Did you know you can sue a painting?
Other fun things to try with art: Double-selling a work, claiming possession by sneaking it out of storage, and overvaluing the heck out of it.
Good morning, Scam Fam!
I'M SORRY for whatever you're going through right now. These are, at best, trying and unpleasant times for everyone; even worse if you're sick, caring for someone who is, a parent, concerned about money, living with someone you wish you weren't, separated from someone you wish you weren't, or you want to rip your skin off when sanctimonious cop strangers and acquaintances publicly proclaim things like going for a run outdoors without wearing a hazmat suit as equivalent to murdering their grandmother. My working theory is that the venn diagram of online scolds and non-immunocompromised people who send Instacart shoppers into the Hunger Games on their behalf is just a circle.
Me? I'm doing remarkably well on all but that wanting-to-rip-my-skin-off count, thanks so much for asking. I appear to have one of the easiest versions of this nightmare. For that, I feel exceedingly fortunate, almost like I'm getting away with something, and as you know that is my favorite way to be. While I have no doubt that the current state of panic and desperation will yield some epic scams, I do not wish to discuss them or my personal plans to profit off of such grift at this moment.
Instead, I want to talk about the art world. That place is Racket City, and I thought it would be fun to spend some time there while other forms of travel are verboten. Don't get too close to the balloon dogs and diamond encrusted skulls, there's a spottily enforced you-break-it-you-bought-it policy around these parts and you cannot afford to buy it. Safer for us to visit Inigo Philbrick, a prep-school-looking art dealer whose multi-layered con was recently detailed at length by Jacob Bernstein in the New York Times.
For years Philbrick acted legitimately (?), selling ownership stakes to groups of collectors on the secondary market. Here's how that works, according to Bernstein:
While these investors often have title to the works and occasionally even buy them in their entirety, they do not typically keep them in their homes or offices. The idea is transparently about resale: art collecting as stock investing. Money is earned on the flip, with the potential for risk differing from the stock market in important ways.
First, it is hard to verify the prices secondary market dealers pay to acquire and sell works on behalf of multiple investors. That enables these dealers to lie about prices, overcharge clients and skim off the top. Second, when a work is acquired and placed in storage, little assurance exists besides a dealer’s reputation that a 50 percent share in a painting is actually a 50 percent share.
Would it shock you to learn Philbrick made excellent use of both of those loopholes? I personally find it a bit surprising that more people don't sell paintings they don't own for arbitrary astronomical prices considering how willing the buyers are. Apparently if you wear a $7,000 suit, eat expensive sushi and travel everywhere you go with MDMA, people trust you when you tell them a painting is worth $10 million. When I'm allowed outside again, I'm going to try it.
Philbrick did make use of those loopholes, and Bernstein documents how, as well as the fallout from the Ponzi scheme quite skillfully; the dealers turn on one another, they sue everyone they can think of including a painting, Philbrick disappears, etc. It's all very fun.
In addition to the Times piece, Kenny Schachter wrote his own inside story for New York Magazine, The Art World's Mini-Madoff and Me*. If Philbrick is Caroline Calloway (not the best analogy because Caroline Calloway is not a scammer), then Schachter is Natalie Beach. The article is very worth reading, not because it's so illuminating, but because Schachter, a grown man with grown children, is obsessed with going to Ibiza with his young friend. Each mention is more hilarious to me than the last. Here, read them:
We took trips together: New Year’s in St. Moritz, summers in Spain (not Ibiza; he was too busy, he told me, when he was with the “clients” he never wanted me to interact with), and art trips to Dijon, Milan, Paris, and even Crystal Bridges in Arkansas, frequently on jets he’d chartered for the occasion.
I will never forgive myself (or him) for permitting one of my sons to join him on an Ibiza jaunt where they had a three-night ecstasy bender. And that wasn’t the only time he fed drugs to my kids, which I found out about only afterward. At the same time, he was very supportive of my making and selling my own art and that of my sons, which likely contributed to my turning a blind eye.
That same year, he began an affair with Victoria Baker-Harber. Mancini and Baker-Harber were acquaintances and vacationed at the same summer rental in Ibiza. Baker-Harber’s nickname for Philbrick was “Fruit,” from his being “forbidden fruit” as the partner of a woman he was having a child with.
The private planes came off multiple contracts for six figures apiece, while the wine went for $5,000 a bottle, drunk at $25,000 tables at clubs from Ibiza to Miami as Philbrick began to follow techno raves by star DJ Marco Carola across the globe like a groupie.
The only night I ever accompanied him in Ibiza, the dinner began at his rental house and ended up at the club Amnesia. Though I tossed the MDMA pill he’d handed me over my shoulder (I’ve never wanted to do a drug that would make me like everyone else; it would ruin my shtick), I managed to get plenty wasted enough to return home at 9 a.m. the following day to my less-than-amused wife, whom I saw while clambering through the bathroom window after being locked out of the bedroom.
What delightfully loathsome details! How can you read a wannabe Chris Hitchens sentence like "I’ve never wanted to do a drug that would make me like everyone else; it would ruin my shtick" and not be so charmed by the effort you vom a little? Believe it or not, the photos in the piece are almost more enjoyable than the Ibiza details, so please please please pick up the copy of New York Magazine that came in the mail sometime last week and/or click this link to view them.
At this point you've probably grown so sympathetic to and invested in these people that you absolutely must know how their friendship has fared through the exposure of Philbrick's scheme and his disappearance. Schachter's essay has all kinds of rich details about that (another reason to read it), but the best one actually comes from Bernstein's story.
“I said, ‘You’re like ‘The Talented Mr. Ripley,’” Mr. Schachter continued. “He wrote back, ‘Google how the movie ended.’”
Reader, he Googled it ;)
Scam in good health and from a safe social distance; I'm sincerely sending you my best.
—Ruthie
*Thank you to my favorite curly adopter, Claire, for alerting me to this story and to the fact that Kenny Schachter is married to Marc and Denise Rich's daughter!
My Week+ in Consumption: No human contact required for anyone edition
My friend Marisa wrote an absolutely marvelous memoir called This Is Big that comes out on April 14 but you can pre-order an e-book right now. I am a person who tries to cope with the downsides of having a body by pretending I simply do not. That, uh, only works some of the time. Marisa's account of her own experience with diEt CuLtuRe/tHe WoRLd really captures for me a lot of what it feels like the rest of the time.
Speaking of bodies and my weird relationship to my own, I'm doing a push-up challenge? No one is more surprised by this extraordinarily dorky turn of events than me, but I do 50 push-ups and 100 lunges each day in little sets of 5 or 10 between other things, and I log it on a spreadsheet with strangers. I can't believe I'm admitting it, let alone recommending you try something similar, but here we are.
I have watched two episodes of a television program called Motherland: Fort Salem with my friend Emily. Let me tell you it is as batshit as the title suggests. If the premise of witches who are required to report for military duty doesn't sell you, here are a few more features of this show: The dialogue does not sound like any human exchanges I have ever witnessed or participated in in my life (makes sense, they’re witches); the direction is non-existent or at least invisible, the actors are left to fend for themselves, and they all make the unsafe choice; there is so, so much plot and I understand absolutely none of it. It's immensely soothing. I love it.
Been listening to a few things on repeat… New: Waxahatchee’s St. Cloud is the album I needed right now. Old: Fugees’ The Score stays a masterpiece. Cooking soundtrack: You cannot beat Percy Sledge’s catalog (Out of Left Field knocks my socks off every. single. time.).