Abstract
Focusing on the case of Inigo Philbrick and his alleged fraudulent overselling of artworks by Rudolf Stingel, we offer a new theory of art market scandal that builds upon Alexander’s framework of the pure and impure, and Adut’s concept of transgressive publicity. We argue that the presence of an art market creates latent impurity, according to the Hostile Worlds conception of markets as an impurification of art. The further financialization of an artwork into shares redoubles money’s impurification of art by creating what we term a financial simulacrum. Philbrick’s case allows us to expand Adut’s theory from mapping an art scandal of moral decency to conceptualizing an art market scandal of financial transgression. We argue that financial transgression—as enabled by the increased securitization of art—depends on the persona of the art dealer as intermediary, a projection that is itself a simulacrum. Thus, we frame Philbrick archetypally as hydroponic, validated, novel yet neutral, and self-pardoning. Drawing on interviews of expert insiders and close reading of court documents and press articles, we contribute a model of art market scandal that encompasses the dual artistic and financial nature of traded artworks and the shared art-industry risk of regulation.
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Data source: Artnet Database
Data source: Artnet Database
Data source: Artnet Database
Data source: Artnet Database
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Notes
The category of “theft” includes looting and sale under duress as well as burglary or art heist.
Other perpetrators of art world scandal have shared this placelessness, in particular Michel Cohen, the scandalized French art dealer who defrauded U.S. investors and currently lives outside extradition reach as a French national living, purportedly, in France. What Cohen said of his time in the U.S. might apply to Philbrick as well: “Americans always think that someone from somewhere else is going to know more than they do” (Engle 2019, 14:40).
He shares the distinctive profile of quiet demeanor yet brazenly luxurious personal style with Jho Low, the Harrow-educated Malaysian scion of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (“1MDB”) scandal. That scandal ensnared Goldman Sachs, the Malaysian government, and an assortment of Hollywood celebrities in Low’s alleged embezzlement of $4.5 billion from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund (Hope and Wright 2018). Physically, Philbrick cultivated a shiny, well-dressed youthfulness in line with such art-and-fashion luminaries as Anna Delvey, who falsely presented herself as a Russian heiress and defrauded friends and investors on a non-existent Manhattan real estate investment (Pressler 2018).
Philbrick’s disappearance may have exacerbated his legal consequences because it gave the impression of trying to go to a locale without U.S. extradition, even though in fact Vanuatu did not meet that criteria.
An NFT is a type of token on the Ethereum blockchain that can allow a digital image or other file to function as an original and singular (i.e., non-fungible) object whose singularity is recorded on the blockchain. Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology, meaning a special database structure in which one can create public trust in records without having to trust a central authority as the recordkeeper.
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to acknowledge Kenny Schachter and numerous other expert insiders who wished to remain anonymous, as well as Giana Ricci, Rani Singh, and Olga Rosen, and Anders Petterson of ArtTactic. Both authors contributed equally to the preparation of this article.
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Whitaker, A., Greenland, F. Theory of an art market scandal: artistic integrity and financial speculation in the Inigo Philbrick case. Am J Cult Sociol 10, 225–247 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-021-00134-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-021-00134-1