Art Theft and the Same Old Song

Sigh. It's happened again. Last week more art was stolen from a Hogtown gallery. This time the thieves made off with two paintings from the Group of Seven's Frank Johnston and Arther Lismer, and a painting by renowned Montreal-born artist the late Sylvia Lefkovitz. The haul is worth an estimated $50,000.

I've blogged before, and I expect - unfortunately - to have to sound off again, that art thieves are no different from bank robbers and should be treated as such. They're sordid and nasty, not suave Cary Grant types stealing for kicks and the money to impress impossibly statuesque blondes. They are bandits only interested in a quick buck, and who couldn't care less about the damage inflicted on a country's art heritage, or the financial loss to a collector, a gallery or a museum (or the taxpayer, if you prefer). Of course, buyers of stolen art are every bit as bad as the thieves.

According to a Toronto Star article, the gallery's owner doesn't expect the stolen art to reappear any time soon, and David Silcox, president of Sotheby's Canada, has the same opinion, saying the works will likely end up in a private Canadian collection. That's because, says Silcox, the stolen paintings are too well known to be sold on the open market and because there is virtually no interest (the italics are mine) in Group of Seven works on the international art market.

That's a dismaying and a confusing state of affairs. Last fall Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven was a critical and popular success at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London. Critic Brian Sewell, writing in the (London) Evening Standard, said, "...these are painters who knew how to handle paint and colour, and to turn a small sketch executed on the spot into a high-pitched studio masterpiece." Elsewhere in his report, Sewell writes of painterly echoes of, among others, Van Gogh and Monet, illustrious company indeed, even if it's tenuous.

Or, are the critics wrong and the Globe and Mail's resident contrarian Margaret Wente right when she says Thomson and the Group of Seven are of domestic or regional interest only? I'll side with the critics. Like many of this country's cultural endevours, it's not the work, per se, that's lacking, but the confidence, the chutzpah, to promote it. And we've all heard that tune before.

Don't Steal This Art or This Book

Joshua Knelman's new book Hot Art - Chasing Thieves and Detectives through the Secret World of Stolen Art (Douglas & McIntyre) is being reviewed all over and I'm pleased for him given the legwork he put in to write it. Philip Marchand in the National Post (see blog September 16, 2011) offered high praise, with Iris Nowell in the Globe criticizing JK for his stylistic approach and for leaving out certain types of art theft. James Macgowan in the Sunday Star also praised the book and had me nodding in agreement until the final paragraph. Then he lost me as surely as I lose lures every fishing season. Macgowan acknowledges that the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad, for example, was a terrible act, but goes on to ask if the theft of a Group of Seven painting owned by "Sir-Lots-of-Money" affects anyone but the owner. Really? I mean, really? (as SNL's Seth Myers and Amy Poehler might say.)

Of course the theft of cultural property affects everyone, irrespective of who owns it. That's because art, even privately owned and displayed art, is part of a country's heritage and is thus, at one remove, a part of everyone, whether it's Canadians and their kinship with Franklin Carmichael and Alex Colville or the English and theirs with Constable and Turner, or the Italians with Tintoretto and Caravaggio, and so on. A legitimate owner may lend or donate a work or works to a gallery or exhibition or other public space. On a wall in an office in Hogtown there's a gloriously vivid acrylic by Ted Harrison that the good doctor who inherited it decided to share with his patients. It's hard to imagine a buyer of stolen art allowing his ill-gotten purchases to travel beyond his own four walls. Those who steal art are thieves and no different from bank robbers and should treated as such, despite what Macgowan thinks about spending our money on pursuing "real" criminals instead.

Hot Art in Hogtown

In July I wrote a story on art theft for the National Post that was as stimulating and intriguing as anything I've written for some time. One of the sources I spoke to was Joshua Knelman, who likely knows as much about purloined paintings - all on the up and up, of course - as anyone here in Hogtown. He should, after all, since he's spent the last few years researching the subject. The result of his work is a new book from Toronto publishers Douglas & McIntyre called Hot Art - Chasing Thieves and Detectives through the Secret World of Stolen Art. Josh will be promoting the book at a Globe and Mail/Ben McNally Books Brunch Sept. 18 and attending a private party the same day. Hot Art comes out officially Sept. 24 and the timing couldn't be more perfect. I have a few months to put away some cash to buy a copy or two as Christmas presents.