The Picasso Ransom

The Picasso Ransom – and other stories about art and crime in Australia, (available in paperback and e-book) my second book is a collection of forty-five true-crime stories about the visual arts in Australia: art theft, art forgery, art censorship, art vandalism, and protest art.

There will be a book Launch: 3pm, 11^th of March, The Woodlands Hotel, 84-88 Sydney Rd, Coburg. Q&A with author, book signings and book sales (see the Facebook events page if you want to).

The title comes from the famous artnapping of Picasso’s Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria. One of the artnapper’s demands was an art prize called “the Picasso Ransom”.

While that crime is famous, others stories of crimes, from the colonial to the contemporary, are not well known but equally intriguing. Amongst them is an entire exhibition of forged Pollocks, paintings stabbed, art prosecuted as pornography, decapitated statues, and more stolen art. 

I have long been interested in art crimes and have been building up a file of clippings and photocopies since I first heard Picasso’s Weeping woman was stolen from the NGV in 1986. That year I wrote a long essay on the aesthetic issues of art forgery as part of my undergraduate studies, but don’t worry, I won’t be quoting from it in the book. It is not an academic book, it is a true-crime book, and I now think I was wrong about almost everything I wrote in that essay.

However, my interest kept growing, as did my file on art crimes: newspaper clippings and photocopies about art forgers, iconoclastic vandals and graffiti writers. I read more and attended talks and seminars on forgery and iconoclasm.My interest in Melbourne’s public sculpture, the subject of my first book, introduced me to the theft of bronze sculptures for scrap metal.

Writing a blog is a good way of making contacts and gaining experience in an area. I found myself reporting on the accusations, first against Bill Henson and then, in more detail, against Paul Yore. As well as hanging around with Professor Alison Young, “Banksy’s favourite criminologist”, and graffiti writers and street artists.

When I started writing the book about five or six years ago, I had yet to learn how long it would take or how much work would be involved. I was sitting day after day in the Supreme Court. I conducted interviews and exchanged messages with various people, including convicted forgers, graffiti writers, defence lawyers and courtroom artists (the last two are great for name-dropping infamous criminals).

At first, I thought there might be enough crimes involving art in Melbourne alone to fill a book. From the attempted destruction of Serrano’s Piss Christ, the Liberto forgeries, art stolen from Albert Tucker’s home to the arrest of the American graffiti writer Ether, there was a wide variety of crimes. However, I soon learnt of crimes in other parts of Australia that were too fascinating to leave out. There are some intriguing art thefts in South Australia, the earliest attempt of prosecution for forgery in Sydney, an entire exhibition of fake Jackson Pollock in Perth and more. Adding up to over a century of stealing, forging, vandalising and censoring art around Australia.

So, I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing and researching it. And as a thank you to my regular readers the first three people who comment will get a copy sent to them, anywhere in the world.

The Picasso Ransom and other stories about art and crime in Australia

Mark S. Holsworth

ISBN 978-0-646-87307-7 / ISBN 978-0-646-87308-4 (ebook)

314 pages 216×140 (5.5×8.50”)

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Open Source Art

“By combining grids with everyday materials – milk crates, twine, plastic cups and stickers – in public space, the works embodied an ‘open-source’ ethic, building on others’ designs and showing, rather than hiding, how they were made. Like open-source software and the open nature of the early internet, these artworks displayed their source code, inviting the viewer to copy and remake them.” (Off the Grid, p.23)

Thank you, Lachlan McDowall, for putting forward this concept because it explains much of 20th-century art. The trajectory of twentieth-century art history, starting with the Dadaist readymades, found objects, collages, chance art and cut-up poetry, shows an increase in open-source art. And it continued with Mail Art’s use of stickers, stamps and other open-source techniques. And Punk music with its open source code on the legendary t-shirt showing guitar tablature and words: “this is D, G, A now go out and form a band”. Or, to use McDowell’s examples, street artists like Invader or Sunfigo.

Open-source art, like open-source code, is where the code is evident in the product or readily accessible and free to use. It is not a technique that has to be taught and practised. The formula for cut-up poetry was first explained in 1920 by Tristan Tzara in his “Dada Manifesto on Feeble Love and Bitter Love”. And cut-up poetry has influenced William Burroughs, David Bowie, and many others.

For there are enormous numbers of people participating in art in the 20th century doing open-source art. For it is an anarchist manifesto of propaganda by deed empowering others to participate. Open-source art is democratic as it is art by the people, art anyone can do. Why is this important? For it is a source of freedom, liberation and the pursuit of happiness, my friend. It is important because everyone can enjoy it and participate, regardless of their social status, age and ability. This utopian aspect is why many Dada and Surrealist art codes, like collage, are now used in primary school art classes.

Yet open-source art is often very unpopular; angry cries of “this is not art!” Many would be voted out if there was a popular vote on what art was. Well-known works of open-source art such as Duchamp’s Fountain or Cage’s 4’33” are frequently held up as objects for derision because they destroy art’s position of superiority. That art requires skill to preserve it for the wealthy who can afford to pay for the time.

Open-source art doesn’t require a talent for the media or training in prescribed skills, and its critics miss the point by decrying the lack of skill involved. They ignore the mental effort in creating an open source code, the elegance in coding, and the artist’s character. We must not forget that in explaining cut-up poetry, Tzara noted, “the poem will resemble you”, ironically equating personal identity with random actions. The identity of the poet or artist of open-source is more evident than the studied, trained and mediated actions of a traditional painter. Like gifts, the gift and identity of the giver are forever entangled; for something to be a gift, it has to have been given by someone. Just as a battle axe blade signed by notorious stand-over man Chopper Read means something different from one I signed.

Views of Iran and Myanmar

Three exhibitions by women from Iran and Myanmar as part of International Women’s Day is a remarkable and timely achievement for a local council gallery like the Counihan Gallery in Brunswick. A time when we need to see different views and hear different voices from these countries.

Installation view of Shwe Wutt Hmon’s Portraits of the Anonymous

In “Portraits of the Anonymous” Shwe Wutt Hmon the works hang like washing on a line. In Myanmar, it is considered bad luck for men to walk under the washing line of longyi dresses.  So they turned into a symbol of protest, slowing the military advance as they cut lines hung across streets. The works hanging in the Counihan are portraits and statements with texts in Burmese and English. Shwe Wutt Hmon is one of the founding members of Myanmar-based women photographer group Thuma Collective (see the Julius Baer Next Generation Art Prize website for more about her work.)

Setareh Hosseini, the visual artist, not the creative Canadian make-up artist of the same name, is exhibiting “I Take My City”. Memories of Tehran from an exile taking geography as a memory, holding the buildings in her hand. The universal and the personal, the public and the personal combined. These lyrical works are typical images by Hosseini, a hand holding buildings against a marble background or a sky, or another open background.

And in the final gallery is “The Elysian Fields” is a multi-channel video installation by Sofi Basseghi, the exhibition design is by Ehsan Khoshnami, with music composition by Ai Yamamoto and performances by actor Salme Geransar and courageous women of Iran on the videos. People say that Paradise is a garden, crossing over into the realm of houries, fairies and genies. Female power in nature, a mystical gateway to the other side, which in the profane world, outside of the sacred garden, could simply be immigration.

Setareh Hosseini I Take My City 2016 digital print

Increased interactions with public sculpture

I was asked how to increase interactions with public sculptures, and my first thought was: “do you really want that?” Like the fairy stories where wishes become your nemesis.

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For example, consider Brunswick Street in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, which was once alive with rock music. The plinth on which the statue of Mr Poetry perched was covered with band posters. This was the sculptor’s intention; “Post Bills Here” declares the stencil letters on the plinth. It was not the artist’s intention that the accumulated posters would then be set alight by drunken revellers, but it would happen regularly, making way for more.

A couple of trucks have hit Mr Poetry in his lifetime, but being a bronze sculpture can be repaired. After the death of the model, Adrain Rawlins, the sculpture became a memorial with the addition of another plaque. The sculptor intended neither of these. (For more on the statue see my post on Mr Poetry.)

When they are first made, sculptures are veiled. Some public statues are dressed up for religious or secular reasons. Statues were regularly dressed up in ancient Rome and Greece. The ancient Roman historian Suetonius reports that Emperor Caligula had a statue of himself that was dressed in an identical suit of clothing to the one that he would be wearing that day. Idols are bathed in milk, oils, perfumes and cosmetics. And my neighbours give their garden statues a fresh coat of paint. Hindu idols are covered in garlands of orange and yellow flowers. Statues might still be dressed on special occasions, like the Japanese Ojizo-sama or Kitsune statues with red bibs.

Melbourne street artists who have dressed up the statue of Redmond Barry in front of the State Library, or, more frequently, The Three Businessmen who brought their own lunch. At what point are these alterations and additions subverting the sculptor’s intention? When the prankster takes over the sculpture to create their own platform.

Extinction Rebellion subverting The Three Businessmen…
(photo by XR Darebin Group, 2020)

There are sculptures that the public use to illustrate the times: like Melbourne’s The Three Businessmen… dressed up in face masks for the bushfire and now for the COVID-19 virus. (I don’t have any photos of these statues as they were temporary; I wasn’t regularly visiting the city then.) The Three Businessmen… isn’t great as a sculpture, but it does work as a public sculpture. Accessible because it is not on a plinth. It presents the opportunity for public interactions, from putting a cigarette in one of their pursed lips to holding their hands and touching the hand so much that it broke off due to public interaction.

The public has an involuntary relationship with public art. People climb, skate on, or tag; some might even find it an obstruction, an intrusion, or even an object of oppression. Artists and the people who commission public art often think about increasing interactions with public art, but you don’t want all the interactions.

Generations of people may have sat on it and climbed on it; touching and sitting are the most common interactions with public art. You can see where the surfaces of sculptures are worn by their touch. Other times there are accidental interactions. These interactions cannot be controlled any more than the weather. No one wants to collide with a sculpture, but accidents happen. Nobody intends to have sculpture porn, other controversies, kleptomaniacs, vandals on ice or accidental interactions with cars and trucks. Be careful of what you wish for.

The Wild West of Australia

The world has now heard about the destruction of the world’s largest and oldest collection of petroglyphs (rock carvings) by the Woodside Energy Group (previously Woodside Petroleum) thanks to two protesters spraying chalk dust on the perspex cover on Fredrick McCubbin’s 1889 oil painting, Down on his luck, at the Art Gallery of Western Australia in January 2023. Further examination of their actions exposes prejudices about race, law, justice, culture, art’s value, and art galleries.

Western Australia has often been called the wild west, as it has many things in common with westerns. It is a land stolen from Indigenous peoples, ruled by cattle barons and miners.

The destruction of the world’s largest and oldest collection of petroglyphs (rock carvings) by the Woodside Energy Group (previously Woodside Petroleum) started in 2006–2007. Since then, the fossil fuel company has irreparably damaged the rock carvings on the Burrup Peninsula (also known as Murujuga) in WA’s Pilbara region.

The Australian government does not define the destruction of Indigenous art and culture as a crime (unless it is a tradable commodity). Indigenous culture, like the petroglyphs on the Burrup Peninsula (aka Murujuga), are being destroyed on an industrial scale, and even the most egregious incidents, like the damage to the Kuyang stones at Lake Bolac or the destruction of Juukan Gorge, only receive official reprimands or a fine.

However, it is a crime. Australia is an occupied territory with no treaty or other peace settlement with the land’s original inhabitants. Without a treaty, the land is an occupied territory where the ownership of the land is in dispute; therefore, the Geneva Convention applies. The destruction of the property of people whose lands have been occupied is prohibited under Article 53 of the 4th Geneva Convention. The situation is analogous to Russian claims to annex parts of Ukraine, a unilateral declaration that they are now legally part of another country. No, where in the Geneva Convention are occupied people, or their allies, prohibited from destroying the occupiers’ property. This does not give Russia the right to destroy Ukrainian property. Australia is a party to GCI-IV, but Australia’s word is worthless.

The actions of the two protesters, Perth ceramic artist and illustrator Joana Partyka and Ballardong Noongar man Desmond Blurton at the Art Gallery of Western Australia is the best art gallery demonstration yet. A symbolic attack on a symbol of the colonial power to draw attention to the actual crime of destroying the world’s oldest art gallery. Partyka’s damage was symbolic, as was the choice of McCubbin’s painting and the location. The chalk spray, used for marking sports grounds, would not damage the painting—indeed, no damage compared to the actual irreparable damage done to the ancient petroglyphs.

McCubbin’s painting symbolises European colonisation as he depicts European settlers in the Australian landscape. And also because it is a tradable commodity exchangeable for dollars, unlike rock art, which is not tradable because it belongs in its original location.

The Art Gallery of Western Australia is used symbolically by the occupying power, as a token of civilisation, as a venue for state functions, a beautiful decoration for the ugly iconoclasm and state violence.

WA police charged Partyka with one count of criminal damage, nobody has yet charged the so-called Commonwealth of Australian and Woodside Energy with war crimes, but it needs to happen.