The Flight Of Thieves

Back in 1976 I wrote a screenplay on my Olivetti typewriter. D. Descending was a tale of a reclusive hang-glider recruited by a mysterious female to rob a Manhattan skyscraper. I can't remember what they were trying to steal, but the other day I stood on a billionaire's 5th Avenue penthouse terrace installing bronze lockers for his cashmere pillows. Each one cost $3500, which was a little less than I coined in a month. Inside the apartment several museum-class paintings hung on the living room walls. I calculated them to be worth over a $100 million and called up an art dealer to tell him where I was. Dithers was a hound for the rich and famous. "See anything interesting?" The ex-investment banker and I were trying to sell a Picasso to my clients, a gay couple in Dublin. Dithers' private owned the painting. They were having second thoughts about getting rid their Picasso. It was from 1954. "There's an amazing Rothko." "I know the painting." Its purchase had broken records at auction. "Can you get to it?" "Yes." I looked south. All of Manhattan stretched below me. Such a theft would make the headlines around the world, but I wasn't after infamy. "It's two steps from me." The glass door was open. It was a ten-story drop to 66th Street. "Are you up for this?" "What?" Dithers came from a good Washington family, but money also was tight for the rich these days. "Get a truck and I'll throw out a painting. There's no security." "But they'll catch you." "I know, but you;ll escape with the painting and I'll do the time." I was working blue-collar. There was no chance of getting rich through honesty. "Prison?" "Yes, prison, unless we return it for a ransom. We'll split it 50/50" "I don't know." "I know you don't." The year was 2013. Dithers wasn't a thief. He was a rich kid in his 40s. They had no balls. "Don't worry about it. I was just joking about it. The Rothko is too big to hang in the Fort Greene Observatory." My ceiling was very low. I hung up the phone and admired the painting, then turned around to scan the length of Central Park. The view was free of charge same as a glance at the Rothko. They were both the same to me.

Marking Up Rothko

Today at London's Tate gallery a tourist vandalized Black on Maroon 1958 by abstract artist Mark Rothko. A witness reported via twitter: “This guy calmly walked up, took out a marker pen and tagged it. Surreal.” The museum reported that the defacer used a brush and black paint to mark up the priceless painting, which has been commissioned for the Four Seasons restaurant in New York. Online response to the incident has been overwhelming critical of 'vladmir's' effort, but mine is that it's just a fucking painting. Rothko hated the idea of his paintings as a backdrop for the power elite and said to a newspaper publisher at the time, “I hope to paint something that will ruin the appetite of every son of a bitch who ever eats in that room .If the restaurant would refuse to put up my murals, that would be the ultimate compliment. But they won’t. People can stand anything these days." Rothko returned his commission and later donated the paintings to the Tate in 1970. Good to see that vandals are still alive in the UK. Fuck the rich.