"The beauty of art may be in the eye of the beholder, but the behavior we allege today is objectively ugly.”
Christian Rosa, art darling of the Hip, has been indicted for the forgery and sale of Raymond Pettibon’s “Wave” series.
According to the US District Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rosa stole at least four unfinished works from Pettibon’s studio, worked them to completion, then sold the forgeries complete with Certificates of Authenticity through a middleman dealer.
Regarding the case, FBI Assistant Director Michael J. Driscoll said, “The beauty of art may be in the eye of the beholder, but the behavior we allege today is objectively ugly.”
A whip-sting of truth from the feds.
Rosa, 43, (real name the less charming Christian Weinberger), was schooled in Vienna and bedazzled his way through the LA and NY art scenes with his paintings, zombie formalist in style. (Roll eyes here.) Both Jay-Z and Leo DiCaprio own his works.
Until last year, Rosa typically fetched over a hundred grand, but recently the value for an original fizzled down to thirty, tops. Rosa maybe thought forging the wave paintings would be easy money to maintain the lifestyle he had grown accustomed to.
Everyone loves surfboarding.
The forgeries were sold for over six figures each.
Enough for a down payment on a wide Riverside spread.
Pettibon, who was originally brought to fame in the 80’s through his cover art for the punk band Black Flag, was a friend and mentor to Rosa, painting each other’s portraits, sharing gallery space, and gambling at dog races.
His wave paintings, begun in 1985, typically sell for about 1.2 mil. They are noted for their simplicity, making the familiar strange, as they say.
While Pettibon’s works are noted for their simplicity, which are hardly more than elaborated school notebook daydream doodles, the style make a Pettibon wave easy to recognize.
New York-based art collector Michael Hort, who owns both Pettibon and Rosa works, says it’s not surprising that Pettibon’s wave paintings were forged.
“Pettibon is easy to knock off. They’re easy to replicate. They are not that complicated, though you keep going back and finding new things to look at.”
Experts certainly did find things to look at. It wasn’t long before examiners sniffed out irregularities in the pieces. Artnet described the forged paintings as having “seemingly strange yellow-greens blended into Pettibon’s normal cobalt blues” misplacement of text, and a too-careful signature.
Basically, Rosa was sloppy, the criminal’s mortal sin.
According to the official indictment:
Untitled (“It was the Moment . . . ”), 2013, 100 cm by 155 cm:
Untitled (“Drop in . . .”), 2011, 80 cm by 60 cm:
Untitled (“Bail, or bail out . . .”), 2012, 115 cm by 163 cm:
Untitled (“If there is a line . . .”), 2016, 118.1 by 208.3 cm:
Rosa fled to Portugal in February but has now been dragged back to the states to await trial.
He could face up to 20 years in the bullpen if convicted.
bible pages
A tinfoil wrap has always been a popular way to sell small amounts (1 – 2 gms, depending on your relationship with the distributor) of weed in NZ.
In the 1970’s they were known widely as ‘bullets’, and were originally a piece of a Buddha stick wrapped in the tin foil.
During the early 1980’s the term ‘foils’ came into usage in some surfing circles, and ‘tinnies’ was mainly used by the non-surfing bogans, and the price of $10 steadily climbed upward as their size dropped down.
From the early 1990’s the mass media and police really pushed the term ‘tinnies’ on the nation at every opportunity due to the high number of Maori gang controlled ‘tinnie houses’ that were selling them at $20.
Since then they’ve become smaller and more expensive.
Plastic bags were generally kept for larger amounts, starting at $30 in the 1970’s and then getting smaller as the price rose to $50 and up in the late 1980’s.
However in the last twenty years they’ve become very popular in the small $20 size too.
P.S.
Personally I’ve never been a fan of smoking it rolled in ‘joints’ (hence rolling papers aren’t included in the price for the above artwork), and have stuck with exclusively using a ‘bong’ (waterpipe) with which to consume ‘billies’ or ‘cones’ (what the Americans call ‘bowls’) since the early 1980’s, though if at a social gathering and offered a puff on a rolled cigarette ‘joint’ I’ll smoke it using the ‘Indian hand chillum’ technique, whereby you place the unlit end of it between your little and second finger and inhale through your enclosed cupped hands so as to not directly touch the joint to your lips, and simultaneously getting less direct inhalation to negate any possible coughing from the hot smoke…
In some kind of romantic idealism yeah, but mostly the cunts just fill their own freezers!
A box of beers, a foily of weed, and a couple of ciggies buys this amazing original artwork.
I call it ‘Warhols Shower’.
https://uploads.disquscdn.c…
Serious enquiries only…
Should have named it “here come the warm jets”
Where I come from poachers are salt-of-the-earth old men in flat caps sneaking out in the dead of night to fuck up the laird’s sport by heaving all his fish out the river or snuffing all his birds, and they are to be lauded.
I don’t know art but I know what I like!
Even the originals are a scam.
I pee waves on the beach before suiting up. Wonder what I could get for them?
If you think his art is bad, you should check out Rosa’s. Infantile scribblings…
Zombie Formalism. At his peak, Rosa was taking well over a hundred G’s for ’em.
I saw that. Made me realize I’m in the wrong biz…
I still like the guy who shaped and sold forged (fake), ‘da Cat’ surboards–talk about a classic scam.
Is this the NFT equivalent to “Surf Art”
A Certificate of Authenticity is essentially a guarantee you are being scammed.
How long you figure Driscoll was waiting to slide that one out?
They’re fucked
Ben Marcus should study your level of restraint.
Anyone who spent money in those ugly “paintings” deserved to be defrauded.
His last one sold for 1.3 mil.
If there was a time to victim blame it is now.