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All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art
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Original price was: $29.00.$23.24Current price is: $23.24.
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A dazzling insider’s account of the contemporary art world and the stunning rise and fall of the charismatic American art dealer Inigo Philbrick, as seen through the eyes of his friend and fellow dealer
In development as a series for HBO
Orlando Whitfield and Inigo Philbrick met in 2006 at London’s Goldsmiths University where they became best friends. By 2007 they had started I&O Fine Art.
Orlando would eventually set up his own gallery and watch as Inigo quickly immersed himself in a world of private jets and multimillion-dollar deals for major clients. Inigo seemed brilliant, but underneath the extravagant façade, his complicated financial schemes were unraveling. With debt, lawsuits, and court summonses piling up, Inigo went into a tailspin of lies and subterfuge. At around the same time, Orlando would himself experience a nervous breakdown and leave the art world for good. By 2019 things had spiraled enough out of control for Inigo to flee to the remote island nation of Vanuatu, 300 miles west of Fiji. Within a year, he was arrested by the FBI and extradited to America, where he was sentenced to seven years in prison for having committed more than $86 million in fraud.
All That Glitters is at once a shocking and compulsive story of ambition and downfall, a cautionary tale, and an intimate portrait of friendship and its loss.
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Categories: Arts & Photography
Product name:
All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art
Price:
Original price was: $29.00.$23.24Current price is: $23.24.
Martin –
I absolutely loved this book , beautifully written a must read for anyone interested In the art
World.
The book centres around the massive art fraud committed by Inigo philbrick and his friendship
with the author Orlando Whitfield a former art dealer.
Inigo is the superstar dealer who’s trading millions of pounds worth art and partying with the Jetset but it all comes crashing down
Spectacularly!!
Orlando is never comfortable in swimming in the shark infested waters called the international art market!
And the book is as much about Orlando finding himself and realising there’s more to life than a quick buck! He’s honest and thoughtful in his writing and shares both his fears and emotions
in coming to terms with his troubled relationship with his farther it’s a coming home
story that really shows that Orlando won the long game and Inigo lost the meaning of happiness in his desire to be the best art dealer!
Five stars compelling read !!
Michael Hingston –
This is not your standard-issue scam exposure (and I’ve read a lot of those). It is, however, an extraordinarily illuminating portrait of another world, a study of a friendship and the life of the author, who – despite his self-admitted faults – comes across as essentially decent and likeable. It is also wonderfully well-written. It deserves the accolades
Eileen D –
Memoirs about the art world, particularly ones that involve crime, are a particular favorite of mine, so I was very excited to read Orlando Whitfield’s memoir ALL THAT GLITTERS. Whitfield met the now-disgraced, but once wunder-kind of art dealers, Inigo Philbrick, while both were in college studying art history. After a short stint running I&O Fine Art while they were students, the pair drifted apart in the art world. Philbrick rose ever higher in the ranks of art dealers, but the article titled “Too much too young” in the Art Newspaper in the fall of 2011 may have been prophetic. While the “too much too young” opinion was leveled at the frantic pace of astronomical secondary sales of art work by young artists at auction, the newspaper specifically mentions Philbrick as one of the more active dealers working in this potentially damaging field.
Throughout the memoir, the image of Philbrick as an art world version of Icarus sets the tone. That image even graces the cover. But the memoir is purportedly about Philbrick’s relationship with the author, at first fast friends, then increasingly distant, sometimes deceitful, always beguiling. Whitfield began writing the memoir when Philbrick reached out to him when the latter was in hiding from the authorities, sending the author copious documents to back up his version of events.
What began as a “collaboration,…ended as an exorcism,” according to an interview with Whitfield in The Guardian.(April 17, 2024). Increasingly aware of just how duped he had been by his friend, Whitfield begins wondering how well he actually knew Philbrick. These questions about the true nature of their friendship and how well the author knew his ostensible subject only emerge late in the memoir, but passages where Whitfield recounts events he couldn’t actually know about first-hand crop up repeatedly in the narrative, raising similar questions for the reader. Nonetheless, ALL THAT GLITTERS is a well-written, engaging story about the art world and about the lure of the con man.
Thank you to NetGalley and Pantheon for the chance to read an advance review copy.
Stevie –
My rudimentary understanding of the art world coupled with thoughtful prose led me to believe, incorrectly, that “All That Glitters” was a literary novel. It took a modicum of research to discover that Inigo Philbrick is, indeed, an infamous fugitive art dealer who was hunted down to Vanuatu, a remote Pacific island, where he and his pregnant girlfriend had fled. He was arrested by the FBI and extradited to America, where he was convicted in May 2022 and sentenced to seven years in prison for having committed more than $86 million in fraud.
The tale opens in February of 2018 when Whitfield wakes up in the psychiatric ward of a hospital in London on suicide watch. He had grown up around the art market (his father “had been an auctioneer at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s”), but he blames his crumbling personal life on his career as a “bottom-rung” art dealer with the incessant traveling the career demanded explaining, however, that the “real poison” were “the lies, one-upmanship, trophy-touting and greed that the industry runs on.”
Whitfield’s friend, Philbrick, had created a multi-million dollar transatlantic art empire, but in October of 2019, he was accused of defrauding collectors, investors and lenders of millions of dollars. Philbrick vanished after shuttering his galleries in Miami and London, but the friends remained in contact with Whitfield trying to deduce the latter’s whereabouts from the timings of the messages and the photos that he sent.
The two men met in 2006 when they were both students at London Goldsmith’s University. Philbrick had grown up in a family that was deeply rooted in the world of contemporary art, and Whitfield was drawn to his confidence and dealmaking skills. Whitfield had never had a friend like Inigo “someone to discuss books and films and art and music with in an unabashedly earnest fashion.” But Whitfield questioned why the charismatic Philbrick was interested in forging a friendship with him (an uncertainty that he wrestled with throughout their relationship).
The duo had some early success as art dealers, but Philbrick’s ambition and confidence far exceeded Whitfield’s. Within two years of graduation, Philbrick had opened his own gallery with backing from a world-renowned art dealer while Whitfield was toiling in publishing. Although Whitfield returned to art, first as an employee of Philbrick’s and, later, opening a primary market gallery, Ingio’s fortunes soared, until he crashed and burned.
Whitfield has crafted a book that is dishy and propulsive (it has been optioned by HBO). He drops names of the luminaries in the art world, and provides an insider’s account of the gallerists, dealers, advisors, archivist, curators, and wealthy collectors who inhabit the unregulated art market. As Whitfield explains the industry, “It’s a business done really well by real bastards.” This may not be a rigorous account of art world controversies, but it kept me riveted. Thank you Pantheon and Net Galley for this compulsive tale of ambition and greed set in the glittering world of contemporary art.
Amazon Customer –
I was led to believe from the promos and reviews that this was going to be about how Philbrick accomplished one of the greatest art frauds in history. Well, that’s in there all right ….. IF you can make your way through thousands and thousands of words that have nothing to do with that story. Those thousands and thousands of words deal, rather, with the author’s own feelings, fears, anxieties, accomplishments, etc. And those thousands and thousands of words are really boring!
peter kyle –
Gripping- hard to put down.How bogus is the really expensive art market !
brian marlow –
This memoir is a piece of fiction.The author writes about events,years ago and
does so in extraordinary detail.What whoever was wearing, their facial expression, gestures,the whole gamut of behaviour….it’s all nonsense.It’s endless and the same pattern for each year. The final chapter comes to grips with the fraud…..really? And now there is some question as to how close he was to the fraudster.Perhaps not such a buddy that he claims to have been.Whatever the truth, you can imagine a streaming company will be soon making a drama of it.
Jehoshephat –
I’m sorry I bought it. It’s essentially in-crowd gossip, aimed at those who are either insiders or who think “dishy” is a positive attribute. Immediately part of my next load for a used-book store.
Simon Manchipp –
A well written and exposing account of what goes on behind the scenes of the art world. Considerate and disarmingly honest.