Late last year brought the news that an art dealer named Inigo Philbrick had gone missing. Given the circumstances, it wasn’t hard to see why: Philbrick had enacted a complex web of sales and counter-sales, and it had finally caught up to him. Think of the narrative of Uncut Gems, but with less basketball and more contemporary art, and you’ll get a sense of how Philbrick was attempting to make money and manipulate art markets.
Now, Philbrick’s lavish lifestyle has prompted a couple of articles to revisit his heyday and his misdeeds. Last week, Jacob Bernstein at The New York Times delved into the complexities of Philbrick’s life — and how elements of it came crashing down around him.
Although a British court has frozen Mr. Philbrick’s assets, and numerous former clients have filed lawsuits in London, Miami and New York, Mr. Philbrick has not been charged with a crime. He did not respond to emails and messages sent to his Instagram account. Calls to his cellphone rang until they didn’t.
Subsequently, at Vulture, arts writer Kenny Schachter — a onetime friend of Philbrick’s — offered a candid look at his association with Philbrick. The two first met in 2012. “For a few years, we drank a great deal of very expensive wine and ate obscenely priced sushi rolls,” Schachter writes. Also involved: intense hugs, global travel and an abundance of profit. As Schachter puts it:
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.
The story abounds with ethical lapses, glimpses of high society and enough excess to make even the most hardened hedonists say, “That seems a little much, don’t you think?” But it’s a fascinating look into the mind of someone who’s fundamentally unknowable — and, one suspects, who’ll be the subject of a gripping book or movie before too long.
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