Ulay's 1976 museum theft performance revisited in interview

In a video interview for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art's web TV, German artist Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen, born 1943 in Solingen) recounts his 1976 performance "There's a Criminal Touch to Art," in which he stole Carl Spitzweg's 1839 painting "Der arme Poet" (The Poor Poet) from a Berlin museum. The painting was reportedly Adolf Hitler's favorite. Ulay, after distracting guards, fled with the artwork to a house in the Kreuzberg district, then an immigrant ghetto, and hung it in the living room of a Turkish family. He then summoned the museum director to retrieve it, taking full legal responsibility. The performance aimed to highlight discrimination against immigrant workers in Germany and critique the institutional marginalization of art. The original footage was shot by Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein, former cameraman for Werner Herzog, and the performance was also documented photographically by Ulay's then-partner Marina Abramović. Ulay described the work as "a kind of identity icon for Germany."