Even Epstein had to endure artists promoting themselves (all images from the House Oversight Epstein dump)
There’s a danger in building a career on being a “provocative” artist. Eventually, you may find yourself hitting up the most notorious sex trafficker and pedo in recent history and, I’d argue, maybe the most influential figure of the 21st century to rant about the election. At least that’s what happened with Andres Serrano, whose email to Jeffrey Epstein I found buried within the 20,000 dump of papers from the Epstein Estate dropped by the House Oversight Committee this week after straining my eyes flipping through image file after image file (yes, the House Oversight saved this all as JPGS. Sadists!).
Now, Serrano, best known for his Culture Wars-era Christian Conservative pearl-clutching trigger Piss Christ, isn’t the only interesting part of the dump that I’ve culled through so far. Most of the media has focused on Epstein’s descriptions of Trump spending time with some unnamed woman, walking into a glass door, ogling women in a pool like a cartoon, or being the unbarked dog, but what the reports haven’t fully shown is just how goddamn gossipy these emails are! From the hundreds I’ve looked at so far, it seems like Jeffrey Epstein spent the last few years of his life sending or receiving news links about the 2016 Trump campaign and first Trump presidency and then sniping about it to, well, really anyone who wanted to listen, whether professional elite suck-up Michael Wolff, New York Times financial reporter Landon Thomas Jr. and a parade of other people. In these emails, Epstein depicts Trump as a crazed, unhinged, evil, bad loser, which says something coming from not-exactly upstanding Jeffrey. My favorite of the bitchfests? This one, in which Epstein jokes that Trump might have early dementia as he’s cracking up:
Epstein seemed singularly obsessed with Trump, as did many of the people around him. Rather than a shadowy and mysterious cabal of elites in masks like Eyes Wide Shut, these emails show that OUR elites are big blabbermouths who whisper about each other behind their backs!
There are other curiosities here, like Clinton-era Treasury Secretary and Obama’s Director of the National Economic Council, as well as president of Harvard University, Larry Summers, who comes to Epstein for…what seems to be some kind of obscured dating advice? This leads Epstein to offer that Summers doesn’t have ovaries and also recommends a book, Helen Fisher’s Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray. OOOKK…
Epstein also not only edited speeches for former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, but offered his copyediting skills, a laughable hobby for Epstein considering all of these emails are riddled with typos and misspellings, to Norwegian Diplomat Terje Rød-Larsen’s son. Edward Rød-Larsen sends Epstein his college admission essay to NYU’s art history program, in which he writes excitedly about going to the Whitney Biennial:
There’s also this with no context, which must be witnessed:
OKKKK…Serrano should print this meme out for his extensive Trump collection, previously shown in a pop-up entitled The Game, which he apparently wants to bring to the Venice Biennale, a rage-baited suggestion I’m thoroughly into.
Which brings me back to Serrano’s email. Serrano belongs to the first crop of Epstein emails gossiping about politics, though this time Serrano has more to say about the 2016 election in general. He rails, “Jeffrey, I was prepared to vote against Trump for all the right reasons but I’m so disgusted by the outrage over ‘grab them by the pussy’ that I may give him my sympathy vote. I’m sure Bill C said things, too.” Uh, of course Clinton did, he’s also a creep! We can debate whether the “grab them by the pussy” was simply “good ole boy” locker room talk or a sex offender brag, but of all the people to rant about this with, why JEFFREY EPSTEIN?! I mean, JEFFREY EPSTEIN?!
To be fair, Jeffrey’s response is pretty reasonable, refusing to take the bait with a simple, “no good choice…how are u?” Serrano replies by sending him a photo of his Abu Ghraib-inspired show in Ireland. Which means even Jeffrey Epstein couldn’t avoid artists narcissistically promoting their work unsolicited. Ugh. I relate, Jeffrey!
Now, it’s not a secret that Serrano knew Epstein as he took the last photographic portrait of the man shortly before his *ahem* suicide in 2019. In articles about the portrait, he explains he first encountered Epstein in the mid-1990s when obsessing over a 16th-century Madonna sculpture that Epstein nabbed. This Madonna sculpture was supposed to be paired with his own purchased St. John. Epstein caught wind that Serrano furiously wanted to acquire the Madonna. In an article with Vanity Fair, Serrano recalls that David Ross, then-director of the Whitney, said he “told Jeffrey Epstein to go to your exhibition.” Vanity Fair describes Serrano’s dealings with Epstein as “superficial,” and the rival art collectors “began intermittently meeting in the boardroom at Epstein’s Upper East Side townhouse to discuss the sculpture and other matters.” Epstein also linked Serrano up with former MoMA board chair and alleged perv Leon Black, and Serrano tapped Epstein for advice about where to hold his Trump hoard exhibition. Finally, after years of back and forth, Epstein in 2018 relented and they traded for the sculpture. In an interview with Artnet News, Serrano said, “I have no doubt that Jeffrey Epstein was a monster and a pedophile…I would have dealt with the devil himself for that Madonna. And apparently, I did.”
All this explains why Serrano is in the emails. Sort of.
Even trying to butter up Epstein to get a coveted work of art doesn’t quite explain reaching out to him to whine about the 2016 election. Maybe knew that Epstein would grab any opportunity to bitch about Trump? Maybe he wanted to send him those exhibition photos and needed an in? Hell, maybe Epstein was fun to rant about politics with! He certainly seems like it. But that’s not exactly how Serrano ever described Epstein. In an interview with Sky News, Serrano said about Epstein, “He wasn’t an interesting guy. Except for being a paedophile, there was nothing about him that should have made him so interesting to so many people.” I’d thoroughly disagree, considering that, having devoured all of Drop Site‘s excellent reporting on Epstein’s international entanglements, he seemed to be a major player on the world stage. But even if Serrano didn’t know that, he, apparently, was fascinating enough to talk with about the 2016 election!
Either way, the Serrano appearance speaks to the most baffling part of culling through these Epstein files (so far). All of these prominent people were just fine with gossiping, getting advice, and soliciting college admission essay tutorship from a known pedophile. All of these communications took place well after his 2008 sweetheart deal in which he pled guilty to soliciting a child for prostitution in Palm Beach. I wouldn’t fault anyone for unknowingly communicating with someone who, later, turns out to be a pedo—hell, it happened to me! And nothing was more nauseating to learn. Predators do like to hide in plain sight, so I’ll give that it does happen. What is different here, though, is hitting up a known pedophile, which all of these people did. Repeatedly. Enthusiastically. These communications, alongside the absolutely depraved Epstein birthday book, in which titans of industry make uncomfortable hur-hur sex jokes more immature than teen boys about how Epstein likes them young, say a whole lot about how the upper echelons of our society operate, including, it seems, parts of the art world.