Over at Artworld Salon, Marc Spiegler has a very interesting interview with artist Jan Christensen, whose currency-covered canvas was stolen from an Oslo gallery over the weekend (see earlier post here). Among other things, the interview points out that, since the amount of money that made up the work was equal to its purchase price, and since his dealer was entitled to a 50% sales commission, Christensen would have been down $8,000 on the piece anyway ("and that is not even including the costs for stretchers and canvas and tools and glue"). Spiegler asks Christensen if he stole the painting himself as a publicity stunt. The response: "Considering the fact that the piece was insured and that the gallery space had a fully working alarm with an immediate response from the security company (they arrived within 12 minutes), doing something like that would have been a foolish stunt if it failed. Not to forget the serious offense such an insurance fraud would represent."
Spiegler also makes a general point about art theft:
"As so many would-be Thomas Crowns have discovered, it’s very hard to resell art once it’s stolen. (I did an Art + Auction feature on art theft a couple of years back, for those who want to know more on the topic.) With contemporary art it would be even more foolhardy, because its value is lower and the channels it moves through are less opaque than those of, say, antiquities or Old Masters."
