The Connor Brothers
Pulp fiction covers with the captions rewritten, by two men who invented a backstory and then admitted it.
The Connor Brothers began in 2012 as James Golding and Mike Snelle, two London art dealers who launched the work under an invented identity: American twins raised in a cult called The Family, who had escaped and taught themselves about the outside world through pulp paperbacks. The story was widely believed and reported before they admitted in 2014 that they had made it up, and explained that it had started as a way of working through their own breakdowns. The work itself takes vintage pulp novel and magazine covers and replaces the text with quotations, aphorisms and jokes, printed and hand-finished, sometimes with a gilded frame.
This is a print-led market with a very wide spread. Editions range from small hand-finished runs to large open ones, and the same image may exist as a screenprint, a giclee, a hand-embellished version and a unique painting. Establishing which, from the certificate and the pencil numbering, is essentially the whole valuation. Hand-finished elements — gold leaf, diamond dust, applied paint — should match the documentation. Because the source images are vintage and reused, the frame and presentation are often specified by the studio and form part of the work.
If you own a work by The Connor Brothers
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
Write to info@whitebankfineart.co.uk, or start below.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.