Picasso’s puppy painting mystery!

Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Buy Amara. This is a weekly news show where we'll look at some of the weird, strange, and as downright odd things that have happened in the art and history fields.

I'm your host and personal curator, Amara Andrew. This week, we're talking about Picasso's pup mystery. Is Michelangelo's David porn?

A rare $8 Picasso thrift find. And there's no place like home for these ruby slippers. So, we have all that and more coming up on this episode of Buy Amara.

And we have tons and tons of goodies in this episode. So, let's get to it.

So, welcome back for yet another episode. I'm sorry it's a day late. I just It was a crazy, hectic weekend.

Sorry, my volume on this is very loud. It was super, super hectic. It was a really fun weekend, though, because we went to VCON.

If you don't know what that is, whether you love him or hate him, it is GaryVee's It's like a super conference, you could call it. Jeff and I literally woke up the day that the conference started. Mind you, we've been hemming and hawking if we should even go.

And we decided last minute, we're like, "Okay, fuck it. Let's just go. We have the time.

We have the like availability. Let's just do it." I didn't have any client things booked until Monday, which is why this is a day late, cuz it kind of threw me off a little bit. But it was a very fun day.

Side note. So, we ended up going to VCON. We literally woke up the day of the conference.

We looked at each other, and we're like, "What the hell are we doing? We should just go." And mind you, I should also say it's in Indianapolis, so that's only a three-hour drive from Chicago, so or three and a half. So, that was totally perfect.

So, it was just like, "Okay, let's just go." Hopped in the car. First, we bought the tickets and everything and secured our lodging just to be like, "Do we have a place to be?" And we ended up going. It was a very fun time.

The whole conference was held at Lucas Oil Stadium. So, where the Colts play. It was very cool to be there.

We got to be like on the actual field. Like I was saying, too, VCON is a super conference where it's not only Web3 and NFT focused, but then it also is like business and creatives kind of mingling and stuff. I saw a fuck-ton of TikTok stars, cuz like basically almost every single person that's there either created something or is going to create something cool.

So, it was very neat to see. I also got to see Jeremy Cowart and meet him in person. He's who I've talked about before.

He did Auras, which is an amazing historic NFT project. Seriously, go check it out. I'll have it linked in the bio down below.

And it is absolutely fabulous. So, I got to tell him how much I love his art, which was really cool. And the entire conference was just really cool cuz essentially, the whole premise is VeeFriends, which is one of Gary's NFT projects.

Or he has like a couple within the ecosystem, like different versions and stuff. But the whole community is just very friendly. Like, everybody was so nice, and I'm very nervous meeting people for the first time, so it just felt very nice.

And like, we all understood each other. There were a few different celebrity guest speakers, too, like Neil Patrick Harris, Drew Barrymore, Jessica Alba, Ariana Huffington and Oh, and Daymond John, too, which was fabulous. I think actually his talk was one of my favorites cuz he just like provided so much insight and actual like tangible help to people instead of just like, "Yeah, this is great.

Being a business owner." Lots of great energy. GaryVee was just walking around, too. He's a lot smaller than I thought in person.

Not that I thought that he was like this massive giant, but I don't know. It's like when you see people who you've seen like on video format or something, and you meet them in real life, and it's like, "Woah, you're huge," or "Woah, you're really tiny." But yeah, I just I really liked seeing him walking around and interacting with the community.

Like, that was really I don't know. That was like very special to see. TLDR, I highly recommend VCON.

There will definitely be one next year. So, this was only the second year it's been in existence, and already, it was like phenomenal, obviously. So, definitely going to go next year.

We're not going to wait until the last minute and just be like, "Should we?" Even though that was kind of fun. I do also have some updates related to the podcast, not just all my life stuff. So, one of them goes all the way back to Episode 6.

What is this now? Episode 34! We're at 34!

Can you believe it? That is more years than I've been on this earth. But anyway, so back in Episode 6, I think that was all the way in October, I believe.

Well, yeah, if I count I don't know. Whatever. I hate math.

So, back in October, we were talking about a suit against Andy Warhol that went to the Supreme Court. So, just to fill you in, here are the very, very brief like here's a very brief synthesis of what happened. Photographer Lynn Goldsmith sued the Andy Warhol Foundation for using a photo she created without her permission.

The image that Goldsmith took was originally commissioned by Newsweek in 1981, back when Prince was an up-and-comer, so he wasn't the superstar that he was later to become. A few years later though in 1984, when Prince had become a superstar, Vanity Fair licensed this image for $400 so that Andy Warhol could create an image for them.

So, it was one of his quintessential portraits. I have an image up here if you're watching this. If not, go look it up.

In the licensing agreement, it stated quote, "No other usage rights granted." That is what basically this entire case hinged upon. Warhol though, then whether or not he read that part of the agreement, because at this time, I mean, Warhol was world famous like for 20 years. He created 15 additional works from this image.

So, I'm not excusing him at all, like you need to read your contracts and stuff like that, but I could see where it could kind of get a little tricky if Vanity Fair was the one that licensed it, but then he didn't know the ins and I don't know. It's very complicated. But anyway, Warhol created 15 additional works from this image without relicensing.

When Warhol died in 1987 though, the Warhol Foundation then sought copyright for these pieces. What made this all come to a head though was that in 2016, Vanity Fair republished the Warhol works when Prince died. They didn't give any attribution or compensation to Goldsmith though for the original photo, but they paid the Warhol Foundation allegedly $10,000.

After this, Goldsmith then contacted the Warhol Foundation about this. And believing that she would sue, the Warhol Foundation sought a quote "declaration of non-infringement" from the courts. Obviously, then, Goldsmith counter-sued.

So, then the case finally made it to the Supreme Court, where they ruled this past week that Warhol actually infringed Goldsmith's work when he created a whole series of prints, and not prints, prints. I meant prints, P-R-I-N-T-S, but it was Prince, Prince. The ruling was 7 to 2 in favor of Goldsmith, so it was a very clear victory for Goldsmith.

At the heart of the Warhol Foundation's argument was fair use, meaning that he had changed the original meaning so much that it just lost it took on a whole new meaning, so it had no kind of tie to Goldsmith's original photograph of Prince. The lawyer also argued, too, quote, "Artists don't create all on their own. They cannot do what they do without borrowing from or otherwise making use of the work of others." Overall, it's unclear what Goldsmith will be awarded, if anything, I have no idea.

But we'll find out later on as things are progressing and stuff like that. So, hopefully, there'll be yet another update. My second update for things that we have talked about on this podcast and second and final one, in Episode 23, we talked about the oldest and most complete version of the Hebrew Bible, the Codex Sassoon.

It is such a cool text if you are into manuscripts at all. It's very, very cool. There are some texts that are older than this specific Hebrew Bible, but this one's the most complete because I think it's only missing 25 some I forget exactly the numbers, but it's only missing a small portion of it, so it is freaking sweet.

This tome, 1,000 years old, as I mentioned, was estimated to fetch between $30-50 million at auction at Sotheby's. And the auction was just this past week as of this recording. The auction happened and we have the final amount.

Drum roll, please. It fetched $38.1 million. So, a little on the lower end of the estimate, but that's still amazing that it actually got within that range that was estimated for it.

Like, that is a huge amount of money if you think about it. What's even cooler though is that the buyer is Ambassador Well, this part is not cool. But what is happening is cool.

What I think is probably happening. So, the buyer was Ambassador Alfred H. Moses, and he's gifting it to the ANU Museum of the Jewish People in Tel Aviv.

So, hopefully, that means that this is going on public view or that it'll be publicly accessible. You know me, if you've listened to this podcast, at least for like one or two episodes, I'm very into having things publicly accessible for people. So, I know in a museum, it's a little bit different, but you can at least view it if you'd like or even access some of their archival collections.

So, just TLDR, I hope that this is publicly accessible for people while still being safe because a lot of people have a lot of feelings about a lot of things. Hopefully, though, the public can go view it and just be able to celebrate it, whether for a religious purpose or just as a historical nerd like myself. So, those are the only updates I have.

I guess the only final thing I want to talk about is I do have a Patreon. So, I received a couple different messages from people about how they could support this podcast or just support me and all my work and stuff like that, which is very, very sweet of you. So, thank you so much.

I really appreciate it. The only thing I kind of have other than my business MAVEN, is an Etsy shop or a Patreon. So, Patreon is just It just exists.

It's just something where I don't even know what tiers I have, honestly. I think it's like three, five, and I don't know. There are three different tiers.

You can check it out. It's always linked in the description below. And that is just a way to help the podcast.

I don't have all the bells and whistles like other people do cuz it's literally just me doing all of these things on my own with the help of my partner, Jeff, boyfriend, Jeff. So, anyway, I just wanted to throw it out there because some people ask. So, I figured I should just make a public announcement.

So, here it is. There you go. Can you hear the bird chirping?

I have my windows open so you can hear. Behold. You'll see.

The rare, crested bird. It sits upon the perch. Anyway, let's just get into the stories.

Last week we talked last week. It's funny actually. Some people made fun of Oh, some people on social media are such fucking dickheads.

But some a lot of people are making fun of the way I talk. The way I say, "Actually," or "and." I don't know, it's just how I talk. I'm very animated, so fuck you!

Anyway, side tangent. Last week, we talked about a possible Vermeer self-portrait that he included in his painting "A Maid Asleep". It's really cool.

You can see it in the doorway. Some people had trouble finding it, but I pointed it out, blah, blah, blah. This week, though, we have another hidden image, and it's even cuter!

Well, not that hidden man was cute. But this one is very cute because it's of a little doggy! It's so cute.

I won't call it a little doggy the entire episode, but it is very, very cute. So, anyway, conservators at the Guggenheim in New York, they've uncovered a small dog hidden beneath the surface of Picasso's "Le Moulin de la Galette". And apologies for mispronunciation, as always, I am an idiot.

So, there's been a lot a lot a lot a lot of Picasso news lately, just because this is the 50th, as of last month, I believe, the 50th anniversary of Picasso's death. So, there's a lot of stuff happening. Hannah Gadsby's doing an exhibit.

You already know how I feel about that. But I digress. So, like I said, conservators at the Guggenheim found that within this painting, the little doggy was covered.

This is actually really common in Picasso's work. He kind of just like iterated as he went, which is really cool. It's like even more creative.

But he would just kind of paint things out or paint over things, or add new things, or do whatever, which is part of the creative process. Like, you just constantly iterate, which is really cool. One of the most common One of like the main examples that sticks out to me is at the Art Institute of Chicago, and it's "The Old Guitarist", cuz they did some imaging of the painting itself and saw that there were I think two or three different figures that were underneath the main figure.

So, if you don't have a lot of money or you just don't want to waste canvas, like why would you waste canvas? Just paint over it. The cool thing, though, about this specific artwork, "Le Moulin de la Galette", is that it's believed now to be one of the earliest examples of Picasso painting over things and iterating as he went.

So, just to paint you a little word picture, if you're watching this, I'll have all the images, images, excuse me. The painting is from 1900, and it features a lively scene at the namesake of the painting, So, Le Moulin de la Galette, which it was originally, I believe, a working windmill, but then it was changed into a nightclub.

What's super spectacular about this painting though, is that this was painted on Picasso's first trip to Paris and also then by proxy to Montmartre, which is where this was. Le Moulin de la Galette was so popular and so famous that it was also painted by Renoir. It was like the Bohemian hotspot, so to speak.

So, to me, this particular painting, it kind of feels like a hybrid of Toulouse-Lautrec's "At the Moulin Rouge", which totally separate location. It kind of feels like that almost, mixed with like an Ernst Kirchner kind of vibe. I know that was like painted what, 13-15 years after this specific piece, but it's kind of like the same like angularity, but then the same like crowd scape and coloring, I don't know.

That was just all I was thinking while I was looking at it. So, anyway, back to the composition. It features like a whole slew of partygoers, and everybody's like dancing or talking, and they're all dressed up in their fancy 1900s garb, which is really fun to see.

There is a table in the foreground of the piece. It's shoved all the way to the left, where it's like basically off camera almost is how I was going to say it. But it's like off of the composition.

There are three figures seated at this table. There used to be a fourth, and it was the little doggy! Sorry, I told you I would stop saying little doggy, but I just can't help it.

So, there was a little dog also seated at the table. Conservators generated an image of what the dog originally looked like using X-ray fluor- X-ray fluorescence, try saying that five times fast. From what we can tell, the dog appears to have been a small, yellowish dog with floppy ears, and it had a big red bow around its neck.

It looked like it was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, and it is very, very cute. So then, why did Picasso remove this from the scene in the painting? It's not quite known, obviously, but some conservators believe that the dog would have stolen the show from the rest of the painting cuz I do agree, if you saw the dog in the painting, you would have focused on that versus like the actual scene kind of happening.

So, I think maybe Picasso got feedback or something, and then someone was just like, "What the fuck are you doing? Like, get rid of the dog in the front." And then it changes. It really does change the entire context of the piece, where then you're focused on the partygoers.

I do think that was a good choice, not that Picasso or anybody gives a fuck what I think. Additionally though, what's interesting, he also changed a couple other things within the painting. He changed the gender representations of a dancing couple and also painted out an empty chair.

So, again, this is just him iterating as he's going and as he's creating and trying to change, you know, the story that he's telling because like paintings are stories, or all artwork is a story. So, artists are storytellers. It's amazing.

So, I just I find it really cool. Like I said, this isn't the only painting that Picasso changed during its creation, but it might be the first, and is surely the cutest.

Michelangelo's sculpture "David" has long been the subject of censorship. There have been very many things that have happened throughout its life. So, one of the earliest recorded ones is Pope Innocent X, who started the campaign by chiseling the exposed phalluses off ancient statues and fitting each with a more modest fig leaf.

Then Pope Benedict XVI also called for something very similar. And I mean even the plaster cast of the David statue at the Victoria and Albert Museum was censored. Legend has it that it was because Queen Victoria was so appalled by seeing a wiener in her face that she was just like, "Okay, you need to cover this." And it had like little hooks, I guess, for the fig leaf.

I don't know, it sounded very cute. Nice little wiener cover. That might just be a legend, though.

It's just very silly. And just recently in March of this year, I believe, David was stuck in the middle of a heated debate at a Tallahassee school when conservative parents deemed the quintessential artwork pornographic and not suitable for a sixth grade art history classes, which do you know what sixth graders are looking at?

Like, I don't know. I really feel like we need to be more positive about the human body as a species because why are we Ugh, I don't know. I won't deride this too much, but it's just a body, it's just a wiener.

Like, calm down. It's not like he's just like jerking Whatever. I'm not going to be too graphic, but I don't want to get a super explicit marking on my podcast.

But I just think we need to kind of like It's just a wiener. Like, it's totally fine. It's not like your sixth graders have seen so much worse online.

Like, don't even try to be like, "My innocent, little Suzy, or my innocent, little Michael." They've seen some fucked up shit. They've probably seen worse shit than you've ever heard of in your entire life. They probably know things that you don't even know.

Just keep that in mind. Anyway, okay. Off my little soapbox.

So, like I said, happened in March at a Tallahassee school district, and it's happened again, this time in Glasgow, Scotland, which is very surprising to me. So, there are a series I don't know why it's surprising to me, I'm just like, "Really? We're still talking about this?" So, a series of ads were created for an Italian restaurant called Barolo in Glasgow, public subway system in Glasgow.

The original ad draft depicted a full look at David in all of his nude glory as he eats a slice of pizza. The tagline read, "It doesn't get more Italian," which is terrible copy, but I digress. I'm not looking at the copy, I'm looking at the wiener.

The ad, though, was rejected by a firm, the firm that manages Glasgow's ad in the public transit system, stating quote, "It is art, but it is still nudity." So, the director of the DRG group, which is the parent company to Barolo, the Italian restaurant, they were rightfully irritated, stating quote, "It's not the 1500s anymore, it's 2023.

Are we really saying that the people of Glasgow can't handle seeing a naked statue?" Which I agree! So, to comply with the firm, the DRG group, which was the one that is the parent company to Barolo, the restaurant, they covered up David's crotch with stickers, but allegedly the stickers weren't big enough to handle all of David's manhood.

So, they had to go back to the drawing board and returned with another iteration of the original advertisement, which was just David cropped, so it was just like tits up essentially. You just got like mid-abdomen up to the top of his head while he's still eating his little piece of pizza. Some people were like, "Why didn't you just use the Mona Lisa?

Why didn't you use literally any other Italian Renaissance artwork that people would have noticed?" Which I could see, like that is a fair point. I do think that this was supposed to be a clever marketing ploy where it's like, "Oh, this is going to get in headlines because we're showing a nude body instead of a nude male body specifically," cuz that can cause quite an uproar.

So does the nude female body, actually, now that I say it. Anyway. But seeing a nude body like that, it kind of like obviously, there would be some sort of a problem because people are very prudish, and if you are, sorry, this isn't the place for you, then.

I don't know, I just find it very funny because people on their phones are looking at images of nude people, specifically female. I guess it's not as direct as having a wiener jutting out toward your face, but it's I guess a little different. But yeah, I don't know.

I just find it funny because we're looking at nude women on influencer platforms like on Instagram, TikTok, whatever, but then I don't know, whatever. And it's just art! Like it's not even like aggressively gross.

I don't know. I can go both ways with this because then from a feminist lens, you could be like, "Well, why do we have to see phalluses everywhere, and blah, blah, blah." So, I don't know. TLDR, it's just nudity.

Like, let's just all get along. So, anywho, just a very strange story and just a lot of nudity, but like just I don't know, it's just a nude body, and it's art. I digress.

Let's just go to the next story before I get myself in trouble. Okay, let me go.

So, again, we're going to be talking about Pablo Picasso, and if you hate him, I'm so sorry, but this is just a very cool, fun find, I thought. I thought it was very inspiring. So, in a recent TikTok, a woman named Nancy Cavaliere, sorry, I totally butchered that, I'm so sorry.

She is an avid thrifter from New York City. And in this TikTok, she recounted an amazing find that she scored once when she was thrifting. So, she went to a thrift store, I believe it was a Salvation Army, I'm not entirely sure, so I'm just going to say thrift store, just to keep it vague enough.

So, she went to the thrift store, she purchased four unassuming, just black, plain plates with like a face on each of them. She purchased all four of them. She spent $8 on them.

So, she just said she went home, she Googled what the places with the abstract faces on them were or looked like. And then, she found out that these were a set of Visage Noir plates from the 1940s made by Pablo Picasso. He crafted them at the Madoura Pottery Studio in Vallauris in Southern France.

Again, apologies for mispronunciation. In total, Picasso designed, painted, and signed, or stamped over 3,500 ceramic works across 633 collections, dating from 1947 to 1971. So, just a couple years before he died.

So, once Cavaliere understood what she had, she approached a variety of different New York City-based auction houses auction, why'd I say it like that? Auction houses for authentication and then also pricing estimates for of the plates. On average, the estimates she got back were about $3-5,000.

But when she did finally sell three of the plates out of the four, she got way more than that. So, the first plate, she got $12,000 for, the second one, $13,000, and the final one, $16,000. So, like I said, only sold three of the plates.

What did she do with the fourth one? Apparently, she is locking it in a safe as a gift for her daughter when she's older, which is very sweet. While this is an amazing story, it's even more amazing considering that this wasn't the first like one-of-a-kind find that she has had, which is also what made me a little skeptical, where it was like, "I don't know what this is." Which I guess she never claimed that.

So, to be fair, she never said, "I had no idea." But, a few years prior, she had also found a jumpsuit from one of Alexander McQueen's earliest collections, which if you have no idea who that is, he's world famous fashion designer. He's sadly passed due to suicide. Check on your loved ones.

And he was just absolutely phenomenal, just made these crazy, amazing fashion pieces. So, anyway, she bought this jumpsuit for $20, and it sold for over $8,000. So, she knows exactly what she's looking for.

Later on in the article even, she states that she does research the hell out of fashion, art, fabrics, trends, basically anything and everything visual arts related to be able to identify something better. She also says that the more you go to thrift stores, the higher chances obviously you have of finding something. So, she says if you really want to get into it and be able to find something, you do have to go pretty frequently and pretty regularly and research, research, research.

So, if you want to find the next Pablo Picasso plates at your local Goodwill or Salvation Army, just do your research.

So, for our final story, if you are a film buff, specifically looking at the age, like the golden age of Hollywood, you know at least a fair amount of Wizard of Oz lore, and specifically talking about the ruby slippers. During filming, it's estimated that there may have been about seven-plus pairs of ruby slippers on set for The Wizard of Oz.

I think only as of now, it's kind of like verified that there have been seven pairs, cuz I think one person, whether institution or whatever, they saw that one of their slippers said "number seven". So, I think it's been verified, kind of almost, in a way, that there were at least seven pairs. As of today though, only four are known to survive, so they're kind of an amalgamation of all these different pairs.

So, like you could have one shoe that's from pair number four and one shoe that's from pair number five, and they're put together to make one new pair. So, of those pairs, one of them was on view at the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, that is until August 2005. A thief allegedly broke into the museum, smashed the display case where these slippers were held, and then stole them.

There were no fingerprints or security camera footage to go by, so that made this case basically almost impossible to try to solve. The only thing that was left behind was one lone red sequin from the shoes. Also, if you want to learn more about this case, you should check out the podcast, No Place Like Home.

It like It wasn't my favorite podcast, but it did do a really good job of explaining kind of what you should know. But you should definitely check that podcast out if you want to learn more. It's really fascinating.

So, throughout the years since the slippers were stolen, many different theories, like I talked about in the podcast, they the person kind of goes like the host of the podcast goes through all these different people who live nearby and far away and even the person who loaned them to the museum. They kind of go through all these different theories about maybe who stole them, why stole them, why they stole them, how, all these different things.

A break in the case, though, came in 2018 when someone approached the insurance company that owned the shoes, claiming to have info about the shoes and that how they could be returned, which then this was believed to be a way for the person to extort money from the company. After this, the FBI's Art Crime Unit, along with some other agencies from different cities, I think it was like Chicago, Miami, and somewhere else, they organized a sting operation to recover the slippers in 2018, a full 13 years after they were stolen.

And they were successful! So, they got the slippers back. Now, which leads me to the story today.

Long, roundabout way, but you needed to know all that. Now, US authorities have charged a man who's been connected to the theft of the slippers. Terry Jon Martin was indicted on one count of theft of a major artwork for allegedly stealing, quote, "an object of cultural heritage from the care, custody, or control of a museum," end quote.

According to documents, at the time of the theft, so in 2005, these were insured at $1 million. Now though, they are valued at around $3.5 million. So, unfortunately, because this is still an ongoing case, I don't have a ton of information about how they were stolen, why they were stolen, or who else was kind of involved.

But I do have a couple little tidbits for you about this Terry Martin character. So, what we do know is he is 76 years old. He lived 12 miles south of the Judy Garland Museum when he stole the slippers or when he was involved in the stealing of the slippers.

And he did not actually work at the museum. A lot of people, if you listen to the podcast, No Place Like Home, recommend checking it out, a lot of people thought that he actually that the person who stole the slippers was working within the museum. So, a lot of fingers were pointing within there.

But he never worked at the museum, according to the executive director of the museum, so I think that's pretty safe to say he did not work there. It's also been theorized, though, too, that the slippers exchanged hands multiple times throughout the 13 years that they were missing. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see from Martin what we can kind of learn and understand unless he was just a lone person, which I don't know.

I just don't know how you go through a theft like that and then try to get I don't know. I'm not I don't have that mind. I have no idea how it works.

I'm dying to know what exactly happened. But I'm also very glad that this quintessential piece of film history has been found safe and sound and has been returned home for a few years now. But anyway, I'm glad that at least maybe somebody's in custody.

Yeah, I don't know. The justice system is very messed up, so I guess we'll see kind of what happens. So, TLDR, anywho, that'll do it for this episode of Buy Amara.

Thank you so much for listening. I really appreciate all of you who are liking and subscribing. Like, thank you so much.

It really does help, so if you like this, please like it or subscribe. It does help rise up in the ranks and stuff like that. So, if you didn't like it, I'm sorry.

I hope you have a good day. You really don't need to let me know that you hate me. That's totally fine.

I hate myself enough, I don't need to know from you. So, yeah, I think that'll do it for this episode. I hope you have a great rest of your week, and again, sorry that this is a day late.

But at least it's here, I guess. So, with that, I'm Amara Andrew, never stop creating.

It's in the can.