Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Why steal famous art?
Jaideep has already blogged the robbery of Munch's paintings. This one has brought up in my mind a question I have asked several times in the past -- what do art thieves do with stolen high value, world famous art? I mean, what is the point of stealing something as famous as the "Mona Lisa" or the "Scream"? How are you going to make money off the robbery? Who on earth are you going to sell to? Is ransom the only plausible motive? Apparently, Edward Dolnick has similar concerns.
This time around, thieves stole a different but equally valuable rendition of "The Scream'' - Munch returned time and again to the themes that haunted him - and made off with a painting whose open-market value experts put in the neighborhood of $100 million. Who would steal an instantly recognizable painting? Whenever thieves take a masterpiece too famous to sell openly - when they stole the "Mona Lisa" in 1911, or Vermeer's "The Concert" in 1990, or Leonardo da Vinci's "Madonna of the Yarnwinder" in 2003 - bewildered policemen hint darkly that some criminal mastermind has ordered the theft for his own delectation.
Not so. Wherever "The Scream" is now, it is almost certainly not in a billionaire's study. Except in movies, thieves are seldom connoisseurs. In the eyes of a typical art thief, the most dazzling of paintings is simply a multi-million dollar bill hanging on a poorly guarded wall. Those who steal art are surprisingly casual about the details of how they might turn their newly acquired paintings into money. In my interviews with art thieves, they talked lightly about "Arab sheiks" or "South American drug lords" sure to want a bargain-price Van Gogh.
Thieves know, too, that a painting doesn't have to surface to be valuable; it can be used as blackmarket currency in the underworld. In 1990, Gabriel Metsu's "Woman Reading a Letter," which had been stolen in Dublin in 1986, turned up in Istanbul, in the hands of a thief trying to barter it for a shipment of heroin. Ransom is another possibility. "Art-napping," after all, offers the advantages of kidnapping without all the fuss. No one needs to feed a stolen painting or keep it quiet. And if the police begin closing in, a painting can always be flung into a dumpster.
The one bright spot is that the greatest paintings, which are the hardest to sell, are the most likely to end up back where they belong. For criminals are foolish, as the 1994 "Scream" theft demonstrated. After a bumbling attempt to sell the painting back to the National Gallery, the thieves were ensnared by a Scotland Yard detective, posing as "The Man from the Getty," who was willing to pay anything to buy back the painting and share it with the world. Let us pray that thieves have grown no smarter in a decade.
This time around, thieves stole a different but equally valuable rendition of "The Scream'' - Munch returned time and again to the themes that haunted him - and made off with a painting whose open-market value experts put in the neighborhood of $100 million. Who would steal an instantly recognizable painting? Whenever thieves take a masterpiece too famous to sell openly - when they stole the "Mona Lisa" in 1911, or Vermeer's "The Concert" in 1990, or Leonardo da Vinci's "Madonna of the Yarnwinder" in 2003 - bewildered policemen hint darkly that some criminal mastermind has ordered the theft for his own delectation.
Not so. Wherever "The Scream" is now, it is almost certainly not in a billionaire's study. Except in movies, thieves are seldom connoisseurs. In the eyes of a typical art thief, the most dazzling of paintings is simply a multi-million dollar bill hanging on a poorly guarded wall. Those who steal art are surprisingly casual about the details of how they might turn their newly acquired paintings into money. In my interviews with art thieves, they talked lightly about "Arab sheiks" or "South American drug lords" sure to want a bargain-price Van Gogh.
Thieves know, too, that a painting doesn't have to surface to be valuable; it can be used as blackmarket currency in the underworld. In 1990, Gabriel Metsu's "Woman Reading a Letter," which had been stolen in Dublin in 1986, turned up in Istanbul, in the hands of a thief trying to barter it for a shipment of heroin. Ransom is another possibility. "Art-napping," after all, offers the advantages of kidnapping without all the fuss. No one needs to feed a stolen painting or keep it quiet. And if the police begin closing in, a painting can always be flung into a dumpster.
The one bright spot is that the greatest paintings, which are the hardest to sell, are the most likely to end up back where they belong. For criminals are foolish, as the 1994 "Scream" theft demonstrated. After a bumbling attempt to sell the painting back to the National Gallery, the thieves were ensnared by a Scotland Yard detective, posing as "The Man from the Getty," who was willing to pay anything to buy back the painting and share it with the world. Let us pray that thieves have grown no smarter in a decade.
