The Conman: How an Amateur Figured Out the Art World and Fooled the Experts

by Laney Salisbury (Author), Aly Sujo (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2010

  $3.26

  When a school teacher put a modest advertisement in Private Eye as a painter of 'genuine fakes', he had no idea that it would lead to him becoming a willing part of the biggest art fraud in Britain. Among one of the few people who responded was the mysterious and magnetic John Drewe, apparently a Professor and inventor with impressive connections. But really Drewe was a conman who was soon to take in the British Modern Art World with a scam that would last a decade. Drewe, who knew, at first, little about the art world discovered that the art itself didn't really make any difference but it was the documentation of a work that mattered. He commissioned some 200 works from Myatt who worked with B&Q emulsion paint, mixed in with KY jelly, over a decade. It was only a naked a woman and a microwaved goldfish that would end the scam!