 Illustration: Professor Potts | War on Terroir: 'Wine Flu' spreads through art trade By our Black Death correspondent Danny Defoe The 'Wine Flu' virus is thought to have originated from a bottle of Château Pétrus purchased at a swanky New York restaurant and has since spread like a contagion among art collectors, art dealers, hedge fund managers and fine art auctioneers. Thousands of art world luminaries have been affected by the virus which causes them to spend too much money on very bad contemporary art in the misguided belief that it will be a sound investment. "I've lost millions," said one ailing collector from his bed at New York's Richard Prince Hospital for Tropical Diseases, as a nurse mopped his brow with a limited edition Murakami-branded flannel soaked in Rémy Martin cognac. "I think I caught it from a Russian hedge fund trader just before the Damien Hirst auction last year," moaned the rapidly expiring millionaire. "He persuaded me to invest in contemporary art and now I've lost everything, my marriage, my beach house in the Hamptons, my G3, and now my li....arrrgh, euurghssppp..." A minute later the man was pronounced dead. His body was promptly doused in quick lime and flung onto a waiting flatbed truck piled high with pin-striped corpses. In a further development related to the Swine Flu virus, dealers and auctioneers have been advised to destroy any paintings with pigs in them. One London fine art auctioneer said, "It's not as bad as the Mad Cow epidemic when we had to burn thousands of works by Thomas Sidney Cooper, or the Bird Flu outbreak which forced us to incinerate all those lovely Hondecoeters. Fortunately, pigs were never a favourite subject for painters, but we can't be too careful. My advice to collectors is, 'If in doubt, swill it out.'" Swine Flu has already led to the burning of hundreds of paintings by Francis Bacon, while Ham House in Richmond, West London has been evacuated "as a precaution" according to local councillors. |
