The legacy of stolen Picasso

When NGV bought Picasso’s “Weeping Woman” in 1986, director Patrick McCaughey stood in front of it and proclaimed that it would “haunt” Melbourne for the next 100 years.

It was stolen just one year later by a group called the Australian Cultural Terrorists (ACT), who have never been caught. They sent ransom notes demanding better funding for the arts, threatening to set the painting alight.

But as laid out in Gabrielle De Vietri’s lecture The Stolen Picasso and Activism as Art, part of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art’s (ACCA) Uncommon Knowledge series, funding for the arts 32 years later is not at a high point and most artists are in a precarious position.

Although the painting was found safe in a locker at Spencer Street Station after 17 days, protesting artists have continued to frame stunts around the painting.

Last year the Artists’ Committee covered the painting with a piece of cloth – black with a red “W” in the centre – to protest NGV’s ties to Wilson Security, which the government contracts for detention centre security on Manus Island and Nauru.

And the Weeping Woman belongs to a lineage of dissent that stretches further back than the theft.

The woman in the painting was taken as a motif by Picasso from his previous painting Guernica ­– a depiction of the Spanish Civil War that ended with power in the hands of fascist general Francisco Franco.

Picasso refused to let Guernica be displayed in Spain while it was ruled by Franco. When the dictator died 36 years later, Picasso had already passed away.

When the Artists’ Committee targeted NGV last year, it was done with the secret precision of a military operation – NGV was mapped out, a buddy system was devised and police liaison officers placed in tactical locations.

But in her talk De Vietri, herself having withdrawn her art from a venue with links to the detention centres, is arguing for less covert, more collective, action.

“The question of an art strike was first proposed by Alain Jouffrey in his 1968 essay What is to be done about art?”

“In 1970 New York artists gathered for the Artists’ Strike Against Racism Sexism Repression and War.”

“In France, where I grew up, strike culture is thoroughly embedded in work culture – artists frequently shut down galleries, theatres and festivals and cancel shows. It didn’t just happen in the ’70s, it happened across the country in 2003, 2007 and 2013.”

De Vietri’s says Australian artists’ protests against detention have shown their ability to respond to wider politics, but asks what happens when they combine this to protest their own conditions?

“Artists report being fearful to ask if the job they’ve signed up for is paid,” she said.

De Vietri laments the romanticising of the poor, tortured artist “working for less and less, undercutting ourselves and each other and in turn fuelling the cycle”.

Depicted, for example, in Carl Spitzweg’s painting The Poor Poet – an impoverished genius working alone, the man is surrounded by books while writing his next masterpiece.

It’s only when you look closer that you realise he’s burning the pages of that masterpiece to stay warm.

The painting was also apparently one of Hitler’s favourites, and was stolen in 1976 as a piece of performance art to make a point about public access to artistic institutions and the suffering of Turkish workers in Berlin.

Artist and activist Gustav Metzger called for a three-year art strike in 1977. He calculated that three years would be enough to crush capitalism, while more may be harmful.

De Vietri is not looking to cripple the system, but says the industry needs to be disrupted.

The question of an art strike is not simple – some of the questions De Vietri raises for her audience are what would be most effective? What would be noticed?

During discussion, an audience member highlights the need to connect with those workers who are non-artists but possess the skills to be considered by employers as strike-breakers.

De Vietri doesn’t sow any illusions in shortcuts, but presses that the sentiment of the 1986 theft by the ACT remained legitimate.

“It is up to us to find new creative ways to emphasise the importance of our work and the depth of our discontent,” she says.