In our final episode on the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa, we catch back up with Picasso and Apollinaire who have just been arrested. We explore the truth of the theft and its perpetrator, growing tensions on the world stage as Europe prepares for war, an Argentine criminal art magnate, a French forger with an unlikely technique, and conspiracies born from the media spectacle of the case.

“Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.” - Jean Baudrillard

Some references for this episode:

Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti

Mona Lisa: The Picture and the Myth by Roy McMullen

The Thefts of the Mona Lisa: The Complete Story of the World’s Most Famous Artwork by Noah Charney

The Death of Guillaume Apollinaire by Tristan Tzara

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin

“Work of Art as Analyst as Work of Art” by Laura Gonzalez, from Transpositions: Aesthetico-Epistemic Operators in Artistic Research, edited by Michael Schwab

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2013/12/the-mona-lisa-heist/

https://www.britishmuseum.org/about-us/british-museum-story/contested-objects-collection

https://www.nytimes.com/1941/12/05/archives/karl-decker-dies-correspondent-73-hearst-reporter-many-years.html

The Mona Lisa Part II: A Commodity Appears