Thursday, July 1, 2010

Provenance


Salisbury and Sujo hit paydirt with Drewe, the extravagantly pathological central figure in this book about the art world, forgery and a larger than life con man who, it occurs to me, is probably reading everything anybody writes about him. I will give him this, he's a hell of a lot more fascinating than the guy who loved books too much. The authors did a wonderful job pulling this story together. The part about what Drewe did to his wife is hair raising. I've been in situations when the truth was too bizarre and my emotions so raw that people dismissed the urgency of the situation. How do you convince somebody that something totally outlandish is the truth, and it's happening to you. Yikes. That poor woman.

This was a satisfying read for many reasons. I wanted to find out what happened, I cared about many of the people, the writing is good, I love art and I dislike the art establishment. Which calls to mind something from the book... isn't Thomas Hoving that pompous @$$ from "Who the #$&% is Jackson Pollock"? So much for his credibility as a human being AND sleuth. I know he's deceased but ptooey.Get more detail about Provenance.

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