• bookofjoe 4 days ago |
  • Willingham 12 hours ago |
    Sentenced to 1 year and 15 days for stealing the Mona Lisa, what a laughable punishment compared to today’s standards.(also, Picasso was accused and never convicted, Vincenzo Peruggia was the actual thief that was convicted)
    • nguyenkien 11 hours ago |
      Have you consider living conditions in prison from that time?
      • whimsicalism 11 hours ago |
        i think most people nowadays would make the trade
    • treetalker 11 hours ago |
      And to be clear, Peruggia was sentenced to that time. Picasso was never sentenced.

      Today's standards are indeed different: if rich or famous enough, you can commit dozens of felonies, receive no prison time or other actual punishment, and be sworn in as president!

      • imchillyb 11 hours ago |
        Dozens of felonious claims.

        Let’s face it, the human you are referring to spoke words.

        New York State claims the words were felonious.

        Let’s not compare theft of a National treasure with spoken words.

        That’s disingenuous at best.

        • fredfoo 11 hours ago |
          What did Hitler do besides speak words?
          • lucasban 10 hours ago |
            One of the fastest examples of Godwin’s law I’ve seen
            • fredfoo 10 hours ago |
              The trouble with avoiding Hitler analogies because of Godwin's law is that it allows the particularly cynical to emulate Hitler and avoid criticism.
          • ripped_britches 10 hours ago |
            Is this really what’s going on at HN this morning?
          • dgfitz 7 hours ago |
            Lmgtfy
            • fredfoo 6 hours ago |
              Try: Traudl Junge
        • ben_w 10 hours ago |
          Dozens of felony convictions, the jury agreed with the prosecution.

          Lying under oath was also what got Bill Clinton impeached, and that too is "just words".

          That said, the claim that this unduly influenced the previous election is, IMO, probably incorrect: that Trump is a philanderer was known in 2016, and his conviction for these offences was known by the 2024 election, and yet he still won.

          • Benanov 10 hours ago |
            AIUI Bill Clinton did not lie:

            The way I heard it, the government used a specific language for "have sexual relations with" (hereinafter HSRW):

            A HSRW B if the mouth, hands, or genitals of A touch the genitals of B.

            Any hackernews regular would notice that HSRW is not associative - as in it is entirely possible for A HSRW B to be true, but B HSRW A to be false; in fact this was the case for if A's mouth touches B's genitals; A HSRW B but !(B HSRW A).

            You can whine and plead and ask the question 4,000 times, but at the end of the day, if one don't understand logic, you might be a Republican Senator in the 1990's.

            • mlyle 7 hours ago |
              Clinton's claim was effectively that he believed the definition was not associative for that specific statement. There was also the later statement which he described Monica's statement about having not had a sexual relationship as true.

              The trial court disagreed that these statements truthfully responded to the deposition, and fined him for his misleading answer.

          • ANewFormation 6 hours ago |
            You know in the 'bad guy countries' where political enemies are imprisoned by the political establishment? They also still generally hold trials for them, and convict them, while still offering them the rights and liberties afforded to any other defendant.

            For instance in Russia, their Supreme Court actually threw out the first conviction of Navalny on embezzlement charges. The local case itself was a shit show, but what else would you call a conviction in a case based largely on the words of a serial liar of undoubtedly near zero character, who also had a financial and vindictive motivation to lie? And I'm not talking about Navalny's case there, but imagine I was. Your opinion should not change if you're being logically consistent.

            This is the reason that these trials sent Trump's popularity surging, and very possibly being the reason he won the popular vote. It seems that not only were they shit shows, but because they are seen as being motivated by the person being charged, rather than by the acts alleged.

            FWIW, this does not mean he's innocent. It just means that if he wasn't who he is, none of these cases, all launched just in time to try to interfere with the election, would have happened.

        • kevin_thibedeau 6 hours ago |
          New York convicted him for his pre-presidential criminal activity documented in paperwork. It has nothing to do with his criminality as president.
      • Willingham 10 hours ago |
        Thanks, I updated the response (:
      • gottorf 10 hours ago |
        > Today's standards are indeed different

        The rulers of yesteryear are surely grateful that, in time, even the worst sins get washed away.

        "Politicians used to be honorable" must be as commonly said across generations as "kids these days are just so disrespectful".

    • mannykannot 10 hours ago |
      I don't think it then had the near-mythic reverence it now commands, and the theft was partly responsible for bringing its current status about.
  • pavlov 11 hours ago |
    The poet Guillaume Apollinaire was also arrested on suspicion of this theft.

    He wrote a poem about the experience of being jailed:

    https://allpoetry.com/poem/14329550---La-Sant--by-Guillaume-...

    I think “La Santé” was the name of the prison. The English translation of the title loses this double meaning.

    • pbhjpbhj 9 hours ago |
      I'm not that good with French, but verse IV appears to be about guards pissing in the next cell.

      La Fontaine, I think, was the title of Marcel Duchamp's urinal installation; I suspect it might be a common euphemism?

  • lysace 10 hours ago |
    The part where Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apolliniare attempt to throw the ancient sculptures they have stolen from the Louvre into the Seine because they are scared of getting caught stealing them...

    After learning of this, I now value Pablo Picasso (the person) somewhat differently. He was ~26 in 1907. Not a kid.

    This probably explains why e.g. I had never heard of this before: https://jacobin.com/2023/06/pablo-picasso-brooklyn-museum-ga...

    • pbhjpbhj 9 hours ago |
      "great artists steal" (attributed to Picasso) after all!
      • lysace 9 hours ago |
        Great point.

        Of course, mere copying is vastly different from copying plus theft and attempted burying/hiding of the original [inspiration].

    • BlueTemplar 7 hours ago |
      Certainly not kids, but then also men only reach maturity around 30 years old (around 25 for women).
    • mlyle 7 hours ago |
      > The part where Pablo Picasso and Guillaume Apolliniare attempt to throw the ancient sculptures they have stolen from the Louvre into the Seine because they are scared of getting caught stealing them...

      Planning to do something bad and not following through is not the same thing as doing the bad thing.

      (What mixture of it was conscience, and what mixture was fear of getting caught?)

      • lysace 7 hours ago |
        No, not planning; attempting but failing. You didn't look at all of the eh, article.
        • mlyle 6 hours ago |
          I did look at the "article", and I've looked at the way the event has been described in other sources. I double checked before I responded to you, too.

          In the end, we'll never know why they didn't dump the suitcase in the river.

          > > (What mixture of it was conscience, and what mixture was fear of getting caught?)

          • tanseydavid 27 minutes ago |
            "They decide to put the sculptures in a suitcase and drop it in the Seine. *They wander the streets all night but never find the right moment to do so*."
  • mbivert 10 hours ago |
    Enjoyable news format; the drawings are a bit crude, not that much considering we're talking about Picasso, but it's more pleasant to read, on a screen, than pure text.
  • narag 9 hours ago |
    ...
    • Biganon 9 hours ago |
      Being a communist makes you a bad person?

      Sometimes I forget I'm not on a European website

      • wslh 9 hours ago |
        I saw the idea more as a reflection of a contradiction within his traits, which is also a common human characteristic. Regarding the ‘-isms’ it’s worth noting that nearly all intellectuals associated with Surrealism leaned towards the left wing. A notable exception is Dalí, who was mocked with the ‘Avido Dollars’ anagram.
        • aloisdg 8 hours ago |
          Dali was a fascist who hits women
          • wslh 7 hours ago |
            There are all combinations of people, what is special/different in Dali comparing to almost all people is that he said that himself about the violence to some women.
      • dev1ycan 8 hours ago |
        Not just that, but a community in the early 1900s...? before communism was even attempted at large scale? you don't have the "it's been tried and it didn't work" excuse to criticize him for.
        • stg22 6 hours ago |
          He was a Communist until his death in the 1970s, but Communism is a pretty broad spectrum and his beliefs moved about it during his life. His public and financial support for Stalinism in France until the mid-1950s was a bad error of judgement.
      • dgfitz 7 hours ago |
        How can one “be a communist” when the entire idea is predicated on a small central authority telling the rest of the country what to do and how to do it?

        Or did you mean “one of the small ruling elite” communists?

      • kolinko 6 hours ago |
        What? Central/eastern Europe than remembers communism definitely considers communists bad people.
  • aloisdg 8 hours ago |
    Picasso has been characterised as a womaniser and a misogynist
  • cjs_ac 7 hours ago |
    Shakespearean actor, mountaineer and explorer BRIAN BLESSED has a brilliant story about the time, as a young boy, he met Picasso and narrowly avoided saving his family from poverty: https://youtu.be/ZH4cWoetw4s?si=CjLg5P5MDrlqNFpU&t=1352
  • kmoser 6 hours ago |
    > Both men start crying like little boys, and change their stories so many times that the magistrate quickly realizes that they have nothing to do with the stolen painting. Both are soon released.

    I would have expected that behavior to make them seem guilty enough to warrant holding them until their stories are thoroughly examined.