The G.I. Taste

U.S. museum directors and antique dealers were being deluged with G.I. art "finds," a lot of them looted. Many a G.I. who had laboriously lugged home a third-class imitative painting on which he put a $10,000 price tag was highly incensed at dealers who offered a take-it-or-leave-it $10. Samples:

P: A suitcase full of Roman statuary, oil lamps and coins, offered to the Detroit Institute of Arts. It had been "picked up" in Germany. Value: "a few dollars." No sale.

P: Pottery of the "chop suey" period and other "terrible stuff" from China and Japan is about all that Gump's store in San Francisco has seen from the Pacific. Value: less than the G.I.s paid for it. No sale.

P: An ivory crucifix obtained by "moonlight requisition" from an Italian church. Sold to a Kansas City antique shop for $500.

One unhappy veteran had swiped a sexy nude from an underground tunnel in Amberg, Germany. The signature, "Mich. Ang. Maestri" looked good to him until he learned last week that his original masterpiece by Michelangelo was really a colored reproduction done 200 years later.

Moral considerations aside, U.S. art dealers were frankly disappointed in the low level of G.I. taste.

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