0:01

Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production

0:04

of I Heart Radio. Hey,

0:11

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,

0:13

and there's Charles W. Chuck, Brian over there,

0:16

and Jerry's here somewhere. So this is Stuff

0:18

you should Know, the Art

0:20

World edition. Yeah,

0:23

you know what, I just realized. We

0:26

we record these in twos and

0:28

we just recorded the POGs

0:31

episode, right, and you

0:33

didn't say welcome to the podcast.

0:37

I didn't have missed opportunity for

0:39

a great dad joke. That

0:41

sounds like something I would skip though, even had I

0:43

I thought of it or don't know that, I would

0:45

have pulled the trigger on I think, or I could see you

0:47

pulling the trigger and then making fun

0:50

of yourself, right, I

0:52

would have just been engaged in self loathing

0:54

for the rest of the podcast. Well, retroactively,

0:57

I'm gonna say, I hope everyone enjoyed the podcast.

1:01

Now let's talk about art mysteries.

1:04

I love this one, man, This is great. This

1:07

reminds me like of a Stuff you Should Know

1:09

episode from years back. For some

1:11

reason, well, because we don't do these top

1:14

lists anymore are part

1:16

of it, you know, very famously we used to have top tens

1:18

on our Old House Stuff Works website, of

1:21

which usually there were maybe seven decent

1:24

entries, so we never

1:26

did I don't think we ever did a full tin

1:29

on anything. Maybe somebody could probably correct us,

1:31

but this one actually came in at

1:33

seven. They didn't even try,

1:35

And I don't even know. We may do like five of these. We haven't

1:37

even figured it out yet. We'll see. We're

1:39

gonna play it fast and loose. I think that's another

1:42

reason why it reminds me of an old stuff you should

1:44

Know episode. Yeah,

1:47

Fast and Loose. First,

1:49

you got the fast, you got the loose, but

1:51

never furious because

1:54

he wants to be mad. I don't

1:56

know they should series

1:59

Fast and Loose that.

2:02

I think I've heard before that that

2:04

series is the highest grossing

2:06

movie franchise in the history of film

2:09

like worldwide. Yeah. You know what's funny

2:11

is at one point we were this

2:13

was years ago, we were talking with Ludicrous

2:15

about doing something with the network, and

2:18

I, uh, because he's he's a local guy

2:20

here in Atlanta, And I talk to our boss

2:23

and said, what's he what's

2:25

he doing these days? Like I haven't heard any

2:27

music, And he went, he makes Fast and Furious

2:29

movies. Like that's

2:31

his job now, Yeah, because

2:33

he's just getting rich off of making

2:36

these movies, like I can't even

2:38

imagine. And plus also, I mean they're

2:40

pretty it's pretty involved movie

2:42

making. I would guess, like I'm sure because

2:44

there's so many stars involved that you

2:47

know, the shooting schedule for each one isn't

2:49

necessarily you know, a year

2:51

long endeavor or anything like that, and they probably

2:53

have it down to like a pretty fast science

2:56

by now. But like, I would think that would

2:58

eat up a pretty decent amount of your time. I'm shooting

3:00

one of those films every few you know, a

3:02

couple of times. Ah well,

3:05

I guess every few years. I only saw one of

3:07

those. I think. Man, I'm slowly like degenerating

3:09

into Bob Newhart. Man.

3:13

Yeah, you could degenerate into worse things

3:15

than that, But I mean, like I'm

3:17

really I'm really hitting that new Heart

3:20

note these days. I've noticed that's a great

3:22

note. I love it. I've always wanted Bob Newhart

3:24

as my podcasting partner. So well,

3:26

you you've you've there,

3:28

you go, You've got it all

3:31

right. Number one on the list. You

3:33

want to talk a little kind of Aggio.

3:36

So Caravaggio is my new

3:38

favorite painter, not

3:42

just because he was a scummy low life

3:44

um swordsman from the

3:47

murder a yah. Um uh.

3:50

He was a gambler, he

3:52

would he had weapons charges against

3:55

him while he was alive. He

3:58

was not a good guy by any stretch

4:00

of the imagination. UM very

4:02

troubled person is a really polite

4:04

way to put it. But if you

4:06

look at his art, like I had

4:09

no idea, I've seen like so many

4:11

works of his art and I never pieced together that they

4:13

were the same person. And then when I really

4:15

started to read some criticism of his work, I'm

4:17

like, oh my god, this guy he's considered

4:20

one of the fathers of modern art. And this guy

4:22

was painting at the beginning of the seventeenth

4:24

century, the early six um

4:27

and just like POGs, he burned hot

4:30

and bright and fast and

4:33

furious. Actually sadly, Oh

4:35

that's right. Uh, that wasn't even forced.

4:38

Nice work, Bob so. Michel

4:40

Angelo Marisi the Caravaggio

4:43

was an Italian Baroque painter.

4:46

Um he at one point in sixteen

4:49

oh six killed a man name Romuccio

4:53

Thomasani and said,

4:55

I gotta get out of here because I'm in

4:57

big trouble now. And went to

5:00

went away from Rome and fled to Malta,

5:03

where he had a pretty brief but

5:05

um, I guess notable

5:08

stay. He was only there about six months

5:11

and kind of hiding out and quickly hooked

5:13

up with the Knights of Malta

5:16

and was briefly one of the Knights of Malta

5:19

like for a month. Yeah, and painted one

5:21

of his most famous paintings there, the

5:24

oil on canvas twelve

5:27

feet by seventeen feet, the

5:29

Beheading of John the Baptist. Yeah,

5:32

it was an altar piece for the Order of St.

5:34

John also known as the Knights of Malta.

5:36

Um. They were going to again put this behind

5:38

the altar in their church on

5:41

Malta um and it was

5:43

actually his little entry fee they charged

5:45

an entry fore usually money to their

5:47

initiates because they accepted,

5:50

but they accepted this altar pieces, giant

5:53

painting of Saint John

5:55

the Baptist being beheaded, And it was

5:57

actually I mean, as as far as the car Vaggio

5:59

go, especially towards the end of his life, it's

6:02

actually fairly tame because there's

6:04

not you know, like jets

6:07

of blood spurting out. It's a pool of blood

6:09

that's being shown um.

6:11

He paints some really violent stuff

6:14

and and like you said that that kind of um

6:16

that he was a master of light

6:19

and shadow. It's called Kira scuro um

6:22

and and he used it's to really dramatic effect, including

6:25

in that painting and in fact,

6:27

one of the other paintings that you might have seen of his

6:29

chuck um it's called Judith

6:32

Beheading Hall of Fairnies. Have you seen

6:34

it? So Judith,

6:37

the woman who's in that painting, the

6:40

the woman who modeled for that UM

6:43

for Judith, that was the woman

6:45

that he killed. Bernuccio Thomason

6:47

e over right,

6:51

did you know that I did? Oh

6:53

you did? Okay? Well that anyway, they really really

6:56

in this House of Works article they called it a petty

6:58

squabble and that that really doesn't the story.

7:01

Yeah. Another explanation I saw was that it

7:03

was over a tennis wager, UM,

7:05

and this was real tennis, not lawn tennis,

7:07

and real tennis is kind of like

7:10

this cookie mix

7:12

between squash

7:15

and UM racketball

7:17

and tennis, and it's all indoors

7:19

and there's like um horse

7:21

sheds basically involved that you can

7:23

play off the roof stuff. It's really interesting

7:25

stuff. And he used to play that a lot too,

7:28

but um, so it was either over a wager

7:31

or it was over this woman. Um

7:34

her name was what was it, No,

7:37

Felida Falide I believe was

7:40

the actual woman's name who modeled

7:42

for Judith. So he ends up on Malta,

7:44

he becomes a night um and when

7:47

he becomes this night, he paints his altropiece

7:49

and he signed his name in the pool of

7:51

Blood, which you're like, well, he's an artist. That

7:54

seems like something an artist would do, not

7:56

Caravaggio. This is actually the first and only

7:59

work of his that he ever signed, which a

8:01

lot of people are like, okay, wait a minute, let's

8:03

examine this. Yeah, And it kind of

8:05

took a while for it to be even

8:07

very visible because it underwent

8:10

some restorations over the years, And in the nineteen

8:12

fifties they did a restoration

8:14

where they really could see the signature

8:18

and what it said I don't know about for the

8:20

first time, but like super clearly at least,

8:22

and it said F period

8:26

got um

8:29

F Mitchell lang M I C H

8:31

E L A N G. And

8:33

then you know, of course, everyone's

8:36

like, well what does this mean? Because there is

8:38

no F in his name? It's

8:40

not like his initial is he saying,

8:43

you know, hey, screw Michaelangelo, myself,

8:46

screw me, or I'm screwed. No,

8:48

no one really said that. They thought the F there're

8:51

a couple of different theories. Thought it was shorthand

8:53

for U fratture or which

8:55

means brother, because he

8:58

was one of the knights, and maybe he just meant

9:00

like brother Michelangelo or whatever.

9:03

And then some other people said, no, maybe it means

9:05

stands for fest f e c I

9:08

T, which is Latin for did,

9:11

translating basically into I

9:13

did it, and it's spelled out in blood, kind of confessing

9:16

to his crime. Right,

9:18

So that's kind of like where the mystery comes. And was

9:20

he confessing to the crime of

9:22

murdering Rnuccio TOMASONI

9:25

um, from what I saw

9:28

most, I can't say most, but the

9:31

art historians and critics that I saw basically

9:33

said, now, he almost certainly wasn't

9:35

doing that. For one, everybody

9:37

knew that he did it. He'd already been convicted in

9:39

absentia, so it's not like he was

9:41

confessing to it. Although you can make the case

9:43

that he was confessing in the Catholic

9:46

sense of the ward. You know, what I mean, like

9:49

before God, yeah,

9:51

exactly, or to bears painting

9:55

still hangs at St. John's Co Cathedral in

9:57

Multituo. Okay, yeah, well,

9:59

I mean it was the altarpiece, like they like, it

10:01

was a big deal that they got their hands on it, because he was a

10:03

celebrated painter at the time, already in

10:06

his lifetime. But the other interpretation

10:08

that he was saying f as in freighter

10:11

or brother Um michel

10:13

Angelo about himself,

10:16

that's probably the likelier version

10:18

because he was at the time seeking

10:20

a pardon from the Pope so he could

10:23

return to rome Um and

10:25

by saying like I'm in this holy

10:27

order, I'm basically like a

10:29

Catholic holy man now

10:31

a whole, a leader of the church because

10:34

the Order of St. John, the Knights of Malta have inducted

10:37

me. Um. He was basically

10:39

shouting it loud and proud by signing

10:41

that one particular very

10:43

holy painting that he did. But they

10:46

said, nice try buddy, uh

10:48

and they kicked him out for being a quote

10:50

foul and rotten member end

10:53

quote. So it didn't work. A month after

10:55

a month, dude, he lasted a month

10:57

in the Order of St. John. And it's not like

10:59

they ran around willie Nilly inducting

11:01

people like they basically

11:04

um had no idea that

11:07

they had um. Uh,

11:09

what was Vic's last name in the Shield? No?

11:13

Not Victor Back. I don't know. I didn't

11:16

watch The Shield, Oh you didn't. It was good.

11:18

I rewatched like the last seven episodes the

11:20

other night, over a couple of nights, and

11:22

he still holds up. Actually, but anyway,

11:24

they didn't realize that they had inducted

11:26

him. They got from the Shield and they

11:28

figured it out pretty quickly. So he made

11:30

his way back from Malta to I

11:32

believe cecily On on his way

11:34

to Roman. I think he actually got a pardon um

11:37

and got into yet another squabble, another

11:39

sword fight, and and sustained

11:42

some wounds. And between infected

11:44

wounds, they think he got a staff infection,

11:47

um lead poisoning. He

11:49

apparently had gone rather mad from being

11:51

exposed to the paints that he painted with, and

11:54

then um sun exposure, sunstroke

11:57

on the beach and Tuscan he finally killed

11:59

him, and so it goes, Yes

12:02

it does. But his paintings are still just amazing.

12:05

I can look at them all day, you know, Yeah, me

12:07

too, I like this. I like this stuff. I

12:09

do too, so that's a

12:12

Caravaggio. How about

12:14

Vermeer, Well, I think we should take a break. Oh

12:17

and uh, we'll be back right after this. All

12:39

right. We had a great cliffhanger with Vermeer.

12:43

Vermir, the very famous Dutch artist

12:45

Johannes Vermir had

12:48

a very famous painting, a lot of very famous paintings,

12:51

but one in particular that has

12:53

had a bunch of names over the years. In

12:55

fact, it did not get the name Girl with

12:57

a Pearl Earring until the twentieth century.

13:00

It was called everything from a Girl

13:02

with a turban u to Girl

13:05

with an earring. Had lots of different

13:07

names because it was not officially titled

13:10

by Bremier nor dated,

13:12

even though they think it was around sixteen.

13:15

Yeah. He was just like this, this dude

13:18

who lived in Delft in the Netherlands

13:20

and never left his hometown and

13:23

had a wife and fifteen kids.

13:26

Yeah, fifteen kids. Um, and

13:29

it just kind of painted. And he made

13:32

a probably a comparatively

13:34

small number of works, I think around thirty

13:36

six or attributed to him, and there's

13:38

a theory that um as many as

13:40

a fifth of those were done by his oldest

13:42

daughter Maria. Um. But

13:45

he's kind of like this enigma at

13:47

the time, not just personally, but

13:49

also the stuff he was painting. Um.

13:52

There was a huge movement

13:54

among the Dutch painters at the time that they would

13:57

paint like, um these you know, horror

14:00

thick um hellscapes

14:02

or there was a lot of like obvious

14:05

narrative and symbolism just all

14:08

over the paintings. There was just a lot going

14:10

on Vermire in a different way where he would

14:12

almost peek in on very

14:14

normal daily life um

14:17

and capture like these these really um

14:20

just kind of boring or otherwise

14:22

mundane moments. Um. But

14:25

he did it in a way that that this guy was

14:27

like the master

14:29

of light. He makes he makes Thomas

14:31

Kincaid look like puke as far

14:33

as like you know, light master.

14:36

He goes So girl with a pearl

14:38

earring. Everyone has seen it, and

14:40

like I said, it's very famous. It's a young girl

14:43

looks to be sort of like mid teenage years

14:46

looking over her shoulder, she's

14:48

wearing a dress, she's wearing that turban. Very

14:51

prominent ear rings, large pearl earrings

14:53

and pearls factored into quite a few of his works

14:56

over the years, and it's one of those paintings

14:58

where the eyes follow you supposedly, which

15:00

we've talked about in one of our short Stuff episodes.

15:05

I think so, yeah, it's you

15:07

know, the effect of the eyes following, which

15:09

doesn't happen in all paintings with eyes.

15:12

Oh no, the Mona Lisa's eyes actually don't

15:14

follow you. I think that was the big reveal of that

15:16

one, was it. Yeah? Alright,

15:18

so he paints his painting and then, of

15:20

course the mystery of this one is

15:22

who is this person? Uh, there

15:24

has been speculation that it might be a mistress.

15:28

A lot of people think it was his daughter,

15:30

Maria, who would

15:32

have been about fifteen or sixteen, And like

15:34

you said, who um. Some

15:37

people believe painted about a

15:39

fifth of the works attributed to him, because

15:41

about a fifth of his collected works aren't

15:46

I mean this sounds mean to say, but they aren't as

15:48

they aren't up to snuff compared to his other works,

15:51

so they sort of stand out from the rest, so they

15:53

think that they may have been Maria's good paintings.

15:56

Still, yeah, there's still a lot better than

15:58

anything I could. Yeah, it's not like your stick. They years,

16:00

you know, out of nowhere, they're like this for

16:03

mere seems off. But you

16:05

know, if you there was novel

16:08

from Tracy Chevalier, The

16:10

Girl with the Pearl Earring, and then the two thousand film

16:13

adaptation starring Scarlett Johansson,

16:16

who was perfectly cast. She looks, you know,

16:18

quite a bit like The Girl with a Pearl Earring. But

16:20

this was historical fiction. If you've seen that movie

16:23

and you're like, no, she was the family's

16:25

maid's assistant and love interest to

16:27

Vermier, that was just I don't

16:29

even think that was based on anything. It's just historical

16:32

fiction. Yes, Um,

16:34

from what I've seen, are critics

16:36

and historians basically tend to think that

16:38

there there was no person that

16:41

this was modeled on. There. It wasn't even

16:43

necessarily his daughter. And in fact,

16:45

it was um kind of a

16:48

trend at the time a painting called

16:50

a trony, which was an imaginary

16:52

figure, a person who didn't actually

16:55

exist, and the point was to

16:57

kind of show off things like costumes

16:59

and jewelry, which is um

17:03

ostensibly the point of that painting.

17:05

But the thing is the Vermier um,

17:07

the face that he did and the where

17:11

the place that he put her. Like we

17:13

were talking about how she gets compared to Mona

17:16

Lisa. She's called the Mona Lisa of the North. Mona

17:18

Lisa is like sitting back in the painting.

17:21

The girl with the pearl earring is like right in the

17:23

foreground, like right, there's very

17:25

little between you and her, and she's

17:27

turned around and her mouth's open, which apparently

17:29

was very unusual for painting Dutch

17:32

painting at the time. Um,

17:34

and it looks like she's going to say something. I guess

17:36

that that is what entrances people

17:38

with this, this this image that

17:40

you know, what's she going to say? What did he capture

17:43

her about to say? You know, it looks

17:45

like she's turning around like oh, and you

17:47

know this other thing I hadn't told you

17:50

maybe she was an improv comedian

17:54

and she was, yes, yes, but

17:57

this is a mystery that will never be solved, which ums.

18:00

I like those kind of mysteries when it comes to stuff like

18:02

this. Yeah. And I saw that argued

18:04

as well, that it was like, you know, if we knew

18:06

who she was, it would just it would say, we

18:09

would lose a lot of the interest in it, and

18:11

we would I think, yes,

18:14

um, yeah, and you're right, we probably won't ever

18:16

know. But because of this so like it wasn't

18:18

like very well, um, I

18:21

thought of her. Nobody really thought much of it

18:23

until the National Gallery

18:25

used it as the poster for their big exhibit.

18:28

Um. But since then a lot of people have really

18:30

kind of examined it. And I hadn't noticed

18:32

this before, but I saw it pointed out choke. If

18:34

you look at the pearl earring. First of all,

18:36

it's I probably large, is how I saw it described

18:39

like that, that you couldn't physically hold

18:41

up a pearl that size. But

18:43

then secondly, um, it's really

18:46

basically made with two brushstrokes.

18:48

Both of them are reflecting light. One

18:51

is um from the light source and then the lower

18:53

one is reflecting the light off of the

18:55

caller. And it's pretty amazing that, you

18:57

know, we talked about this the girl with the pearlering

19:00

and this pearl itself is it is like

19:02

a kind of a cultural icon too,

19:05

and it's basically just two brushstrokes,

19:07

which is kind of goes to show how

19:09

great vermir was. Have

19:11

you ever seen Tim's Vermeer the documentary,

19:16

Oh, Chuck, You've got to see it. It's directed

19:18

by Teller from Penn and Teller, which

19:21

makes you think, like, how did he direct if he

19:23

doesn't talk, you know, but

19:25

he somehow did. And it's

19:28

about what that's just a

19:30

bit and it's about Um,

19:33

it's about a guy who basically figured out

19:35

that Vermier somehow projected

19:38

images that he built in

19:40

real life onto a canvas and then

19:42

painted him that way and he actually replicates

19:45

a vermir like perfectly. Um.

19:47

It's really just one of the better documentaries

19:49

you'll ever see. Very cool. Yeah,

19:53

so what do you think onto Rafael? Yeah,

19:56

so the mystery here and

19:58

this is one of our This actually has a Simpsons

20:01

crossover as well, which is kind of

20:03

fun because Raphael

20:06

painted a very famous painting called Portrait

20:09

of a young Man and

20:11

is largely described

20:13

as one of the most famous, if not the most famous

20:16

pieces of art to go missing during the plundering

20:19

of great art in World War Two

20:22

by Hitler in the Gang Uh

20:25

And this is a crossover with The Simpsons and that

20:28

in the Fighting Healfish episode when

20:31

Grandpa Abe and Burns are stealing

20:33

art, this is one of the paintings Portrait of

20:35

a young Man. It's one of the paintings

20:38

that they stole, which

20:40

shows that you know, Simpsons writers back then. At least

20:42

we're definitely doing their work, uh

20:45

like their research work, because that's a nice little easter egg,

20:47

I think, yeah, totally. Doesn't it

20:49

even talk? Doesn't it say something like

20:51

someone's guilty conscience or something. I

20:54

don't remy making that up. I don't know, I don't remember.

20:56

I mean, it's been a long time since I've seen that one. But it was one

20:59

of the great episodes, I think, so

21:01

the Portrait of the young Man, which they think

21:04

was a Rafael self portrait,

21:06

and actually we have no idea what the colors were

21:08

because the only photographs we have of it were in black

21:10

and white. But he used to hang

21:13

in the Prince's Zartarski Museum

21:16

in Poland, along

21:18

with two other really important paintings, UM

21:21

Leonardo's Lady with an Ermine, which

21:23

is a goat stout I

21:25

can't remember, kind of a weasel like animal,

21:28

and then Remembrance Landscape with the

21:30

Good Samaritan and

21:32

um. All three of those and everything

21:34

else in the princes are Torski Museum

21:37

were swiped by the Nazis when they came to Poland

21:39

and placed in the office of a

21:41

guy named Hans Frank who was the

21:43

head of the government for the Nazis

21:46

in Poland, right, yeah, And you know they

21:48

almost they almost got these hidden

21:50

away successfully when Poland

21:52

was being invaded. They knew that the art was going to

21:54

be plundered, and so those

21:57

three paintings were actually rescued by the Prince

22:00

hidden away Uh in a in

22:02

a house in a place that I can't even pronounce

22:05

ciena wa, I'm

22:07

not sure what that is. But they were ultimately

22:09

found by the Gestapo and

22:12

handed over to Uh, to Frank

22:15

and Frank. You know, they were supposed to go to Hitler.

22:17

Hitler was gonna open a museum, the Fural Museum

22:20

in Lens and Frank actually

22:22

kind of kept it for a little while, hung it in

22:24

his residence, and then eventually,

22:27

um, this thing went to Germany

22:30

and then Austria for a little while

22:32

and then back with Frank in nineteen which

22:35

seems crazy and probable that it would

22:37

they would end up back with him,

22:39

but they did, and um, the Allies

22:41

came in to Poland, I guess, and arrested

22:44

Hans Frank in n and

22:47

they were able to find the lady with

22:49

an her mine and the landscape with the

22:51

good Samaritan but the

22:53

portrait of the young Man was nowhere to be found.

22:56

They found a lot of other stuff too, sure,

22:58

they definitely did, but the three most important

23:01

pieces in the Prince's um

23:03

Zartarski Museum were

23:05

those three, and two were recovered, one

23:08

wasn't. And it's very odd to think that they

23:10

were separated at any time, or

23:12

that it's even odder to think that two

23:14

were kept together, but one wasn't. And

23:17

so because the portrait of the young Man was

23:19

not recovered, and it's a Raphael who's

23:21

you know, one of the great Italian Renaissance

23:24

painters. Um it's considered maybe

23:27

the most important piece to go missing

23:29

in World War two. Yeah, and

23:31

they, you know, along with I think

23:33

over eight hundred other artifacts they

23:35

got from him, and they could not go on to question

23:38

him very long because he was

23:40

executed just a year later. And

23:43

since then there have been a lot of rumors about where

23:45

this thing ended up. Who

23:47

has it, a lot of speculation that

23:49

maybe a private collector in another

23:51

country has it. I think in twelve

23:54

there was a false report that it was supposedly

23:56

in some bank vault, and

23:59

they really don't know. It's just sort of one

24:01

of those great mysteries of a disappeared

24:03

painting, and my my money

24:06

is on a private collector probably has this thing stashed

24:08

away. But you would also think that at some point somebody

24:10

would talk. You would

24:12

think so, um, and you know, maybe

24:14

they will eventually, unless it's really stashed.

24:17

Well, some people think it was destroyed. In that movie

24:20

Monuments Men. Uh, they

24:22

show the Nazis igniting

24:24

it with the flamethrower in a cave with a bunch

24:26

of other art um and there, you

24:28

know, there's a whole camp that says, now this thing is

24:30

It's gone forever. So they did something

24:33

to it because the Nazis were known not just plunder

24:35

but also destroy art as well, which

24:37

just one more reason to love them Nazis. Uh.

24:40

And I think this is oil on panel, so it's I

24:42

don't think this could even be like rolled

24:45

up in a tube and put under your bed or anything. Yeah,

24:48

I guess not. No, I didn't realize it was on panelment

24:50

That makes sense. But the the

24:52

State, the National Museum and crack how

24:54

bought the entire princesses

24:57

Ark Twarsky collection from

24:59

a private lector for a hundred million euros

25:01

back in two thousand and sixteen, and that

25:03

that I know, and that included the rights

25:05

to portrait of a young man in

25:08

case it's ever found. And for now

25:10

it's just they have the original

25:12

frame hanging empty in the in

25:14

the gallery. Yeah, that's it.

25:16

Turns out that's a thing I didn't know as a thing, empty

25:20

frames in galleries. It's kind of sad. Yeah,

25:22

it's sad. It's very poignant, says come home,

25:25

come home. We're leaving the light

25:27

on for you. Come home, just like Motel

25:29

six. That's right, Tom

25:32

Broke call, We'll leave the line out for you. All

25:35

right. Well that means it's time for another break and

25:38

we'll be back right after this. To talk a little bit

25:40

about Van Gogh.

26:01

So Chuck before I launched into Socca,

26:04

go away, uh type tirade

26:06

onto you? Is that how you accurately

26:09

pronounce his name? I don't know it

26:11

was. It was from the

26:13

filmmaker who dare not speak. His name was from a Woody

26:15

Allen movie. I think

26:18

it was in the most

26:20

problematic movie, Manhattan, when

26:22

he's with Diane Keaton and some obnoxious person

26:24

says been. I think it's Diane Keaton, says Van

26:27

Gogh, and he's you know,

26:29

he's in sense he's like Van Gogh, like how pretentious.

26:32

Um so okay, So instead we're just

26:34

gonna go with Van go like everybody else, right, sure

26:37

okay, and we can cut all that out if we want to. Don't

26:39

even want to talk about Woody Allen, that's fine, sure, sure,

26:41

I hear you. So, um Van

26:43

god was most uh he was just

26:46

such a sad, tragic figure out for

26:48

this guy so much after learning more

26:50

about him, we should do an entire podcast

26:52

on him, if you ask me, I agreed. But

26:54

instead here we're going to talk about his death because

26:57

there is a mystery surrounding his death.

27:00

He's very famous for having cut off his ear.

27:02

He definitely did that, and um,

27:04

I had always learned that he did it to impress

27:06

a sex worker who he was

27:08

enamored with, and he definitely did

27:11

give her his ear after he cut

27:13

it off. But that's not why he cut it

27:15

off. He cut it off in a fit of

27:17

angst, basically after having

27:19

an argument with his friend Paul go Gant,

27:22

who he was living within in Arles

27:24

in the south of France, and

27:27

he said, well, I'm gonna make some

27:30

sort of lemonade out of this lemon I just gave

27:32

myself and he took it to his

27:35

I guess hopeful girlfriend,

27:37

and I believe she was not that impressed

27:40

with it. Yeah, so he suffered from

27:42

definitely depression. There is speculation

27:45

that he had bipolar disorder. Uh

27:49

was um, you know, just sort of long suffering

27:51

as an artist, he didn't He only sold one painting

27:53

before he died in nine at

27:56

the age of thirty seven. And

27:58

the story he goes is

28:00

that he shot himself in the chest

28:03

with a revolver. But

28:05

it gets a little more complicated than that. And

28:08

in what year was the book? In

28:10

two thousand eleven, there was a book written called Van

28:12

go Colon the Life

28:16

written by Stephen I'm gonna

28:18

say MafA and

28:20

Gregory white Smith, And

28:22

it seems like they sort of launched this idea

28:25

or at least really put it in the public forefront

28:28

that he was actually killed

28:31

almost certainly accidentally, by

28:34

one of two boys, younger

28:36

gentleman that he was hanging out with that day.

28:40

Right. So here's the thing, Like,

28:43

there's a lot of circumstantial evidence

28:46

that supports that theory that it was

28:48

killed by two boys. There's

28:51

also it's also circumstantially plausible

28:54

that you know, Van Go died by suicide

28:56

as well. But even if

28:58

you take his story and

29:00

start digging into it and the statements

29:03

that he made supposedly made, apparently

29:05

everything we know about it comes from the

29:08

owner of the inn where he rented

29:10

a room's thirteen year old daughter at

29:12

the time was a witness to all this. But

29:14

even if you take what he supposedly said,

29:17

it still doesn't add up that number

29:19

one, he shot himself in the chest, and

29:22

most importantly the number two, the

29:24

gun that he shot himself with could never

29:26

be found and instead um

29:29

of actually, you know, finishing the

29:32

suicide, completing the suicide, um,

29:34

he couldn't find the gun

29:37

after he shot himself in the chest and just walked

29:39

back to his room where he died after

29:41

suffering twenty more hours, but still

29:44

to the end claiming that he had done this himself.

29:46

Even if you take all that together, it seems

29:48

like, no, this is something really fishy

29:51

going on here. Yeah, so this

29:53

bullet uh misses all

29:55

of his internal organs very improbably

29:58

because it deflected off his rib cage and

30:02

he walked, like you said, to the doctor

30:04

who they didn't have a surgeon on duty, so they couldn't

30:06

remove the bullet. He lived a

30:08

total of thirty hours after the shot

30:11

and died of infection. Got

30:13

to talk with his brother, you know, was

30:16

was speaking to people. So it's he had every

30:18

opportunity to say

30:20

that these two boys that I was hanging out

30:22

with, that I was drinking. And I say boys, I think they were

30:25

maybe late teens, early twenties. There's

30:28

okay, I saw early twenties and another thing. Uh,

30:31

but you know, hanging out getting drunk

30:33

with them. Um. One

30:35

of these boys, Renee Sat,

30:39

had a gun that apparently misfired

30:42

a lot, and he liked playing with this thing. He

30:44

liked to play cowboys, supposedly, And

30:48

so it all just seems and and even

30:50

his statement, he he said he

30:53

didn't say I shot myself.

30:56

He said, do not accuse anyone. It

30:58

was I who wanted to kill myself. Yeah,

31:01

which is very peculiar as well. Yeah,

31:03

it's uh ambiguous,

31:06

I think as far as like, because

31:08

the idea is that maybe he was accidentally

31:10

shot, and then after he was shot, he was like, this

31:13

is kind of what I wanted all along. You know, I've been heading

31:15

down this road towards suicide.

31:17

And then now it's just done for me. So

31:20

what what seems to have happened is UM

31:22

that this gun possibly

31:25

that it wasn't actually murderer or any

31:27

kind of premeditated murder, more like a manslaughter

31:30

where Renee and his brother

31:32

um guests on were messing

31:34

around and um accidentally

31:38

basically he had seen a wild

31:40

Bill Cody wild West show the year before

31:42

and became obsessed with it, so that's what he was doing

31:44

with a gun and playing cowboy, UM.

31:47

And that they had accidentally shot him with this gun

31:49

that was kind of you know, known

31:51

to misfire UM.

31:53

So the thing was that

31:55

the gun was never found. Renee

31:58

went back to school like right

32:01

after that, which was still in the middle of summer

32:03

break. From what I saw, and

32:05

UM and the town seems

32:08

to have circled the wagons around

32:10

this this these boys UM,

32:12

because you know, Van Go was an outsider. He was

32:14

not very well thought of. He used to get really drunk

32:17

and argue with the locals in in

32:19

the cafe and the and everything like basically

32:21

every night. And this these boys came

32:23

from like a good well to do family.

32:26

So for many years like that was just the thing,

32:28

like like it just happened. And then

32:31

slowly, little by little, it seems to

32:33

have trickled out some support for this idea.

32:35

Like no, like van Go wasn't anywhere

32:37

near this field. He said that he had shot himself

32:39

in he was actually on the road to the Secretans

32:42

house. Um. And then finally

32:44

years later Reness Secretan

32:47

said that you know, he it probably

32:49

was his gun, in that Vango had somehow gotten

32:51

ahold of it. It seems it

32:54

seems likely that that he

32:56

was shot by them, whether accident

32:58

or not. Yeah, these two authors, they

33:01

put forth some other circumstantial evidence,

33:03

like that the bullet went

33:05

in at a weird angle that

33:07

would not have been the angle if you shot yourself

33:10

in the chest. Um,

33:12

that his more recent works

33:14

were a little more upbeat and a

33:16

little more positive, and that he

33:18

was not in that kind of mindset at the time, and

33:21

that he had had recently even written

33:24

his thoughts about suicide, that he thought it was sinful

33:27

and immoral, and so they sort

33:29

of us all this is evidence that he would not have done

33:31

it himself, and that it was you know,

33:33

they believe it was an accident. His

33:36

last words very sad, where um

33:38

the sadness will last forever. He

33:40

spoke to his brother, which, uh,

33:43

that's tough, Yeah, it is. I

33:45

really do want to do an episode on him. And

33:47

I think Sefratan came out in the fifties even and

33:49

denied it, right, like finally, once

33:51

and for all did he did. But he also

33:54

he also said that it probably was his

33:56

gun and that somehow van Go had gotten it,

33:58

right, but hey, that my fault. No,

34:01

But also to to back pedal and

34:03

be like, it probably was my gun, because

34:05

that was another thing. Everybody's like, where did van Go get

34:08

a gun? Van Go didn't have a gun, no, and no one

34:10

would have given van Go had gotten He

34:12

was the guy who got drunk every night and it cut off

34:14

his ear before. Um, that was like

34:17

they no one in town would have given him a gaunt

34:19

and so, uh, the fact that he even

34:21

admitted that it was his gun is

34:25

probably as close as Renee Sircuiton ever

34:27

came to confessing publicly about it, you

34:29

know. Yeah, And and it makes sense

34:31

what he said was do not accuse anyone

34:33

like that really seems like he's trying to cover

34:35

for these kids that he didn't want

34:37

to get in trouble. Yeah, because if

34:39

he wanted to die. But it was also

34:42

he didn't want to die by his own hand. Like,

34:45

this is kind of a lucky gift

34:47

in a very strange way. You know. Yeah,

34:49

I'm going to that immersive

34:52

van go thing and uh in July.

34:55

Where is that? It is here

34:57

in Atlanta? It's at the Pullman Yards,

34:59

uh over in Kirkwood.

35:01

Whether they're shoot like every

35:03

movie in Atlanta shoots there. Yeah,

35:06

uh so, Yeah, it's supposed to be pretty cool. It's

35:09

very very neat. Sounds neat, I mean like to basically,

35:11

they just make the stars come out whenever you

35:14

come in, and I think so, I think you sitting

35:16

this yellow chair, I think that's the deal. I think you

35:18

go in and you are surrounded

35:20

by projected art in

35:23

different ways from

35:25

what I can get, that's all. I got to check that

35:27

out. Man, Thanks for telling me about it. Yeah, it

35:29

looks kind of cool. Alright, Chuck, you want

35:31

to finish out talking about Hitler? Don't

35:34

you mean Hilter? Did

35:37

you know there's Hill Hilter? Oh

35:39

my gosh, yes, in the headlines in the headline

35:41

did Hilter really do these paintings?

35:44

Do do these paintings?

35:47

That? I feel

35:49

bad? But like, did Hilter

35:52

really do these painting. That's

35:55

great. Oh yeah he did him. Yeah,

35:57

Hilter did these paintings.

36:00

So, um, we're talking not about Hilter but

36:02

about Hitler, Adolf Hitler in particular.

36:04

And as everybody knows, Hitler was

36:06

a frustrated artist. You

36:09

know, people have made a lot of hey about how

36:11

possibly the world would be a totally different place

36:14

had he been accepted into

36:16

the Vienna Academy of Arts.

36:18

Um and he came well, I don't want to say

36:21

he came close, but he made two different

36:23

attempts in one year to be accepted,

36:26

and they basically looked at his stuff and said,

36:29

uh, look, man, you

36:31

you have the skill

36:33

of a draftsman. Maybe you should go

36:35

into architecture, like, but you're

36:37

not going to be an artist.

36:42

That was a direct quote. But this

36:44

was a huge deal for him. I think I read

36:46

in that in mind comp. I haven't read mind

36:48

comp, but I read an article by somebody who

36:51

read Mind Confidence said that he said it was like a bolt

36:53

from the blue and that um,

36:55

you know, he was pursuing this dream

36:58

that his father would beat him

37:01

out of, Like his father enrolled him in a technical

37:03

school. He's like, no son of mine is going to be an artist.

37:06

He would beat him up whenever he he brought

37:08

he brought the idea up. Um.

37:10

And so finally, after his father died and

37:12

then he nursed his mailing ailing mother

37:14

until she died, he got up the

37:16

gumps and did like go and roll

37:19

in art school. And apparently, he, being

37:21

Hitler, who I guess had been

37:24

fairly um bonkers

37:26

his whole life, just knew that he was destined

37:28

to become an artist. So the idea that he was rebuffed

37:30

not once but twice by

37:33

this Vienna school, and these people

37:35

were like the the people, the guardians

37:37

of what is art and what is not, and

37:39

they were telling him what you got is not.

37:42

Um. That was a huge deal to

37:45

him. It was a very big deal. And it's

37:47

funny, it's just now occurring to me that there

37:49

was a sort of a similar thing

37:51

with Manson's rejection as

37:53

a musician by the

37:55

music industry. Um. I never

37:57

really kind of really thought of that parallel. But in

38:00

nineteen o nine Hitler

38:03

is trapesing around Vienna and he is

38:05

selling watercolors

38:07

copied from postcards to

38:09

tourists. So if

38:12

you've ever traveled to Europe, he was one of those

38:14

guys that was down by the river, the

38:17

river bank, Yeah, in a van selling

38:20

these uh and literally copied from postcards.

38:22

So he did that for a little while, made a little bit of money

38:25

because you know, if you look at his art, it's it's way

38:28

better than I could do. It's you know, it's okay, but like

38:31

modern uh, and it's it's hard to

38:33

tell if modern art critics like so

38:36

much goes into looking at a Hitler painting and reviewing

38:38

it, Like, it's really hard to kind of separate

38:40

those things. But the general

38:42

thought is is that he had nothing

38:45

exceptional about him at all. It was he

38:48

was the kind of artist that would sell stuff down by

38:50

the river. It's a tourists he was. They were fine,

38:53

he was capable, but they

38:55

were copycat paintings. He was copying

38:57

things. He had no point of view. Uh.

38:59

He this in nineteen thirteen as well in

39:01

Munich, painting Munich city escapes

39:04

and landscapes and selling them to tourists.

39:06

And then in nineteen fourteen got

39:08

hauled in by the police, uh of

39:11

all things, for failing to register

39:13

for the military. Yeah.

39:16

Um, and then they he he went

39:18

down and registered and then they gave

39:21

him am a physical

39:23

exam and he failed it. They said it was too weak to

39:25

fire a weapon, so they

39:27

arrested him so that they could humiliate

39:29

him basically. And and then

39:32

when um, World War one came around, he

39:34

enlisted and they say, we need everybody

39:36

we can get, come on in, and even yeah,

39:39

yeah, even Hilter. Um,

39:42

Hilter did this army thing, right.

39:45

Um. So when he rose to power

39:47

from Germany, one of the things he did was he had

39:49

his works collected and destroyed.

39:53

Um. I'm not exactly sure what the

39:55

thinking was behind that. I guess because he knew

39:57

it wasn't very good. Um, and

39:59

he need to focus on his political career

40:01

rather than his artistic career, or

40:04

have everybody else focus on it. But to

40:06

no avail, because I saw a nineteen

40:09

thirty six critic or

40:11

a critic wrote in ninety six that his style

40:13

was prosaic, utterly devoid of

40:16

rhythm, color, feeling, or

40:18

spiritualism. And this

40:20

was before he I'm sorry, or spiritual

40:22

imagination. And this was before

40:25

he had really become an

40:28

obvious threat. This is nineteen thirty

40:30

six. So even back then, um,

40:33

even without hindsight, people thought

40:35

his stuff wasn't very good. So yeah,

40:37

he had his stuff destroyed, uh, and

40:40

that's he It was kind

40:42

of a footnote for a very long time that

40:44

he was an artist and no one really cared

40:46

after his death. Yeah, I mean this, and that

40:49

was one of the major reasons that he was such an

40:51

art plunderer during the war and

40:54

stole as much art as he could from real

40:56

famous artists and famous paintings, because

40:59

he had all this backstory as a failed artist,

41:01

and it was interesting. I did

41:04

see that like one of his major I

41:08

mean, because he wasn't an utter failure at

41:10

first. He had a backer early on. I think

41:12

he was a Jewish Man,

41:15

Yeah, which was really interesting, and there was I

41:18

don't know, man, it's there's a lot of speculation

41:20

about what that

41:22

all meant to him,

41:24

and like people try and draw parallels

41:26

to like some of the paintings

41:28

I saw, I mean, some of it feels like a stretch, definitely,

41:31

like the you know, the cold

41:35

the cold streets of Munich, Like we're

41:38

painted like clearly with a future

41:40

cleansing in mind to make it look like this,

41:42

And yeah, some of

41:45

that stuff seems like a stretch, but you could definitely

41:47

read into the backstory. At

41:49

least I think with some accuracy.

41:51

Yeah, and even if like you can't necessarily

41:54

suss out like the future from from

41:56

his paintings, you can make a

41:58

pretty strong case that his artistic

42:00

ambitions being utterly crushed. Yeah,

42:03

um had some sort of driving

42:05

force or impact on his psyche

42:07

at the very least like that,

42:11

and his his later political

42:14

career and dictatorship did

42:16

not exist in a vacuum. And you I don't think

42:18

you can possibly make the case that they were just

42:21

unrelated in any way. No. I think

42:23

any sociopath, you you can look

42:25

at their past and see the dots connected, you know. Yeah.

42:28

Uh So, like you said, there was this

42:31

kind of just was the deal for a long time. And

42:33

then in like anything else, like people

42:35

wanting to get original Charles

42:37

Manson music reels. Uh.

42:40

In the early at late nineties, early two thousand's,

42:42

there was a market for for Hitler's work.

42:45

I think in two thousand nine a British

42:47

auction house someone paid a hundred

42:50

and fifty grand for fifteen early sketches and

42:52

watercolors, including a self

42:54

portrait, And then in some

42:57

unnamed investors paid four and

42:59

fifty thousand dollars for a

43:01

set of watercolors. I think they were twelve or thirteen.

43:05

Yeah, that survived. Yeah. The problem

43:07

is is because he didn't have a style

43:09

of his own, that he was copying

43:12

postcards, that he didn't

43:14

have any formal training, um,

43:16

and that he was he

43:18

lacked like a lot of creativity or

43:20

any creativity. It seems like it's

43:23

really hard to say this is a

43:25

Hitler and this is a fake. And

43:27

there's been developed a really um,

43:30

really enormous market

43:33

of fakes because anybody who's

43:35

like a passingly good um

43:38

artists in watercolors of street

43:40

scapes and landscapes could drum up

43:42

something and be like, this is a Hitler, and it would

43:44

be really difficult to say

43:46

yes it is or no it's not. Yeah, what

43:48

kind of a garbage human do you have to be to

43:51

think I'll do Hitler forgeries

43:53

and try and sell them to garbage

43:56

humans that want to collect them. Yeah,

43:58

And it's not like the you're even fetching

44:01

like ten million dollars a piece. We're talking like

44:03

you might get ten dollars

44:05

for it for your your Hitler

44:08

for jury. Unbelievable,

44:11

but totally believable. So

44:13

that's the mystery of the Hitler paintings. Did

44:15

he do this? Did he do those

44:17

paintings? Uh?

44:20

You got anything else? I got nothing else?

44:22

That was a good five. I

44:25

think we have committed to doing a robust

44:27

episode on the

44:29

Gardener Museum highst because that's a

44:31

good one and that was on this list and way underplayed

44:34

for sure. So keep an ear out for

44:36

that, everybody. Uh. And since I

44:38

said keep an ear out for that, thank

44:41

it's time for listener mail. Yeah.

44:45

I'm gonna call this um

44:49

middle names because we had a little

44:51

discussion in our John your episode

44:53

about how, uh, Emily and

44:55

I and our friends justin Melissa one night,

44:57

we're going by our mental names as a joke, and

45:00

I had the theory that you have no emotional connection to

45:02

your middle name if you don't

45:04

have a reaction when you hear it. Set out woud and

45:07

I just meant sort of the non the non

45:09

dominant name. That didn't necessarily mean middle

45:12

names, because my brother goes by his middle name,

45:15

Scott is his middle name, and some people do that.

45:17

It's a thing, and certainly Amy does.

45:19

She said, I was listening to the show and

45:21

at the end you were chatting about using middle names and how

45:24

you don't have an emotional connection when you hear

45:26

it. I have an interesting situation that everyone

45:28

everyone in my family uses

45:30

their middle names, so I've always

45:32

been called Amy ever since I was born, but my first

45:35

name is Helen. This causes an interesting

45:37

situation at airports and doctors appointments

45:39

where they refer to me as Helen, and I always

45:42

have to remember that they're talking to me. A

45:44

big fan of the show kept me curious and

45:46

my curious spirit satisfied over the last three or

45:48

four years, and it's such a comfort knowing there's

45:50

always another episode to listen to. Best

45:53

wishes from the UK. They're always so nice

45:55

and Amy, Helen

45:57

Amy, Thanks Helen Amy.

46:00

Um, We'll We'll just call her Amy,

46:02

as is customary because we say

46:04

Helen. She's like who yeah,

46:07

Wow. I can't wait until they read my listener

46:09

mail, says Amy. If

46:11

you want to be like Amy and get in touch with us

46:14

for whatever reason, you can send

46:16

us an email to Stuff podcast

46:18

at i heart radio dot com.

46:24

Stuff You Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.

46:26

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46:29

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46:31

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