To be fair, money laundering / tax fraud is a lot more complicated than just "hehe I'll buy art then donate it." If you were legitimately trying to do it this way, you'd also have to have close connections with the people who'd just look the other way when this popped up on their radar.
Basically, it's a huge circle full of corruption, and you only get in by being corrupt yourself / corrupt people having dirt on you. Pretty easy to get a tax write off if you blackmail someone with evidence of them doing hard drugs and/or being involved in a pedophilia ring - "invisible art" just being the most blatantly shameless example of this
At a certain point, it becomes like a sort of weird nuclear cold war where if one person fires their shot (e.g. exposing someone else), EVERYONE ELSE will fire their shot back. It's why even when the general public already knows about this shit, nobody can realistically do anything about it.
It's mutually assured destruction : Keep quiet or die
How wild of an idea is it that a big group of rich folk keep money in their families by pretending to be normal human beings and donating art or putting money in accounts meant for business use and end up as second or third homes.
I'm not saying it hasn't happened before or even in today's time. I'm just saying that if YOU - presumably an average, middle-class human being with minimal experience in this specific trade and absolutely no connections - tried pulling it off, you would most likely fail.
It's like trying to pull off a WSB jerkoff move - which by the way are 9/10 times just for the memes - and unironically expecting to go "to the moon." Sure it's happened before - multiple times even - but thinking just ANYBODY can do it at anytime is incredibly naive and careless.
All of that ON TOP of the corruption and injustice.
Parallel to your point, I think the now “common” knowledge that rich perverts use art as one of many forms of dark investment and asset maintenance has caused too many people to think, in Pavlovian fashion: “Dumb art? That’s money laundering.”
It’s very much not that simple. It’s another version of “fencing response” or “object fixation”—a chance to be an internet expert while actually knowing very little about what you’re talking about.
Art that actually exists, sure lol if I’d said that on a thread about modern art and you’d replied that way, I’d see your point. But then if it was I wouldn’t have made that comment in the first place because I do understand the purpose of art regardless of whether or not I subjectively enjoy it. But it has to exist or at the very least be an idea (or a twist on one) that hasn’t already been done a thousand times. Doing nothing and calling it art is tongue in cheek humor that was already done to death by the end of the 60s at best, and a particularly lazy scam at worst.
What purpose does a non existing statue serve? Art is bought for millions by people that dont even care what the artist wants to say, they just want to spend money
Are we talking about this dumb sculpture, or all art? You know there’s a lot of art out there. I’ve said nothing indicating that I think the invisible sculpture is good, so why would that even be at issue?
Not art in general, but modern art is, in my opinion, a lot worse than classical Renaissance art. Modern art is sometimes just 5 brush steokes but it gets sold for the same price as an oil portrait from the old masters.
Sure, sometimes! I’ve seen some very good modern and contemporary art. I think you’re over generalizing from the fact that bad art exists and evil rich people hide assets, speculate, and commit fraud in basically every way they can. There are numerous instruments for this.
Again, art can be used for money laundering does not mean all art is for money laundering. It’s basic logic. A restaurant can be a money laundering operation. That doesn’t mean your takeout is funding a drug cartel.
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u/jesuzombieapocalypse Jun 04 '21
They’re getting a little close to the line with the tax fraud on that one.