Rarest Trojan War image found / Is the art market fair to women? / Frank Lloyd Wright home lists for shocking price / A missing Cubist painting hidden in plain sight!

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to By Amara. This is a weekly news show where I discuss contemporary events in the art and history worlds.

I'm your host and personal curator, Amara Andrew. The format for the show that we typically follow is one used by Western brides, traditionally speaking: something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue. This week <laughter> getting tongue-tied.

This week though, we're going to have one something old, two something news, and one something blue, just to switch it up. This week, we're discussing the rarest depiction of the Trojan War ever found, a study that asks if the art market is fair to women, one of the most affordable Frank Lloyd Wright homes, and a hidden painting found in plain sight.

All that coming up on this episode of By Amara. Let's get to it.

So first, I know this is like timely and they're like, "Don't make timely things," but happy week of Halloween. I guess the background kind of gives it away and my sweater. <laughter> And I noticed right when I was going to start recording, my not-a-sponsor Liquid Death water, but if you want to be a sponsor Liquid Death, I love you.

But yeah, so I have skulls everywhere. Like literally everywhere, all year-round, but because it's Halloween, it was just like, I don't know, we just are celebrating it. But yeah, it's just it's the week of Halloween.

I absolutely love Halloween. It is genuinely my favorite holiday. I could do without all the rest of the holidays, to be quite honest.

It is my time of year. And especially because this is the week of Halloween, we're just a couple days out by the time this comes out, and I am so stoked. I get so stupid happy.

Like Jeff even noticed this morning because I was a little crabby yesterday. He's just like, "Well, you seem like really happy today." And I'm like, "I just realized it's the week of Halloween." And I don't know, I've been so busy with work and like doing all my social media like production and doing all my illustration and like all these different things that I kind of forgot that it was actually Halloween this week. <laughter> So, I was just like, "No, I have to like get in like Halloween mode," cuz like I guess I typically am all year-round, just cuz I really like spooky, creepy things, just generally speaking.

But, I don't know, just because it's the time of year for it, I'm like, "I got to like got to seize it." so, yeah, I think Jeff and I are going to be going to like the world's largest corn maze or something this weekend, possibly. If we do, I will let you know how it is in the next episode. But we will see how that goes.

Anywho, I have a few updates from episodes past. So, I haven't had any updates in all my other episodes, but I got a few. Okay, so the first one: in episode two, I talked about how City by Michael Heizer, which is like an installation in the middle of the desert in Nevada, or Nevada, however you pronounce it, I wanted to hear if somebody had actually been to City and experienced it and could give a little bit more information about how it was and things like that.

So, I was able to find a review of City by somebody, but, unfortunately, it was behind a paywall and it was for a publication. So, I am not made of money at all. <laughter> Once again, Liquid Death, if you'd like a sponsorship. <laughter> but yeah, so I wasn't going to pay the money to read it. So, unfortunately, I was unable to hear that.

I assume it was probably like, "Wow, it was really big." <laughter> So big, much wow. Yeah, so there was a review. I was unable to see it.

So, again, like I mentioned in episode two, if you have experienced City by Michael Heizer, please let me know in the comments below or reach out to me privately if you don't want to put it publicly. I'm very curious to see how it is. My second update, I have three updates, whoa!

In episode two, I talked about how Odesa, which is a port city in the Ukraine, it was going to be turned into a World Heritage Site because it was like being under attack by Russia, and it could just be completely obliterated. A bet was a nomination was, not a bet, a nomination was made to make Odesa a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

On October 11th, President Zelenskyy formalized the nomination for this at a UNESCO meeting. This doesn't mean that necessarily Odesa is added to the heritage sites or whatever, but it's still a huge step in that it's now a formal thing at the UNESCO meeting. Hopefully, this is really good news for Odesa, but we will see kind of what that means in the future.

But that was just a little update that I had. And finally, in episode three, I talked about how Zahi Hawass, who was the former Antiquities minister, I think, was the wording for it, but he's just a noted Egyptologist, and you've seen him on every single documentary if you like ancient Egypt, he claimed that he had found possibly the tomb of Nefertiti, and they were waiting on DNA from these mummies that were within the tomb to see if they were actually Queen Nefertiti.

It was supposed to be announced in October, which is now. <laughter> It's like the end of October, if these were actually Nefertiti or not. There's no news. I wish I did, sorry.

That was a little bit of like a fake lead in. But yeah, unfortunately, I don't have any news yet just because I know you were dying to know, as am I. I keep checking like basically every day.

I'm like, "Is it Nefertiti day?" And Jeff's like, "Can you keep it down? I'm trying to sleep." And I'm like, "I need to know." <laughter> So, unfortunately, I don't have any news for that, but those are just some of my updates. Hopefully, I can have more for you as we go. <laughter> So, anyway, without further ado, let's get to the show.

This week, one of the rarest depictions of the Trojan War was found. So cool! So, while it's not the oldest, archaeologists are calling it the rarest because it's one of the most complete intact mosaics that's ever been found that are depicting the Trojan War or scenes from the Trojan War or events of the Trojan War.

That's pretty freaking sweet. In case you are not a super huge history buff, or you just have heard of the Trojan War, but you don't really know minus the Troy movie that was made, which surprisingly I would like to point out Jeff, my boyfriend, looks like Brad Pitt in Troy. People have always told him that like forever, cuz his hair's long and blonde and he looks very similar.

He's going to he's going to hate that I said that on this, but <laughter> so anyway, besides the movie Troy, the Trojan War is debated in the historical community if it actually did happen or not. So, we know that the Trojan War was written about by Homer and a bunch of other different Greek name ancient people. <laughter> That's that's how I'm going to say it. <laughter> Very historically accurate and proper.

But we know that the Trojan War has been written about a shit ton and so that is kind of the only evidence really that we have that this actually like happened. So, we're just going to go with that the Trojan War did happen, and we're just going to keep talking. So, the Trojan War was allegedly, according to stories and mythology and things like that, it was fought between the ancient Greeks and then the people of Troy, or the Trojans, that I think Troy is in Turkey, like what is present day Turkey.

The mosaic we're talking about though, it depicts this battle between the Greeks and the Trojans. In the colorful mosaic, they also are depicting ancient Amazon warriors, who, again, according to mythology, Amazon warriors are mythological female soldiers who sound so badass and cool. But in the mosaic, you can see depictions of these Amazon warriors who aided the Trojans in their fight.

You can also see other figures from Greco-Roman mythology like Poseidon or Neptune, whichever name you prefer. And also, the Greek soldiers that are depicted, they have swords and shields, and they also have their names listed next to them, which is really freaking cool. So, this mosaic was found underneath a building in Rastan, Syria.

It's dated around 1,600 years old, so it was created sometime in the 4th Century CE. But like I said, we don't really know, it's like up for debate if the Trojan War actually existed, but if it did, it's dated to have happened sometime around the 12th or 13th centuries BCE, and I'm doing the non-religious like BC/AD. So, 12th or 13th Century BCE.

The Iliad, which is an early recorded story that talks about the Trojan War and just briefly references it, is dated to have been written sometime between the 9th and 6th centuries BCE. So, already, that's about 3 to 600 years removed from the actual event, so written way after. So, you have this event that possibly happened, we're just going to say 12th Century BCE just to keep it nice and easy in like one number.

And then the Iliad, which was written sometime around, let's just say, 7th century BCE, so couple hundred years after that. And then you have then this mosaic that was made 4th century CE. So, that is in our common era.

Basically, what I'm trying to get to is that there's a huge amount of time between when this event is supposed to have happened, when it was kind of recorded, and then when this mosaic was made. So, this is like a huge amount of time that passed between all these events. So, this particular mosaic is believed to have been the flooring in an ancient bathhouse.

It's not really known yet exactly because it was literally like just found. It's amazing, not only that this mosaic has been largely undisturbed and is like mostly intact, which is crazy because it's just pieces of stone in like cement kind of stuff, but also because it's in Syria, and there's obviously has been a lot of conflict, to put it mildly, going on.

And most, not most, but a lot of different world heritage sites have actually been destroyed in recent times. I think six were destroyed, six UNESCO World Heritage Sites have been completely destroyed. So, it's great that this was underground, so then it's hard to get to.

So, so far archaeologists have revealed 65 ft of this mosaic, but it's believed to measure 1,300 sq ft, so <laughter> they got a lot of work ahead of them. That's really massive. I'm curious to know what other events or things like that or people or mythological figures are going to be represented in this.

I'm just very curious. I can't wait. This discovery should provide some really amazing context to, yeah, just the Mediterranean world, ancient Mediterranean world, and all that.

It's really cool.

Our first something new is a question that's been pondered for years, not a lot of years, but a few years: Is the art market fair to women? I am opening up a can of worms, but we are going to talk about this. <laughter> So, according to a recent Yale study, this is actually a very tricky question. So, in a separate study, not done by Yale, that looked at the art market from 2000 to 2017, the world art market specifically, apparently 96% of art sold at auctions around the world were created by men.

So, because of this study, a team at the Yale School of Management studied 4,000 graduates from the Yale School of Art. They looked at the student makeup, so like the student body, from over a century. So, I'm about to tell you a lot of different dates, so stick with me.

So, they looked at students from over a century, so from 1891 to 2014, a little over a 100 years, and divided this data between two major time periods: pre-1983 and after 1983. They chose 1983 as that middle point because that appears to be when the gender ratio roughly equalized. So, it wasn't entirely equal at that point, but you did have more women that were being admitted into the School of Art than before 1983, so that is why.

To understand this and look at this, researchers looked at auction records for about 10,000 artworks by over 500 artists that sold work around the world from 1922 to 2016. With this data, researchers found that before 1983 less women sold art at auctions, but those who did sell their work fetched higher auction prices than their male peers on average.

When controlling for factors like the auction house, country of sale, size of the artwork, the medium, what year it sold, they found that women's work sold for about 35% more on average than a similar work by a male counterpart. Weird, right? But this number is skewed because there's a huge, huge gap between the like superstar woman who sold a very expensive piece of artwork and then the woman who sold like the next expensive piece.

Let's just say a woman sold an artwork for $10,000, like I don't have facts and figures or anything from the study, unfortunately, but let's say a woman sold like $10,000, the next woman after her, it may have sold for maybe $6,000 or something like that, in comparison to the male demographic <laughter> where a man could have sold like $10,000 painting as well, but then the next highest sold painting could have been $9,000 or $8,000 or something like that.

So, there's a huge, you can see if you're watching this on YouTube, there's a I'm just making lots of motions with my hands, but there's a huge disparity between or huge gap rather between highest sold for women and then the next highest sold versus highest sold for men and then the next highest sold. Hopefully, that makes sense.

So, researchers also found, which this is very interesting, even though more women were admitted to the School of Art after 1983, this didn't mean that more women actually appeared in auctions or in catalogs. So, they went through all these different catalogs and things, and, in fact, women were actually less likely to appear in publications.

Before 1983, men were mentioned 3 to 14 times more than women. After 1983 though, male artist citations were still about two to three times more frequent, but that is a massive decrease in that number. So, that's a lot of data I just threw at you, but I thought that was a very interesting study that was done because then it's a very concrete way to look at something and to look at the art market, and also how to look at what is available to purchase and kind of why we have all these traditional white male artists and things.

It's just it's very interesting to have all this concrete data to kind of support what has been said traditionally in the art world that it is not diverse in any capacity whether like gender or race, ethnicity, age, whatever. So, I would just be very curious to see how we could further apply all of this information to all other demographics like I mentioned, like race, age, ethnicity, various other things that I'm forgetting right now, but that would also be very interesting to see just to kind of provide more context to the art market and also why things are the way they are.

So, I think this is a hugely beneficial study. I'm hoping to hear more, so we'll just see where it goes.

If you want an affordable Frank Lloyd Wright home, this might be your lucky day. So, as of this recording, the home is still for sale. However, the home owner will stop accepting offers on October 22nd.

This, without a doubt, is one of the most affordable Frank Lloyd Wright homes that has ever been on the market. It's even more amazing because it's only 35 minutes outside of Manhattan, which is also amazing for another reason, which we'll talk about in a second. So, it's located in Blauvelt, New York, and it's located in the Clausland Mountain Park, which is a heavy heavily wooded area, perfect for a Frank Lloyd Wright home.

We all know that Frankie loved his nature, so that's like perfect for him. So, this is called the Socrates Zaferiou house, and you can see it right here if you're watching on YouTube. If not, definitely recommend looking it up because it's very beautiful.

It sits on 2 and 1/2 private acres, four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and it was built in the early 1960s. This is the only Frank Lloyd Wright house that was designed on the West Bank of the Hudson. If you know anything at all about Frank Lloyd Wright, or one of the quirks of Frank Lloyd Wright's character is that he absolutely hated New York City.

It's kind of like a fun thing that you know about him. It's like when your friend hates pretzels or something, I don't know, <laughter> but it's it's one of those things where it's like, "Oh yeah, he hated New York." <laughter> So, it's interesting that he designed a home so close to New York City. So, this specific property is a modified Usonian house.

What the hell is that? Well, Usonian was a term that was used by Frank Lloyd Wright to describe his properties and how they interacted with nature and included it rather than just like discluding it. I guess that isn't even a word, but you know what I mean.

So, he wanted to work within the natural landscape and have a lot of land and kind of play with the forms and things like that. These homes are typically single stories, and they're also like an L-shaped floor plan. And they also typically don't really have a publicly visible front entryway like most homes traditionally have, which I love that.

I love hiding the front entryway, but the back is like totally open and accessible so you can actually like see all the nature and everything. So, a little bit of backstory to the property, too, cuz I thought this was really interesting. So, apparently Socrates Zaferiou wanted Frank Lloyd Wright for like two years, he kept reaching out to him to build this home for him.

Wright though was like, "No fucking way. Your property's way too small. You got to get more if you want me." <laughter> So then, Zaferiou did.

He bought more land and then Wright ultimately said yes, and then he added on a couple extra rooms to the drawings that he already had and everything. Wright actually died before this project was completed. So, Wright died in 1959, but then the person who was working on the Guggenheim at the time, who finished that up, the project architect, he also was able to finish this house then, too.

So, this home has absolutely beautiful windows, asymmetrical cutouts. I'm looking at the photos online, and they're gorgeous. There's a lot of rich wood paneling, and it also has Frank Lloyd Wright's signature red flooring.

So, you're probably wondering, "How much does this cost?" This specific property was listed on Sotheby's for <drum roll> if you can hear my little drums <laughter> for $1.52 million. That is not a lot of money when you consider that it's a Frank Lloyd Wright home. Now, you're buying it for the brand name, just like you're buying like Chanel and Dyson, and like yeah, there's quality and stuff like that, same with Frank Lloyd Wright, but when I say that is not that expensive, I am only saying particularly in relation to the rest of Frank Lloyd Wright properties that have sold, it's really not that expensive.

I still think it's an insane amount of money to spend on anything, <laughter> but that is not a lot if you want to own this piece of historic architecture, especially for the area, as well, too. Apparently, I was looking around on Zillow and there are like definitely pricey properties there, too. So, this looks like a steal all the way around, so you always have to wonder, what's wrong with it?

But I don't know, not my problem, I'm not buying it, so that is for the new homeowner to learn. Also, I just said homeowner, that is actually a really interesting point that I wanted to bring up. Apparently, this property has only had two homeowners in its entire life.

So, this was built in the early 1960s, Zillow said 1963, but other like Sotheby's just said early 1960s, so we're just going to go with that. The two people that have owned it were Zaferiou, the guy who commissioned it in the first place, and just the person who's selling it right now. I didn't get their name, that was my bad, I'm sorry.

So, you could be the third person to own this. How cool! If you're the person who bought the Frank Lloyd Wright home, I would love to come visit and see what it looks like, <laughter> so hit me up in the comments below, or reach me on Instagram or TikTok, or wherever.

So, we are ending our show today. I know, I'm so sorry. I don't want to leave either, but we are ending our show with a mystery something blue.

This week, we're talking about a mystery painting that has some blue on it. <laughter> this is a painting by, and if you're watching on YouTube, again, you can see the image right here, this is a painting by Fernand Léger. It was believed to have been lost for the last lost for the last 100 years and has been found, but not how you might think.

So, Léger started out as a noted Cubist painter before World War I. Like many other artists though, he was dramatically, traumatically horrified by World War I cuz he served. So, he came back and he was very interested in mechanical things, which you notice with a lot of different Dadaist artists and things like that.

So, specifically, I knew him from Ballet Mécanique, which is his experimental film. It's very weird, but very cool. I really liked it, so definitely check it out.

We're not talking about his Dadaist filmwork though, we're talking about his Cubist artwork. So, it's believed that an unnamed piece from his Smoke Over the Roofs series was that he painted this series between 1911 and 1912, it's believed that one of these pieces was discovered on the back of Bastille Day that he painted in late 1912.

Léger had gifted this piece, Bastille Day, to his friend Marc Duchamp on his wedding day. Duchamp actually died in World War I though, so his family was completely distraught and didn't even want to look at the painting because it reminded them of him. So, they just hid it away in their private collection.

Bastille Day was sold to the Dutch Triton Collection Foundation in 1999, and they own it now. In 2016, they had restoration work done to Bastille Day, cuz remember they had no idea that there was this mystery piece on the back, and apparently restorers from I believe they are another Lindo- or a Dutch company Studio Redivivus, they noticed that there was something on the back.

So, the experts had to remove a large amount of white, gray material from the piece from the back of it as well as a backing board. When the restorers actually like moved like peeled part of the backing off, they noticed on the back of Bastille Day that there were definitely distinctive forms and colors that were clearly painting.

It wasn't just like, "Oh, that's just mold or something," <laughter> that looked like billowing smoke. So, they were able to see that this is probably part of Smoke Over the Roofs, so or like part of the series. So, that is very cool.

So, the Dutch Triton Collection Foundation, they lucked out, they got a twofer <laughter> without even noticing or like meaning to, obviously, cuz how would you know? This newly discovered painting, if you want to see it, it's going to go on display at the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands from November 19th to April 2nd.

And for the first time in its history, it's going to be placed in a glass cabinet so you can see it on either side, which is really cool. If you check it out, let me know how that goes, cuz I'm very curious. I definitely will not be making it to Amsterdam during that time period, but that just sounds very, very cool.

So, like I said, if you see it, let me know, I'm dying to know.

All right, so that'll do it for this episode of By Amara. Thank you so much for listening, I hope you enjoyed, and if you liked it, please make like make sure to give me a thumbs up on YouTube, or subscribe, or whatever, however you want to support, I just genuinely appreciate it that you're even listening to me. So, thank you.

Have a happy, safe Halloween, if you're watching this around that time period. Yeah, and just as always, I'm Amara Andrew, never stop creating.