Published in 1998, Boyd has written a very short biography of American abstract expressionist, Nat Tate, who committed suicide in 1960 after destroying most of his work.. He describes the artist’s meetings with all the leading painters of the day, including Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Robert Motherwell, Picasso, and Bracque, and leaders of the art world. Boyd includes quotes from Gore Vidal, John Richardson, and David Bowie. But all was quickly revealed as a hoax.
Reading it today, even if I hadn’t known it was a hoax, the use of the memoirs of Logan Mountstuart was a tipoff. This was apparently the first appearance of the hero of Boyd’s later novel, Any Human Heart.
Boyd has done an amazing job of creating a young artist, troubled background, drinking problem, and all. He does a good job of describing how Tate worked and a description of his paintings. The paintings in the books were apparently done by Boyd himself.
I believe this must have been one of the better hoaxes in the art world. But I’m always puzzled by hoaxes of this kind. I know sometimes the perpetrator just wants to see if he can get away with it. But I don’t think that was Boyd’s motivation. I wonder if he wanted to demonstrate to the art community how quick they are to jump on a bandwagon and go along with the prevailing opinion. If that was the case, he certainly succeeded.
