art museums

The Amazing Art Thief

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The Art Thief is really a romance, but not so much the tale of Stéphane Breitwieser and the girlfriend who helped him steal art worth two billion dollars.

No, it’s a romance about the profound attraction of beauty and how it can be  even stronger than the love for another person–and can make someone take wildly unimaginable risks.

Starting in the 90s, Breitwieser’s eight-year haul in a handful of European countries broke down to two hundred heists that yielded three hundred works.  And he hid all these thefts in his mother’s attic as if it were the treasure-filled vault in David Baldacci’s Absolute Power.

Stéphane grew up in a haut bourgeois, wealthy French home surrounded by beauty and turned into a teen who fell in love time after time with paintings and countless objets d’art: late Renaissance and early Baroque ceramics, silver pieces, ivory statuettes, paintings on copper and paintings in oil, antique weapons and helmets and anything else that spoke to him.  He was especially fond of work from Northern Europe in that period, and unlike the “typical” art thief, he was careful not to damage what he stole.

As the author makes clear, Breitwieser truly was no ordinary thief: he saw himself as “liberating” these pieces from their imprisonment in museums and galleries.  And he wanted something more than money, since he didn’t funnel the works to fences.  He craved an intimate, in-person relationship with everything he stole.  The daring daytime thefts weren’t what turned him on, it was the glorious art and craftsmanship itself.

Remember the thief played by Pierce Brosnan in The Thomas Crowne Affair and Steve McQueen before him?  Both of them seem like mere shoplifters compared to Breitwieser.

Finkel is a masterful story-teller who makes this unbelievable story come vividly alive: it races forward, immediate and electric.  You really feel at times that you’re watching an on-screen thriller that involves a thief and the art detectives who gradually close in on him.  The courtroom drama is topnotch and Finkel’s prose is consistently lean, colorful, gripping.  His use of many sources, including interviews with Breitwieser, is exemplary.  He’s also careful in sifting various theories as to why Stéphane was the mother of all art thieves, because a variety of mental health professions had a variety of explanations.

Take this book on a plane ride, to the beach, take it everywhere and anywhere–it is a work of beauty itself with spectacular and stunning illustrations, an unforgettable story that’s ultimately about one of our deepest and most chaotic feelings: desire. ★★★★★

Lev Raphael was a frequent visitor to many New York museums when he grew up there and recently published a piece about one of his favorite pieces, Canova’s Perseus at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

A Mighty Masterpiece on the Move

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If every picture tells a story, then a masterpiece, one by Leonardo Da Vinci, must be full of stories that make for an epic, and Eden Collinsworth serves them up in grand style in her thrilling new book What the Ermine Saw.

The painting is the seductive, engrossing, and enigmatic portrait of Cecilia Gallerani, a Renaissance Duke’s mistress, holding, of all things, an ermine. It’s the strangest lapdog you’ve ever seen and has sometimes actually been misidentified over the years as just that, a dog. An ugly dog, too. But there’s nothing ugly about the painter’s execution, his delicacy, his tones that seem as fresh and magical as when they were painted over 500 years ago.

What is she looking at?  And why is she holding an ermine?  The author deftly explores both mysteries.

The painting in modern times has traveled from its base in a Polish museum around the world on loan and been transported with almost unimaginable security given its worth and rarity, one of only fifteen of Leonard’s paintings to survive.  Reading about the security around its movements, you feel like you’re in the middle of an amazing heist movie–though luckily the painting survived intact wherever it went.

How it got to Poland is somewhat mysterious as there’s a gap of almost 250 years in its history, but what’s more mysterious than that is its having survived wars, revolutions and every kind of disaster you can imagine–with only some minor damage to an upper corner.

Along the way and crossing one border after another in Europe, we get stories of love, lust, greed, cruelty, family feuds–plus Nazi madness and obsession.  There are capsule portraits of individuals you’re unlikely to have heard about, some of them heroines like Rosa Valland at the Louvre, who kept track of the vast stores of art the Nazis looted from Jews in France.  Her secret records aided restitution to the original owners and museums after WWII.

The book is a fast, stunning read as we whirl from one century and country to the next, from palaces to hovels, and all the while the small painting shines at the center, a jewel of jewels, a magnet for the very best of humanity and also the very worst.

Collinsworth has written a book that will delight art and history buffs and yes, even fans of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.  Because hovering over everything is the spirit of one of the world’s greatest artistic geniuses, a man whose legacy has affected and inspired countless millions.  To turn these pages is to feel connected to his genius, however tangentially, to be graced and possibly even changed.

Lev Raphael has been an art lover since he was very young and has visited dozens of art museums across the U.S., Canada, and Europe.  The author of 27 books, he taught creative writing at Michigan State University and currently coaches, mentors, and edits writers in all genres at writewithoutborders.com.

A Taste of Grand Rapids

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I was in Grand Rapids last week to do an interview on WGVU about my newest mystery State University of Murder. The host Shelley Irwin is a terrific interviewer because she’s so well-prepared and enthusiastic.

When we were finished, I stayed on to have even more fun. I crossed the Grand River to the Grand Rapids Art Museum (GRAM) and arrived when it opened at 10am. That’s my favorite time for any museum at home or abroad because there’s rarely a crowd and you can linger in front of a work without feeling like you’re getting in someone’s way.

I was lucky to grow up in New York Cuty where my parents took me to the Guggenheim, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, MOMA and others from as far back as I can remember. We went so often that I didn’t just have favorite artists, I had favorite paintings and sculptures.  I’ve always found enjoyment, solace, and adventure in museums and especially love encountering artists I don’t know or know only be name.  Or work by artists I admire but have never seen before.

GRAM is in a spectacular modernist building that has the feel of a temple, and it’s filled with light and attractive galleries for a collection spanning Rembrandt to Rauschenberg. Some years ago I saw a splendid Warhol retrospective there that made me appreciate the depth and range of his work, and I’ve also been to GRAM for the yearly international competition Art/Prize.

Last week, I was delighted to find a Rembrandt self-portrait engraving at GRAM because it reminded me of visiting his home in Amsterdam and all the times I’ve encountered his work in other museums here and abroad.  There were portraits everywhere that spoke to me, including the one below by Gilded Age painter William Merritt Chase.  His work has always appealed to me because I grew up in a Gilded Age apartment building and went to a public library built in the same period.  Seeing this “Lady in Opera Cloak” from 1893 also reminded me of the many Edith Wharton novels I’ve read.

Sated in one way, I was hungry in another and I strolled a few blocks over to Bistro Bella Vita and had a terrific lunch. The restaurant is in a former factory, has high ceilings, wooden pillars, exposed brick walls and a soothing color palette of orange and brown with a dash of teal for contrast.  I felt great before I even looked at a menu.

My affable server was very knowledgeable about the food and wine without being pedantic.  I started with roasted Brussels sprouts that had a sauce with Greek Yogurt as its base. That may sound like an unlikely combination, but it was delicious. I moved on to seared gnocchi which were perfect, not too soft, not too dense. House-made, they came in a savory ragù of pork and Riesling, topped with fried sage. It was to die for, truly.

I was full but couldn’t resist the olive oil cake which was airy and the lightest I’ve ever had–and beautifully presented as you can see above. Dining at this restaurant reminded me of fabulous bistro meals I’ve had in France, Italy, and Belgium, and I can’t wait to go back to Grand Rapids for another grand meal.

Lev Raphael is a member of the North American Travel Journalists Association and his favorite city in Europe is Ghent.  He’s the author of a memoir/travelogue My Germany and two dozen other books in a wide range of genres.  He teaches creative writing online at writewithoutborders.com.