Michel Cohen, a French-born con man and all-round fantasist who disappeared in 2001, began his working life as a teenager, selling encyclopaedias. Having discovered early on that he could palm off just about anything on just about anyone, he made a brief detour into pâté, before diving into the art world as if into one of David Hockney’s swimming pools. Splash! First there were posters and lithographs, then there were paintings by Dubuffet, Monet, Picasso and Gerhard Richter: mammoth names that fall so casually from his lips, he might as well be dictating his weekly shopping list.
In New York, where he pitched up in the Eighties, he was trusted by other dealers and galleries to the point where he was able to take delivery of a painting in order to show it to a possible buyer without the necessity of any paperwork. From where did this blind faith in him spring? Partly, it was reputation. Cohen was always as good as his word (until, that is, he wasn’t). But perhaps his Frenchness worked in his favour, too, not to mention his lifestyle, which was as gilded as that of his clients (penthouses, ponies, private jets). People – even those who wear bow ties and claim to know the difference between a minor Renoir and a major one – are gullible, aren’t they? In the US, a French accent can take you quite a long way, and a uniformed doorman standing outside your building further still.
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