by Michael Finkel ★★★★★
When Amazon released their Books of the Year for 2023, I was intrigued by #3, The Art Thief, a non-fiction account of a couple who stole hundreds of items from museums in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Having read a few different fictional heist books over the last couple of years, this seemed like the sort of non-fiction that would be right up my alley.
The book follows the life of Stéphane Breitwieser, a young man who grows up in Alsace, France, an only child and a bit of a loner, someone who never quite fit in with his classmates or shared their primary interests. From an early age, he found a fascination with art, and his parents would often drop him for afternoons at local museums, after which he'd emerge happier and more content. His formative years were disrupted when his parents separated, and his father took all of the family's modest art collection with him to start a new life. Breitwieser harbored anger and frustration with his father over the split and his monopolization of the art collection, something that would fuel the early days of what would become his life's obsession.
Eventually, Breitwieser meets a young woman during his senior year of high school named Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus, and they immediately fall in love with each other, "totally and sincerely" (as Finkel recounts from interviews with those close to them). It was around this time when Breitwieser's father left, and living through that traumatic moment alongside Anne-Catherine cemented their relationship (and Breitwieser's love for her) even more fully.
In the book, Finkel summarizes the visceral hold that art has on Breitwieser:
"When Breitwieser sees a beautiful artwork, he says that a tremor builds in his fingers, followed by buzzy, tactile vibrations that spread over his skin. It's as if an electric circuit has been completed between him and the art, fine-tuning his senses and jolting his thoughts. The feeling culminates in what Breitwieser calls a coup de couer -- literally, a blow to the heart."
Breitwieser and Anne-Catherine began visiting local museums and art installations, and it was on one of these visits when Breitwieser was struck by one such coup de couer, brought on by a flintlock pistol from the early 18th century. There were "no other visitors around, no alarms, no cameras, no guards". Breitwieser explained to Anne-Catherine that the pistol was older and more valuable than anything his father had taken, and rationalized that taking the pistol would "be the ultimate 'fuck you' to (his) dad". Breitwieser didn't want to just look at it; he wanted it for himself. And as for Anne-Catherine? She had no particular attachment to the pistol, but she was in love with Stéphane and wanted to see him happy. "'Go ahead,' said Anne-Catherine. 'Take it.'"
And thus, on a spring day in 1994, the most prolific art thief the planet has seen was created.
Finkel spoke to dozens of people close to Breitwieser, as well as the man himself, in order to construct the events of his life and his hundreds of thefts, while also including multiple viewpoints. Breitwieser also has a tremendous memory, and so the intimate details of different heists are captured beyond what any publication had previously been able to determine. Like with any recurring crime spree, there is also the growing inevitability of how this must end, with a growing assumption that the authorities will finally catch up to the exploits of Stéphane and Anne-Catherine.
This is a well-researched piece of work, but it's also novelistic in its presentation and pace of the story. You suspect you know how things will end, but you don't know for sure, and that tension builds throughout. It's a tidy 234 pages (and the last 40 are images of several of the stolen pieces of art as well as notes and acknowledgments), and so that combination of length and style makes for an exceptionally quick read. I'd never heard of Stéphane Breitwieser, and Finkel creates a multi-faceted depiction of a confounding person, one who broke the law hundreds of times, but also comes off at times as a sympathetic character who steals not for profit for the pure love, the coup de couer, that the art brings him. I keep vacillating between making this a 4-star or 5-star book, but after recounting it here, it's made me appreciate it a little more, and I'm going to nudge it up to a "low 5". It's worth a read.