The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong

Art is Dead

1/2/2018

Art is Dead

You don't know this story. You don't know the killer. You don't know the victims. You don't know the artist and you don't know the artworks. But in 1998 Yugoslavia, a series of mutilated corpses shocked the public, rocked the art world and, maybe, changed politics forever.

4 Comments

Patuleia

6/11/2018 10:59:42 pm

Can you tell me the name of the artist?

Miguel Carvalho

7/7/2018 07:53:07 pm

Same question, can you write the name of the guy?

Mark Here

7/7/2018 08:04:53 pm

The fake artist in question was called "Darko Maver." The group pseudonym of the artists who engineered the conspiracy was "Luther Blissett". And the couple behind the whole prank were Eva and Franco Mattes, whose work you can find here:
https://0100101110101101.org/

Richard

10/11/2018 01:43:18 am

Just finished this one and really enjoyed it, as usual. By coincidence I finished Q a few weeks ago, so just before you said it I thought "Luther Blissett!". Minor quibbles - the real Blissett wasn't Italian or obscure. Born in Jamaica, he played football (soccer) for England a few times. He played in Italy for one season in the early 80s, and at the time would have been one of the few black players there (both England and Italy would have been tough environments to play in - outright hostility and racism even from their own fans).
Q was a fascinating book. The only thing that broke my absorption in the plot was the occasional disappearing down a rabbit hole reading up about John of Leyden etc. as I had very little background knowledge about that bit of European history.
Greetings from the UK - keep up the good work!
Richard