Masterpiece: My Astonishing Connection from Art to Childhood Artifact

In the seventies my brothers and I loved a board game called Masterpiece: The Art Auction Game. It had a deck of twenty-four cards, each card a masterpiece, a reproduction of a famous painting. We traveled the circular board with our character tokens — “collectors” who came complete with autobiographies — buying up masterpieces by bidding on them at auction. When we won an auction, we received our masterpiece card, like Monopoly but with paintings. The player who amassed the most valuable collection won the game.

The Renoir masterpiece was my favorite. The Van Gogh self-portrait spooked our little-kid imaginations — we’d learned he’d cut off his own ear in a fit of madness.

I’m not an art expert, but this game inspired a life-long love, a romance with paintings, a feeling that I’m a child gaping, overjoyed, at the wonders of the world. In my mind’s eye, famous paintings wallpaper my brain’s chamber of memories where I store every single thing that makes me happy, that inspires me, that tells me: “Ah, this is the meaning of life.”

Not long ago, while researching art theft for a novel I’m writing, I discovered…