There have been some epic, action-movie-ready art heists over the years—a 2000 Rembrandt and Renoir theft involving a speedboat getaway in Stockholm; a Cézanne stolen during a New Year’s firework explosion over Oxford; and a $500-million art robbery in Boston involving fake police officers that remains unsolved three decades later. But it was the 2015 theft of an unknown artist’s paintings in Oslo that may have yielded the most fascinating art-theft ending yet.
After two of her most prized paintings were stolen, Czech artist Barbora Kysilkova came face-to-face with thief Karl-Bertil Nordland in a courtroom. Rather than reprimand Nordland though, she asked him if she could paint his portrait. The unlikely friendship that developed over the following three years is chronicled in Benjamin Ree’s new documentary The Painter and the Thief, which is available to stream Friday on Hulu.
The story is so serendipitous that, at times, viewers might wonder whether the story was scripted. But in conversations with Vanity Fair, filmmaker, artist, and thief insisted that the relationship evolved organically.
“It was not at all my plan to befriend my thief,” Kysilkova told Vanity Fair, explaining that her original idea was to paint Nordland stealing her artwork as a way to reclaim the narrative around the incident. “But when I entered the court, when I saw Karl-Bertil there, this first concept totally vanished because what I saw there was not the criminal. I actually saw a very vulnerable, destroyed person sitting there at the courtroom.”
When she met Nordland—who was battling a drug addiction—for the portrait sittings, she was seeing the whole him. “It ended up with me painting Karl-Bertil as a person and not as a thief,” said Kysilkova. “I could see that there’s really a lot more to Karl-Bertil than just a troublesome kid. He really has an enormous personality and such amazing humor. He’s very intelligent.”
Ree said that he had been researching art heists when he came across Kysilkova and Nordland’s story in Norwegian newspapers, and initially thought his footage would yield a 10-minute documentary. But Ree tracked artist and thief over the course of about 100 meetings—with the emotional climax being a meeting in which Nordland shows Kysilkova the portrait she created of him. He is so overcome by the oil painting before him, and the deluge of emotions that come from being seen, that he collapses into full-body sobs. At a later point in the documentary, Nordland reveals that, even though he is not painting Kysilkova, he is watching her just as closely: “She sees me very well, but she forgets I can see her too.”
In addition to chronicling their friendship, the documentary tracks artist and thief on their individual struggles to overcome darkness—including Kysilkova with her journey to move past an abusive former relationship and support herself through her artwork. Nordland, meanwhile, battles heroin addiction. Both artist and thief have romantic partners, but are undeniably drawn to each other.
Asked to describe the friendship, Nordland said of Kysilkova, “She is just like my soul mate in some kind of dark way. We shared some of the same demons, I think.”
“I couldn’t say it better,” said Kysilkova. “Of course, our demons probably come from different sources.”
For Nordland, who is now a year sober and studying to become a nurse, seeing the finished documentary was a difficult reminder of his past. He is seen, at one point, evading his girlfriend to score heroin. “I’ve become sober and clean and living a totally different life and then now I have to see it on the screen—reminding me about all the shame, heroin abuse, and seeing myself like the skinny junkie with a lot of problems—that’s painful…. That’s not a cool thing [to be seen as], but at the same time, I hope people can see that it’s possible to change. It’s motivation for me to stay sober and continue to study and live the life I’m living now.”
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May 22, 2020 at 03:25AM
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How An Artist Befriended the Thief Who Stole Her Painting - Vanity Fair
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