Chapter Five: The Theft of the Mona Lisa
Apolinaire prompted Picasso’s interest in primitive art and the two of them would often drift into the evening discussing how primitive art was refreshing western art with new styles and forms and refreshing modern spirituality with the day to day sense of a connection with the divine that European civilization had exhausted. These influences are very strong in the few years leading up to the development of Cubism. You can see this influence in the “Three Women” where primitive forms collide with the soon to be Cubist forms and especially in the stark brutality of “Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon which was so primitively powerful a study of ladies of the night that Picasso had to turn it against the wall for many years because his poet friends could not stomach the results. It was even too modern for the band de Picasso.
Iberian statues were Picasso’s great passion at this time. He would spend hours studying these primitive Spanish forms in the museums in Paris and did many drawings of them for his paintings.
Gery Pieret was a writer friend of Apollinaire. He was younger, ruggedly handsome, tanned and he had a great artistic flair for thievery and this is how he came to focus himself on removing priceless antiquities from the Lourve Museum.
Gery Pieret shared stories of his sexual exploits with Apolinaire and hoped he would use this material in his novels and or his sexual novellas. But in truth, Apolinare was afraid of what this friend might do next. Pieret knew of Picasso’s fascination with Iberian sculpture and he also openly boasted that the security at the Lourve Museum was so lax that he could walk out the door with anything he pleased. So one day he did just that, he stole four statues from the Lourve to impress Picasso and the Art world with his criminal exploits.
Picasso gleefully bought two of the statues for his collection and easily overlooked the fact that they were stolen property. He somehow saw past the moral implications of the theft of archaeological property and the cultural loss for everyone else. For Picasso it was more important that he was inspired by the statues than it was to have to consider the morality of doing business with criminals for the pleasure of his artistic pursuit. Or maybe he just didn’t consider these things, or maybe he didn’t care to think through the consequences of this highly charged situation.
Shortly thereafter this exchange of stolen property, Pieret found it necessary to leave Paris, possibly because of some unexpected personal transgressions or possibly he needed to avoid interaction with the police which caused the need to get lost for awhile. Peret went to America to discover the Wild West. He would dress in a cowboy hat and leather chaps and carouse around the plains with the Cowboys until the dust settled back in France.
Upon his return to Paris, a year later, he went to work for Apolinaire as his secretary. Gery then visited the Lourvre again and realized that mere amateurs were now stealing from the Louvre and he decided to send a message to the Art world about how elevated his criminal talents were for stealing statues from the museum and to put a scare into all of the amateurs who were trying to steal his thunder. Pieret was able to walk out of the museum in broad daylight, with the statues under his coat and he decided that the best place to bring this bounty was back to Apolinaire’s home.
Gery left the pieces at Apolinaire’s apartment to stand amidst the magnificent clutter of other statues, pottery, and paintings added in with the heaps and mounds of books, sex magazines, literary journals and periodicals.
There on the shelves of the bookcases stood the statues, with Apolinaire’s full knowledge, and all the other poets couldn’t believe Pieret that the sculptures had actually been stolen from the Lourve. However, Apolinaire was quite aware of Pierets criminal proclivity. Pieret was beginning to frighten Apolinaire and even though Pierets schemes for criminal exploits would excite him but when Peret actually pursued him to become an accomplice Apolinaire backed off in great fear. The two men were at such great odds that within a few days Apolinaire left on a 10 day vacation and he hoped out loud that Pieret would be gone by the time he returned.
He wasn’t. No such luck. And to make matters even worse Pieret had written to the papers in Paris about his criminal talents and the lax of security at the Louvre. This shook up both Picasso and Apolinaire, as foreigners, because they knew that it wouldn’t be long before they would be implicated in the theft of the statues and the probability for them being arrested and deported was rising madly.
Picasso was summoned back to Paris, from his vacation, by Apolinaire at the end of August and he and Apolinaire gathered up the stolen merchandise and swore they would throw the lot of them into the Seine. After a night wandering around the two men could not bring themselves to throw the statues into the river and they took the treasures to the Paris Journal newspaper themselves and pleaded with the paper to return the statues to the museum for them. The two artists put Pieret on a boat bound for Egypt and against all reason they hoped that their problems were behind them
And then, just a few days later, complete disaster struck. The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Lourve and suddenly the infamous thief Pieret was now the prime suspect as he was suddenly the most well-known art thief in Paris. Very shortly the police connected the dots to Apolinaire and they arrived at his apartment to arrest him just a few days after the theft of the Mona Lisa. Apolinaire was taken across town to the police headquarters and was stripped searched, interrogated for hours and it was nearly ten days before he was brought to a hearing. Apolinaire became a complete nervous wreck and was wrenched with fear that he would soon be expelled from France or imprisoned. He was the only suspect the police had in connection to the theft of the great Mona Lisa.
Apolinaire and Picasso wanted to be internationally known as great artists but not like this.
When Apolinaire was finally brought to his hearing the Judge brought Picasso into the courtroom to question him on what he knew about Apolinaire and the theft of priceless Art. Picasso stood in front of the judge and bold facedly claimed he had never met Apolinaire before in his life.
As Picasso told this convient lie in place of the truth Apolinaire was completely crestfallen and his face became nearly gray from the ashes of his emotions burning. Apolinaire had been betrayed but he knew he had had a hand in the betrayal. Apolinaire had opened the door for Picasso to become the uber anarchistic artist. Picasso was given the right of complete artistic privilege over being a moral and upstanding citizen.
For Picasso continuing to work at his Art, in Paris, was more important to him than being truthful to the court and being truthful to his most complete like-minded friend that he would ever have.
We will see later that Picassos need to work at his Art was so great that during the German Occupation he chose to live with the Nazis, his cultural enemies, and keep on painting fully aware of the consequences of and the possible penalties of this situation.
Apolinaire recovered from the horrors of his arrest and betrayal by Picasso. But he and Picasso would never be that close again. Apolinaire began to recruit other artists into his artistic circle such as Robert Delaney, Picabia, Jaun Gris and others to the point where Apolinaire officially became the leading critic of Modern Art and he had a steady hand on its course.
However, he no longer had a steady hand on his friendship with Picasso. Apolinaire found out what all of Picasso’s family and friends would find out, sooner or later, that the only thing important to the new Modern Picasso was to continue to work at his Art and the world and his friends would need to accommodate him or be left out of his life.
Jarry’s education of Picasso was now complete.
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