There is a
Criminal Touch to Art
is one of the crucial points of
Ulay
's artistic engagement, which very directly comments on and questions the social and political climate of Germany in the 70s. The starting point is an “art theft” carried out by Ulay in 1976, stealing Carl Spitzweg’s painting “The Poor Poet” from the Neue Nationalgalerie. The theft of the “symbol of the German soul” and its installation in a Turkish family’s living room in Kreuzberg (a district in Berlin) is not just a symbolical demonstration of an artist, who was against Germany´s identity icons, but it is also a very direct comment on the artist’s concern over the difficult situation of immigrants and their families in Germany in the 70s.
