Can I help you find something? Kenny Schachter presiding over his Sotheby's sale. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.How can you make a small fortune in art? Start with a big one. I’m paraphrasing Victor Gauntlett, a onetime owner of the perennially cash-strapped sports car...
The Great Stink
Paul Thek, Untitled (Meat Cable), 1968-69. Wax on steel cable with two turnbuckles. 168 x 3 x 2 1/2 in. Photography by Veli-Matti Hoikka. Courtesy of Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles. © The Estate of George Paul Thek.I got COVID this autumn, not after taking fourteen...
Kenny Schachter Is Back, Baby! And He’s So OVR It. (But Has Plenty to Say About the Ron Perelman Selloff)
The time is now! For the auction houses to have a more representative staff. Until then, maybe Anthea Hamilton will lend some of her mannequins. Illustration courtesy of Kenny Schachter.I hope this article finds you and your family safe in these strange and...
Remembering the beautiful melancholy of Matthew Wong
Matthew Wong's The Realm of Appearances on show at a preview of Sotheby's contemporary art evening auction on 29 June in New YorkI’d like to share a few thoughts concerning Matthew Wong and the recent auctioning of four of his works since his recent premature death in...
Are TV Art Auctions the New Televangelism? In a World Gone Mad, Kenny Schachter Tunes In to Watch the Fast and Furious Flipping
There's no accounting for dumb. Illustration courtesy of Kenny Schachter. *This story has been updated with a correction. Please see the full correction appended at the end. As the beaches swell with sardined sun worshippers and pathetic partygoers, and as COVID...
Kenny Schachter Has Some Choice Words to Say About Inigo Philbrick’s Arrest, and Now Turns His Attention to… Donald Trump
I can’t say I’m happy about this, but it doesn’t mean I can’t have a laugh—I did get Inigo’d don’t forget. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. We sure live in some fucked up times. Take New York City alone, in which the mayor, Bill de Blasio, is overplaying his hand in...
Nate Freeman’s Artnet News Wet Paint: Kenny’s cutting in
Give it away, give it away, give it away: this should be the name of my column, Richard Prince’s publication of Ted Kaczynski’s “Truth Versus Lies.” One per customer, it’s only morally right to generous Richard. Photo courtesy Kenny Schachter. Below is a special guest...
‘The Great Art World Reassessment’: A Heartwarming Bedtime Story by Kenny Schachter
Sweet dreams. Illustration courtesy of Kenny Schachter. With the art world as we knew it receding into memory, Artnet News columnist Kenny Schachter wrote a children’s bedtime story to remember how the industry evolved as it did—and to imagine were, hopefully, it can...
The ‘Banality’ Bailout? In a Locked-Down Art World, Jeff Koons Chases Government Cash, Flippers Persist, and Kenny Schachter Takes It Easy
Shackled: Jeff Koons's (blue) ball and chain gang. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.The live Instagram Stories that are proliferating under lockdown are the equivalent of anything-goes public-access television—an unprofessional stream of blather with horrible video and...
What to Do When the Art World’s on Lockdown? Kenny Schachter Goes Searching for Cut-Price Deals From Quarantine
Um, let’s not and say we did. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. “Corona, Corona, Corona, baby!” That’s the new rallying cry that on-the-run art dealer Inigo Philbrick—aka “Inigo! Inigo! Inigo!” as his now-infamous daily shower rant goes—wrote to me the other day. He...
As Coronavirus Upends the Art World, Kenny Schachter Hits the Fairs (and Shares a Convo With His Frenemy Inigo Philbrick)
Stay back! I’m going in! With my Andre Cadare- and John McCracken-armed art suit. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. We seem to be in the midst of some otherworldly, Kafkaesque, biblically scaled reassessment of modern life. Every day is now Sunday with new...
The Art World’s Mini-Madoff and Me Boozy nights and high-stakes art trades with Inigo Philbrick.
lnigo Philbrick, left, and the writer, in St. Moritz on New Year’s Eve in 2015. Photo: Courtesy Schachter When I first met Inigo Philbrick in 2012, he was all of 25, looked an awful lot like Justin Timberlake, and was running an art gallery called Modern Collections...
Kenny Schachter Gets Emotional Support at LA’s Art Fairs—and Picks Up Some Intel on Larry Gagosian’s Bedroom Dealings
With so many art dealers, my emotional support pig sure came in handy. Only in LA folks! Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. Los Angeles is its own spiritual, quartz-laden universe, and it takes a little getting used to for a consummate East Coast outsider like my...
Why Do Mega-Collectors Play Monopoly With Masterpieces? Kenny Schachter Sees Trouble Brewing in the Year Ahead
Monopoly: Art-Market Edition. Video still courtesy of Kenny Schachter. Another year has gone by, and with it another holiday spent in the mecca of money (and art), St. Moritz, where my in-laws, avid skiers all, have been vacationing for decades. Due to the of fear of...