For the Rich, Art May Well Replace Drugs as the New High

I can’t help thinking it’s no mere coincidence that within two days last week, law enforcement officials made both the biggest cocaine bust in U.S. history and one of the largest crackdowns on forged artworks in the Southland.

The direction the art market is heading, I suspect that in the years to come we’re going to be seeing a lot more police vans filled with art that has been stolen, faked or fenced.

Last week’s art scam uncovered more than 1,600 lithographs of faked Renoirs, Dalis, Chagalls, Joan Miros and others that could have been sold for $15 million. About 1,200 of the works were rounded up from the Huntington Beach warehouse of the Upstairs Gallery commercial art chain, whose owners are launching their own investigation to see whether they were duped into buying counterfeits.

A Frenchman who was arrested as a ringleader allegedly tried to sell a phony print of Renoir’s “Young Girl With Daisies” to undercover police for more than $3 million. The police said the fakes were selling for an average of $10,000 to $50,000 apiece.

It shouldn’t come as any surprise that art forgery would kick into high gear in an age when we seem to read headlines every other week about some painting or sculpture that has been sold at auction for some obscene amount: nearly $54 million for Van Gogh’s “Irises” not long after his “Sunflowers” sold for almost $40 million. And it’s not just the Old Masters--even a contemporary artist like Jasper Johns recently pulled down $17 million for his “Three Flags,” while Jackson Pollock’s “Number 8, 1950” went for $11.5 million in May.

My own jaundiced view is that this is happening because, as a society, we are losing the ability to respond to the emotions or ideas expressed in a work of art and can relate to art only via its price tag. Art has become just one more commodity for acquisition and trade once it has appreciated sufficiently.

In any case, art seems to be replacing out-fashioned drugs as the new high for the rich and famous, as they snort up more and more of the world’s masterpieces. As the war on drugs escalates into a full-scale blitzkrieg, the habit-forming substances of choice for the ‘90s very well may turn from coke, crack and pot to oils, gouaches and watercolors.

And all this is doing more than just massaging the egos of private investors who are interested only in an artist’s capital growth potential (ideal targets for the portfolio: anything by an aging artist whose imminent death will be certain to drive prices up). Worse, this feeding frenzy is leaving museums unable to compete for valued artworks the public might like to see--and creating a booming business for purveyors of fraudulent art.

Actually, I don’t understand why these counterfeiters go to such trouble to pass off their phonies as real when they could make a hefty profit selling them on the open market for exactly what they are: near-perfect imitations.

An artist in Barcelona recently had a sale in London of his imitation Monets, Goyas, Titians and Van Goghs and sold every one of them, raking in $238,600 for his own personal sincerest form of flattery.

A Newport Beach commercial gallery put on an exhibit a few years ago of famous fakes (clearly labeled as such) by art forger Elmyr de Hory, who aped the style, rather than specific works, of the likes of Picasso, Matisse and Modigliani. Turned out there is a thriving market for a genuine De Hory fake--they sell for $10,000 to $15,000 each. Apparently some would-be art lovers like a canvas that looks as impressive over the couch as a real Picasso but that costs only a fraction as much.

But the person who doesn’t care about art, except for how cheap it is, is no less pathetic than Joe who cares only about how much it costs. Whether the art in question is real or fake, in either case the emphasis is all on the price tag and the prestige (or pseudo-prestige) that comes with it.

It must irritate the true art lover that nouveau sophisticates with big bucks are driving the price of art through the roof only because they see it as having more profit-potential than junk bonds or hog futures.

Of course, this phenomenon is not limited to the visual arts--the late Irving Berlin said he repeatedly turned down offers of millions of dollars for the rights to his vast song catalogue because “I wouldn’t know what to do with their money and they wouldn’t know what to do with my songs.”

We’re talking about the same mindless consumerism that caused a guitar-loving co-worker to fume recently at the sight of a heavy metal singer carelessly flinging around a fine old Les Paul guitar that this headbanger had bought simply because he could afford to, not because he valued its craftsmanship or its music-making qualities.

Part of the blame rests with those of us in the media: We’re the ones who trumpet the dollar amounts of record-breaking art sales, or the size of superstar actor, athlete or rock ‘n’ roller contracts. When was the last time you saw a front-page headline shouting about the lyrical brilliance of the new Bob Dylan album, the stunning vocal achievement of K.D. Lang’s latest record, or the stark power of a Robert Longo assemblage? Dylan generated more headlines when the house he was born in in Hibbing, Minn., was put up for sale last year.

But put Andy Warhol’s grocery list on the auction block, or let Michael Jackson sell 35 million copies of “Thriller” and boom, it’s news. Quantity wins out over quality every time.

On one hand, perhaps there is no real victim here. Perhaps we shouldn’t cry too loudly over the stratospheric prices for authentic art or the proliferation of l’art bogus . If people have and are willing to pay outrageous sums for their art, genuine or phony, maybe the law of caveat emptor should suffice.

But it seems to me everyone said pretty much the same thing two decades ago about drugs, before we learned about the long-term effects of substance abuse and decided to make drugs our new Public Enemy No. 1.

I suggest we don’t wait so long this time. Before it’s too late, Just Say No to Art Abuse.