Lost, Stolen or Shredded

by Rick Gekoski

  At the subsequent trial in Italy, Peruggia vehemently protested his innocence, maintaining that he had acted from altruistic motives. (The 100,000 franc asking price was presumably to cover his expenses.) He was sent to jail for the remarkably short period of seven months, during which time he was treated as a national hero. So many gifts, cheques, flowers, titbits of food, sacks of coffee and boxes of chocolate arrived that he had to be moved to a larger cell.

  The theft of the Mona Lisa, and its repatriation, was claimed as an altruistic act, though this was nonsense. Peruggia stole the picture to make money, just as Leonardo had parted with it for the same reason. But the public response to Peruggia’s justification for the theft was revealing, and funny. For however brief a moment, the Mona Lisa had come home, and throngs of people were as delighted as Greeks might be upon the return of the Elgin Marbles.

  But it could not last, and the Mona Lisa soon made her slow way back to her adoptive home, stopping at a museum or two on the way to elicit the admiration of tens of thousands of Italians. Crowds arrived at the railway stations through which she travelled, hoping to catch a final glimpse of the lady. If she was leaving Italy for the last time, at least one could say goodbye, maybe take a picture. The assembled throng was largely silent and reverent, and one cannot avoid juxtaposing the image, almost a century later, of Princess Diana’s body being carried up the motorway to her resting place on the island at Althorp, as mournful crowds wished her a good final journey.

  In the view of the Director of the Uffizi, she had never been stolen, nor even kidnapped. His view was that she had eloped, and tried to come home. She always was a devious lady: surely that tricky Renaissance smile tells you that. Indeed, Peruggia, in one of the various and contradictory stories that he gave with regard to his motives, claimed that he had gone into the Louvre to steal some other painting, but that as he passed her the Lady smiled seductively at him. Take me! Perhaps she fancied him? Or was she merely looking for a way out? Women chained to uncongenial destinies often choose odd bedfellows to make their escape.

  2

  Possession and Dispossession in New Zealand: The Theft of the Urewera Mural

  Lake Waikaremoana is unknown to most visitors to New Zealand, who are more likely to be drawn by obvious and accessible sites, by Lake Taupo, Hawkes Bay, Milford Sound or the Bay of Islands. New Zealanders are quietly pleased by this, and like to regard this isolated spot in the Urewera National Park as a secret, and a treasure. (The web site describes the lake as ‘New Zealand’s Best Kept Secret’.) The lakeside facilities are rudimentary, which Kiwis also like, though there is – or was – a Visitors’ Centre, a campsite and a few chalets for rent, which are all primary colours, unpretentious building materials and acute angles, comfortable enough for a few nights by the water. The effect of the buildings is smart, simple and quietly memorable, characteristic hallmarks of the work of the highly regarded Maori architect John Scott.

  When I first stayed at the lake, I was immediately struck – silenced almost – by the eerie quiet, the unexpected psychic weight of the place. No sounds of souped-up motor boats or jet skis on the lake – they are forbidden – but hardly any sounds of people either. Even the children of visitors are hushed, as if acceding to some ancient imperative that issues from deep within the landscape. Round the lake, native bush – the Kiwi name for the indigenous forest – rises, and is reflected in the waters as an ebony sheen. Dark green, black. It is a sombre place, with a quiet gravitas that speaks to something deep in the national consciousness.

  The site is administered by the Department of Conservation, though the John Scott-designed Visitors’ Centre is now closed and has been replaced by a temporary building. The major display at the original Centre, the modest facade of which did not hint at the treat to come, was an immense (18 × 5½ feet) painting on canvas by Colin McCahon – ‘the Urewera mural’ – which dominated the interior with its sombre imagery. Black, mostly black. Bit of dark green too, and a few ochre notes for the painted inscriptions, for which the artist was famous. McCahon was already recognised as New Zealand’s greatest artist when the painting was commissioned in 1975 to hang in the newly built Centre. The painter was asked to portray ‘the mystery of man in the Urewera’, and the result has come to be regarded, for reasons both of its intrinsic quality and its remarkable history, as New Zealand’s most famous painting. When I first saw it, it seemed overwhelmingly to catch the spirit of the place, and though its complex political implications were lost on me, the mural had a satisfying authority that spoke of serious matters, seriously addressed.

  From its very first appearance it had been a controversial picture, which offended the complex and often contradictory local sensibilities both by what it said and by what it left out. To understand the depth of feeling involved, you need to know something of the history of the region and of the dispossession of the Tuhoe (‘People of the Mist’), who have lived there for centuries before the coming of the Pakeha, or European settlers.

  ‘It’s a painful love, loving a land’: Colin McCahon’s Urewera Mural.

  New Zealand’s founding document is the Treaty of Waitangi between the British Crown and Maori. The rangitira (or chiefs) of most Maori tribes signed the treaty as copies were carted round the country in 1840. Most significantly, however, the Tuhoe did not sign, and were in fact not offered the opportunity.

  The Colonial Secretary’s intentions leading to the Treaty were both clear and honourable:

  All dealings with the Aborigines for their Lands must be conducted on the same principles of sincerity, justice, and good faith as must govern your transactions with them for the recognition of Her Majesty’s Sovereignty in the Islands. Nor is this all. They must not be permitted to enter into any Contracts in which they might be the ignorant and unintentional authors of injuries to themselves. You will not, for example, purchase from them any Territory the retention of which by them would be essential, or highly conducive, to their own comfort, safety or subsistence. The acquisition of Land by the Crown for the future Settlement of British Subjects must be confined to such Districts as the Natives can alienate without distress or serious inconvenience to themselves. To secure the observance of this rule will be one of the first duties of their official protector.

  Sadly, it didn’t work straight away. For about thirty years, from 1843, a series of brutal wars were waged, increasingly alienating laws were passed, and punitive land confiscations were made, to assist the new European immigrants flooding the country in search of land.

  Fast forward to the present, and the lasting grievances of Maori relating to the Treaty are subject to an ongoing forensic examination by the Waitangi Tribunal, established in 1975, the longevity and complexity of whose deliberations make Kafka’s jurists in The Trial look simple and expeditious souls. The Tribunal has issued two massive reports into claims relating to the Urewera region, and the Tuhoe are in the process of attempting to negotiate a settlement that they hope will include the restoration to them of 212,000 hectares of land within the Urewera National Park, which is certainly a highly contentious claim.

  The Tribunal was unequivocal:

  The report also examines the confiscation of Tuhoe land in the 1860s by the Crown. The confiscation was designed to punish other iwi [tribes] but it also included much of Tuhoe’s best land. No land was ever returned to Tuhoe, even though the Crown had not intended to punish them. Largely in response to this, some Te Urewera iwi supported Te Kooti in attacks on Mohaka and other places in 1869, with about 80 Maori and Pakeha being killed. The Crown responded by sending an armed force into Te Urewera, killing non-combatants and destroying homes, food supplies, and taonga. Many people died, either as casualties or from hunger and disease, and this created a lasting legacy of pain and grievance.

  The Tuhoe have continued to suffer, many of them feel, the disenfranchisement of an occupied people, the deprivation and loss of cultural identity. They are not, they claim, New Zealanders, and many yearn for the creation of
a separate Tuhoe nation.

  McCahon’s mural makes explicit reference to these events and aspirations, and incorporates references to Tuhoe history and mythology. But the wording of the first version of his painted inscription had been controversial, and various alterations which in the artist’s view would ‘glorify’ the Tuhoe were suggested and rejected. Though sympathetic to the Tuhoe cause, McCahon was reluctant to accept multiple changes of wording which would affect not merely the meaning of the inscription but the formal balance of the painting itself. After almost a year of negotiation with the Urewera National Park Board, McCahon announced he was withdrawing the picture and would sell it through the art trade instead. He first offered to create a replacement mural with the revised wording, but eventually concurred and made the minimal suggested changes: ‘It’s not a replacement but a rewrite … a bit messy as I guessed it would be but it should be okay.’ After over a year of negotiations, the picture was at last in the right place for more or less the right reasons.

  The ‘messy’ inscriptions are in both Maori and English, the most explicit and striking of which fills the bottom half of the right-hand panel, and explicitly states ‘TUHOE/ UREWERA/THEIR LAND’, below which are references to the Maori prophets Rua and Te Kooti, the warrior leader and founder of the Ringatu Church, and the subject of Maurice Shadbolt’s excellent novel Season of the Jew. The left panel has a long inscription against the backdrop of a darkening sky. The centre panel contains a huge, creamy ochre tree, which stands like a sentinel, with the words ‘TANE’ (‘God of the forest’) and ‘ATUA’ (‘God’) at either side of the base, and there are further inscriptions in the green black hills that traverse the whole work.

  On 5 June 1997 the Urewera mural was stolen from the Visitors’ Centre. It happened in the middle of the night, quickly, a typical smash and grab, as if it had been a jar of sweets in a shop window. In the space of only two minutes the Centre was broken into and the alarm went off, the burglars entered the premises, set up a ladder and ripped the mural off the wall, raced back to their car and made their escape.

  How can you take a picture off a wall so quickly and efficiently? In the case of the Mona Lisa, you had to have the professional know-how. But the McCahon mural was merely tacked to a board along the top edge, and easily enough removed from it. The method of its presentation might suggest some lack of professional competence and respect, but it was how McCahon designed the painting to be displayed. (In any case this was an improvement on an earlier period, in which the picture had been rolled up on top of a former Director’s wardrobe, and exhibited in its place was … a map of New Zealand.)

  How could anyone accomplish such a theft without inflicting significant damage? What could you do with the painting? Roll it up, or fold it, and stuff it into a car boot? Not likely to do it much good. But, according to Dame Jenny Gibbs, New Zealand’s most important art collector and the holder of the finest McCahon collection in private hands, there was still reason to hope. ‘McCahon’, she explained, ‘worked on heavy-duty canvas, and painted with normal house paints. The pictures are very resilient – I never hesitate to loan mine for exhibitions, whereas with artists who use less durable materials I am more circumspect.’

  By the time the Park’s area manager, Glenn Mitchell, got himself out of bed and hustled round to the Centre from his nearby cottage, the picture and thieves were gone. But there aren’t many places to vanish to down at the lake. You can’t speed on the unlit rustic byways, which New Zealanders call ‘metal’ roads, as they are made up of loose stone chippings. One phone call, five minutes after the theft, and both the Department of Conservation and the police were on their way to set up road-blocks. There could be no escape.

  Only a damn fool could have hoped to get away with such a theft, unless they had a boat, a helicopter or at least some cunning plan to transfer the booty to an accomplice. The thieves had none of the above, but they got away with it anyway, because there is, from a burglar’s point of view, no beating good old investigative incompetence. Forty-five minutes later – it was now two in the morning, so there wasn’t much traffic – two Maori in a beaten-up van drew up to the road-blocks. The middle-aged driver, with a traditional Maori fully tattooed face (‘moko’), pulled over as the van was waved to the side of the road. In the back a teenaged boy was sleeping on a mattress. Just off for a little spin, the driver explained, noting that his chum had had enough and nodded off. The Department of Conservation had no legal right to search the van, but the police did so in a cursory manner, before waving it through. The McCahon mural lay undetected under the mattress. It was not seen again for fifteen months.

  It didn’t take much time to find the (now burned-out) van and to identify the driver and his sleeping passenger. Within three weeks a reformed drug addict and dealer named Te Kaha and the seventeen-year-old Laurie Davis, who had a string of burglary charges pending, appeared in court. The police had them bang to rights, the only thing lacking being evidence. Nothing connected them to the burning of the van, to the Visitors’ Centre or to the painting. The case foundered and was dropped.

  The Te Urewera region is a sparsely populated portion of the central eastern North Island, largely inhabited by the Tuhoe, with scattered small, demoralised settlements, low educational standards and considerable economic deprivation. The most profitable local cash crop is marijuana, a good deal of which is smoked before it hits the wider markets. The local people may be united by familial and tribal fealty under the influence of the local meeting centres, known as Marae, but many are often broke and desperate. The area has become a breeding ground for Tuhoe activists, some of them patient and well organised, others of whom preach violent revolution to bands of stoned teenagers ready to contemplate a fight, only not just now. Local police, often accused of racism by the locals, keep an eye out, but not much tends to happen.

  No ransom for the painting was demanded, no manifesto issued in the name of its new possessors. But if the thieves were curiously silent, the rest of the nation was resoundingly horrified. The theft was front-page news for weeks. If the picture was gone, who had it? And, more importantly from the point of view of its possible retrieval, why? Though suspicion had fallen upon Tuhoe activists, there was nothing conclusively to link any of them to the crime. Even Tame Iti, a local firebrand promoter of both himself and his many causes, was uncharacteristically silent on the issue, which only added to the general suspicion that he had something (a painting perhaps) to hide. Born on a railway train in 1952, Iti has been travelling and fellow-travelling, ever since. As a young man, he protested against apartheid and the Vietnam War, journeyed to China to take in the Cultural Revolution, admired the Black Panthers and joined the New Zealand Communist Party, before settling down – having picked up a few insurrectionary tips – to the cause of Tuhoe nationalism.

  With his full facial moko, which he has described as ‘the face of the future’, and a penchant for exposing his buttocks in public as a form of insult, Iti has provoked and self-displayed like the performance artist he was eventually (if not for long) to become. He has run for Parliament three times, and once fired a shotgun at the national flag in order to make the Pakeha ‘feel the heat and smoke’ as the Tuhoe have for almost two hundred years.

  You want suspects? You’ve got them. The increasingly frustrated Detective Inspector Graham Bell, head of the police investigating the theft – in the imaginatively named ‘Operation Art’ – concentrated his efforts on interrogating the locals. Most knew that Te Kaha had been involved, but no one was willing to say so. Everyone in the area was questioned repeatedly, reports on suspicious meetings and journeys were logged, phones were (by all accounts) tapped. Nothing came of it, except that the locals felt harassed, and feeling against the police, always inflammable, heated up dangerously. If they knew where the painting was hidden, they were less and less likely to say so, or even to wish to safeguard it.

  More or less a year had now passed: if the Tuhoe had the picture, surely it was time for the
m to say so, to indicate where it was – if it still existed – and to make a demand of some sort? When the demand came, though, it was from a surprising source. In June 1998 a criminal lawyer named Christopher Harder, who had a well-earned reputation for seeking the limelight, contacted Jenny Gibbs, hoping to arrange a meeting with Tame Iti and Te Kaha to negotiate a return of the picture. Gibbs was a shrewdly chosen intermediary: regularly described as the most influential woman in New Zealand, she is a patron of the arts as well as an art collector, and has a number of talented and influential Maori friends, including the writer Witi Ihimaera and the painter Ralph Hotere, and a history of fighting for the arts. And – this was apparently crucial – she also had access to her (separated) husband’s helicopter.

  She was aware that a member of the staff of New Zealand’s National Gallery, Te Papa in Wellington, had already made a secret visit to the Ureweras in the hope of negotiating the picture’s return. But it was unclear what the two Maori actually wanted. Money was mentioned but never actively pursued, perhaps because this would have catapulted their actions from the political to the merely mercenary. What was perfectly clear, though, was that the thieves had never anticipated such a fuss, and had badly under-estimated the importance (and value) of the mural. They were now seeking a way to give it back, save face and stay out of jail.

  The two Maori soon met Gibbs at her house (really a private art gallery) on Paritai Drive, which is one of Auckland’s prime locations, with views over Okahu Bay, where she lives with three devoted and disarmingly yappy small poodles, who suffer from the mass delusion that they are capable of protecting her and her treasures. Gibbs had insisted from the outset that, if there was any question of a ransom, she would not be party to any negotiations, but took immediately to her Maori visitors: ‘I looked at their eyes and decided that they were people I could trust’, she said. This testified (depending on who you asked) either to her considerable acuity or to breath-taking gullibility. It was going to be interesting to find out which.