Category: art

I’m really busy Finding The Warhols!, but when the Palm Beach Pollock heist went down, and no one in the crime beat media seemed to know enough about art to spot the inconsistencies and implausibilities in collector/dealer/boytoy Angelo Amadio’s claims, I couldn’t remain silent.
[The biggest red flag, of course, is the couple’s claim to have bought or been given an authenticated but secret painting by Jackson Pollock in 2001. But let’s set that aside for a moment.]
In all his early statements, Amadio described the stolen works as “paintings.” I was the first and only one to point out that the works in the photos were not paintings, but were actually prints: the Miros were lithographs, and the Rembrandt was an etching. As recently as Wednesday, they were being reported as “paintings and drawings.”
Now it seems Amadio has agreed with me.
In advance of a press conference scheduled for today, Amadio & co. gave the Monterey County Herald a list of the stolen works, “which include prints by Rembrandt, Renoir and Miro.”
Just to be clear: no serious collector, no one who actually owns and handles art, and certainly no one who has been in the “wholesale art business” and authenticating Pollocks for years as Amadio claims would call a print a painting. And they certainly wouldn’t do it for Rembrandt, whose paintings and etchings are such completely different physical objects. It’d be like calling a piece of paper a book, or a purse a suitcase. It just makes no sense.
Meanwhile, in other Telling Different Things To Different People news, the LA Times describes Amadio as A law student who clerks for attorney Vicki St. John. Which may be true! Life’s complicated, and we all have many different hats and usernames.
Here’s what he told the SF Chronicle earlier this week:

Amadio said he is chief executive of Alternative Asset Investments Inc., which he described as a company that deals with artwork. He also said he is a law student, but would not say where.

Also this, “St. John’s ex-wife is Vicki St. John, who is listed as the attorney for Alternative Asset Investments, Amadio’s company, on the firm’s Web site.”
And from the Herald: “Vicki St. John, an attorney representing Angelo Benjamin Amadio and Dr. Ralph Kennaugh…”
So St. John is Amadio’s “boss,” his employee, and/or his lawyer. And she’s also an ex-wife? Yes, of David St. John, the couple’s insurance broker, who is the only other person named so far who claims to have seen the art. In describing the coming “rebuttal press conference” [Amadio & co’s term], the LA Times said the collectors’ proof would include “a statement from an insurance agent who specializes in art.”
So I guess that means the statement will not come from David R. St. John, then, because he apparently specializes in auto, health and life insurance. One of Tulsa’s most upstanding independent insurance brokers, I’m sure.

UPDATE: I didn’t notice that Wednesday, the Herald put a date on the Pollock: 1944. That should narrow it down.
One work that hasn’t gotten any real attention is the Van Gogh. I know, right? Was it the drawing of an old woman [signed “Vincent”] that Amadio showed to KSBW last week? [above, right] Because according to the Internet Archive version of Art Etoile [above, left], Amadio & Kennaugh’s defunct “wholesale art” business website, that drawing was “SOLD” for $1.5 million by April 2004. It was described as a “Van Gogh [that] has never before been seen outside the actual artist’s family!” What incredible art historical detective skills these guys must have, finding unknown Van Goghs and Pollocks everywhere! Maybe they can help–you guessed it–Find The Warhols!

So first the big news about the Pebble Beach Pollock Caper: did I call it or what? The Monterey Herald reports from the Sheriff’s Dept. press conference today that Angelo Amadio and Ralph Kennaugh are now being considered suspects in, well, if it’s not an actual $80 million art theft, it’s some kind of “criminal enterprise.” They’ve hired a defense attorney, but they have not, as yet, provided the police with any actual documentation that proves the supposedly stolen works even exist.
David St. John says it exists, though. He’s supposedly the collectors’ insurance broker [and his ex-wife is listed as counsel for Amadio’s newly incorporated investment company, so a really arm’s length guy. From the SF Chronicle:

David St. John said he had seen his clients’ most valuable painting, an untitled Pollock that police were told was worth $20 million.
“There have been very few owners – three or four as I can trace,” Amadio said. “It’s known amongst Pollock collectors, I think.”

Ah, now we’re getting somewhere. A 4×7-foot Pollock which has traded hands three or four times in 50+ years, yet has never been sold or exhibited publicly. A painting which is not in the four-volume, 1978 catalogue raisonne or the supplement, yet is “known amongst Pollock collectors,” Amadio “thinks.”
I guess I’ve just been spending too much time trying to rally all the Warhol collectors to Find The Warhols! to do much Pollock collector outreach. Could someone who’s on Facebook contact the Pollock Collectors Group for me and tell them to spill the beans?
UPDATE: Watch the raw feed of the Sheriff’s bemused press conference! [kcra.com]
Also, the Google Map and the real estate listing for the scene of the as-yet-unspecified crime: $4.3m, not $5m, and flooded with western light. Good thing the prints were all rolled up!

Now that the Monterey Herald’s on the case, I think the Pebble Beach Pollock heist will be wrapped up pretty soon. Then we can get back to Finding The Warhols! Out of Angelo/Benjamin Amadio’s shifty, grifty interview with reporters Larry Parsons and Julia Reynolds, emerge details about the stolen Pollock and the “wholesale” art business Amadio ran for ten years:

A few minutes later, Amadio confessed that he knows “nothing about art.” But his role in the partnership with Kennaugh was “find it, buy it and sell it.” And he said he has good connections in the art world.
In 2001, Amadio said, research he did for a big-time art broker involved in the pending sale of a lot of Pollock paintings revealed that some of them weren’t authentic.
In gratitude, he said, a would-be buyer gave the men one of the real Pollocks — the same one they now say was taken from an upstairs office nook, where it was rolled up for storage. The broker, he said, wound up dying, an art world casualty of “cocaine overdose out West,” he said [from his rental house perched on the West coast].”

Ah, so in 2001, when he was 23, the guy who knows “nothing about art” authenticated an unknown hoard of purported Pollocks, and got “one of the real Pollocks” he identified as a thank you gift.
Who was this coke-snorting, big-time Pollock broker out West? I’m sure he must be very well-known to the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Just think of the firestorm of attention and debate that erupted in 2005 when sexploitation filmmaker Alex Matter, whose parents were friends of the Pollock-Krasners, pulled a stack of small purported Pollocks from his late father’s East Hampton storage unit. [below: a NYT photo of Matter with some of his find.]

In fact, much of the story of the Matter Pollocks unfolds in Boston, where Amadio lived with his partner, Harvard physician Dr. Ralph Kennaugh. The NY Times reported in 2007 that pigments from Matter’s paintings were analyzed at the Harvard Art Museums and the MFA. When the pigments were found to have been manufactured long after the artist’s death in 1956–some as recently as 1996, after even Matter’s father’s death–Matter disputed the findings, and then commissioned a do-over in Williamstown, and then threatened to sue that guy over the results. And the whole trove was exhibited later that year at Boston’s College’s McMullen Museum.
Oh, look, as coverage of the local angle on the Matter paintings controversy picked up in 2007, the Boston Globe’s Geoff Edgers got Matter to admit that he had given “partial ownership” of his Pollock stash to dealer Ronald Feldman in exchange for help covering the “expenses associated with restoring, insuring and researching the works.”
So it could totally happen! Matter actually said he found the works in 2002. There are 22 canvases and 10 boards. Maybe he gave one of the largest canvases to Amadio for helping him clean out the storage unit, and kept the tiny, notebook-sized ones himself? [Q: Did Alex Matter OD in the desert recently?]
Of course, right in the middle of this Matter matter, David Geffen reportedly sold his Pollock painting, No. 5, 1948, for $140 million. That painting measures 4×8 feet, very close in size to Amadio’s Pollock. No. 5 is on fiberboard, though, not so easy to roll up and store behind your printer. To a collector-dealer of Amadio’s savvy and renown, I’m sure such a confluence of Pollock stories unfolding in his own backyard was a purely matter of deep, scholarly interest–and not a blueprint for concocting a giant Pollock scam of his own.
Pebble Beach art heist puts collectors in spotlight [montereyherald.com]

Stolen art aficionados, please don’t let the reports of a giant $60 million art theft in Pebble Beach distract us from Our Important Task of Finding The Warhols, because it is a big gay hoax. I’ll bet you a Warhol wanted poster.

Every thing about the Pebble Beach heist is fishy or inconsistent or hilariously a lie. Let’s start out with the collectors themselves, A. Benjamin Amadio, 31 and Dr. Ralph Kennaugh, 62, who present themselves as business partners. Business partners who lived together, retired from Boston together, and were renting the $5 million house with no alarm system while either finishing construction on their new place or shopping around for a place to build. They first went into business together 10 years ago, when Amadio, then 21, was either an art gallerist or a venture capitalist in Ohio.

A. Benjamin is better known to Google as Angelo Amadio, and as 40 commenters at the Boston Herald–but no reporter anywhere so far–were able to figure out, he is the subject of numerous ripoff complaints for selling undocumented puppies as AKC-registered, but then never delivering the paperwork.

But what about the art? From the Boston Globe:

Amadio said that only three or four people in the world knew the two owned some of the pieces and that the thieves took only authenticated paintings, though the collection included some impeccable reproductions that only a skilled eye would be able to distinguish from the original.
“When they hit us, they knew exactly what they were looking for,” he said.
“They knew exactly where they were and the difference between some of the authentic pieces and some of the reproductions.”

Among those “authenticated paintings” were irreplaceable works by Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Miro, Matisse, Renoir, Jackson Pollock, and G.H. Rothe.
Ignore for a moment that G.H. Rothe is a gigantic print mill, cranking out tens of thousands of pastel posters of taut ballet dancers and running horses–both of which were prominent subjects in the Amadio-Kennaugh “theft” and any of which could be easily replaced for a couple hundred impulsively spent bucks on your next Carnival Cruise.
As for the “real” artists’ paintings, the Rembrandts are clearly etchings. One, Femme qui pisse, or Woman making water, is either the version offered for sale in this 2005 CG Boerner catalogue [PDF, image above] or the shabbier one they mention which was sold at auction. It’s hard to tell from Amadio’s blurry color copy documentation of this extremely rare and priceless treasure. And the Miros are clearly prints, too. [The one on the left is reproduced pointing down the Herald, and up in KSBW’s story.]

The biggest tell, though, is the Pollock, the only painting mentioned which could justify the $27 million, $60 million, or $80 million values Amadio has claimed. It is 4×7 feet. There is no published image of it. They supposedly bought it in 2001. It has supposedly never been exhibited or on the market publicly. The only thing that can be said with certainty about this purported Pollock is that it is not the #$&% Jackson Pollock bought by trucker Teri Horton in 1992 for $5, which was the subject of the 2006 joke documentary, Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? As you can see from the movie poster, that #(*$% Pollock is more than four feet tall:

Also, the insurance talk doesn’t make sense [it costs $30 million to insure a collection supposedly appraised by the insurance company for $27 million?]; the local law enforcement discrepancies; the lack of FBI Art Theft Division involvement; the sudden appearance of a ransom note/death threat? It’s all too much to believe with a straight [sic] face. And yet it gets reported far and wide by newspaper and TV sources as unquestioned fact.
I give it less than a week before the whole Pebble Beach caper implodes in a cloud of boytoy blackmail gone awry. [c-monster]

Sheesh, build an Empire State Building out of Erector Sets at Rockefeller Center and the NY Times still thinks you’re dead:

The greatest enchantments at Inhotim are produced by works that not only draw on powerful subconscious currents but that also could only have come into being in this place, in Brazil. I am thinking, for instance, about Chris Burden’s ”Beam Drop,” a sculpture that — like a lot of work by this artist, who is so steeped in art-world legend it sometimes seems surprising that he exists and is still at work — was realized only once before, in 1984, in a version that has disappeared.

Never mind that Burden made another “Beam Drop” in Antwerp. Or that the original “Beam Drop” was made in New York, too.

Meanwhile, this is as good a time as any to hate on the insanely intrusive ads that pop over Every. Single. #$)(%*ing. Page of T Magazine? It’s like walking into Saks and getting spritzed by a hundred perfume salespeople desperate not to lose their jobs.