Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art, by Laney Salisbury and Aly Sujo, 2009
I've cruised museums and galleries with more than my share of smugness over how knowledgeable, worldly and sophisticated I must be to recognize and enjoy the work of great artists. Then along comes Provenance, the meticulously detailed true crime story (hey, art forgery is a crime, isn't it?) of John Myatt, a down-and-out, reasonably talented artist who gets caught up in a complex forgery scheme orchestrated by John Drewe, a chronic liar who variously portrays himself as a nuclear physicist, professor, historian, army officer, and weapons expert. The con man ropes the painter into creating paintings in the styles of famous artists. Meanwhile, Drewe creates false provenance using documents torn from vintage books and stolen from museum libraries.
This book made me slightly paranoid. Now I glance sideways at the art in my home and think "Ah haaahh... is this the real thing? Or is it fake? It could be fake and how would I know? I'd never know. I've been duped, I just know it!"
Lately I recognize new advantages to decorating with my kids' artwork. At least I know it's authentic.
This book was as exciting as any fiction thriller. Even my mother praised it and if you knew my mother you'd be just as surprised as I am. I had only one issue with Provenance, though: where are the pictures? Seriously, there's not one photo of the characters, documents or artworks, forged or otherwise, although there is a very useful cast of characters at the beginning to which I referred many times. But really -- a book about pictures with no pictures?
__________________________________________________________________
Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America a Democracy, by Bruce Watson, 2010
What do I remember about Freedom Summer? Nothing. I know 1964 was the summer my parents took my sister and me to Florida, where we tried to catch fish in the hotel lobby fountain, then commandeered an elevator for possibly an entire afternoon, until a couple of bellboys caught up with us. Little wonder we didn't take another family vacation until I was 12.
As I was wreaking havoc in Miami, dozens of college students, mostly white, were traveling to Mississippi to register black Americans who'd been cheated out of their constitutional rights by white neighbors claiming that Negroes neither needed nor wanted the vote. Since no more than 7% of the state's black population was registered before 1964, the white opponents of black suffrage claimed this proved their point; they conveniently failed to acknowledge that beatings, shootings, harassment, threats, vandalism, and murder probably served as effective deterrents. The story partially revolves around the murders of three Freedom Summer workers, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman; the search for their bodies; and the 40-year campaign for justice against their killers.
This is a story everyone needs to know. It's a story of how wrong things can be; how insults and barbarism can be counteracted gradually through years of effort by many dedicated people; how you just possibly might not be right simply because you claim to be.
_________________________________________________________________
In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote, 1965
The first time I read In Cold Blood, in my twenties, I had no living daylights left in me to speak of. The story of a quadruple murder on a prosperous Kansas farm before Thanksgiving in 1959, the search for the killers, their trial and hanging, made me quiver like a feather, and not in a good way. I've avoided rereading literature's original non-fiction novel for fear of another succession of sleepless, freaked-out nights, but this summer, due to a new interest in Truman Capote, I gritted my teeth and determined to read it again even if I had to confine my reading to daylight hours, turn all the lights on, lock the doors and engage the burglar alarm.
But this time -- no willies, no heebie-jeebies. Nothing but utter engrossment in a charismatic story that flows like the music of Beethoven.
The fact that I made it through In Cold Blood with no trouble this time must indicate that I'm jaded and more cynical than I was in my 20s. Maybe a dose of cynicism isn't so bad; I suppose I'd be an insufferable bore if I were as delicate and innocent now as I was back then.
____________________________________________________________________________
The common thread in all these books? Deception, especially self-deception. How Capote's killers convinced themselves that all their problems and issues and challenges were the fault of someone else, certainly not themselves, and how even their victims were somehow to blame for their own murders. How John Myatt convinced himself that what he was doing wasn't really hurting anybody and was bringing in much needed money to support his family, and how John Drewe convinced everyone he encountered, including himself, that he was brilliant and entitled. The scene near the end where Drewe tirades about his innocence and the injustice of putting him on trial for forgery is especially poignant. And finally, how many, but not all, Mississippi whites convinced themselves that terrorizing their black neighbors who wanted to vote was appropriate and even decreed by the Lord.
