jalissonluan

Dolnick, Edward. THE RESCUE ARTIST: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece. (2005). ****. “On a frozen February morning in 1994, two men in a stolen car skidded to a halt in front of Norway’s national art museum. They raced across the snow and grabbed a ladder they had stashed away the night before. Two minutes later, they roared off. Wedged behind the driver sat one of the most valuable paintings in the world: Edvard Munch’s The Scream.” So shouts the cover of this tale by Dolnick, which won him an Edgar Award for best Non-Fiction Work. Art theft is a wide ranging topic, much like art forgery. The author manages to cover most of the recent thefts of art that occurred in the mid-20th Century. What the book is really about, though, is a man named Charley Hill, an ex-soldier, an almost-priest, and an English/American mixture of charm and hokum. Charley, at the time, was working in the Art Theft divison of Scotland Yard, and had the reputation of knowing what he was doing in the recovery of lost art. He had a splendid reputation behind him. Scotland Yard provided Charley to Norway as an international gesture – also, on the chance that he succeeded, they would look pretty good; a plus that the department could really use. Charley worked on the case, along with an assistant and the rest of the Norwegian police force, on an undercover basis. He adopted the guise of a representative from the Getty Museum, which obviously had the money to pay some or all of the ransom demand for the return of the painting. Charley didn’t really know a lot about art, per se, but he boned up on the period, and especially on the life and works of Munch. His success, as did his successes in the past, depended in large part on his intimate knowledge of the psychology of art thieves. That, and convincing them that he was indeed who he said he was, enabled him to get in close to the real crooks. There were some tough times and tight spots that he had to make his way through, but his quest was ultimately successful. Along the way, we learn about the attitude of the world about expensive masterpieces, and what their value really means – both to the collector and to the crook. Lots of interesting stuff here. Recommended.

2023-03-06 14:05