War of the images: should the Fabergé, close to Putin

Not only individual buildings and paintings are currently threatened by the war in Ukraine, but also entire collections -

.

The Russian Morosow collection with the most beautiful Impressionists in France seems to have been particularly affected by the adversities of the times.

Lenin himself had the valuable French masterpieces of the textile entrepreneur brothers Mikhail and Ivan Morozov confiscated.

Since the collection also contains semi-abstract Fauvists and Cubists, Stalin banished them to the depot from 1948, where they slumbered into the 1970s.

Now the unfortunate pictures get caught up in the maelstrom of world politics in Paris, where they are presented in the Louis Vuitton Collection.

Actually, there would have been no problem at all, since the term was only scheduled until February 22nd.

However, because of the overwhelming success of more than half a million visitors, it was extended until the beginning of April, and thus the last chapter in the drama of the Morosow collection began for the time being.

Since the beginning of the war, there have been increasing calls in the French media to confiscate the works and not return them to the three Russian museums Hermitage in Petersburg and Pushkin and Tretyakov in Moscow, which are ultimately subordinate to Putin.

However, the French state guarantees that it cannot confiscate anything from an exhibition during the period of its existence.

The collection is therefore legally untouchable up to and including April 6th.

But how often does a law leave an interpretation gap: What happens to the pictures after the exhibition has been dismantled and before they are transported back to Moscow?

In general, there is currently a lot of displeasure in the French capital in terms of image symbols about the great dictator, who, like so many others, duped Macron at his grotesque giant table in the Kremlin.

Earlier this week, the Grévin Wax Museum in Paris, whose oldest wax effigies belong to Madame Tussaud personally, disposed of a figure for the first time in its history because of historical events: the wax effigy of Putin, which resembles the embalmed Lenin in his Kremlin mausoleum.

It had been repeatedly damaged by angry visitors, and museum director Delhommeau stated, almost in an animistic way, that in view of what had happened, he did not want to expect his employees to "have to fix Putin's hair and his appearance every day".

But France's British neighbors are also pondering a pre-Easter egg coup.

Under the title "Fabergé in London: Romance to Revolution", the most magnificent jeweled eggs are on display in the Victoria and Albert Museum until May 8, including the so-called "Kremlin Egg" from 1906. Since many of the Fabergé eggs made for the tsars Works of art have been bought back from Western collections in recent years by the Russian oligarch Viktor Wechselberg, voices are also being raised in London calling for the confiscation of the eggs close to Putin.

It is reassuring that there are currently no exhibitions in Germany with Russian loans and the only two Renoirs from Russia for the Städel show that opened last week did not even make their way to Frankfurt.