Andrew Lloyd Webber has a lot to answer for – primarily being so relentlessly creepy throughout How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria than we had to take a potato peeler to our skin just to feel a bit less dirty for watching it.
But – when he isn't phoning girls up, waggling his eyebrows around like some kind of smug, mega-wealthy amphibian and saying "Hello, it's Andrew Lloyd Webber" like he's fully expecting the person on the other end of the phone to explode with delight at hearing those words – Andrew Lloyd Webber has problems like the rest of us. Problems like the auction of his $60 million Picasso-painted portrait of Angel Fernandez de Soto being halted because the Nazis might have forced its original owner to sell it during World War II. Well OK, maybe not the exact problems as the rest of us…
Fine art isn't usually a subject covered by hecklerspray – we can make cheap jokes about Rolf Harris making a flick-book out of the Queen, but then people start talking about the semiotic square of oppositions and differentiations and we do a little wee and run away crying. But this isn't just a story about art; it's a story about art and Andrew Lloyd Webber and the Nazis. Oh, alright, it's just an excuse to have the words 'Andrew Lloyd Webber' and 'Nazi' in a headline. Happy now? Are you happy now?
Recently, Andrew Lloyd Webber has been most famous for being an even less approachable version of Simon Cowell in the dreadful BBC How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria show, or the 'Oh Shit Scarlett Johansson Wants To Sing Tom Waits Songs Instead Of Being in My Musical What Do I Do Now?' show as literally nobody calls it. But aside from that, Andrew Lloyd Webber is a man with an art foundation; an art foundation that wants to auction off Picasso's Portrait Of Angel Fernandez de Soto, which is from Picasso's blue period – when Picasso painted a lot of blue things because he was quite sad. The money raised by the artwork would have gone to some kind of charity, according to Andrew Lloyd Webber.
The only problem is, though, a judge has blocked the auction of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Picasso because it a previous owner might have been forced to sell it by the Nazis, as BBC reports:
Andrew Lloyd Webber's art foundation has been temporarily stopped from selling a Picasso work over claims it was forcibly sold to the Nazis. A US judge is blocking the auction, due to take place at Christie's in New York until the matter is fully investigated. A German man claims he is heir to a Jewish banker who was forced to sell the painting during World War II.
Quite what this means to Andrew Lloyd Webber or the world of fine art won't be known until after the investigation has taken place. However, for $30 million you can get your hands on Portrait Of My Mum, from hecklerspray's blue period. In it we explore the indelible link between blue Crayola texture and the impact on the human psyche of getting totally hit by a train while trying to run away from the cops down a subway in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
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