The man who paints under the name ‘The Artist Formerly Known as Clark Rockefeller’ – he’s actually convicted murderer and kidnapper Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter – has been a very busy man at the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in California, formerly known as the San Quentin State Prison. .
Gerhartsreiter, a notorious fabulist who successfully imitated a Rockefeller for at least ten years, claims his art is inspired “by the new sculpture or ‘La Néo-Plasticisme’ by Theo van Doesburg and Piet Mondriaan.” He is also an accomplished book reviewer and journalist, having published dozens of articles in San Quentin’s award-winning newspaper, the San Quentin News.
To refresh our collective memory: Gerhartsreiter was seen in the globe about ten years ago, after his trial for kidnapping his daughter in Massachusetts. He was subsequently convicted of committing one long unsolved murder in California. He is serving a prison sentence of 27 years to life.
In a darkly comic way Interview from 2013 at the Nashua Street Jail, Gerhartsreiter insisted on using his assumed name with a trio of Globe reporters and “rambled on about the ‘five or six or seven’ languages he speaks, the historical novel about the roots of the Israeli state that he his writing, and his work as a researcher of ‘everything from physics to social sciences.’ ”
In a recent brief and friendly conversation with me over the California prison messaging service, Gerhartsreiter wrote, “Call me Clark” and said his artwork was continuing: “Yes, my painting is continuing.” I never received an answer to my follow-up questions.
If he doesn’t exhibit his not half bad art at the Empowerment Avenue websiteGerhartsreiter also claims in an ‘Artist’s Bio’ to have worked on ‘lengthy literary works on elusive subjects in an elegant and compelling postmodern style that he calls ‘quantitatively balanced prose’, and he types his creations in a retro-utopian manner. Dvorak keyboard.”
Gerhartsreiter also finds time for journalism. I’ve counted twenty bylines in the San Quentin News so far this year. He was last December reusedwith the correct creditworthiness, a Globe story about federal Pell grants that help fund prison education. He has too written about a Supreme Court decision impacting a COVID-19-related lawsuit filed by families of San Quentin staff and inmates. It can produce lighter features, e.g. “Governor Newsom and Prince of Norway visit the Q.”
For that story, newshound Gerhartsreiter asked for brief comments from both Crown Prince Haakon – “We have a lot in common and we can learn from each other” – and from the governor – “You put out a great newspaper and you revolutionized the podcast. ”
(I can’t resist plugging in the wonderful San Quentin newspaper and its affiliated podcast “Ear Hustle,” winner of the 2021 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Prize and 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist. You should subscribe to the newspaper and listen to the podcast I once asked an official affiliated with the Commonwealth’s corrections hierarchy why we don’t have prison media like that. Her response: “That will never happen in Massachusetts.”
With five more years to go he is eligible for parole, Gerhartsreiter has found enough time to read. Are judgement of the multi-volume “The Forsyte Saga” is full of praise for John Galsworthy’s writing (“tightly integrated paragraphs give the prose an unmistakable rhythm”).
Gerhartsreiter claims to have read another British doorstop, Anthony Powell’s 12-part series, “A Dance to the Music of Time,” twice to this review: “Despite the title, the 2,947 pages have nothing to do with dance or music. Much of the action in the novel revolves around cocktail parties, dinner parties, garden parties and weekend parties in colossal country houses. The characters talk about literature and paintings. Not much else happens.”
Earlier this year, Gerhartsreiter published a review of Emma Cline’s novel ‘The Guest’, about a female con artist. “Scammers have always created fascinating characters for stories,” said Gerhartsreiterunder the headline: “It Takes One to Know One.”
Someone in San Quentin has a sense of humor.
Alex Beam’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him @imalexbeamyrnot.
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