Ruminations....

On "All That Glitters" and ins & outs of collecting

I just binge read All That Glitters by Orlando Whitfield-”A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art.” It’s based upon the rise and fall of Inigo Philbrick, one of our artworld sociopaths who ended up fleeing to Vanuatu, a remote island in the Pacific, and was arrested by the FBI and extradited to the US. This was big news back in 2019. He defrauded both his mentor, Jay Jopling, founder of the influential gallery White Cube in London, and his investors to the tune of approximately $83 million. Shortly thereafter we had another artworld sociopath, Lisa Schiff, Art Advisor to the very rich and celebrities, including Leo DiCaprio was arrested, arraigned and pleaded guilty to wire fraud to the tune of $6.5 million. Now, Dear Reader, you must understand that these two individuals held great sway in the artworld in their time. Dealers and auction houses and speculators tripped over themselves to do a deal with Inigo until the artworld got wind of his deceptions. In fact, Kenny Schacter, the very obnoxious, and endless self-promoter, married to, or was married to, Ilona Rich, daughter of fugitive Marc Rich, and who writes a column for Artnet about artworld gossip and dealings, always referred to Inigo as his Mr. Big. And Lisa Schiff was the artworld’s go-to insider for “insights” into the contemporary art market. What does that say about the artworld’s publications like Artnet, ArtNews, etc? In fairness, the New York Times also liked to quote Lisa S and frankly she did provide accurate and intelligent statements on the state of the market, so in that respect she was doing a good job. No one, least of all her clients, knew she was skimming money from them to fund her very lavish lifestyle.

Inigo was charming and smart and handsome. I met him towards the end of his time after he opened a gallery in the Design District in Miami. Out of the blue I received an email from Alex Gartenfeld, Director of the ICA in Miami introducing Inigo and I to each other suggesting we had lots in common. Certainly we had a lot of artists we championed in common-Christopher Wool, Wade Guyton and Rudolph Stingel. In fact, Inigo was hugely influential in the meteoric rise of those artists’ markets. He was buying and flipping constantly. He seemed to have access to endless amounts of money and was always on the prowl for a good deal. But he was shamelessly dishonest. He invited me to his gallery followed by lunch at MC Kitchen (they make an exceptional pasta Bolognese). He had Stingels, Wools and Guytons in the gallery all ridiculously overpriced. After reading the book, he must have been desperate to make money to mitigate his fraud, which explains the crazy prices.

The artworld is the last space where multimillion dollar deals are concluded with a handshake and is an industry that is not regulated or beholden to any written rules. One’s reputation means everything in the artworld. If you are an Art Advisor it’s first about your integrity (it should also be assumed you are intelligent and have art historical knowledge but you would be surprised what passes for “Art Advisor”) and second about the quality of your clients’ collection, that is, what artists have you acquired. If you have acquired of-the-moment or today’s flavor-of-the month artists no serious dealer will sell you any of their artists because it suggests you/client are not serious collectors and are only interested in buying to flip at auction. On the other hand, buying from intellectually prestigious galleries elevates one’s collection. Buying well respected and not in-demand artists or “difficult” art also brings prestige. Artists that fall into that category would be Michael Krebber and Heimo Zobernig and Joseph Beuys and Bruce Nauman. Buying Anne Imhof tells the inside art world you are not only an intelligent insider with good information, but are buying for art history. Ditto for Seth Price, a very important, generational artist.

I’ve had many a conversation with the few Art Advisors I’ve met over the years. Some of them are quite good and serious professionals; many are simply terrible, have no clue about art but have access to rich people, and want to sell whatever they can to make a commission regardless of the quality of the work or artist. I’ve always operated on the assumption that my clients want to buy for posterity and they want to buy serious, art historical artists. History is brutal. How many contemporary artist will be in the history books fifty to one hundred years from now is an open question, but in our own time we can look at specific markers and base our decisions upon that information to make informed choices. My markers are simple: Which artists have had a lasting influence on successive generations? Which artists have contributed to or furthered conversations about painting, sculpture, mixed media, performance, etc? Thinking broadly and critically these answers reveal themselves but, it takes a village, meaning, it takes many art conversations with artists, dealers, curators, critics, writers and yes, sometimes collectors, to bring clarity to this decision.