryan over there, and Jerry's here somewhere.
So this is Stuff you should know, the Art World edition.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Yeah, you know what, I just realized. We record these
in two's and we just recorded the Pog's episode, right,
and you didn't say welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
I didn't have.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Missed opportunity for a great dad joke.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
That sounds like something I would skip though, even had
I thought of it, Or I don't know that I
would have pulled the trigger.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
On I think or I could see you pulling the
trigger and then making fun of yourself, right, but.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
I would have just been engaged in self loathing for
the rest of the podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Well, retroactively, I'm gonna say, I hope everyone enjoyed the podcast.
Now let's talk about art mysteries.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
I love this one, man, this is great. This reminds
me of a Stuff you Should Know episode from years back.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
For some reason, Well, it's because we don't do these
top lists anymore. Are part of it, you know. Very
famously we used to have top tens on our old
House Stuffworks website, of which usually there were maybe seven
decent entries, so we never did I don't think we
ever did a full ten on anything. Maybe somebody could
probably correct us, but this one actually came in at seven.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
They didn't even try.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
And I don't even know. We may do like five
of these. We haven't even figured it out yet.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
We'll see. We're gonna play it fast and loose. I
think that's another reason why it reminds me of an
old stuff You should know episode Fast and Loose. Yeah,
fast and loose. First you got the fast, then you
got the loose.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
But never furious because he wants to be mad. I
don't know they should have called out series Fast and Loose.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
That. I think I've heard it before that that series
is the highest grossing movie franchise in the history of
film like worldwide.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Yeah. You know what's funny is at one point we
were this is years ago, we were talking with Ludicrous
about doing something with a network, and I, uh, because
he's he's a local guy here in Atlanta, And I
talked to our boss and said, what's he what's he
doing these days? Like I haven't heard any music? And
he went he makes fast and furious movies, like that's
(02:31):
his job now, Yeah, because he's just getting rich off
of making these movies, like.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
I can't even imagine. And plus also, I mean they're
pretty it's pretty involved movie making. I would guess, like
I'm sure because there's so many stars involved that, you know,
the shooting schedule for each one isn't necessarily you know,
a year long endeavor or anything like that, and they
probably have it down to like a pretty fast science
by now. But like, I would think that would eat
(02:58):
up a pretty decent amount of your time. I'm shooting
one of those films every few you know, a couple
of times, well, I guess every few years.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I only saw one of those.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
I think, Man, I'm slowly like degenerating into Bob Newhart. Man,
have you known?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Man? Good?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
Yeah, you could degenerate into worse things than that. But
I mean, like I've really I'm really hitting that new
Heart note these days.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I've noticed that's a great note. I love it. I've
always wanted Bob Newhart as my podcasting partner.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
So well, you you've you've there, you go, You've got it, buddy.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
All right. Number one on the list you want to
talk a little cut of Agio.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
So Caravaggio is my new favorite painter. Oh yeah, not
just because he was a scummy lowlife swordsman from the Murderer. Yeah. Uh,
he was a gambler. He would he had weapons charges
against him while he was alive. He was not a
(03:58):
good guy by any stretch of the imagination. Very troubled
person is a really polite way to put it. But
if you look at his art, like, I had no idea,
I've seen like so many works of his art and
I never pieced together that they were the same person.
And then when I really started to read some criticism
of his work, I'm like, oh my god, this guy
(04:19):
he's considered one of the fathers of modern art. And
this guy was painting at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
the early sixteen hundreds, and just like POGs, he burned
hot and bright and fast and furious.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
Actually, sadly, oh that's right, that wasn't even forced. Nice work,
Bob so. Michelangelo Marisi de Caravaggio was an Italian Baroque painter.
He at one point in sixteen oh six, killed a
man name Ramuccio Tomasani and said I got to get
(04:55):
out of here because I'm in big trouble now, and
went to went away from Rome and fled to Malta,
where he had a pretty brief but I guess notable stay.
He was only there about six months and kind of
hiding out and quickly hooked up with the Knights of
Malta and was briefly one of the Knights of Malta,
(05:19):
like for a month. Yeah, and painted one of his
most famous paintings there, the oil on canvas twelve feet
by seventeen feet, the Beheading of John the Baptist.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, it was an altarpiece for the Order of Saint John,
also known as the Knights of Malta. They were going
to again put this behind the altar in their church
on Malta, and it was actually his little entry fee.
They charged an entry fee, usually money to their initiates.
They accepted, yeah, but they accepted this altar beeces giant
(05:53):
painting of Saint John the Baptist being beheaded, and it
was actually I mean, as far as the car Vaggio goes,
especially toward the end of his life, it's actually fairly
tame because there's not you know, like jets of blood
spurting out. It's a pool of blood that's being shown.
He paints some really violent stuff and and like you
(06:15):
said that that kind of that. He was a master
of light and shadow. It's called Kira scuro and and
he used it to really dramatic effect, including in that painting,
and in fact, one of the other paintings that you
might have seen of his chuck it's called Judith beheading Halofernes.
Have you seen it? I have so Judith, the woman
(06:38):
who's in that painting, the woman who modeled for that
for Judith, that was the woman that he killed. Bernuccio
TOMISONI over.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Right, did you know that I did?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Oh? You did? Okay?
Speaker 1 (06:54):
Well, at any rate, they really in this House of
Works article they called it a petty squabble and that
that really doesn't the story.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah. Another explanation I saw was that it was over
a tennis wager. And this is real tennis, not lawn tennis,
and real tennis is kind of like this kooky mix
between squash and racquetball and tennis, and it's all indoors
and there's like horse sheds basically involved that you can
(07:23):
play off the roofs of it's really interesting stuff. And
he used to play that a lot too, But so
it was either over a wager or it was over
this woman.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Her name was what was it, Judith.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
No Felide Felide I believe was the actual woman's name
who modeled for Judith. So he ends up on Malta.
He becomes a knight, and when he becomes this night
he paints this altarpiece and he signs his name in
the pool of Blood, which you're like, well, he's an artist.
That seems like something an artist would do, not Caravaggio.
This is actually the first and only work of his
(08:00):
that he ever signed, which a lot of people are like, Okay,
wait a minute, let's examine this.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, And it kind of took a while for it
to be even very visible because it underwent some restorations
over the years, and in the nineteen fifties they did
a restoration where they really could see the signature and
what it said I don't know about for the first time,
but like super clearly at least, and it said F
(08:24):
period god, F mitche lang M I C H E
l A N G. And then you know, of course,
everyone's like, well, what does this mean because there is
no F in his name. It's not like his initial.
Is he saying, you know, hey, screw Michelangelo, myself, screw me,
(08:47):
or I'm screwed. No, no one really said that. They
thought that F. There are a couple of different theories.
Thought it was shorthand for fratter or which means brother,
because he was one of the knights, and maybe he
just meant like brother Michelangelo or whatever. And then some
other people said no, maybe it means stands for fesset fec,
(09:09):
which is Latin for did, translating basically into I did it,
and it's spelled out in blood, kind of confessing to
his crime.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Right, So that's kind of like where the mystery comes in.
Was he confessing to the crime of murdering Renuccio Tomosoni?
From what I saw most I can't say most, but
the art historians and critics that I saw basically said no,
he almost certainly wasn't doing that. For one, everybody knew
that he did it. He'd already been coated in absentia.
(09:40):
That's so it's not like he was confessing to it.
Although you can make the case that he was confessing
in the Catholic sense of the word. Do you know
what I mean right like before God, Yeah, exactly, or
de Bear's.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
That painting still hangs at Saint John's Co Cathedral in Multitude.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Okay, yeah, yeah, well, I mean it was the altar piece,
like they like, it was a big deal that they
got their hands on it, because he was a celebrated
painter at the time already in his lifetime. But the
other interpretation that he was saying f as in Freighter
or Brother Michelangelo about himself, that's probably the likelier version
because he was at the time seeking a pardon from
(10:21):
the Pope so he could return to Rome, and by
saying like I'm in this holy order, I'm basically like
a Catholic holy man now a leader of the church
because the Order of Saint John, the Knights of Malta
have inducted me. He was basically shouting at loud and
proud by signing that one particular very holy painting that
(10:45):
he did.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
But they said, nice, try, buddy, and they kicked him
out for being a quote foul and rotten member end quote.
So it didn't work.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
A month after a month, dude, he lasted a month
in the Order of Saint John's. And it's not like
they ran around willy nilly inducting people like they basically
had no idea that they had. What was Vic's last
name in The Shield?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Victay Beck, No, not victay Back, I don't know. I
didn't watch The Shield, Oh you didn't.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
It was good. I rewatched like the last seven episodes
the other night, over a couple of nights. It still
holds up, actually, But anyway, they didn't realize that they
had inducted him, the guy from the Shield, and they
figured it out pretty quickly. So he made his way
back from Malta to I believe sicily on his way
to Rome, and I think he actually got a pardon
and got into yet another squabble, another sword fight, and
(11:41):
sustained some wounds, and between infected wounds, they think he
got a staff infection, lead poisoning. He apparently had gone
rather mad from being exposed to the paints that he
painted with, and then sun exposure sunstroke on the beach
in Tuscan. He finally killed him, and so it goes,
(12:02):
yes it does, but his paintings are still just amazing.
I can look at him all day, you know, Yeah,
me too.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
I like this. I like this stuff.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
I do too, So that's Caravaggio.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
How about Vermire, Well, I think we should take a break.
Oh gosh, and we'll be back right after this. All right,
(12:40):
we had a great cliffhanger with Vermire. Vermire, the very
famous Dutch artist Johannes Vermire, had a very famous painting,
a lot of very famous paintings, but one in particular
that has had a bunch of names over the years.
In fact, it did not get the name Girl with
a Pearl ear Ring until the twentieth century. It was
(13:00):
called everything from a Girl with a Turban to Girl
with an Earring, had lots of different names because it
was not officially titled by Vermir Noor dated even though
they think it was around sixteen sixty five.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
Yeah, he was just like this, this dude who lived
in delt in the Netherlands and never left his hometown
and had a wife and fifteen kids fifteen, yeah, fifteen kids,
and just kind of painted and he made probably a
comparatively small number of works. I think around thirty six
(13:36):
are attributed to him, and there's a theory that as
many as a fifth of those were done by his
oldest daughter, Maria. But he's kind of like this enigma
at the time, not just personally, but also the stuff
he was painting. There was a huge movement among the
Dutch painters at the time that they would paint like these,
(13:59):
you know, horror, thick healscapes or there was a lot
of like obvious narrative and symbolism just all over the paintings.
There was just a lot going on. Vermere went a
different way where he would almost peek in on very
normal daily life and capture like these these really just
(14:20):
kind of boring her otherwise mundane moments. But he did
it in a way that this guy was like the
Master of light. He makes he makes Thomas Kinkaid look
like puke as far as like you know, light Master.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
He goes So girl with a pearl earring. Everyone has
seen it, Like I said, it's very famous. It's a
young girl looks to be sort of like mid teenage
years looking over her shoulder, she's wearing a dress, she's
wearing that turban. Very prominent ear rings, large pearl ear
rings and pearls factored into quite a few of his
works over the years, and it's one of those paintings
(14:58):
where the eyes follow you supposedly, which we've talked about
in one of our short Stuff episodes on Mona Lisa.
I think so, yeah, it's you know, the effect of
the eyes following, which doesn't happen in all paintings with eyes.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Oh no, the Mona Lisa's eyes actually don't follow you.
I think that was the big reveal of that one,
was it. Yeah?
Speaker 1 (15:18):
All right, So he paints his painting, and then, of
course the mystery of this one is who is this person.
There has been speculation that it might be a mistress.
A lot of people think it was his daughter, Maria,
who would have been about fifteen or sixteen, and like
you said, who some people believe painted about a fifth
(15:39):
of the works attributed to him, because about a fifth
of his collected works aren't I mean this sounds mean
to say, but they aren't as they aren't up to
snuff compared to us other works, so they sort of
stand out from the rest, so they think that they
may have been Maria's good painting.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Still, yeah, there's still a lot better than anything I
could say.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Yeah, it's not like there were stick fit years, you know,
out of nowhere.
Speaker 2 (16:02):
They're like this Vermere seems off.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
But you know, if you've there was a nineteen ninety
nine novel from Tracy Chevalier, The Girl with a Pearl Earring,
and then the two thousand film adaptation starring Scarlett Johansson,
who was perfectly cast. She looks, you know, quite a
bit like The Girl with a Pearl Earring. But this
was historical fiction. If you've seen that movie and you're like, no,
she was the family's maid's assistant and love interest to Vermire,
(16:28):
that was just I don't even think that was based
on anything. It's just historical fiction.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
Yes, from what I've seen, the art critics and historians
basically tend to think that there was no person that
this was modeled on. There. It wasn't even necessarily his daughter.
And in fact, it was kind of a trend at
the time a painting called a trony, which was an
imaginary figure, a person who didn't actually exist, and the
(16:56):
point was to kind of show off things like costumes
and jewelry, which is ostensibly the point of that painting.
But the thing is the Vermire, the face that he did,
and where the place that he put her, Like we
were talking about how she gets compared to Mona Lisa.
(17:16):
She's called the Mona Lisa of the North. Mona Lisa
is like sitting back in the painting. The girl with
the pearl earring is like right in the foreground, like right,
there's very little between you and her, and she's turned
around and her mouth's open, which apparently was very unusual
for painting Dutch painting at the time, and it looks
like she's going to say something. I guess that that
(17:36):
is what entrances people with this image that you know,
what's she going to say? What did he capture her
about to say? You know, it looks like she's turning
around like oh, and you know this other thing I
hadn't told.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
You maybe she was an improv comedian. And she was, yes, yes,
and you never know. But this is a mystery they'll
never be saw, which I like those kind of mysteries
when it comes to stuff like this.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, and I saw that argued as well, that it
was like, you know, if we knew who she was,
it would just it would we would lose a lot
of the interest in.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
It, and we would have found out by now.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I think, yes, yeah, and you're right, we probably won't
ever know. But because of this so like it wasn't
like very well thought of or nobody really thought much
of it until nineteen ninety five and the National Gallery
used it as the poster for their big exhibit. But
since then a lot of people have really kind of
examined it. And I hadn't noticed this before, but I
(18:33):
saw it, pointed out Chuck. If you look at the
pearl earring. First of all, it's improbably large, is how
I saw it described, like the ear couldn't physically hold
up a pearl that size. But then secondly, it's really
basically made with two brushstrokes. Both of them are reflecting light.
One is from the light source and then the lower
(18:53):
one is reflecting the light off of the caller. And
it's pretty amazing that, you know, we talk about this
the girl with the pearl earing this pearl itself is
is like a kind of a cultural icon too, and
it's basically just two brushstrokes, which is kind of goes
to show how great Vermir was.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (19:11):
Have you ever seen Tim's Vermuir the documentary? I have not, Oh, Chuck,
You've got to see it. It's directed by Teller from
Penn and teller, which makes you think, like, how did
he direct if he doesn't talk, you know, but he
somehow did.
Speaker 1 (19:26):
I think.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
It's about what that's just a bit and it's about
It's about a guy who basically figured out that Vermir
somehow projected images that he built in real life onto
a canvas and then painted him that way. And he
actually replicates a Vermir like perfectly. It's really just one
of the better documentaries you'll ever see.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Very cool.
Speaker 2 (19:51):
Yeah, so what do you think?
Speaker 1 (19:54):
And rafe yell, Yeah, so the mystery here and this
is one of our This actually has a Simpsons crossover
as well, which is kind of fun because Raphael painted
a very famous painting called Portrait of a young Man
and is largely described as one of the most famous,
(20:15):
if not the most famous pieces of art to go
missing during the plundering of great art in World War
Two by Hitler in The Gang. And this is a
crossover with The Simpsons in that in the Fighting Hellfish
episode when Grandpa Abe and Burns are stealing art, this
is one of the paintings Portrait of a young Man. Oh,
(20:37):
it's one of the paintings that they stole. Wow, Which
shows that you know Simpsons writers back then at least
were definitely doing their work, like their research work, because
that's a nice little easter egg, I think.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
Yeah, totally. Doesn't it even talk? Doesn't it say something
like someone's guilty conscience or something. I don't remember making
that up.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
I don't know. I don't remember. I mean, it's been
a long time since I've seen that one. But it
was one of the great episodes, I think.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
So the Portrait of the young Man, which they think
was a Raphael self portrait, and actually we have no
idea what the colors were because the only photographs we
have of it were in black and white. But he
used to hang in the Prince's zar Torski Museum in Poland,
along with two other really important paintings, Leonardo's Lady with
(21:22):
an Ermine, which is a scout stoat I can't remember,
kind of a weasel like animal, and then Rembrandts Landscape
with the Good Samaritan. And all three of those and
everything else in the Prince's zar Torski Museum were swiped
by the Nazis when they came to Poland and placed
in the office of a guy named Hans Frank who
(21:43):
was the head of the government for the Nazis in Poland, right.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
Yeah, And you know, they almost they almost got these
hidden away successfully when Poland was being invaded. They knew
that the art was going to be plundered, and so
those three paintings were actually rescued by the Prince hidden
away in a house in a place that I can't
even pronounce, Sienawa. I'm not sure what that is. But
(22:09):
they were ultimately found by the Gestapo and handed over
to Frank and Frank. You know, they were supposed to
go to Hitler. Hitler's going to open a museum, the
Furia Museum, and Lenz and Frank actually kind of kept
it for a little while, hung it in his residence,
and then eventually this thing went to Germany and then
(22:30):
Austria for a little while, and then back with Frank
in nineteen forty five.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
Which seems crazy improbable that they would end up back
with him, but they did. And the Allies came in
to Poland, I guess, and arrested Hans Frank in nineteen
forty five, and they were able to find the Lady
with an Ermine and the landscape with the Good Samaritan,
but the portrait of the young Man was nowhere to
(22:55):
be found.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Yeah, they found a lot of other stuff too.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Sure, they definitely did. But the three most important pieces
in the Prince's Zartarski Museum were those three, and two
were recovered, one wasn't. And it's very odd to think
that they were separated at any time, or that it's
even odder to think that two were kept together, but
one wasn't. And so because the portrait of the young
(23:18):
Man was not recovered, and it's a Raphael who's you know,
one of the great Italian Renaissance painters, it's considered maybe
the most important piece to go missing in World War two.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
Yeah, and they, you know, along with I think over
eight hundred other artifacts they got from him, and they
could not go on to question him very long because
he was executed just a year later. And since then
there have been a lot of rumors about where this
thing ended up. Who has it, a lot of speculation
that maybe a private collector in another country has it.
(23:53):
I think in twenty twelve there was a false report
that it was supposedly in some bank vault, and they
really don't know. It's just sort of one of those
great mysteries of a disappeared painting, and my money is
on a private collector probably has this thing stashed away.
But you would also think that at some point somebody
would talk.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
You would think so, and you know, maybe they will eventually.
Speaker 1 (24:16):
Unless it's really sashed.
Speaker 2 (24:17):
Well, some people think it was destroyed, and that movie
Monuments Men, right, they show the Nazis igniting it with
the flamethrower in a cave with a bunch of other
art and there, you know, there's a whole camp that says,
now this thing is it's gone forever. So they did
something to it, because the Nazis were known not just
plunder but also destroy art as well, which just one
(24:38):
more reason to love them Nazis.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, and I think this is oil on panel, so
it's I don't think this could even be like rolled
up in a tube and put under your bed or anything.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah, I would guess not. No, I didn't realize it
was on panel, but that makes sense. But the the state,
the National Museum in Krakow bought the entire Princess ark
Torsky collection from a private colle elector for one hundred
million euros back in twenty sixteen, and that I know,
and that included the rights to portrait of a young
Man in case it's ever found, And for now it's
(25:10):
just they have the original frame hanging empty in the
in the gallery.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Yeah, that's it turns out that's a thing I didn't
know as a thing in ty frames in galleries. It's
kind of sad.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, it's sad. It's very poignant. It says, come home,
come home. We're leaving the light on for you, come home,
just like Motel six. That's right right, top bro call,
we'll leave the lne out for it. All right.
Speaker 1 (25:35):
Well, that means it's time for another break and we'll
be back right after this to talk a little bit
about Van Goch.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
So Chuck before I launched into saka go away type,
tie rade onto you? Is that how you accurately pronounce
his name?
Speaker 1 (26:10):
I don't know it was. It was from the filmmaker
who dare not speak his name. It was from a
Woody Allen movie. I think it was in the most
problematic movie Manhattan, when he's with Diane Keaton and some
obnoxious person says Van or I think it's Dian Keaton,
says Van Goch, and he's you know, he's incense. He's
like Van Gock, like how pretentious.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
So okay, So instead we're just gonna go with Van
Go like everybody else, right, yeah, sure, okay, and we can.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Cut all that out if we want to. Don't even
want to talk about Woody Allen, that's.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Fine, sure, sure, I hear you. So Van Go was
most he was just such a sad, tragic figure out
for this guy so much after learning more about him,
we should do an entire podcast on him, if you
ask me, I agreed, But instead here we're going to
talk about his death because there is a mystery surrounding
his death. He's very famous for having cut off his ear.
(27:02):
He definitely did that, and I had always learned that
he did it to impress a sex worker who he
was enamored with, and he definitely did give her his
ear after he cut it off, But that's not why
he cut it off. He cut it off in a
fit of angst, basically after having an argument with his
friend Paul Gogan, who he was living with in Arles
(27:24):
in the south of France, and he said, well, I'm
going to make some sort of lemonade out of this
lemon I just gave myself, and he took it to
his I guess hopeful girlfriend, and I believe she was
not that impressed with it.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
Yeah, so he suffered from definitely depression. There is speculation
that he had bipolar disorder. Yeah, I saw that too,
was you know, just sort of long suffering as an artist,
he didn't He only sold one painting before he died
in eighteen ninety at the age of thirty seven. And
the story he goes is that he shot himself in
(28:02):
the chest with a revolver. But it gets a little
more complicated than that. And in what year was the book?
In twenty eleven, there was a book written called Van
go Colon the Life written by Stephen I'm gonna say,
Maifa okay and Gregory white Smith, And it seems like
(28:23):
they sort of launched this idea or at least really
put it in the public forefront that he was actually
killed almost certainly accidentally, by one of two boys, younger
gentleman that he was hanging out with that day.
Speaker 2 (28:40):
Right. So here's the thing, Like, there's a lot of
circumstantial evidence that supports that theory that it was killed
by two boys.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
Aye by it.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
There's also it's also circumstantially plausible that you know, Van
God died by suicide as well. But even if you
take his story and start digging into it and the
statements that he made supposedly made, apparently everything we know
about it comes from the owner of the inn where
he rented a room's thirteen year old daughter at the time,
(29:13):
as a witness to all this. But even if you
take what he supposedly said, it still doesn't add up
that number one, he shot himself in the chest, and
most importantly, the number two, the gun that he shot
himself with could never be found and instead of actually,
you know, finishing the suicide, completing the suicide, he couldn't
(29:36):
find the gun after he shot himself in the chest
and just walked back to his room where he died
after suffering twenty more hours, but still to the end
claiming that he had done this himself. Even if you
take all that together, it seems like, no, this's something
really fishy going on here.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Yeah, so this bullet misses all of his internal organs
very improbably because it deflected off his rib cage, and
he walked, like you said, to the doctor who they
didn't have a surgeon on duty, so they couldn't remove
the bullet. He lived a total of thirty hours after
the shot and died of infection. Got to talk with
(30:14):
his brother, you know, was speaking to people, so as
he had every opportunity to say that these two boys
that I was hanging out with that I was drinking,
and I say boys, I think they were maybe late teens,
early twenties.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
No they were sixteen.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Oh okay, I saw early twenties and another thing. Oh yeah,
but you know, hanging out getting drunk with them. One
of these boys, Renee Sacratan, had a gun that apparently
misfired a lot, and he liked playing with this thing.
He liked to play cowboys, supposedly he did. And so
(30:49):
it all just seems and even his statement, he he said,
he didn't say I shot myself. He said, do not
accuse anyone. It was I who wanted to kill myself.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah, which is a very official year as well.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Yeah, sure, it's ambiguous, I think as far as like,
because the idea is that maybe he was accidentally shot,
and then after he was shot, he was like, this
is kind of what I wanted all along. You know,
I've been heading down this road towards suicide and then
now it's just done for me.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
So what seems to have happened is that this gun
possibly that it wasn't actually murdered or any kind of
premeditated murder, more like a manslaughter where Renee and his
brother guests Don were messing around and accidentally Basically he
had seen a wild Bill Cody Wild West show the
(31:42):
year before and became obsessed with it, so that's what
he was doing with a gun and playing cowboy, and
that they had accidentally shot him with this gun that
was kind of you know, known to misfire. So the
thing was that the gun was never found. Renee went
back to school like right after that, which was still
(32:02):
in the middle of summer break from what I saw,
and the town seems to have circled the wagons around
this these boys because you know, Van Go was an outsider.
He was not very well thought of. He used to
get really drunk and argue with the locals in the
cafe and the and everything like basically every night. And
(32:23):
these boys came from like a good well to do family.
So for many years like that was just the thing,
like like it just happened, and then slowly, little by
little it seems to have trickled out some support for
this idea, like no, like van Go wasn't anywhere near
this field. He said that he had shot himself in
he was actually on the road to the Secraton's house.
(32:43):
And then finally years later, Renee Secraton said that, you know,
he it probably was his gun and that vang Goo
had somehow gotten hold of it. It seems it seems
likely that he was shot by them, whether accident or not.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, these two authors, they put forth some other circumstantial evidence,
like that the bullet went in at a weird angle
that would not have been the angle if you shot
yourself in the chest, that his more recent works were
a little more upbeat and a little more positive, and
that he was not in that kind of mindset at
(33:20):
the time, and that he had had recently even written
his thoughts about suicide, that he thought it was sinful
and immoral. And so they sort of use all this
as evidence that he would not have done it himself
and that it was you know, they believe it was
an accident. His last words, very sad, were the sadness
will last forever, he spoke to his brother, Which that's tough.
Speaker 2 (33:43):
Yeah, it is. I really do want to do an
episode on him.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
And I think sek Gatma came out in the fifties
even and denied it right, like finally once and.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
For all he did. He did, but he also he
also said that it probably was his gun and that
somehow Van Goll had gotten it.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
Right, but hey, my fault.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
No, But to also to back pedal and be like,
it probably was my gun, because that was another thing
and everybody's like, where did Vang get a gun? Van
go didn't have a gun, no, and no one would
have given Vang a gun. Y. Yeah, he was the
guy who got drunk every night and had cut off
his ear before that was like they no one in
town would have given him a gun. So the fact
(34:21):
that he even admitted that it was his gun is
probably as close as Renee Serkatan ever came to confessing
publicly about it, you know.
Speaker 1 (34:30):
Yeah, and it makes sense what he said was do
not accuse anyone like that really seems like he's trying
to cover for these kids that he didn't want to
get in trouble.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, because if he wanted to die, but it was
also he didn't want to die by his own hand,
Like this is kind of a lucky gift in a
very strange way.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
You know. Yeah, I'm going to that immersive van Go
thing in July.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Where is that?
Speaker 1 (34:56):
It is at here in Atlanta. It's at the Pullman
Yards over in Kirkwood where they're shoot Like every movie
in Atlanta shoots there, right, Yeah, so yeah, it's supposed
to be pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (35:08):
It's very very neat. Sounds neat, I mean, like do
it basically? They just make the stars come out whenever
you come in, And I think so. I think you
sit in this yellow chair.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
I think that's the deal. I think you go in
and you are surrounded by projected art in different ways
from what I can get, that's all.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
I got to check that out. Man, thanks for telling
me about it.
Speaker 1 (35:29):
Yeah, it looks kind of cool, all.
Speaker 2 (35:31):
Right, Chuck. You want to finish out talking about Hitler.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Don't you mean Hilter?
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Did you know there is Hilter? Oh my gosh, yes,
in the headline in.
Speaker 1 (35:41):
The headline, did Hilter really do these paintings? Do these
paintings that I feel bad, but like, did Hilter really
do these paintings?
Speaker 2 (35:54):
That's great?
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Oh yeah he did them.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, Hilter did these paintings. So we're talking not about
Hilter but about Hitler, Adolf Hitler in particular. And as
everybody knows, Hitler was a frustrated artist. You know, people
have made a lot of hay about how possibly the
world would be a totally different place had he been
accepted into the Vienna Academy of Arts. And he came well,
(36:20):
I don't want to say he came close, but he
made two different attempts in one year to be accepted,
and they basically looked at his stuff and said, look, man,
you you have the skill of a draftsman. Maybe you
should go into architecture, like, but you're not going to
be an artist. And that was a direct quote. But
(36:44):
this was a huge deal for him. I think I
read that in Mine COMF. I haven't read Mine comp
but I read an article by somebody who read Mine
comp and said that he said it was like a
bolt from the blue, and that you know, he was
pursuing this dream that his father would like beat him
out of. Like his father enrolled him in a technical school.
He's like, no son of mine's going to be an artist.
(37:06):
He would beat him up whenever he brought he brought
the idea up. And so finally, after his father died
and then he nursed his ailing mother until she died,
he got up the gumption and did like go and
enroll in art school. And apparently, he, being Hitler, who
I guess had been fairly bonkers his whole life, just
(37:27):
knew that he was destined to become an artist. So
the idea that he was rebuffed not once but twice
by this Vienna school. These people were like the people
the guardians of what is art and what is not,
and they were telling him what you got is not.
That was a huge deal to him.
Speaker 1 (37:45):
It was a very big deal. And it's funny, it's
just now occurring to me that there was sort of
a similar thing with Manson's rejection as a musician, yeah,
by the music industry. I never really kind of really
thought of that parallel. But in nineteen oh nine Hitler
is trapesing around Vienna and he is selling watercolors copied
(38:07):
from postcards to tourists. So if you've ever traveled to Europe,
he was one of those guys that was down by
the river, the river bank, yeah, in a van, selling
these and literally copied from postcards. So he did that
for a little while, made a little bit of money,
because you know, if you look at his art, it's
it's way better than I could do. It's you know,
(38:29):
it's okay, but like modern and it's hard to tell
if modern art critics like so much goes into looking
at a Hitler painting and reviewing it, like it's really
hard to kind of separate those things. But the general
thought is is that he had nothing exceptional about him
at all. It was he was the kind of artists
that would sell stuff down by the river to tourists.
(38:51):
He was they were fine, he was capable, but they
were copycat paintings. He was copying things. He had no
point of view. He did this in nineteen thirteen as
well in Munich, painting Munich city scapes and landscapes and
selling them the tourists. And then in nineteen fourteen got
hauled in by the police of all things, for failing
(39:12):
to register for the military.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
Yeah. And then he went down and registered, and then
they gave him a physical exam and he failed it.
They said it was too weak to fire a weapon. Yeah,
So they arrested him so that they could humiliate him basically,
and then when World War One came around, he enlisted
and they say, we need everybody we can get, come
(39:37):
on in, and even Hilt right, yeah, yeah, even Hilter.
Hilter did this army thing.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
Right.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
So when he rose to power in Germany, one of
the things he did was he had his works collected
and destroyed. I'm not exactly sure what the thinking was
behind that, I guess because he knew it wasn't very
good and he needed to focus on his political career
rather than his artistic career, or have everybody else focus
on it. But to no avail, because I saw a
(40:08):
nineteen thirty six critic or a critic wrote in nineteen
thirty six that his style was prosaic, utterly devoid of rhythm, color, feeling,
or spiritualism. Yeah, and this was before he I'm sorry,
or spiritual imagination. And this was before he had really
become an obvious threat. This is nineteen thirty six, So
(40:31):
even back then, even without hindsight, people thought his stuff
wasn't very good. So, yeah, he had his stuff destroyed,
and that's it was kind of a footnote for a
very long time that he was an artist, and no
one really cared after his death.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Yeah, I mean this, and that was one of the
major reasons that he was such an art plunderer during
the war and stole as much art as he could
from real famous artists and famous paintings, because he had
all this backstory as a failed artist, and it was interesting.
I did see that like one of his major I mean,
(41:08):
because he wasn't an utter failure at first. He had
a backer early on. I think he was a Jewish Man, yeah,
which was really interesting, and there was I don't know, man,
it's there's a lot of speculation about what that all
meant to him, and like people try and draw parallels,
just like some of the paintings I saw, I mean,
(41:29):
some of it feels like a stretch. Definitely, like the
you know, the cold the cold streets of Munich, like
were painted like clearly with a future cleansing in mind
to make it look like this, and.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
That's a stretch.
Speaker 1 (41:44):
Yeah, some of that stuff seems like a stretch. But
you could definitely read into the backstory, at least I
think with some accuracy.
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Yeah, And even if like you can't necessarily suss out
like the future from from his paintings, you can make
a pretty strong case that his artistic ambitions being utterly crushed, Yeah,
had some sort of driving force or impact on a
psyche at the very least. Sure like that and his
(42:13):
later political career and dictatorship did not exist in a vacuum.
I don't think you can possibly make the case that
they were just unrelated in any way.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
No. I think any sociopath you can look at their
past and see the dots connected, you know. Yeah, So,
like you said, there was this kind of just was
the deal for a long time, and then in like
anything else, like people wanting to get original Charles Manson
music reels, in the early late nineties early two thousands,
(42:42):
there was a market for Hitler's work. I think in
two thousand and nine a British auction house someone paid
one hundred and fifty grand for fifteen early sketches and watercolors,
including a self portrait, And then in twenty fifteen some
unnamed investors paid four hundred and fifty one thousand dollars
for a set of watercolors. I think there were twelve
(43:03):
or thirteen yeah, that survived.
Speaker 2 (43:06):
Yeah. The problem is is because he didn't have a
style of his own that he was copying postcards that
he didn't have any formal training and that he was
he lacked like a lot of creativity or any creativity.
It seems like it's really hard to say this is
a Hitler and this is a fake. And there's been
(43:28):
developed a really, really enormous market of fakes because anybody
who's like a passingly good artist in watercolors of street
scapes and landscapes could drum up something and be like,
this is a Hitler and it would be really difficult
to say yes it is or no it's not.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Yeah, what kind of a garbage human do you have
to be to think I'll do Hitler forgeries and try
and sell them to garbage humans that want to collect them.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
Yeah. And it's not like the you're even fetching like
ten million dollars apiece. We're talking like you might get
ten thousand dollars for it for your your Hitler forgery.
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Unbelievable, but totally believable.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
So that's the mystery of the Hitler paintings. Did he
do this?
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Yeah? Did he do those paintings?
Speaker 2 (44:20):
You got anything else?
Speaker 1 (44:21):
I got nothing else? That was a good five. I
think we have committed to doing a robust episode on
the Gardner Museum heist, because that's a good one and
that was on this list and way underplayed.
Speaker 2 (44:34):
For sure, So keep an ear out for that, everybody.
And since I said keep an ear out for that,
think it's time for listener mail. Yeah. I'm gonna call this.
Speaker 1 (44:49):
Middle names because we had a little discussion in our
John Mure episode about how Emily and I and our
friends justin Melissa one night, we're going by our middle
names as a joke, and I had the theory that
you have no emotional connection to your middle name if
you don't have a reaction when you hear it. Set
out loud and I just meant sort of the non
(45:10):
dominant name. It didn't necessarily mean middle names, because my
brother goes by his middle name, Scott is his middle name,
and some people do that. It's a thing, and certainly
Amy does. She said, I was listening to the show
and at the end you were chatting about using middle
names and how you don't have an emotional connection when
you hear it. I have an interesting situation that everyone
everyone in my family uses their middle names. So I've
(45:32):
always been called Amy ever since I was born, but
my first name is Helen. This causes an interesting situation
at airports and doctor's appointments where they refer to me
as Helen, and I always have to remember that they're
talking to me. A big fan of the show, kept
me curious and my curious spirits satisfied over the last
three or four years, and it's such a comfort knowing
there's always another episode to listen to. Best wishes from
(45:53):
the UK. They're always so nice and that is sure, Amy, Helen.
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Amy, Thanks Helen, Amy. We'll just call her Amy as
is customary.
Speaker 1 (46:03):
Yeah, because we say Helen, She's like, who.
Speaker 2 (46:07):
Wow. I can't wait until they read my listener mail,
says Amy. If you want to be like Amy and
get in touch with us for whatever reason, you can
send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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