There's a Criminal Touch to Art: How Ulay Stole Hitler's Favorite Painting and Redefined Performance Art

by Noah Charney, Noah Charney, Ulay

On December 12, 1976, German conceptual artist Ulay stole Hitler's favorite painting from the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. It was art theft as conceptual artwork. He hung the painting on the wall of a working-class immigrant family's home, then phoned the museum to let them know where they could retrieve it. Told from three perspectives, this unique and groundbreaking book tells the complete story of this art theft and explores what made Ulay's iconic artistic action one of the most famous performance artworks in history. While Ulay passed away in 2020, he recorded his own first-person account of the action in conversation with art historian Noah Charney, allowing readers to engage with a never-before-seen narrative of the theft in Ulay's own words. The theft as artwork was conceived and undertaken with the help of Ulay's partner at the time, Marina Abramovic, who is among the most famous living artists in the world. Her account of the action will follow Ulay's in this book. Finally, Noah Charney will contextualize Ulay and Abramovic's artistic action within the history of art as well as highlight this fascinating incident's importance to the history of art theft.

144 pages, Hardcover

Published February 19, 2026

About the author

Noah Charney holds degrees in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art and Cambridge University. He is the founding director of the Association for Research into Crimes against Art (ARCA), the first international think tank on art crime. He divides his time between New Haven, Connecticut; Cambridge, England; and Rome, Italy.