Looking at Salvador Dali’s Swans Reflecting Elephants I was stricken by a sudden epiphany. Who was it that first said that swans were beautiful? We all know they are one of the symbols of grace, purity, and beauty but how often do we actually stop to look at them with a critical eye? Ungainly boat-shaped bodies, disproportionately long, snake-like necks, and a waddling gait – are these the attributes of a perfect being, a paragon of physical virtue? In what way does the miraculous transfiguration of Hans Christian Andersen’s infamous “Ugly” Duckling into the feathered equivalent of a snake in a boat constitute a good end? Of course Andersen never was too fond of happy endings…

It was this train of thought that led me to see this famous fairytale in a new light, and realize the superficial nature of the life-affirming end we have all been told by our parents. But have they told us the truth?

What if we look at the Ugly Duckling not as a positive symbol of the transformative power hidden within all of us, but as a profoundly disturbed individual with an agonizing inferiority complex? This complex stems in part from social rejection, in part from his own over-analytic nature. He does not see himself as the adorable, fluffy creature he is and lacks the lighthearted self-acceptance of childhood. Constantly judging and reassessing himself, he willingly accepts the taunts and jeers that are thrown his way. Perhaps he spends too much time looking at his own reflection – a futile exercise that has already brought about the demise of a menagerie of mythological figures.

Self-conscious to the point of obsessiveness, he dreams of only one thing – transformation. The glowing vision of a better self haunts his dreams and strengthens his belief in his own hideousness. He is not a misfit, he is a monster, shunned and loathed by all, even her whom he considers his mother. Seasons pass, and he gradually begins to change. Wearied by his own self-loathing, he hides from himself and is not aware of the alteration at first. But then the revelation comes. Gliding along the glossy surface of a sunlight lake, he takes a deep breath and looks down. But what does the despondent, unsatisfied perfectionist really see in this inverted image? Is it the radiant embodiment of exquisite elegance? No – it is an elephant, a twisted, surrealist inversion of his glamorous fantasies. The stricken idealist stares in horror at the image projected by his distorted imagination. There is no hope then. The world has betrayed his impossible standards, it has proved incapable of producing perfection. Then, like a mocking parody of Narcissus, he plunges into his own reflection and gives up his tormented soul to the dark, swirling waters of the lake.

Here at ArtCorner.com, we have a love of all things art. But what happens when you love it too much? Theft is usually the answer. Throughout the ages, thieves have stolen artworks for either love of it or money. However, finding that no one wants to buy stolen artwork, they often hang on to it themselves, and it can end up in the strangest places. To prove it, we have collected five art heists that involved Pablo Picasso art and what became of them:

1. Original sketches – Although only valued at $200,000 at the time, these were the first Picasso artworks to ever be stolen. It happened in the University of Michigan during a traveling art exhibit in 1967. They would eventually be found two years later at an auction house and no arrests were ever made.
2. Collected works – It would take too long to list all the works of Picasso’s that were stolen in 1976 at the Palais des Papes in Avignon, France. The short of it is that 118 paintings, drawings, and other works by Picasso were the target of the thieves. Detectives actually used a fake American crime boss who wanted to buy stolen Picassos as a way to ultimately catch the thieves who took them.
3. Horse’s Head, Glass and Pitcher – In a two for one heist, these paintings were stolen in February of 2008 in the Pfaffikon gallery near Zurich. It was speculated that two thieves stayed after hours when the gallery had closed, then made off with only two paintings out of thousands. The combined total of these two paintings was valued at about $4.5 million. They were found three years later in Serbia, of all places…
4. Portrait of Suzanne Bloch – This was part of the art heist that happened at the Sao Paulo Museum of Art in 2007. This Picasso painting and one done by Cândido Portinari’ were the targets of the thieves. The heist took only three minutes to pull off, the loot was worth $55 million, but they were both recovered in 2008.
5. Head of a Woman – Think art heists happens only in other countries or in the past? That wasn’t the case with this 1965 Picasso sketch. A man literally walked into the San Francisco museum where it was hanging in 2011, snatched the work off the wall during the day, and drove off in a waiting taxi. He would later be identified as wine steward Mark Lugo, arrested the same year, and served 138 days in prison. Other stolen works were also found in his possession and he is facing an additional 15 years.

There seems to be an unexplained romantic flair to art heists, you kind of root for the villain as you imagine a daring “Thomas Crown” type making his way through thick security and grabbing a Picasso off the wall. However, reality is somewhat different. The heist tends to be violent and the thieves are far from the romantic facade we envision. The most frustrating thing about it, is that even if the thieves succeed to vanish with the loot it is very difficult to actually sell the stolen pieces, and the art ends up hidden at an undisclosed location, many times, never to be found.

The woman has been a muse ever since humans began to paint. However, the woman’s body has not been seen in the same perspective in all ages of mankind. Each part of history sees women from the perspective of that era. In the past, the plump woman was the perfect prototype for she symbolized health and a guarantee that she will have many followers. Art saw her that way when it was at it’s peak, during the Renaissance. Nevertheless, she was regarded as a mythological muse, untouched and pure. Mother, wife or mistress, she was the prototype of an intangible being, perfect.

Woman’s beauty was a superior beauty, which could be admired through the paintings that had access only to the select, the high stratum of society. Art was considered the access of a higher level of knowledge. Artists created paintings with mythological subjects, and the woman is the main character. The most famous pure women are Botticelli’s “angels.” In the painting called Spring, women characters appear in the picture, that simply dressed and through their allure give the impression that they are not from the same world as the viewer. At the heart of the painting is Venus in front of a sacred plant, alluding to Eden’s goddess of love. Venus is also present in the famous painting, Birth of Venus, which is at the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence. The masterpiece places Botticceli as the creator of sublime beauty. Through the foamy waves, carried by a shell, sits the Goddess, a beautiful woman, the embodiment of purity, naked, with long blond hair, a timeless woman. Such beauty sparked assumptions that the artist has made the Goddess as the embodiment of love poetry.

Renaissance models were mostly important women in society, whose life is shared with the state or powerful men with an impressionable fortune. These women defined fashion and beauty of those years. Such model we meet at Leonardo da Vinci’s Young woman with ermine, the portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, the 17-year-old mistress of the Duke of Milan. Another favorite of the official is dedicated The beautiful blacksmith, alleged to be Lucrezia Crivelli, next to currying favor with Duke after Gallerani. However, the famous La Gioconda, which is still shrouded in mystery is the most famous woman smile created by Leonardo. One hypothesis explaining the painting Mona Lisa is said to represent chastity. La Gioconda amazes with her mysterious smile, which gives the feeling that she is the one that admires or observes the viewer. Furthermore, Freud advances the hypothesis that Mona Lisa is the ideal portrait of the artist’s mother.

In the same time Tiziano shows a sensual side of women in the painting Venus of Urbino. The painting shows a typical fashion for that period, the preference for composition from a closed fund to gradually comes to light.

Like Leonardo, Rubens made portraits of famous women, at the time. These include Portrait of Marie de Medici and Portriat of Anne of Austria, which embodies the strong woman, with certain social position. However, there is not a painter, who hasn’t included among his works portraits of women who stood near them. In the last years of his life, Rubens dedicated many of his paintings to his beautiful wife, Helene Fourment. The paintings are testimony to the love the artist feel for this girl. Proofs are over 19 paintings made in a modernist approach. In some of these works, Rubens leaves Helen to be admired by the viewer in all her glory. He surprises her wearing only a fur coat, which let’s found almost all her robust body.

As sensual is Goya’s Maja presented in the painting Naked Maja. The woman begins to be seen more earthly and her nakedness is no longer regarded as pure, but rather sensual. She becomes available to the desired impulses. The painting challenges traditions, customs, and morals of the 1800s. Maja appears naked not only of her clothes but of the time’s customs and offers herself to the viewer admiration. By making this painting the artist approaches creative freedom and the right to express himself without censorship. The freedom will be appreciated more because the artist made the painting with the price of his life. The Inquisition intended Goya a process for immorality.

For Naked Maja is considered as the first paintings in art history that has not mythological suggestions, the only nudes accepted by the society in those times. He thus opened the way for modern artists. Pablo Picasso breaks tradition and tries to give the viewer the feeling that admires a woman by suggestion, in Portrait of Dora Maar.

However, the artist who devoted the most to one single woman is Salvador Dali. His paintings are the undisputable evidence of the enormous love for a woman and what she symbolizes in the artist’s life. The many portraits of Gala, including Gala seen naked from behind, shows the strong connection between the two. Dali calls her his “his genius, his twin.” The artist proves that there is a deep connection between women and men saying: “By signing my paintings with the logo Gala-Dali, I gave a name to the existential truth: without my twin, Gala, I do not exist.” Dali transforms the admired woman into an adored woman, forever loved, that no longer stands as a statue in front of the viewer, but comes down from the heart of the artist, that reveals her to the world by waving passionate the brush on canvas.

His paintings support the hypothesis that a genius artist always has a muse near, that will inspire him forever, whether pure, sensual or just earthly.

Last week, the Van Gogh Museum told press officials that a known self-portrait by Van Gogh isn’t really the artist, it’s his brother, Theo. Vincent Van Gogh’s brother was a major patron of his artwork, supporting Vincent throughout most of his life, morally and financially.

Art historians at the museum say that if this is true then the “self-portrait” will be the only known portrait created by Van Gogh of his brother, aside from casual sketches. Museum spokeswoman Linda Snoek said that the piece was rendered in 1887, when the brothers resided together in Paris. It seems this era of Vincent Van Gogh’s life isn’t well known, except through a few letters exchanged between the brothers.

The brothers are close in resemblance, but scholars say that it is in fact Theo for a number of reasons. A CBS news source shares the following comparisons, “The portrait of Theo shows he had rounder ears than Vincent did. The other portrait shows Vincent with long, angular ears, consistent with other artists’ paintings of Vincent. That is before he famously self-mutilated one of his ears in December 1888.

In addition, Theo’s goatee is more yellow-brown than Vincent’s dark red beard, and Theo has shaven cheeks, consistent with photographs of him from the same period, while Vincent painted himself sporting mutton-chop sideburns.”

Another Van Gogh Self-Portrait (1887), with “mutton-chops”

Van Gogh rendered this self portrait in 1887. He made the move to Paris to live with Theo in 1886, aged 32 years. This was at the height of the Impressionist movement, where he was inspired by and moved alongside Monet and Gauguin. He and Gauguin worked together in Arles, where Van Gogh painted sunflowers to help decorate Gauguin’s residence. Interestingly, the sunflowers are later found in several of Van Gogh’s artworks. The exposure to Impressionism inspired the use of dramatic color in his modern art pieces.

In 1888, mental illness began to become more evident. It was the year that he suffered from bouts of epilepsy, psychotic attacks, and delusions. In one episode he took a knife to his ear and severed it, and later offered the removed ear to a prostitute. This was the same knife he assaulted Gauguin with earlier in the day. Before the episodes became severe, Van Gogh dreamed of creating his own school with Gauguin and other artists.

Vincent left Saint-Rémy-de-Provence in 1890 and regained contact with Theo. Though he viewed his life and work as a failure, he continued to paint a new work almost daily. Paint flowed through his veins. It was during this time that he created Starry Night, a beloved favorite for most in the world. Whatever fueled his artwork could not be rendered fast enough, like many artists who speak of death at the hands of their muse.

On July 27, 1890 Van Gogh shot himself in the chest and survived the suicide attempt, but he died from the wound two days later. Theo was devastated and inherited the majority of Vincent’s work. Six months later Theo, too, died. His widow took Vincent’s work to Holland to advocate for the work of a brilliant artist and his most supportive patron, his brother Theo.

“In order to learn to draw, you must learn to see”. These words took my attention when I recently read a book about painting. That is how I learned that an object hasn’t a single color, but an infinity of shades. Rendering reality as it is it’s almost impossible. However, I can say that the artist paints only the reality he sees.

Monet began to make associations between reality, nature and painting, following the guidance he received from Eugene Boudin, with whom he began to paint outdoors. After meeting with the artist, Monet wrote: “Boudin, with a tireless kindness, began to guidance me. Finally, my eyes opened and I truly understood nature. In the same time, I learned to love her”.

Monet’s words reminded me of Plato’s story. The greek philosopher imagined a cave in which people, who are tied, look towards a wall to the shadows caused by objects paraded before a fire behind the prisoners. The shadows are seen by people as being the only reality. One of the prisoners managed to escape and goes outside the cave. He contemplates the sun and the surrounding nature. He comes back in the cave to tell the other prisoners what is the actual reality. Nobody believes him. Fortunately, the “reality” drawn by a painter is admired by fans of beauty, even if it is not the true embodiment of the object that stands in front of the artist.

Every artist, at the beginning of his career, has a person who helps him gain maturity in his work. He is the person who will help him define his manner of painting, the person from whom he will learn techniques and tricks that enhance his own ideas. The young artist should add his own vision and experiences to the master’s ideas, tips and tricks to become unique.

For Monet, Boudin was the one who paved the way to an artistic career and the same who made the world aware of the artist Claude Monet. Because of his master, young Monet decided to become a professional artist, painting in direct contact with the reality of nature. The first painting by Monet, where he signed Monet O. 58, is a landscape near the village Rouelles with the water flowing along. The young artists’ passion once opened it could not be taken away even by the painters’ father. In those times artists were not seen kindly, so Monet was left without any financial support from his family, except for an aunt.

The vision of reality will enrich along his life. Called to military service, he goes to Africa, where he fell in love with light and color. While some artists choose to spread darkness, shadows on canvas, Monet prefers the sun and shades that render nature. A man has a lot of stops along the way, in which he has the opportunity to change all or just to improve his vision. Africa was for Monet another stop, where he could see nature in a new light: “My view on things has improved. At first, I didn’t realize that. The impressions of light and color formed there only later revealed, but already sprouted in me a desire for future searches,” wrote the young artist.

If in Africa, Monet looked at nature alone, when he came back, he met the dutch men Johann Barthold Jongkind, who explained to him the practice and motivation of his work, thus complementing the guidance of Boudin. “Since then, he became my true master, whom I owe my views final education,” Monet described the meeting with Jongkind.

Landscapes will define Monet’s work. The most representative paintings are the 250 variations of the famed Water Lilies, painted in the last twenty years of his life. The artist Claude Monet is the one who also informed the world about France’s natural wealth.

Over the years, Monet took the ideas of painters he met along the way, such as Jongkind and Boudin, and combined them with his own unique style and footprint. Monet was able to adapt and borrow his art from his surrounding molding his art into what it is so well known for today.

Therefore, if you consider those next to you as being masters, regardless of their age or training, take the time to open your mind, and listen to what they have to say. You will find out that you become a richer artists just by listening to others.

It is said that “A picture is worth a thousand words”. We use words to express what we feel or what we need. However, when it comes to images you don’t need words anymore. The image is the one that can capture a feeling: sadness or happiness. You become absorbed in the feelings that live before you. The artist can make you feel sad or happy. The artist is the one that can and will play with your feelings, even if he or she is not near you. Artists can do that by just creating a painting that can change the way you feel only by looking at it. The free will inside you is not so free anymore. The choice of what you should take is not yours anymore. You are just a person at the crime scene, and you can’t take your eyes from it. It is mesmerizing. In the same time, an artist can make you sense what he is feeling.

Frida Kahlo is an artist who could lay her feelings on canvas. She described with images what she was going through since the accident on September 17th 1925. It was the exact day of the Mexican independence. In the years that passed, she described the accident by painting it. She also wrote: “I sat on the edge, near the descent. Moments later the bus was hit by a tram line Xochimilco. The Tram crashed the bus on the corner of the street. It was an odd blow. It wasn’t violent, but dull, slow, injuring everyone. Especially I.” She suffered a triple fracture of the spine, clavicle fracture, dislocation of left shoulder, triple fracture of pelvis, abdomen and pelvis perforation and dislocation of her right leg. Virtually, the accident stopped time for Frida, who was, as she described in her memoirs, a wanderer.

The list health problems will continue throughout her life. However, Frida is the worthy example of someone whose body is weak, but whose interior is strongly. In the long days she had to wait to walk again Frida made the first significant painting of her work, Self portrait in a Velvet Dress. It is influenced by the Renaissance painters whom she studied with passion during convalescence. Besides her work is represented by the self-portraits, the only person she knew best so she could spread feelings on canvas. She was the only person who could stand still long enough that she could surprise even the most hidden feelings. People can only see glimpses of the person you really are, but they can never look within yourself to see your hidden thoughts.

Sometimes even you cannot see the hidden part of you. I fell in love with Frida not only for her original paintings, but because of the whole package, her life. I think that you can’t understand the significance given by the artist to his paintings if you don’t know his life. Because Frida lived in much of her life in bed in a room with four walls, her paintings are full of solitude. We can see this by the fact that the main character is placed in the middle of the paintings, all alone. Sadness in the eyes of the character also surprises. She shows loneliness and sadness as they are, without a curtain. The artist’s suffering can be seen especially in the painting The Broken Column, made in 1944. Admired in Frida is that for a moment, she did not hide the sadness and suffering that had gone through her life. Frida is for me a worthy artist. She wrote towards the end of her life “I hope the exit is joyful, and I hope I never come back.” Most people fear of death, but she would look right into its eyes.

Perhaps the harsh and sincere reality of her paintings resonates so much with the viewer precisely because it describes exactly what the world feels: that we struggle alone with our own suffering.
Frida shows that you don’t need words to reflect how you feel just as you don’t have to reveal your wound for people to understand your pain. You only need a painting.