The nineteen-eighties saw a dramatic shift in emphasis for the visual arts, when the financial values of the market eclipsed every thing else and Fine Art became just another commodity. The street-wise quickly cottoned on to the fact that an art dealer could buy a painting for thousands of dollars one day, and then sell it on to a wealthy collector for millions the next. Hungry for effortless wealth and keen to make a killing at anybody’s expense, entrepreneurs re-invented themselves as art dealers and consultants; their only interest lay in the inflated profits just waiting to be harvested. This state of affairs also affected the legitimate dealers who experienced profits beyond avarice and the unwary who sold off the family silver for a handful of beans. The prospect of all this easy money, just there waiting to be appropriated also attracted the usual criminal element.

On the 11th of November 1987, a painting of Irises by Vincent Van Gogh sold for $53.9 million in an auction at Sotheby's in New York. The phenomenal price achieved for the picture meant that the value of all other major works soared overnight, a Monet had to be at least as valuable as a Van Gogh. As prices rocketed, speculators became collectors, masterpieces became an alternative form of 'futures' and the Art Establishment became a laundry for the proceeds of organised crime.

Bradley Faine. 1992.

'A Killing in Prospect' by Brad Faine is available from Kindle.