In this time when the world seems full of darkness, both natural and political, I have been distracting myself by reading Orlando Whitfield’s new book All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art (Pantheon Press). The fraud was committed by Whitfield’s American friend, Inigo Philbrick, whom he met at Goldsmith’s, a college of the University of London. From the earliest days of their friendship, Whitfield was fascinated by Philbrick’s ability to soak up art market information and to form highly advantageous art-world relationships with seemingly effortless ease.
Whitfield portrays himself as a sort of Robin to Philbrick’s Batman as they begin a gallery together. In short order, however, Philbrook has moved far ahead of his friend, leaving their joint effort to work for one of London’s premier contemporary dealers. He is raking in the big bucks, his cellphone constantly buzzing with the details of complicated transactions involving artworks which trade for millions of pounds.
It’s a world of Billionaires and Beautiful People who spend the year traveling on their private jets to art fairs around the world. Their only respite seems to come in December after the close of Miami Basel, when they all knock off to go skiing in St. Moritz. Artworks are bought, sold, and then resold for enormous prices, even though the buyers often do not even see the works in person; instead, the works are moved from the seller’s space to the buyer’s space at some duty-free warehouse outside Geneva.
Whitfield occasionally gets invited to a reception like a poor relation, or he enjoys lunch with his friend at an exclusive club, reminiscing with Philbrick between urgent texts arriving on the latter’s phone. Philbrick knows everyone, it seems, and has his finger precisely on the market, knowing which artist will get hot next and who’s passé. He doesn’t deal in any artists whose works don’t sell for at least six figures.
But it’s an artificial world, in every sense of the word, and Philbrick has forgotten, if he ever knew it, the number one truth about the art world: “Any dealer who mistakes his clients’ lifestyle for his own is in for big trouble.” Philbrook is staking big money from investors on things that have no inherent value. Whitfield sums things up neatly after relating the story of his selling an artwork to Philbrook, all the time lying to him about the fact that the “privately-owned” painting had come from another dealer they both knew:
But, as much as we were all lying to each other, we were also all engaged in a collective act of self-delusion: deliberately choosing not to question whether these things are worth these enormous sums of money, that the market can value them in advance of history’s verdict. The money that has been injected into the contemporary art market can only ever be seen as speculative at its core. Because, unlike tradable concrete assets like timber or grain, trading artworks is always trading futures in the hopes that fashion will dictate their continuing rise in value; necessity, that keystone of economic forces, does not apply. This makes the art market widely unstable: vast sums of money change hands, often sealed by little more than a handshake, for assets that have no intrinsic value and whose quality has been decided by an international phalanx of tastemakers whose quixotic desires serve only their own ends. Woe betide the art market when the apocalypse arrives.
Donald DeLue (1897-1988), Icarus, gilded bronze, 30 inches high
Photo courtesy Askart.
The apocalypse in Philbrook’s case is too much money being spent on an extravagant lifestyle and too little money coming in. Like Max Bialystock in Mel Brooks’s movie The Producers, Philbrook begins to sell shares totaling 200 to 300 percent in paintings he supposedly owns. In one of the more egregious cons in the book, Philbrick sells a share of a painting to a buyer who wants physical control of the artwork. Philbrick has a blank canvas the same size as the painting boxed up and shipped to Switzerland, betting (correctly, as it turns out) that the buyer will not bother to have the artwork unpacked once it arrives at his space. The painting is just an investment – who needs to actually see it?
Such a situation cannot last. Investors lose patience with the-funds-will-be-wired-next-week promises, and multiple lawsuits are filed. Facing the revelation of his fraud, Philbrick takes what money he can get his hands on and flees the country, owing millions of dollars to various entities. He is eventually apprehended on a resort island in the South Pacific and is tried and sentenced to seven years in prison.
This is where Whitfield’s book ends. Philbrook was released from prison about a year ago, having served four years of his sentence. He has since married a British television personality and is said to be eyeing a new art dealing career. I would have my doubts about his attracting new clients, but you never know. Art dealing is one of the few professions in which a criminal record is not necessarily a deal-breaker.
However things eventually shake out, it won’t make any difference in my life. The art market machinations Whitfield describes take place in a rarified atmosphere far above my head. Every now and then someone falls Icarus-like from the heights, but I (and I suspect you, Dear Reader) live in a world where artworks are bought for love, not investment or status, and the primary hope is that they will give us years of pleasure.
As in art, so in the larger world. The Important People currently in the newspapers go on with their grand schemes, but in my world the rising sun is now inching its way a bit farther north each morning. Beneath the frozen ground in my front yard, the crocuses are preparing for the final burst of energy that will push them through the snow. And somewhere in the woods nearby, the deer are stamping their hooves impatiently, wondering when the hell my hostas will come up so they can eat them down to the ground. May the pleasure brought by the natural and artistic beauty in our lives continue to bring us joy throughout the year to come. God bless us, every one.
