And now:Sonja Keohane <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
For those who remember the issues (sent to the list by Norman
Fournier) of the Daishowa paper company and the lawsuits they lodged
against the Friends of the Lubicon for instigating boycots against those
who used the paper products of Daishowa's destructive logging business...
A strange twist that perhaps gives insight into the mind of the
chairman of the Daishowa company.
imo, an empty man, without soul...driven by greed to fill his and
his company's insatiable needs at the expense of the destruction of Native
land in Canada, and now perhaps the destruction of these paintings.
$82.5M Van Gogh Painting Missing
Filed at 3:35 p.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- No one in the art world seems to know the whereabouts
of the most expensive painting ever sold, even though it has not been
reported stolen.
The painting is a portrait by Vincent van Gogh of Paul-Ferdinand Gachet,
the doctor and friend of the artist who watched over him in the last weeks
of his life. Many consider the 1890 painting to be van Gogh's last
important portrait.
When the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York tried to find the painting
for its current exhibition, museum officials could not locate the
masterpiece, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sunday. The exhibition
catalog noted the absence with the words ``present location unknown.''
In 1990, Japanese businessman Ryoei Saito paid $82.5 million at an auction
for ``Portrait of Dr. Gachet,'' the most money ever paid for a painting.
Saito, the honorary chairman of Daishowa Paper Manufacturing Co., said he
stored it in a warehouse after looking at it once.
That year, shortly after paying the Japanese government a $24 million tax
bill, he told friends that the van Gogh and a Renoir he bought at the same
auction should be burned at his cremation so his heirs would not have to
pay an inheritance tax. At the time, it was regarded as a joke.
Six years later, he died at age 79. It is unclear if anyone has seen the
van Gogh since.
---end of NYT excerpt-----
