Art Critic Of The Week (8)

While visiting the Picasso Museum in France, a 72-year-old woman noticed a blue jacket hanging on a peg and thinking it abandoned and taking a shine to it, took it home with her. The sleeves, though, were a little too long and so she asked her tailor to take 30cm off them.

The collar, though, was perfect which was just as well as it was felt by the Gendarmerie who had tracked her down through CCTV footage and the debit card she had used to purchase her ticket. It turns out that the jacket was far from discarded but a piece of work by the Spanish artist, Oriol Vilanova, entitled Old Masters which recreated a jacket worn by Picasso in his studio.

The woman explained her mistake, was let off with a caution, and the somewhat truncated jacket was returned to the museum.

Vilanova was less enamoured with the impromptu alteration to his masterpiece and was said to be struggling to come to terms with the theft. Still, the artistic temperament will always try to find a bright side. “What interests me most is the attitude of the person who took it, the gesture of appropriating it and having it remade to measure. There’s the whole idea of reproduction and appropriation that is implicit in the work itself, but taken to a higher degree,” he said.

On the other hand, what interests me most is whether a jacket hung on a peg is really art.