Shirley Jackson award-winner Kaaron Warren published her first short story in 1993 and has had fiction in print every year since. She was recently given the Peter McNamara Lifetime Achievement Award and was Guest of Honour at World Fantasy 2018, Stokercon 2019 and Geysercon 2019. She has also been Guest of Honour at Conflux in Canberra and Genrecon in Brisbane.
She has published five multi-award winning novels (Slights, Walking the Tree, Mistification, The Grief Hole and Tide of Stone) and seven short story collections, including the multi-award winning Through Splintered Walls. Her most recent short story collection is A Primer to Kaaron Warren from Dark Moon Books. Her most recent novella, Into Bones Like Oil (Meerkat Press), was shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award and the Bram Stoker Award, winning the Aurealis Award. Her stories have appeared in both Ellen Datlow’s and Paula Guran’s Year’s Best anthologies.
This
book looks at thieves, liars, manipulators and of course the art itself.
There’s a section on damaged goods, which taps into one of my obsessions about
the difference in time and effort creation versus destruction takes.
It’s
full of pictures, ironic given that most of the pieces depicted are lost, never
to be found. The Gallery of Missing Art is beautifully reproduced, and includes
such masterpieces as Strindberg’s “Night of Jealousy”, so we can look at the
works and marvel. But knowing that these pieces are…somewhere? Hidden away for
a small audience, or perhaps destroyed? That’s heart-breaking.
The masterpieces of art that have been stolen could fill a museum. Museum of the Missing offers readers a rare glimpse of the greatest gallery that never was. Simon Houpt brilliantly recounts the story of its valuable holdings and investigates some of the men and women involved in the thefts. Filled with beautiful illustrations and rarely seen photographs, this intriguing book is also a celebration of the ingenious few who are trying to get these treasures back.
A
fascinating Australian story about a man who is certain he has unearthed a
painting by the renowned Australian painter Lloyd Rees. While this isn’t
exactly about stolen art, it is about a painting that went missing, and whose
provenance was lost. It depicts just how obsessed we can become with a single
image.
This is a book I buy every time I see it in order to give it away. It’s one of my favourite novels and one I re-read every couple of years. It’s about a man who thinks his rich neighbour owns a Brueghel (a missing panel from the “Seasons” series) and his plans to steal it. It captures the nature of art obsession, and of that desire in all of us to discover something new, be it a hidden masterpiece, the solution to a long-unsolved crime, or perhaps a first edition book on our shelves. It’s funny, educational, entrancing and now I have to go and read it again.
Headlong begins when Martin Clay, a young would-be art historian, believes he has discovered a missing masterpiece. The owner of the painting is oblivious to its potential and asks Martin to help him sell it, leaving Martin with the chance of a lifetime: if he could only separate the painter from its owner, he would be able to perform a great public service, to make his professional reputation, perhaps even rather a lot of money as well. But is the painting really what Martin believes it to be? As Martin is drawn further into…
This
fascinating book not only looks at art stolen by thieves, but also at the
business of art museums and what constitutes moral collection. It was written
in 1973, so things have changes drastically as far as how we perceive where a
treasure belongs, but Meyer already argues for the return of the so-called
Elgin Marbles, for example. He has a brilliant table at the end, listing major
art thefts 1911-1972 and including comments, all of which deserve a story of
their own. For example:
1953,
Rodin bronze, stolen by a student who wanted to “live with it”.
1959,
Daumier painting, in the pocket of a suitcase that was stolen from a
train.
1971,
Titian “Holy Conversation”, recovered after dramatic car chase. Thieves also
drank communion wine.
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I
really love this book and could write an entire short story collection inspired
by it. It’s the first time I heard about the Amber Room, one of those things
that once you know about it, you are obsessed. The authors lead us into caves,
through basements, across borders, as they track down the pathways of stolen
treasures. The book tells us about the provenance of missing artworks, and what
it means to have that space on the wall.
All
of these books have an element of ‘the missing wall’ about them and perhaps
that’s one of the things that fascinates me the most about the subject.
Sometimes what isn’t there is more meaningful than what is.
Just as Nazi Germany appropriated works of art - paintings, sculptures and antiques - from all over Europe in 1939 and 1940, so the Soviet army set up "trophy brigades" to transport the same works of art, and many more, to Moscow and Leningrad in 1945. This book by two Russian art historians sets out to reveal how they did this and what happened to these works of art. With the end of the Soviet Union, many of these stolen works are now likely to go on display in Russia or be returned to their rightful owners in Europe. This…
When I was writing The Grief Hole, a novel about a woman who knows how you’re going to die by the ghosts who haunt you, and her battle with Sol Evictus, a charismatic singer and art collector, I visited the New Jersey State Museum with family. There were a number of artworks on show there that resonated within the novel, and with the choices Sol Evictus makes. He only collects paintings and sculptures with dark inspiration, such as The Sempstress, by Richard Redgrave, Bruegel’s Massacre of the Innocents, and the photographs of Dina Gottleibson.
There I saw Adolph Konrad’s “Summer Afternoon’, where a large, white house dominated the painting. It seemed to loom over the people sitting, stone-faced, at a table in the overgrown garden in the foreground. Around them, behind them, between them, were ghosts; pale, transparent figures. Being Sol Evictus, most of his pieces are stolen, and I loved researching art theft as I wrote.
To hide a corporation’s failure to properly service a space ship, Captain Jonas Stryker is prosecuted but saved from imprisonment by a dying man, who hires Stryker to collect asteroids for their mineral content. Stryker soon finds he must stop a shadowy corporate group called The Board, who employ space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids to overthrow the Federation government.
Set in Lagrange points, space stations, the Moon and outback Australia, it is a fast-moving story with some speculative future technology. If you were interested in the NASA attempt to alter the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos, you might…
When a trial to cover-up a corporate failure ends Captain Jonas Stryker's career, he wants revenge against The Board, a ruthless, shadowy organization with limitless funds that employs space piracy, terrorism, and even weaponised asteroids. Posing as a space miner, Stryker learns that The Board wants him killed, while a young female SCIB police agent wants retribution against him for having her career spoiled at his trial. As Stryker avoids attempts to kill him, he becomes the only chance to prevent The Board from overturning the Federation Government and imposing a Fascist-style rule. A story of greed, corruption and honour,…
