FEATURES
FEATURES
Art
Theft
A Timeless Phenomenon
By Essam Farag
How Serious is Art Theft?
For the past century, an estimated $5 billion worth of art has been stolen. Only 12% of those have been from museums and 54% from private homes. Most museum thefts occur outside the United States and most often, high profile works of art are never recovered. Valuable art works have been the targets of professional thieves for ages, even since the time of the Ancient Egyptians, when the stealing of artifacts with cultural value was denounced as a crime as early as 1134 B.C. The phenomenon of art theft has been portrayed in the recent film The Thomas Crown Affair (1999), giving the general public a glamorous look at a major problem that affects the entire world today.
Despite the ancient rules prohibiting the theft of art work at the times of the Pharaohs, precious objects and artwork has recently been stolen from the Cairo Museum in Egypt. It is important to understand that while some of the modern masterpieces by Van Gogh, Di Vinci, and Monet can still be sold for millions of dollars each, Ancient Egyptian art pieces have been given "priceless" status, since they are viewed as cultural artifacts of historical value and not monetary value.
What is Being Done About It?
In
1991, a collaborative effort by the art and insurance communities resulted in
the creation of the Art Loss Register (ALR), with the purpose of allowing major auctioneers, collectors and art buyers to check their catalogues to determine whether a valuable
art piece is stolen or not. The ALR today has a total of more than 120,000 stolen paintings, sculptures, furnishings and other valuable artifacts on
its database, adding about
10,000 items to its lists yearly. Among the missing
art on the databse, 467 works are by Pablo Picasso and 289 are by Mark Chagall.
The protection of property found in private homes, where most robbery occurs, is under the protection of home insurance companies. On the other hand, museums - the second major location where precious artwork is stolen - have managed to develop the International Council of Museums (ICOM) that is devoted to preventing art losses and recovering stolen artifacts. ICOM regularly releases an updated list of museum objects that it claims to be at high risk of being looted by thieves. Finally, of course, there is the Interpol, which has a database of stolen art, for which the suspected thieves are being pursued internationally.
What Has Been Stolen?
The
most famous case of slumming a stolen painting occurred in 1911, when Vencenzo
Perugia walked out of the Louvre with the Mona Lisa under his shirt. He kept the
painting under his bed for 2 years. In 2001, a French art thief's mother said
that she was disgusted by her son's crimes, destroying millions of dollars of
paintings by Prugel and Watteau, that he had stolen and stashed at her home.
Mireille Breitwieser cut up the paintings, stuffed them in the trash, and threw
other art treasures into the Rhone River. In April 2003, Picasso, Van Gogh and
Gauguin watercolors that had been stolen from the Whitworth Art Gallery in
Manchester England, were found in a cardboard tube outside a public washroom.
Scottish detectives said they worried about the fate of Leonardo Di Vinci's
almost priceless, Madonna
with the Yarnwinder, stolen in August 2003 from the Duke of Buccleuch's Drumlanrig
Castle
in Scotland.
When it comes to major heists of art theft, the most serious cases occurred during the Holocaust, when Nazi soldiers frequently looted art from the homes of prominent Jewish families. The Holocaust Art Restitution Project was set up to seek the return of this stolen art to its rightful owners. One of the cases of controversy on this issue involved the American Hollywood celebrity, Elizabeth Taylor, who is being sued to return a famous Van Gogh painting to the family of its alleged rightful owner, which had been taken away during WWII by the Nazi forces. American news agencies have been covering this case closely, providing the public with more exposure to the issue of art theft.
Art Theft That Makes you "Scream"
Last August, The Scream masterpiece, painted in 1893 by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch disappeared from the Oslo Art Gallery. Two men, in hooded sweatshirts, smashed through the glass doors and ripped one of the four existing versions of Edvard Munch's priceless painting, The Scream, off the gallery wall, along with another of his works, and loaded them into the trunk of a black Audi, leaving 70 visitors and a few security guards in a state of awe. The armed robbery of the paintings in broad daylight, before scores of witnesses is quite unprecedented.
While The Scream is claimed to be priceless, it
would fetch $60-70 million at an auction, while the other stolen painting, Madonna,
could reach $15 million. Munch
Museum officials are worried that the paintings will be damaged or lost by incompetent
thieves. While few famous paintings have been sold by
thieves, many great works
have fallen on hard times.
Previously,
another version of the same painting was stolen from a different Oslo gallery,
in a 50-second night time raid. The robbers also left a postcard reading,
"Thousand thanks for bad security"! The painting was held for $800,000
ransom, but four of the thieves were caught before a deal was made. The leader
of the group was the famous Norwegian soccer player, Paul Enger, who had stolen
Munch's painting, The Vampire in 1988 and admitted he had a life-long
Munch fixation.
What Do Thieves Do With Stolen Art?
Generally
speaking, there are limited possibilities for a thief with a famous stolen painting on
their hands.
The most likely possibility is that the thief will hold the artwork for ransom, with demands for money in exchange for the painting's
return. Another possibility for the theft of the art would be simply because the
thief likes the painting and would like to keep it - similarly as was the case
with Paul Enger who had stolen Munch paintings due to his infatuation with his
artwork.
Precious art is also sometimes stolen since it is used within larger organized
crime circles.
"We know that organized criminals steal art and antiques to raise funds for other
crimes," Mr. Radcliffe said, chairman of ALR. He added that, "if cash is not forthcoming, gangs have been known to use paintings in deals for weapons or drugs."
Furthermore, stolen art is sometimes kept hidden for long periods of time until the dust has settled over its theft, before it is bargained on for sale on the antiques black-market. While this would be the optimal low-key money-making solution for thieves. Many art experts disqualify this option, particularly that anybody walking into a shop or auction with a precious art piece would be arrested on the spot, since no sensible shop owner would take such a risk to purchase it, since the piece is too famous.
When
art robbers recognize that the masterpiece they have stolen is almost impossible
to sell due to the global publicity about its status as "stolen", they
sometimes decide to try passing the stolen art off as a very good copy of the
original and sell it for much less than what would have been asked for "the
original" piece.
Finally, and also hopefully for agencies like the ALR, some thieves may eventually get fed up of waiting and decide to hand them back. This was the case with the very valuable Bouilloire et Fruits Cezanne painting (of similar value to The Scream) that had been stolen from the Bakwin Family in 1978. This painting was recently recovered after being kept by its thief in a bank vault for 20 years. "They eventually came to the conclusion that they wanted to get rid of it," said Mr. Radcliffe. However he added an important footnote that while the recovery rate for really good pictures is in excess of 20%, "you may have to wait 30 years."
Essam Farag, BA Honors (Dalhousie), MA (Guelph) is a political scientist. He is the Production Editor of the Ambassadors Magazine. Email: essamfarag@ambassadors.net
