Drugs, Guns, and Gauguin

By Natasha Kirshina
 

    Masked villains stealing ancient masterpieces for their Sicilian mafia boss...is this the image an "art crime" inspires in your mind? Or perhaps it's a collage of headline-smashing thefts - like the recent disappearance of Andy Warhol’s Athletes silk-screens from a museum in California. But is that really the whole range of art crime’s colours or just its varnished surface?

At second glance it becomes clear that the world-shaking art thefts make up only a fraction of what's under the surface.  No bullshit: art crime involves an international industry with an annual profit roughly estimated at US$6 billion. Currently, only the drugs and arms trades possess and manipulate larger sums. In fact, all have three become inevitably entangled, as art theft on its own is not particularly effective due to the trouble involved in selling a stolen piece. In case ransom is not an option, art is often substituted for drugs or arms. There's no room for Delacroix-era romance in this industry!

Aside from stealing masterpieces there exists a more insidious crime – forgery; counterfeiting an existing work to increase value. Some forgers alter the age or signature on a piece. It is a tricky business, a typical “white-collar” crime: it leads to the mutual profit of auction houses, dealers, gallery owners – everyone but the buyer. And we – the common art-lovers – are also deceived, as in Hamburg in 2007: the statues of Chinese warriors exhibited in the Museum of Ethnology turned out to be…fakes.

Now for the dirty truth: about 90 % of art crime cases go unsolved due to poor documentation and open international borders. What's more - there are no Art Police in most countries. However, there is hope: in Italy, which happens to be the most art crime-afflicted country, the first Master 's Program in Art Crime opened this summer.

Next time an unfortunate security guard discovers a blank wall where a Picasso used to hang, or a once unattainable art piece suddenly becomes available to a conveniently wealthy patron, remember those mafia bosses looking to boost their guns and heroin trade. These days there's no time for a romantic art-hunt of the previous epochs. The 21st century converts even the elegant letters of a signature meticulously added in the corner of a canvas – into cold, hard, cash.