The Vanishing Brief - 10/24/25

The Accidental Picasso Thief

In this episode, Olivia tells Emma the story of The Accidental Picasso Thief - a story about family, fate, coincidence, and adventure - all orbiting around a stolen Picasso painting. Special thanks to Whit Rummel for reaching out to us and letting us tell his family story. "Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run, but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant.” - Hunter S. Thompson Sources Rummel, W., & Charney, N. (2026). The accidental picasso thief: The true story of a reverse heist, outrunning the FBI, and fleeing the Boston Mob. Bloomsbury Academic.  https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article312441876.html https://themobmuseum.org/notable_names/whitey-bulger/

My Kid Could Paint That

In this episode, Emma tells Olivia the story of toddler painter extraordinaire Marla Olmstead in the early aughts. This story is intertwined with an examination of the documentary about Marla and her family, My Kid Could Paint That, directed by Amir Bar-Lev and released in 2007. We discuss the question of whether four year old Marla or her father Mark were completing her prolific abstract paintings, as well as the question of whether or not a documentary can ever tell us the truth. We explore the idea of an uncorrupted mind in childhood, the current age of child stars and toddler TikTok-ers, and the tragedy of prodigy.  “It's not that there's no such thing as truth. But we come to like and trust a certain story… not necessarily because it's the most, absolutely truthful… but because it's a thing that we tell ourselves which makes sense of the world, at least at this moment.” -Michael Kimmelman, My Kid Could Paint That Follow us on  http://instagram.com/vanishingpointpod [http://instagram.com/vanishingpointpod] https://vanishingpointpod.substack.com/ [https://vanishingpointpod.substack.com/] Sources My Kid Could Paint That. Roma: Sony pictures home entertainment, 2008.  Morgan, Douglas N. “Must Art Tell the Truth?” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 26, no. 1 (1967): 17–27. https://doi.org/10.2307/429241. Varnedoe, Kirk. “Your Kid Could Not Do This, and Other Reflections on Cy Twombly.” MoMA, no. 18 (1994): 18–23. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4381274. https://www.filminquiry.com/my-kid-could-paint-that-auteur/ [https://www.filminquiry.com/my-kid-could-paint-that-auteur/] https://imagejournal.org/2008/09/05/marla-really-paint-matter/ [https://imagejournal.org/2008/09/05/marla-really-paint-matter/] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/movies/25kid.html [https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/25/movies/25kid.html]

The Knoedler Gallery Fraud Part III: A Trial of Prestige

In our Knoedler Gallery Fraud series finale, we discuss the end of the Knoedler Gallery, the arrest of one of the fraudsters, and explore the De Sole lawsuit extravaganza. We ask the question of what authenticity means within the art world and how important it truly is, from the walls of a prestigious gallery in New York to the Chinese village of Dafen where art reproductions were famously made by the hundreds. And of course, we armchair analyze the notorious Ann Freedman.  “And so art is dead, not only because its critical transcendence is gone, but because reality itself, entirely impregnated by an aesthetic which is inseparable from its own structure, has been confused with its own image.” - Jean Baudrillard, Simulations Follow us on  http://instagram.com/vanishingpointpod [http://instagram.com/vanishingpointpod] https://vanishingpointpod.substack.com/ [https://vanishingpointpod.substack.com/] Sources https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/arts/fbi-art-crime-team.html [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/13/arts/fbi-art-crime-team.html] https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/visual-arts/david-mirvish-acknowledges-fakes-in-new-york-art-fraud-scandal/article_84b3ab29-c05b-5e0d-9a1d-b23b7a80e4fa.html [https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/visual-arts/david-mirvish-acknowledges-fakes-in-new-york-art-fraud-scandal/article_84b3ab29-c05b-5e0d-9a1d-b23b7a80e4fa.html] https://maddoxgallery.com/news/454-what-is-blue-chip-art/ [https://maddoxgallery.com/news/454-what-is-blue-chip-art/] https://itsartlaw.org/art-law/wywh-knoedler-trial-uncut-week-1/ [https://itsartlaw.org/art-law/wywh-knoedler-trial-uncut-week-1/] https://www.clm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/7830293_1-1.pdf [https://www.clm.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/7830293_1-1.pdf] Varga, Somogy and Charles Guignon, "Authenticity", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = . https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/what-if-readers-like-ai-generated-fiction [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-weekend-essay/what-if-readers-like-ai-generated-fiction] https://news.artnet.com/market/knoedler-fraud-trial-jack-flam-martha-parrish-419594 [https://news.artnet.com/market/knoedler-fraud-trial-jack-flam-martha-parrish-419594] https://brooklynrail.org/2014/03/art/the-held-essays-on-visual-artin-defense-of-faking-it/#_edn1 [https://brooklynrail.org/2014/03/art/the-held-essays-on-visual-artin-defense-of-faking-it/#_edn1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/opinion/sunday/in-praise-of-art-forgeries.html [https://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/03/opinion/sunday/in-praise-of-art-forgeries.html] https://hyperallergic.com/why-chinas-infamous-copycat-town-now-invests-in-original-artworks/ [https://hyperallergic.com/why-chinas-infamous-copycat-town-now-invests-in-original-artworks/] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-chinas-art-market-is-evolving-from-knockoffs-to-new-works [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-chinas-art-market-is-evolving-from-knockoffs-to-new-works] https://news.artnet.com/art-world/dafen-village-china-replicas-2672642 [https://news.artnet.com/art-world/dafen-village-china-replicas-2672642]

The Vanishing Brief - 10/24/25

This week in The Vanishing Brief, we discuss some recent headlines in the art crime world including the recent Louvre Heist, a Picasso painting gone missing in transit, and a Nazi-looted painting discovered in an Argentine real estate listing. “I am not murdered, and I am not missing, but parts of me have been disappeared.” - Leanne Simpson  Follow us on  http://instagram.com/vanishingpointpod [http://instagram.com/vanishingpointpod] https://vanishingpointpod.substack.com/ [https://vanishingpointpod.substack.com/] Sources https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/world/europe/france-louvre-jewel-heist.html [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/world/europe/france-louvre-jewel-heist.html] https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/19/europe/robbery-louvre-paris-france-museum-closure-intl [https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/19/europe/robbery-louvre-paris-france-museum-closure-intl] https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/picasso-work-missing-madrid-granada-1234757797/ [https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/picasso-work-missing-madrid-granada-1234757797/] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-tiny-picasso-painting-went-missing-while-traveling-to-an-exhibition-in-spain-180987533/ [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/this-tiny-picasso-painting-went-missing-while-traveling-to-an-exhibition-in-spain-180987533/] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/world/europe/louvre-heist-items.html [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/19/world/europe/louvre-heist-items.html] https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/louvre-museum-closed-staff-protest-inadequate-security-1234757928/ [https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/louvre-museum-closed-staff-protest-inadequate-security-1234757928/] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/06/18th-century-portrait-stolen-by-nazis-recovered-in-argentina [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/sep/06/18th-century-portrait-stolen-by-nazis-recovered-in-argentina] https://news.artnet.com/art-world/nazi-looted-portrait-real-estate-listing-argentina-2681421 [https://news.artnet.com/art-world/nazi-looted-portrait-real-estate-listing-argentina-2681421] https://hyperallergic.com/1051349/french-museum-reports-theft-one-day-after-louvre-heist/ [https://hyperallergic.com/1051349/french-museum-reports-theft-one-day-after-louvre-heist/] https://hyperallergic.com/1051113/the-louvre-heist-was-a-colonial-wake-up-call/ [https://hyperallergic.com/1051113/the-louvre-heist-was-a-colonial-wake-up-call/]

The Knoedler Gallery Fraud Part II: Elegy to Authenticity

In this episode, we continue the story of the Knoedler Gallery as the fourteen year long forgery ring that made the gallery millions began to crumble. We unveil the masterminds behind the fakes, including a man who delivered caviar to Sotheby's in an old ambulance and a master Chinese forger who could easily replicate Rothko's and Diebenkorns. We discuss the alarming red flags that gallery girl boss Ann Freedman somehow overlooked, a millionaire Gucci alum, and misspelled Pollock signatures.  “Spectacle is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity.”  - The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord Follow us on  http://instagram.com/vanishingpointpod [http://instagram.com/vanishingpointpod] https://vanishingpointpod.substack.com/ [https://vanishingpointpod.substack.com/] The Devil Wears Rothko: Inside the Art Scandal that Rocked the World by Barry Avrich Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art. Directed by Barry Avrich, Melbar Entertainment Group, 2020. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/3047 [https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/3047] https://www.nypl.org/about/divisions/wallach-division/art-architecture-collection/catalogue-raisonne [https://www.nypl.org/about/divisions/wallach-division/art-architecture-collection/catalogue-raisonne] https://anderson.stanford.edu/collection/ocean-park-60-by-richard-diebenkorn/ [https://anderson.stanford.edu/collection/ocean-park-60-by-richard-diebenkorn/]