April 6, 2023 • 45 mins
Like Elmyr de Hory before him, Wolfgang Beltracchi loved painting other artists' works. The "lost" masterpieces were a hot commodity, generating riches for Beltracchi and the rest of the art world. He could forge the works of any genius painter, but he couldn't forge a simple label. Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of Iheartradiozon Elizabeth. You know
it's ridiculous. Oh man, do I all right? You ever
heard of wife carrying as a competitive sport? No, I've not.
So it started out apparently in Finland, where it has
a definitely decidedly questionable history. But wife carrying as a sport,
(00:24):
it involves track that has to be two hundred and
seventy eight yards long, exactly that number, and then it
has to have two dry obstacles, one wet obstacle swarty goodness,
and a husband has to carry their wife. Now, you
can find these contests everywhere. They're like in Finland, Kazakhstan,
anywhere you look, you know. But in America we do
(00:46):
them proper. Okay. There's the North American wife carrying Championship
you can find at the Sunday River Resort in newy Maine,
like any wry newy okay, right, And they usually do
it in the fall, and it involves people male female
partnership when they're all leaf peeping. Yeah, so the exactly
(01:07):
out there like oh it's gouse the leaves. You don't
want to do a championship run. So yeah, they basically
just imagine a husband carrying his wife like fire like
fireman over the shoulders, or like maybe like bear hug
like you know, upside down, where like they're all s
all sorts of weird ways, but however they can like
clutch each other and then they run as fast and
(01:28):
as hard as they can over three obstacles and hell
and dale, Yeah, for two hundred and seventy eight yards
or whatever. And you can't drag her, No, no, you
gotta its whole thing is the carrying in. That's the name. Yeah,
I thought, ridiculous. That is very ridiculous. Do you know
what else is ridiculous? No, hit me with it? Forging
art while in jail for forging art? Wait, what this is? Ridiculous?
(02:12):
Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons.
It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred
percent ridiculous. Oh you damn right. Yes, I think I've
established that I like four things. Okay, I mean I
like more than four things in life, but these are
the main four dogs, which are the greatest living creatures
(02:34):
on Earth. Trains, but not in like the knowing the
model or history kind of way, pretending to not watch TV,
especially the hit Fox TV show nine one one, and
art crimes. Yes, those are four things I like. I
don't have any cool dog stories today, and I haven't
been on a train lately, and I'm all caught up
on the stories. OA, so that leaves art crime nice.
(02:57):
You gotta fresh you for me, I do. I really
liked telling you the tale of Elmer Dahorri Elmir. Excuse me. Oh,
he was fantastic. There was something so compelling about someone
who had talent, someone who life had totally put behind
the eight ball, and someone who was so charming and
who wanted more than anything to be loved and valued. Um,
(03:18):
and I loved hearing about his criminal escapades. Today. I
have another Forger for you, right, he also has talent.
He's also rather audacious and charming, but he's not as
charming as Elmir of course. Um. You know how if
you look at an established artists Apple Music page, say,
for example, Oasis, Okay, I don't know about theirs, though,
(03:40):
they'll have like their essentials, which is like the greatest
hitch and then then sometimes they'll have deep tracks, but
they also have both influences and inspired by and so
by the way. The inspired by collection for the band
is really good. Um. Anyway, if there wasn't inspired by
Elmer Dahorri track list Wolfgang or I should say Wolfgang,
(04:02):
I'll say Wolfgang. I'll americanize it Bell Tracky, he'd be
right up there, okay. So Wolfgang Beltracky is an inspiration
for almerda hard Well, he would he was inspired by Elmire.
Oh I got it backwards. Why there you go? So
Wolfgang Beltracky. He was born Wolfgang Fisher. Wolfgang Fisher picked
up Bell Tracky along the way. Well, you'll find out
(04:24):
in Hexta, Germany. Sure, I am gonna like you say
it like I know it. I'm butchering the hawkster with
oh yeah, yes, so Hexta Hexta Yeah. In nineteen fifty one.
His father was an artist. He was like a muralist.
He restored church frescoes. He's like the German Diego Rivera.
(04:47):
Yes so no, so Wolfgang Wolfie. He began painting when
he was ten, and when he was fourteen he painted
a piece copied from Pablo Picasso. After his father had
to ten to do the exact same thing. Like his
dad tries copying it. This is what he said. I
was fourteen and my father had given me a postcard.
(05:08):
I was allowed to use my father's oil paints for
the first time. I didn't like the original I thought
it was too sad, so I changed it, omitting a
piece of material and making the picture less monochromatic. The
painting took an afternoon. My father didn't touch a brush
again for the next two years. Oh my god, can
you imagine that moment where the father like walks into
the room to see what he's done, and he's just like,
(05:29):
never mind, and it just goes into sadly puts his
brushes away. They get dusty for the next two years.
That's just like wow. Right. So when he was seventeen,
Wolfgang was expelled from high school and he'd quit art
school in Akin after four years studying there. Sure, so
what do you do when you quit art school? Go
to it T Tech where you can start learning to code.
(05:52):
No no clothes, You buy yourself a Harley Davidson, and
you become a nomadic hippie. Oh I like his choice. Huh.
So he travels throughout Europe, smoking hash, dropping acid with
US soldiers stationed at nearby NATO base on their way
home from Vietnam, you know, as they would have stories.
Where did he go as a nomad? Well, for a
(06:13):
year and a half. He crashed on a Moroccan beach
and he lived in the commune Choices. Oh yeah, he
lived in the commune in Spain. He lived in a
houseboat in Amsterdam, and he ran a psychedelic light show
at the Paradiso nightclub there. I think what we have
established is is that under General Lisamo Francisco Franco Fascist,
Spain was a great place to do drugs. Apparently everybody
(06:35):
doing drugs in the seventies like, I gotta hit Spain. Yeah, anyway, going,
So he drifted around Barcelona, Paris, London. What did he
do in all those places, Well, he bought and sold paintings.
He founded antique markets, and his career as a forger
was born in those markets. One day he noticed a
(06:55):
wintry landscape painting of iced over as he saw that
it sold for a lot of money. But he found
that the ones with these kind of winter scenes made
more if there were ice skaters in the painting. So
with the Disney, He's like, are you know what you
need is some ice skaters? So he bought a set
of paintings for two hundred and fifty dollars each by
(07:17):
this unknown eighteenth century Dutch painter. He then painted ice
skaters into the winter landscape and he resold them for
a profit because like, ice skaters are big business or
something apprently, so he sitsuing. Like then he starts buying
these old wooden frames and he creates winter landscape paintings
with ice skaters in them, sold as works by old masters.
(07:39):
So he like had this technique where he would put
this stuff all over the painting and then scrape the
old paint off and then you know, make his own thing.
So by the eighties he really ramped up his forgery business.
He painted in waves, as he called them, depending on
whatever his needs were. Quote, sometimes I'd paint ten works
in a month, and then I'd go for six months
without doing any He's just yeah, he's take a little
(08:01):
pieces of your retirement when you can get it. Exactly.
So in nineteen ninety two, Wolfgang meets Helene BELTRACKI, oh,
there it is progressive. So they were each living with
another partner when they met. Helene was with her longtime boyfriend.
Wolfgang lived with his ex girlfriend and their four year
old son. Okay, he met Helene because her boss was
(08:25):
backing a project of his using money made from his forgeries.
He bought an eighty foot sailboat and he hired a
five man crew all for this project. What was the project?
He was gonna do some plane air paintings and this
is something this would be right up your alley. He
was writing and filming a documentary about pirates. Oh my god,
(08:46):
I love this guy. He makes all the right choices.
So he planned to sail around the world. He was
going to go from Majorca to Madagascar, then to South
America because he wanted to follow the career paths of
all the pirates. Totally get into car. He was saying,
I want to go from Sir Francis Drake to the
South China season. So he's doing every he's going. Yeah,
he's covering the whole history. So Helene, she did not
(09:08):
find Wolfgang to be all heba hoba at first. She
wasn't into it. She thought he was a big mouth
as what she called him. So Wolfgang, he organized a
seminar series on sixteen millimeter film production as you do.
Helene attended spent some time with him, her mind gets changed.
Wolfie goes from zero to hero. He is an artist. Now,
(09:28):
this is what she said, quote, I saw that he
was an absolute perfectionist, intelligent, educated, and a totally open
social human being. So he just wins her over. By
the end of the week, she has dumped her boyfriend
and moved in with him. Wow, I like it. How's
that pirate documentary going? And you know whatever? Not great? Yeah,
(09:50):
I think it served as so exactly, So the film
production it fell apart and the crew gets stranded in Maorca.
Wolfgang gave the boat away and and pay the crew. Wow,
I like it exactly, he's loose. So a couple of
days after they first got together, Helene saw the paintings
that he had from all these famous artists, and she's
(10:10):
curious about him. Here's how she tells it. Quote I
asked him, are these actually real? And he said they're
all mine? I made him. I said, so you're an
art counterfeiter and he said, exactly, that's my work, that's
my metier. Obviously she's cool with it. Why is she
cool with it? Who knows? So anyway, Helene and Wolfgang
(10:31):
they get married in nineteen ninety three. Nine months later,
they had a daughter named Franziska, and Wolfgang took Helene's
last name, changing from Wolfgang Fisher to Wolfgang belt Truckey. Yes,
it sounds cooler. It does sound cooler, and I'm imagining
as an artist. He's like, listen to the Ring of back.
Oh yeah, completely. So Helene, she wasn't just cool with
(10:52):
the counterfeit paintings. She's like she wanted in on that lefe.
Oh yeah, she's angry. She was all about fraud life.
So she reaches out to Lempert's major auction house in Cologne.
She said that she had a painting for sale by
the French cubist George Vamier and quote they sent their expert.
She looked for a few minutes, said it was wonderful,
(11:14):
and then asked how much do you want for it?
So the lady bought it for twenty thousand Deutsche marks. Okay,
And this is what Elaine said. The first time. It
was like being in a movie. It was like it
had nothing to do with me. It was another person,
an art dealer whom I was playing. Everybody with the movies,
ye always with the movies of the movie. So she
just roll places. Sorry, doesn't even ever do crime and
(11:36):
think that they're in a play, you know, maybe pre movie.
It was like a Eugeno Neal. I just felt like, well,
so she's shocked at how easy this is. So she
said quote normally a person would think that these experts
would study the paintings and look for proof of its provenance.
The authenticator asked two or three questions. She was gone
in ten minutes. It was super easy. A year later,
(11:59):
that same forged Valnier sold at auction in New York
for a million dollars. Well you know there it is. Yeah, Well,
and their money easily parted. So nineteen ninety three, Helene
debuted her Fletch Time collection. Wolfgang would paint in his
studio while Helene, she had a sister named Jeannette, and
then another accomplice named Otto schulteke ketting house I'm destroying.
(12:21):
I'm sure they organized the sale of the paintings. Wolfgang
met Otto in a cafe. He introduced him to people
as Count Otto. What a great name, of course. Wolfgang
describes Otto as someone not really up on the art
world and its history and such, but like a quick learner, okay,
so he takes him under his wing. He learned about
the forgery racket, totally on board. He's like count me in.
(12:42):
So Helene and her sister they went to auction houses
and they said that they inherited an art collection from
their father, Werner Yeagers. And according to them, Yeagers had
been a client of Alfred fletch Time, the famous Jewish
art gallery owner who lost his gallery to the Nazis.
So keep it mind that the Nazis looted more than
six hundred and fifty thousand works of art there. I
(13:06):
it was like twenty percent of the art in Europe. Yeah, ridiculous.
And there are more than one hundred thousand pieces that
haven't been recovered or returned to the heirs of the owners.
So Wolfgang in Helene said that in order to save
his works from the grubby clutches of the Nazis, flesh
Time sold a bunch of the paintings to Yeager Helene's grandpa,
(13:27):
who then hid them in the Cologne Mountains for the
duration of World War Two. They had doctored photographs and
forged documents to back and claim. So there were experts
who also for a fee would back his staff. Experts
can always be bought exactly, and the auction houses they
were stoked to be able to get their hands on
all these old master works believed to time. So much
(13:47):
like Elmer Dhri, Wolfgang didn't copy existing works. He painted
quote in the style of designer impostor. It's harder to
question right well, and then the way he came up
with it is so genius. So the piece as he
created were then said to be works that had been
lost in the shuffle somewhere, whether missing pieces or one's
not known about until then. He created titles and different
(14:10):
motivation stories behind the creation of the piece in question.
This is what he said. Quote. Every philharmonic orchestra merely
interprets the composer. My goal was to create new music
by that composer. In doing so, I wanted to find
the painter's creative center and become familiar with it, so
that I could see through his eyes how his paintings
(14:31):
came about, and of course see the new picture I
was painting through his eyes before I even painted it.
I wonder how that worked, you know, I mean, if
you're really good as an artist, and because I can
only speak as like a film student. Or it's like
you can eventually art to see how an editor would work,
how they would cut this, or how a composer would
score this, or I would director would want to move
on this and follow that. You get that sense. But
(14:52):
as an artist, it's such a two dimensional thing I'd
be willing to about. Not that it's easier, but I
bet they could do that really well in that vision
like a crazy feeling, you know, like as a writer,
when I'm writing in the voice of a character created,
like you get into it and all of a sudden
you're that person. Yeah, it's just flowing through you. You You
don't having to thank or you're in the what of
the flow state. But to have that two dimensional quality
(15:14):
imagines being able to put on lenses like imaginary lenses,
and also you can see the world like Picasso right
and exactly so, like he would study the catalogs of
existing works for artists, and he'd research their schools of practice.
But then what he did that was so smart is
that he looked at what was registered as having gone
missing during World War two. Brilliant and because of that,
(15:35):
there usually weren't reference images for the paintings just like
vague descriptions. So he's like, all right, well, you know,
I wonder if he's also pulling through their notes, you know,
like going into their diaries and trying to find them
talking about a thing. Oh, he did tons and tons
of research on it, and when he found a piece
of missing, missing piece of work, he would start painting
it based on whatever written narrative there was for it,
with knowledge of the artists uber So he's like any
(15:58):
descriptions that other people had at the time writing about it.
So he's just filling in the gaps, and he was good.
The paintings were selling, the prices are going up and up.
Here's what Wolfgang had to say about a max Ernst
painting that he did. Quote his widow, Dorothea Tanning, and
artist in her own right, said that one of my
forgeries was the most beautiful Max Ernst painting she had
(16:19):
ever seen. The trick is to paint a picture that
doesn't exist and yet that fits perfectly into an artist's
body of work. So exactly like Elmer. When we get
back from this break, I'll tell you other ways. Wolfgang's
criminal enterprise was pretty much like Elmer's. We're back, hey, Hey, o,
(16:58):
Wolfgang Beltrackey. Yeah, he's making fake pieces by famous artists.
He's using the Nazi theft of art from German Jews
and others to make cover for himself. There were a
lot of people who were duped by him, auction houses
like Christie's and lem Parents. Art scholar Verner Spice. You're
familiar with it. Oh, of course, I used to get
(17:18):
the newsletter Experience Speaks were your favorite experienced art collectors
Reinhold Erth and Danielle Philipacchi the verse. Haven't called me
since that, you know, the incident, but you know, I
think that we could reconnect. I know, maybe therapy would
be good, sit down talk therapy. Yeah. Um, actor Steve Martin,
(17:41):
Banjoe Buddy Banjo Boys, Steve Martin. So, because it was
nearly impossible to trace these pieces, experts, mediators, purchasers, they
all got suspicious after a while. Remember Wolfgang and Helene.
They said that the pieces came from Helene's actual grandfather,
who was a wealthy industrialist, Werner Yeagers. So they said
(18:01):
that Yeagers had been friends with Alfred Flechteim in the
nineteen twenties, and as we know, he's this German Jewish
art dealer. They said that Yeagers bought the paintings from
Flesh Time in order to save them from the Nazis.
The story, though, had holes. So in the nineteen thirties,
here's the big problem, Yeagers was actually a member of
(18:22):
the Nazi party. Well there is that he's not saving
it from himself. Yeah, he trying to pull the hole,
like I got pulled in, but I was trying to
say he's dead. And he also had no interest in
art in his life. It was completely doubtful that he
even knew flextime. Okay, So when people tried to call
him out on this, Volfgang and Helene, they pulled out
(18:45):
all these old photographs what they said were from the
twenties of Helene's grandmother, Josephine Yeagers, with the paintings in
question hanging on a wall in the background. They're like, look,
we'll come to find out these photos are fake. So
Helene would dress in period clothing and pose as her grandmother.
Love it. Wolfgang used an old camera and like pre
(19:08):
war developing paper to take these pictures. This is what
he said. Quote. We were asked if perhaps there were
some family photos in which the paintings could be seen. Well,
of course there were. I got myself an old camera
on one of those big cardboard things from the nineteen twenties,
as well as old film roles in larger's trays, whatever
I could find at the flea market. So he's like, yeah,
I can get you some pictures. They created fake labels
(19:31):
that stated that the paintings were from sam Lung flex Time,
the flex Time collection. So with the success of this collection,
the sisters did it again later with a second large
art collection, the Knops collection, and that was also collections.
Oh yeah, but they had to like have oh why
we got this? So in this story, Knops was the
(19:53):
grandfather of Auto, the other four germ count Auto. Yeah exactly.
So Count Otto has this grand father, Knops, who also
just dies ilected. His name is Count eight, you know.
So Otto inherited the art collection upon his grandfather's death. Well,
where here we are, you know, more paintings. So the
(20:14):
Beltrackeys made a lot of money from these forgeries, and
they spent a lot of money. They spent seven million
euros on this enormous villa in Freiburg, which is a
town in southern Germany. If you're going to do it
a villa, right, Well, it took nineteen months to restore
this villa after they bought it. And while they were
(20:34):
having the restoration, they stayed in the penthouse suite of
the Columbia Hotel for seven hundred euros a night. They're
just ragging it up and their neighbors are like blown
away by these spending habits. They traveled, They went on
these shopping sprees. When the renovations on the villa were done,
they invited a hundred people to their housewarming party. And
then you know, it wouldn't be a proper villa warming
(20:56):
party without a four member flamenco band flown in from
Granada to sing and dance for the guests. It's only problem.
I mean, come on, I mean, come on doing this
or do what? Are we animals? M So they're living large.
But as is obvious from the fact that I'm telling
you about them, it didn't last. Oh I was worried
about this because you're telling me about them. It was
something small that took them down. Though. It was those
(21:18):
fake labels that would be their undoing. Oh. Interesting, Well,
experts were suspicious of their authenticity and considering the fact
that they'd never seen labels such as these on any
other artworks prior. Oh yeah, that's and well they didn't
like copy a label, they made a new right, and
so the labels didn't compare in quality to Fletch Times labels. UM.
(21:41):
And they also, like those labels, had a custom stamp
that was very recognizable. It would have been worth it
to them to buy an actual flex Time just to
get the stamp and then be able to exactly for
the amount of money that they're taken in. Yeah, if
they're buying villas, you know, buy a flex Time. Yeah,
well there was on their label. There's like a weird
caricature of flex Time at Wolfgang Drew. And so in
(22:02):
two thousand and eight, um Ralph Jens, who was an expert, UM,
he did something no one had done before. He questioned
the labels. This is what he said, quote Fletch Time
was a connoisseur, a collector, a man of taste. There
is no way he would have permitted such a silly portrait.
So it was just the caricature, Like this guy was serious.
Why did he have like a good girl. That's like
(22:24):
an observation. You're with your boy doctor doctor Bendor would
know yes, oh my god, Bendor, and I don't remember
his last Yeah, he's like an English art story expert. Yeah,
oh my god, he's the best. But he has just
the best lines for his reasoning. Oh yeah, he would
definitely do that with I don't believe it totally. So
in two thousand and six, Wolfgang in Helene sold a
(22:47):
nineteen fourteen painting supposedly by Heinrich Compendonk called Red Picture
with Horses to a Maltese company, Tristeco, and Tristec commissioned
to art historians to inspect the work. They're like, why
are there ice skaters in this picture? So they confirmed
(23:08):
that some of the paint that was used didn't exist
in nineteen Oh yeah, that's always a year it was
supposedly made. Wolfgang had purchased a tube of paint in
the Netherlands that contained titanium white and made mostly of
titanium dioxide. It was still in development when they were,
you know, saying that this painting was created. So Wolfgang
he blamed his desire for convenience on this slip up quote.
(23:31):
I had always used a zinc white, which was completely normal.
In Kampendoc's day. Yeah. Usually I mixed the paints myself,
but I was missing some pigments, so I took a
zinc white from a tube, a Dutch product, but unfortunately
it didn't say that it contained a small amount of
titanium white. In other words, the whole thing was discovered
because of an incorrectly labeled tube. He's very facility. He
(23:53):
just got lazy. I think you can point that finger
right back this way. So in twenty ten, the buyer
painting filed a complaint with the District Court in Cologne
in order to be reimbursed for the purchase price two
point nine million euros. Yeah to hell, have a rebate, Yeah,
a little chargeback on the card. Berlin State Criminal Police
got word of the forgeries, they launched an investigation. Forensics
(24:17):
discovered that the labels were made with a modern paper
to look old, and the glue was also modern. Zaren Yes,
close you, Oh yeah, I want you to picture it closed.
It's August twenty seven, twenty ten. You own Cologne, Germany's
hottest restaurant, Zarin House. It's terribly posh. It's super small,
(24:43):
known for our sculptures of salad. Zaren House. You recommend
the crudo, or maybe the roasted duck with wild spice,
strudel and beetroot. It's very good this time of yeah, exactly.
You and the staff that you all wear patent leather jumpsuits.
By the way, we all like to look very good.
And when we are seven fo it's your idea, No,
it was their idea. So your greeting guests, as they
(25:05):
approach the hostess to claim their reservations, incomes the Beltrackey family.
The goods. They're regulars, like, hey, guys, they spend well,
they eat well. They're two teenage kids. Manuel and Franziska
are particularly adventurous eaters you've noted, so they enjoy this
wonderful meal and all the exquisite wines that you've recommended.
(25:26):
They get up to leave and you walk with them.
You're chatting about the weather and the plants that they
have for this fall. You hold the door to the
restaurant open for them as they file out. Just then
you hear approaching sirens and the screeching of wheels. Five policemans,
lights and sirens ablaze, come careening up to the curb.
(25:47):
Police jump out, armed with automatic weapons and police dogs.
The police order Wolfgang in Helene into a policeman. You
stand by a gog. Wolfgang tosses his car keys to Francesca.
The teens look at you, but you've already headed back inside.
I'm glad to go back because this is too much funny.
You don't need the trouble. Basically, so the kids look
(26:09):
at each other, they shrug, and they make their way
home alone in the family car. This is what Franziska said.
This is what the daughter said. We went back to
the house and called a lawyer. I had no idea
what this was about until I saw the news on
television and read it in the newspapers. Blissfully ignorant of this. Sorry,
(26:29):
the television, I don't know. So Wolfgang in Helene. They
were in custody for fourteen months between the time of
their arrest and their trial in October of twenty eleven.
In jail, Wolfgang painted portraits of fellow inmates, and he
and Helene wrote to each other what they say were
seven thousand to eight thousand pages in total, constant letter writing.
(26:53):
And it was during this time that Helene was diagnosed
with breast cancer. So they're just going through all this
stuff In September of twenty eleven, the group went on
trial in Cologne, Germany. Wolfgang in Helene, Helene's sister Jeanette,
and Otto count Otto about my man count eight. There
were fourteen works of art that were confirmed as forgeries, okay,
(27:14):
and those had earned them twenty one million dollars hot damn.
And there were another thirty three pieces that were supposedly
by all these other artists that Camp and Docmax Earnst
they're under investigation as well. Wolfgang loves an audience, so
when he was called to the stand, he gave more
of a soliloquy than a confession, because they've cut this deal.
(27:35):
If you confess, then will reduce the sentence. So he
regaled them with stories of his wild youth, and he
went on. He went after the arrogance and greed of
the art world. He also said the whole thing was
quote great fun exactly. And then he did this post
trial interview with Vanity fair as you do. He said
(27:56):
he was thrilled to share how he was able to
like dash off these paintings that he would later sell
for millions. Quote, I did in three or four hours,
sometimes even faster. So he's just whipping these that's amazing,
and it really kind of it's not an insult to
the great masters, but it kind of puts into perspective
how long some of their stuff might have taken, you know. Well,
and it's interesting because it's like they put all of
(28:16):
this thought and development into it and then he just
kind of swoops in after and it's like the table's
already been set. Yeah, you know, he's just going to
tinker around a little bit. It's just basically an artistic
fax machine at that point. Pretty much. Now, when we
get back from this break, I'm going to tell you
how Wolfgang's inflated ego worked out for him in terms
of sentencing. Oh, Zaren Elizabeth, Welcome to my crime flop house. Dude.
(28:58):
I'm really liking this ever since you left the crime
Dojo and you got this new crime floppers I mean,
everything's well, it's a lot dirtier. I gotta say, well, there,
you're going to get scabies from sitting on that, so yeah,
I'm pretty sure already have that. But I like you
apparently a lot more time to yourself now that you're
not cleaning all the time exactly. That's nice. I have
a busy on the go lifes. So October twenty eleven
(29:19):
there was a forty day trial Wolfgang Beltrockey. He gets
sentenced to six years, Helene gets sentenced to four. Both
of these sentences were in open prisons. What does that mean.
It meant that they went to work outside during the
day and then check back in each night. So that's
like beyond work furlough because they just did their thing. Yeah,
so they're basically they just have to sleep in a prison. Yes, exactly,
(29:42):
it's like a hotel. They just have a really crappy hotel.
That was their prison sentence. So they would like meet
up at the studio in the morning, hang out work
until it was time to get in separate cars, and
then make their way back to prison. They would literally
drive next to each other on the freeway and then
one would have to get off in an exit and
they'd wave to each other. Are you kidding me? I'm
not kidding you. Wow, Europeans approach to prison, I mean
(30:04):
I wish we had this type of approach to prison
for the non violent effects the world. Well, this is
what the judge said. Quote to clear up any confusion,
Mister Beltrocky has agreed to take back all his forgeries
and return them to their owners, signed this time with
his own name. Some slacks the right name on these things,
so Wolfgang, Um, he agreed to paint only in his
(30:27):
own name moving forward. No, wait with Steve, you said
Steve Martin was one of his victims. Yeah, did he
come forward in this like, I don't know. I was
wondering if he was like angry about it, because he
seems a little prickly sometimes. Yeah, I know it doesn't he? Yeah? Yeah,
God bless him. Um, So he said I can They
told him you can only paint in your own name
going forward, because it goes back to remember with elmir
(30:48):
it was like, did you actually signed it? That's whole
thing about a forgery is if you if you don't
sign it to deceive exactly. So it's the signature that
makes the forgery. Um. And then he also had to
move from Germany to France. They just like kicked him
out of Germany. You're out of here, buddy, I mean,
I bet you ran this by like this law about
copyright law and having to put your name on a painting.
(31:09):
If you ran that by a sovereign citizen, they probably
lose their mind because it's all about the law and
the name. Like, this is what happened? Man? Did they
take your name and that's your identity? You're like, oh, brother,
this is great. Keep going. Oh my god, I love
sovereigns like in the abstract. Sorry, so Bell Tracky right
(31:31):
he um, oh, I forgot to tell you otto he
got five years and Jeanette got a twenty one month
suspended sentence. Oh so she doesn't even have to sleep
in prison. No, she just has to wear like a
cool bracelet. Um. So after he got out of prison,
Bell Tracky admitted in all these interviews that he actually
forged maybe fifty different artists. He's like, there were a
(31:51):
lot more, Buddy. I like how he just keeps wanting
to flex something. But totally. He also just took me
at ten minutes they had in ballpark. How many did
you sell? He's like, I don't know, thousand, two thousands
could be, but he wouldn't disclose the exact number or
like the locations of This is what he said in
an interview. He said, wouldn't it be the height of
(32:11):
vanity if I were to tell you now where the
paintings could still be hanging. So I mean there's some
still out there. Oh you know that in the Houston Museum. Three.
The magazine says, this isn't exactly what one imagines as
a full confession, Wolfgang, Wait a minute, I made a
confession about the paintings that were the subject of the trial.
Aside from that, if the police had asked me at
(32:31):
the time, I would have told them where the paintings were,
at least as far as I knew. That's on the cops. Yeah,
they missed the boat on that had me on the stand.
So it was pretty much acknowledged that the galleries, the
auction houses, they all turned a blind eye to pretty
obvious clues. We keep hearing this, Oh well there. It
wasn't just fake labels. They were misspelled names and like
frames that didn't match the pictures that were supposed to
(32:53):
be made out of the same wood. The money was
too good though for everyone involved. Well, I was just
like a target print you get for a dorm room.
They've been painted over. It was like one of those
kids in the big hats, like holding a rose. So
they could increase the value though tenfold, between buying from
Helene and then selling it at auctions, so of course
(33:14):
they're not going to pass it up. That's what I
keep saying. This is what journalist Henrik van Spresshart said,
a little more detective work at the right time could
have exposed the so called yagers and knops collections. But
something in the art market seems to resist, almost hysterically,
any discussion or disclosure ranks. They're like, how do you
(33:35):
think we move all this money? Come on now, so
Wolfgang he accused the galleries and the art houses of
being consumed with quote greed and depravity in their mission
to acquire these high dollar pieces. Per der Spiegel, German
news magazine, quote doubts are bad for business. A dealer
who buys a painting for one hundred thousand euros but
(33:55):
knows that he can sell it for two hundred thousand
or three hundred thousand euros post doesn't want to ask
too many questions about its origin. So you got from
every angle everyone's pointing out like this is all big racket.
We all know. As long as everyone gets their beak wet,
no one cares, right, But you know, there were those
who paid high non monetary costs thanks to the fraud
(34:16):
reputations were damaged. Oh so art scholar Andrea Ferminich of
bon She was called to examine a supposed compendanc piece.
Oh yes, it should be stated that Compendonk produced over
twelve hundred works. Damn well, factory Compendonk. Yeah, there are
so it's like really easy to say, like this could
(34:37):
have been lost in the shuffle. But there were also
two other experts who were called in to look at
the same piece. This is what she said, quote no
expert is immune from mistakes. The damage to my person
is so big that I'm not able to say anything
quote official. The damage for the experts of art is
so enormous, and the public understanding of BELTROCKI as a
hero so absurd that I hope you can understand my opinion.
(35:01):
Another one, your buddy Werner Spice. He was another casualty
of it. He was referred to as one of the
most influential art historians of the twentieth century. Sky was huge.
He was a friend to both Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso,
and he was an expert on both of their catalogs
of work. So Wolfgang comes along, DUP's Spice gets him
(35:24):
to issue certificates of authenticity for five works that were
supposedly by Ernst. One of the certificates was for the
fake Lafouette Deum Spice put controversial Swiss art dealer Eve's Bouvier.
I mean, we all know about his kind in contact
with Helene and so they sold the piece to a
(35:45):
private company for two point three million dollars and the
painting was then sold to New York publisher Daniel Philippacci
for seven million. Wow. Yeah. In two thousand and four,
Spice authentic hated an alleged Max Ernst painting tromblemndetail, and
the painting was sold to a collector for more than
(36:06):
six hundred and fifty thousand euros. And then in May
of twenty thirteen, Spice was convicted in order to payback
that collector. Huh so. The decision, though, was overturned by
the Court of Appeal of Versailles. They stated that Spies
had quote expressed an opinion outside of the determined transaction unquote,
and could not therefore be quote charged with a responsibility
(36:29):
equivalent to that of an expert consulted in the context
of a sale. Quite understands that basically saying, in his
professional capacity he was he wasn't doing as part of
the actual sale itself. So the court said that a
quote cannot be required of the author of a catalog
Reisen to subject each work in a catalog published under
his responsibility to the execution of a scientific expert assessment,
(36:54):
which requires the removal of fragments of the work and
represents a significant cost. Okay, so they're basically saying he
did go up to this this criteria, and no one
expected them because he didn't say that. He didn't say
I analyzed it right. And while he may have created
this catalog reison, they for Ernst, Yeah, he just based
on looking at it. How could he have known you'd
actually have to like, that's how good. It's more of
(37:15):
a curatorial catalog exactly. So Spicy ended up facing a
civil lawsuit for certifying seven Max Ernst paintings. It turned
out to be faked. So rich people are suing him.
Oh yeah, and it totally tarnished this reputation that he
had built over more than half a century. In twenty fourteen,
Wolfgang in Helene, they collected those letters that they'd sent
(37:36):
each other and had them published into a book. Oh wow,
So they did like a whole letters between Henry Miller
and Annias and Inn and they also wrote an autobiography. Yeah,
they're a little duly because of course I got to
write a book. It's what you do in prison, Elizabeth,
you write books. But how look how fun it was
until you got to like the people whose careers they Yeah,
I know. This is the one thing is like, you know,
(37:57):
meach as long as people aren't getting hurt by a crime.
I don't crime, but people are getting hurt by this
crime was like Sokom when these like rich people fall
for it. But then yeah, at least yeah, well the exam.
I don't mind separating a fool from their money if
it doesn't actually hurt the fool, right, true, I will,
I will say that every time. So a documentary about
the couple was made in twenty fourteen called Beltracky The
Art of Forgery. It got a German Film Award for
(38:20):
Best Documentary. It was by Arnip Birkenstock. No, his father
Ryanhart Birkenstock, founder of the shoe company. No, it was
legal counsel for the Beltracky's. Wait a minute, so their
lawyer's kid made a documentary and they were all wearing Burkey.
It's not an easy documentary to track down, but thanks
to my library card, and if you don't have one,
(38:42):
I don't know what's wrong with you. I was able
to watch it through Canopy, which is a nap or
canopy dot com. So in it, Wolfgang waxes about the
Fauvis and how they went to the south of France
and they painted things that no one had ever painted before,
in a way that no one had painted, capturing light
and the way people hadn't seen it. And so he
talks about how much he would have loved to be there,
(39:03):
as if it's only time that prevents him from doing
something wholly new. You know, he's like, God, if I
were there, I could have been one of these guys,
like seeing these modern takes on everything. Oh well, I
can't go back in time, ally, buddy, look around right,
how about you try it now? Hit a brand new
moment right now, here's rom dos. He'll explain it to you.
(39:24):
So he's really boastful about his skills. He said, quote,
there's nothing I couldn't paint. I could paint anything. And
then when he's asked about all the various old masters
and like classical artists, that he could replicate. He affirms
each one listed to him, even quote, I could paint
a new Leonardo. He calls him like simple, like oh Leonardo.
So I like that after he took down his father
(39:44):
as an artist, no artist was said anybody I'll take
down You will take down your father. Well, the craziest
part about the documentary is that the crew follows both
Wolfgang and Helene as they spend the day in the
studio and then buzz off back to jail in the evening.
That's how I got to see them driving next to
each other. You actually got to see them do it. Yes,
(40:05):
Why does he do in the studio all day? Pretty
much what he was always doing. So he gets these old,
mediocre paintings, he strips them down to the canvas, paints
a forgery, ages it artificially, like there's one he gets
this canvas from Barcelona, and he's like shoving lint and
dust and dirt behind the canvas stretcher so that if
someone were to look down. He recreates taking those phony
(40:27):
pictures from the twenties down to even creating a makeshift
parlor for his wife to sit in, posing in front
of the fakes. So I suppose he's doing that for
the film crew, but it's like, this is what you're
out of jail doing, like faking it up. So anyway,
he goes to this dinner party and one of his
friends said that he heard a rumor that Wolfgang had
invested in quote ocular prosthetics in the United States. Ocular prosthetics.
(40:50):
It's a little too close to Baron Bruno right right
on other ocular prosthetic is a glass of one of
our old episodes. A little too close for comfort, I say. So.
He paints portraits of other inmates when he's in jail,
and they all seem to want him to learn to tattoo,
and he declined. One of the when he's declining, there's
a really uncomfortable moment when Wolfgang talks about how if
(41:12):
he tattooed the guys that art collectors would want to
take their skin when they die, worse than the banks.
We would take this wall. Wait, the dude that he's
painting says, I'd make it into a lampshade. Oh, now,
if you're German, you may want to be careful about
that kind of ref more than may. So it's so uncomfortable. Anyway,
what's Wolfgang doing Now, um, let's see he is in
(41:36):
crypto coin. You're so close? Oh really? Well he does
speaking engagement and then he creates work under his own
name NFTs. Ah, I should have gone one step over
on the scams. I know. In twenty twenty one, he
released a series of NFTs called The Greats, and he
reimagined Leonardo da Vinci's Salvador Mundi in the style of
(42:00):
other artists like Vincent van Gogh and Andy Warhol. That's interesting.
So he does like a master work and then has
all the other master painters do this master work their way. Well,
there's a promotional like an MTV kind of thing, kind
of Yeah, there's a promotional video for it that says, quote,
armed with over sixty years of experience, he is the
(42:20):
only person who has the crucial knowledge and skills to
pull this off. The armed. Yeah, he's armed and dangerous.
They add that the NFTs will see him quote become
part of history himself. Yeah. You love these hype things,
Like the people get paid to write these things. I
just like I want to pat them on the back.
Look at you, you you can paid nonsense. Now here's my takeaway. Sure,
(42:43):
I like to cheer on the forgers, but I feel
bad for the authentic. Yeah. And also, our researcher Andrea
sent me a great Pablo Picasso quote. If the counterfeit
were a good one, I should be delighted. I'd sit
down straight away and sign it. Oh yes, I've heard yeah,
which it makes me wonder what the artists themselves would
make of all this. I think Picasso, you know, yeah,
(43:05):
like I'll take that joint. Zarin, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
It's wild because like we've we've covered some of this,
which is that you have like a painter like Picasso
who is literally stealing his imagery from other works of
art and other people just don't know about, which isn't
counterfeit because that's the whole inspiration aspect. So the fact
(43:26):
that these other painters, like it's not that he's like lazy,
because he's doing all kinds of work well, and it's
like every kind of style. It's not even like oh
I only do modernists or I only you know, he's
all over the place. But there's like one switch that
just gets kicked over in the wrong direction and then
all of a sudden he just does all of this
stuff as opposed to like taking all this abundant talent,
and as we talked about looking around the world and
(43:48):
finding something, you know, commenting on that visually with his
own visual language. He's right there and he's like, Nah,
I'd rather be a jukebox machine of art and I'll
just play this hint, I'll playing that hitt, and I'll
just keep putting my own buttons. Well. And we've talked
about this before, the difference between like artists and artisan
basically like are you a draftsman or are you an artist?
So that's it. That's all I have. Volve's gang. I
(44:11):
did like that he took his wife's name. That is
pretty cool. Cool, Yeah, good for him. That's all I
have for today. You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime,
on both Twitter and Instagram. Email us if you'd like
at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, download the iHeart
app and leave us at talk back I double Dare
you tune in next time? Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
(44:36):
Elizabeth Dutton and Zarin Burnett, produced and edited by Authenticator
of Authenticators Dave Kusten. Research is by Angry art collector
Marissa Brown and Suspicious auctioneer Andrea song sharpened here. The
theme song is by Thomas I Have Photographic Proof Lee
and Travis urnst you glad I didn't paint it Dutton.
Executive producers are Christie's auction House Experts put on administrative
(44:58):
leave and Definitely and Bollen and Noll Brown. We decreas
QUI so you one more time. We dequeus Crow. Ridiculous
Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts to
my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of Iheartradiozon Elizabeth. You know
it's ridiculous. Oh man, do I all right? You ever
heard of wife carrying as a competitive sport? No, I've not.
So it started out apparently in Finland, where it has
a definitely decidedly questionable history. But wife carrying as a sport,
(00:24):
it involves track that has to be two hundred and
seventy eight yards long, exactly that number, and then it
has to have two dry obstacles, one wet obstacle swarty goodness,
and a husband has to carry their wife. Now, you
can find these contests everywhere. They're like in Finland, Kazakhstan,
anywhere you look, you know. But in America we do
(00:46):
them proper. Okay. There's the North American wife carrying Championship
you can find at the Sunday River Resort in newy Maine,
like any wry newy okay, right, And they usually do
it in the fall, and it involves people male female
partnership when they're all leaf peeping. Yeah, so the exactly
(01:07):
out there like oh it's gouse the leaves. You don't
want to do a championship run. So yeah, they basically
just imagine a husband carrying his wife like fire like
fireman over the shoulders, or like maybe like bear hug
like you know, upside down, where like they're all s
all sorts of weird ways, but however they can like
clutch each other and then they run as fast and
(01:28):
as hard as they can over three obstacles and hell
and dale, Yeah, for two hundred and seventy eight yards
or whatever. And you can't drag her, No, no, you
gotta its whole thing is the carrying in. That's the name. Yeah,
I thought, ridiculous. That is very ridiculous. Do you know
what else is ridiculous? No, hit me with it? Forging
art while in jail for forging art? Wait, what this is? Ridiculous?
(02:12):
Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists, and cons.
It's always ninety nine percent murder free and one hundred
percent ridiculous. Oh you damn right. Yes, I think I've
established that I like four things. Okay, I mean I
like more than four things in life, but these are
the main four dogs, which are the greatest living creatures
(02:34):
on Earth. Trains, but not in like the knowing the
model or history kind of way, pretending to not watch TV,
especially the hit Fox TV show nine one one, and
art crimes. Yes, those are four things I like. I
don't have any cool dog stories today, and I haven't
been on a train lately, and I'm all caught up
on the stories. OA, so that leaves art crime nice.
(02:57):
You gotta fresh you for me, I do. I really
liked telling you the tale of Elmer Dahorri Elmir. Excuse me. Oh,
he was fantastic. There was something so compelling about someone
who had talent, someone who life had totally put behind
the eight ball, and someone who was so charming and
who wanted more than anything to be loved and valued. Um,
(03:18):
and I loved hearing about his criminal escapades. Today. I
have another Forger for you, right, he also has talent.
He's also rather audacious and charming, but he's not as
charming as Elmir of course. Um. You know how if
you look at an established artists Apple Music page, say,
for example, Oasis, Okay, I don't know about theirs, though,
(03:40):
they'll have like their essentials, which is like the greatest
hitch and then then sometimes they'll have deep tracks, but
they also have both influences and inspired by and so
by the way. The inspired by collection for the band
is really good. Um. Anyway, if there wasn't inspired by
Elmer Dahorri track list Wolfgang or I should say Wolfgang,
(04:02):
I'll say Wolfgang. I'll americanize it Bell Tracky, he'd be
right up there, okay. So Wolfgang Beltracky is an inspiration
for almerda hard Well, he would he was inspired by Elmire.
Oh I got it backwards. Why there you go? So
Wolfgang Beltracky. He was born Wolfgang Fisher. Wolfgang Fisher picked
up Bell Tracky along the way. Well, you'll find out
(04:24):
in Hexta, Germany. Sure, I am gonna like you say
it like I know it. I'm butchering the hawkster with
oh yeah, yes, so Hexta Hexta Yeah. In nineteen fifty one.
His father was an artist. He was like a muralist.
He restored church frescoes. He's like the German Diego Rivera.
(04:47):
Yes so no, so Wolfgang Wolfie. He began painting when
he was ten, and when he was fourteen he painted
a piece copied from Pablo Picasso. After his father had
to ten to do the exact same thing. Like his
dad tries copying it. This is what he said. I
was fourteen and my father had given me a postcard.
(05:08):
I was allowed to use my father's oil paints for
the first time. I didn't like the original I thought
it was too sad, so I changed it, omitting a
piece of material and making the picture less monochromatic. The
painting took an afternoon. My father didn't touch a brush
again for the next two years. Oh my god, can
you imagine that moment where the father like walks into
the room to see what he's done, and he's just like,
(05:29):
never mind, and it just goes into sadly puts his
brushes away. They get dusty for the next two years.
That's just like wow. Right. So when he was seventeen,
Wolfgang was expelled from high school and he'd quit art
school in Akin after four years studying there. Sure, so
what do you do when you quit art school? Go
to it T Tech where you can start learning to code.
(05:52):
No no clothes, You buy yourself a Harley Davidson, and
you become a nomadic hippie. Oh I like his choice. Huh.
So he travels throughout Europe, smoking hash, dropping acid with
US soldiers stationed at nearby NATO base on their way
home from Vietnam, you know, as they would have stories.
Where did he go as a nomad? Well, for a
(06:13):
year and a half. He crashed on a Moroccan beach
and he lived in the commune Choices. Oh yeah, he
lived in the commune in Spain. He lived in a
houseboat in Amsterdam, and he ran a psychedelic light show
at the Paradiso nightclub there. I think what we have
established is is that under General Lisamo Francisco Franco Fascist,
Spain was a great place to do drugs. Apparently everybody
(06:35):
doing drugs in the seventies like, I gotta hit Spain. Yeah, anyway, going,
So he drifted around Barcelona, Paris, London. What did he
do in all those places, Well, he bought and sold paintings.
He founded antique markets, and his career as a forger
was born in those markets. One day he noticed a
(06:55):
wintry landscape painting of iced over as he saw that
it sold for a lot of money. But he found
that the ones with these kind of winter scenes made
more if there were ice skaters in the painting. So
with the Disney, He's like, are you know what you
need is some ice skaters? So he bought a set
of paintings for two hundred and fifty dollars each by
(07:17):
this unknown eighteenth century Dutch painter. He then painted ice
skaters into the winter landscape and he resold them for
a profit because like, ice skaters are big business or
something apprently, so he sitsuing. Like then he starts buying
these old wooden frames and he creates winter landscape paintings
with ice skaters in them, sold as works by old masters.
(07:39):
So he like had this technique where he would put
this stuff all over the painting and then scrape the
old paint off and then you know, make his own thing.
So by the eighties he really ramped up his forgery business.
He painted in waves, as he called them, depending on
whatever his needs were. Quote, sometimes I'd paint ten works
in a month, and then I'd go for six months
without doing any He's just yeah, he's take a little
(08:01):
pieces of your retirement when you can get it. Exactly.
So in nineteen ninety two, Wolfgang meets Helene BELTRACKI, oh,
there it is progressive. So they were each living with
another partner when they met. Helene was with her longtime boyfriend.
Wolfgang lived with his ex girlfriend and their four year
old son. Okay, he met Helene because her boss was
(08:25):
backing a project of his using money made from his forgeries.
He bought an eighty foot sailboat and he hired a
five man crew all for this project. What was the project?
He was gonna do some plane air paintings and this
is something this would be right up your alley. He
was writing and filming a documentary about pirates. Oh my god,
(08:46):
I love this guy. He makes all the right choices.
So he planned to sail around the world. He was
going to go from Majorca to Madagascar, then to South
America because he wanted to follow the career paths of
all the pirates. Totally get into car. He was saying,
I want to go from Sir Francis Drake to the
South China season. So he's doing every he's going. Yeah,
he's covering the whole history. So Helene, she did not
(09:08):
find Wolfgang to be all heba hoba at first. She
wasn't into it. She thought he was a big mouth
as what she called him. So Wolfgang, he organized a
seminar series on sixteen millimeter film production as you do.
Helene attended spent some time with him, her mind gets changed.
Wolfie goes from zero to hero. He is an artist. Now,
(09:28):
this is what she said, quote, I saw that he
was an absolute perfectionist, intelligent, educated, and a totally open
social human being. So he just wins her over. By
the end of the week, she has dumped her boyfriend
and moved in with him. Wow, I like it. How's
that pirate documentary going? And you know whatever? Not great? Yeah,
(09:50):
I think it served as so exactly, So the film
production it fell apart and the crew gets stranded in Maorca.
Wolfgang gave the boat away and and pay the crew. Wow,
I like it exactly, he's loose. So a couple of
days after they first got together, Helene saw the paintings
that he had from all these famous artists, and she's
(10:10):
curious about him. Here's how she tells it. Quote I
asked him, are these actually real? And he said they're
all mine? I made him. I said, so you're an
art counterfeiter and he said, exactly, that's my work, that's
my metier. Obviously she's cool with it. Why is she
cool with it? Who knows? So anyway, Helene and Wolfgang
(10:31):
they get married in nineteen ninety three. Nine months later,
they had a daughter named Franziska, and Wolfgang took Helene's
last name, changing from Wolfgang Fisher to Wolfgang belt Truckey. Yes,
it sounds cooler. It does sound cooler, and I'm imagining
as an artist. He's like, listen to the Ring of back.
Oh yeah, completely. So Helene, she wasn't just cool with
(10:52):
the counterfeit paintings. She's like she wanted in on that lefe.
Oh yeah, she's angry. She was all about fraud life.
So she reaches out to Lempert's major auction house in Cologne.
She said that she had a painting for sale by
the French cubist George Vamier and quote they sent their expert.
She looked for a few minutes, said it was wonderful,
(11:14):
and then asked how much do you want for it?
So the lady bought it for twenty thousand Deutsche marks. Okay,
And this is what Elaine said. The first time. It
was like being in a movie. It was like it
had nothing to do with me. It was another person,
an art dealer whom I was playing. Everybody with the movies,
ye always with the movies of the movie. So she
just roll places. Sorry, doesn't even ever do crime and
(11:36):
think that they're in a play, you know, maybe pre movie.
It was like a Eugeno Neal. I just felt like, well,
so she's shocked at how easy this is. So she
said quote normally a person would think that these experts
would study the paintings and look for proof of its provenance.
The authenticator asked two or three questions. She was gone
in ten minutes. It was super easy. A year later,
(11:59):
that same forged Valnier sold at auction in New York
for a million dollars. Well you know there it is. Yeah, Well,
and their money easily parted. So nineteen ninety three, Helene
debuted her Fletch Time collection. Wolfgang would paint in his
studio while Helene, she had a sister named Jeannette, and
then another accomplice named Otto schulteke ketting house I'm destroying.
(12:21):
I'm sure they organized the sale of the paintings. Wolfgang
met Otto in a cafe. He introduced him to people
as Count Otto. What a great name, of course. Wolfgang
describes Otto as someone not really up on the art
world and its history and such, but like a quick learner, okay,
so he takes him under his wing. He learned about
the forgery racket, totally on board. He's like count me in.
(12:42):
So Helene and her sister they went to auction houses
and they said that they inherited an art collection from
their father, Werner Yeagers. And according to them, Yeagers had
been a client of Alfred fletch Time, the famous Jewish
art gallery owner who lost his gallery to the Nazis.
So keep it mind that the Nazis looted more than
six hundred and fifty thousand works of art there. I
(13:06):
it was like twenty percent of the art in Europe. Yeah, ridiculous.
And there are more than one hundred thousand pieces that
haven't been recovered or returned to the heirs of the owners.
So Wolfgang in Helene said that in order to save
his works from the grubby clutches of the Nazis, flesh
Time sold a bunch of the paintings to Yeager Helene's grandpa,
(13:27):
who then hid them in the Cologne Mountains for the
duration of World War Two. They had doctored photographs and
forged documents to back and claim. So there were experts
who also for a fee would back his staff. Experts
can always be bought exactly, and the auction houses they
were stoked to be able to get their hands on
all these old master works believed to time. So much
(13:47):
like Elmer Dhri, Wolfgang didn't copy existing works. He painted
quote in the style of designer impostor. It's harder to
question right well, and then the way he came up
with it is so genius. So the piece as he
created were then said to be works that had been
lost in the shuffle somewhere, whether missing pieces or one's
not known about until then. He created titles and different
(14:10):
motivation stories behind the creation of the piece in question.
This is what he said. Quote. Every philharmonic orchestra merely
interprets the composer. My goal was to create new music
by that composer. In doing so, I wanted to find
the painter's creative center and become familiar with it, so
that I could see through his eyes how his paintings
(14:31):
came about, and of course see the new picture I
was painting through his eyes before I even painted it.
I wonder how that worked, you know, I mean, if
you're really good as an artist, and because I can
only speak as like a film student. Or it's like
you can eventually art to see how an editor would work,
how they would cut this, or how a composer would
score this, or I would director would want to move
on this and follow that. You get that sense. But
(14:52):
as an artist, it's such a two dimensional thing I'd
be willing to about. Not that it's easier, but I
bet they could do that really well in that vision
like a crazy feeling, you know, like as a writer,
when I'm writing in the voice of a character created,
like you get into it and all of a sudden
you're that person. Yeah, it's just flowing through you. You You
don't having to thank or you're in the what of
the flow state. But to have that two dimensional quality
(15:14):
imagines being able to put on lenses like imaginary lenses,
and also you can see the world like Picasso right
and exactly so, like he would study the catalogs of
existing works for artists, and he'd research their schools of practice.
But then what he did that was so smart is
that he looked at what was registered as having gone
missing during World War two. Brilliant and because of that,
(15:35):
there usually weren't reference images for the paintings just like
vague descriptions. So he's like, all right, well, you know,
I wonder if he's also pulling through their notes, you know,
like going into their diaries and trying to find them
talking about a thing. Oh, he did tons and tons
of research on it, and when he found a piece
of missing, missing piece of work, he would start painting
it based on whatever written narrative there was for it,
with knowledge of the artists uber So he's like any
(15:58):
descriptions that other people had at the time writing about it.
So he's just filling in the gaps, and he was good.
The paintings were selling, the prices are going up and up.
Here's what Wolfgang had to say about a max Ernst
painting that he did. Quote his widow, Dorothea Tanning, and
artist in her own right, said that one of my
forgeries was the most beautiful Max Ernst painting she had
(16:19):
ever seen. The trick is to paint a picture that
doesn't exist and yet that fits perfectly into an artist's
body of work. So exactly like Elmer. When we get
back from this break, I'll tell you other ways. Wolfgang's
criminal enterprise was pretty much like Elmer's. We're back, hey, Hey, o,
(16:58):
Wolfgang Beltrackey. Yeah, he's making fake pieces by famous artists.
He's using the Nazi theft of art from German Jews
and others to make cover for himself. There were a
lot of people who were duped by him, auction houses
like Christie's and lem Parents. Art scholar Verner Spice. You're
familiar with it. Oh, of course, I used to get
(17:18):
the newsletter Experience Speaks were your favorite experienced art collectors
Reinhold Erth and Danielle Philipacchi the verse. Haven't called me
since that, you know, the incident, but you know, I
think that we could reconnect. I know, maybe therapy would
be good, sit down talk therapy. Yeah. Um, actor Steve Martin,
(17:41):
Banjoe Buddy Banjo Boys, Steve Martin. So, because it was
nearly impossible to trace these pieces, experts, mediators, purchasers, they
all got suspicious after a while. Remember Wolfgang and Helene.
They said that the pieces came from Helene's actual grandfather,
who was a wealthy industrialist, Werner Yeagers. So they said
(18:01):
that Yeagers had been friends with Alfred Flechteim in the
nineteen twenties, and as we know, he's this German Jewish
art dealer. They said that Yeagers bought the paintings from
Flesh Time in order to save them from the Nazis.
The story, though, had holes. So in the nineteen thirties,
here's the big problem, Yeagers was actually a member of
(18:22):
the Nazi party. Well there is that he's not saving
it from himself. Yeah, he trying to pull the hole,
like I got pulled in, but I was trying to
say he's dead. And he also had no interest in
art in his life. It was completely doubtful that he
even knew flextime. Okay, So when people tried to call
him out on this, Volfgang and Helene, they pulled out
(18:45):
all these old photographs what they said were from the
twenties of Helene's grandmother, Josephine Yeagers, with the paintings in
question hanging on a wall in the background. They're like, look,
we'll come to find out these photos are fake. So
Helene would dress in period clothing and pose as her grandmother.
Love it. Wolfgang used an old camera and like pre
(19:08):
war developing paper to take these pictures. This is what
he said. Quote. We were asked if perhaps there were
some family photos in which the paintings could be seen. Well,
of course there were. I got myself an old camera
on one of those big cardboard things from the nineteen twenties,
as well as old film roles in larger's trays, whatever
I could find at the flea market. So he's like, yeah,
I can get you some pictures. They created fake labels
(19:31):
that stated that the paintings were from sam Lung flex Time,
the flex Time collection. So with the success of this collection,
the sisters did it again later with a second large
art collection, the Knops collection, and that was also collections.
Oh yeah, but they had to like have oh why
we got this? So in this story, Knops was the
(19:53):
grandfather of Auto, the other four germ count Auto. Yeah exactly.
So Count Otto has this grand father, Knops, who also
just dies ilected. His name is Count eight, you know.
So Otto inherited the art collection upon his grandfather's death. Well,
where here we are, you know, more paintings. So the
(20:14):
Beltrackeys made a lot of money from these forgeries, and
they spent a lot of money. They spent seven million
euros on this enormous villa in Freiburg, which is a
town in southern Germany. If you're going to do it
a villa, right, Well, it took nineteen months to restore
this villa after they bought it. And while they were
(20:34):
having the restoration, they stayed in the penthouse suite of
the Columbia Hotel for seven hundred euros a night. They're
just ragging it up and their neighbors are like blown
away by these spending habits. They traveled, They went on
these shopping sprees. When the renovations on the villa were done,
they invited a hundred people to their housewarming party. And
then you know, it wouldn't be a proper villa warming
(20:56):
party without a four member flamenco band flown in from
Granada to sing and dance for the guests. It's only problem.
I mean, come on, I mean, come on doing this
or do what? Are we animals? M So they're living large.
But as is obvious from the fact that I'm telling
you about them, it didn't last. Oh I was worried
about this because you're telling me about them. It was
something small that took them down. Though. It was those
(21:18):
fake labels that would be their undoing. Oh. Interesting, Well,
experts were suspicious of their authenticity and considering the fact
that they'd never seen labels such as these on any
other artworks prior. Oh yeah, that's and well they didn't
like copy a label, they made a new right, and
so the labels didn't compare in quality to Fletch Times labels. UM.
(21:41):
And they also, like those labels, had a custom stamp
that was very recognizable. It would have been worth it
to them to buy an actual flex Time just to
get the stamp and then be able to exactly for
the amount of money that they're taken in. Yeah, if
they're buying villas, you know, buy a flex Time. Yeah,
well there was on their label. There's like a weird
caricature of flex Time at Wolfgang Drew. And so in
(22:02):
two thousand and eight, um Ralph Jens, who was an expert, UM,
he did something no one had done before. He questioned
the labels. This is what he said, quote Fletch Time
was a connoisseur, a collector, a man of taste. There
is no way he would have permitted such a silly portrait.
So it was just the caricature, Like this guy was serious.
Why did he have like a good girl. That's like
(22:24):
an observation. You're with your boy doctor doctor Bendor would
know yes, oh my god, Bendor, and I don't remember
his last Yeah, he's like an English art story expert. Yeah,
oh my god, he's the best. But he has just
the best lines for his reasoning. Oh yeah, he would
definitely do that with I don't believe it totally. So
in two thousand and six, Wolfgang in Helene sold a
(22:47):
nineteen fourteen painting supposedly by Heinrich Compendonk called Red Picture
with Horses to a Maltese company, Tristeco, and Tristec commissioned
to art historians to inspect the work. They're like, why
are there ice skaters in this picture? So they confirmed
(23:08):
that some of the paint that was used didn't exist
in nineteen Oh yeah, that's always a year it was
supposedly made. Wolfgang had purchased a tube of paint in
the Netherlands that contained titanium white and made mostly of
titanium dioxide. It was still in development when they were,
you know, saying that this painting was created. So Wolfgang
he blamed his desire for convenience on this slip up quote.
(23:31):
I had always used a zinc white, which was completely normal.
In Kampendoc's day. Yeah. Usually I mixed the paints myself,
but I was missing some pigments, so I took a
zinc white from a tube, a Dutch product, but unfortunately
it didn't say that it contained a small amount of
titanium white. In other words, the whole thing was discovered
because of an incorrectly labeled tube. He's very facility. He
(23:53):
just got lazy. I think you can point that finger
right back this way. So in twenty ten, the buyer
painting filed a complaint with the District Court in Cologne
in order to be reimbursed for the purchase price two
point nine million euros. Yeah to hell, have a rebate, Yeah,
a little chargeback on the card. Berlin State Criminal Police
got word of the forgeries, they launched an investigation. Forensics
(24:17):
discovered that the labels were made with a modern paper
to look old, and the glue was also modern. Zaren Yes,
close you, Oh yeah, I want you to picture it closed.
It's August twenty seven, twenty ten. You own Cologne, Germany's
hottest restaurant, Zarin House. It's terribly posh. It's super small,
(24:43):
known for our sculptures of salad. Zaren House. You recommend
the crudo, or maybe the roasted duck with wild spice,
strudel and beetroot. It's very good this time of yeah, exactly.
You and the staff that you all wear patent leather jumpsuits.
By the way, we all like to look very good.
And when we are seven fo it's your idea, No,
it was their idea. So your greeting guests, as they
(25:05):
approach the hostess to claim their reservations, incomes the Beltrackey family.
The goods. They're regulars, like, hey, guys, they spend well,
they eat well. They're two teenage kids. Manuel and Franziska
are particularly adventurous eaters you've noted, so they enjoy this
wonderful meal and all the exquisite wines that you've recommended.
(25:26):
They get up to leave and you walk with them.
You're chatting about the weather and the plants that they
have for this fall. You hold the door to the
restaurant open for them as they file out. Just then
you hear approaching sirens and the screeching of wheels. Five policemans,
lights and sirens ablaze, come careening up to the curb.
(25:47):
Police jump out, armed with automatic weapons and police dogs.
The police order Wolfgang in Helene into a policeman. You
stand by a gog. Wolfgang tosses his car keys to Francesca.
The teens look at you, but you've already headed back inside.
I'm glad to go back because this is too much funny.
You don't need the trouble. Basically, so the kids look
(26:09):
at each other, they shrug, and they make their way
home alone in the family car. This is what Franziska said.
This is what the daughter said. We went back to
the house and called a lawyer. I had no idea
what this was about until I saw the news on
television and read it in the newspapers. Blissfully ignorant of this. Sorry,
(26:29):
the television, I don't know. So Wolfgang in Helene. They
were in custody for fourteen months between the time of
their arrest and their trial in October of twenty eleven.
In jail, Wolfgang painted portraits of fellow inmates, and he
and Helene wrote to each other what they say were
seven thousand to eight thousand pages in total, constant letter writing.
(26:53):
And it was during this time that Helene was diagnosed
with breast cancer. So they're just going through all this
stuff In September of twenty eleven, the group went on
trial in Cologne, Germany. Wolfgang in Helene, Helene's sister Jeanette,
and Otto count Otto about my man count eight. There
were fourteen works of art that were confirmed as forgeries, okay,
(27:14):
and those had earned them twenty one million dollars hot damn.
And there were another thirty three pieces that were supposedly
by all these other artists that Camp and Docmax Earnst
they're under investigation as well. Wolfgang loves an audience, so
when he was called to the stand, he gave more
of a soliloquy than a confession, because they've cut this deal.
(27:35):
If you confess, then will reduce the sentence. So he
regaled them with stories of his wild youth, and he
went on. He went after the arrogance and greed of
the art world. He also said the whole thing was
quote great fun exactly. And then he did this post
trial interview with Vanity fair as you do. He said
(27:56):
he was thrilled to share how he was able to
like dash off these paintings that he would later sell
for millions. Quote, I did in three or four hours,
sometimes even faster. So he's just whipping these that's amazing,
and it really kind of it's not an insult to
the great masters, but it kind of puts into perspective
how long some of their stuff might have taken, you know. Well,
and it's interesting because it's like they put all of
(28:16):
this thought and development into it and then he just
kind of swoops in after and it's like the table's
already been set. Yeah, you know, he's just going to
tinker around a little bit. It's just basically an artistic
fax machine at that point. Pretty much. Now, when we
get back from this break, I'm going to tell you
how Wolfgang's inflated ego worked out for him in terms
of sentencing. Oh, Zaren Elizabeth, Welcome to my crime flop house. Dude.
(28:58):
I'm really liking this ever since you left the crime
Dojo and you got this new crime floppers I mean,
everything's well, it's a lot dirtier. I gotta say, well, there,
you're going to get scabies from sitting on that, so yeah,
I'm pretty sure already have that. But I like you
apparently a lot more time to yourself now that you're
not cleaning all the time exactly. That's nice. I have
a busy on the go lifes. So October twenty eleven
(29:19):
there was a forty day trial Wolfgang Beltrockey. He gets
sentenced to six years, Helene gets sentenced to four. Both
of these sentences were in open prisons. What does that mean.
It meant that they went to work outside during the
day and then check back in each night. So that's
like beyond work furlough because they just did their thing. Yeah,
so they're basically they just have to sleep in a prison. Yes, exactly,
(29:42):
it's like a hotel. They just have a really crappy hotel.
That was their prison sentence. So they would like meet
up at the studio in the morning, hang out work
until it was time to get in separate cars, and
then make their way back to prison. They would literally
drive next to each other on the freeway and then
one would have to get off in an exit and
they'd wave to each other. Are you kidding me? I'm
not kidding you. Wow, Europeans approach to prison, I mean
(30:04):
I wish we had this type of approach to prison
for the non violent effects the world. Well, this is
what the judge said. Quote to clear up any confusion,
Mister Beltrocky has agreed to take back all his forgeries
and return them to their owners, signed this time with
his own name. Some slacks the right name on these things,
so Wolfgang, Um, he agreed to paint only in his
(30:27):
own name moving forward. No, wait with Steve, you said
Steve Martin was one of his victims. Yeah, did he
come forward in this like, I don't know. I was
wondering if he was like angry about it, because he
seems a little prickly sometimes. Yeah, I know it doesn't he? Yeah? Yeah,
God bless him. Um, So he said I can They
told him you can only paint in your own name
going forward, because it goes back to remember with elmir
(30:48):
it was like, did you actually signed it? That's whole
thing about a forgery is if you if you don't
sign it to deceive exactly. So it's the signature that
makes the forgery. Um. And then he also had to
move from Germany to France. They just like kicked him
out of Germany. You're out of here, buddy, I mean,
I bet you ran this by like this law about
copyright law and having to put your name on a painting.
(31:09):
If you ran that by a sovereign citizen, they probably
lose their mind because it's all about the law and
the name. Like, this is what happened? Man? Did they
take your name and that's your identity? You're like, oh, brother,
this is great. Keep going. Oh my god, I love
sovereigns like in the abstract. Sorry, so Bell Tracky right
(31:31):
he um, oh, I forgot to tell you otto he
got five years and Jeanette got a twenty one month
suspended sentence. Oh so she doesn't even have to sleep
in prison. No, she just has to wear like a
cool bracelet. Um. So after he got out of prison,
Bell Tracky admitted in all these interviews that he actually
forged maybe fifty different artists. He's like, there were a
(31:51):
lot more, Buddy. I like how he just keeps wanting
to flex something. But totally. He also just took me
at ten minutes they had in ballpark. How many did
you sell? He's like, I don't know, thousand, two thousands
could be, but he wouldn't disclose the exact number or
like the locations of This is what he said in
an interview. He said, wouldn't it be the height of
(32:11):
vanity if I were to tell you now where the
paintings could still be hanging. So I mean there's some
still out there. Oh you know that in the Houston Museum. Three.
The magazine says, this isn't exactly what one imagines as
a full confession, Wolfgang, Wait a minute, I made a
confession about the paintings that were the subject of the trial.
Aside from that, if the police had asked me at
(32:31):
the time, I would have told them where the paintings were,
at least as far as I knew. That's on the cops. Yeah,
they missed the boat on that had me on the stand.
So it was pretty much acknowledged that the galleries, the
auction houses, they all turned a blind eye to pretty
obvious clues. We keep hearing this, Oh well there. It
wasn't just fake labels. They were misspelled names and like
frames that didn't match the pictures that were supposed to
(32:53):
be made out of the same wood. The money was
too good though for everyone involved. Well, I was just
like a target print you get for a dorm room.
They've been painted over. It was like one of those
kids in the big hats, like holding a rose. So
they could increase the value though tenfold, between buying from
Helene and then selling it at auctions, so of course
(33:14):
they're not going to pass it up. That's what I
keep saying. This is what journalist Henrik van Spresshart said,
a little more detective work at the right time could
have exposed the so called yagers and knops collections. But
something in the art market seems to resist, almost hysterically,
any discussion or disclosure ranks. They're like, how do you
(33:35):
think we move all this money? Come on now, so
Wolfgang he accused the galleries and the art houses of
being consumed with quote greed and depravity in their mission
to acquire these high dollar pieces. Per der Spiegel, German
news magazine, quote doubts are bad for business. A dealer
who buys a painting for one hundred thousand euros but
(33:55):
knows that he can sell it for two hundred thousand
or three hundred thousand euros post doesn't want to ask
too many questions about its origin. So you got from
every angle everyone's pointing out like this is all big racket.
We all know. As long as everyone gets their beak wet,
no one cares, right, But you know, there were those
who paid high non monetary costs thanks to the fraud
(34:16):
reputations were damaged. Oh so art scholar Andrea Ferminich of
bon She was called to examine a supposed compendanc piece.
Oh yes, it should be stated that Compendonk produced over
twelve hundred works. Damn well, factory Compendonk. Yeah, there are
so it's like really easy to say, like this could
(34:37):
have been lost in the shuffle. But there were also
two other experts who were called in to look at
the same piece. This is what she said, quote no
expert is immune from mistakes. The damage to my person
is so big that I'm not able to say anything
quote official. The damage for the experts of art is
so enormous, and the public understanding of BELTROCKI as a
hero so absurd that I hope you can understand my opinion.
(35:01):
Another one, your buddy Werner Spice. He was another casualty
of it. He was referred to as one of the
most influential art historians of the twentieth century. Sky was huge.
He was a friend to both Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso,
and he was an expert on both of their catalogs
of work. So Wolfgang comes along, DUP's Spice gets him
(35:24):
to issue certificates of authenticity for five works that were
supposedly by Ernst. One of the certificates was for the
fake Lafouette Deum Spice put controversial Swiss art dealer Eve's Bouvier.
I mean, we all know about his kind in contact
with Helene and so they sold the piece to a
(35:45):
private company for two point three million dollars and the
painting was then sold to New York publisher Daniel Philippacci
for seven million. Wow. Yeah. In two thousand and four,
Spice authentic hated an alleged Max Ernst painting tromblemndetail, and
the painting was sold to a collector for more than
(36:06):
six hundred and fifty thousand euros. And then in May
of twenty thirteen, Spice was convicted in order to payback
that collector. Huh so. The decision, though, was overturned by
the Court of Appeal of Versailles. They stated that Spies
had quote expressed an opinion outside of the determined transaction unquote,
and could not therefore be quote charged with a responsibility
(36:29):
equivalent to that of an expert consulted in the context
of a sale. Quite understands that basically saying, in his
professional capacity he was he wasn't doing as part of
the actual sale itself. So the court said that a
quote cannot be required of the author of a catalog
Reisen to subject each work in a catalog published under
his responsibility to the execution of a scientific expert assessment,
(36:54):
which requires the removal of fragments of the work and
represents a significant cost. Okay, so they're basically saying he
did go up to this this criteria, and no one
expected them because he didn't say that. He didn't say
I analyzed it right. And while he may have created
this catalog reison, they for Ernst, Yeah, he just based
on looking at it. How could he have known you'd
actually have to like, that's how good. It's more of
(37:15):
a curatorial catalog exactly. So Spicy ended up facing a
civil lawsuit for certifying seven Max Ernst paintings. It turned
out to be faked. So rich people are suing him.
Oh yeah, and it totally tarnished this reputation that he
had built over more than half a century. In twenty fourteen,
Wolfgang in Helene, they collected those letters that they'd sent
(37:36):
each other and had them published into a book. Oh wow,
So they did like a whole letters between Henry Miller
and Annias and Inn and they also wrote an autobiography. Yeah,
they're a little duly because of course I got to
write a book. It's what you do in prison, Elizabeth,
you write books. But how look how fun it was
until you got to like the people whose careers they Yeah,
I know. This is the one thing is like, you know,
(37:57):
meach as long as people aren't getting hurt by a crime.
I don't crime, but people are getting hurt by this
crime was like Sokom when these like rich people fall
for it. But then yeah, at least yeah, well the exam.
I don't mind separating a fool from their money if
it doesn't actually hurt the fool, right, true, I will,
I will say that every time. So a documentary about
the couple was made in twenty fourteen called Beltracky The
Art of Forgery. It got a German Film Award for
(38:20):
Best Documentary. It was by Arnip Birkenstock. No, his father
Ryanhart Birkenstock, founder of the shoe company. No, it was
legal counsel for the Beltracky's. Wait a minute, so their
lawyer's kid made a documentary and they were all wearing Burkey.
It's not an easy documentary to track down, but thanks
to my library card, and if you don't have one,
(38:42):
I don't know what's wrong with you. I was able
to watch it through Canopy, which is a nap or
canopy dot com. So in it, Wolfgang waxes about the
Fauvis and how they went to the south of France
and they painted things that no one had ever painted before,
in a way that no one had painted, capturing light
and the way people hadn't seen it. And so he
talks about how much he would have loved to be there,
(39:03):
as if it's only time that prevents him from doing
something wholly new. You know, he's like, God, if I
were there, I could have been one of these guys,
like seeing these modern takes on everything. Oh well, I
can't go back in time, ally, buddy, look around right,
how about you try it now? Hit a brand new
moment right now, here's rom dos. He'll explain it to you.
(39:24):
So he's really boastful about his skills. He said, quote,
there's nothing I couldn't paint. I could paint anything. And
then when he's asked about all the various old masters
and like classical artists, that he could replicate. He affirms
each one listed to him, even quote, I could paint
a new Leonardo. He calls him like simple, like oh Leonardo.
So I like that after he took down his father
(39:44):
as an artist, no artist was said anybody I'll take
down You will take down your father. Well, the craziest
part about the documentary is that the crew follows both
Wolfgang and Helene as they spend the day in the
studio and then buzz off back to jail in the evening.
That's how I got to see them driving next to
each other. You actually got to see them do it. Yes,
(40:05):
Why does he do in the studio all day? Pretty
much what he was always doing. So he gets these old,
mediocre paintings, he strips them down to the canvas, paints
a forgery, ages it artificially, like there's one he gets
this canvas from Barcelona, and he's like shoving lint and
dust and dirt behind the canvas stretcher so that if
someone were to look down. He recreates taking those phony
(40:27):
pictures from the twenties down to even creating a makeshift
parlor for his wife to sit in, posing in front
of the fakes. So I suppose he's doing that for
the film crew, but it's like, this is what you're
out of jail doing, like faking it up. So anyway,
he goes to this dinner party and one of his
friends said that he heard a rumor that Wolfgang had
invested in quote ocular prosthetics in the United States. Ocular prosthetics.
(40:50):
It's a little too close to Baron Bruno right right
on other ocular prosthetic is a glass of one of
our old episodes. A little too close for comfort, I say. So.
He paints portraits of other inmates when he's in jail,
and they all seem to want him to learn to tattoo,
and he declined. One of the when he's declining, there's
a really uncomfortable moment when Wolfgang talks about how if
(41:12):
he tattooed the guys that art collectors would want to
take their skin when they die, worse than the banks.
We would take this wall. Wait, the dude that he's
painting says, I'd make it into a lampshade. Oh, now,
if you're German, you may want to be careful about
that kind of ref more than may. So it's so uncomfortable. Anyway,
what's Wolfgang doing Now, um, let's see he is in
(41:36):
crypto coin. You're so close? Oh really? Well he does
speaking engagement and then he creates work under his own
name NFTs. Ah, I should have gone one step over
on the scams. I know. In twenty twenty one, he
released a series of NFTs called The Greats, and he
reimagined Leonardo da Vinci's Salvador Mundi in the style of
(42:00):
other artists like Vincent van Gogh and Andy Warhol. That's interesting.
So he does like a master work and then has
all the other master painters do this master work their way. Well,
there's a promotional like an MTV kind of thing, kind
of Yeah, there's a promotional video for it that says, quote,
armed with over sixty years of experience, he is the
(42:20):
only person who has the crucial knowledge and skills to
pull this off. The armed. Yeah, he's armed and dangerous.
They add that the NFTs will see him quote become
part of history himself. Yeah. You love these hype things,
Like the people get paid to write these things. I
just like I want to pat them on the back.
Look at you, you you can paid nonsense. Now here's my takeaway. Sure,
(42:43):
I like to cheer on the forgers, but I feel
bad for the authentic. Yeah. And also, our researcher Andrea
sent me a great Pablo Picasso quote. If the counterfeit
were a good one, I should be delighted. I'd sit
down straight away and sign it. Oh yes, I've heard yeah,
which it makes me wonder what the artists themselves would
make of all this. I think Picasso, you know, yeah,
(43:05):
like I'll take that joint. Zarin, what's your ridiculous takeaway?
It's wild because like we've we've covered some of this,
which is that you have like a painter like Picasso
who is literally stealing his imagery from other works of
art and other people just don't know about, which isn't
counterfeit because that's the whole inspiration aspect. So the fact
(43:26):
that these other painters, like it's not that he's like lazy,
because he's doing all kinds of work well, and it's
like every kind of style. It's not even like oh
I only do modernists or I only you know, he's
all over the place. But there's like one switch that
just gets kicked over in the wrong direction and then
all of a sudden he just does all of this
stuff as opposed to like taking all this abundant talent,
and as we talked about looking around the world and
(43:48):
finding something, you know, commenting on that visually with his
own visual language. He's right there and he's like, Nah,
I'd rather be a jukebox machine of art and I'll
just play this hint, I'll playing that hitt, and I'll
just keep putting my own buttons. Well. And we've talked
about this before, the difference between like artists and artisan
basically like are you a draftsman or are you an artist?
So that's it. That's all I have. Volve's gang. I
(44:11):
did like that he took his wife's name. That is
pretty cool. Cool, Yeah, good for him. That's all I
have for today. You can find us online at Ridiculous Crime,
on both Twitter and Instagram. Email us if you'd like
at Ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, download the iHeart
app and leave us at talk back I double Dare
you tune in next time? Ridiculous Crime is hosted by
(44:36):
Elizabeth Dutton and Zarin Burnett, produced and edited by Authenticator
of Authenticators Dave Kusten. Research is by Angry art collector
Marissa Brown and Suspicious auctioneer Andrea song sharpened here. The
theme song is by Thomas I Have Photographic Proof Lee
and Travis urnst you glad I didn't paint it Dutton.
Executive producers are Christie's auction House Experts put on administrative
(44:58):
leave and Definitely and Bollen and Noll Brown. We decreas
QUI so you one more time. We dequeus Crow. Ridiculous
Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts to
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Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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