Made You Look

I've been watching a lot of documentaries lately and I watched Made You Look last night on Netflix. Wow! The story of wealthy folks buying phony artwork was fascinating. At the end of the documentary, I thought, There are no winners here. Everyone was awful: the supposedly unsuspecting art gallery manager, the woman the manager purchased art from, the ultra wealthy folks who bought the art. No one, in my mind, had clean hands here. The art buyers wanted to have exclusive Pollock and Rothko pieces in their homes to showcase their wealth and brag to friends, the art dealer wanted these huge deals to boost her reputation and boost funds for the failing gallery she managed, and the con artist seller and her boyfriend wanted to make money. I didn't walk away from the documentary feeling like anyone had clean hands here. They were all grimy, some more than others. And the so-called art "experts" who were supposed to verify the authenticity of the works fell down on the job also. Excuses, excuses for why they made bad calls on the art. 

Made You Look reminded me of another documentary I saw called Sour Grapes about a guy who duped wine collectors and claimed to have vintage bottles of wine that sold for a lot of money when, actually, the guy was making the wine in his house and doctoring the bottles, corks, and labels to make them look aged. The same thing was going on with the artwork in Made You Look. The con artists got a Chinese painter to recreate works by artists like Pollock and Rothko and doctor them so they'd look aged. There were so many red flags about this artwork that came out of nowhere, yet everyone seemed to either blissfully overlook those flags or knew the con was afoot and just let the scam play itself out. Crazy, but entertaining. And Armie Hammer's father owned the gallery where this nonsense was taking place. That was an interesting twist. He never actually appears in the documentary himself (he sends his attorney to speak on his behalf, and that was probably a wise decision), but pictures of him are shown throughout. What a hot mess that guy is. Is it any surprise his kid is now in a hot mess himself? Not really. Not that I believe parents are to blame for their grown children's behavior, but sometimes the apple just doesn't fall far from the tree.