The Art of the Steal
Dir: Don Argott
Rating: 2.5/5.0
Rainbow Media
104 Minutes
Buzzing with kinetic editing and visual tricks, The Art of the Steal is one of those documentaries that make a swift bid for our attention, foregoing dry delivery of the facts for glittery showmanship, a stream of graphics and quick clips that never lets up. At first this all seems well and good. Latching onto the controversy behind Pennsylvania's contested Barnes Collection, the film seems poised to deliver a careful treatise on the value of art: as culture, as commodity, as an easy step-ladder seat for the fame-seeking and money hungry.
This early promise, however, is squandered as director Don Argott rushes headlong into the mob, contenting himself with importunately one-sided finger pointing. We also get glimpses of the fascinating story of Albert Barnes, a pharmaceutical millionaire and voracious art collector who turned his home into an unmatched sanctuary for early modernist art, prophetically assembling what's now judged as a $500 billion collection.
Barnes, scorned by the Philadelphia art establishment of the time for buying what they deemed insignificant, unsophisticated crap, took that insult to heart, cosseting himself and his collection in a nearby suburb named Merion. Some 80 years after founding the small museum, which eschewed crowd-pleasing configuration for a more aesthetically pleasant placement of the art, the city seems rightly desperate to get their hands on the stuff.
This is where The Art of the Steal loses its way. Despite early hints, the eventual focus is not the intricate game of creative expression defined by dollars but an often-histrionic take on the ownership controversy. Museums are evil, bureaucrats are petty, and both use art only to enrich themselves. Tempering these claims, using them as entry point for bigger questions about how society approaches art, would probably make a great movie. The snazzy editing and quick pace suggest the possibility of a gripping story. But Arnott's broad, persistently simplistic treatment of the controversy only scrapes against the big issues early on. It later abandons them, and is even consumed by hypocritical inconsistencies, recruiting questionable figures to voice his side of the argument.
The reductive treatment of the situation leaves Barnes, surely a great man to some extent, fashioned into a lifeless pillar of artistic fortitude. His enemies, primarily politicians and a family of gangster-affiliated newspapermen, are weaselly, opportunistic monsters. It's a tricky proposition to paint the museum establishment as a bastion of greed and shady dealings, but the film makes a strong effort, employing ominous music, scads of highlighted legal documents and invocations of a gang of marauders pulling off a cultural super-heist.
None of this accounts for the real Barnes, the human being, who was surely employing art for his own self-validation as much as the good of mankind. His aim, to create a place where art is appreciated is veritably the same as the Philadelphia Museum of Art's. And the museum's claims, that the art is not being fully appreciated tucked away in the suburbs, that it's possibly even at risk of damage, has more validity than anyone here is willing to admit.
The myopic focus also lets off local Merion township officials, who appear as a witnesses for the figurative prosecution but appear to be the same kind of low-level bureaucrats the film has been railing against all along, individuals more concerned with the art's beneficial shine on the community around it than the art itself.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art may in fact be the ultimate villains in this case, but this would be easier to gauge if we were allowed to make that judgment ourselves. Instead they are highlighted with yellow tape and posted on cute police investigation corkboards. More interesting in persecution than examination, The Art of the Steal becomes a prolonged study in missed opportunities.
by Jesse Cataldo
