Nat Tate: Boyd's Art World Satire

In 1998, acclaimed British novelist William Boyd orchestrated an elaborate literary hoax with the publication of Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960. The biography detailed the life of Nat Tate, an abstract expressionist who supposedly destroyed 99 percent of his work and took his life, but it was entirely a figment of Boyd's imagination. Presented as real and reviewed extensively, the hoax involved collaboration with Tate Britain, the National Gallery, and even a public reading by David Bowie on April Fools' Day. The elaborate ruse aimed to expose the pretentiousness of the art world, as revealed when a reader exposed the hoax in The Independent.