EDWIN JOHNSTON ON BRAD TROEMEL'S EBAY ART PROJECT

As a keen and longtime collector of small independent minters, focusing on those who model their designs based on numismatic history, I was drawn to the E-Sylum article titled, "Money Artist Brad Troemel Exhibition". After reading Troemel's press release in the article I was immediately affronted by the chicanery in regards to his self-described bamboozles on eBay where he alleges he was able to defraud buyers by using altered replicas of US colonial era coins to pass off as genuine, through carefully scripted narratives as his sales tool that were deliberately vague and intentionally misleading.

As a cover for the commission of what appear to me to be crimes, he claims, as all confidence men do, that the buyers' own sense of greed was at fault, just as a thief often does when caught: "He went thatta way!" I found myself in agreement with Wayne Homren's comments regarding Troemel's eBay scams in the article, but balked at supporting Homren's comparison to J.S.G. Boggs for Troemel's gallery exhibition, which I had viewed on the website link and found to be no more artistic than any number of numismatic exhibits at coin shows and conventions.

Despite being miffed, I kept my opinions to myself, at least temporarily. However, the next week's E-Sylum featured an article titled, "A Defense of Brad Troemel's eBay Art Project" by Andrew Hurle, who had initially alerted Homren to Troemel's gallery exhibit, a piece that made me boil over and motivated this response.

It is my impression that Troemel's writing, despite his postgraduate degree from New York University, is evidence of a functional illiterate, most glaringly in terms of numismatics. Hurle's self-styled defense is no doubt meant to seem more educated on its face than Troemel's writing by attempting to situate it within the realm of art, while continuing to obfuscate the apparent criminality of the acts.

Take for instance the simple fact that Troemel personally and with great descriptive effort removed the federally-required identifying "COPY" stamp from his replicas in order to make them appear as authentic currency. Hurle transforms this apparent crime into a creative act of "erasing" and "blurring" the replica into an "empty space" and a "blank" that buyers could fill with their imaginations.

However, the buyers were not alerted to this intent in the very least, if indeed it ever existed at all, since it is more likely a cover story developed after the sales.

Given the facts clearly stipulated in this case, I'm not surprised that both Troemel and Hurle subscribe to the pseudo-anarchistic free market nostrums that are popular among privileged sectors of the digiterati.

What is missing in all this is that Steve Litzner (a.k.a., J.S.G. Boggs), though widely renowned for his artwork that came under government scrutiny without ever having been convicted, was jailed for demonstrable offenses entirely unrelated to art.

To read the earlier E-Sylum articles, see:
MONEY ARTIST BRAD TROEMEL EXHIBITION (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n06a29.html)
A DEFENSE OF BRAD TROEMEL'S EBAY ART PROJECT (www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v17n07a14.html)

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