The art behind the bull

BAGnewsNotes makes an interesting connection between Bernie Madoff as con artist and Bernie Madoff as art collector:

How fitting, and brilliant even, to grace his office and his media portrait with Lichtenstein’s 1973 lithographic series of this animal, in which the bull, just like Madoff’s own presentation of financial reality, reflected the same morphing into abstraction.

Of course, just as I pointed out recently in connection with the Lehman Brothers vast art collection, Madoff’s art collection is now nothing but one more asset to be sold off along with the office furniture.

And the impact of Madoff’s monumental financial fraud on the art world is not limited to his own collection.  According to ArtInfo, a number of major art patrons have lost hundreds of millions of dollars with the collapse of the Ponzi scheme.