In an article published in 2015, Hans Ulrich Obrist declared that “at the beginning of the year I could have been convinced that really everywhere in the American art scene, people were talking about the Swiss painter Vittorio Brodmann.” This statement could almost be a line from one of Brodmann’s own jokes. The subtle undercutting of the statement with the modal verb could suggests the possibility that Brodmann wasn’t really famous: It was all a setup, an elaborate prank. It would be poetic justice if Obrist’s caution turned out to be well founded—if Brodmann’s fame were the product of an