'The Art Thief' brings obsession to life
September 30, 2024
Elisabeth Sherwin -- ensherwin@gmail dot com
Columnist
Have you ever gone to an art museum and gazed, mesmerized, at a particular painting? Did you think it would look fabulous in your home, on your bedroom wall? Stéphane Breitwieser put those thoughts into action, stealing hundreds of pieces of art before he got caught.
And what do you habitually bring to the art museum? A notebook, or a camera on your phone? Breitwieser always carried his Swiss Army knife.
Author Michael Finkel writes about Breitwieser's exploits in "The Art Thief."
It’s a good read, a fast read, and hard to put down. Finkel seems
to have a talent for finding and drawing out strange characters.
His first book, “True Story” (2005), was about a murderer,
Christian Longo, who killed his wife and three children. Then
came his 2017 book about the hermit Christopher Knight.
Now we have “The Art Thief” (2023), the story of another weird
character, Frenchman Breitwieser, the world's most
successful and prolific art thief.
Finkel wisely keeps himself out of the
story even though he did meet Breitwieser in France and interviewed him
extensively. Wise move. The writer is not the story.
Breitwieser was extraordinarily ordinary. That was his genius and
that’s how he got away with so many heists. He didn’t look or act
the part of a high-stakes outlaw. In one instance, he and his
accomplice/girlfriend, had a snack in the museum café sitting with a
hidden piece of art they’d just snatched.
Actually, it’s hard not to have some sympathy for Breitwieser, who
took artworks not because he wanted to sell them but
because he loved them. He and his girlfriend lived in an upstairs
room of his mother’s modest house. He turned the room into a
sumptuous repository of rare and beautiful pieces, which he could
view from his four-poster canopy bed.
“Everything, in total, has been estimated by art journalists to be
worth as much as two billion dollars, all stashed in an attic lair in a
nondescript house near a hardscrabble town. The young couple
has conjured a reality that surpasses most fantasies. They live
inside a treasure chest,” wrote Finkel.
Take, for example, the ivory sculpture that sat on Breitwieser’s
bedside table. “Adam and Eve,” a gift to the painter Peter Paul
Rubens, taken from the Rubens House Museum in Antwerp.
Breitweiser was obsessed with the 10-inch tall,
astonishingly detailed, 400-year-old sculpture by Georg Petel.
The book opens with a description of Breitweiser gracefully and
swiftly stealing the piece, simply by unscrewing the plexiglass
case that protected it, and stuffing it in the waistband of his pants.
He wears a roomy overcoat. He doesn’t run.
If he had only known when to stop. But stop? How could he? He
was in the grip of an obsession as strong as any addiction you
can think of. We’re talking 200 thefts over 10 years, starting when
he was 25. Breitwieser lived in France and plundered many
museums there, but also drove to small museums in Switzerland,
Austria, Germany, Belgium, Denmark and The Netherlands.
“Directors of small-budget museums don’t like to talk about
security but these institutions, rather than allocating funds for the
latest protection measures, such as tracking devices thin as
threads that can be sewn into canvases, instead almost always
opt to acquire more art. New works, not better security, draw
crowds,” writes Finkel.
But of course, Breitweiser was ultimately caught. He served time
in prison, more than once, but generally has been treated mildly
for a person who stole 239 artworks from 172 museums
throughout Europe. His girlfriend left him and never went to jail.
And, sadly, some of the most valuable oil paintings he took were
destroyed by his mother.
Breitweiser thought at one time that he could make a living as a
museum-theft consultant, but that never materialized. When his
life as a thief came to an end (assuming it has) he was bereft.
“I was the master of the universe,” he said. "Now I am nothing."
-- Reach Elisabeth Sherwin at ensherwin@gmail.com
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