Never forget David Bowie masterminded "the biggest art hoax in history"

On April Fools’ Day, 1998, the crème de la crème of the New York art scene gathered for a party in the studio of Jeff Koons. In a recent issue of "The Journal of Art Crime," an article by Charlotte Rebecca Britton entitled “Forging a Double Life: Creating an Artist for the Purpose of Fraud” looked at an unusual phenomenon: “an artist being created for the purpose of promoting counterfeit art.” This is such an elaborate con that it has rarely been practiced, but her article, cites several examples, one of them involving a hugely prominent name, and yet the case is strangely little-known. Bowie included a quote, as well, stating: “the great sadness of this quiet and moving monograph is that the artist's most profound dread — that God will make you an artist but only a mediocre artist — did not in retrospect apply to Nat Tate.” The April Fools’ Day party in 1998 was officially the launch of "Nat Tate: An American Artist, 1928-1960," released as the first book from Bowie’s own publishing house, 21. “It’s a little fable,” he wrote, “particularly relevant now, when almost overnight, people are becoming art celebrities.” The only kink in the scheme was Lister’s article, as Boyd and Bowie intended the hoax to be drawn out, perhaps with an exhibit of Tate’s remaining oeuvre at a major museum, and only to be revealed further down the line. In Britton’s essay, she notes that the Nat Tate practical joke provides a useful roadmap for how some of the criminal artist forgers went about falsifying our impressions of history in order to profit.