THERE'S A CRIMINAL TOUCH TO ART

When is art theft not a crime?

Frank Uwe Laysiepen (1943-2020), better known by the sobriquet Ulay, was a German-born photographer and artist who in 1976 perpetrated one of the most audacious and celebrated art thefts in modern history, albeit as an act of performance art. In this rather uneven account, a triptych of that event, principal author Charney attempts to place the theft, Ulay’s career, and his professional and personal relationship with fellow artist Abramović in the context of classical aesthetics and to assay whether the theft was in fact a crime at all, since the painting in question was returned unharmed, Ulay’s political and cultural statement having been made. Including brief, meandering, and, alas, leaden accounts by Ulay and Abramović themselves, Charney, an art historian and personal friend, also makes a case for the “Berlin lifting” (as the theft was called) as an enduring work of art. Arguably, Charney interprets aesthetic ideas to validate his judgment, but he is not wholly convincing—or unbiased. It’s even debatable whether Ulay’s famous act was genuinely significant—outside a narrow, rarefied slice of the art world. Ulay himself resisted calling it art, preferring to call it an aktion (action) aimed at exposing the disconnect between what is revered as art and what is neglected in society, such as the poor or marginalized, as well as what Ulay saw as the suffocating institutionalization of art. That said, Charney cannot be faulted for adding that the theft “gives us, briefly, a vision of what art can still dare to be: not just beautiful but bold, dangerous, and alive.” Yet the real strength of the book—a monograph, actually—rests not in Charney’s championing of Ulay, but in his wider historical and critical analysis.

An impassioned argument weakened by hagiography.