Hot Art, Cold Cash

by Michael Van Rijn (Author), Michael Van Rijn (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1994

  $72.93

  Since the age of 16, when he drove in a clapped-out van from Amsterdam to Istanbul to pick up a consignment of sheepskin coats - later to be sold at huge profit - Michel van Rijn knew that schoolwork was no longer for him. Business was the thing - buying low and selling high, cutting deals and working the market. It was a decision that would have repercussions throughout the sedate salons of the art world for years to come. Following the heady success of that first operation, van Rijn then began to make his mark, and his money, in other commodities: Byzantine icons, antiquities and eventually fine art paintings. In this, his colourful life story, van Rijn exposes some of the art world's most sensational scandals, describing with candour his own role in scams such as the sale of the first Rembrandt to Japan, and the notorious attempt to market a damaged, eight-inch plaster male torso as the $90 million long-lost model for Michelangelo's David.