Author(s): Mark S. Holsworth

Art

A collection of forty-five true-crime stories at the intersection of the visual arts and the Australian criminal justice system. It is divided into five parts: art theft, art forgery, art censorship, art vandalism (both the vandalism of art and graffiti vandalism as art), and protest art.The title comes from the famous art-napping of Picasso's Weeping Woman from the National Gallery of Victoria. While that crime is famous, others stories of crimes, from the colonial to the contemporary, are not well known but equally intriguing. Amongst them is an entire exhibition of forged Pollocks, art prosecuted as pornography, decapitated statues, and burnt flags.