Carl Spitzweg's picture of the "Poor Poet", Ulay has in a sense stolen the "symbol of the German soul" from the National Gallery to hang it up in Kreuzberg in a Turkish family's living room.
Ulay/Frank Uwe Laysiepen ran through the snow with the painting under his arm, to a Turkish family, who had agreed to let him shoot a documentary film in their home-however unaware that it involved a stolen painting. Before entering the family's home, the artist called the police from a phone booth and asked for the director of the museum to pick up the painting. He then hung up the painting in the home of the family "for the reason to bring this whole issue of Turkish discriminated foreign workers into the discussion. To bring into discussion the institute's marginalization of art. To bring a discussion about the correspondence between art institutes from the academy to museums to whatever."
Review of How I Stole a Painting
