The Con Job of all Con Jobs
Don't look for the bottom, there isn't one.
The commercial art world—a realm of spectacle, crookedness, and blithe profiteering—has recently, and rather impressively, outdone itself. And, as ever, the media has been there to perpetuate the grift by dispassionately regurgitating clickbaity morsels from press releases without challenging or commenting on them.
Numerous outlets have covered the burgeoning art career of Anna Sorokin, a.k.a. Anna Delvey, the fake Russian-German heiress who went to prison for swindling financial institutions and members of Manhattan’s high society out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. (Imagine if the Fyre Festival was a person and you’ve got a pretty good sense of how Anna rolls.)
ARTnews reported that Sorokin has made a total of $340,000 by selling her art wares over the past year. She is “represented” by “art dealer” [sarcastic parentheses mine] Chris Martine, co-founder of Founders Art Club, which he described to the outlet as “an advisory body and group of influential collectors.” Who these influential collectors are, no one knows; Martine didn’t talk about it during his segment on the Dr. Phil show.
A very quick search, which no outlet seems to have done, reveals that Martine is in fact the founder of a tech start-up that charges realtors $25 per month per listing for a QR code and landing page template that captures only the most exclusive buyers. Before that, he worked in digital marketing and financial services.
His co-founder of Founders Art Club is Patrick J. Peters III, who was forced to leave his career as the head of a NYC digital advertising firm due to complications from long Covid. Luckily, he was able to recover from his Covid-related cognitive dysfunction (which he refers to on his website as “Traumatic Brain Injury”) and persistent fatigue in the Hamptons. During that time, according to his artist statement, “He found that painting gave him serious relief from severe mental anguish. After months of painting HE WOKE UP AN ARTIST.”
Voilà! Patrick J. Peters III was reborn as PJPIII, the full-fledged artist who gets gushing profiles written about him and who makes things like this:
Founders Art Club first repped Sorokin in the group show Free Anna Delvey in which 33 artists made work inspired by her story, whatever that means, and to which Sorokin contributed a few originals, which turned out not to be originals, of her own. The show was co-curated by artists Alfred Martinez and Julia Morrison.
About his interest in Sorokin, Martinez said to the NYTimes, “Art is only partly about talent and determination and even more so about the artist’s ability to demand attention through their personality and story. And this is where she really shines.” In the art market of the 2020s, we’re comfortable saying the quiet part out loud.
Within this cynical worldview, Martinez’s own success as an artist seems inevitable. “Alfredo Martinez is a provocateur,” reads a profile of him in Cell Vision. “He is someone who has deliberately poked at the art world, paid for it, and looped back around to poke some more. In 2002, Martinez was sentenced to 21 months in Brooklyn Federal MDC for wire fraud after selling a number of forged Basquiat drawings to prominent collectors. While incarcerated, he continued to make artworks using the materials available to him, works which were then slipped out of prison to feature in a sold-out show in downtown Manhattan with an up-and-coming art dealer, James Fuentes.” What’s two years in lockup when you get to come out an art star?
You will not be shocked to learn that Morrison, Martinez’s co-curator for the Free Anna Delvey show, made a name for herself mining NFTs of Instagram DMs she traded with Armie Hammer in which they talk about bondage. Mind you, she never met him. She is not one of his victims. This is not a form of restitution. Her “art” is simply proof that she once texted a celebrity. Surely that’s worth $16,600 to someone.
Morrison explained to Dr. Phil why Sorokin’s artistic pursuits were appealing to her: “I had been following her story on the news. And I saw her drawings on Instagram and thought, ‘This is quite interesting: it's a con artist turned artist.’”
Aside from the adorable wordplay, I wonder, why is that interesting? It’s like saying So-and-so used to be a heroin dealer and now they’re a car dealer. That seems like something worth investing in. What does it say about us as a culture that we not only seek out but actively reward corruption, vice, and fraud?
Why bother with an art education or being a good person? Proximity to spectacle is all you need. Making art is something that famous (and infamous) people can do now just to gin up a bit of cash.
Though it came as a great surprise to Morrison, it will likely not surprise you that she was not reimbursed by Sorokin or Founders Art Club for the $8,000 of expenses she incurred while putting together the group show to raise funds for Sorokin’s legal defense. Pro tip: if you’re working with someone who’s in jail for scamming people out of money, don’t charge anything for them on your credit card expecting to be paid back.
Founders Art Club is now selling Sorokin’s original pieces for between $17,500 and $25,000. Many have also been made into editions of 500 prints. At $250 a pop, this represents an additional $125,000 per piece in print sales.
The selling points of these works are not about their artistic or conceptual merit. Per the website, “Only 27 original works were produced by Anna while in…detention. Now that Anna is out of prison, there will never be any pieces like these created again.” Speaking to Dr. Phil, Martine perfectly sums up the value of an artist in the eyes of the commercial art world: “She has an interesting style1 but that’s not the most important thing she brings to the table.”
When I started OUT OF THE BOX in 2021,2 I did a lot of research to decide what platform to use. I committed to Substack because of its singular focus on writers. They work obsessively to help us create a space where, if we're lucky, we can make a living in the attention economy, which has in large part left us by the wayside. Even though OOTB isn't self-sustaining yet, I'm grateful every day for having made that decision, because the Substack network is a wonderful place. One of the best things about it is the other writers, who are all incredibly supportive of one another—something I'd never experienced in my twenty-year freelance writing career.
In that spirit, I wanted to introduce you to my favorite Substack publication, The Gallery Companion, written by the art historian Victoria Powell (Dr. Powell if you’re nasty). Though she’s an academic, her writing is so accessible as to appeal equally to the art nerds and the newbies. Here’s an example of how she weaves together art, civil resistance, and climate change:
Drop a heart or a comment. It’s always nice to hear from you.
We disagree on this point.
Wow, it’s been a minute! Thank you so much to everyone who has supported the venture from the beginning (the OG crew made it possible for me to take this leap). And to those of you who have found your way to this community since then. I appreciate each and every one of you.
Dr Powell is in the house. Ha! Thanks Jennifer for this wonderful introduction, and also for your company on this Substack adventure. I'm not self-sustaining (yet) either, but being here has made me write more regularly and write exactly what I want to say rather than what convention requires me to say. And that's joyful.
On the ideas in your post today, sadly I think it is largely true what Martinez says that to be successful today 'is only partly about talent and determination and even more so about the artist’s ability to demand attention through their personality and story.' I wish it wasn't the case but particularly with the rise of video for promotion I wouldn't be at all surprised if vetting the artist's personality wasn't an unspoken factor for big commercial galleries.
This is just... heartbreaking. As an artist, at this point I feel like I cannot even orient one iota towards the art world. What's the point.