BULL STREET – The art of the Con

The Minor Leagues of Art Fraud

Alternatively, how about Elizabeth Durack who under the made up name of Eddie Burrup, supposedly was an aboriginal artist and was able to move a prodigious number of paintings before her trickery was discovered. Moreover, Durack displayed the work of so-called aborigine, Burrup at the Native Title Now exhibition in Australia with great success. However, the greatest ruse of all was accomplished by Hugh Troy, a notorious prankster. “In 1935, the New York City Museum of Modern Art held a Van Gogh exhibition. On the theory that many attendees were more interested in the sensational aspects of Van Gogh’s life than in his art, prankster Hugh Troy molded a piece of beef, placed it in a velvet-lined box and attached a label that read: “this is the ear which Vincent van Gogh cut off and sent to his mistress, a French prostitute, December 24, 1888.” Troy smuggled this supplementary exhibit into the museum, where it attracted the greatest crowds.”[103]David Stein can knock off the most original looking Chagall’s[104] that you have ever seen in no time at all.

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