Provenance

by Laney Salisbury

  Drewe seemed even more upbeat than usual when he told Myatt that he’d given Goudsmid the two “Dutch portraits” as a birthday present. However, he had a small confession to make: He’d lied and said that he’d bought the pieces at auction. He’d also neglected to mention Myatt’s contribution, telling Goudsmid only that Myatt was his art consultant and adviser on his collection.

  “For God’s sake, John, don’t tell her you painted them,” Drewe said.

  Myatt hesitated for a moment. He’d told the occasional white lie in the past, but this was a little more elaborate. Still, he felt indebted to Drewe, who had paid him hundreds of pounds and was probably good for hundreds more. It was the least he could do.

  Inside, Drewe showed Myatt how he had set the two Dutch portraits—one of a boy in a heavy brown cloak with his hand stuck in his vest, the other of a girl holding an ostrich feather—on a plum-colored velvet background surrounded by a gilt frame. When Goudsmid came downstairs, Drewe introduced her to Myatt, and the two shook hands and admired the paintings.

  “Lovely pieces,” Myatt said in the most professorial tone he could muster. “Excellent examples of late-seventeenth-century works. Probably painted around 1680.”

  He felt uncomfortable masquerading as an expert, but he had done a good job on the paintings, and they were thoughtful gifts from Drewe to his wife. Why should he spoil things?

  Goudsmid, a petite, good-looking woman, was clad in a business suit and wore her hair pulled straight back. An Israeli army veteran, she now worked as a pediatric eye specialist at a London hospital. When she wasn’t at her job, she was taking care of the children or hunting for antique furniture and remodeling: a new bathroom, a sunroom, a gourmet kitchen. She gave Myatt a brief tour of the house, which was filled with ladders and paint buckets and hammers, in a state of “hyperactive refurbishment,” as one of the neighbors described it.

  After dinner, Drewe slipped Myatt an envelope, walked him back to the train station, and announced that he was commissioning another piece. Until now, he had been particular about which artist Myatt should copy, but today he wanted to hear Myatt’s recommendations for his growing “collection.”

  “Surprise me!” he said, grinning. “After all, you’re my personal art consultant.”

  As Myatt waited for the train, he felt that something significant had taken place, something that was about to change his life. He turned and watched Drewe strutting away in his perfect suit with his long arms swinging. Myatt had always done his best work in the solitude of his studio, but someone was at his side now. Drewe was offering a partnership, a creative conspiracy of sorts.

  Stepping into the train compartment, Myatt saw an old man reading the Times next to the scattered remains of a bag of crisps. He sat down and discreetly checked the contents of Drewe’s envelope. It was a nice haul.

  Most of Myatt’s early clients had been partial to Gainsborough, Constable, or Reynolds, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century traditionalists from the Royal Academy, but Myatt had always been more interested in the work of twentieth-century Frenchmen. Given the opportunity to expand his repertoire, he decided to experiment. Drewe did not want direct copies, but “pastiches,” works that could pass as paintings a particular artist might have done. Myatt went combing through his art history books.

  Over the next several months, he produced works in the style of the Cubist Georges Braque, of Roger Bissière, whose tapestrylike compositions were prized in the 1950s, and of Nicolas de Staël, a Frenchman of Russian origin who painted abstract landscapes in blocklike slabs of color. Whenever he could afford a babysitter to watch Amy and Sam, he would set up his easel in the living room and go to work. Painting in the style of another artist required a certain amount of historical research and psychological insight, as well as a flawless ability to reproduce the brushwork and compositional preferences of the original in a loose and interpretative way. This was far more interesting to Myatt than knocking off straight copies.

  Every month or so, he would take the train to London with a new canvas and meet Drewe at the Euston station bar or at Lindy’s restaurant across from the Golders Green tube station. Drewe would hand over the money, and they would have a beer or a cup of tea.

  Once, Drewe drove up to Myatt’s farmhouse in his blue Bristol—a handmade, limited-edition jewel of a car—and Myatt took him to the Sugnall pub. It felt like a royal visit. Drewe waxed on about extrasensory perception, quantum physics, mathematics and its relationship to the artistic process. It all sounded a little high-flown to Myatt’s ears, but Drewe seemed as interested in learning from Myatt as he was in pontificating. Myatt felt appreciated when Drewe asked him about the ins and outs of the art establishment, about the technical differences between the moderns and the old masters, about how to tell the talented from the poseurs of the art world. The five years Myatt had spent in art school in the 1960s, and the fact that he had paid his dues on the local exhibition circuit, qualified him to be Drewe’s teacher, and when he offered Drewe a crash course, the professor proved himself a quick study.

  If Myatt secretly wondered whether Drewe was mining him for information in order to sell fakes, he buried the thought. Whenever he spent time with Drewe, he came away reinvigorated, as if the man’s charm had rubbed off on him. It was encouraging to know that someone of such importance valued his friendship. Besides, Drewe’s curiosity about the art market wasn’t unusual, given the fact that everyone was talking about the unprecedented boom and the spiraling prices. Traditional collectors who had once been guided by aesthetics alone had begun to compete against a new breed of wealthy international collectors and young moneyed professionals who were driving up prices. These newcomers were excited by the prospect of substantial returns and saw art as another investment, if one with an added benefit: An art portfolio bestowed an aura of sophistication and culture that no stock holding could provide.

  Andy Warhol had seen through the eager new collector’s real purpose in acquiring well-branded art, suggesting in 1977 that instead of spending $200,000 on a painting, a smart collector would be well-advised to take the money, “tie it up and hang it on the wall. . . . Then, when someone visits you, the first thing they see is the money on the wall.”2

  In the new marketplace, money managers nudged their clients to invest in art. British Rail’s pension fund, for example, committed about £40 million to buying fine art. Its portfolio included impressionist and modern works as well as pieces by El Greco and Canaletto. Art, in the words of the dealer Eugene Thaw, was at risk of becoming “a commodity like pork bellies or wheat.”3

  Alfred Taubman, the American shopping mall mogul whose assets included the A&W chain, equated fine art with one of his products. “There is more similarity . . . in a precious painting by Degas and a frosted mug of root beer than you ever thought possible,” he told a business audience about the marketing challenges he faced after buying Sotheby’s auction house in 1983.4

  Taubman’s $139 million purchase of the 241-year-old company was a sign that the once insular market was open to newcomers. Under Taubman, Sotheby’s began offering financing terms, insurance, restoration services, and storage as inducements to its new and relatively inexperienced collectors. It encouraged Wall Street to move into art investment and assigned staffers to reach out to corporations that wanted to set up on-site galleries. Taubman also sent works scheduled for sale on preauction tours across the United States and abroad, backing the tours with aggressive advertising campaigns. A different language sprang up at the auction houses: The new catchphrases were “threshold resistance,” “value,” and “liquidity.”

  Christie’s, Sotheby’s rival, followed suit.

  In this climate it was hardly surprising that the price of an artwork could increase as much as fivefold in a single year. In the past the media had seldom paid much attention to art auctions and sales, except for the occasional story about a rare find or a well-known collection that was headed for the block. Now auction prices routinely made headlines,
and the investment returns were phenomenal. A Kentucky nursing home magnate who bought Pablo Picasso’s self-portrait Yo Picasso for $5.8 million in 1981 sold it seven years later for nearly $48 million, a net rate of return of 19.6 percent a year. Jackson Pollock’s Search, purchased in 1971 for $200,000, would sell for $4.8 million in May 1988, a 2,400 percent increase. Pollock, who had sold only a handful of

  Although art investors were constantly being reminded that the bubble would inevitably burst, even the stock market crash of October 1987 failed to punch a hole in the balloon. A month later, van Gogh’s Irises, bought in 1947 for $84,000, sold for $53.9 million at Sotheby’s. Those who recalled art’s historical role in civilizing society, a larger and nobler role than enriching speculators, warned of the dangers of “canvas greed.”

  “Art is no longer priceless, it is priceful,” said Time magazine art critic Robert Hughes.

  Arguably, in many cases, style was winning out over substance. Young painters who wanted their work to attract a share of the free-flowing money quickly figured out that the key to success lay not only in the quality of the work itself but in the practice of “branding,” the establishment of a strong public association of the product with positive values. In the past, an aspiring artist struggled to build an alliance with a respected and powerful dealer, hoping that over time the dealer would persuade the world of art patrons and collectors that the young artist’s maturing talent deserved to be recognized and supported. Now, in the commodities-driven eighties, artists like Keith Haring, Jeff Koons, and Julian Schnabel followed Warhol’s example and became businessmen as much as artists. Art schools began offering business classes to their more enterprising students.

  Some artists developed product lines, opened trademark stores, and pushed for their works to appear on billboards or in commercials in bald-faced campaigns to increase the market value of whatever they put their names to. At a time when the world seemed more interested in the art of the deal than in the art, the worth of a piece was often determined by the auctioneer’s gavel rather than by critical evaluation.

  When Picasso’s Au Lapin Agile sold at Sotheby’s in 1989 for $40 million and change, it became the third most expensive work of art ever sold at auction, but the market was so jaded that only a handful of people on the floor applauded, and the night’s total of nearly $300 million was considered relatively flat. In this atmosphere, demand quickly exceeded supply. Handshake deals were being struck for works that had not even been painted yet.

  Plugging away at his works “in the style of,” Myatt couldn’t help being aware of these trends. Sometimes his clients, mesmerized by the market boom, asked what their paintings might be worth if they were real. Myatt would humor them and invent an exorbitant sum. Whenever he dropped off a Braque or a Bissière for Drewe, the professor would speculate on what price it might fetch at auction. Over drinks one night, he explained to Myatt that he worked in a world of precise scientific calculations and that the art market’s way of determining value was still a mystery to him. He wanted hard information on the dynamics that drove the business.

  How was the authenticity of a painting determined?

  Was the decision entirely subjective? If so, who was authorized to say whether a work of art was genuine?

  If something was satisfying to the eye, wasn’t that enough?

  Who actually determined the price placed on a particular work of art?

  “I’m just curious to know what you think, John,” said Drewe.

  Again Myatt felt a touch of pride at being treated as an equal by such a distinguished man. He had considered these issues for years, and he answered Drewe’s questions thoughtfully.

  Unlike scientists, he said, art collectors did not rely on a peer-review system. Works of art were not evaluated by juries of artists and historians, nor were dealers bound by specific guidelines, let alone hard and fast rules. Myatt respected the art establishment for supporting the careers of artists, but lately he had begun to question the whole enterprise of evaluating art. He thought great art should be kept out of the hands of the wealthy few, who could drive prices up by trading in masterpieces as though they were stock options or locking them away in vaults.5

  “The world’s gone mad,” Myatt told the professor. “Art was never meant to be just a question of money.”

  By the middle of 1988 Drewe’s and Myatt’s relationship was flourishing. Drewe often invited Myatt and his children over for dinner, and Myatt took a liking to Goudsmid. During one meal, when he mentioned that his daughter had an eye problem, Goudsmid took Amy to her private office upstairs, examined her carefully, and made sure Myatt found the right specialist for her. She was the disciplinarian in the family, the bookkeeper, the educator. It was Goudsmid who made sure Nadav and Atarah did their homework, watched them brush their teeth, and hustled them to bed. Drewe, on the other hand, seemed lackadaisical, and let them do whatever they pleased.

  The two families enjoyed their evening get-togethers, and on one occasion Drewe took them all out to the West End to see a pantomime. It was an unusual theater season: Three productions of traditional children’s pantomime starred former television anchormen, while another featured a well-known stuntman who had once jumped his motorbike over dozens of London double-deckers.

  After the performance, as they strolled outside the theater, Drewe took Myatt aside, pulled out a cigar, and announced that there had been an interesting development. A friend of his at Christie’s had been over for dinner, examined the two Dutch portraits on the wall, and pronounced them “very competent” eighteenth-century copies of seventeenth-century Bakkers. Then Drewe said something that truly astonished Myatt. The two works, the Christie’s friend had said, could easily fetch £15,000 to £20,000 at auction.

  Myatt laughed at the irony. With just a little more scrutiny, Drewe’s friend would have known that the paintings were very competent twentieth-century copies.

  Only when Myatt thought back on his relationship with Drewe years afterward did he realize that the professor had been testing him that night to see if he was ready for the next step.

  A few weeks later Myatt was at Drewe’s for supper and noticed that the two portraits had vanished, along with several other works, including a Bissière, a de Staël, and a work on a coarse jute fabric after Braque.

  Something wasn’t right. Drewe had already placed orders for more works than could possibly fit on the walls of his house. It didn’t elude Myatt that Drewe might be passing them off as originals and selling them, but he quickly developed a rationale: Most likely the paintings had been given away and were hanging in someone’s vacation home. Drewe was a generous fellow, after all, a man of character. He was at the height of his career, and married to a woman who was also earning a good salary.

  Myatt struggled with his suspicions. He feared losing Drewe as a steady client, and this was no time for a confrontation. It was really none of his business.

  3

  ART FOR SALE

  On a busy thoroughfare in Golders Green, in the converted garage of a mews house that had served as a stable a century earlier, Danny Berger set up a small office and a temporary home for himself and his girlfriend. A middle-aged Israeli salesman with a heavy accent, Berger had been trolling the neighborhood for the past two decades with varying degrees of success. He dealt in whatever came through the marketplace: luggage, fixtures, appliances, “a full product line,” as he put it, anything that could be imported or exported and marked up. Most often he did business through handshake deals with friends of friends.

  The garage faced Finchley Road, which ran straight to the bustling center of Golders Green, a thriving Jewish community since the early 1900s, filled with synagogues, bakeries, delicatessens, and coffeehouses. Berger had installed cheap wall-to-wall carpeting and a battered desk with a phone that was nearly buried by the car parts strewn around. Behind the main room was a bed he could use while he finished renovating a house he’d bought in Greenwich, on the south bank of the Thames.<
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  Quite by accident, he had recently found himself in a whole new line of business. He’d become a “runner,” a mobile art dealer without a gallery or a private collection. Traditionally, runners were part of a small squadron of professional go-betweens who worked to match buyers with sellers. Runners tended to be energetic, refined, and well connected. Part of their job was to scour homes, attics, antique shops, and auction houses in search of pristine and unique works that would appeal to collectors. At any given moment there might be several dozen runners crisscrossing the globe with their little jewels: a small Magritte to Paris, a Hockney to Rome, a Duchamp to Dallas.

  Berger didn’t exactly fit the profile. His new sideline had begun unexpectedly one day at the Costa Café, a Golders Green hangout popular with émigrés, where he liked to sit nursing a double espresso, watching the street, and chain-smoking his Time cigarettes, an Israeli brand. Here at the Costa, Berger could chat comfortably with fellow Israelis and read his Haaretz newspaper. The other Britain—characterized by Benny Hill, cricket, and marmalade—sometimes felt like a neighboring republic. The Costa, a chummy and informal place, felt like Tel Aviv. It was filled with a nice mix of entrepreneurs, chatterboxes, and the occasional philosopher, and had served for years as Berger’s de facto office and a place to catch up on local gossip. It was close enough to his garage that he could walk home to follow up on a business lead or take a nap and get back to the café before it closed.

  Late one morning in mid-1988, Berger was sitting in the Costa going through some papers when a man wearing a nice brown suit and carrying a leather briefcase introduced himself and asked whether Berger would mind sharing the table. The café was crowded, so Berger moved his stack of papers over and gestured for him to sit.

  “Are you Israeli?” asked Drewe, noticing Berger’s accent. “So is my wife.”