Thursday 15 May 2008

they sicken of the calm, who know the storm" - Dorothy Parker.

CLASH OF THE TIGHTEST!
History's Greatest Drunks square off!
"This month we pit dark horse Dorothy Parker against booze juggernaut Ernest Hemingway.
Round One
Parker orders two Beefeater Gin martinis.
LO: Parker comes out with her tried and true martini jab. They clink glasses and Hem turns on a boyish smile. I do believe he is attempting to charm the lady.
HC: They casually sip and exchange pleasantries. Hem may be onto something, when it comes to attractive men, Parker is known as a pushover.
Round Two
Hemingway orders two Gordon’s Gin and tonics with a splash of bitters.
HC: No surprises from Hem, either. These two have drank together before, in New York, and I don’t think they’re going to need to feel each other out.
LO: I sit here wondering what manner of trick Parker is going to pull. She cannot attack his palette, as she did so effectively with Welles, and she surely cannot outdrink him. I just had a rather odd thought..."
(Modern Drunkard magazine)
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Channel 4 tv in Britain: (thanks, Hayley)

Artful Codgers- C4 Thursday 15 May 2008 9pm
"Cutting Edge tells the story of the audacious pensioners from Lancashire who conned the art world with a series of fakes sold to museums, galleries and collectors all over the world. Masterminded by 84-year-old George Greenhalgh, and aided by his mother, Olive, 83, son Shaun, 47, faked paintings, sculptures and ancient artefacts in the garden shed of their shared council house in Bolton. The Artful Codgers uncovers the secret world of the most unlikely art forgers in history, interviewing the police who uncovered them, the experts they deceived and their friends and neighbours in suburban Bolton."
National Post has the Reuters version of the story from January 29:
"the Artful Codgers, one London newspaper calls them. Testifying in court, Mom claimed her work was purely routine, like making calls for Shaun because he's too shy to talk on the telephone...
In 1997, a certain Mrs. Roscoe (that's Mom's maiden name) sold Shaun's The Faun at Sotheby's in London, claiming she had inherited it from Roderick O'Conor, a friend of Gauguin, who had purchased it from the Paris gallery. (She supplied a bill from the gallery, forged by her boy Shaun.) A firm of London dealers bought it, to their delight, for only £20,700, and later sold it to the Chicago Art Institute for US$125,000. Chicago's sculpture curator dated it to 1886, called it probably Gauguin's first ceramic and said it was among the Art Institute's most important acquisitions of recent years. It was included in a show, Van Gogh and Gauguin, which went on to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. It remained on exhibit in Chicago until the call from Scotland Yard last October. It would be there yet, and perhaps for centuries more, if Shaun hadn't messed up the cuneiform.
Shaun has been sentenced to four years and eight months in jail. Mom got off with a year's suspended. Dad came to court in a wheelchair, wearing slippers, with a shawl over his legs; he apologized for being partially deaf, due to his Second World War injury... (lots more)"

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3 Comments:

Blogger Matthew Adams said...

One day people will forge comics and convince comic book publishers that they have discovered an unpublished Eddie Campbell manuscript.

20 years later what they thought was a dark stout stain turns out to be just an ink stain and they realise it is a fraud.

15 May 2008 at 17:23:00 GMT-5  
Blogger spacedlaw said...

I love this forging story! Anyone wanted to write a story like this and critics would scoff at it, saying it is not credible for a moment.

16 May 2008 at 00:56:00 GMT-5  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for that Modern Drunkard link - very cute! I've posted on it and linked you...

19 May 2008 at 15:03:00 GMT-5  

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