Showing posts with label Legal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Legal. Show all posts

Panama Papers, Modigliani, and Nazis

I've been a bit confused about all the hubbub surrounding "The Panama Papers." Yes, the leaked documents has shown precisely which wealthy people have used precisely which off-shore tax havens, but it's certainly not news that tax havens exist and are used by wealthy people for a number of reasons. Two of the most popular tax havens are the state of Delaware and the City of London. You don't have to actually go off shore to go off-shore.

But anyway.

One interesting thing that has turned up is the ownership of a Modigliani painting allegedly looted by Nazis and possibly being reclaimed. If I'm reading the news reports correctly, the Nahmad family has claimed that they do not own the painting in question, but that it is owned by a company called IAC. Only ow it's been leaked that IAC is owned, and has been owned for decades, by the Nahmad family.

Vantablack

Yves Klein famously had his own color, and now Anish Kapoor does as well. Kapoor has somehow got the exclusive rights to a high-tech nano-pigment called Vantablack. It absorbs more than 99.9% of light, and Kapoor is the only artist who can (legally) work with it.

What does an artist do with a virtual black hole? Let's find out.