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Art & Crime: The Fight Against Looters, Forgers, and Fraudsters in the High-Stakes Art World
Here are stories of high-stakes, brazen art crimes from around the world with new insights on ongoing cases by two journalists counted among the most 100 influential people in the art business.
"True crime fans and aficionados of culture will appreciate this dive into the dark side of the art world." — Publishers Weekly
The art world is one of the most secretive—and largely unregulated—of global businesses, and the list of its crimes run long and deep. The extent of the economic and cultural damage that results from criminality in the global art scene rarely comes to light. By turns thrilling, disturbing, and unbelievable, the cases explored in this book include "artnapping"—stealing art to collect a ransom—tax fraud, forgery, money laundering, and illegal excavations. The book includes coverage
True crime and art history lovers will devour this thoroughly researched and fascinating book.
"True crime fans and aficionados of culture will appreciate this dive into the dark side of the art world." — Publishers Weekly
The art world is one of the most secretive—and largely unregulated—of global businesses, and the list of its crimes run long and deep. The extent of the economic and cultural damage that results from criminality in the global art scene rarely comes to light. By turns thrilling, disturbing, and unbelievable, the cases explored in this book include "artnapping"—stealing art to collect a ransom—tax fraud, forgery, money laundering, and illegal excavations. The book includes coverage
True crime and art history lovers will devour this thoroughly researched and fascinating book.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2020
27 people are currently reading
454 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
October 8, 2021
This is the kind of book that shows the whole picture by going into tales, one after the other. The tales weave a picture that shows what a complete racket the international art market is.
Over fifty billion USD annually flow through the international art market. Paintings by people like Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died only about forty years ago, today trade for many millions of American dollars, while [philistines like Jay-Z and Beyoncé misuse his name](https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2...).
The art market used to be transparent, in one sense; It used to be impossible for important and expensive artwork to trade hands without the public knowing about it. The price was often not disclosed for most art.
Today, things are different.
> In the summer of 2006, it was reported that 221 objects were missing from the Russian department of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, in particular icons and enamel works from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century with an estimated worth of almost five million US dollars. It was suspected that they had been spirited away to the Far East and South America. According to research by the Moscow daily online newspaper Gaseta, more than 50 million objects have been stolen from Russian museums since the economic re-opening of the country in 1990, among them 3.4 million paintings and 37,000 icons. The newspaper estimated the total value of works formerly held in Russian museums now being sold on the gray market at more than $1 billion.
Art gone missing is one problem. Another is forgery.
> Between 1994 and 2011, the New York gallery Knoedler sold work by world-renowned and high-priced artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still and Franz Kline, which turned out to be fake.
Because of neoliberalism, abject poverty, and desperation, another trend is in the ascendant: transforming art into quickly-made bucks:
> In December 2005, Henry Moore's two-ton bronze sculpture Reclining Figure was stolen from the Moore Foundation in Much Hadham, England. The perpetrators brought a flatbed truck to disassemble the sculpture and transport it to a warehouse where it was sawed apart. Later, the pieces of the sculpture are presumed to have been shipped via Rotterdam to China by a junk dealer in Essex. Bronze is increasingly sought after by the electronics manufacturers there. The value of the work of art was estimated to be £3 million; the thieves were paid about £1500 by the junk dealer.
Kolfehoff skilfully displays not only singular or trendy crime but also how art theft works for dictators, genocidal maniacs who don't care about their minions, and other types of ultra-destructive persons.
One problem in all of this is how wealthy people don't think enough nor listen to experts. Kolfehoff shows how experts simply prove how an artwork, about to be sold for millions of American dollars, is forged; this has no influence on the buyers, for whom everything is a sham.
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts [shut down its authentication board](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014...) due to its inability to tell whether a Warhol is a forgery or not. This would, no doubt, have tickled Warhol's sense of humour if he'd been alive.
> [...] there are several photos from the 1980s that depict Trump and Ivana, his wife at the time, with Andy Warhol. The world-famous artist eventually developed a real antipathy toward Trump as Warhol's meetings with him also concerned commissioned work and payment therefor and the relationship soured. On other occasions, Trump claimed that he owned a masterpiece by one of the most important artists of French impressionism. In fact, the picture was demonstrably a copy, a forgery, or even a print. The U.S. president nonetheless claimed several times that he had the original hanging on his wall.
On the other hand, I doubt that Warhol would laugh or care about knowing how his art enables money-laundering, tax evasion, wars, further art theft, starvation at scale, and, ultimately, death in tortorous ways.
Kolfehoff's story of how Imelda Marcos's secretary helped to siphon immense amounts of money that belonged to the Filipino population to private coffers is astounding. Manhattan apartments, extremely expensive jewellery, cars, and even holidays all helped the Marcoses to steal around ten billion American dollars from the Filipino population. The national debt was two billion dollars in 1972; today it is more than twelve times that amount. By the government's own reckoning, 85% of Filipinos live below the U.N. poverty level.
Thanks to a trail of receipts that were found in the Philippines, Imelda Marcos's name was tied to purchases by her secretary. Hundreds of artworks were smuggled out of the Philippines, their whereabouts still unknown. Art by 'van Gogh, Monet, and Degas, by Cézanne, Picasso, and Mondrian—and, allegedly, also by Rembrandt, Goya and Michelangelo, although leading experts have cast doubt on the authenticity of the old master works in the Marcos's possession'.
The Marcoses are not alone in their doing. They're joined by the likes of Donald Trump (who wasn't allowed to borrow a van Gogh painting but was offered a golden toilet seat instead, which he said no to), Congolese dictator Mobuto and Diba/Pahlavi, the former Shah of Iran couple, who all squandered billions of American dollars in the shape of art from their population to benefit only themselves.
Of course, that's not where this stops.
Democratic governments squander money. As both the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers show, country leaders like Tony Blair like to say one thing and covertly do the opposite. Tax havens are enriched by people at the top of kleptocratic governments. Malaysia's national funds were basically stolen by their prime minister, Najib Razak, and other people, who transferred art into money by going to Luxembourgish and Swiss banks via the Cayman Islands:
> The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs made an offer to the U.S. Department of Justice to pay a financial penalty of $2 billion for its involvement in Najib Razak’s offenses.
In other words, it's more common for rich institutions such as banks and kleptocracies to use art for money-laundering than they don't.
> In his treatise *Money Laundering through Art*, the Brazilian judge, criminologist, and money-laundering expert Fausto Martin de Sanctis explains why transactions in art have come to play an increasingly important role in money laundering in the past few years: "Art is an attractive sector for the practice of money laundering because of the large monetary transactions involved, the general unfamiliarity and confidentiality surrounding the art world, and the unlawful illegal activity endemic to it (theft, robbery and forgery)."
There are ways of preventing all of this from happening.
> The terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 and in Brussels in March 2016 and the question of how the responsible terrorist groups had financed themselves led to the European Union adopting a new directive on money laundering. The scandal surrounding the Panama Papers also propelled this development. The member governments throughout Europe were obliged to enact the directive into national law. When the German treasury published its "Draft Legislation to Enact the Change of Directive for Four Money Laundering Directives" in late summer 2019, the arguments put forth by art dealers resembled those they had used against the law for the protection of cultural goods. With the new directive, the former scope of the law on money laundering expanded to include additional professional groups, which were also required to establish risk management and fulfill duties of due diligence and identification and, in appropriate cases, report suspicious activity to the criminal authorities. Outside of the finance sector, this change from that point on applied to art dealers, who already felt themselves under the gun: "also art dealers and art storage businesses (these last only in duty-free zones) for transactions of €10,000 or more." In the future, the planned security measures apply not just to cash deals but also to transactions by credit card, through payment systems like PayPal or through bank accounts. According to the legislature, today it is no longer quite so easy in a suspicious case to trace the flow of money because of the increasing digitalization of the payment business: "In particular the pseudonyms or anonymity employed in the trade of crypto currencies enables their misuse for criminal and terrorist purposes. Thus, the G20 spoke in favor of "regulating 'virtual assets' in order to fight money laundering and the financing of terror."
However, there are so-called freeports, places where art is stored and sold tax-free:
> In freeports in Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Singapore, works of art worth billions of dollars are warehoused not just for days or weeks but for years and even decades—for example, to artificially constrict the market for Picasso or Warhol, or to wait out the statute of limitations on legal action. And that's not all: the art can be sold tax-free.
At the end of the book, Kolfehoff states ten simple questions that should be asked to prevent illegalities and morally bankrupt choices from being made. It really is quite simple, and involves honesty, transparency, and crime-prevention.
Kolfehoff's book is a myriad of insanities committed, perpetrated, and furthered not only by the criminals behind all of these choices, but also by governments, inadequate and aged laws, and legal loopholes that are taken advantage of by legal eagles. It's all a matter of stopping these things as often as is possible, to, ultimately, prevent people from suffering while a handful of people live extraordinarily wealthy lives.
This is a wild ride, and it's worth taking. Of course, this book can be seen as an allegory of capitalism in its current and most popular state: a few people collect almost all of the benefits while the rest suffer. On the other hand, in the art market, the ones who suffer the most are not the workers nor part of the art-dealing chain, but populations of nations whose rulers betray them.
Over fifty billion USD annually flow through the international art market. Paintings by people like Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died only about forty years ago, today trade for many millions of American dollars, while [philistines like Jay-Z and Beyoncé misuse his name](https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2...).
The art market used to be transparent, in one sense; It used to be impossible for important and expensive artwork to trade hands without the public knowing about it. The price was often not disclosed for most art.
Today, things are different.
> In the summer of 2006, it was reported that 221 objects were missing from the Russian department of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, in particular icons and enamel works from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century with an estimated worth of almost five million US dollars. It was suspected that they had been spirited away to the Far East and South America. According to research by the Moscow daily online newspaper Gaseta, more than 50 million objects have been stolen from Russian museums since the economic re-opening of the country in 1990, among them 3.4 million paintings and 37,000 icons. The newspaper estimated the total value of works formerly held in Russian museums now being sold on the gray market at more than $1 billion.
Art gone missing is one problem. Another is forgery.
> Between 1994 and 2011, the New York gallery Knoedler sold work by world-renowned and high-priced artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still and Franz Kline, which turned out to be fake.
Because of neoliberalism, abject poverty, and desperation, another trend is in the ascendant: transforming art into quickly-made bucks:
> In December 2005, Henry Moore's two-ton bronze sculpture Reclining Figure was stolen from the Moore Foundation in Much Hadham, England. The perpetrators brought a flatbed truck to disassemble the sculpture and transport it to a warehouse where it was sawed apart. Later, the pieces of the sculpture are presumed to have been shipped via Rotterdam to China by a junk dealer in Essex. Bronze is increasingly sought after by the electronics manufacturers there. The value of the work of art was estimated to be £3 million; the thieves were paid about £1500 by the junk dealer.
Kolfehoff skilfully displays not only singular or trendy crime but also how art theft works for dictators, genocidal maniacs who don't care about their minions, and other types of ultra-destructive persons.
One problem in all of this is how wealthy people don't think enough nor listen to experts. Kolfehoff shows how experts simply prove how an artwork, about to be sold for millions of American dollars, is forged; this has no influence on the buyers, for whom everything is a sham.
The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts [shut down its authentication board](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014...) due to its inability to tell whether a Warhol is a forgery or not. This would, no doubt, have tickled Warhol's sense of humour if he'd been alive.
> [...] there are several photos from the 1980s that depict Trump and Ivana, his wife at the time, with Andy Warhol. The world-famous artist eventually developed a real antipathy toward Trump as Warhol's meetings with him also concerned commissioned work and payment therefor and the relationship soured. On other occasions, Trump claimed that he owned a masterpiece by one of the most important artists of French impressionism. In fact, the picture was demonstrably a copy, a forgery, or even a print. The U.S. president nonetheless claimed several times that he had the original hanging on his wall.
On the other hand, I doubt that Warhol would laugh or care about knowing how his art enables money-laundering, tax evasion, wars, further art theft, starvation at scale, and, ultimately, death in tortorous ways.
Kolfehoff's story of how Imelda Marcos's secretary helped to siphon immense amounts of money that belonged to the Filipino population to private coffers is astounding. Manhattan apartments, extremely expensive jewellery, cars, and even holidays all helped the Marcoses to steal around ten billion American dollars from the Filipino population. The national debt was two billion dollars in 1972; today it is more than twelve times that amount. By the government's own reckoning, 85% of Filipinos live below the U.N. poverty level.
Thanks to a trail of receipts that were found in the Philippines, Imelda Marcos's name was tied to purchases by her secretary. Hundreds of artworks were smuggled out of the Philippines, their whereabouts still unknown. Art by 'van Gogh, Monet, and Degas, by Cézanne, Picasso, and Mondrian—and, allegedly, also by Rembrandt, Goya and Michelangelo, although leading experts have cast doubt on the authenticity of the old master works in the Marcos's possession'.
The Marcoses are not alone in their doing. They're joined by the likes of Donald Trump (who wasn't allowed to borrow a van Gogh painting but was offered a golden toilet seat instead, which he said no to), Congolese dictator Mobuto and Diba/Pahlavi, the former Shah of Iran couple, who all squandered billions of American dollars in the shape of art from their population to benefit only themselves.
Of course, that's not where this stops.
Democratic governments squander money. As both the Panama Papers and the Pandora Papers show, country leaders like Tony Blair like to say one thing and covertly do the opposite. Tax havens are enriched by people at the top of kleptocratic governments. Malaysia's national funds were basically stolen by their prime minister, Najib Razak, and other people, who transferred art into money by going to Luxembourgish and Swiss banks via the Cayman Islands:
> The Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs made an offer to the U.S. Department of Justice to pay a financial penalty of $2 billion for its involvement in Najib Razak’s offenses.
In other words, it's more common for rich institutions such as banks and kleptocracies to use art for money-laundering than they don't.
> In his treatise *Money Laundering through Art*, the Brazilian judge, criminologist, and money-laundering expert Fausto Martin de Sanctis explains why transactions in art have come to play an increasingly important role in money laundering in the past few years: "Art is an attractive sector for the practice of money laundering because of the large monetary transactions involved, the general unfamiliarity and confidentiality surrounding the art world, and the unlawful illegal activity endemic to it (theft, robbery and forgery)."
There are ways of preventing all of this from happening.
> The terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 and in Brussels in March 2016 and the question of how the responsible terrorist groups had financed themselves led to the European Union adopting a new directive on money laundering. The scandal surrounding the Panama Papers also propelled this development. The member governments throughout Europe were obliged to enact the directive into national law. When the German treasury published its "Draft Legislation to Enact the Change of Directive for Four Money Laundering Directives" in late summer 2019, the arguments put forth by art dealers resembled those they had used against the law for the protection of cultural goods. With the new directive, the former scope of the law on money laundering expanded to include additional professional groups, which were also required to establish risk management and fulfill duties of due diligence and identification and, in appropriate cases, report suspicious activity to the criminal authorities. Outside of the finance sector, this change from that point on applied to art dealers, who already felt themselves under the gun: "also art dealers and art storage businesses (these last only in duty-free zones) for transactions of €10,000 or more." In the future, the planned security measures apply not just to cash deals but also to transactions by credit card, through payment systems like PayPal or through bank accounts. According to the legislature, today it is no longer quite so easy in a suspicious case to trace the flow of money because of the increasing digitalization of the payment business: "In particular the pseudonyms or anonymity employed in the trade of crypto currencies enables their misuse for criminal and terrorist purposes. Thus, the G20 spoke in favor of "regulating 'virtual assets' in order to fight money laundering and the financing of terror."
However, there are so-called freeports, places where art is stored and sold tax-free:
> In freeports in Switzerland, Luxembourg, and Singapore, works of art worth billions of dollars are warehoused not just for days or weeks but for years and even decades—for example, to artificially constrict the market for Picasso or Warhol, or to wait out the statute of limitations on legal action. And that's not all: the art can be sold tax-free.
At the end of the book, Kolfehoff states ten simple questions that should be asked to prevent illegalities and morally bankrupt choices from being made. It really is quite simple, and involves honesty, transparency, and crime-prevention.
Kolfehoff's book is a myriad of insanities committed, perpetrated, and furthered not only by the criminals behind all of these choices, but also by governments, inadequate and aged laws, and legal loopholes that are taken advantage of by legal eagles. It's all a matter of stopping these things as often as is possible, to, ultimately, prevent people from suffering while a handful of people live extraordinarily wealthy lives.
This is a wild ride, and it's worth taking. Of course, this book can be seen as an allegory of capitalism in its current and most popular state: a few people collect almost all of the benefits while the rest suffer. On the other hand, in the art market, the ones who suffer the most are not the workers nor part of the art-dealing chain, but populations of nations whose rulers betray them.
January 10, 2023
Verbrechen innerhalb der Kunstszene. Das ist ein Buch, was einem Einblicke in eine Welt gibt, die uns Sterblichen verwehrt bleibt. Spektakuläre Fälle werden in diesem Buch beschrieben. Von dem Klau des Maple Leaf Goldstück in Berlin oder der Mona Lisa.
Wie sind die kriminellen Strukturen in der Kunstzene. Wie werden historiSche Bilder gefälscht und welchen Gewinn erwirtschaften Kriminelle damit? Wie wird Geldwäsche betrieben und was ist mit Kunst aus dem dritten Reich. Dieses Buch gibt tiefe Einblicke in die beachtlichen Summen, die Millionäre und Milliardäre ausgeben, um Prestige zu erwerben. Und dabei gehen manche nicht unbedingt den legalen Weg. Und manchmal werden ebendiese Milliardäre durch Kuratoren und Händler, um verschleierte Beträge gebracht. Man kann wohl abschließend sagen, dass die Kunstszene für mich ein dreckiges Image nach diesem Buch hat. Es sollte unbedingt gelesen werden.
Wie sind die kriminellen Strukturen in der Kunstzene. Wie werden historiSche Bilder gefälscht und welchen Gewinn erwirtschaften Kriminelle damit? Wie wird Geldwäsche betrieben und was ist mit Kunst aus dem dritten Reich. Dieses Buch gibt tiefe Einblicke in die beachtlichen Summen, die Millionäre und Milliardäre ausgeben, um Prestige zu erwerben. Und dabei gehen manche nicht unbedingt den legalen Weg. Und manchmal werden ebendiese Milliardäre durch Kuratoren und Händler, um verschleierte Beträge gebracht. Man kann wohl abschließend sagen, dass die Kunstszene für mich ein dreckiges Image nach diesem Buch hat. Es sollte unbedingt gelesen werden.
September 1, 2022
Never mind the unsolved rapes, and the unsolved thefts, the rich have to be assured their valuables are guarded by expensive bureaucrats that have to travel at the expense of the idiot waiting for his bike to be recovered.
May 11, 2020
Kunstfälschung, Kunstraub, Geldwäsche, Steuerbetrug, Absicherung für Drogen- & Waffengeschäfte, Altersvorsorge für Diktatoren & ihre Familien, Finanzierung von Terrorismus, Handel mit Raubkunst, vom organisierten Verbrechen organisierte Raubgräberei & Handel mit illegal beschafften Objekten, Handel mit (post-)kolonialen Gütern, die ihren eigentlichen Besitzern weggenommen oder massiv unter Wert abgepresst wurden - Stefan Koldehoff & Tobias Timm präsentieren in ihrem Buch die vielen Möglichkeiten, die es gibt, unter dem Schutzmantel des besonderen ideellen Wertes, der Kunst & Antiquitäten zugeschrieben wird, damit mehr oder weniger illegal bis schwer kriminell richtig Asche zu machen. Die Autoren gehen dabei systematisch vor & präsentieren die unterschiedlichen kriminellen Tatbestände anhand besonders ans baulicher oder haarsträubender Beispiele. Dabei entsteht eine Geschichte des Kunstbooms der letzten Jahrzehnte als Geschichte der immer weiter eskalierenden Transformation kulturellen Kapitals in ökonomisches Kapital, diesseits & vor allem jenseits geltender Gesetze & mit tätiger Mithilfe vieler ehrenwert erscheinender Mitglieder des Kunstsystems - vom doppelt Beratungshonorar einstreichenden renommierten Kunstwissenschaftler über den angesehenen Kunsthändler, der sich über die dubiosen Provenienzen seiner Waren keinen Kopf macht, bis zu den Museumsdirektoren angesehener Häuser, die aus ihren Museen Showrooms für die nächste sensationelle Auktion machen. Von den Scharen an shady middle men mit und ohne kunstwissenschaftlichen akademischen Weihen zu schweigen. Auch wenn die Autoren immer wieder darauf verweisen, dass das Auswüchse des Kunstbetriebs seien, bleibt bei dieser Leserin eher der Eindruck, dass Ignoranz bis hin zur Verachtung gesellschaftlicher & juristischer Normen zum eigenen Vorteil das eigentliche Business Model des Handels mit kulturell hoch bewerteten Objekten ist. Wie sonst ließe sich erklären, dass sich zB. keine deutsche Interessenorganisation des Kunsthandels zu einem modernen, Transparenz-basierten Code of Conduct durchringen kann, sondern stattdessen die eh schon recht milden deutschen Gesetze & Vorschriften (die im Zuge der Bekämpfung von Terror-Finanzierung verschärft wurden), als Zwangsverstaatlichung des Handels & Bespitzelung in Stasi-Manier denunziert. (So Michael Döpfner, Springer-Mann & Kunstsammler.) Völlig hypertrophe, ins Pegidistische schlagende Ausfälle gegen Bemühungen, den Saustall Kunsthandel auszumisten scheinen von seinen Lobbyisten eher die Regel denn die Ausnahme. Wer sich wundert, woher manche populistische Anti-Staats-Rhetorik in so genannten besseren bürgerlichen Kreisen plötzlich herkomme, findet in diesem Buch in den zahlreichen Zitaten der Protagonisten des Betriebes, die selbst minimale Anforderungen an Gesetzestreue & Steuerehrlichkeit als Zumutungen spießiger Kleinbürgerlichkeit an ihr intimes Verhältnis zur hehren Kunst & genialen Künstlerpersönlichkeiten denunzieren, Teile ihrer Vorgeschichte.
March 14, 2022
With art works now selling for millions of dollars, crime is growing increasingly rampant, from artifacts looted from archaeological sites, to forgeries, to stolen items to money laundering and tax evasion. The authors give a careful analysis of the rampant abuses that are occurring and why regulation is needed Translated from German, the text does not always flow smoothly and contains a lot of names of people and institutions that can make following the text a little confusing.
January 29, 2023
DNFed after 100 pages. this book was just a word vomit tbh. i was interested bc art theft is fascinating and the uses of a stolen painting are endless but it just fell short. there was so much room to expand upon the different thefts and tell the story but it was mostly just facts and names thrown in your face. boo, very disappointing
August 5, 2020
Auf viele Menschen üben Kunstfälschungen eine große Faszination aus. Sie werden weniger als kriminelle Handlung, denn als glamouröse, handwerklich beeindruckende Tat wahrgenommen. Zumindest ist das bei mir so. Mich interessiert das Thema "Kunst und Verbrechen" seit ich Orson Welles Mockumentary "F for Fake" über den berühmten Kunstfälscher Elmyr de Hory gesehen habe. Auch hier wird mit dem Charisma der Kunstfälschung gespielt, ein Mockumentary ist nicht unbedingt der Wahrheit, sondern mehr dem Nimbus verpflichtet, so werden die Straftaten selbst als eine Art Kunst angesehen.
Das vorliegende Buch ist nach "Falsche Bilder, echtes Geld" die zweite Zusammenarbeit des Autorenteams Stefan Koldehoff (Journalist, Kunstmarktexperte) und Tobias Tim (Journalist, ZEIT Online Redakteur). Es werden hier schlaglichtartig besondere Fälle verschiedener Kunstmarktbetrügereien vorgestellt, dabei geht es zum Beispiel um die massenhafte Fälschung von Druckgrafiken, dem Handel mit gefälschten Büchern, Nazireliquien, Museumsdiebstähle und "Artnapping". Die Lektüre macht Spaß, das liest sich flott, an manchen Stellen jedoch auch etwas zu lange beleuchtet und zu detailreich.
Zum Schluss werden vom Autorenteam 10 Fragen zur "Befreiung der Kunst" aufgezeigt, Kunst soll für alle als unbelastetes Glücksgefühl zurückgewonnen werden. Dabei sollten sich integre Sammler, Händler, Vermittler vor jedem Geschäft fragen nach:
- Besitzverhältnissen
- Provenienz
- Stil
- Material
- Preisgestaltung
Dass Handel, Sammler und Museen jedoch heute weitgehend bemüht sind um ein gutes Nebeneinander und um gute Zusammenarbeit mit Kunsthistorikern und ggf. auch Landeskriminalamt, geht manchmal ein bißchen unter. "So spektakulär sind die Fälschungs-, Betrugs-, Geldwäsche-, Korruptionsfälle, so aufsehenerregend die jeweilige materielle Schadenshöhe, dass sich eben diese [negativen] Geschichten im digitalen Zeitalter in Windeseile um die Welt verbreiten".
Das vorliegende Buch ist nach "Falsche Bilder, echtes Geld" die zweite Zusammenarbeit des Autorenteams Stefan Koldehoff (Journalist, Kunstmarktexperte) und Tobias Tim (Journalist, ZEIT Online Redakteur). Es werden hier schlaglichtartig besondere Fälle verschiedener Kunstmarktbetrügereien vorgestellt, dabei geht es zum Beispiel um die massenhafte Fälschung von Druckgrafiken, dem Handel mit gefälschten Büchern, Nazireliquien, Museumsdiebstähle und "Artnapping". Die Lektüre macht Spaß, das liest sich flott, an manchen Stellen jedoch auch etwas zu lange beleuchtet und zu detailreich.
Zum Schluss werden vom Autorenteam 10 Fragen zur "Befreiung der Kunst" aufgezeigt, Kunst soll für alle als unbelastetes Glücksgefühl zurückgewonnen werden. Dabei sollten sich integre Sammler, Händler, Vermittler vor jedem Geschäft fragen nach:
- Besitzverhältnissen
- Provenienz
- Stil
- Material
- Preisgestaltung
Dass Handel, Sammler und Museen jedoch heute weitgehend bemüht sind um ein gutes Nebeneinander und um gute Zusammenarbeit mit Kunsthistorikern und ggf. auch Landeskriminalamt, geht manchmal ein bißchen unter. "So spektakulär sind die Fälschungs-, Betrugs-, Geldwäsche-, Korruptionsfälle, so aufsehenerregend die jeweilige materielle Schadenshöhe, dass sich eben diese [negativen] Geschichten im digitalen Zeitalter in Windeseile um die Welt verbreiten".
December 11, 2024
I love reading in this rather small genre of art crime, forgery, etc. I have no idea how I didn't discover this book until now, but I am very glad I did.
Written from a European perspective and translated into English, it is refreshing to not get an American-centric point of view. The authors concentrate on several large subjects-- money laundering, forgeries, destruction of antiquities, and theft. Along the way, they unflinchingly point fingers at very prominent figures and institutions, such as Harvard, The Getty Museum, Donald Trump, Sotheby's and Christie's, Imelda Marcos, the German government, Switzerland, and much more. You learn how large cultural institutions claiming to be a safe haven for antiquities are in reality turning a blind eye to how these objects came into their possession, which is largely indirectly by terrorist organizations looting poorly guarded archeological sites. You also learn that hardly any art by Adolph Hitler is authentic, and a high degree of skepticism should be given to anything by Dali, Miro, and Picasso. They also confirm my own suspicions that the $450 million "Salvator Mundi" by DaVinci is almost certainly a fake. Even if it were real, it has been restored to such a high degree it can hardly be considered original (which, by the way, had two thumbs on one hand).
Finally, they go into great detail about how the art market is the least regulated, most corrupt economy out of any other field. Prices are outrageously high primarily due to money laundering and fantastically rich but taste-deficient investors.
Written from a European perspective and translated into English, it is refreshing to not get an American-centric point of view. The authors concentrate on several large subjects-- money laundering, forgeries, destruction of antiquities, and theft. Along the way, they unflinchingly point fingers at very prominent figures and institutions, such as Harvard, The Getty Museum, Donald Trump, Sotheby's and Christie's, Imelda Marcos, the German government, Switzerland, and much more. You learn how large cultural institutions claiming to be a safe haven for antiquities are in reality turning a blind eye to how these objects came into their possession, which is largely indirectly by terrorist organizations looting poorly guarded archeological sites. You also learn that hardly any art by Adolph Hitler is authentic, and a high degree of skepticism should be given to anything by Dali, Miro, and Picasso. They also confirm my own suspicions that the $450 million "Salvator Mundi" by DaVinci is almost certainly a fake. Even if it were real, it has been restored to such a high degree it can hardly be considered original (which, by the way, had two thumbs on one hand).
Finally, they go into great detail about how the art market is the least regulated, most corrupt economy out of any other field. Prices are outrageously high primarily due to money laundering and fantastically rich but taste-deficient investors.
October 18, 2022
Not really a great read --- and disappointingly so.
I might have given it 3 stars, but the high price for a book filled with typos and random numbers inserted between (and even inside of ) words made this annoying and quite frankly a pain to read.
The chapters were too long -- especially the Hitler one -- stories were half told and then it all concluded in a moralistic lecture on the art business.
Just a big "meh" for an ebook that costs 2 - 3 times what others cost. Skip it -- better books are out there!
I might have given it 3 stars, but the high price for a book filled with typos and random numbers inserted between (and even inside of ) words made this annoying and quite frankly a pain to read.
The chapters were too long -- especially the Hitler one -- stories were half told and then it all concluded in a moralistic lecture on the art business.
Just a big "meh" for an ebook that costs 2 - 3 times what others cost. Skip it -- better books are out there!
December 18, 2024
Interesting peek into shadowy overlap between art and crime. I liked how the authors provided details that helped contextualize the art that is being stolen or reproduced (materials available at the time, the political context during and after the artist's lifetime), as well as details of the actual crimes and details of investigations and court cases that follow.
My only complaint is that I wish the book was a bit more tightly edited and succinct - the details sometimes became difficult to follow but this may be an issue with the audiobook.
My only complaint is that I wish the book was a bit more tightly edited and succinct - the details sometimes became difficult to follow but this may be an issue with the audiobook.
December 9, 2024
This is probably not a book that would entertain the vast majority of people I know, but I find the intersection of the art market and financial crime fascinating. This book was laden with stories and names that I was semi-familiar with, to introducing me to all of the creative ways people use art to fund crime. The authors get a bit bogged down in the details and numbers sometimes, but it was still a solid listen.
January 4, 2026
Ich hatte Ende 2022 schon mal eine Phase, wo ich mega interessiert an Kunstraub/Raubkunst war und da hab ich massiv Bücher zum Thema gekauft, aber man kann ja nicht alles auf einmal lesen und dann ging das Leben weiter aber neulich kamen ein paar Dokus auf 3Sat und jetzt bin ich wieder drin im Thema. Fand Koldehoffs Buch sehr gut und liebe auch seinen Podcast zum Thema, Tatort Kunst.
March 15, 2022
While the subject matter is intriguing, the choppiness of the writing (or translation) makes this a very challenging read.
did-not-finish
May 17, 2022DNF at 17%. Just too boring.
February 8, 2023
3.5 stars.
February 24, 2023
Mentions Leonardo DiCaprio a suspiciously high number of times, but mentions Trump exactly as many times as you’d expect.
September 24, 2023
Surprising German perspective on the subject - who knew?
August 21, 2024
Not too deep, but a great entertaining read that covers the main art thefts and scams. Great introduction to the topic.
P.S.: Read this in German, apparently the translation is not so good.
P.S.: Read this in German, apparently the translation is not so good.
September 2, 2024
I felt like this book hyperfixated on a few things and left some issues completely out, but the ones that were mentioned were heavily researched and fascinating.
December 28, 2024
"Whoever swims in this shark pool, whether dealer, gallerist or artist, knows that deception isn't the exception but the rule."
- Helge Achenbach, swindler
I've just read a whole slew of books, many fiction, on the subject of art crimes, and most seem to reflect the cynical sentiments voiced above. Out of all of them, Art & Crime: The fight against looters, forgers etc. deserves five stars for reflecting a change of attitude. Read how it closes:
"Above all else, those artists, gallerists, curators and auctioneers who operate cleanly and foster transparency and are still focused on art itself, its beauty, its critical power and its humor should be more robustly supported and celebrated.
They are, as always, the majority."
Well said!
- Helge Achenbach, swindler
I've just read a whole slew of books, many fiction, on the subject of art crimes, and most seem to reflect the cynical sentiments voiced above. Out of all of them, Art & Crime: The fight against looters, forgers etc. deserves five stars for reflecting a change of attitude. Read how it closes:
"Above all else, those artists, gallerists, curators and auctioneers who operate cleanly and foster transparency and are still focused on art itself, its beauty, its critical power and its humor should be more robustly supported and celebrated.
They are, as always, the majority."
Well said!
August 28, 2021
“La Gioconda (o Monna Lisa) di Leonardo da Vinci, per esempio, è diventata veramente famosa solo dopo essere stata rubata dal Louvre nell’agosto 1911.
Il furto fu all’epoca un ‘inside job’: Vincenzo Peruggia, un imbianchino italiano che aveva lavorato come vetraio al museo, e per questo ne conosceva le misure di sicurezza, si fece rinchiudere dentro il Louvre una domenica pomeriggio con due compari. I tre si nascosero in uno sgabuzzino in cui i copisti di solito depositavano i loro utensili. Il lunedì mattina, quando il Louvre era chiuso ai visitatori, i tre manigoldi entrarono nel Salon Carré in camice bianco, tolsero semplicemente la Gioconda dalla parete e si dileguarono con il quadro attraverso un’entrata laterale. Vestiti dei loro camici, nessuno li notò tra gli addetti che di lunedì facevano le pulizie nel museo.”
Il furto fu all’epoca un ‘inside job’: Vincenzo Peruggia, un imbianchino italiano che aveva lavorato come vetraio al museo, e per questo ne conosceva le misure di sicurezza, si fece rinchiudere dentro il Louvre una domenica pomeriggio con due compari. I tre si nascosero in uno sgabuzzino in cui i copisti di solito depositavano i loro utensili. Il lunedì mattina, quando il Louvre era chiuso ai visitatori, i tre manigoldi entrarono nel Salon Carré in camice bianco, tolsero semplicemente la Gioconda dalla parete e si dileguarono con il quadro attraverso un’entrata laterale. Vestiti dei loro camici, nessuno li notò tra gli addetti che di lunedì facevano le pulizie nel museo.”
July 6, 2021
Libro che parla del business dell'arte e di tutto ciò che c'è dietro, facendoti capire che non sempre è tutto rose e fiori. Purtroppo la traduzione fatta male rallenta parecchio lo scorrere della lettura.
Adatto per gli appassionati d'arte che vogliono approfondire questo ambito.
Adatto per gli appassionati d'arte che vogliono approfondire questo ambito.
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