2015-04-02
The big business of art fraud. Former Metropolitan Museum of Art Director Thomas Hoving once declared that 40 percent of art in museums is fake. The FBI has a special, highly trained Art Crime Team, and the London-based Art Loss Register has compiled a database of nearly 200,000 stolen artworks. Amore (co-author: Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists, 2011, etc.), head of security at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, offers riveting profiles of ingenious con men and women who have duped gallery owners, collectors, museum officials, and appraisers to pass off forged paintings as originals by the most famous artists in the world. Among them are Pei-Shen Qian, a talented Chinese immigrant in need of money who produced abstract expressionist paintings complete with the signatures of Pollack, Rothko, and de Kooning; and the brilliant Wolfgang Beltracchi, who claimed that he "channeled" the spirits of the artists whose works he imitated. Forgers, Amore notes, are usually "middle-aged men frustrated by their own failures as artists (or perhaps the failure of the art world to recognize their greatness)." They tend to produce impressionist or abstract expressionist paintings since they are easier to make than old masters; and they work in oils, not the more delicate watercolors. To sell forgeries, they must come up with each work's provenance, or record of ownership, producing documents that themselves are fake. Art scams require buyers: one con man who auctioned worthless paintings on eBay believed that buyers were motivated by "optimistic self-delusion" that "they have found something good." That self-delusion might even explain why the head of New York's famed Knoedler Gallery was taken in by forgers: probably, writes the author, "she was intoxicated by the prospect of being part of the unleashing of a heretofore unknown collection on the world." An engrossing read about brazen, artful scams.
Art scams are today so numerous that the specter of a lawsuit arising from a mistaken attribution has scared a number of experts away from the business of authentication and forgery, and with good reason. Art scams are increasingly convincing and involve incredible sums of money. The cons perpetrated by unscrupulous art dealers and their accomplices are proportionately elaborate.
Anthony M. Amore's The Art of the Con tells the stories of some of history's most notorious yet untold cons. They involve stolen art hidden for decades; elaborate ruses that involve the Nazis and allegedly plundered art; the theft of a conceptual prototype from a well-known artist by his assistant to be used later to create copies; the use of online and television auction sites to scam buyers out of millions; and other confidence scams incredible not only for their boldness but more so because they actually worked. Using interviews and newly released court documents, The Art of the Con will also take the reader into the investigations that led to the capture of the con men, who oftentimes return back to the world of crime. For some, it's an irresistible urge because their innocent dupes all share something in common: they want to believe.
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Anthony M. Amore's The Art of the Con tells the stories of some of history's most notorious yet untold cons. They involve stolen art hidden for decades; elaborate ruses that involve the Nazis and allegedly plundered art; the theft of a conceptual prototype from a well-known artist by his assistant to be used later to create copies; the use of online and television auction sites to scam buyers out of millions; and other confidence scams incredible not only for their boldness but more so because they actually worked. Using interviews and newly released court documents, The Art of the Con will also take the reader into the investigations that led to the capture of the con men, who oftentimes return back to the world of crime. For some, it's an irresistible urge because their innocent dupes all share something in common: they want to believe.
The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World
Art scams are today so numerous that the specter of a lawsuit arising from a mistaken attribution has scared a number of experts away from the business of authentication and forgery, and with good reason. Art scams are increasingly convincing and involve incredible sums of money. The cons perpetrated by unscrupulous art dealers and their accomplices are proportionately elaborate.
Anthony M. Amore's The Art of the Con tells the stories of some of history's most notorious yet untold cons. They involve stolen art hidden for decades; elaborate ruses that involve the Nazis and allegedly plundered art; the theft of a conceptual prototype from a well-known artist by his assistant to be used later to create copies; the use of online and television auction sites to scam buyers out of millions; and other confidence scams incredible not only for their boldness but more so because they actually worked. Using interviews and newly released court documents, The Art of the Con will also take the reader into the investigations that led to the capture of the con men, who oftentimes return back to the world of crime. For some, it's an irresistible urge because their innocent dupes all share something in common: they want to believe.
Anthony M. Amore's The Art of the Con tells the stories of some of history's most notorious yet untold cons. They involve stolen art hidden for decades; elaborate ruses that involve the Nazis and allegedly plundered art; the theft of a conceptual prototype from a well-known artist by his assistant to be used later to create copies; the use of online and television auction sites to scam buyers out of millions; and other confidence scams incredible not only for their boldness but more so because they actually worked. Using interviews and newly released court documents, The Art of the Con will also take the reader into the investigations that led to the capture of the con men, who oftentimes return back to the world of crime. For some, it's an irresistible urge because their innocent dupes all share something in common: they want to believe.
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The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World
The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940169885156 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Novel Audio |
| Publication date: | 03/21/2017 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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