Appreciating the Value of Art
Painting grift, reimagining Shakespeare, and dancing through quarantine.
Hello there,
One of the things I’ve missed most keenly during the pandemic is being able to experience art in person: whether it’s seeing a live performance, going to a museum or the movies, or even just stopping to listen to a busker in the subway. It made me realize how much I’d taken those things for granted before the pandemic, and during the early days of New York becoming the epicenter, I for some reason couldn’t stop thinking about Broadway closing. Some museums have reopened at limited capacity, but until I get a vaccine, it still doesn’t quite feel safe yet.
Watch
I’m not hugely into fine art, but one of the things I find fascinating about it is the completely arbitrary values placed on it, and over the past few years there have been a bunch of documentaries I’ve enjoyed that really highlight this.
Made You Look (Netflix) examines a scandal involving abstract fakes that sold for millions of dollars and the people at the center of the operation. The whole thing is thoroughly ridiculous, and an interview at the end with one of the key grifters will make your jaw drop.
Art & Craft (Amazon Prime, On demand) is about a different type of art fraud: making fake copies of existing works, and doing it for the fun of it. It’s a story with incredible characters, of cat and mouse, and a really fun watch.
There Are No Fakes (Amazon Prime, On demand) tells the story of what one might expect to be a straightforward plot to sell fake paintings from a famous Indigenous Canadian artist that also involves a member of the Barenaked Ladies. But what actually happens is far darker, involving organized crime, sex abuse and exploitation in the Indigenous community.
Sour Grapes (Netflix) is not actually about art, but wine, and details an elaborate scheme to sell fake wine to unwitting rich people. File this in the schadenfreude watch category.
Read
A random factoid that has popped into my head far too often throughout the pandemic is that Shakespeare lived through a plague, but almost never wrote about the plague directly. Hamnet, a gorgeously written novel about Shakespeare’s wife and children, postures about why this may be, and imagines what might have happened to Shakespeare’s son Hamnet and how his fate inspired Hamlet. If you don’t mind reading about a pandemic during a pandemic, it’s really worth it.
See the full list of watching and reading recs here.
Follow
I follow an absurd number of ballet dancers on Instagram, and admittedly it’s been painful to follow them during the pandemic as they’ve been confined to their homes. But one dancer who has handled things really well, managing to keep dancing and create community at the same time, is Isabella Boylston, a principal dancer at American Ballet Theater. Her videos have consistently raised my spirits, and she somehow managed a brief televised performance during the peak of the pandemic that made me cry. And I’ve noticed she’s recently been back in the studio, which is heartening.
Hey, look what she’s reading!
Do
The pandemic isn’t over, and there are still plenty of ways to help others. A great place to donate or volunteer is with one of your local mutual aid groups, which have been the backbone of some communities in order to survive during the pandemic. There are lots of groups, so you can use a list like this or better yet, research local groups in your area.
Until next week,
Rachel