Con artist, p.3
Con/Artist, page 3
I was young and had wanderlust. When I drove out to California, I had picked up a hitchhiker. She asked me why I was going to LA and I said simply, “Fame and fortune.” The secret fantasy I stashed away was to one day own a Ferrari. Now I had to face the depressing reality that my dreams were pulling farther and farther out of view.
The fifty-mile commute to work really began to wear on me, wasting hours of time and gallons of gas every day. Every week, on my day off, I would stop by a furniture store in Pomona to ask for a job. Finally, just to stop answering my calls and to put an end to my impromptu appearances, they hired me. I thought I was doing pretty well, but it wasn’t long before the store cut back and, as the youngest and newest salesman, I got fired. I went on unemployment and hated it. We only managed to scrape by because Marguerite had gotten a job at the Ontario public library a few months before.
I’d like to say that I used the unemployed time wisely, but in reality, I was pretty low. I would watch Sesame Street with Christine, walk her to school, then come home and make calls for job interviews that never materialized. Then I’d flip around on the TV, watching the corny Tempo program, where they’d interview people on the street or have on some guy who had a nice Christmas tree. I painted to pass the time.
My life was on repeat and I couldn’t see any way to change things. Marguerite and I started to fight about money, our lifestyle, and how to raise Christine. One time, my whole family came out from Fulton to take a trip together to Las Vegas. I was so excited to take a break and be with my family that I begged Marguerite to agree to go. She said we didn’t have the money, and though she was right, I got so mad that I didn’t speak to her for three days.
After a few grim months on unemployment, I finally got a job selling furniture in a department store in the brand-new Montclair Plaza. It was more of the same, but at least everyone from the mall would go to the Jolly Roger for happy hour after work. It was my only outlet, though I always left early, just as people were starting to have fun. I was the only person with a wife and kid.
Eventually Marguerite and I drifted apart. I didn’t know anything about how to be in a relationship and we ended up getting divorced, as was probably inevitable. I’m grateful for my daughter—my greatest joy—and Marguerite is a good woman, but nobody should ever get married at sixteen. They moved down the street to a nice little apartment and I moved three minutes away with a couple of roommates. We saw each other when we could. Though I was barely scraping by, for the first time, I enjoyed a little bit of the youth that I had never had. It was the first time that I had ever lived alone and could make my own schedule. It was strange but liberating doing everything for myself.
One Sunday, like any other, I drove my beat-up Volkswagen Bug with no brakes to the Alpha Beta supermarket to buy bread and pasta, and to treat myself to a bruised, purple, manager’s special chuck steak. It didn’t seem like it then, but it was the day that changed my life and set me on the course I would pursue for the next fifty years.
I had finished shopping and was waiting around bored in the line at the check-out stand when I noticed a little circular book display. As I spun it around, something caught my eye, a book with a colorful Modigliani painting on the cover. It was Fake! by Clifford Irving. I picked it up and, as people streamed past me, I started reading, mesmerized by the story of the notorious Hungarian art forger Elmyr de Hory, who had had an illustrious twenty-year career as a European socialite selling Chagalls, Picassos, and Modiglianis to unsuspecting galleries and collectors in Spain, France, and Italy. I bought the book, drove home, and devoured it in one sitting, staying up late into the night. As I read, one idea became clearer and clearer: the only thing I could think was “I could do this.”
In the book, Irving talked about how Elmyr had risen from obscurity to become a respected dealer and sought-after guest at European summer homes. He had operated secretly, trading on a fictional personal relationship with the artists, and his main insight was to make paintings that weren’t exact copies but rather believable paintings in the style of the great masters and popular painters of the time. I thought it was brilliant that this guy had thought of doing these things and that he had the balls to carry it out with little more than his wits, his talent for art, and a plausible line of bullshit.
The very next morning, I resolved to put my own plan into action. I drove down to the big Art Deco library on Olive Street in downtown LA, where I searched the shelves for old, large-format art and architecture books whose pages were tinged with age. Usually, these books had three or four blank pages at the beginning and several more at the back. I would bury myself deep in the stacks and when no one was watching, cough and tear a blank page from the book. After a few trips and what must have seemed to others like a bout of tuberculosis, I had accumulated a little stack of paper, perfect for drawing.
My first steps were timid. Somewhere between a forgery and a prank. I was ignorant, but I was smart enough to know that an oil painting or anything by a major artist would draw attention. I also knew from Elmyr’s story that provenance—the history of who had owned an artwork and where it had been—could be a problem. So, rather than do a Chagall or Monet or Picasso painting, I decided to do a little drawing that was meant to be a fake Chagall, signed by de Hory, who, with the release of Fake!, had become notorious. I imagined that knowledgeable people in the art world would know who he was and would get a kick out of the piece of memorabilia. And since it wasn’t an actual, real work of art that would have been in a collection or museum, I wouldn’t need to come up with any kind of provenance. The idea seemed perfect.
I searched books and found a self-portrait that Chagall had done. His was a simple black-ink line drawing showing his curly hair. Mine was based on that but a little more elaborate and had a donkey, one of his iconic symbols, on his head. I signed it, “À mon ami, Elmyr de Hory.” For three days, I practiced the drawing over and over again on regular art paper until I was finally happy and could do it without hesitation.
When I was done, I bought a sheet of plexiglass, which I held on my knees over a lamp like a poor man’s light table. Carefully, over and over, I practiced tracing my drawing until I could do it confidently. When I was finally ready, I took one of the pages I had torn from the library books and traced my work. When I finally stepped back to appraise the drawing, I was very happy with the result. And so it was that the very first piece of art that I ever forged was a portrait of Chagall that I signed with the name of another forger.
In those days, Palm Springs was glamorous and cosmopolitan, at the tail end of the Rat Pack era and the boom of modernist architecture. Many galleries on Palm Canyon Drive and Tahquitz-McCallum catered to a cultured and wealthy clientele, and it’s there that I decided to bring my work. I had concocted a story that my grandfather, old and in failing health, was giving his art away before he died and the collection ended up in probate. I said I was selling the art because my beat-up car needed a transmission. With my dying, brakeless VW Bug, it wasn’t too much of a stretch.
At first, I went to a few galleries, but the dealers weren’t interested or wanted to put my piece on consignment. I had had enough of that with my own art. Finally, I went into the gallery of John Mercante, a young, stylish, and charming guy. His gallery was full of beautiful works and I admired his suit and Gucci loafers, which he wore without socks—the kind of easy, relaxed elegance I associated with stylish, rich people in Palm Springs. As I showed him my Elmyr Chagall, we chatted about my grandfather and my backstory, and I felt like we had an easy rapport.
He liked the piece, got a kick out of the novelty, and offered me $200, though I asked for $400. He wrote me a check with a casual flourish, and as I left the gallery, he called after me, “Let me know if your grandfather has anything else.” That was it. It took fifteen minutes. This was incredible to me, to think that I could make a simple drawing and walk out with $200 after failing so miserably with my own art. Signed by me it was worthless; signed by a famous forger, it was worth money I could bank. The check Mercante had just written with such ease was twice my rent at the time. To celebrate, I went a half block down the street to treat myself to lunch at a nice restaurant.
As I sat there, I started to have second thoughts. If I cashed this check, I would have $200, but I would probably never be able to go back to Mercante, with whom I had developed a good feeling. I felt like we had hit it off and I had a sense that he could be my guide and teach me so many of the things that I didn’t know and would need to learn. I left my half-eaten sandwich, paid my bill, and headed back to the gallery.
When I walked in, Mercante was sitting with his feet up on his desk, bored in the middle of a weekday afternoon. He was surprised to see me back so soon. Sheepishly, I confessed what I had done and pleaded that he let me make paintings for him. I told him that I could come up with wonderful art that he would like and that he could make a lot of money on.
“First thing,” he said, “give me back that check.” I’m sure he was thinking, “What balls on this fucking kid,” but he wasn’t angry. Maybe he felt a little sorry for me or liked my hustle. I don’t know. I handed him the check and he gave me back my drawing. He told me that he wouldn’t buy any of my art, but if I wanted, I could bring it to him and he would tell me what he thought of it. He didn’t make a big deal or threaten to call the cops. I think he had a good business and didn’t want to jeopardize it. It was interesting to see that dealers would rather take a hit now and then than raise a big stink and spook their customers.
When I went home, I was happy. Despite the fact that I had not made any money, I felt like the day had been a big success. Mercante had liked my piece and had bought it, at least before I confessed. And though he didn’t want to buy my art afterward, he told me that I could bring him things to look at.
Now, I felt a real boost of confidence and was sure that I could take my Elmyr drawing anywhere. I drove to Beverly Hills and sold it to a place on Robertson. There, the old-time actor Vincent Price, who was known as an art connoisseur, looked at my piece and succinctly canned it. “I don’t like him,” he said, pointing to Elmyr’s name, “and I don’t like him,” pointing to Chagall’s. Despite Vincent’s scathing review, the owner took out a jeweler’s loupe, examined my drawing, and wrote me a check for $250. I gladly sank the money into back rent and bills that had just come due.
Having sold my first quasi-forgery, I was now ready to step up to the full-fledged thing. Too dumb to know any better, I decided to do a Modigliani, like the one that had caught my eye on the cover of Fake! An artist like that would have been too big, too significant for a clueless kid to have, but at least I was smart enough to do a pencil drawing instead of a painting.
In the 1920s Modigliani had done an oil painting of a nude woman on a bed that I had admired. I based my drawing on the same woman, but instead of lying down in bed, in my piece, she was sitting up. This made sense, as it could have been the preparatory drawing for the known painting. I did my drawing, tracing it as I had done with the Chagall, then signed it “Modigliani” and framed it in an inexpensive black frame.
Near me, there was a smorgasbord restaurant of the kind that was popular in the seventies, called Griswold’s. Attached to the restaurant, there was a motel, and then, I remembered, an art gallery. I knew that the guy there wouldn’t be an expert, but it was nearby and would be a low-risk way to check how I had done. The dealer liked the drawing, commenting on the strong and confident lines. Little did he know the lines were strong just because I had traced them instead of working freehand. I knew this guy was probably a three out of ten in knowledge, but still, his response told me I was on the right track.
A week later, my roommates, Don and Gary, planned to go to LA to see The Dinah Shore Show at CBS Studios on Beverly. I tagged along and asked them if they minded if we stopped on the way. I told them about my drawing and said they could come with me to Sotheby’s so they could see how it all went down. I wasn’t worried telling them; being a forger then was such a pie-in-the-sky idea that I didn’t mind if they knew. It seemed more like a prank that teenagers would do, like climbing a fence to go skinny-dipping, rather than a serious crime.
So, the three of us went to Sotheby’s, where I met with an appraiser while my friends browsed around the gallery. When I showed the drawing to the expert, giving him my story about my grandfather, he didn’t seem impressed. He examined the drawing for a while, then handed it back to me, saying, “It doesn’t feel right.” And that was it. There was no more to say. I felt like he had been too abrupt, but I said OK and left without an argument. At the time, I thought his statement was hokey, but he was right. Someone who really knows an artist can get a feeling just by looking at the whole thing. At the time, what did I know?
We left Sotheby’s with a shrug and ended up at Dinah Shore. Everything seemed rinky-dink compared to what you saw on TV. Before the show, they sent out a comedian to put us in a good mood, but it ended up doing the opposite. My friends were annoyed at how hard they tried to rile us up and get us into a good humor. Later, I would see the same kind of song and dance at galleries and auction houses, where the bells and whistles were meant to distract you from what was really going on.
Still, I wasn’t satisfied with Sotheby’s opinion. So, I took my drawing out to Palm Springs and showed it to John Mercante, whose opinion I trusted more and with whom I had more confidence. When I showed it to him, he said it looked good, agreeing that my nude looked like the same model from the oil painting, and that the preparatory story and signature seemed plausible. A couple of days later, I was sitting on the beach reading a newspaper when I came across a listing for Empire Gallery, a fine art auction house in Santa Ana near me, with its other outlet, Desert Auction, in Cathedral City, near Palm Springs. The listing said that they bought fine estate items: Tiffany lamps, Steuben vases, and paintings by well-known artists. It seemed like the right place to go.
I dressed like a naive kid in jean shorts and flip-flops, put my drawing in the car, and pointed it toward Santa Ana. The auction wasn’t like what I had imagined from TV. It was a jumble of items, like an explosion at a rich man’s house. There were vases, tables, elephant tusks, mosaic mirrors, jewelry, antique floor lamps, all kinds of paintings and sculptures. I told them I had a drawing to sell and they brought me to meet the owner, Carl Marcus, a tall, slick man in his early forties. Carl talked fast but was polite and had the mannerisms of a genteel old-world European with, I thought, just a trace of an accent.
He was sitting at his desk with a sly smile on his face as he listened to my story about a sick and elderly grandfather and his art collection. I told him that my drawing had been a centerpiece in the family and that my grandfather had bought it in France. He smiled and nodded politely. As he examined the drawing, to fill the awkward silence, I explained about my dying car and its ailing transmission, which Carl acknowledged with a sympathetic look. He told me that he could wallpaper his living room with fake Modiglianis and asked if I had provenance. I told him I didn’t and, though he seemed skeptical, I think Carl might have just been beating down the price. He offered me $1,600, and a chance for more if it sold well on consignment. I told him I had wanted $4,000, but in reality, I was shocked and elated. I would have taken $400.
For me, $1,600 was a fortune, untold wealth, almost the price of a new car and more than I had ever earned at one time. Carl wrote me a check, filled in my name and phone number for the consignment slip, and shook my hand. I walked out floating on air. It was like an ecstatic vision. I quickly rattled away in my Bug and drove straight to Carl’s bank in Tustin, where I hammered the check immediately. I remember they had me sit down with the teller in a big comfortable chair and treated me like royalty, as if I was a valued customer. As I walked out of the bank flush with cash, I remember feeling that everything had changed. I had started the day as an unemployed kid, with $100 to his name and no clue. Now I was a professional and I was going to make my fortune.
To celebrate, I took Christine out to dinner at Griswold’s Smorgasbord. She was only six or seven, but she knew that I didn’t have a lot of money. Though she had told me she was hungry as a horse, when we went to fill our plates, I noticed that she came back with only a few things on hers. She hadn’t realized that it was a buffet—all you can eat—and she told me that since I didn’t have a job, she wanted to economize. It touched me so much, how brave and sweet she was, but I laughed, telling her that from now on, she could have anything she wanted, and as much as she wanted, anytime. She returned to the buffet and came back with a plate stacked so high that she could barely carry it.
By the next day, I was already planning my next forgery and had started working on a Chagall watercolor. I knew that if I painted instead of drawing, my works would be worth more money, but I knew that I couldn’t do an actual full-scale oil painting. Chagall did these loose, sloppy watercolors that were colorful and bright and that everybody liked. They seemed like the perfect choice. I was just dipping my brush in water and swirling around the color when the phone rang.
It was John Mercante, talking fast, with an urgent tone in his voice. He was yelling at me, shouting at me to stay away from Carl Marcus, that he was a bad man and that I should not go anywhere near him. This shocked me, because I didn’t know that he knew Marcus and because I had never told him about my sale. Just as I was trying to piece it all together in my head, my line beeped and another call was coming in. I hung up on John and switched to the other line, where I heard the voice of Carl Marcus, his vaguely European accent now transformed into straight Brooklyn menace.
