Hitler, the rejected artist

The provenance of these pictures is not very clear and they seem rather unlike Hitler's other art. It would be amusing if they were eventually found to be by a more respected artist and the critics were pissing on them for nothing! Note that the claims about Hitler being infuriated by his rejection from the art school are phrased very tentatively -- for good reason. In "Mein Kampf" Hitler evinces no such anger and in fact emphatically agrees with the Rector that his main talent was in architecture

They represent the hopes of an ambitious young artist. But these sketches failed to impress selectors at a prestigious art college . . . and those dreams were shattered. Who knows just how momentous were the implications of that rejection.

The teenage artist is believed to have been Adolf Hitler. It may be folklore, but it is now said he blamed a Jewish professor at the Vienna Academy of Art for refusing his application to study.



Budding artist Adolf Hitler is believed to have submitted the portfolio to the Vienna Academy of Art - which rejected him twice

The sketches are expected to fetch up to £6,000 when they go on sale next month, a price that has more to do with the notoriety rather than talent of the artist.

Hitler's portfolio is said to show a moderate artistic ability no greater than the average GCSE student. The works consist of nudes, human figures, objects and landscapes. Most are dated 1908, the year 19-year-old Hitler was rejected by the academy for the second time and not even permitted to sit the entrance exam. Others are dated the following year.





Speculation: Hitler is believed to have blamed a Jewish professor for his rejection from the academy. Some believe this sparked his persecution of Jews in later life

Hitler moved to Vienna as a young man in 1905 and lived a bohemian lifestyle, making a little money by selling pictures he copied from postcards. At one point he ended up in a hostel for the homeless and later claimed it was in Vienna where the fires of his anti-Semitism were ignited.



Up for auction: The pictures are expected to sell for up to £6,000 each when they are auctioned in Ludlow, Shropshire next month

Richard Westwood-Brookes, of the auction house in Shropshire which is selling the archive, said the pictures were owned by an artist based in Europe who had had them for many years. 'It is the first time the pictures have come to light and can be seen by the general public,' he said.

It is not, however, the first time that Hitler's early life as a budding artist has been on show. Last year a series of watercolours were sold in Britain. They included what was thought to have been his first selfportrait. Painted in 1910, it showed a solitary figure with dark straight hair sitting on a stone bridge. A cross was painted above the head along with the initials AH.

SOURCE

Another Aga saga

The world's best stove is no longer politically correct



It began when the gas bill landed on the mat. “This is outrageous,” my husband James yelled. “There’s no way we can afford this.” The bill in question covered seven weeks between January and February this year. It came to £682.30.

Given we’d been on holiday for one of those weeks, the figure was shocking. James had no doubt where the blame lay. “It’s your Aga,” he declared. “It’s got to go.”

We’d huddled round it through out the miserable winter, we’d eaten endless warming casseroles slow-cooked in its bottom oven. The prospect of losing our Aga was devastating.

I hadn’t always been an Aga aficionado. I regarded them as status symbols that people pretentiously described as “best friends”. They were the toys of Marie-Antoinettish pseuds who wanted to play at living in a farmhouse in Wales – when actually they were hedge fund managers from Notting Hill. Madonna and Guy Ritchie had one, just as they donned Hunter wellies and Barbours and claimed to love hunting and fishing. (Now I wonder if maybe they divorced after a row over the gas bill.)

Then four years ago we bought a house with an Aga in situ.

I was so scared of the lump of iron that for weeks we lived off microwave meals. Finally I bought an Aga guide book and discovered that Agas were actually far easier to use than conventional cookers. Not only that but everything that came out of it was utterly delectable. The deep, thick walls of the double ovens produced an incredibly unctuous chicken and spinach curry, and a roast lamb so tender the meat fell off the bones.

And so a great and unexpected love affair began. Like any converts, we were evangelical. “It’s marvellous,” we bored our friends. “If you want to roast a chicken, just shove it in the top oven and an hour later it’s done. Its jacket potatoes are so fluffy and the toast is sublime.”

Only one dared to actually voice the truth. “Heavens you’re smug,” she said after I’d launched into a reborn-Nigella eulogy to drop scones made on the hot plate.

Most, however, simply looked sceptical. “But how does it work?” they’d ask. “Surely, it can’t be turned on all the time?”

James and I would eye each other guiltily. “Well, yes. It is. But that’s great! It means you can pull a pizza out of the freezer at 3AM and it’ll be ready in minutes, with such a crispy base ...”

Our friends had spotted the glaring design flaw. When David Cameron excused the Aga in his constituency home by saying he only turned it on when he was there, it made me doubt his fitness to lead the country. Because Agas only work properly if they’re turned on all the time. All day, all night, all year round. When we’re on holiday, or at the height of summer (which fortunately has lasted for just two days in recent years) the Aga continually radiates useless heat. As gas prices soar, we’re literally burning money.

Still, we continued to find get-outs. We work at home and use the Aga on and off all day, so we were using it at full capacity. But more and more, unease tempered my enjoyment of my juicy venison casseroles. Last year environmentalist George Monbiot launched a crusade against middle-class Aga owners. “I’ve lost count of the number of aspirational middle-class greens I know who own one of these monsters and believe that they are somehow compatible – perhaps because they look good in a country kitchen – with a green lifestyle,” he said.

The annual carbon footprint of my two-oven gas Aga is four tons, I discovered, two thirds of what an entire average British home emits in a year, a whole ton more than government targets for individual houses by 2020. In this light, my sneering at my neighbours for driving 4x4s, my rubbishing patio heaters and my obsessive recycling of the insides of loo rolls seemed deeply ironic.

Tessa Glass, a mother of two, who has an Aga in her second home (another eco crime) in Sussex refuses to believe she is an Aga lout, wilfully helping sea levels rise, all so she can scoff perfect Yorkshire puddings.

“But Aga owners are green,” she protests. “They’re the kind of people who love the country and have dogs. Apart from the footballers’ wives, that is.” She’s taken aback when I explain that flying to New York twice a year would cause less devastation to the rain forests. “La la la, not listening,” she cries.

Not listening, indeed. The list of celebrity Aga owners who also profess to be eco warriors makes hilarious reading. Sting and Trudie Styler lecture us about the Amazon but – natch – they own one. Prince Charles is forever warning us of climate Armageddon but his wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, “wouldn’t cook on anything else.”

Colin Firth, whose wife runs a chichi “green” store is another fan. Not so much hypocritical as puzzling is Sharon Stone’s avowal that an Aga is the first thing she would save in a fire, though the lightest model weighs 64 stone [900lb].

I’ve been doing everything I can to offset my Aga’s footprint. I never drive and we have no separate kettle or toaster and no tumble dryer, meaning, as one school-mum friend cheerily pointed out: “whenever I walk past your house I can see your wet knickers on the cooker.”

We’re not the only ones to be having second thoughts. Last week Aga announced annual profits had dropped by 97 per cent, from £14.4 million to £500,000 (although sales levelled out in the second half of the year).

After the gas bill shocker, our Aga is a seriously endangered species – like a Giant Panda. I frantically investigated ways to preserve it. I looked into installing AIMS, Aga’s new “intelligent management” system, which effectively makes the cooker heat up only when you need it. But the price for conversion was around £2000 (now on sale at a still pricey £1200), the price of a decent range cooker.

I remembered the freezing weekend the Aga broke and I had to survive two days with no heat in the kitchen, making coffee in the microwave, before forking out £400 for an emergency call out. Servicing the beast costs around £150 a year.

Despite this, I couldn’t bear to let go. Mary Berry, author of dozens of Aga cook books, sympathises. “I know of so many husbands who say 'Good God, this is costing a lot of money’ but our house would be unhappy without it. It’s at the hub of the home: our children did their homework by it, my husband dries the dogs on it, I’ve just washed a jumper and folded it on one of the lids so it won’t need ironing. I don’t want to have Botox or my varicose veins sorted so why not allow myself this luxury.”

Inspired by Berry, I upped my campaign. There were other reasons for the monster bill: it’s been the coldest winter in 25 years, we live in a big, draughty Victorian house and working from home means the heating is almost always on. Mercifully, a heating engineer confirmed this. He calculated our Aga is costing us around £14 a week and our lack of room thermostats was a bigger culprit. “People spend £50 a month on cable television,” I begged James. “I’ll forsake America’s Next Top Model for life in return for the Aga.”

So our Aga is reprieved. But I fear the stay is temporary. It’s like living with an errant husband, turning a blind eye to his obvious flaws, because I can’t imagine life without him. But at least there’ll still be drop scones for tea.

Source. (NOTE: I reported another Aga saga in January)

Dingo may be world's oldest dog breed



THE dingo may be the oldest dog breed in the world, according to a new study. Only the New Guinea singing dog, so named because of its ability to modulate its howling, can match the dingo's longevity, the University of NSW's Dr Alan Wilton suggests.

His work, part of an international study tracing the DNA of modern domestic dogs from their wild wolf ancestry, may now help conserve the purity of the dingo breed.

The findings show it is likely dingoes, brought to Australia from Indonesia about 5000 years ago, developed separately from other canine breeds, mainly because of their physical isolation.

But their relatively recent cross-breeding with modern domesticated dogs is threatening the purity of the breed. "Most modern breeds of dogs originate from Europe over the last 100 years or so," said Dr Wilton, a genetics expert. "But there is another strand of more ancient breeds that we know originated in the Middle East and Asia.

"Dingoes originated in Asia and since they came to Australia they have largely been separated from other breeds. There was generally not the mixing we see with other, more modern dogs."

The dingo was now the dog with the closest genetic resemblance to the wild wolf. Other ancient breeds include the chow-chow, basenji, akita, Chinese shar-pei, Siberian husky and Alaskan malamute.

Dr Wilton speculates all of these also underwent separate domestication processes to most modern "European" breeds.

The study, collated at American universities Cornell and UCLA, is being published in the science journal Nature.

It has always been suspected that the dingo was among the oldest breeds in the world, but this is the first time it has been confirmed through scientific study.


SOURCE

Lord Robert Baden-Powell's Scouts offered Hitler Youth friendship

The report below is a good indication of how Nazism became generally respectable after Hitler's success at getting Germany back on its feet in the late '30s -- JR

THE founder of the Boy Scouts founder held friendly talks with senior Nazis about forming closer ties with the Hitler Youth and was even invited to meet Adolf Hitler, newly released security files show.

Lord Baden-Powell, who started the Scouts in 1907, held talks with German ambassador Joachim von Ribbentrop and Hitler Youth chief of staff Hartmann Lauterbacher on November 19, 1937.

Lauterbacher, then 28, was in Britain to foster closer relations with the Boy Scout movement and Ribbentrop invited Baden-Powell to tea with the Hitler Youth leader, declassified MI5 Security Service files revealed.

A letter from Lord Baden-Powell to Ribbentrop the day after the meeting showed how he felt about the talks.

"I am grateful for the kind conversation you accorded me which opened my eyes to the feeling of your country towards Britain, which I may say reciprocates exactly the feeling which I have for Germany," Lord Baden-Powell wrote.

"I sincerely hope that we shall be able, in the near future, to give expression to it through the youth on both sides, and I will at once consult my headquarters officers and see what suggestions they can put forward."

In a report on the meeting, Baden-Powell described Ribbentrop as "earnest" and "charming".

He wrote: "I had a long talk with the ambassador, who was very insistent that the true peace between the two nations will depend on the youth being brought up on friendly terms together in forgetfulness of past differences."

"He sees in the Scout movement a very powerful agency for helping to bring this about if we can get into closer touch with the Jugend (Youth) movement in Germany.

"To help this he suggested that if possible we should send one or two men to meet their leaders in Germany and talk matters over and, especially, he would like me to go and see Hitler after I am back from Africa."

He went on: "I told him that I was fully in favour of anything that would bring about a better understanding between our nations, and hoped to have further talks with him when I return from Africa."

There is no evidence that Lord Baden-Powell ever met Hitler.

Once the war had been under way for several years, the security services had no doubt about the nature of the Nazi youth wing.

An October 1944 intelligence assessment warned that the organisation should not be taken lightly and could not be compared to the Scouts.

It said: "It is a compulsory Nazi formation, which has consciously sought to breed hate, treachery and cruelty into the mind and soul of every German child. "It is, in the true sense of the word, 'education for death'."

Source

ABBA helps Jews celebrate ancient festival

David Hilton, in fancy dress according to Purim tradition, reads the Story of Esther scroll in Sydney's Great Synagogue yesterday

IT IS a Jewish festival that dates back about 2500 years and yesterday it was celebrated in Sydney with a little help from Bjorn, Benny, Agnetha and Anni-Frid.

The city's Jewish community observed Purim, a day marking the story of Queen Esther's rescue of the Jews from genocide in Persia.

Part of the tradition of Purim is attending the annual celebration in dress-up. Sydney's Great Synagogue yesterday became a sea of brightly coloured wigs, masks and a man in jockey silks.

The other Purim tradition is during the reading of the book of Esther - also known as the Megillah - to boo at each mention of royal adviser Haman, who wanted to destroy the Jewish people.

To cap off the celebration, yesterday's traditional reading at the Great Synagogue was followed by a performance of Megillah Mia!, a stage show that takes the Purim story and puts it to the music of ABBA.

Such performances, known as a ''purim spiel'' have been absent from celebrations at the synagogue for a number of years. The synagogue's new board and events committee had decided to reinstate the performances as a way to reconnect with in a social setting, Rabbi Lawrence said.

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"Spiritual" cult uses false rape accusation against critic

The tactics of the Kenja movement and its slurs against a crusading politician have been laid bare by people close to the case. Tim Elliott reports.

On March 30, 1994, a woman walked into Rose Bay police station, and made a complaint of sexual assault against Stephen Mutch, then a Liberal MP in the NSW upper house.

The woman remained vague on the timing of the assault, saying it had happened some time between March and May 1978, when she was 18. But she was very clear on the details: Mutch had visited her at her parents' home, pushed her onto the bed and, amid much swearing and struggling, sexually assaulted her.

Mutch denied the allegations, which, due to incorrect court records, were soon being reported as having involved a girl under the age of 16. The 38-year-old MP was set to face court in March 1995, just three days before the state election, in what TV news bulletins described as a "bombshell" for John Fahey's government.

"It was a disaster," Mutch says now. "It was the worst thing that someone could say about you, and it was totally and utterly fabricated."

What wasn't known at the time, but can now be revealed, was that the woman making the allegations belonged to Kenja, a self-empowerment group that many consider to be a cult, against which Mutch had been speaking out in Parliament for some time.

Though the allegations were ultimately dismissed, they changed the course of Mutch's life, and, together with testimony from former Kenja members, provide a chilling insight into the extraordinary lengths to which the group will go to defend itself.

Founded in Sydney in 1982 by a former encyclopaedia salesman, Ken Dyers, and his third wife, Jan Hamilton, Kenja billed itself as a non-political and non-religious personal development organisation offering a range of training seminars and courses. It offers the same seminars today.

A Scientology drop-out, Dyers wooed attendees with a carefully crafted personal mythology that included a hard-scrabble youth on Sydney's streets, a celebrated World War II record (that was largely falsified), and a barnstorming business career in which he traded precious stones, invented a tax-accounting system and worked as a trouble-shooter for Consolidated Press.

Through sporting and cultural activities, Dyers and Hamilton recruited hundreds of members who would pay thousands of dollars to attend a seemingly endless round of workshops and "processing sessions", all aimed, as Kenja's website explains, at increasing "understanding of the spiritual nature of man … along with practical training in the basics of effective communication - time, space and energy."

Bevin Hudson, a former member, describes it as "a pyramid sales system, similar to Amway … Processors herd the greater body of members into fee-generating endeavours, with Hamilton and Dyers sitting atop the cash flow."

But the cornerstone of Kenja's work was "energy conversion", a one-on-one mediation session conducted with Dyers, who would stare into his participant's eyes, "making them become conscious of negative energies in their thinking, and then … dissipate them."

Mutch first raised concerns about Kenja in 1992, after being contacted by a family friend whose daughter had become a member. This precipitated more mail from ex-members, including women and girls who claimed they had been coerced into conducting nude "energy-conversion" sessions with Dyers, which were often followed by sex.

Similar complaints had also reached the police, who in September 1993 charged the then 71-year-old with 11 counts of sexual assault against four girls aged between eight and 15. Dyers was eventually found guilty on one of the 11 charges, but had the conviction quashed on appeal. In 2005 he was charged with another 22 counts of sexual assault against two 12-year-old girls, but was declared mentally unfit to stand trial. More charges were raised in July 2007. Dyers killed himself rather than face those charges.

Mutch's initial involvement, however, did not go unpunished. There were repeated crank phone calls and a barrage of form letters. Several Kenjans turned up to Mutch's wedding in January 1994, disguised in giant sunglasses and floppy hats, and began taking photos of the guests and their numberplates. When Mutch gave evidence against Dyers, he was regularly followed out of court by people who stationed themselves on street corners with walkie-talkies.

"I was so freaked out at one stage that I jumped in a cab and came straight back to Parliament rather than get the train," he says. "It sounds silly, but you get paranoid, because you really don't know what these people are capable of."

Then came the accusation of sexual assault. Even though the police dismissed the allegation - the Director of Public Prosecutions also chose not to pursue it - the case quickly assumed a life of its own. Anonymous letters detailing Mutch's supposed crimes were distributed among the parliamentary press gallery and to the letterboxes of his Cronulla constituents. They also found their way to Mutch's Liberal Party colleagues, some of whom were only too happy to use it against him. (In one instance, a political rival showed the letter to Mutch's mother.) In 1996, a particularly salacious version of the allegations was posted on the internet.

"It had a major effect on me," Mutch explains. "Not only psychologically but politically. One member of my preselection panel wouldn't even talk to me."

But according to one former Kenjan, an ex-boyfriend of the woman who came out against Mutch, the allegations were "wholly without substance," and cooked up at the behest of Hamilton and Dyers. "Around 18 months ago, in a telephone discussion [she] admitted to me that allegations made by her to police regarding Stephen Mutch sexually molesting her were entirely made up," the man writes in a statutory declaration given to the Herald.

According to the statement, Dyers and Hamilton asked the woman to lie to discredit Mutch and the case against Dyers. Otherwise, "Mr Dyers would be jailed and killed as a rock spider [paedophile] in the prison system."

The Herald attempted to contact the woman, who is living in Victoria, but she did not return calls. The woman's mother, however, was clear. "Stephen didn't do anything," she says. "Of course he didn't. The accusation was an awful thing in his life, and I naturally blame my daughter. But in a way I can't, because she wasn't in her right mind."

Hamilton, who took over the organisation after Dyers's death, denies asking anyone to lie. She claims there has been a long-running conspiracy against Kenja, involving religious fundamentalists and a US group called Cult Aware. "It's a witch-hunt," she told the Herald. "My opinion of these people is so low that I will not lower myself to conduct a conversation about them."

But it seems other members were also asked to lie. "Jan said to me, 'You have to fight lies with lies'," says Su Germain, a former Kenjan. "We were told there was huge conspiracy against Ken and that if we didn't lie he was going to jail."

Germain had been a member of Kenja since 1982. In a statement to police in 2006, she talked about processing sessions in which 50 people would be naked together in a room. Dyers would talk about "clearing sexual energies", and insisted it was "better to be naked so that you weren't hiding behind an identity".

Germain remembers a particular one-on-one nude session with Dyers in Kenja's George Street centre, when she spotted, with some alarm, a Vaseline jar sitting on the table beside her.

One day during Dyers's 1993 trial, Germain, who was a defence witness, was summoned by Hamilton to a meeting in the basement of Kenja's Surry Hills offices. There, disguised in wigs and robes from a secondhand clothing store ("so that security cameras would not show us meeting up together"), a group of defence witnesses tried to dredge up anything that reflected badly on the character of one of the plaintiffs. "But we didn't have anything, so Jan suggested some stories. One of the people there said, 'Yes, I'm sure that happened.' Before you knew it they had created a story."

The pressure to please was overwhelming. "It was high treason not to go along with the prevailing ideas within the group," Bevin Hudson says. "Anyone out of step was not just out of step with Kenja but also with the magical spiritual universe."

These days, Hudson manages an art gallery in the eastern suburbs and remains an outspoken critic of Kenja. Mutch entered Federal Parliament in 1996 but retired two years later and now lectures in politics and international relations at Macquarie University.

"The allegations affected me deeply and really impacted on my career," he says. "But I have always had sympathy for [the woman] who made them, because she was brainwashed. In the end, I'm glad I raised concern about Kenja. It's one of the things I'm proudest about in my career."

Source

Big Mal is a liar and a fool

Comments below from David Smith, who was official secretary to Ninian Stephen and four other governors-general from 1973 to 1990

Malcolm Fraser should not try to rewrite political history.

The first extract from former prime minister Malcolm Fraser's political memoir (The Weekend Australian, February 20-21) contained the following paragraph: "Fraser contacted the office of governor-general Ninian Stephen to seek a double-dissolution election, shortly after midday on February 3, 1983, but Stephen was not available to see him."

That paragraph is totally untrue. When Fraser arrived at Government House at about 12.30pm he was ushered immediately into the study and spoke with the governor-general.

Furthermore, Fraser made no prior contact with the governor-general's office before turning up at Government House; he gave no warning whatsoever of his arrival.

A second paragraph reads: "While Fraser waited for an opportunity to see the governor-general, Hayden announced his resignation." That paragraph is also totally untrue. By the time Bill Hayden announced his resignation as opposition leader, Fraser had already seen the governor-general; he had not waited at all.

At 9am on February 3, 1983, the governor-general's deputy official secretary received a telephone call from the head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Geoffrey Yeend, who asked what the governor-general's engagements were for that day. He was told that Stephen would be spending most of the day at his desk, and his only engagement was a farewell call at 12.45pm by the departing Polish ambassador and his wife, who would stay for lunch. Nothing else was said.

At about 12.30pm, Fraser arrived at Government House, unexpected, and demanded to see the governor-general. He was taken straight to the governor-general's study, whereupon he handed Stephen a five-page letter recommending the dissolution of the Senate and the House of Representatives: a double dissolution.

The letter was accompanied by an eight-page attachment and 26 pages of legislation, a total of 39 pages.

The prime minister asked the governor-general for an immediate decision. The governor-general told the prime minister that he would need some time to read the documents and that, with the Polish ambassador and his wife due at any moment, an immediate decision was not possible. Stephen told Fraser that he would have his answer by 3.30 that afternoon.

We learned later that before leaving Parliament House to make his ambush call on the governor-general, Fraser had called a 1pm press conference.

On his return to Parliament House, Fraser asked Yeend to telephone me and ask me to tell the governor-general that the prime minister needed an immediate answer and was standing by his telephone. I told Yeend that the prime minister would have his answer by 3.30pm. The 1pm press conference had to be cancelled.

At 3.30pm, the governor-general telephoned the prime minister to tell him that he (the governor-general) required some further advice from the prime minister on a particular matter. Yeend handed that additional advice to the governor-general, by way of a further letter from the prime minister, at 4.45pm. After reading that letter, the governor-general told Yeend that he would approve the prime minister's recommendation and would dissolve both houses of the parliament. Fraser held a press conference at 5pm to announce the double dissolution and the election.

On February 3, 1983, the ACT was on daylight saving time and Queensland was not. Fraser had wind of Hayden's intention to resign later that day as opposition leader and hand over the leadership to Bob Hawke. Fraser hoped to use the one-hour time difference to pre-empt Hayden's announcement with his own announcement of an early election. He reasoned that Labor would be unlikely to change leader after an election had been called.

Hence Fraser's attempts to pressure the governor-general into giving him an immediate decision, though why he chose to ambush the governor-general and arrive without prior notice, and why he expected an immediate response to a 39-page document, simply beggars belief. Stephen was accustomed to reading and absorbing lengthy documents but he did need time to read them. Had Fraser sought an early appointment and presented his advice in good time, he could have had his answer, even with the governor-general's request for additional advice, and he could have had his 1pm press conference.

Instead, he timed his arrival just before the arrival of the Polish ambassador and expected an immediate answer.

Even more puzzling than his actions that morning is Fraser's failure, once his timing had come unstuck and he found himself facing Hawke as opposition leader, to withdraw his request for an early election. The one thing that he had schemed to prevent had occurred, but still he pressed on with his request, and lost the early election that he didn't have to have just then.

Fraser's decision not to withdraw his request was one of the most stupid political decisions that he made. His decision to falsify his account of that day in his memoirs is another.




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Qi Baishi is only just behind Picasso in art sales ranking

Peaches and Fire Crackers

Qi Baishi is not a name that many Western aficionados of art can recognise, let alone pronounce.

This son of Chinese peasants, who received no formal artistic training, has just become the third bestselling artist in the world at auction. Figures out next month from the art market data organisation Art Price will show that Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol raked in more than $220 million (£143 million) in sales between them in 2009, heading the rankings as they do almost every year.

The appearance of Qi immediately below them, with more than $70 million in sales, says much about the changing shape of the international art market and China’s economic boom. Qi (1863-1957) owes his place on the list to his work being original, striking and instantly recognisable — and to his being prolific, ensuring a steady supply of pieces to the market.

In China, he is a household name, best known for his reflective late pictures of mice, birds and particularly shrimps.

The Art Price figures are compiled from 6,000 auction houses around the globe but before last year the highest appearance by a non-Western artist was achieved by Zhang Xiaogang, a contemporary Chinese artist who reached 22nd place in 2007.

In 2009 the traditional auction powerhouses of New York and London suffered their worst year in a generation — at the same time as the Chinese art market, and Qi in particular, had a surge in value fuelled by local new money. The number of dollar billionaires in China reached 130 last year and the country is now the third most important art market in the world after London and New York.

Qi is the natural beneficiary. Patti Wong, chairwoman of Sotheby’s Asia, said that 20 years ago Qi was much sought after by US buyers who had worked in China, but that was no longer the case. They can no longer compete. Qi features in “every important Chinese collection”.

His work has grown in value over the past two decades but last year he sold 73 per cent more works than in 2008, substantially helped by a sale in November in which a series of his drawings entitled Flowers and Insects sold for a record equivalent to £8.1 million.

The record acknowledged price for one of his works was set at Sotheby’s in Hong Kong in 2007 when his Peaches and Fire Crackers (1952) sold for about £850,000, although Chinese auction houses have claimed much higher figures.

Shelagh Vainker, curator of Chinese art at the Ashmolean, in Oxford, which has the largest collection of 20th-century Chinese paintings in Britain, said that Qi had a broad following based on “the instant visual appeal” of pictures that are often painted in a “light, slightly uplifting way”.

Not that he is a lightweight. The pictures “reward deeper contemplation”, Ms Vainker said. “The brushwork is very good and I know some extremely well-educated people in China who would regard him as the No 1 Chinese artist of the 20th century.”

Picasso called Qi “the greatest oriental painter” and said that he did not dare visit China for fear of meeting him.

Qi was born in Hunan province, central China, and as a child he loved to copy from a famous Qing Dynasty painting manual, The Mustard Seed Garden. At 14 he became an apprentice woodcarver, and he went on to master poetry, calligraphy, painting and the traditional art of seal carving.

In middle age he travelled widely through China, and it was after he moved to Beijing in the 1920s that his mature style emerged.

Source

Archaeologist sees proof for Bible in ancient wall

An Israeli archaeologist said Monday that ancient fortifications recently excavated in Jerusalem date back 3,000 years to the time of King Solomon and support the biblical narrative about the era.

If the age of the wall is correct, the finding would be an indication that Jerusalem was home to a strong central government that had the resources and manpower needed to build massive fortifications in the 10th century B.C.

That's a key point of dispute among scholars, because it would match the Bible's account that the Hebrew kings David and Solomon ruled from Jerusalem around that time.

While some Holy Land archaeologists support that version of history _ including the archaeologist behind the dig, Eilat Mazar _ others posit that David's monarchy was largely mythical and that there was no strong government to speak of in that era.

Speaking to reporters at the site Monday, Mazar, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, called her find "the most significant construction we have from First Temple days in Israel." "It means that at that time, the 10th century, in Jerusalem there was a regime capable of carrying out such construction," she said.

Based on what she believes to be the age of the fortifications and their location, she suggested it was built by Solomon, David's son, and mentioned in the Book of Kings.

The fortifications, including a monumental gatehouse and a 77-yard (70-meter) long section of an ancient wall, are located just outside the present-day walls of Jerusalem's Old City, next to the holy compound known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. According to the Old Testament, it was Solomon who built the first Jewish Temple on the site.

That temple was destroyed by Babylonians, rebuilt, renovated by King Herod 2,000 years ago and then destroyed again by Roman legions in 70 A.D. The compound now houses two important Islamic buildings, the golden-capped Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Archaeologists have excavated the fortifications in the past, first in the 1860s and most recently in the 1980s. But Mazar claimed her dig was the first complete excavation and the first to turn up strong evidence for the wall's age: a large number of pottery shards, which archaeologists often use to figure out the age of findings.

Aren Maeir, an archaeology professor at Bar Ilan University near Tel Aviv, said he has yet to see evidence that the fortifications are as old as Mazar claims. There are remains from the 10th century in Jerusalem, he said, but proof of a strong, centralized kingdom at that time remains "tenuous."

While some see the biblical account of the kingdom of David and Solomon as accurate and others reject it entirely, Maeir said the truth was likely somewhere in the middle. "There's a kernel of historicity in the story of the kingdom of David," he said.

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Ancient Estonian drug store offers cure for broken hearts and unicorn powder



A pharmacy in the Estonian capital promises a cure for broken hearts: an almond-based concoction that's been around since medieval times. "Since the Middle Ages a special marzipan prescription has been prepared and sold here for the heart to relieve the pain of love," said Ulle Noodapera, a pharmacist at the Raeapteek drug store which first opened for business in Tallinn's old town square in 1422.

It is believed to be Europe's oldest pharmacy, and has been in operation for 588 years.

"We keep making the special marzipan because the need for such a medicine has continued over the centuries, and patients with symptoms of love pain keep turning up seeking the cure," she added.

The ancient recipe is a jealously guarded secret. "It's not ordinary marzipan, but one made using a medieval prescription containing 72 per cent almonds and 28 per cent other ingredients that we will not disclose," Noodapera said.

One dose of the wonder drug weighs 40 grams (1.4 ounces) and costs just one euro (86p).

Stepping into Tallinn's ancient drug store feels like a journey in a time-machine. Along with the cure for broken hearts, a room in the store displays many other medieval potions used for centuries for their supposedly miraculous impact.

Most of these remedies are not sold anymore, but the display on old shelves is impressive: dried frogs' legs, pike's eyes, powder supposedly from the unicorn, black cat's blood, the grease of dirty sheep's wool, pieces of a mummy, dew-worm in oil, burned bees, wolf's gut and rabbit hearts - the last prescribed to restore sanity.

"We might think it's funny and ridiculous but there were always reasons why something was recommended by doctors at that time and sold at the drug store," Noodapera noted. "For example, those with vision problems were advised to buy valeriana because it was believed that cats - known for very good eyesight - have good vision because they like valeriana," Noodapera said.

Another item that has remained on sale since the Middle Ages is a lamb's wool called Rose, meant to ease backaches.

The pharmacy also reflects Tallinn's colourful multinational background over the centuries. Opened by Johan Molner, a German doctor, in 1422, it passed into the hands of a Hungarian doctor named Johann Burchart Belavary de Sykava in 1580 and was run by the Burchart family for the next 300 years.

At times, it doubled as an elite club for city fathers where alcohol flowed freely - literally. In the Middle Ages, Noodapera said, pharmacists also sold alcoholic drinks and convention required they give a certain amount free of charge to city rulers.

In those days, "the drug store also functioned as a kind of closed club for Tallinn city rulers who liked to gather there after meetings at Town Hall, which is still located on the other side of the old town square," Noodapera said. "Meeting behind the closed doors of the pharmacy gave the city rulers more privacy to party than in local pubs."

Today, the Tallinn pharmacy also deals in modern drugs and pharmaceuticals. For tourists, the best-selling "remedy" is a wine called Klaret made using a medieval recipe, with eight different spices and 14 per cent alcohol. A 450 millilitre (15 fluid ounces) bottle costs 16 euros (£14) .

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Adolf Hitler painting may have hung in Sigmund Freud's surgery



A watercolour by the German dictator has come to light that has an inscription on the back that bears the name of Freud's medical practice in Vienna.

While Freud was based in the Austrian city in 1910 it is possible he or one of his staff bought the picture from the struggling artist.

Hitler was a jobbing painter at the time, knocking out postcards and paintings and trying to make a living.

This painting, that measures 8in by 4in, shows what looks like a small church with a background of mountains and is signed "A Hitler 1910." On the reverse are the Italian words: "Studio Medico Sigmund Freud Vienne."

The painting was taken from Vienna to Italy after the Second World War by an American GI who was told the picture had hung in Freud's consulting rooms.

It raises the tantalising prospect that Hitler and Freud - two giants of the 20th century - were connected by the painting, and might even have met 100 years ago. Both were in Vienna at the same time and it is said that Jews in the city helped Hitler sell his art.

Freud was driven out of Nazi Germany in the 1930s and moved to England where he lived all his life.

Richard Westwood-Brookes, from Mullock's auctioneers, is selling the painting with a pre-sale estimate of up to 10,000 pounds. He said: "The possibility that this watercolour once hung on the walls of Freud's consulting rooms in Vienna may seem on the face of it completely bizarre. "But both men were in Vienna at the same time and we know Hitler was selling his paintings, so it is quite possible that Freud had one on the wall. "We will never know for certain whether this was Freud's, but it raises the tantalising prospect that the two men might have met.

"Freud famously conducted a psychoanalysis on the composer Gustav Mahler, who was also a Vienna resident, at this time.

"The vendor is Italian and he said it came back from Vienna with an American GI after the second world war. The GI said it had hung in Freud's rooms. "On the reverse are words in Italian that say "Sigmund Freud's Medical Study, Vienna." It looks as if it has come from a sketch book.

"The scene in the painting is typical of that which Hitler was painting at the time. "He would paint postcards and also go around people's houses and ask them if they wanted a watercolour of their property.

"It is known that Hitler was popular amongst the Jewish community of Vienna in those days. "It was the Jewish people who helped him with the sale of his paintings and sketches - one of the most ironic facts of 20th century history. "This was a time long before the birth of the Nazi Party and long before Hitler's abominable anti-Semitism came to the fore.

"It is therefore quite possible - though supremely ironic - that the great Sigmund Freud could have had a painting by Hitler hanging on the walls of his consulting rooms."

The vendor is from Italy and the sale in Ludlow, Shropshire, takes place on March 2.

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A rather charitable view of Finland

The writer is after all married to a Finn.

"Finlandization" was a word used to describe the way a country could be absorbed by the Soviet bloc while still remaining nominally independent. The Soviet Union is long gone but Finns are obviously still much influenced in their thinking by their past submission to Soviet values.

The writer below seems to have absorbed some such values himself: Monopolies that keep prices high and empty piety don't bother him as long as you have "unity".

He fails to mention that the Finnish authorities are ferocious censors of politically "incorrect" speech. As in Soviet times, dissent does not fare well in Finland -- JR

Finland has had a rough time in the British press of late. A Telegraph report on New Year's Eve was blunt: "The country is... known for heavy drinking and domestic violence and high rates of suicide".

This was in the wake of Finland's third gun massacre in three years - but the darkness of that line is far from the whole story...

But many of the things that horrified me when I first moved here probably explain why Finland was selected last year, by the Legatum think tank, as being the best place on earth to live.

First, monopolies are ubiquitous. Seventy per cent of all supermarkets are owned by two companies. They also own a lot of restaurants and nobody tips. This may, in turn, influence the astronomical food prices. Independent Iraqi stores are far cheaper than the chains.

Newspapers are a near-monopoly, too. There are three national-reach titles – two of them owned by one company: Sanoma. One of these, Helsingin Sanomat, has a Pravda-like status in Helsinki, where it controls 75 per cent of the market. This is problematic on many levels. But on the plus side, everybody doing the same thing – reading the same newspapers, eating the same food – is one of the factors that holds a society together. And this was a big part of Finland's ranking. More so than elsewhere, people trust each other and have a sense of national community.

The Lutheran Church is a big part of this. It seemed bizarre to me that priests would happily confirm children (90 per cent are confirmed) who were openly atheists and conduct weddings for people who asserted: "We don't want you to say anything about God." But as a result, 80 per cent of Finns are church-members, though Helsinki is less "churched" than the north – and being religious usually has little to do with it.

According to the Lutheran Church researcher Kimmo Ketola: "In recent decades, there has developed a tradition of lighting a candle on a relative's grave on Christmas Eve. The church maintains the graveyards, so they maintain a space for this popular religiosity. The church used to be a big part of Finnish patriotism but now it is ancestor rituals which take place in the context of the Lutheran Church." As a result, the church helps to sustain society.

I found the Finnish failure to question authority pretty shocking, as well. When a Finnish doctor informed me that I did not need a malaria vaccination to go to India in the rainy season ("There aren't many mosquitoes then"), my Finnish wife was "embarrassed" that I dared to dispute this. Things are changing now, but, in general, people are less inclined to complain than the British.

I once had a dispute with some builders whose contract work I had cancelled. Finnish law obliged me to pay their expenses but they would not give me a dated receipt proving that they had bought the materials before I cancelled. They said that the "trade secrets law" meant they did not have to. I looked into it, discovered it was a lie, put this to them and never heard back.

They were attempting fraud and I, surely, would assume they were "honest Finns". But, again, this trust – even if sometimes misplaced – bolsters the sense of nationhood.

Finnish national insecurity also got to me. Why is there this need to boast about how educated they are? Why do some – particularly in the academic elite – try to rewrite history by asserting that Finland is, without question, Western (whatever that means)?

Why this need, on the part of younger Finns, to trawl the internet for articles about Finland in British newspapers and bravely leave anonymous comments involving that wonderful "culture shock" word, "stereotype"? And why are Finnish journalists so fascinated by what British papers have to say about Finland?

There are historical reasons for this, I think. Shared trauma perhaps has something to do with it. And Finland is more nationalistic, more tribal, than the UK. Last year, I published an academic book on Finland which looked at its culture's Arctic dimensions.

A senior journalist at Helsingin Sanomat predicted that: "Some will agree with it, some will agree with parts of it, but you will get hate mail, unfortunately." He was right: the reaction, by bloggers and "commentators" who had obviously not read it, was polarised, to say the least.

The more tribal side of any society will react in such a way to the views of an outsider. Other foreigners who have written about Finland have also received hate mail. It shows that the society has strong boundaries, a deep sense of who is "us" and who is "them". At times in Finnish history, it may have been so extreme as to stifle innovation.

But this is not the case at the moment. Finland appears to have got the balance right between civilisation and progress and holding the tribe together … the occasional massacre notwithstanding.

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Advanced Imaging Reveals a Computer 1,500 Years Ahead of Its Time

X-rays and advanced photography have uncovered the true complexity of the mysterious Antikythera mechanism, a device so astonishing that its discovery is like finding a functional Buick in medieval Europe.

In 1900, some divers found the wreck of a Roman vessel off the Greek island of Antikythera. Among the other treasures remanded to the Greek government was an unassuming corroded lump. Some time later, the lump fell apart, revealing a damaged machine of unknown purpose, with some large gears and many smaller cogs, plus a few engraved words in Greek. Early studies suggested it was some type of astronomical time-keeping device – researcher Derek J. de Solla Price laid the groundwork by establishing initial tooth counts and suggesting that the device followed the Metonic cycle, a 235-month pattern commonly used to predict eclipses in the ancient world.

The full function and beauty of the Antikythera device remained hidden until recent studies subjected it to more advanced imaging techniques. First, it was photographed using a technique that exposed the surfaces to varying lighting patterns. This created different levels of contrast that allowed the researchers to read far more of the inscribed Greek text than was previously possible. Then, x-ray imaging was used to create full 3-D computer models of the mechanism, which revealed for the first time some of the more complex and detailed gear interactions. The Greek National Archaeological Museum's discovery of some boxes filled with 82 additional mechanism fragments added new information as well.

The findings, published in Nature, are probably best described as "mind blowing." Devices with this level of complexity were not seen again for almost 1,500 years, and the Antikythera mechanism's compactness actually bests the later designs. Probably built around 150 B.C., the Antikythera mechanism can perform a number of functions just by turning a crank on the side.

Using nothing but an ingenious system of gears, the mechanism could be used to predict the month, day and hour of an eclipse, and even accounted for leap years. It could also predict the positions of the sun and moon against the zodiac, and has a gear train that turns a black and white stone to show the moon's phase on a given date. It is possible that it could also show the astronomical positions of the planets known to the ancients: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

The Antikythera mechanism wasn't just a scientific tool – it also had a social purpose. The Greeks held major athletic competitions (such as the Olympics) every two or four years. A small dial within the Metonic dial showed the dates of these important events.

The true genius of the mechanism goes beyond even the complex calculations and craftsmanship of a mechanical calendar. For example, the ancients didn't know that the moon has an elliptical orbit, so they didn't know why it sometimes slowed or sped up as it moved through the zodiac. The mechanism's creator used epicyclic gears, also known as planetary gears, with a "pin-and-slot" mechanism that mimicked this apparent shifting in the moon's movement. This use of epicyclic gears is far ahead of what anyone suspected ancient technology was capable of. Scientific American has a two-part video about the mechanism and the imaging techniques used in the research.

The mystery of who built the Antikythera mechanism remains. It has been linked to renowned ancient inventor Archimedes by the writings of Cicero, but this particular device was built after Archimedes' death. Still, the engraved words revealed by the new photos pinpoint the device's origin to Corinth, or possibly Corinthian colonies. Sicily was such a colony, and the Sicilian city of Syracuse was Archimedes' headquarters. The researchers theorize that the Antikythera mechanism is based on an Archimedian design, and might even have been built by a workshop carrying on his technological tradition. But if the design has been "industrialized" in such a way, why have we never found another one like it? Mysteries remain.

The complexity of the mechanism shows that ancient humans were capable of intellectual and engineering feats that boggle our modern minds (and it puts the lie to all those "ancient astronaut" theories). The upheavals of war and natural disasters over 2,000 years have probably caused us to lose many more works and wonders that will never be found.

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Vatican reveals Secret Archives

A 13th-century letter from Genghis Khan’s grandson demanding homage from the pope is among a collection of documents from the Vatican’s Secret Archives that has been published for the first time



The Holy See’s archives contain scrolls, parchments and leather-bound volumes with correspondence dating back more than 1,000 years.

High-quality reproductions of 105 documents, 19 of which have never been seen before in public, have now been published in a book. The Vatican Secret Archives features a papal letter to Hitler, an entreaty to Rome written on birch bark by a tribe of North American Indians, and a plea from Mary Queen of Scots.

The book documents the Roman Catholic Church’s often hostile dealings with the world of science and the arts, including documents from the heresy trial against Galileo and correspondence exchanged with Erasmus, Voltaire and Mozart. It also reveals the Church’s relations with princes and potentates in countries far beyond its dominion.

In a letter dated 1246 from Grand Khan Guyuk to Pope Innocent IV, Genghis Khan’s grandson demands that the pontiff travel to central Asia in person – with all of his “kings” in tow – to “pay service and homage to us” as an act of “submission”, threatening that otherwise “you shall be our enemy”.

Another formal letter in the archive highlights the papacy’s political role. In 1863 Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States, wrote to Pope Pius IX claiming that the civil war raging across America was entirely due to “Northern aggression”.

“We desire no evil to our enemies, nor do we covet any of their possessions; but are only struggling to the end that they shall cease to devastate our land and inflict useless and cruel slaughter upon our people.”

Other letters in the archive are more personal. In a 1550 note, Michelangelo demands payment from the papacy which was three months late, and complains that a papal conclave had interrupted his work on the dome of St Peter’s Basilica.

A yellowed parchment covered in neat black script reveals details of the 14th century trials of the Knights Templar on suspicion of heresy, after which members of the warrior-monk order were pardoned by Pope Clement V.

Some of the documents are already well-known, including a parchment letter written by English peers to Pope Clement VII in 1530, calling for Henry VIII’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon to be annulled.

An entreaty written to Rome by another British monarch, but in very different circumstances, is also reproduced in exquisite detail. In 1586 Mary, Queen of Scots, wrote from Fotheringay in Northants to Pope Sixtus V, a few months before she was beheaded for plotting against her cousin, Queen Elizabeth I, pledging her eternal allegiance to Rome.

The document includes letters written to Hitler by Pope Pius XI in 1934 and one received by his controversial successor, Pius XII, from Japan’s Emperor Hirohito.

“An aura of mystery has always surrounded this important cultural institution of the Holy See due to the allusions to inaccessible secrets thanks to its very name, as well as to the publicity it has always enjoyed in literature and in the media,” Cardinal Raffaele Farina, a Vatican archivist, writes in the preface to the book, which was produced by a Belgian publisher, VdH Books.

One of the most unusual documents is a letter written on birch bark in 1887 by the Ojibwe Indians of Ontario, Canada, to Pope Leo XIII. The letter, written in May but datelined “where there is much grass, in the month of the flowers”, addresses the pontiff as “the Great Master of Prayer” and offers thanks to the Vatican for having sent a “custodian of prayer” (a bishop) to preach to them.

Although scholars have had access to the secret archives since 1881, they remain closed to the general public.

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