The Perfect Crime

Somewhere in Verona, Italy.

You know what I love about this story? Everyone got exactly what they didn’t know they wanted. This fifty-thousand-dollar crystal chair that got destroyed for photos? It’s symbolic of unraveling chaos that can tie itself back up.

So there’s this eye surgeon in Italy, Nicola Bolla, who makes art on weekends. His day job is fixing people’s vision. His hobby is making things people can’t see clearly. He’s a marriage counselor who starts fights at dinner parties. And his masterpiece is this chair covered in Swarovski crystals. Art about how things aren’t what they appear to be. Very deep. Very expensive. Very fragile. Very sitting-on-able.

Tourists show up. They mistake his art about fake furniture for actual furniture. They sit on it. They proved his artistic thesis by destroying it. Somewhere Bolla’s thinking, “I was trying to make a statement about appearance versus reality, and they made my statement for me. With Walter’s giant MF ass.”

But these tourists, let’s call them Walter and Brenda, planned it. They waited for security to leave. Brenda surveilled the room like they’re robbing Fort Knox. Except they were being filmed by surveillance cameras the entire time. Walter and Brenda committed the most documented crime in museum history.

When it broke, Bolla said it looked like “Czechoslovakian Cubism.” The destruction accidentally achieved the exact aesthetic he was exploring. The tourists didn’t destroy his art. They completed it through vandalism. Walter accidentally wrote a symphony by falling down the stairs.

Now Bolla’s making a new piece called “Buster Keaton’s Chair.” I’m not kidding. The Italian police have HD surveillance footage and still can’t find them. These people achieved criminal perfection by accident.

This chair is a portal. The artist wanted to explore reality versus appearance. Got a live demonstration. The tourists wanted photos. Became fugitive art historians. The museum got international attention they never asked for. Manifest.

Meanwhile, the Italian police managed to turn video evidence into a missing persons case. That’s not an investigation. That’s a magic show.