Hello, I’m Sara Crow, co-owner of Crow & Co. Books in Hutchinson. I’ll be talking about The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession, by Michael Finkel, a true crime story about one of the world’s most successfully notorious art thieves in history, Stéphane Breitwieser. He and his girlfriend, Anne-Catherine Kleinklauss, successfully stole over 200 pieces of art from more than 170 museums across Europe over the course of almost 10 years. All of the pieces were stolen during the day, right under the noses of both security and museum patrons.
I feel the need to preface this review with a confession: I’ve dreamed, since I was very young, about stealing art. Wistful fantasies of shoving an intricately carved veiled lady under my coat (never mind the 40 pounds of marble), feeling the cold stone warming against my chest as I saunter out past the grand colonnade. Or gently prying Rembrandt’s Lucretia off the wall and throwing her into some arcane Bag of Holding to sneak her out of the museum and past the watching eyes of the bronze avenging angel standing guard outside. The thought of my favorite art literally hanging out with me like some sort of chill bestie gives me no small amount of glee, like the astonished joy of getting invited to hang out with the “cool kids” in high school.
Suffice it to say, Breitwieser and Kleinklauss lived the dreams that dance in the darkest corners of my mind. A somewhat selfish part of me gets his motivation on a deep level. Because one of the reasons that they were so successful was because their art never ended up on the black market. Their motivations for stealing weren’t monetary–they were aesthetic. Breitweiser in particular claimed to have a deep love for the art he stole and wanted it for himself. He’s always claimed that his sole motivation for his grand thefts was that he wanted to surround himself with the beauty of some of the greatest art Europe had produced.
Even if you never harbored those wicked little whims to display a headless Nike in your living room, The Art Thief is a fascinating examination of the psychology and process that these two people who stole purely for aesthetic adoration employed to lift hundreds of priceless artifacts from museums across Europe in broad daylight from the mid-90s through 2001 (and beyond, if you read the epilogue).
The pulse-pounding series of near misses and clever thefts pulled off directly under the nose of countless guards, guests, and volunteers in museums large and small offer an engrossing read, as does author Michael Finkel’s recounting of the many analyses of Breitwieser’s motivations and his ruminations on why and how art moves even those of us who aren’t compelled to take original souvenirs home with us when we become engrossed with the experience of art. I devoured this book, as I think anyone fascinated by true crime or art would.
So if you’re going to Indiana Jones this summer and hollering “THAT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!” along with Harrison Ford, or if a piece of art has ever made you stop for an extra few seconds and live for a moment on a rainy Paris sidewalk in the 1900s or in the shadow of a timeless snow-capped mountain, you’re going to find this story and the people who so brazenly thought they could pull off such a confounding series of heists, just for the love of art (and probably, to be honest, also for the rush of getting away with it), an engrossing summer read.
