Here’s how it worked: Philbrick made his
money betting big on a rise in price for a few
artists, notably Stingel, who is known for
his seemingly endless series of indistin-
guishable paintings of wallpaper (I’m not
kidding, though I admit to liking them),
and Wool, whose most famous text paint-
ing fittingly spells out the word fool. It
worked so well for a while—Stingel’s prices
went as high as $10.5 million in May 2017—
that he called himself “Stingeldamus.”
Philbrick had a close-knit group of friends
and supporters he regularly traded with
who were steadily driving up prices from
one deal to the next. Often it was “secondary
market” works (what car dealerships might
call “pre-owned”), since galleries in various
ways make it difficult to buy works of cov-
eted “primary market” art (art that has not
been previously sold, sometimes hot off the
easel) by giving early access to their estab-
lished collectors. These are people trusted
not to flip the art and instead play along to
the subtle and incremental holding game
lest its value shoot up unsustainably quickly
and then deflate. In practice, this often
means that only insiders can reliably make
money in an art market.
Sometimes you’d have to do clever things
to get access. Philbrick would use a network
of art advisers and proxies—even actual
actors playing an art-interested version
of their recognizable selves to starstruck
gallerists—to buy works that might not be
for sale directly to him, only to flip them.
The flip is what mattered, the prices
going ever higher. If this sounds like the
condo market in Miami Beach in 2007,
there’s a reason for that.
The art market was estimated at $64 bil-
lion last year. But the value of art in exis-
tence is much more. Art is an asset class,
but one that offers no dividends or income
by hanging on the wall or, as is so often the
case, being jammed into Fort Knox–like
storage facilities in places like Geneva, des-
ignated “free ports” that function as
government-sanctioned holding pens
where, if the art is never hung on the walls,
the owner doesn’t have to pay taxes on it.
There it sits, hopefully maturing in value
like a vintage wine. (There’s also wine and
even cars parked in these facilities.)
How do you take advantage of that? The
past decade has seen an avalanche of banks
and finance companies offering easy credit
collateralized by fine art and spurred by low
interest rates and the highly publicized
spike in art prices. Basically, you’d borrow
against your holdings and do what you
could to ensure that the values rose, includ-
ing selling off shares of the artworks and
teaming up with others to spread the risk
of artificially bidding up the prices.
With the greater expansion in the global34 new york | march 16–29, 2020
And for a long time, I thought that was
one of the most fortunate days of my life,
since, soon after I bought a Nate Lowman
painting from Modern Collections, we
became friends and art-world wingmen for
each other in life and business. Though I’d
been making art, teaching, and curating
as well as buying and selling art at auction
and brokering sales between art dealers
for more than 20 years by then, the last
eight while living in London—all the while
writing about the trade from an insider’s
perspective—I’d never made all that much
money off it all. The art world seems like it’s
flooded with dough, and it is, but its best-
publicized assets (pricey name-brand art-
works) are for the most part bid up and
exchanged among a rather limited number
of people, most of whom are already deeply
entrenched in the market. It’s a game easy to
gawk at but not as easy to be dealt into. And
Philbrick was determined to be a player.
For a few years, we drank a great deal of
very expensive wine and ate obscenely
priced sushi rolls. We took trips together:
New Year’s in St. Moritz, summers in Spain
(not Ibiza; he was too busy, he told me, when
he was with the “clients” he never wanted
me to interact with), and art trips to Dijon,
Milan, Paris, and even Crystal Bridges in
Arkansas, frequently on jets he’d chartered
for the occasion. Between competing for
steps on the iPhone Health app and drink-
ing institutional amounts of red wine and
Monkey 47 gin, we talked shop. We were
friends. We loved art. He was a key source of
information for my column on Artnet; a
character I invented called Deep Pockets
was an amalgam of insiders but primarily
Philbrick. My kids would always say, “Inigo
is either the next Larry G. [Gagosian] or a
future jailbird,” years before any major red
flags arose—little geniuses that they are.
Friends would accuse me of loving him,
and I can’t deny that. Not in a physical way
so much, though there was admittedly a lot
of horsing around, especially under the
influence, which we often were. He’d fre-
quently slip my glasses on when I’d remove
them to text. He even grabbed me once fol-
lowing an afternoon consumed by consum-
ing a few bottles and put me into a violentbear hug on a London street corner that I
had to struggle my way out of.
Through all of this, he helped me make a
good deal of money, I’ll admit. He’d sell me,
say, a Christopher Wool work on paper for
around $800,000 or a Rudolf Stingel on
canvas for around a million dollars, then
he’d resell it to another client and we’d both
pocket a few hundred thousand. Philbrick
sauntered into the salesrooms like a sea-
soned veteran beyond his years with balls of
steel. I used him to get access to evening
auction tickets, as I was blacklisted from
time to time for my writing, and he liked the
breadth of my experience and the profile
that my writing enjoys. As recently as
December 2018, I wrote on Artnet News
that “the young dealer ... has kept a low pro-
file as a secondary trader well known
among the cognoscenti for being shrewd
and having a mind of his own ... a rarity
in the market.”
I didn’t realize how he might be in over
his head—or the extent of it—until six
months or so after I wrote that. It was
around then that he was accused of selling
art that wasn’t his to sell in elaborate trans-
actions and trying to hide that even more
elaborately. Philbrick, it seemed, was a
mini-Madoff of the art world.
It appears he could have cheated people
out of $70 million or more. I wasn’t
immune either; he took me—his friend!—
for $1.75 million when we (or so he told me,
anyway) bought a Stingel copper cast
together with another partner.
As all of this came to light, last Novem-
ber, he vanished.as an art dealer, he had few rivals,
from his generation or beyond. He had an
uncanny knack for finding the very best
examples of a select group of artists who
were in demand (or would soon be) and
knowing the minutiae of those markets
better than anyone I’ve met. It was his
facility for finding great examples of highly
sought-after art, and the well-endowed
homes and art storages to park it in, no
matter how temporarily, that attracted the
deep-pocketed, from Jopling to a coterie of
the young, privileged, and entitled.No
March 2016
He was a key source of information
for my column on Artnet;
a character I invented called Deep
Pockets was an amalgam of
insiders but primarily Philbrick.
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march 16–29, 2020 | new york 35
art market in the past 25 years, things soon
got a little too easygoing. Lenders once man-
dated that art collateral be held in neutral
storage facilities they controlled, but over
this time the requirements were loosened
and borrowers were allowed to hang on to
the art, giving some the opportunity to
unscrupulously deal it (or to borrow more
against the same collateral), supposedly to
contribute to paying back the initial debt.
The art world is to some extent unregu-
lated and not particularly transparent.
There is no centralized database of art-
works’ ownership and nothing resembling
title with regard to a work of art, as with
real estate and cars (other than when there’s
an outstanding loan and a creditor chooses
to file for protection under local Uniform
Commercial Code statutes, which means
some lenders in jurisdictions that permit it
can file a searchable lien against a painting
or sculpture). Consequently, prices some-
times can be manipulated by the very well
connected, who would be consistently sell-
ing and reselling the same works at increas-
ing prices to an unwitting clientele or cho-
reographing the selling of those works at
auction to give the impression of ever-rising
value. It’s easy to think you can mastermind
this, and in various ways you can, but sinceNovember 20 17: At the auctions.
August 2018: In the Hamptons.
March 2016: Roughhousing in Hong Kong.nothing goes up forever (in a straight line,
anyway), your big bet can rather quickly
become as overleveraged as WeWork. Stin-
gel’s prices went up through 2017 but then
began to fall. As ARTnews put it in Decem-
ber of last year, “a torpid Stingel market was
a threat to Philbrick’s business strategy, as
it began to shut off the supply of new
money,” though he profited handsomely on
the way up.
You can partly credit, or blame, the elec-
tion of Donald Trump for this. In a more
woke art world, the group of white male
artists Philbrick dealt in, after experiencing
meteoric rises, began to plateau and tum-
ble. Meanwhile, the prices of some artists ofcolor skyrocketed. Rather than rein his bets
in, Philbrick seemed to grow ever more
audacious. There is an adage with which
my father frequently admonished me as a
child: You can lie as much as you like, but
don’t believe your own lies.
Philbrick bought more and more expen-
sive works of art at auction, ostensibly to
quickly resell them, and played the auction-
guarantee game—placing bets on artworks
about to be auctioned with a view to pock-
eting a quick profit (with no money down
required to make the wager, like those late-October 20 18: Drinks in Paris.
November 20 17: Di nner in London.
April 2017: Flying private.PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF SCHACHTERY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EICTRANSMITTED________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EIC0620FEA_Inigo_lay [Print]_36890243.indd 35 3/13/20 10:24 PMmarch16–29, 2020 | newyork 35artmarketinthepast 25years,thingssoon
gota littletooeasygoing.Lendersonceman-
datedthat art collateralbeheldinneutral
storagefacilitiesthey controlled,butover
thistimetherequirementswereloosened
andborrowerswereallowedtohangonto
theart,givingsometheopportunityto
unscrupulouslydealit (ortoborrowmore
againstthesamecollateral),supposedlyto
contributetopayingbacktheinitialdebt.
Theart worldis tosomeextentunregu-
latedandnotparticularlytransparent.
Thereisnocentralizeddatabaseofart-
works’ownershipandnothingresembling
titlewithregardtoa workofart,aswith
realestate andcars(otherthanwhenthere’s
anoutstandingloananda creditorchooses
tofileforprotectionunderlocalUniform
CommercialCodestatutes,whichmeans
somelendersinjurisdictionsthat permitit
canfilea searchablelienagainst a painting
orsculpture).Consequently, pricessome-
timescanbemanipulatedbythevery well
connected,whowouldbeconsistentlysell-
ingandresellingthesameworksat increas-
ingpricestoanunwittingclienteleorcho-
reographingthesellingofthoseworksat
auctiontogivetheimpressionof ever-rising
value.It’seasytothinkyoucanmastermind
this,andinvariouswaysyoucan,butsinceNovember 20 17:Atthe auctions.August2018:In theHamptons.March 2016: Roughhousing in Hong Kong.
nothinggoesupforever(ina straightline,
anyway),yourbigbet canratherquickly
becomeasoverleveragedasWeWork.Stin-
gel’spriceswentupthrough 2017 butthen
begantofall.AsARTnewsputit inDecem-
berof lastyear, “a torpidStingel market was
a threattoPhilbrick’s businessstrategy,as
itbegantoshutoffthe supplyofnew
money,” thoughheprofitedhandsomelyon
thewayup.
Youcanpartlycredit,orblame,theelec-
tionofDonaldTrumpforthis.In a more
wokeart world,thegroupofwhitemale
artists Philbrickdealtin,afterexperiencing
meteoricrises,begantoplateauandtum-
ble.Meanwhile,thepricesof someartistsofcolorskyrocketed.Ratherthanreinhisbets
in,Philbrickseemedtogrowevermore
audacious.Thereis anadage withwhich
myfatherfrequentlyadmonishedmeasa
child:Youcanlieasmuchasyoulike, but
don’t believeyourownlies.
Philbrickboughtmoreandmoreexpen-
siveworksofartat auction,ostensiblyto
quicklyresellthem,andplayedtheauction-
guaranteegame—placingbets onartworks
abouttobeauctionedwitha view topock-
etinga quickprofit (withnomoney down
requiredtomakethewager,like thoselate-October 20 18:Drinksin Paris.November 20 17:Di nnerin London.April 2017: Flying private.PHOTOGRAPHS: COURTESY OF SCHACHTER