The Crimes of Paris: A True Story of Murder, Theft, and Detection (27 page)

When Picasso and Braque next met, they compared their summer work and discovered that they were going in the same direction. They decided to work together, in what became a unique artistic partnership that Braque described as two mountain climbers roped together. They stripped their palettes of all but a few colors — brown, white, gray, black — for what was important now was form alone. This new style was still (often just barely) representational: if the viewer looks hard enough, he can discern the subject of the painting. But perspective and three-dimensionality were gone completely. What Picasso and Braque did was to break down their subjects into plane surfaces that reflected all angles of view and then rearranged them on the canvas, where they fought for the viewer’s attention. If they were to be put together, it was the viewer who would do it.

Supposedly, when Braque submitted his work for an exhibition, Matisse, one of the jury members, scornfully said the canvases were full of “petits cubes.”
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A reviewer, Louis Vauxcelles, is credited with coining the term
cubism
to describe the work. He didn’t expect cubism to last, but it proved to be one of the most influential artistic movements of the century.

Later critics pronounced cubism to be another reflection of the scientific currents of the time. William R. Everdell, in his book
The First Moderns,
says, “In effect, Picasso had done for art in 1907 almost exactly what Einstein had done for physics in his ‘Electrodynamics’ paper of 1905.”
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Einstein had said that it was impossible for any single observer, standing at a fixed spot, to observe reality. Now Picasso and Braque were trying to capture reality by depicting an object from many points of view at the same time.

Though it is doubtful that Picasso or Braque ever read Einstein’s work, ideas like his were part of the intellectual atmosphere that made Paris such a stimulating place. Anybody could attend, for free, Henri Poincaré’s lectures at the University of Paris or Bergson’s at the Collège de France. Anarchists, socialists, and other groups sponsored free educational programs for their adherents. And of course, anyone dropping into a café in Montmartre might hear people like Apollinaire expounding on such topics. The cubists (there were soon more of them) sought, as scientists were doing, to find a deeper reality underneath the surface reality that anyone could see. It took an artist, like a detective, to find that hidden reality.

Kahnweiler displayed some of the cubist paintings in his gallery, where they attracted attention among both patrons and other artists. Some, like Juan Gris, enthusiastically took up the new style, contributing their own visions to it, and showing to what degree the concepts behind cubism were a part of the intellectual atmosphere of Paris. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, who exhibited their work at the Salon des Indépendants, even claimed to have been cubists
before
Picasso and Braque, who responded by calling them
les horribles serre-files
(the awful stragglers).
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Kahnweiler was successful in promoting and selling cubist art, and Picasso profited accordingly. In 1909, he left the Bateau-Lavoir and took an apartment on the boulevard de Clichy. This was a real home, with a living room, dining room, bedroom, and pantry, as well as a studio. By contrast, the furniture Picasso and Fernande brought with them was so shabby that the movers thought the young couple must have won the lottery to be able to live there.

It was certainly a more fashionable neighborhood. Paul Poiret, a dress designer who made clothes for the dancer Isadora Duncan and the actresses Eleonora Duse and Sarah Bernhardt, lived nearby, as did Frank Haviland, a porcelain manufacturer who was an admirer of African sculpture. Poiret was famous for the parties he threw for his customers, and he carefully chose art that would reflect his refined sense of taste. He visited Picasso’s studio, praised the paintings, but did not purchase any.

Picasso received numerous invitations from people like Poiret and Haviland and often accepted, but he was uneasy in their company. Fernande later explained, “Artists hate growing old. When they leave poverty behind them they are also bidding farewell to a purity and a dedication which they will try in vain to find again.”
⁴⁶
Even going to the regular Saturday evening parties at the Steins’ apartment lost some of its appeal. According to Fernande, people would ask Picasso to explain his paintings, and he found it difficult to reply, partly because his French was poor, but also because he felt the work needed no explanation. He “would remain morose and dejected for the greater part of the time.”
⁴⁷
To his old friends, he admitted experiencing moments of self-doubt, as if he had run up against a wall in his exploration of how far painting could take him.

vi

As he had done before when his spirits ebbed, Picasso left Paris for a simpler environment. He spent the summer of 1911 in Céret, a little village in the western Pyrenees. Fernande, who evidently liked the comforts of the city more than he did, came down to join him after he rented a house. So did Braque. In the bucolic atmosphere, with Kahnweiler in Paris able to sell his paintings and provide him with an income, all seemed well.

Then a copy of the
Paris-Journal
arrived, carrying the story written by the thief who had stolen two stone heads from the Louvre in 1907. Picasso knew just where those statuettes were: in his apartment on the boulevard de Clichy. He rushed back to Paris, where he found Apollinaire in a panic. The news of the
Mona Lisa
theft had meant more to him than it had to Picasso. Apollinaire knew that Pieret had returned to Paris — had in fact been living in Apollinaire’s apartment. “He came to see me,” Apollinaire later wrote, “… his pockets full of money which he proceeded to lose at the races. Penniless, he stole another statue. I had to help him — he was down and out — so I took him into my flat and tried to get him to return the statue; he refused, so I had to put him out, along with the statue. A few days later the
Mona Lisa
was stolen. I thought, as the police later thought, that he was the thief.”
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Things had only gotten worse when the
Paris-Journal
editors announced that the thief had brought them a statue he had stolen from the Louvre. André Salmon was now the art critic for the
Paris-Journal.
If he learned Pieret was the anonymous thief, he would certainly make the connection between him and Apollinaire. Salmon and Apollinaire were currently on bad terms, not having spoken since quarreling three months earlier, so Apollinaire could not appeal to him. When Pieret turned up again, Apollinaire took him to the railroad station, bought him a ticket to Marseilles, and gave him 160 francs. The police would later regard these actions as incriminating.

Neither Picasso nor Apollinaire was a French citizen, and thus they could expect harsh treatment from the authorities. Fernande wrote, “I can see them both now, a pair of contrite children, terrified and thinking of fleeing abroad. It was thanks to me that they did not give in to their panic; they decided to stay in Paris and get rid of the compromising sculptures as quickly as possible. But how? Finally they decided to put the statues in a suitcase and throw it into the Seine at night.”
⁴⁹

Fernande thought that much of this was playacting. The pair ate dinner and then sat around nervously, not wanting to venture out with the statuettes until the streets were deserted. They whiled away the time by playing cards, but “neither of them knew the first thing about cards,”
⁵⁰
Fernande wrote. They just thought it was something gangsters would do, so they did it to build up their courage.

Finally, at midnight, they left, carrying the statuettes in a suitcase. But as they walked through the silent streets, their nerve began to fail. They feared that they were being followed, “and their imagination conjured up a thousand possibilities, each more fantastic than the last.”
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If they were seen throwing the statuettes into the river, the penalty would be harsher than if they simply tried to return them. Finally they decided that turning the statuettes in would be the best course after all. And so they went back to the apartment at two in the morning, exhausted and still carrying the suitcase.

Apollinaire spent the night at Picasso’s apartment and in the morning took the statuettes to the
Paris-Journal,
which by now seemed the proper place to turn in such stolen objects. The news of this latest recovery ran under the headline

WHILE AWAITING MONA LISA

THE LOUVRE RECOVERS ITS TREASURES

That was just the sort of publicity Apollinaire and Picasso did not want, but at least the newspaper did not mention their names. In fact, the “mysterious visitor” who returned these stone objects was described as “an amateur artist, fairly well-to-do, [whose] greatest pleasure is in collecting works of art.”
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That, they felt, was surely enough to keep the police off their trail. Moreover, a curator at the Louvre had examined the statuettes, which were described as the heads of a man and a woman, and pronounced them genuine. If Picasso had damaged them in his investigations, it was not noticed. He and Apollinaire hoped the entire affair would now blow over, particularly since Pieret had left Paris — though not before sending a mocking farewell letter to the
Paris-Journal,
writing, “I hope with all my heart that the
Mona Lisa
will be returned to you. I am not counting very heavily on such an event. However, let us hope that if its present possessor allows himself to be seduced by the thought of lucre, he will confide in your newspaper, whose staff has displayed toward me such a praiseworthy degree of discretion and honor. I can only urge the person at present holding Vinci’s masterpiece to place himself entirely in your hands.”
⁵³

Unfortunately, Pieret’s comments only made it appear more likely than ever that he knew something about the
Mona Lisa
theft, and the police intensified their search for those who had purchased his previous stolen goods. No one ever learned how they identified Apollinaire, but on the evening of September 7, two detectives from the Sûreté appeared at his door. A search of his apartment turned up some letters from Géry Pieret, which apparently mentioned the theft of the statuettes. The police took Apollinaire into custody and brought him to Henri Drioux, the examining magistrate in charge of the
Mona Lisa
case. Drioux told him that the prosecutor’s office had received “anonymous denunciations… stating that he had been in contact with the thief of the Phoenician statuettes, and also that he was a receiver of stolen goods.”
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He ordered Apollinaire to be imprisoned pending the results of an investigation.

Two days later, on September 9,
Le Matin
reported the sensational news:

It was not without emotion and surprise that Paris learned last night of the arrest made by the Sûreté in connection with the recent restitution of Phoenician statuettes stolen from the Louvre in 1907.

The mere name of the person arrested is enough to account for this reaction. He is M. Guillaume Kostrowky [sic], known in literature and art as Guillaume Apollinaire…

What exactly are the charges against him? Both the Public Prosecutor and the police are making a considerable mystery of the affair.
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Mystery or no, the police intimated that it was far more than a case of a few missing statuettes. According to
Le Matin
’s editors, they were told, “We are on the trail of a gang of international thieves who came to France for the purpose of despoiling our museums. M. Guillaume Apollinaire committed the error of giving shelter to one of these criminals. Was he aware of what he was doing? That is what we are to determine. In any case, we feel sure that we shall shortly be in possession of all the secrets of the international gang.”
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Apollinaire had been held in jail for twenty-four hours even before the police announced his arrest. Later, he wrote an account of his imprisonment: “As soon as the heavy door of the Santé closed behind me, I had an impression of death. However, it was a bright night and I could see that the walls of the courtyard in which I found myself were covered with climbing plants. Then I went through a second door; and when that closed I knew that the zone of vegetation was behind me, and I felt that I was now in some place beyond the bounds of the earth, where I would be utterly lost.”
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Under further questioning, Apollinaire admitted that the person who had stolen the statuettes was Pieret, only confirming what the police already knew. The investigators wanted the name of the person Pieret sold the statuettes to, but Apollinaire would not reveal that. Back to the Santé he went, and surveyed his bleak cell with the eye of a literary man: “As reading matter they gave me a French translation of
The Quadroon,
by Captain Mayne Reid, whose adventure novels I remember reading as a schoolboy. During my confinement I read
The Quadroon
twice, and despite certain shocking improbabilities I found it a book not to be dismissed contemptuously.”
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