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The Very Best of Maximillien de La Croix
« Mistral »
October 15, 2003: Celebrating our 4th
Anniversary!
By
Dr. Gisele von Guntunbergersen, WACJ President and Publisher
It is very ironic that originally, World Art Celebrities Journal started in 1999 as “De La Croix Fans Mail” and turned into a major international arts magazine. We started the whole thing. We were a group of universities professors and art lovers in Europe and more particularly in Vienna, Berlin and Paris. “We” meaning, Dr. Gisele Muller-Anderson, Dr. Kurt Rosenstadt, Dr. Esther Cohen-Hamilton, the famous and infamous Dr. Erica Soderlhom (Famous for her “Ask Erica”), Penelope Countess de Vassy, Valerie Constand and myself. We were fascinated my Maximillien de La Croix’s progressive neo cubism painting. Yes, this one: Maximillien de La Croix de Lafayette, the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine you are reading now. It was fun. Very fun. Mail poured from all over the world.
We used to post 200 de La Croix’s new paintings every week. It was a lot of work but we loved it.
Later on, Dr. Carmen Ortega, the original Editor-in-Chief of “De La Croix’s Fans Mail” came up with a crazy idea. Carmen told Kurt: “Kurt, how about expanding the website, I mean the whole thing and turn it into a real art magazine, we will call it World Art Celebrities Journal. We expand and we will write about everything has to do with art. What do you think?” Kurt looked at her and said “You are crazy. A magazine? Are you nuts? We need funds, editorial staff, correspondents, graphic artists, spies, gossips stuff, the whole mambo jumbo…” Three months later, the “Fans Mail Website” became what this magazine is all about today with more than 525.000 readers in 65 countries! And the rest is history.
Of course, we stopped devoting the whole magazine to de La Croix. And gradually, the magazine became a real magazine dealing with all sorts of topics and crazy endeavors. Erica (Dr. Erica Soderholm) got busier by the minute. More than 9,000 pieces of mail poured on her desk every single month!
World Art Celebrities Journal is a Good Thing!
Yes, it is a good thing because we use it as a medium to help and promote artists in all disciplines. We never badmouth any person. On the contrary, we always write positive articles and give good reviews. Our philosophy is this: If you want to write an article about somebody, choose somebody who is good, so whatever you write about this person would be good. We do not select or target “mediocre” or bad people, and consequently, we do not find any reason why should we badmouth people or write negative articles about them…of course, we chose the good ones and avoided the bad ones. And as a result, you will only read good stuff about good people.
All this was good but, one thing we missed throughout the years. Because the concept and the formula of the “de La Croix Fans Mail” changed into a magazine, and after the editorial board asked de La Croix to become the Editor-in-Chief of World Art Celebrities journal, the common sense and wisdom of journalism refrained us from constantly writing about de La Croix the venerated artist and regularly posting his artwork.
Today, October 15, 2003 marks our 4th anniversary. And it is time to revisit de La Croix. Now, it is the perfect occasion to post once again what we used to do 4 years ago… De La Croix’s painting before your very eyes. Maximillien strongly objected to this idea. He believes that posting his work on the pages of the magazine he is responsible for, would be very vain, unprofessional, ridiculous and self serving. It could and would jeopardize the credibility and integrity of World Art Celebrities Journal. Maybe he is right. But, anyway, and without his permission, we went ahead, selected from our archives the best (We think!) of his work (The Negatives and Slides we had) and posted it here. This brought a lot of memories to our team. We enjoyed it in the past. We hope, you will enjoy it now.
MAXIMILLIEN
DE LA CROIX’S ORIGINAL ARTWORK
The Very Best!
FROM
WACJ ARCHIVES
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