“Once I knew of about d’Offay’s painting, I could no longer put the behaviour of Printz and King-Nero down to inexperience. The existence of the canvas suggested instead a deliberate policy to reshape Warhol’s achievement, to rewrite art history by denying authenticity of a pivotal work, which they had the strongest evidence of Warhol’s authorship.”
Preface, I had no interest in Warhol at all, neither his work. But the “power and money in the modern art world” suffix in the title & further intel on the work’s topic of content from a book review (sorry, I forget the reviewer’s name) compelled me to chew the page.
& by-Jings! – was it worth the investigation.
Any astute insider’s account on corruption, especially in the arts – & how the whole decaying goose waddles it’s maggots – is worth an ol’ obsessive’s time, to fit-in, flesh-out & confirm the larger pattern & system of manipulation & malfeasance.
“Corruption in the art world takes many forms, and silence is among the most corroding.”
With plenty more incision points to this excellent book, the crux is how a shadowy group of almost faceless corporate fraudsters acquired authority over authenticating, cataloguing & auctioning a great deal of Warhol’s paintings & life’s work.
They did not just mismanage & misrepresent it, but committed a sophisticated multi-million-dollar fraud & counterfeiting operation under a pall of absurd white-collar & legal secrecy that truly boggles the brain whilst strangling the morals.
“Antitrust action against the Andy Warhol Foundation, Vincent Fermont and ‘all past and present members of the Authentication Board who knowingly participated in, or wilfully ignored an alleged thirty-year scheme of fraud, collusion and manipulation of the market in works of art by the late Andy Warhol.’”
The author is a seasoned journalist, exhibition curator, historian & scholarly art critic, who is reluctantly led into the labyrinth by a flustered art collector who has had his Warhol original defaced & in-authenticated by the crims running Warhol’s “official” trust.
“This, setting aside Printz’s objections, the Board oversaw their transformation from worthless fakes into original works by Andy Warhol. Fermont was now able to sell them as genuine, thereby enriching the Foundation with many millions of dollars, and taking a commission of as much as 10 per cent on each deal.”
As well as an incredible view into steaming corporate/modern art corruption/criminality, you also have a screamingly good read, rich in the curious mechanics of terrain & the legality of the eventual fantastical trial (described by the judge as possessing ‘the most irresponsible lawyering I have encountered in twenty years of practice‘.
The corruption comes from everywhere, with repugnantly wealthy interests splurging cash into an array of mythical monster defenders & top-tier establishment “favour bank” efforts to escape conviction, exposure & scrutiny.
Dorment covers it all, in all it’s extraordinary & repulsive detail.
“Entrusted with Andy Warhol’s posthumous reputation, they abused that trust – abetted by the silence of trustees of the Foundation, art dealers and – unforgivably – curators and scholars.”
How is it that this corrupt, kleptocratic, fraudulent-imposter-class almost always ends up occupying the upper executive echelons of everything & polluting the source???
kill them all.
“Without academic transparency and commitment to truth, art history degenerates into a mere matter of opinion, or, more accurately, of self-interest. The Andy Warhol Foundation and Authentication Board had corrupted the discipline I dedicated my life to studying.”
Richard Dorment, 2023, Picador, 231-pages