5 years
ago
The
Shocking Truth Behind New York’s $55 Million Art Swindler
https://fineartmultiple.com/blog/art-swindle-new-york/
Initially
Michel Cohen’s method was perfectly legal: he’d borrow a piece of work from a
reputable gallery, invite round a network of art collectors to come and see it
then sell it to one of them for an inflated price. It was simple, legal and
highly effective. At his peak, he was making hundreds of thousands of dollars
profit a month and chartering private jets and living in the most sought-after
property in Malibu. Yet after more than a decade of living the highlife, his
near manic compulsion to make money caused him to fall into a spiralling debt
hole. By the end he felt he had no other choice but to run, leaving behind him
a trail of broken friendships and a tale that is rich in greed, motive and
morality.
The new
documentary The $50 Million Art Swindle by Vanessa Engel tells this remarkable
story and reveals the barely believable events that transpired after his
disappearance. Incredibly, the documentary makers managed to do what Interpol,
the FBI and allegedly various hitmen failed to do, they managed to track Michel
Cohen down. Right from the beginning of the documentary he is there. Still
handsome, still mercurial and still showing no signs of contrition. We see him
washing up dishes in his home and walking in the woods, friendless, isolated
and living a life in total contrast to the extremity of his former existence.
Born in
France in 1953, Cohen left school early and quickly discovered a talent for
salesmanship. By 1980 he was in San Francisco selling posters to Francophile
Americans but it was not enough, his ambitions were boundless. He realised that
by trading in Picasso’s, Monet’s or Chagall’s you couldn’t really go wrong.
Once he had firmly established himself in New York, the epicentre of the art
world, he began studying contemporary auction catalogues, memorising everything
about the works price, size, materials and provenance.
The art
world is still a society that bases trust largely upon appearances, a handshake
is enough to get you into the private salons, the right introduction opens the
right doors (Just look at the Knoedler Art Trial). Slowly he began to build up
a network of trusted dealers, gradually working his way up to ever more
significant artworks. Without leaving any form of guarantee, he would even on
occasions carry the works straight out the gallery door. In 2001, he took a
$2.5m Picasso work from Richard Gray Gallery to his private warehouse and sold
it to a collector for $3.5m. It was that easy, ridiculous sums of money could
be made in an afternoon. A new deal every day.
Cohen
became so convinced of his methods that he began to apply them to the option
market. In 1996 he turned $30,000 into $13m. He was invincible, large sums of
money flowed into his lap effortlessly – until of course it didn’t. Like every
true gambler you don’t “stop when you’ve won, you only stop when you lose.”
With mortgages, a stable of horses and a brand new sports car each month,
Cohen’s expenditure was out of control. With debts mounting he returned to the
art world and began selling the same artworks to multiple collectors.
Gaunt and
haunted-looking, galleries realised something was up. Sotheby’s broke first,
demanding the payback of a $10 million loan and promptly called the police.
With the FBI circling he made a dash for it, flying straight to Rio. A few
weeks later his German wife and two children joined him. The story would be
remarkable if it ended there but it doesn’t. What follows is a
barely-believable adventure involving an underground South American jail, a
crafty prison escape, precarious river crossings and then of course his 17-year
disappearance.
The
documentary takes us on a rip-roaring ride through his nefarious art career, a
how-to-guide to making it to the top of the art world with absolutely no
training. Spliced with interviews with bemused former friends and bitter former
associates: all of them grappling with the character of man who not only
betrayed their trust but who managed to dodge any form of punishment. On the
phone from London, Engel tells me that she found him to be “nice, thoughtful”
even “sweet” but twenty years later, dogged in his self-delusion, he denies
that the works were even stolen. It’s just taking him a long time to pay the
original owners back. Anyway, what does he care? “These are people who have
assets of $50 million to billions, so it did not affect their lives.” Though of
course, it did. The Bill Beadleston Gallery was forced to close down, people
lost their livelihoods.
What
Cohen did was bring a Wall Street approach to the art market. To trade it like
it was any other commodity, he could just as well have been dealing in football
stickers. One of his former friends, the collector Robert Galoob, describes him
as a “young French Jewish Icarus” but that would be to over-romanticise him. If
anything he was a gambling addict, with startling powers of self-delusion.
At the
end, Engel’s atmospheric and highly-engaging documentary leaves us with more
questions than answers. What happened to the money? And isn’t he being absurdly
reckless in revealing himself with so many people baying for his blood? I put
these questions to Engel but she tells me her job is “Not to come in judgement
but to come in with curiosity.” Would she be surprised one morning to wake up
to discover that something had happened to Michel Cohen? “There are dark forces
in parts of the artworld,” she answers, “Do I think from my research that there
are people in the art world with connections to the mafia and are capable of
something like that? Then yes.” A sinister thought, but it makes you wonder
what Cohen might really be up to. Maybe, we’re all being duped by this
astounding story.
You can watch the The $50 Million Art Swindle
on the BBC Iplayer if you are a resident of UK or have a VPN. The documentary
will also be available on worldwide release in the year ahead.
Duncan Ballantyne-Way
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