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What Canada’s largest art heist reveals about the art world’s shady side
- simonw 4y agoI enjoyed reading this. It's a neat summary of so much that is shady about how the "fine art" world actually works.
- sammalloy 4y agoCheck out the Freakonomics podcast. They have a three-part series on the hidden side of the art market that is eye-opening. https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/the-hidden-side-of-the-art-market/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast-tag/the-hidden-side-of-the-...
- WelcomeShorty 4y agoFascinating! Thanks for the pointer.
- marsa 4y agoand for folks who prefer reading there's a great book on that topic as well: Chasing Aphrodite: The Hunt for Looted Antiquities at the World's Richest Museum
- johnnymorgan 4y agoIt's mostly money laundering and tax fraud that drives the high valuations. Hype for store of value is pretty close to market manipulation and should be treated similarly. It won't, but it probably should.
- tenpies 4y agoDon't forget bribery. After all, Hunter Biden's paintings netted up to ~$500,000 a piece and I can only imagine how good the return on investment was.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoI don't see what they're trying to hide though, they're paid millions of dollars for "consulting" services. It's not like anything is going to happen to them if they just get more. Why bother doing the art and book deals and things? Or is it to inflate the ego of the ones who actually believe they're talented and interesting?
- googlryas 4y agoYou need some kind of plausibility behind the payments though. I might want a selfie with POTUS for bragging rights, and I'm rich, but I don't own a business that could reasonably have Hunter consult for. So, I buy his artwork instead, and eventually I get invited to a dinner that Joe happens to be at.
- throwawaylinux 4y agoMy point is, why does there need to be any air of legitimacy? Those "business" dealings in Ukraine and China etc are already blatantly corrupt bribery schemes to buy political favors as it is. Deniability is already pretty far fetched, so paying a bit more is hardly going to change that.
- johnnymorgan 4y agoYeah, that's the tax fraud part. Let me buy this painting @ $500k and then donate it with a value of $1m, net $500k tax rebate. So much of it is just shady shit using Art as a store of value.
- hpkuarg 4y agoThat's not how it works! You can't just make up a valuation when you donate things, and whatever higher valuation you get, you have now incurred capital gains on which you must pay taxes.
- brippalcharrid 4y ago
- sammalloy 4y agoThere’s an art dealer where I live who is extremely shady. He steals the work of other artists, copies and mimics their styles, and then mass produces their work as his own so that he doesn’t have to pay them. He also has an extensive practice that involves cybersquatting on domains and redirecting searches from these artists to his own work. He also trolls for photography online and steals the images from these artists and sells it under their name and pockets the money without paying them. Eventually, a group of artists found out and ostracized him from the local community. He finally shut down his gallery last week, but I’ve been told this went on for 15 years. Artists need better protection under the law (and new laws to protect them if needed), and more enforcement mechanisms to uphold the law.
- JumpCrisscross 4y agoIt’s telling that until the penultimate sentence, I couldn’t tell if this anecdote would end with the name of a criminal or world-famous artist.
- password4321 4y agoOr "Stable Diffusion"
- largepeepee 4y agoThe trick to that question is whether that artist had a wealthy and influental patron. Poorly made art gets redefined as a "thought experiment" or "social commentary" all the time by a small closed circle of art snoobs. Think NFTs. Even forgeries turn into "real" art pieces if enough ppl in that circle can be convinced.
- pyrale 4y agoHonestly thought the art dealer was Google.
- busyant 4y agoi thought the "reveal" was going to be dall-e or google images or something along those lines.
- tomcam 4y agoA nuanced and seemingly well-informed article. The part that hit me the hardest: > When, in 2015, police raided the properties of Ronald Belciano, a Philadelphia drug lord, they found paintings by Renoir, Picasso, and Salvador Dalí, most of them held in a nearby storage locker. The man, it would seem, had little interest in actually looking at the works he’d acquired. To go to that trouble and then not to bother enjoying your Renoir and Dali paintings... that hurts my heart.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bongoman37 4y ago
- potatolicious 4y agoThis is typical in the art world - crime lord or otherwise. Art is often kept in freeports - storage facilities that exist outside of the realm of domestic taxation. This allows the artworks to be sold without incurring taxes or customs. Many artworks pass through owners who never actually physically lay eyes on them, and many pass through multiple owners without ever physically moving. For a lot of people who transact in art, actually looking at the art is not at all the point of the exercise. Speculation on the art is the whole point. These things are effectively fanciful, convoluted, tax-dodging securities instruments, with only the most cursory nod to the appreciation of art. Which, y'know, is awfully reminiscent of something else in recent memory...
- paganel 4y ago> Art is often kept in freeports One of my most interesting memories when visiting Geneva as a tourist a few years back was travelling in a public transport bus near the city's freeport, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) in the world. I was asking myself while on that public bus about how many masterpieces might be stored in the anonymous depot-like building I was seeing through the bus's window. A special kind of Louvre or Kunsthistorisches Museum, if you will.
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- michaelwww 4y agoI learned how shady the art world was during the NFT craze
- elzbardico 4y agoThere is a lot of shady stuff in the art world: Money laundering, tax evasion, theft, scams.