The Art of the Steal [Hardcover]

Christopher Mason (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2004

The definitive book on the price-fixing scandal that roiled the art world, from the reporter who Dominick Dunne says "knows more about the ins and outs of this story than anyone else" (Vanity Fair).

The Art of the Steal is the explosive inside story-the only book to tell the whole truth and dish the dirt-of one of the most fascinating big-business trials of the new century-the price-fixing scandal that rocked the auction world and put one of the richest men in America behind bars.

Brilliantly written and reported, it tells the story of larger-than-life figures-the billionaire tycoon Alfred Taubman; the most powerful woman in the art world, Diana "DeDe" Brooks; and the wily British executive Christopher Davidge-who quaffed champagne and dined on caviar while conspiring to cheat clients out of millions of dollars. The book also offers an unprecedented look inside this secretive, gold-plated industry, describing just how Sotheby's and Christie's grew from clubby, aristocratic businesses into slick, international corporations and showing how the groundwork for the most recent illegal activities was laid decades before the perpetrators were caught by federal prosecutors.

Christopher Mason is the only reporter who has persuaded all the key figures (and hundreds more) to spill the beans. He has followed the trail of this story wherever it has led-from galleries and boardrooms in London, Paris, and New York to parties in Palm Beach and courtrooms in lower Manhattan.

Evoking the best-known investigative narratives like Barbarians at the Gate and Den of Thieves, the hidden lives of the very rich described in Philistines at the Hedgerow, and the crime-and-high-society reporting of Dominick Dunne, The Art of the Steal is destined to become the hottest- and most entertaining-gossip-starter of the season.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Veteran art writer Mason does a good job separating the bad guys from the slightly less bad guys in his lively, anecdote-packed saga about how the world's two leading auction houses, Sotheby's and Christie's, conspired to fix prices on everything from famous paintings to antique furniture. Alfred Taubman, the shopping-mall king who bought Sotheby's in 1983 to keep it from falling into the hands of a couple of carpet salesmen, became the only principal in the case to actually do jail time-apparently due to what some courtroom observers labeled "the worst defense money can buy." It didn't help that Diana "DeDe" Brooks, who started her career as an unpaid intern and whose workaholic habits persuaded Taubman to make her Sotheby's CEO, became one of the government's chief witnesses against Taubman. On the Christie's side, the lineup features a number of snobbish Brits, including Christie's CEO, Christopher Davidge, who seems to have sold everyone else down the river. It would have made for smoother reading if Mason (or his editor) had done some pruning: how many times do we need to be told that Brooks is six feet tall or that Taubman's wife, Judy, is a glamorous former beauty queen? But in the end, it's the story that carries the day-an amazing and depressing chronicle of greed in the name of culture that should (but probably won't) keep art buyers from ever walking into an auction house again.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Christopher Mason is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and New York magazine, and has been writing for more than a dozen years on the worlds of art, society, fashion, and design.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Putnam Adult; First edition (May 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0399150935
• ISBN-13: 978-0399150937
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #769,556 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > Crafts, Hobbies & Home > Antiques & Collectibles > Art

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars "greed is good, greed works" September 11, 2005

By roger hainsworth

Format:Hardcover

The Art of the Steal is a morality play but the morals we must draw from it differ somewhat from those proclaimed in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. (The book should have been dedicated "to those who got away with it".) True some of the sinners discover that the wages of sin are destruction (incomes, careers, reputation and in one instance, liberty). However, there are also less morally satisfying `morals' to be drawn. Chief of these is: if you must sin make sure you get it all down on paper and then squirrel the evidence away so that later you can get away with your sins by acts of cowardice, betrayal, and the skilfully orchestrated whistle blowing known as `turning state's evidence'. Do all that and you may evade the penitentiary and even hang on to millions in severance pay, stock options and mansions. Also exposed is the ludicrous capriciousness of the American criminal justice system where so much legal action is dominated by the desire of lawyers to add to their reputations - and their incomes. Certainly the connection between the courts and morality - or indeed justice - seems coincidental. Here we find the very marginally guilty going to prison, the very guilty walking away, and the outrageously, indeed confessedly, guilty slapped firmly on the wrist. Finally, this book delivers one clear lesson to all future corporate sinners. If everybody keeps his big mouth shut everybody will get away with everything, no matter how dire the suspicions of the Justice Department. Am I serious? Alas, I am.

Christopher Mason's enthralling book concerns the great Sotheby's and Christie's scandal, which rocked the art collecting world and `high society' across continents during 2000. The blurb states that chief executive officers Christopher Davidge (Christie's) and Dede Brooks (Sotheby's) conspired to "cheat their clients out of millions of dollars". In fact the issue is more that they colluded to deny their clients costly incentives to become their clients. The often comic sometimes revolting thread running through this affair is that terminal greed was to be found everywhere - except, ironically, among the dedicated, devoted, grotesquely underpaid employees of the auction houses. The executives were greedy for power and the privileges of great wealth. The dealers, collectors and sellers were greedy for the last dollar from their Cezannes and Van Goghs (neither artist made a brass farthing from painting) for, as the Duchess of Windsor remarked, "You can never be too rich." Another irony: although colluding with Christie's in defiance of the anti-trust laws put the chairman of Sotheby's, Alfred Taubman, one of the richest men in America, in jail for a year, and put his really guilty executive officer, Mrs Dede Brooks, under house arrest for six months and stripped her of her wealth, it was the decades long intense competition between Christies and Sotheby's which had brought this situation about. Their competing for clients and the grotesque incentives they offered were bankrupting them. Finally the hounds of the Justice Department came baying at the door and after them the lawyers, like genial sharks, charging more an hour than a Sotheby's fine art expert could hope to earn in a week. By that time Davidge had unearthed his long cached evidence and cut a deal with the Justice Department which was so good for Christies as well as himself that the new management, trying to come to grips with the destruction he had brought upon them, had to swallow their bile and pay him millions in severance pay. Christies lost millions in lawsuits from hungry clients but escaped criminal prosecution - most unjustly.

What makes this book so good is the author's expertise. He moves in the circles whose lifestyle he mercilessly lays bare. He does not lambast the rich with inflammatory invective. He is more deadly than that. He gets them to spill the beans about themselves, a `child among them taking notes' - and faith, he prints it! The opulence and tasteless extravagance are so gross, the self-absorption of so many are so blatant, that Mason needs no rhetoric. Remember Gordon Gecko? "Greed is good, greed works!" Right on Gordon - but keep an eye on the Anti-Trust Laws!

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars For Gossip-hounds Only September 28, 2004

By J. O. Holmes

Format:Hardcover

Written like a particularly juicy and in-depth Vanity Fair tell-all, Christopher Mason's book, The Art of the Steal details the Christie's / Sotheby's price-fixing scandal that roiled the art world several years ago. Through meticulous research and countless interviews Mason brings to life for the average reading-joe the main players purported to be involved in the crime--Dede Brooks and Alfred Taubman of Sotheby's, and Christopher Davidge and Anthony Tennant of Christie's.

Mason is clearly comfortable inhabiting the social circles he seeks to chronicle and the evidence lies in the sheer number of candid interviews he managed to conduct in preparation for writing the book. The story unfolds largely through anecdote (often times to scathing and hilarious effect), and the method mainly succeeds here. The first half of the book sails along at a breathless pace as Mason recounts the arrangement and execution of illegal collusion by the two auction houses. Brooks and Davidge-the then-CEOs of Sotheby's and Christie's, respectively--are portrayed as power-hungry aristocratic wannabes with no concept of the ramifications their unlawful meetings could produce. God-on-high Tennant (Christie's then-chairman) is credited with masterminding the scheme, while Alfred Taubman (Sotheby's then-chairman) is portrayed as the hapless scapegoat who took the hardest fall.

Unfortunately, the amusement of reading bon mot upon bon mot eventually wears off and the later chapters become bogged down with gossipy or repetitive stories that often do nothing to further the narrative. Where the author's sympathies lie also becomes quite plain in the book's final third. Mason has clearly not taken a strictly journalistic approach to his writing and this shortcoming ultimately weakens the facts so painstakingly narrated in the book's first half.

Nonetheless, The Art of the Steal succeeds in much the same way a good soap opera does. Most of the characters depicted between its pages have more money than some of the planet's smaller nations, and everyone knows it's a guilty pleasure to witness the spectacular fall of the uber-rich. The Art of the Steal ultimately proves itself to be a must-read for both watchdogs of the glitterati and those addicted to society columns.

Copyright 2004

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Gripping Read June 8, 2004

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

This book is a real page turner and yet is packed with fascinating and well researched details of both the art world in general and the auction house scandal in particular. Mason manages to give fascinating character descriptions of all the main players laying out both their qualities as well as their, sometimes fatal, flaws. While reading like a thriller, The Art of the Steal is both a social and economic commentary on our times and a historical document. I would recommend this book highly.