Last week I
received a review copy from the Amsterdam University Press: a new book on Piet
Mondrian, Inside Out Victory Boogie
Woogie, edited by Maarten van Bommel, Hans Janssen and Ron Spronk. Mondrian
started on the painting Victory Boogie
Woogie in 1942, but it stayed unfinished because of his death in February
1944. The painting was bought in 1998 from the collector Samuel Irving Newhouse
at a whopping price of 82 million Guilders (approx. 37 million Euro’s) through
a gift of the Dutch National Bank to commemorate the introduction of the Euro
in the Netherlands. The acquisition caused a public outrage, and even the House
of Representatives raised questions about the way it was acquired. But now the
painting is on victorious display in the Gemeentemuseum of the Hague, and is by
now a prominent attraction of the museum.