Art-world chicanery meets true crime in Richard Dorment’s breezy, absorbing “Warhol After Warhol.”
That title has a double meaning. It refers to the complicated estate that pop artist Andy Warhol left when he died in 1987, one valued in the tens of millions. It also hints that, because of his working methods (especially silk screening) and his casual approach to pieces that were attributed to him, new works often pop up and need to be authenticated, long after Warhol’s death.
British art critic Richard Dorment became involved in the latter when a stranger named Joe Simon approached him when two artworks he believed to be legit were disavowed by the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board. One, featuring glued-on currency that turned out to have been minted after Warhol’s death, was fake. But another, from a ’60s series called “Red Self-Portraits,” seemed real. So why had the authentication board rejected it, defacing it in the process?
You don’t need to care about the snooty art world to be interested in Dorment’s investigation, which takes years and leads to hob-nobbing with a member of Duran Duran, being drawn into Mick Jagger’s orbit, encounters with the FBI and (he believes) his phone being tapped.
Eventually, Dorment realizes that Simon is a very well-connected guy, although he admits, “I sometimes worried I was making friends with the Talented Mr. Ripley.” Beginning in 2003 and extending over more than a decade, Dorment learns a lot about the way Warhol’s estate has been managed and why those who profit from it might want to reduce the number of official works by Warhol — whose huge output isn’t a great business model, since lower supply means higher demand.
A fan, Dorment refers to Warhol several times as a genius, but he’s also skeptical enough to make observations such as this one about the glacially paced films Warhol began making in the 1960s: ” ‘Sleep’ and ‘Empire’ are hard to watch, especially if you are employed or have something more interesting to do.” And, as an art critic for London’s Daily Telegraph for 35 years, he’s clearly in a position to get away with statements like, “[art dealer Arne] Glimcher looks like he’s been sent by central casting to play the role of a suave international art dealer.”
As the erudite writer becomes more involved in Simon’s quest, he lifts a rock off wormy dealings in the art world. Dorment gets inadvertent help from the loud-mouthed president of the Andy Warhol Foundation and from documents accidentally given to him by Simon’s foes at the authentication board, a plot twist that’s right out of a courtroom melodrama.
In the end, Simon racks up huge legal bills in an attempt to prove his piece’s authenticity and we learn that the world of art and beauty is a grubby, slimy place.
Warhol After Warhol
By: Richard Dorment.
Publisher: Pegasus, 277 pages, $29.95.
