Author: Lisa Kraege
In 1534, Lucas Cranach the Elder painted his famed pair of paintings, “Adam and Eve.” In typical Cranachian style, the long, lean figures bend towards one another, each holding their ill-fated apples. Four hundred and seventy-six years later, the painting resides in Pasadena’s Norton Simon Museum, our own under-appreciated trove of artistic treasures.
One person, however, is trying to change that. A woman named Marei Von Saher has recently attempted to reclaim the painting, which, in the course of its rich history, was looted by the Nazis from Von Saher’s father-in-law, the Dutch-Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker. In the process, she raises the question: Who does art belong to?
Surely not Von Saher. The case is branded under the sacrosanct category of the Holocaust, a fact which Von Saher is clearly conscious of. Since 1997, when, according to the Los Angeles Times, she was made aware of the family history, she has filed claims for 267 artworks and reportedly sold and auctioned many of them to amass a net worth of $25 million. Even if Von Saher weren’t arguing for the ultimate wronged party, the issue would remain. Art, once produced and entered into the economic and cultural market, ceases to belong to any one group, or any one person. It only belongs to any one in the sense that it belongs to every one.
Art cannot be “reclaimed” for the sake of symbolic gesture, or to return it to the side it “belongs” to. Rather, it exists outside the dialogue of right and wrong. A painting cannot be appropriated toward a political statement because art exists independent from these strict categories. In fact, it breaks them.
In front of a painting, one is overwhelmed by the possibilities of interpretation, by the infinite potential of the work to affect, by the fragile moment of realization and knowledge attained in front of it. In front of a personally affecting work of art, visual or written or any other media, one’s identity ceases to be defined by things like gender, age, race, et cetera. And while these categories necessarily factor into one’s self, in the moment of art they are naught. The work’s economic history, its various owners, all cease to matte. Regardless of who once held it or stole it – Jew or Nazi – the painting still depicts the same scene, it still affects the viewer.
Von Saher has brought the Cranach case all the way to the Supreme Court – and for what? A gesture?
By attempting to “reclaim” Cranach’s “Adam and Eve,” she embarks on a pointless struggle to prove that gestures really do matter, giving the Nazis’ theft of her father-in-law’s paintings a sense of legitimacy. She implicitly makes the claim that authorship and ownership is the key to the enjoyment and possibilities of art.
If so, can you really look at a work of art knowing that the artist was a murderer? Can you read a book knowing that the author is a liar? There must be, and is, a disconnect between author, artist, owner and viewer. Art belongs to no one. It passes through hands and touches people, it affects us, it exists and we encounter it, but no one can hold it forever.
As much as we attempt to prolong our ownership, our moral rectitude and rightness in proving that yes, this painting really is mine, we can’t. Art will always exceed us and our limitations of self and time. “Adam and Eve” will always exceed its categorization under the genre of “reclaimed” art. It will always break such boundaries because of the multiplicity of possibilities inherent within it. And to think: This is but one painting, one potential, one work of art.
Lisa Kraege is a senior ECLS major. She can be reached at lkraege@oxy.edu.
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