There truly is a sucker born every minute. And when being a sucker collides with vanity, you have yourself a whole lot of emperors walking around in their birthday suits.
Take the multitudes who bought some of what were purported to be Nelson Mandela’s art works, specifically the handprints.
Many are worried that their Mandela souvenirs may not be the real deal after allegations that a substantial number were produced after Mandela had withdrawn his approval. Now, before we go on about the signature being authentic or not, could anyone explain why one would part with £5 000 to buy a handprint that a four-year-old could do?
For those who argue that the handprint was not sold for its artistic creativity, why then was it sold at an art gallery and not at, say, a butchery or chemist? For heaven’s sake, why wouldn’t anyone have questioned that the palm with a map of Africa looked too contrived to be true.
But, like the emperor who would not admit that he could not see the cloth that the conmen said was visible only to the wise, these self-styled arty types were never going to suffer a public humiliation of not seeing beyond the palm.
Instead, there is a gallery note that says: ”In an astonishing gift of nature, Nelson Mandela holds Africa in the palm of his hand. Lori Reid, a hand analyst, said … the centre of the hand concerns our worldly affairs. It is very interesting in a symbolic way. It is almost as if the continent is imprinted on his soul.” Yeah, right.
Admittedly, the whole thing had a lot of romance. Madiba went to jail as a lawyer and revolutionary and, unlike other prisonsers who returned worse off, he emerged as a budding artist.
Then, one Varenka Paschke, the granddaughter of PW Botha, one of the men responsible for keeping Mandela imprisoned for 27 years, emerges as Madiba’s art tutor.
It must also have worked on the consciences of the politically sensitive, for whom buying a Mandela art work was an act of being one with the masses. One suspects that these people would still have bought the ”art work” had it shown one middle finger instead of all five so long as it had that signature.
If anything, the whole saga proves that more than 130 years after Hans Christian Anderson’s death, the vain and their money are still soon parted. Philistines, on the other hand, are having a field day. The egg on the face of high art experts is no creative expression. Come now, Mr and Ms High Art Connoisseur, admit it, you have been had.