My Mourning Jacket

I'm a charter member of the "If It Ain't Yours, Leave It Alone" club, and I wish to extend membership in our ranks to an unidentified 72-year-old woman in Paris.

She went to the Picasso Museum (you get a lot of side-eye there) in Paris, and while enjoying the “Picasso à l’image” exhibition, which is all about showing photos of old Pablo, she came upon a denim jacket hanging on the wall next to a picture of Picasso on the wall.

So she figured someone had left it behind, and instead of leaving it there to be sought by its rightful owner, don't you know she ripped that jacket off!? Took it on home and even had a tailor alter it so it fit her just ever so.

But the jacket was not left behind by any Pierre, Paul ou Jacques...no no no! It was part of artist Oriol Vilanova’s “Old Masters” series. The jacket's pockets were full of photos taken by Vilanova of postcards and examples of Picasso's works around Europe. It was supposed to be "interactive" "art," because museumgoers were supposed to take a picture from the stack of pictures of Picasso's art in a jacket hanging on the wall of a museum showing pictures of Picasso's face.

In the art world, that is the ne plus ultra - the grand slam of arty artfulness. The artist intended it as a statement on mass production.

In third grade, I made an alligator out of clay, painted it, and gleefully gave it to my mother after the teacher fired it in a kiln, so as to make a statement about tiny alligators being displayed on the breasts of polo shirts. I was way ahead of my time in terms of artistic statements.

 

“When the museum told me the work had been stolen, I was surprised, but it was impossible to envisage the story that followed,” Vilanova told the museum staff.

Immediately, trained French art crimebusters swung into action, reviewing the surveillance videos, and seeing clear images of the woman stuffing le jacket into her sac. 

Their years of training and honing deductive skills paid off when the woman came walking back into the museum again in a couple of days. With almost machinelike precision, they said, "There she is!" and she was questioned about it. 

If she had any sense of humor, she would have said she came back looking for the pants to go with her new jacket. But no. The police searched her home, finding the jacket with its sleeves now each a foot shorter.

She says she had no idea the jacket was not up for grabs. Vilanova, who has been showing the jacket in a traveling exhibit since 2017, said he never would have brought it to that museum if he thought he'd be the victim of a crime. 

And the police let the woman go with a warning. She told them she was passionate about art, and also mentioned that she had previously been placed under guardianship.

Just as the jacket should have been!

French toast, anyone?