The Binge Crimes: Lady Mafia - Hidden Crimes, Artful Lies: Exposed

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, Witness listeners. Larison here. If you're looking for your next true crime binge, I have great news for you. From the people who brought you Witnessed, Devil in the Ditch, is the latest installment of the award-winning podcast franchise Chameleon, Gallery of Lies. We turn our gaze from the muggy swamps of the Mississippi Delta to a different scene, the windswept beaches of the Canary Islands and the secretive world of high-end art dealing. At the center of it, the most famous criminal you've never heard of, Helga Achenbach. Helga was the best of the best, so good at finding and selling Picassos and Warhols that he owned seven homes and 30 classic cars. But one big misstep revealed he was actually running a massive, multi-million dollar con for years. Join host Bijan Steven as he travels overseas to get up close and personal with Helga himself to reveal the secrets behind this scammer

Starting point is 00:01:01 who conned millions of dollars from the ultra-rich. Take a listen. Here's a clip just for you from the new season. If you like what you hear, be sure to add Chameleon, Gallery of Lies, to your weekly listening. And for those of you who don't want to wait to listen, you don't have to. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts to binge all episodes now, all ad-free. Just click subscribe on the top of the Chameleon Show page on Apple Podcasts, or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you listen. Earlier this year, I went to a gallery opening on the far west side of Manhattan, where I hoped to gain vital information for a story that had been evading me for months. The show was at the prestigious David Zwirner Gallery,

Starting point is 00:01:50 among the best-known galleries in the world. David's dad is Rudolf Zwirner, a German-born dealer who has done as much as anyone over the past 60 years to champion and sell contemporary art around the world. The opening was in celebration of another important figure in German and contemporary art, and in the story that I've been chasing. Gerhard Richter is now 91 years old and one of the most famous and successful living artists. He's a man whose work was at the center of a scandal that rocked the cloistered secretive world of high-end contemporary art. To give you a sense of his influence,

Starting point is 00:02:26 in 2015, an abstract Richter painting sold for $46.3 million at Sotheby's in London. Perhaps you've seen his candle paintings. Simple, exquisitely constructed images of flickering flames. By the time I arrived at the gallery, around 7pm, a line stretched down most of a long block on 20th Street. The guy working the door was both thrilled and a little panicked. Yeah, I mean, I haven't seen this in an opening since I've worked here and I've been here for three years. So it's quite a lot.

Starting point is 00:02:57 Usually it's for this or that, that draws the crowds. But yeah, it's big. Inside, the place was packed. On the walls in the first room hung Richter's most recent paintings, which he'd made in 2017. A couple of large canvases featuring thick abstract lines of cranberry, eggplant, and a bright green that didn't resemble any fruit or vegetable at all. They looked like a film of oil on the surface of a puddle, or the smeary lights of a

Starting point is 00:03:25 city as seen through a rainy window. An interior room housed smaller watercolors, all titled with a single word, mood. In yet another room, drawings in ink and graphite and pencil. At the center of that room stood a 10-foot tall glass sculpture. I heard a passing admirer say the new piece was going for $2 million. But of course, none of the works had listed prices. That would be crass. I've always been fascinated by the art market, and recently that fascination has turned into a fixation. But it's not a piece I'm after. It's information about a case. The facts of which are easy enough to find. But the heart of it, where the true mystery lies,

Starting point is 00:04:16 is as hidden from public view as that glass sculpture's $2 million asking price. Because to me, peering in from the outside, the art world looks pretty opaque. As I would soon learn, it's not much clearer for those on the inside. Everywhere I went, people told me that if I really wanted to understand a story set in this world and how the art market works, I'd need to find the dealer at the center of it all. The same dealer who had helped make Gerhard Richter famous in the first place. Helga Achenbach. I was told that Helga inspires a wide range of emotions in the people he encounters.

Starting point is 00:04:55 Some think he's a wildly innovative groundbreaker who pretty much invented the role of the art consultant in Germany. Others consider him a shady hustler who's only looking out for himself. The distance between those two feelings got me thinking that Helga might be the walking embodiment of that old saying about art itself, that it's all in the eye of the beholder. It all depends on who's doing the looking. I was reminded of that at that Richter show in March, as a young couple inspected a drawing for clues to what it could mean. We're just observing this piece, trying to figure out what we feel about it and what we see. We're between space and machinery and an eye. Very diverse things.

Starting point is 00:05:34 I see mostly space. I see a couple of planets, some stars. Yeah, I think it's amazing. Great work. What do you see? What do I see? Great question. When I contacted Helga to see if he'd speak to me, I got an answer right away. Not only was Helga game to talk, he said,

Starting point is 00:05:55 Hey, why don't you just come visit me on Lanzarote, which is one of the Canary Islands. Of course I was going. How could I say no? I figured this would be the trip of a lifetime. But I had no idea just how wild things were about to get.

The Binge Crimes: Lady Mafia - Hidden Crimes, Artful Lies: Exposed

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