Word: vermeere
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...least, thought the Miami Beach Music and Fine Arts Board. In 1963, John Bass, a retired sugar-company executive, offered the city his private collection of 100 works of art, including paintings attributed to Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer, Rubens, Botticelli, Goya and El Greco. The board urged the city council to call in outside experts to certify the paintings. But the council, loath to look a gift horse in the mouth, voted down the recommendation, spent $160,000 transforming the old public library into the Bass Museum...
Among the most suspect: a Vermeer Self-Portrait that Bass tried to auction off at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet in 1962. Since only 30 unchallenged Vermeers are known to exist, a genuine Vermeer should have brought as much as $1,000,000. But there were so few bidders for Bass's Vermeer that he was forced to buy it back...
...Vermeer or Veneer? The most prolific of modern French directors, Godard has made 14 features since Breathless-a few of them critical successes, many more of them exasperating failures. Manhattan's Museum of Modern Art is now paying homage to Godard with a retrospective showing of his films, including two recent works hitherto unreleased in the U.S.: Two or Three Things I Know About Her and Made in U.S.A., two disappointing works that nonetheless show flashes of incisive social satire and technical virtuosity...
Whether a Godard deserves a festival is a matter of some critical dispute. To Richard Roud, author of a worshipful new study of his movies (Godard; Seeker & Warburg), the director is "one of the most important artists of our time," worthy of comparison, with Joyce and Vermeer. Pauline Kael of The New Yorker calls Godard "the most exciting director working in movies today." On the other hand, Stanley Kauffmann of the New Republic describes him as "a magician who makes elaborate uninspired gestures and then pulls out of the hat precisely nothing...
Today, except for serving on civic boards, he relishes his ranch (a 200-acre spread with a private golf course near Palm Springs), his yacht (the 80-ft. Sirius II), his art collection (Rembrandt, El Greco, Vermeer, Rubens) and, above all, his privacy. Ahmanson runs his establishment from his midtown Los Angeles mansion. "I haven't met an employee in 20 years," he muses. "In insurance, maybe I had too much of people...