Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [138]
Christensen was not surprised: “I wanted to make a blunt work with the intention of creating a discussion about the value of art, and about capitalism, and how the art world works,” he told the BBC. “It proves my theory that I have made an artwork that has a value outside the gallery space.”
3
Christopher Mason. The Art of the Steal: Inside the Sotheby’s-Christie’s Auction House Scandal. New York: Berkley Books, 2005, p. 51.
4
Mason, Art of the Steal, p. 50. works during his lifetime, would have been amazed. The 1980s sale history of works by Vincent van Gogh was like a helium balloon soaring into the sky. The artist’s 1890 glowing blue Portrait of Adeline Ravoux had sold for $441,000 in 1966 and five times that when it changed hands again in 1980. By 1988, the price had risen sixfold, to $13.75 million, a more than 3,000 percent increase over the original sale price.
5
Just a few years later, in 1990, Vincent van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr. Gachet would be auctioned off for $82.5 million to Ryoei Saito, a Japanese industrialist who spent a few hours with his purchase, then put it in a crate and locked it in a climate-controled vault in a top-secret storeroom in Tokyo.
6
Mibus no doubt knew that similar caches of artworks could be found all over the world. London, Paris, New York, and Tokyo were dotted with anonymous storage depots where dealers routinely stashed their best works until the market was ready to pay the right price. These gloomy treasure troves, which often called to mind the interior of a state prison, ranged from modest warehouses to much larger operations manned by discreet uniformed attendants riding prewar elevators. One such facility in New York was said to be filled quite literally to the rafters with thousands of priceless works, some of which had not seen the light of day in decades. The occasional thefts, almost always inside jobs, were kept quiet and in the family.
7
Neither the alleged affair, assault charge, nor prison sentence could be verified.
8
War fibbers are not confined to Britain. According to a 2001 Guardian article by Duncan Campbell, thousands of American fabricators claimed to have taken part in the Vietnam War. In a notable example, Los Angeles Superior Court judge Patrick Couwenberg was removed from the bench in 2001 after it was determined that he had lied to get his job, claiming he was a decorated Vietnam War veteran who had received the Purple Heart for a groin injury sustained in battle. He had also claimed that he had worked undercover for the CIA in Laos in the 1960s, that he had studied law at Loyola, and that he had a master’s degree in psychology. These were all lies. At hearings to determine whether he should remain on the bench, Couwenberg’s defense lawyers argued that he was suffering from pseudologia phantastica. Other well-known war fibbers include the historian and Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Ellis, who was suspended from his university job after inventing a Vietnam War past for himself. (He said he had been a platoon commander near My Lai, the site of the notorious mass killing by U.S. soldiers.) Chicago District judge Michael O’Brien falsely claimed to be a medal of honor winner and was forced to step down in 1995, after fourteen years on the bench. Toronto Blue Jays manager Tim Johnson was fired after his claims about Vietnam War combat turned out to be bogus. War liars are often caught because of the grandiosity of their boasts—for example, that they belonged to elite units such as the Special Forces, Britain’s SAS, the U.S. Navy SEALs, or the CIA, claims that for the most part can be verified.
9
Lyn Cole. Contemporary Legacies: An Incomplete History of the ICA 1947-1990, unpublished.
10
David Mellor, ed. Fifty Years of the Future: A Chronicle of the Institute of Contemporary Arts.