At the most glamorous of the many fab parties leading up to the 2009 Basel Art Fair, the granddaddy of them all, a museum director related the story of a day trip to Venice to see the Biennial after which she went for a massage and was awoken by the sensation of something odd in her hand which ended up to be the penis of the masseuse. The only reaction it elicited was laughter. But afterwards, she passed a famous dealer friend in the hallway with more adventurous sexual proclivities that was unknowingly on the way to the surprise of her art season. A day later at the opening of the fair a design dealer recounted how when a famous industrial designer took delivery of a classic 60’s Aston Martin, he took his penis into hand and rubbed it across the length of the automobile. These separate but related art world incidents are illustrative of the childishness, sleaze and dicking around so prevalent in the art world of today. Overheard at the same party by the lake in Zurich was the comment: “if you wiped out the crowd here, there’d be no art world left”. Which goes to prove that there is nothing like art world’s strong sense of self-satisfied smugness.
First in from Zurich to Basel I was confronted with a Cameroonian taxi driver in who tried to sell me an African mask, “a replica of which was currently on view at the Beyeler Museum” and then offered to scout young talent for me in Africa. There is no mistaking when it is art fair time of year. For a change I was able to enjoy not having participated in one of ancillary fairs, as the main fairs are usually far too political for someone of my ilk to be admitted; I felt a newfound freedom to roam, to see and enjoy the peripatetic existence, living outside the Willy Lowman-esque ball and shackle of gallery-dom. In the process, I ended up with more business cards and less beholden.
Within the very fair itself, there is more of a social hierarchy than at the outside parties and restaurants. Within the buzzing VIP Lounge, there are VIP-VIP lounges, the most exclusive of which was fittingly sponsored by private jet company Netjets. After managing to get smuggled in like so much excess baggage, it was so hot and uncomfortable inside that it was like being stuck on an airless plane. But still, they stayed; content in the knowledge of how many flight hours it took to be invited. Throughout, art is being consumed this way and that, right under your nose, and after getting caught in the whirlwind, sometimes by you. It’s an elating experience to behold. Sure it’s rather gross in a depression, but art excites, and someone told me, has a measurable neurological effect that prolongs your life. Viva la credit crunch, the hiatus is over, I’m starting to collect again—though I must admit, after my return to reality and the collapse of my past 5 deals, I hope it didn’t amount to premature ejaculation.
A participant in the fair was quoted on Bloomberg confessing to a dirty little secret those in the art business are nowadays all too familiar with: the practice of dealer selling at substantial losses to maintain liquidity in order to keep things moving. It’s reassuring to know I’m not alone. Though many dealers seemed to be selling, I heard stories of just as many who were not. But it’s the age-old lie, the art world’s version of original sin—to publicly state that they sold like hotcakes when in reality they lost a fortune. Are my peers becoming the model of a new aphorism of the YUPPIE variety, namely MUDs: Middle-aged, Urban and Downwardly mobile? Spending money used to be a profession; now finding any is a chore.
As I was actually sitting with a client, a specialist from a major auction house called him to tell how I had burnt the works in the collection by shopping them around too aggressively. Art is the only field where you are contacted to try and sell something only to be accused of diluting its value and ostracized for doing the very thing you were asked to undertake in the first instance. As my client hung up from the auction house, my phone rang with the very same auction house expert asking me to lunch the following week, knowing only I had full access to the work. Talk about a zero sum mentality, for which the art world is famous. One dealer sells, it is perceived, only at the expense of another. A few days later another gallerist (who might be from Canada) called my client to state he had seen the very paintings we were offering for sale on the Internet that would be the death knell to a discrete transference. Nothing could be further from the truth but that was beside the point; the front and backstabbing in the art world defies belief.
Emblematic of the degree of gossip, innuendo, and disinformation swirling around the art world in the attempt to undermine business are the following: one dealer “friend” called to relay he heard a painting I was selling through a dealer participating at the fair was being sold for more than I was let on to believe to a Russian with a famous girlfriend. Although the pricing story turned out to be false, the identity of the collector was entirely correct. The reconnaissance of the art world is worthy of the CIA and MI5 combined. In the end the show of public consumption for the sake of the girlfriend was followed by a swift cancellation only after the fair and invoice were complete. A few deals later I was contacted by the same deep throat dealer who again knew the precise details of a multi million dollar deal I was in the midst of. The only upside is that I was relived to know I wasn’t suffering from extreme paranoia due the accuracy of the third party information I am constantly bombarded with. Can someone explain why art world insiders have such big mouths?
Museums and auction houses are cutting more and more positions after Spring/Summer 2009 sales declined by three-quarters to 80%; while Sotheby’s debt is in the process of getting downgraded from junk that would make it…really junky. Last year at Christie’s in London, a Monet Water Lilly painting sold for more than $80 million, only a year later the entire Impressionist and Modern sale was estimated at $62 million to $84.7 million and achieved $61m. Two major Picasso’s both recently bought in 2005 for £2.7m and in 2000 for £4m sold for £5.75m, and £7m respectively. Which translates into the fact you can sell Picassos in a post-nuclear apocalypse. All in all contemporary sales are down nearly 80% in volume from only a year ago and Modern and Impressionist didn’t fare much better at a level 75% less than last year. On the contemporary side, a Richard Prince Nurse painting was valued at $3m and sold for just shy of that versus last year’s result of $8m for the same size nurse; though Prince inflation is still nothing to sneeze at considering they initially sold only 5 years ago for less than $100k, after depreciation like that you’ll need a nurse. But amazingly that was the only work in the sale with a third-party guarantee. For the most part though, the favorite artists in today’s market are dead ones. Mine too—they are a hell of a lot easier to deal with. Even so, just when it appeared the auctions stopped making records like the music industry, 18 were set at Phillips for primarily younger artists.
Only a short time ago, in my London neighborhood, I witnessed two Ferrari test-drives in one morning, if that’s not a ray of hope what is? And, I only just heard reference to the present state of the economy as: a “post crisis environment”. That’s enough of a reason in itself to breathe a collective sigh of relief. Even more evidence of good times ahead, there is a group of hip, young New York artists I avoided assiduously until one became a recent auction highflier at a tender young age. I decided if you can’t beat them, join them so I bought one and was able to resell it for twice what I paid before I paid for it, which was still only fair market value, thus the glory of the inefficiencies of the market—probably the last largely unregulated multi-billion dollar one at that. Fittingly the subject matter of the work was an abstract depiction of animal shit.
Kenny Schachter