Movie of the Week: Eat the Rich — If You Can Stomach Them

The rich are not like you or me – thank god. This observation was driven home for me by the new Netflix documentary Made You Look, about the greatest art forgery scandal in U.S. history. For more than two decades, the Knoedler Gallery – the oldest art gallery in New York – sold over $80 million worth of fake Pollacks, Rothkos, Mothwerwells and other Abstract Expressionists to unsuspecting wealthy art collectors. The psychology and mechanics of the massive art fraud are fascinating -- a twirling-plates-in-air escapade carried out by the still stubbornly unreflective and unapologetic gallery dealer Ann Freedman, a Long Island housewife turned hustler named Glafir Rosales, and a talented painter who emigrated from China to Queens named Pei-Shen Qian. But I won’t give away the dramatic twists and turns of Barry Avrich’s documentary, which is the best movie of the week (if overlong by 20 minutes or so).

 What I want to zero in on here – and it seems like an unconscious aspect of the film – is the way Made You Look exposes the grotesque greed, narcissism and even hideous looks of the super rich. By the end of the documentary, you’re almost rooting for the art forgers, even though they’re nothing more than clever thieves, because the art collectors they bamboozled are such haughty and shallow specimens of the human race. (Not to beat on the Fear and Loathing drum too much this week, but where’s artist Ralph Steadman when you need him? Like his creative partner Hunter S. Thompson, Steadman had a Grosz-like talent for capturing the hideousness of the American bourgeoise.)

The documentary’s revolting cast of characters begins with the leather-tanned and expensively hair-gelled Michael Hammer, owner of the Knoedler Gallery, which he inherited from his filthy rich oil baron grandfather Armand Hammer. Michael also happens to be the father of actor Armie Hammer, recently revealed to be another strange acorn from the family tree.

 Then there’s petulant art tycoon Domenico de Sole, chairman of Sotheby’s, and his equally pouty (and anorexic) wife Eleanore. This Euro trash couple were duped into buying a Rothko for $8.3 million – because it was a steal at that price, until they found out it was worth nothing.

 Even the bit players in Made You Look are strikingly unpleasant to behold and hear – slimy art experts, curators and journalists who revel in their splash of fame on camera, despite their bad teeth and ill-fitting blazers. Are the denizens of the elite New York art world so addicted to their racket that they no longer think about their appearance?

 Made You Look is not a Michael Moore film. It doesn’t aim to rile up the masses about the idiocies and inanities of the 1%. But if you don’t feel like crusading for Elizabeth Warren’s tax- the-rich bill – or grabbing your pitchforks – after viewing it, then you’ve gone comfortably numb.

A Fear and Loathing illustration from the Ralph Steadman bestiary