big brass balls

last night in paris, a guy snipped a padlock, broke a window and stole a bunch of very famous paintings out of the museum of modern art. he swiped a picasso, a braque, a matisse, a modigliani and a leger. estimated value between $300 and 600 million euros.

the THREE overnight guards on duty "saw nothing". video shows a single masked man, before the surveillance system was disabled.

the frames were disassembled rather than shattered, so there remains hope the canvases were not damaged.

while i admire the audacity, this kind of theft is so staggeringly selfish it makes me very sad at the same time. a collector, with both more money than croesus and some serious pathologies, no doubt arranged this heist. the paintings will sit in his mansion evermore (am i the only one imagining a secret room behind a revolving faux bookcase kinda set-up?), where no one but the kleptocrat will ever see them again. he cannot even share them with friends, nor boast of his accomplishment.

but the stoopid starts here:

the director of the neighboring modern art museum palais de tokyo, pierre cornette de saint-cyr, called the thief or thieves "fools."

"you cannot do anything with these paintings. all countries in the world are aware, and no collector is stupid enough to buy a painting that, one, he can't show to other collectors, and two, risks sending him to prison," he said on television.

"in general, you find these paintings," he said. "these five paintings are un-sellable, so thieves, sirs, you are imbeciles, now return them."

i realize to a parisian there are no other cities on the planet, but i should like to remind this fellow of the gardner museum theft of 20 years ago. 13 paintings, including a rembrandt, a degas and a vermeer (his "the concert" is thought to be the most valuable missing artwork in the world), plus a few other objets, were hauled off into the night and effectively disappeared. two guys simply bluffed their way into mrs. jack gardner's manse, handcuffed the guards and smashed and sliced their way into anonymous notoriety. no credible leads in two decades, and the frames hang empty on the walls, as if in mourning. despite a $5 million reward offered by the museum and an expired statute of limitations, all those pretty things remain just gone.