A funny thing happened on the way to the Guggenheim.
This from the NYT
November 14, 2006
Goya Painting Stolen on Way to Guggenheim
By FELICIA R. LEE
A painting by Goya was stolen on its way from the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio to a major exhibition that opens on Friday at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the two institutions announced yesterday.
The museums said in a statement that the 1778 painting, “Children With a Cart,” was stolen in the vicinity of Scranton, Pa., while in the care of a professional art transporter. They said the theft was discovered last week but refused to provide additional details on the crime. Officials at both museums said the F.B.I. was investigating the case and had warned them that releasing additional information might jeopardize the inquiry.
The painting was to be included in “Spanish Painting From El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth and History,” a sprawling exhibition of some 135 paintings by Spanish masters.
The two museums said the painting would be “virtually impossible to sell and therefore has no value on the open market.” While art that belongs to major museums is easily identified as stolen, the statement seemed intended in part to discourage any attempt at a clandestine sale.
The painting was insured for only $1 million, the museums said. The insurer is offering a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to the recovery of the painting, they added. Their statement urged people with information about the theft to contact the Philadelphia division of the F.B.I. at (215) 418-4000.
…
If this was planned and pilfered to order, expect no solution or a quiet settlement.
If it was a crime of opportunity, 6-to-5 they nail the guy within two weeks, because where is the average Joe Hijack going to find someone in his immediate circle of associates to take this thing off his hands and even a penny on the dollar?
The theft of Art has always fascinated me. Because it’s unlike almost any other kind of property crime.
A painting cannot be melted down or recut. It can’t be laundered. It’s can’t be split up or spent down a little bit at a time. And burying it in the ground for ten years doesn’t change its nature or those facts.
Although art is often looted, it’s not loot as I would usually think of it. A painting or statue or mint edition of Action Comics #1 is not fungible. It can’t be carved up like a roast turkey without losing the very thing that made it worth coveting in the first place
Like the difference between Sex and Love, one can be (and often is) commoditized and sold piecemeal. The other one has a unitary value that cannot be stripped for parts; a whole whose totality immeasurably exceeds its breakup value.
Ah well.
Beauty itself may be "a sovereignty which stood in need of no guards", but beautiful things like paintings and first folios and democracy usually need the protection of reliable men with guns.
12 comments:
Thomas Crown most likely has it now.
That would be the Pierce Brosnan version, not the Steve McQueen model. Can Catherine Banning be far behind?
Art theft has led to a lot of movies, damn near all of them pretty bad. If one can name a really good one, I'd like to know what it is. (HINT: If you say Silver Streak, I will forever consider you a cretin) It seems to work better in books, somehow. I mean, I can read an Arsene Lupin novel and be engrossed although I know I'm reading "pop trash" much like Sherlock Holmes. In film, they always take it too seriously, or alternately, buffoonishly.
You read a lot of stolen art cases in law school. I always imagine the thief (or the ultimate recipient of the art) being tortured by the artwork. To whom can they show it? No one, really. They can't display it without lying that it's a fake. Then come the worries about selling it. Just how are you going to explain how you -- and not the Guggy -- have that Goya? So now the stress of dealing with unsavory art "dealers." I always think of someone locked away in a huge house or apartment, trapped by the fear of being found out, the stolen art torturing them...
res ipsa loquitot- sounds like the makings of a good Twilight Zone episode, or maybe one that lurks half-forgotten in the back of my mind. Something about a former nazi guard who meditates on a painting in a museum. DG- am I hallucinating again?
res- sorry I misspelled your name above, didn't mean to imply tou are a mere tot. ;-)
us blues,
Not "again", but "still" :-)
res!
The rich are different than you and me. Recommended reading on the topic: "A Diamond As Big As The Ritz."
cieran,
It was on this weekend. Probably the confluence of the two brought it to mind.
mndean,
"The Maltese Falcon".
mndean, I accept the challenge and in the process I believe I may help to recover us blues' half memory.
Check out John Frankenheimer's wonderful 1964 film "The Train"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059825/
The kleptocracy luvs to get their mits on artifacts, as well. Whole murals, frescos, reliefs, staturay, tile floors are constantly under attack, only to be hammered, pried, cracked, sawed, dynamited, basically obliterated out of history to feed this vapid hunger for 'status'.
grrrr..
It can’t be carved up like a roast turkey without losing the very thing that made it worth coveting in the first place
With the notable exception of valuable plates and maps that have all too often been razored out of books. It was a cottage industry for years. A lot of people made a lot of money selling the plates, and made the books they mutilated practically worthless, or worth a great deal less. Lordy, book geeks are so tiresome, aren't we?
A recent notable practitioner was the rare-maps guy, who ripped off millions of dollars worth of maps from various libraries becaue a librarian dissed him once. Or something.
In this case, I expect you are right. It was either a crime of opportunity, and now some poor schmoe has a hot picture he can't possibly unload, and will have to try to ransom and get caught easily; or it was stolen on order for some rich bastard to keep in his vault to gloat over. I always wonder what happens when these geezers die. Do the heirs continue gloating? Or do they have to face the music and return the loot? If I were them, I would rather admit Uncle Desmond was a thief and give back the swag than pay the inheritance tax on a fucking Goya.
One great film and one very good film (that i haven't seen, just going by its reputation) - is that all you guys got? I consider the bird as little more than a MacGuffin, anyway, but I'll give to you, ya bastard. Remember the other times they tried filming the Maltese Falcon? #1 wasn't much, and had a workmanlike director in Roy Del Ruth who is one of the better of the hack directors Warners had (he wasn't no artist). He could be good if the script was good, like in Blessed Event, but he didn't have a great star in this, the script wasn't very snappy, and for some reason even Bebe Daniels and Una Merkel couldn't make me care. #2, well, outside having Alison Skipworth as a very weird interpretation of Caspar Gutman as a curio, it wasn't much either. And the all-time worst Sam Spade character ever in Warren William. As I was watching it, all I could think was, "What the hell does this guy think he's playing?" Even having Bette Davis as Brigid O'Shaughnessy (NOT her name in the film, in fact none have their, er, canonical names, but the plot's the same) didn't make attempt #2 anything more than something to groan at. So they had to have three tries at the thing before they could get it right. Tells ya how hard it really is to make art theft into a good film.
Perhaps it was stolen for its aesthetic value alone. After all, Napoleon kept the Mona Lisa in his bathroom (true fucking story).
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