By Tiffany Rainey
BT Staff Writer
Though renowned Overtown
artist Purvis Young will tell you that he is, and always
has been, a loner, these days it’s rare to find him
alone. He seems constantly to be surrounded by friends and
advisors, as he was on a recent Sunday afternoon. Young lazed
with eyes half closed on a dilapidated easy chair inside
his newly acquired Wynwood studio space as manager Leon Rolle,
attorney Bob McKinney, and publicist Dindy Yokel lounged
nearby, carrying on a languid, meandering conversation.
Long-time friend Rolle, with whom Young
currently lives, is a steady force in his life. Rolle and
his wife oversee everything from Young’s medical appointments (necessary to monitor
the 65-year-old artist’s transplanted kidney) to arranging
his business meetings. McKinney and Yokel, also trusted friends,
may not be a continuous presence, but lately they’ve
been close at hand. One reason is their concern for Young’s
fragile health following last year’s transplant. Another
is their effort to help Young reorganize and rebuild his art
enterprise. And yet another is the persistent threat of scam
artists, people like former manager Martin Siskind, insinuating
themselves into Young’s life.
Siskind is not a welcome face among the
artist’s allies,
and hasn’t been since Young filed a lawsuit against him
last year. That suit was settled just a few weeks ago and resulted
in Siskind claiming about 20 percent of the prolific Young’s
unsold artwork, some 200 individual paintings. Little wonder
that mere mention of the man’s name evokes a palpable
hostility. Rolle notes with some wariness that, not an hour
earlier, he had spotted Siskind driving by the studio.
“Any time I’m around him,” observes Young,
shaking his head in disgust, “he still comes up to me
like we’re friendly. We argued all the time. We just
didn’t get along.”
Young’s involvement with Siskind began in 2005, when
the two met thanks to neighboring warehouse spaces. Those close
to the artist say Siskind became a fixture when he noticed
the attention Young was getting from a film crew making a documentary
of his life. Before long, they entered into a verbal business
agreement that would split profits 50-50 on any artwork Siskind
helped the painter sell. Siskind also promised to set up a
bank trust to help Young manage his income. Problems arose
when Siskind did not supply requested accounting records of
the partnership’s assets.
“I kept asking him about my money and he kept telling
me it was going to be another month,” Young says. “It
went on and on and on.”
Then attorney Bob McKinney, who looks
after Young’s
legal interests, stepped in and insisted that Siskind and accountant
Terry Forman produce a report of all earnings. McKinney set
a deadline. Siskind ignored it.
On February 8, 2007, Young filed a petition
for an injunction in civil court, demanding that an accounting
be made. It alleged that Siskind obstructed the sale of certain
paintings, denied Young access to the 54th Street warehouses
where his work was stored, failed to record the money received
from artwork sales, and refused to disburse any of the profits
owed to him. Siskind strictly controlled Young’s money,
and gave him a meager allowance ($500 per week) for living
expenses.
Less than a week later both Siskind and Forman filed detailed
affidavits with the court asserting that they had not been
given adequate time to pull together the records Young wanted.
They also suggested the artist was withholding money that rightfully
belonged to the partnership. Then Siskind did something that
changed everything: He sought to have Young declared incompetent.
In Florida, any adult can file a petition in probate court
arguing that another individual is incompetent, cannot properly
care for himself, and should become, in effect, a ward of the
state. After such a petition has been filed, and after a judge
deems it to be legitimate, a committee of two health professionals
and one lay person conducts an investigation into whether the
person is in fact incapacitated. Part of that investigation
involves psychological testing.
Young, who was recovering from his kidney transplant surgery
at the time, had no choice but to submit to the tests. The
results were startling.
For years, many people understood Young
to be an eccentric, but also a self-taught artistic genius.
His compulsion to paint gritty scenes of urban life, as well
as heavenly visions, compelled him to use any materials he
could find — ordinary house
paint, scraps of wood as canvases. He filled entire blocks
of Overtown with his distinctive murals, and created literally
thousands of individual works. Eventually his singular talent
attracted the attention of the established art world, and his
paintings began to sell. Was he a meticulous money manager?
No. But neither are many driven artists. Still he survived
and, in his own way, prospered.
By the time Siskind alleged that he was
incapacitated, Young had earned a worldwide reputation in
a genre sometimes called “outsider
art.” But when the legal system took a measure of him,
none of that mattered. The probate judge declared him to be
incompetent and stripped him of his right to conduct his life
as he saw fit. Two guardians were appointed to manage his affairs — one
for personal matters, another for his property. And with that,
Siskind effectively neutralized Young’s lawsuit against
him.
Siskind’s crafty legal gambit was only the latest in
a long history of questionable business dealings. In 1984 an
English court convicted him of “obtaining services by
deception,” “obtaining property by deception,” and “evading
liability by deception.” He was deported back to the
U.S., but kept his British accent and his penchant for con
games. Over the years, Miami New Times devoted three
lengthy cover stories to his various subterfuges. In 1991 he
was accused of illegally obtaining and selling property belonging
to two elderly Canadian sisters from whom he rented a residence.
Then in 2001 Siskind was accused of falsifying records to gain
public funding for the Advocacy Foundation, a nonprofit organization
that was supposed to help Miami’s black community. A
year later he initiated the suspicious takeover and sale of
an Overtown apartment building belonging to the estate of the
late Rev. Clennon King. Despite these and other suspected scams,
Siskind has successfully evaded criminal prosecution.
“I was warned,” Young admits,
adding that Siskind even showed him the New Times articles
and claimed they weren’t true. “I was going to
give him a break.”
McKinney says the probate court was unaware
of the lawsuit Young had filed against Siskind, and by the
time the judge was notified, the guardianship process had
gone too far for reconsideration. And so David Mangiero,
a respected Miami attorney and guardianship expert, was appointed
to be Young’s
property guardian. He inherited the artist’s lawsuit.
But rather than take the case to court, Mangiero, acting in
what he believed to be Young’s best interest, began negotiations
to settle the case. This did not sit well with Young. “The
guardians listened to [Siskind] more than they listened to
me,” he asserts. “It’s like [Mangiero] wasn’t
even concerned about me. All he talked about was [Siskind].”
Adds Leon Rolle: “When the guardians
got involved, the whole thing shifted to settlement. It just
looked and felt funny. It was just a question of how much
art was going to be lost.”
Mangiero, who did not respond to messages seeking comment,
came to terms with Siskind. The settlement, approved by a judge
this past December, required Young to hand over approximately
200 of his pieces to Siskind in a painstaking process meant
to give each party an equal chance to walk away with the paintings
he wanted. Approximately 1000 pieces were at stake. For the
first 100, Young got eight for every two Siskind could lay
claim to. The remaining 900 were divided this way: Siskind
could claim 10 for every 40 chosen by Young.
Young himself did not participate in
the selection process, which took place at the warehouse
on 54th Street on January 5. He asked his friend Larry Clemons,
a Fort Lauderdale gallery owner specializing in Young’s works, to serve as his
proxy. Mangiero was also present to document the process on
Young’s behalf. Says Clemons: “I tried to do the
best I could to move forward. I just wanted to get this guy
[Siskind] away from Purvis. No one can ever measure the strain
this has put on him.” (Young’s guardianship will
remain in place until the court decides he is no longer incapacitated.)
McKinney believes that if Young’s lawsuit been allowed
to go to trial, he wouldn’t have lost any of
his work and that he could have retrieved the money Siskind
allegedly still owes him. He points to Florida commercial-relations
statutes that specifically address the business relationship
between an artist and the person to whom he or she consigns
work for sale or exhibition. The statutes require, among other
things, that an artist receive an accounting for all sales
made by the consignee, and that proceeds from all sales are
to be held in a trust for the artist. Violation constitutes
a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by imprisonment and
fines. An accounting of sales never was produced by Siskind,
and according to Young, a trust was never formed. The settlement
agreement doesn’t even mention money from sales, the
essence of Young’s lawsuit.
Many questions linger in the minds of
Young and his friends. What happened to proceeds from all
the paintings supposedly sold over the 14 months Siskind
was involved with Young? If no sales took place and there
are no revenues, as Siskind claims, what happened to the
several pieces Young says were missing from the collection
that was divided in the settlement? “Martin
has sworn that he doesn’t have any artwork, but we know
he does,” McKinney says.
Though Young may never get answers to these
questions, he and his team are relieved to be rid of Siskind. “He’s
gotten too much attention,” says McKinney. “We need
to get Martin Siskind behind us. We’ve already wasted too
much time and energy. In all my 30 years as an attorney, I’ve
never seen anything like this. Siskind should be in jail.”
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