There is in America a very special kind of art gallery. A gallery that Donald Trump would like, appealing to the tasteless billionaire, the nouveau riche, the wannabe suburban family, New Jersey Mafia types and illiterati in general. Those who are called by gold-and-glitter and a desire (necessity) to impress, pretend and show off.
You don’t like art but need “something pretty” for that wall. You’re all for baroque designs and kitsch stuff, and you take it serious (no Jeff Koons here). Your name is carved, Rococo font, in your McMansion’s monumental gate. You wear gold chains and jogging suits when using your gold-leaf bathroom.
If any, the art you like is the Impressionists, of course! Specially those fluffy, fatty adorable Renoir women in screamingly garish colors. But mostly landscapes, depicting things you can recognize, some photorealism; and Norman Rockwell.
You’re all this and proudly so.
Come on then, fellow American, please! “Suburban Fine Art, Inc.” is a gallery exclusively tailored for you, and there’s always one around, right where you need it, whether you live in the capital of tackiness, Las Vegas, or in seemingly brassy suburban paradises like Scottsdale of Metro Detroit. In your suburb, in the mall, in that part of the big city locals avoid and tourists flock to (think of SoHo in New York). They will decorate your house, your office, your yacht and your casino, too- interior designs included.
“Motel art”, we call it.
They have three certain exhibitions a year: “Picasso”, “Chagall”, “Rembrandt”. Dalí, Miró and Calder are other common fixtures (not a coincidence that all those are the most faked and forged artists). If you don’t like the Picassos, they’ll have colorful prints for you, or posters, Sports memorabilia, The Sopranos prints. Some pretty preppy sculptures for your lawn will be available, gnomes and eagles, all-American boys fishing, some huuuge lions casted in bronze (or plastic, or something). They will wonderfully complement your purchase of that Russian Contemporary Impressionistic Master, chosen from a list comprising Max, Tarkay, LeKinff, Krasnyansky, Fanch, Medvedev, Kipniss and other renowned artists.
They will even frame your acquisition and put a ribbon on it. Fine!
The owners will be attentive and solicitous- they know how you are and what you want. After all, they’re in it for the money! And you’ll be able to share insights on those not-so-legal businesses or downright fraudulent stuff you specialize in. Not in vain “fraud and forge” is what arts people think of these very special gallery runners, and googling their names will yield as much “rip off” and "lawsuits" entries as gallery addresses.
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One of the brassiest and most dishonest of these suspicious shops, Rima Fine Art in Scottsdale, Arizona, is being exposed now. Their agreement with a California-based great-grandson of Pierre-Auguste Renoir (master of the fluffy kitschy women) to mass-produce original copies of the Impressionist artist sculptures is being denounced in court by the heirs of Richard Guino. Guino was Renoir’s assistant in the late years of the painter’s life, when crippled and disabled, he was barely able to hold the brushes, let alone cast a sculpture. Guino must be considered the actual maker of famous sculptures like “Venus Victrix”, modeled after Renoir’s sketches and ideas.
Renoir’s great-grandson sold the use of his family name to “House of Renoir”, an enterprise set up by the owners of Rima Fine Art to produce “limited” editions (just 400,211 of them) of “Venus Victrix” and other sculptures by Renoir and Guino. The business plan, recently revealed by The Art Newspaper, called for appealing to “the most Neanderthal of art fans” by including “kitchen, bath, bar, furniture, patio & garden, office, clothing, cosmetics, food, jewelry, sports and pet categories” to be sold at Costco and other nation-scale retailers.
But Renoir’s descendant appears not to have legal rights over Renoir and Guino sculptures, Richard Guino’s family claims. A lawyer to Renoir and Guino heirs was cited in the same The Art Newspaper article calling the “House of Renoir” business “the largest fraud scheme in the history of the art world”.
The website of “House of Renoir” has been put down recently, “for construction”.
One of the veterans of these Suburban Mafia Galleries, Park West Galleries in Southfield, Michigan, housed in a mammoth building resembling a funeral home, conducts auctions at sea during cruises, probably attempting to avoid international laws. The very successful (and disreputable) 25-years-old dealing business of Albert Scaglione, earring-clad preposterous gallery owner with half-thug half-aged Italian model looks, “sold 200,000 pieces of art on more than a half-dozen cruise lines last year” (2000). Quantity, obvious is, means much more than quality for the Neanderthal (I mean, “unsophisticated”) art fan and the dishonest dealer. "Park West Gallery is the largest seller of "fine" (emphasis added) art in the world", they say, and I guess they spend as much time defending themselves from constant accusations of rip-off, forgery and illicit business as shipping “fine” art from their Florida warehouse or their funeral headquarters in Michigan.
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The sad, outrageous story of abuse and dishonesty these “Suburban Fine Art, Inc.” types of “art” galleries are leaving behind are proof of how the lack of education but hunger for “art” of many Joe and Jane from Arkansas or Rocco and Carmela from New Jersey is voraciously profited by non-art individuals with a keen eye on easy money and no ethical principles. Perhaps a basic training on art and a better education would end not only this corrupted system of cheap shops pretending to be fine galleries, but also the disdain for the most cutting-edge art.
Talking rich rednecks into buying a Maurizio Cattelan instead of a fake Dalí print might be the hardest mission ever undertaken in the history of mankind.
