Marc Fennell is no stranger to gallery heists and dodgy museum dealings.
Following the runaway international success of his podcast series Stuff the British Stole, examining the, uh, "reappropriation" of cultural artefacts by colonial powers, it also then became a TV series.
In 2021 he released a docuseries called Framed, which followed the 1986 theft of Picasso's Weeping Woman from the NGV.
His latest documentary for SBS, The Mission, centres on the bizarre but true story of an art heist at a monastery in the outback.
He first came across the story via an art crime expert he interviewed for Framed.
"The crime expert was like, 'oh, yeah, what happened in Melbourne was bad, but wait 'til you hear what happened in WA'," Fennell explains.
"And this guy starts going 'well, there's a centuries-old monastery built by Spanish monks in the West Australian bush'. I feel like the moment that was said, I was like, 'I'm sorry, what now?'
"And I remember [thinking], 'this is just weird. Like, why is there a monastery in the middle of the West Australian bush? And then why is it that it had this collection of art that was thought to be worth millions of dollars?' And then the crime itself is so sort of farcical."
The three-part series is just the latest in what seems to have become a staple of the true-crime genre: audacious acts in the art world.
From near-farcical tales of fraud, heists and scams, here are some stories of true art crimes to stream now.
The Whiteley Art Scandal, ABC iview
This two-part documentary on ABC iview revisits the most high-profile art fraud case in Australian art history.
It centres on two paintings, Big Blue Lavender Bay and Orange Lavender Bay, apparently painted by Brett Whiteley in 1988. Or, they were actually painted years after his death in 2007 by art conservator Aman Siddique, to be sold on by Melbourne art dealer Peter Gant — depending on whose story you believe, of course.
The case famously went to trial in 2016, where the pair were found guilty, before having their convictions quashed in 2017.
It was a complex case and, as this documentary examines, there was no clear-cut resolution on the authenticity of the paintings.
But what makes it fascinating is the peek behind the curtain into the high-stakes world of art dealing, and the very grey area that seems to lie between what is genuine and what constitutes fraud.
Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art, Netflix
This feature-length documentary from Netflix gives further insight into the wild world of art forgery, examining the largest art fraud in American history.
It centres around one New York art gallery that unwittingly traded in dozens of multi-million-dollar fakes. The real artist behind it all? That will surprise you.
See also: Fake or Fortune, ABC iview
For more on the theme of art fraud and how expert conservators and valuers determine what is genuine and what's not, this long-running British series examines everything from old Dutch masters to junk shop finds, and there are multiple seasons streaming now on ABC iview.
The Duke
Another heist romp that feels too bizarre to be real is 2022 film The Duke, which is actually based on a true story that made huge headlines in the UK in 1961.
It stars Jim Broadbent as a working class, 60-year-old taxi driver who steals Goya's portrait of the Duke of Wellington from the National Gallery in London.
Disgusted by the artwork's £140,000 price tag, he holds it hostage for political reasons, while his exasperated wife, played by Helen Mirren, just wants him to put it back.
Big Eyes
This 2014 movie from director Tim Burton centres around the true story of an art fraud that was committed for years — but in this case, the artist was the main victim.
Amy Adams stars as Margaret Keane, painter of very distinctive artworks featuring characters with big eyes.
It was her husband, played by Christoph Waltz, who fraudulently claimed credit for her work at the peak of their popularity throughout the 1950s and 60s, in a coercively controlling relationship.
It wasn't until there was a court case between the two that she was finally revealed to the world as the rightful artist.
The Mission, SBS
The three-part series ends up taking Fennell on an investigation that spans from the streets of Manila right up to the front door of the Trump building in New York.
"It's one of these strange stories that has tendrils, just reaching all around the world," Fennell says.
"I'll tell you straight: when you make documentaries and podcasts you often find stories that, like, on one-line description, are a bit intriguing. And then the more you kind of pull the threads … it becomes more normal. You're like, 'oh, yeah, they did that for that reason'. This was the exact opposite, where it started weird and it got weirder.
"Every twist we were presented with by the people we were interviewing, we were like, 'No, that's totally implausible'. You'd go ask another person. And they'd be like, 'oh, yeah, that's totally possible'. I thought 'this is the strangest thing'."
The Mission is available on SBS from October 24.
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMiZGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIzLTEwLTI0L3RydWUtY3JpbWUtaW4tdGhlLWFydC13b3JsZC1tYXJjLWZlbm5lbGwtZG9jdXNlcmllcy8xMDI5OTY0NTDSAShodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTAyOTk2NDUw?oc=5
2023-10-23 22:10:54Z
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