Eight years after his death, Francis Bacon, perhaps England’s most acclaimed painter since Turner, is at the center of a major scandal. John Edwards, a former pub manager who is the painter’s heir, has sued Bacon’s longtime dealer, Marlborough Fine Art. Examining charges that the gallery cheated both the artist and Edwards, its chicanery shielded by a token Liechtenstein branch, Michael Shnayerson finds that all the parties in this scandal may have had hidden motives, including Bacon himself.
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A frantic year on Wall Street and a robust economy have powered unfathomable riches into New York’s bloodstream, making the brash consumption of the 1980s look like the Depression. In SoHo restaurants, Madison Avenue boutiques, and East Side real-estate offices, no price is too high for the lords of luxury.
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“I thought both Angelo and Michael were friends that I would grow old with. As it turned out, I didn’t even have a chance to say good-bye.” One by one, people are dying—quietly—of AIDS. The deaths are most visible in fashion and the arts. Michael Shnayerson reports on the awful decimation of talent.
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