WTF?

I may have posted this before in an unedited form; if you saw it then, well, its better now:

Handling art for LA Packing and Crating had its epic moments, like being handed a Van Gogh painting by Elizabeth Taylor in her bathrobe, but other jobs revealed a murkier side of the art world. One Friday I was sent to a house in Beverly Hills to install a light sculpture by the minimalist Dan Flavin. The piece consisted of multiple six-foot standard fluorescent light fixtures leaning against the wall at precise angles prescribed by an installation manual. I was just about done setting everything up when the collector came into the room and made me stop, having just discovered a museum in Europe owned an identical sculpture with the same name. The art dealer who sold him the piece had a bad reputation after getting busted earlier in the year for offering timeshares to a consigned Warhol, so a lot of phone calls were made while I stood outside and smoked a cigarette.

News finally came through that the Flavin was confirmed a counterfeit. The dealer had somehow obtained a copy of the installation manual then purchased the correct kind of fluorescent fixtures from a local hardware store. The outraged collector told me to return the piece back to the gallery but the art dealer wouldn’t accept it. No one seemed to know what to do so I asked if it was OK for me take the fixtures since there were no overhead lights in my studio. The collector just wanted me and the bogus sculpture gone so that was fine with him but he had to clear it with his lawyer first. After a short phone call, he came back and said I had to destroy everything since the fixtures were now considered art forgeries and no longer fluorescent lights. I hammered them all to pieces on the front lawn then picked up exactly the same fixtures at a hardware store on my way home.

I soon found out such chicanery was commonplace. A collector decided to unload one of my paintings and included it in a Santa Monica Auctions event. The auctioneer was the gallerist Robert Berman who, as one of the few dealers who accepted Lowbrow, encouraged me to attend the auction. My piece initially got no bids but knowing I was in the audience, Berman really laid on the hype. It finally went to a good collection at a reasonable price, although still below its estimate. Later, while I sat there fuming, a painting by an artist I considered crap went for way above its opening bid. LA Packing was hired to deliver the sold works afterwards so I was perplexed that the painting returned to the same gallery from which it came. When I mentioned this to another art dealer, he was very interested in the information, explaining some galleries bid on work by their own artists in order to artificially raise the prices. This was somewhat discouraging to me as my dealer, John Pochna, seemed more intent on lowering prices than raising them.

LA Packing was contracted to handle the inventory for several different auction houses and when we received two portraits by Rembrandt, I hung them in a special area for representatives of the company to view. The portraits were actually individual faces cut out of a group scene, something rare but not particularly suspicious as large works are difficult to transport in disastrous time and these had allegedly been traced back to the beginning of World War Two. Three people arrived to look at the paintings: two men in black leather business suits and an extremely hot woman in a “casual porn” dress revealing plenty but not too much. Although auction houses are supposed to thoroughly vet the authenticity and provenance of works being sold, the trio seemed to lose interest in the paintings after a cursory examination. The only interactions I had were with the two men but when I wasn’t answering their questions or moving the pieces for them, my eyes were glued on the amazing specimen of womanhood who, to my rapt puzzlement, just stood there, doing and saying nothing.

Several days later, an FBI agent showed up and I was called into the front office for questioning. Apparently, similar ersatz Rembrandt portraits had been delivered to another art moving company where they were displayed for the same trio. The art handler there had been unable to give an accurate description of the two men, so the FBI agent was counting on me. I eagerly began describing the woman but the agent didn’t care about her and kept trying to get me to say what the men looked like. I hemmed and hawed but finally admitted I couldn’t even tell him if they had beards or not. The FBI agent slammed his hand down on the desk and screamed, “All you guys did was look at the fucking chick? God damn it, go back to work!”

Forgeries or not, I occasionally worked for art collectors who didn’t seem to understand what they owned. One day, I was sent to Palm Springs to install an 8 x 14 foot painting from 1960 by the Washington Color School artist Morris Louis. To facilitate shipping, the painting had been rolled up and I had to restretch the canvas back on its original stretcher bars. The piece was one of Louis’ Unfurled series, so he had only painted about two feet in from each end of the canvas, leaving the center completely bare. Before starting, I measured the wall where the painting was going and discovered it was shorter than the piece by almost twelve inches. When I pointed that out to the new owner, he told me to cut the stretcher bars down to fit the wall and just wrap the surplus canvas over the back. On a nearby coffee table, the collector had proudly placed an expensive Abrams art book with his piece on its cover so I was able to show him that if I did as he asked, most of the painting couldn’t be seen. That would defeat its purpose; plus, I had to use staples, which would considerably damage the previously untouched canvas.

Unimpressed, the guy told me to get on with it and work fast because he had to leave in an hour. I patiently explained a Louis painting that size was worth at least seven digits and also historically significant so even after the chop job, properly stretching the canvas would take a couple of hours. The collector obviously considered me just some glorified carpet installer and called my boss to complain, conflating my reluctance with sloth and demanding I be ordered to finish the job in the rapidly diminishing time allotted. Wishing to placate a rich collector while avoiding a lawsuit for damaging the painting, my boss faxed over a form releasing me from any future legal action. Once that was signed I got to work, and even though my Lowbrow aesthetic was repulsed by the huge abstract painting, I winced every time the staples bit into that million-dollar virgin canvas.

In 1989, The architect and designer Frank Gehry produced a limited edition of painted papier-mâché lamps in the shape of a snake. A famous Playboy Playmate and longtime girlfriend of Hugh Hefner purchased one and LA Packing was hired to install it at her house. I was chosen to do the job, which resulted in my boss and envious coworkers insisting I return with the Playmate’s phone number. Practicing my line while driving over there, I arrived on time but was instructed via the front gate intercom to wait in the kitchen until the Playmate was ready. While sitting by the butcher block table, I heard someone whispering and turned to see a servant motioning for me to follow him. Thinking this was where the piece was going to be hung, I went with the man down a flight of stairs into a darkened basement. He flipped a switch on the wall and suddenly the room was lit up, revealing a huge private disco featuring walls decorated by lengths of wire with regularly spaced drops of oil running down them. Lit from underneath by changing colored lights, the effect was spectacular, especially when loud dance music was turned on. We hung out for a while then the man abruptly shut everything down and took me back up to the kitchen where he left me left sitting there wondering what had just happened.

Finally the Playmate arrived and I followed her to the living room where the Gehry snake had been unpacked. Even though the snake was designed as a flat tabletop lamp, she instructed me to hang it on a wall covered with expensive fabric stretched over thick padding. I told her that meant cutting into it and irreparably the material so it was imperative she figure out exactly where the snake was going to be hung; unable to decide for herself, she left to find her husband. After almost half an hour, I was pretty sure the Playmate had forgotten about me but she eventually reappeared with a man wearing a face mask and operating room scrubs. Visibly irritated, the husband gruffly explained that he was a plastic surgeon in the middle of an operation so I should just hang the lamp up on the wall with no further questions. He then split without saying where to place it, but not before yelling at the Playmate not to disturb him again. Clearly embarrassed by this, she vanished into the house.

Irritated by her disappearance and the absurdity of hanging a phallic work of art in the dwelling of a Playmate with her own in-house plastic surgeon, I finally placed the snake on the wall where it looked best. After waiting a long time for the Playmate to reappear, I asked a passing maid to find her so she could approve the job and sign the paperwork. Another half hour went by before the Playmate showed up, evidently relieved that I would soon be leaving. It seemed the perfect time so with my heart pounding, I shyly asked for her phone number. Understandably used to such things, the Playmate smiled and wrote it on a piece of paper which I crammed in my pocket without examining. Back at the shop, everyone asked if I’d gotten the Playmate’s number, obviously expecting me to say no. I showed it to them but refused to call her while at work, preferring to wait until back home. That night I breathlessly called the number, only to hear, “You have reached the offices of Playboy Magazine, please leave a message.”