'SCREAM' stolen for the Japan's art market?

[Taro Toporific]

Munch's `The Scream,' `Madonna' Stolen at Oslo Museum
Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) --Two Edvard Munch paintings including a version of the famous ``Scream'' were stolen at gunpoint from an Oslo museum, the second time in a decade the artist's work has been taken...

Japan's art auction market booming on the back of economic recovery
Thu Aug 19, 10:38 AM ET
TOKYO (AFP) -As Japan's economy recovers, its fledgling art auction market is rapidly expanding with the growth being driven by art lovers with money to spend rather than companies looking for an investment.
The buyers are attracted by prices which, two and a half years into a recovery from more than a decade of economic stagnation, are still a fraction of the frenzied levels of the early 1990s, when a Japanese industrialist paid more than 80 million dollars for a single work by Van Gogh. At a recent Tokyo sale by Japan's top auction house Shinwa Art Auction an oil by French Impressionist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, "Little Girl with an Orange", fetched 150 million yen (1.4 million dollars) -- almost double the pre-sale estimate of 80 million yen.

[Taro Toporific]

This is TRAGIC since the Scream is painted on cardboard with funky paints. Police say they found crumbled pieces of it on the street where the moron thieves carried it off.
If you gonna steal a painting at least do a clean job, sheesh.

[Taro Toporific]

The above theft and defacement of 'The Scream' is obviously the work of a squadron of Evil Pongi's disciples known as 'The PongiYangs'

Sad to say but Munch's "Madonna" was also taken.

[vince]

Evil Pongi's disciple known as 'The PongiYang'!

[Taro Toporific]

Two Stolen Edvard Munch Works Recovered
Forbes - 08.31.2006, 05:37 PM.Two years after masked gunmen grabbed national artistic treasures in front of stunned visitors at an Oslo museum, police recovered the Edvard Munch masterpieces "The Scream" and "Madonna" on Thursday....
....the two paintings were on an FBI list last fall on the top 10 art thefts around the globe. Among still missing works are three Rembrandts, a Vermeer, a Manet and five Degas taken from Boston's Isabella Steward Gardner Museum in 1990 and a Cezanne stolen from England's Ashmolean Museum in 1999....more...

[floatl][/floatl] Munch's `The Scream,' `Madonna' Stolen at Oslo Museum
Aug. 22 (Bloomberg) --Two Edvard Munch paintings including a version of the famous ``Scream'' were stolen at gunpoint from an Oslo museum, the second time in a decade the artist's work has been taken...

Japan's art auction market booming on the back of economic recovery
Thu Aug 19, 10:38 AM ET
TOKYO (AFP) -