The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World

by Anthony M. Amore

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250108609
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/11/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	1,042,493
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

ANTHONY M. AMORE is an expert in security matters and head of security and chief investigator at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. He is the co-author of Stealing Rembrandts, which was a Wall Street Journal True Crime Best Seller. Before joining the Gardner Museum in 2005, Amore worked for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and was a Special Agent with the Federal Aviation Administration. He lives in Boston, MA.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter I – The Forger

Chapter II – The Broker

Chapter III – The Art Ponzi Scheme

Chapter IV – The Trusting Artist

Chapter V – The Inheritor

Chapter VI – The Captor

Chapter VII - The Double Dealer

Chapter VIII – The Bait and Switch

Chapter IX – The Printmaker

Chapter X – The Telescam

Chapter XI – The Internet

Editorial Reviews

An engrossing read about brazen, artful scams.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Amore is privy to more information on the subject of forgeries than the average art collector or dealer, and he shares a number of those stories in this engrossing account... a bracing and highly informative assessment of a very real problem, sure to resonate with art fans and curators alike.” —Publisher's Weekly

“A riveting, fast-moving account of shameless fraudsters who wreak havoc on the art world. A must read!” —Brian T. Kelly, former Assistant United States Attorney

“The Art of the Con is must reading for any true-crime fan. Brazen museum thefts get all the headlines, but Anthony M. Amore makes it clear that the real money in art crime is to be made from forgeries, fakes, online auctions, laser printers and other 21st-century technologies. And Amore's diverse, colorful crew of art-gallery grifters and scammers have been reaping the kind of ill-gotten gains that old-school criminals could only dream of. Highly recommended!” —Howie Carr, New York Times bestselling author of THE BROTHERS BULGER and HITMAN

“What is most fascinating about The Art of the Con is that you haven't heard these stories before. The tales of these unknown scams are woven into a narrative that reads like a thriller. The attention to detail takes the reader inside the investigations and allows them to play armchair detective. Read this book!” —Jon Leiberman, radio and television host and author of WHITEY ON TRIAL: SECRETS, CORRUPTION, AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH

“It takes a lot to pull off an art world con. But it might take even more to tell the unvarnished story behind those swindles, and there's no doubt that Anthony Amore has done it in this definitive page-turner. The Art of the Con is wonderfully investigated-and highly paced-and provides a jaw-hitting-the-floor examination of art world fraud.” —Ulrich Boser, author of THE GARDNER HEIST: THE TRUE STORY OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST UNSOLVED ART THEFT

“Not only is The Art of the Con a wild ride through a rogue's gallery of colorful art forgers, entertainingly written by a master of prose. It is that. But it's also an object lesson in how art is made, what makes art valuable, and how some of the smartest minds in the business could be suckered by deals that ultimately proved just too good to be true.” —Michael Blanding, author of THE MAP THIEF: THE GRIPPING STORY OF AN ESTEEMED RARE-MAP DEALER WHO MADE MILLIONS STEALING PRICELESS MAPS

“A fascinating account of some of the biggest scams that have taken place in the art world over the last century” —ArtNet News

From the Publisher

05/04/2015
As head of security and chief investigator at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Anthony Amore (Stealing Rembrandts) is privy to more information on the subject of forgeries than the average art collector or dealer, and he shares a number of those stories in this engrossing account. According to Amore, art forgery has been part of the American art scene since the country’s inception, most famously illustrated by the rampant copies of Gilbert Stuart’s portrait of George Washington that circulated at the turn of the 19th century. (That portrait now graces the $1 bill.) Rather than simply offering a laundry list of forgeries and hucksters, Amore shows the lengths forgers will go to in order to fool their patrons and the public, such as hunting down historically accurate materials (e.g., pigments), commissioning artists (“copyists”), and attempting various weathering techniques (even using a blow dryer in some cases to weather the paint). One shocking example involves surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, who as part of a lawsuit was ordered by the court to sign 17,000 blank sheets of paper, ultimately putting the provenance of his entire body of work up for debate. This is a bracing and highly informative assessment of a very real problem, sure to resonate with art fans and curators alike. Agent: Sharlene Martin, Martin Literary Management. (July)

Publishers Weekly

06/15/2015
Art scams are so common today that many specialists shy away from authenticating artworks, which in the past ensured the works' authorship or originality, and thereby value. Amore (coauthor, Stealing Rembrandts), director of security at Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and internationally recognized expert in the field of art theft and security, relies on interviews and newly released court documents to reveal some of the most notorious cons and their histories: the fakes, frauds, forgeries, Ponzi schemes, double-dealing, telescams, and more. Eleven chapters cover at least one case each in great detail. The author's clear and mostly factual approach examines the various mind sets and motivations of the criminals, art brokers, collectors, dealers, artists, and other individuals involved. Fascinating and at times spellbinding, this book reads like a series of case studies, setting forth the crimes of many well-known and lesser-known miscreants and entities. VERDICT Of significant interest to art world aficionados, brokers, collectors, dealers, lawyers, professionals, and general readers, this ambitious, well-presented and well-documented survey belongs in public as well as academic and special libraries.—Cheryl Ann Lajos, Free Lib. of Philadelphia

Library Journal

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.

Kirkus Reviews