That Time Apollinaire Was Arrested for Stealing the Mona Lisa

It's Bastille Day, mes amis! To observe the day, in addition to featuring Pierre Martory's "Bastille" as our poem of the day, here's a little news item from Hyperalleric on Guillaume Apollinaire as critic, collector, and... art thief? Wilson Tarbox begins his review of the current exhibition “Apollinaire, the Vision of the Poet,” showing at the Musée de l’Orangerie, by reminding us of the time the French police nabbed Apollinaire for stealing the Mona Lisa, which he in fact did not steal:

On September 7, 1911, French police arrested poet Guillame Apollinaire for stealing the Mona Lisa. Apollinaire hadn’t actually taken the iconic treasure; however, a few days prior to his arrest, he had attempted to anonymously return a pair of ancient Iberian busts stolen for him and Pablo Picasso by their associate, Géry Piéret. Picasso, who modeled the central figures of “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” on the bust Piéret procured for him, was also brought in for questioning. Miraculously, neither the painter nor the poet was charged with receiving stolen goods. If they had been, their status as foreigners in the French Republic would most certainly have resulted in their deportation. Luckily, lack of evidence and pressure from the Parisian art and literary establishments forced the police to release Apollinaire six days later — thereby consigning the episode to one of the wilder footnotes of art history rather than to one of its major chapters.

Tarbox then looks at the exhibition and finds much lacking in Apollinaire's art criticism, but admires the collection:

A room modeled on the interior of his apartment on Boulevard Saint-Germain reveals an eclectic mix of military memorabilia, African figurines, theater posters, and circus puppets. The items expose bits of both Apollinaire’s personal history and taste for aesthetic alterity [...]

Another room, titled after “Méditations esthétiques,” presents the work of the artists Apollinaire discusses in the text: Picasso, Georges Braque, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, Fernand Léger, Francis Picabia, Robert Delany, and Marcel Duchamp. Together, this impressive group makes for a stunning installation, however Apollinaire’s art writing itself leaves much to be desired. For instance, a review in which Apollinaire compares the performance of le Coq d’or by the Ballet Russes to Italian Futurism is perplexing, especially after examining Natalia Goncharova’s costume designs (there are eight on view in the exhibition’s second room), which evoke more the bright colors and patterns of Matisse; the figures invented to fill them suggest more the disproportioned bodies of Rousseau’s figures than the sweeping geometries of Gino Severini or Boccioni.

Similarly, in the chapter of Médiations devoted to Marie Laurencin — an artist with whom Apollinaire had a turbulent five-year affair — the poet is unable to comment insightfully beyond the occasional mention of the “grace and charm” of her “feminine arabesques.” The writing is awkward, especially in the middle of the chapter, where Apollinaire inexplicably interrupts his own analysis to devote the next several pages to a description of Rousseau’s work. Add in the fact that Laurencin’s slender, reduced forms, while indeed enchanting, constitute a style that is anything but Cubist, and we are left with a graphic affirmation of the cliché that love is blind.

There's much more to look into at Hyperalleric—go now!