Amazon Cover
The Art Thief by Michael Finkel
BOOK BLURB ON AMAZON
Stéphane Bréitwieser is the most prolific art thief of all time. He pulled off more than two hundred heists, often in crowded museums in broad daylight. His girlfriend served as his accomplice.
His collection was worth an estimated $2 billion.
He never sold a piece, displaying his stolen art in his attic bedroom. He felt like a king. Until everything came to a shocking end.
In this spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, Michael Finkel gives us one of the most remarkable true-crime narratives of our times, a riveting story of art, theft, love, and an insatiable hunger to possess beauty at any cost.
MY REVIEW
Read for a book club, bought the book on kindle when it was on sale for $1.99 since the library didn’t have it.
Things that make me angry. The topic of this story, the “main character” of this true-life criminal just enrages me as an embroiderer, a painter, a mosaic worker (see the Arts dropdown in the top-bar menu for details). The line “everyone thinks about stealing from a museum.” No – we don’t. Many of us go to them for inspiration, to learn new techniques, to see the past and the future in one vision.
The researcher had a lot of questionable narrators to draw his story from. He did a good job in creating a narrative.
But, let me say, the core of this story is a tragedy. Not of the people getting caught, but the Tragedy of the Commons. To make the past available to all, to make art and beauty available to all, some people think that means they are allowed to take it from “the all” because only they can properly appreciate it. Without training on maintaining it, of saving it. And worst of all, no chance of making more.
I often say, as an creator, we need an audience. Art isn’t art until it is seen and interacted with. But the MC took the art for himself and no one else.
He isn’t to be celebrated as the most prolific solo (dual) thief of all time. Because he stole from the future and destroyed the past. His wasn’t a theft without victim. His theft stole from everyone, our culture, our future, our artists, our appreciators.
The book itself is presented typical, acceptable writing. The topic for me was emotional.
Let me close by saying, if you want … need … original art – and I say this as a person who does, BUY IT / MAKE IT. It doesn’t have to be great. Buy it from artists on the street. Go to craft shows. Don’t do a Bed-Bath-and-Beyond generic “Live Laugh Love”; buy YOUR art. Make YOUR art. It won’t be great to start, but you will get better and it will become amazing. Even one piece that no one else in the world has that is opposite your door as you enter your home each night is amazing; the piece of sculpture a young woman at college made, a scarf a young man knitted from the bench waiting for his team to take the field again. It means so much more than something taken, or copied, or big-box-store multiplied. Do art. Make the world prettier, sweeter with music, amazing with food. Dance in the soul of humanity, the dance between creator and audience.