Landscape with Smokestacks: The Case of the Allegedly Plundered Degas - Hardcover

Trienens, Howard J.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0810118203 ISBN 13: 9780810118201

Publisher: Northwestern University Press, 2000

Synopsis

The dispute over Edgar Degas’s Landscape with Smokestacks was featured in newspapers and on television. But because the suit was settled before trial, the story behind the headlines was never publicly presented. Howard J. Trienens, a lawyer for the defendant collector, traces the landscape’s travels from its prewar home to its current location in the Art Institute of Chicago, laying out the mystery surrounding the work and demonstrating the legal complexities that plague Holocaust restitution cases, yet are seldom examined in depth by the media.

About this title

About the Author:

Igor Klekh writes from the crossroads of Europe: Ukraine, influenced by the Russian literature tradition of the east and the languages and dialects of both Central Europe and his native country. As one of the brightest lights to come out of the post-perestroika literary scene, Klekh's work has been welcomed as a synthesis of the two traditions, and celebrated as some of the most breathtakingly original prose of recent years. The publication of his novellaKallimakh's Wake (included in this collection) in 1993, and his work since, has drawn comparisons to Borges--for the blurring of boundaries between forms and styles; to Gogol's work in both Russian and Ukrainian language; to Eco's use of esoteric knowledge; and to the stylistic innovations reminiscent of Latin American magical realists.A Land the Size of Binoculars collects the five short pieces and novella that comprise his "Galician Motifs," and two more recent novellas. Throughout Klekh passes over landscapes as intimate as the terrain between fathers and sons and as broad as the Carpathian Mountains.

Review:

"Howard Trienen's Landscape with Smokestacks is a lucid, engaging book that offers an unusual vantage on the world of art collecting and the heritage of the Holocaust. Most notably, it demonstrates why the muddy, boring, detailed truth of the law, that emerges from adversarial skirmishing, can prove more reliable than that of journalism, where the independent observers are sometimes too eager to capitulate to preestablished verities." —Scott Turow

"Trienens not only exposes the weakness of the lawsuit, he decries simplistic media coverage and cautions against making tacit assumptions." —Booklist

About this edition

• Publisher: Northwestern University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0810118203
• ISBN 13: 9780810118201
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 122