If you think no one is paying attention to your blog–think again (I learned my lesson after the Young Triffie fiasco). At least once a week I read the Zeke’s Gallery blog from Montreal which is a good, irreverent source of art news. Anyhow, in November, its writer Chris Hand wrote a post stating, “a guy named Frank Martorana was in business with Pierre-Antoine Tremblay who tried to sell some fake paintings to Loto-Quebec. Because of him, a bunch of different police forces here in Canada started to investigate the Mafia for something like five years, and resulted in them arresting a gazillion and a half people on Thursday.” Soooo, if you were going to pick out the offending part of the post–the one that would result in lawyers’ letters, court dates and potentially the entire blog being shut down–what would it be? What about the word “him”–apparently Tremblay wants Head to change “him” to “Frank Martorana ” so that the sentence is clearer. Fine. So after the first lawyer’s letter, Head changes the post with a strikethrough and then writes all about it, posting all of these cease and desist letters. Tremblay is obviously still ticked off with the content because yesterday Head had to go to court, where there’s a request for an injunction against the blog. The preliminary hearing is postponed to the 29th, but hopefully this will have a happy ending.
This article appears in May 17-23, 2007.