A still from my upcoming NFT collaboration with Dakis Joannou, to be released on NiftyGateway July 7th! Take advance of the market crash, they’re cheap! Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.I feel like a cockroach. Not exactly the bug (though that too), but rather like Kafka’s...
Adam Lindeman as Chromie Squiggle Remember last month when I wrote that I was done writing for a while? Well, I lied (if you can’t contradict yourself…). You didn’t think I’d actually give up this platform, did you? If you hadn’t heard, I returned to Miami Basel this...
Kenny Schachter in the process of shedding his skin as a journalist. Photo: www.KennySchachter.artThis is a twist on Arthur Miller, where the salesman in fact comes to terms with his new identity and the concomitant change effectuated by it. In other words, dear...
Some of the Salvator Mundi NFTs from Wolfgang Baltracchi's new NFT collection "The Greats."In January 2021, a long-germinating NFT project titled Hashmasks officially launched. The series of 16,384 unique collectible NFTs was the first meaningful follow-up...
Creative destruction: blowing up the bridge between old and new—the traditional art world and the world of NFTism.The art world knows one word, above all others, and that is “no.” No, you can’t buy this (the illusive waiting list); no, you can’t do that, or say… just...
It’s raining men, and money in Frida’s case.Before I resume with more of the crypto content you’ve come to expect from me of late (apologies in advance), here’s some juicy meatspace fodder to chew on. Author Luis-Martín Lozano spent 30 years ferreting out all 152...
No rain here, just healthy living in S-chanf, Switzerland. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.The painter Lucien Smith, born in April 1989, crashed out of the gate in a hurry—only to suffer an equally swift, though less desirable crash of an altogether different variety. In...
The elusive Joe Hage. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.I was at a gallery the other day when someone cast a glance in my direction and said to a friend, “Isn’t that the NFT guy?” Yes, I may very well be that—but it doesn’t mean I’m not still privy to meatspace scoops every...
NFTs have made Kenny Schachter's life... interesting. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.Joshua Decter is a “writer, curator, theorist, educator, and editor” who really, really loathes NFTs, so much so he has been engaged in a months-long, cross-platform attack against me on...
That’ll be Professor Nifty to you. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.I am urgently trying to scratch together enough fiat money—you know, old-fashion paper currency made legal tender by government decree—to buy my house, which is weighed down by an antediluvian hoard...
Bubble, bubble, toil and no trouble (on the horizon). Some will go up, many will go down, but NFTs are here to stay! Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.It took the world centuries to stop talking (and thinking) about the artiness of art and denigrate the discussion to the...
It all makes sense, trust me. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.For all you luddites (including me, only a few months ago) who are new to the world of crypto art, here is a partial glossary of NFT terms—one that will undoubted need updating before this is even posted....
My second drop on Nifty Gateway—woohoo, I reinvented myself in late middle age. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.While writing this, I’m on WhatsApp chatting to a friend, listening to (yet another) Clubhouse talk drone on, and participating in a group discussion on...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
"Where's Inigo," a new puzzle for the whole family. Artwork courtesy of Kenny Schachter. The only thing more scrutinized than the whereabouts of the Salvator Mundi—which I happened to locate on a certain boat in the Middle East—is the art world’s new game of “Where’s...
What’s next, an art-world whistleblower? Photo illustration by Kenny Schachter. On November 8th I gave a keynote talk for the Art Appraisers Association of America at Cardozo School of Law, which I coincidentally attended in a previous life. Initially, I was...
A Koons memorial that would have been better if it was designed by a kommittee. Photo illustration by Kenny Schachter. Before I launch into a brief fair recap, some thoughts on the upcoming auctions and state of art collecting, as insignificant as it all sounds in...
KAWS's market just keeps going. Artwork by Kenny Schachter. Whether we actually live in the wackiest, rockiest economic, social, and political time in history remains to be seen, but there’s no denying it certainly feels that way. Unprecedented art world...
Sotheby’s Easy Art Credit may cause nausea, vomiting, and bankruptcy. Use only as directed. If you can’t afford the pill, this medication is not for you! Photo illustration courtesy of Kenny Schachter. On the first day back to school last week, I had lunch with dealer...
Money was the medium, as in Damien’s diamonds; now it’s BBB (Bed Bath & Beyond-ism), with products as paint and process. Photo illustration courtesy of Kenny Schachter. For the first 24 hours after I post on artnet News, I shut down all communication...
The forced march we all love to bemoan, but always end up repeating. Art Basel is now 50 years old, though fair brass are waiting 'til 2020 to celebrate. (You get better marketing conditions by rounding off the numbers and calling it 1970-2020 in copy.) Image collage...
You got your Salvator in my Kusama: What private museum is worth its weight in oil without a mirror room? Photo collage courtesy of Kenny Schachter. It’s a miracle! When I received intel from a source with deep Middle Eastern ties as to the possible whereabouts of...
Steve Cohen was the belle of the auction ball after buying a certain rabbit. Animation still courtesy of Kenny Schachter. Remember Fatal Attraction’s famous bunny-burner? Well, I definitively know the identity of the bunny-buyer, and now you do too: Steve Cohen....
Street Fightin’ Man: Sean Scully as Muybridge study in motion. Collage courtesy of Kenny Schachter. This is a review of the April 2019 BBC film Unstoppable: Sean Scully and the Art of Everything. Last fall I reviewed The Price of Everything. What’s next, The...
This rabbit has a poem for you. Animation still courtesy of Kenny Schachter. I used to be a toyAnd meant to bring you joyNot sure what I should call myselfAm I a girl or a boy? Are you tempted to plant a kiss?Looking for ever-lasting bliss?It’s physical, it’s...
People seemed to really enjoy Frieze LA. Wonder why? Video still courtesy of Kenny Schachter. I cannot tell a lie (as many know firsthand—sorry): Although I was in LA at the time, I didn’t go to Art Los Angeles Contemporary (ALAC), Spring Break, or even Felix, really,...
The Hauser & Wirth Hospice. Artwork courtesy of Kenny Schachter. The Top of the World! At an altitude of 5,466 feet, the tagline of St. Moritz makes perfect sense, but it may soon be better known as the Top of the Art World. There are around 30 international...
Kenny meets Mike. Photo illustration by Kenny Schachter. In his Aesthetics (1835), the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel published a compilation of university lectures on fine art, stating: “For us art counts no longer as the highest mode in which...
Take it or leave it, it’s our art world- Adverting Art. Photo courtesy of Kenny Schachter. Last week, in just six days of Impressionist, Modern, and contemporary auctions in New York, around two billion dollars of art was sold—with even more sales taking place...
Art and money have had sex for centuries but rarely share a bed. Photo illustration courtesy of Kenny Schachter. The Price of Everything, the new HBO documentary from My Architect filmmaker Nathaniel Kahn, is meant to pull back the curtains on the connection...
All aboard the Eurostar Fair to nowhere, fast…no need to check-in, unpack or disembark! A new form of train robbery? Photo illustration courtesy of Kenny Schachter. The last round of London contemporary art auctions were down nearly 10 percent, but you can’t really...
Surprised onlookers react as Banksy's Girl With a Balloon self-destructs at Sotheby's. Your content goes here. Edit or remove this text inline or in the module Content settings. You can also style every aspect of this content in the module Design settings and even...
Jenny Saville at Sotheby's contemporary art evening auction in London.Before things even got cooking in London last week for the 16th iteration of the Frieze Art Fair and the concomitant auctions, there was the monster Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibition hosted by...
Death be not proud (it's bound to happen sooner or later). Video still courtesy of Kenny Schachter.In the waning days of summer, just when you might expect the art world to be napping beachside in the Mediterranean, guess what? There’s no rest for the weary, because...
Seventeen-time Le Mans entrant, and driver of my car, Nic Minassian. Photo courtesy of Kenny Schachter.As an isolated, overweight child growing up in Long Island with zero exposure to culture, cars were my gateway drug to art. It was the industrial design that...
You’re only as good as your last sale. Amy was on top this time, but don’t count out Loïc for long.... Illustration courtesy of Kenny Schachter.I have noticed a surge in the level of homelessness in London, which was confirmed by a recent article in the Guardian that...
See you at Art Basel Pyongyang 2019. Photo illustration courtesy of Kenny Schachter.Switzerland is the land of three-cheek kisses (along with Slovenia, Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro, the Netherlands, and Egypt), seven presidents (a collective of co-equally powered...
It's time for someone to bone up on art-handling. Photo illustration by Kenny Schachter. The latest spate of New York auctions that transpired over the past two weeks saw nearly $3 billion worth of art trading hands, a mind-boggling sum. But beware: Springtime in...
The TEFAF Fast Art Shoe. Illustration courtesy of Kenny Schachter.If Frieze New York were more conveniently located—with all the Ubers in New York, you still couldn’t get a car out of Randall’s Island during last week’s fair—with better, broader art in a (way) more...
The art world loves spontaneity... but spontaneous combustion? Video still courtesy of Kenny Schachter. While I was checking into my hotel for Frieze New York, a fellow guest made a comment about how much she liked my writing—at the precise moment my credit card got...
Who knew? Everyone who wins a Pulitzer gets a free horse. Photo illustration by Kenny Schachter. Like Paul Revere riding into town in the dead of night to warn the colonials of the impending British invasion, Jerry Saltz rolled into the art world’s inboxes and social...
Did someone say "open bar"? Kenny Schachter gets rambunctious at London's annual Art Quiz. Photo by Luke Fullalove. In the brief respite between miart and Art Cologne, I was invited to join some art-world-style extracurricular activities closer to home: a charity quiz...
It's not easy getting out of bed during an art-fair week. An artwork by Eva Kot'atkova at the 2018 opening of miart in Milan. (Photo by Pier Marco Tacca/Getty Images) I’m like a sacrificial lamb trudging across the world to art fairs so you don’t have to. Yes, I can...
The death of an art collector. Photo illustration by Kenny Schachter. Wandering around Art Basel Hong Kong last week, I wondered what Andy would make of all this—fairs, Instagram, and the unstoppable beast the art market has become. For some perspective, his lifetime...
Protect me… from the art world. Photo illustration by Kenny Schachter. A few months ago, I got a direct message from an Instagram account entitled Frenchiepickles that appeared to be dedicated to a French Bulldog. Odder still than receiving a missive from a...
A hobo encamped at a Lower East Side gallery, surely a casualty of the Great Depression. Photo collage by Kenny Schachter. Just before coming to New York for last week’s art fairs, someone tried to sell me a Louise Lawler that had been marked “Lost Property” by an...
Be sure and catch Kenny's new instructional YouTube video. Photo illustration courtesy of Kenny Schachter. Where in the world have I been? It’s been a while since my last dispatch—I hope you enjoyed the break. My absence was largely down to the fact I avoided the...
The architect Norman Foster surveys the town of St. Moritz. Photo courtesy of Kenny Schachter. I’m no fan of Christmas, New Year’s is even worse—all the contrived peace, love, and joy is frankly too much, not to mention the practice of holiday emails that amount to...
The gang's all here—again—in Miami. Artwork by Kenny Schachter.Before heading off to Miami Beach for the sixteenth edition of the Art Basel there, I bumped into a prominent art-world public-relations exec who exaggeratedly fist-pumped in exaltation at not having to go...
A tortoise and the hare for our age. All images courtesy of Kenny Schachter.What does $450,312,500, the sum paid at Christie’s last week for Leonardo da Vinci’s circa-1500 painting Salvator Mundi (the “Savior of the World”), look like? How about 55,000 Bitcoins at...
A work by Ilona Rich being installed by Adrian, Kai, and Kenny at the Art021 fair in Shanghai. Photo courtesy of Kenny Schachter.Last week there were two simultaneous international art fairs in Shanghai, one being Art021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair—the...
,h3> A very special episode of "Antiques Roadshow." Image courtesy of Kenny Schachter.Having just returned from Paris and the 44th edition of the Foire internationale d’art contemporain, otherwise known as FIAC, I’m left with two distinct impressions. The first is...
Step right up. Image courtesy of Kenny Schachter. When I began my career, art fairs were still in the Paleolithic Age. The marquee events were Chicago (really), Cologne (really), and Basel (can you recall when there was but one?). That’s it. In a given year, attending...
An anonymous auction-dominating art dynasty. Image courtesy of Kenny Schachter. It doesn’t take much to get me out of the house, but what choice have I? Opportunities in the art world are scarce, and these days you need to chase them more than ever. The especially...
Kenny Schachter discovers the hard way that jellyfish and art dealers are of the same genus. Video still by Kenny Schachter. As much as global warming has disrupted the traditional cycling of the seasons, the 24/7 maelstrom that is the art market has also had an...
Kenny Schachter Plank III (pace Charle Ray Plank II). Image courtesy of Kenny Schachter. I am all but Los Angeles illiterate—I have only been to the city twice, for a handful of days. I don’t go to movies, or even watch them on laptops or planes. As an...
Basquiat is the latest wild card in the high-stakes art casino. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. London is known for gin and tonic, Bacon and Freud, Gilbert and George, and Damien and Tracey. When I moved to the UK in 2004, London also boasted a burgeoning auction market,...
Art Sardines: The close quarters of Basel hotel living. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter.Two years ago, when I was driving home from Art Basel, I suffered facial injuries in a car accident. This year, I rolled back into the art-industry town with an automotive vengeance:...
Kenny Schachter flipping his two artist sons, Kai and Adrian, for love and profit. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. I probably shouldn’t give it away, but New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport is by far the easiest point of ingress and egress for New York...
On the road in Sicily in a 1970 Fiat Abarth Rally car. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. After Damien Hirst’s undersea extravaganza in Venice left me feeling like a splashed-on tourist at SeaWorld (albeit one with much nicer aquariums, and a different kind of whales),...
Damien and his figurehead. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. Buckets of (digital) ink have already been spilled on the subject, but I’ll add more. I have pretty much seen every artwork that Damien Hirst has made, read his book On the Way to...
The Poison Pen of Kenny Schachter (Courtesy Kenny Schachter, with Adrian Schachter) As an art lifer, I’ve begun to measure the remainder of my days by how many Art Basel fairs I’ve left to attend. The fifth iteration of Art Basel Hong Kong (or 10th if you...
Art musical chairs. Courtesy Kenny Schachter Imagine Janet Yellin—or the head of your respective Federal Reserve—calling to say that you’ve been granted free rein of a currency-printing press, with the lone caveat that it be enjoyed at your discretion. That has...
Image courtesy Kenny Schachter Roving the art world for business and pleasure, I was en route to New York for the Armory Show and its attendant fairs and goings-on when I had a near miss with a sneering Tracey Emin, and struck a possible deal with Harry...
At the Kurhaus Casino Baden-Baden with Anne Polke (second from left). Courtesy of Kenny Schachter The Museum Frieder Burda was opened by the eponymous publisher in 2004 in a Richard Meier building in the German spa town of Baden-Baden (literally “Bath-Bath”) known for...
Image courtesy of Kenny Schachter. The Unquenchable Appetite for Classic Contemporary I’ve never lived through such a tumultuous period, one that compels us to tune into the news 24/7 to stay abreast of the rapidly changing global condition; the USA is giving the...
Illustration by Kenny Schachter. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. Prince v. Trump Without getting too much into the minutiae of Immanuel Kant’s concept of the “thing-in-itself,” as posited in his “Critique of Pure Reason” (1781), in which he wrestles with the differences...
My bedroom with Joe Bradley and Mel Bochner paintings. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. Thursday evening, January 5, two bottles into a business dinner, my wife Ilona phoned to say that our London house was on fire. She assured me that everyone was fine (our four sons,...
The Sky Over Nine Columns by Heinz Mack, with illustration by Kenny Schachter. Writing in St. Moritz, Switzerland lands me on a slippery slope in more ways than one, besides accidentally smashing onto the pavement on occasion. After an article I wrote last year, I was...
Collage by Kenny Schachter. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. This story first appeared in the January 2017 issue of British GQ. The world has changed in the last five months since I wrote this. Much of Jerry Saltz’s medieval (over sexualized) mischievousness has been...
Collage by Kenny Schachter. Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. Loving and Learning Like starlings changing course mid-flight in a well-ordered flock, many trudged to Art Basel Miami, season fifteen (there should be a boxed set). Come to think of it I’ve been to every fair,...
Collage by Kenny Schachter. Courtesy Kenny Schachter. THE ART MARKET PLAYS ITS TRUMP CARD New York is a city enveloped in an otherworldly atmosphere lined by an endless horizon of police cordons and seemingly spontaneous, raucous, pop-up protests that resemble school...
Collage of Mao beside artwork by Joe Bradley a Gagosian's booth at Art021. Courtesy Kenny Schachter This may be the craziest, most pathetic thing I’ve written but consider this an appeal to action—or inaction—in light of recent political events, the relevance and...
Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. This is an interim report between the West Bund and Art 021 art fairs in Shanghai next week, followed by the pivotal New York November auctions kicking off on the 14th, and the final Basel iteration before year end in Miami. The 11th...
“Dark Shadows” was an epic American gothic soap opera involving a bloodsucking vampire. Though it aired weekdays from 1966–71 (I’m dating myself), it’s what the art market has come to resemble.
“Dark Shadows” was an epic American gothic soap opera involving a bloodsucking vampire. Though it aired weekdays from 1966–71 (I’m dating myself), it’s what the art market has come to resemble.
“Dark Shadows” was an epic American gothic soap opera involving a bloodsucking vampire. Though it aired weekdays from 1966–71 (I’m dating myself), it’s what the art market has come to resemble.
“Dark Shadows” was an epic American gothic soap opera involving a bloodsucking vampire. Though it aired weekdays from 1966–71 (I’m dating myself), it’s what the art market has come to resemble.
“Dark Shadows” was an epic American gothic soap opera involving a bloodsucking vampire. Though it aired weekdays from 1966–71 (I’m dating myself), it’s what the art market has come to resemble.
“Dark Shadows” was an epic American gothic soap opera involving a bloodsucking vampire. Though it aired weekdays from 1966–71 (I’m dating myself), it’s what the art market has come to resemble.
“Dark Shadows” was an epic American gothic soap opera involving a bloodsucking vampire. Though it aired weekdays from 1966–71 (I’m dating myself), it’s what the art market has come to resemble.
I enjoy many art fairs, especially the Art Basels (Basel, Miami and Hong Kong) and, considering its owners, MCH Group, announced a major expansion into the market for regional fairs [the group is to buy stakes in existing fairs], there are soon to be plenty more. In...
“Dark Shadows” was an epic American gothic soap opera involving a bloodsucking vampire. Though it aired weekdays from 1966–71 (I’m dating myself), it’s what the art market has come to resemble.
The 15th Biennial of Architecture in Venice opened last week with an impromptu retrospective of architect Zaha Hadid, hastily organized since Hadid's untimely death a few short months ago on March 31. What was meant to be an exploration of the research methodologies...
Loic Gouzer and Amy Cappellazzo wrestle. Photo collage by Kenny Schachter Captain Cappellazzo, the Auctions and the Onward March of May Markets like psyches have their natural, cyclical biorhythms; no one is happy 100 percent of the time and nothing goes up forever...
Christie's Global President and auctioneer Jussi Pylkkanen gestures during the bidding of Pablo Picasso's Women of Algiers (Version O), which sold for nearly $179.4 million, making it set a world record for artwork at auction during a sale at Christie's Rockefeller...
Stand: Ropac, Halle 11.2 Tony Matelli at Marlborough. Image: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Cologne If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium was a rollicking 1969 comedy (with Suzanne Pleshette), featuring a busload of Americans touring...
Welcome to Hong Kong, where the bills are stamped with HSBC—one of three commercial banks authorized by the government to issue currency (how annoying is that?)—which is hosting the latest Basel iteration. Soon there will only be Basel fairs, along with Art Central,...
Collage by Kenny Schachter. Image: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter Collage by Kenny Schachter. Image: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter Dark Shadows “Dark Shadows” was an epic American gothic soap opera involving a bloodsucking vampire. Though it aired weekdays from...
Collage by Kenny Schachter. Image: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter James Franco, Bird 13 (2015). Image: Courtesy of Siegfried Contemporary Hello Magazine, Art World Edition After my recent article on the art and art scene in St. Moritz, returning with a piece on...
Collage by Kenny Schachter. Image: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter The Sky is Falling—Or Is it? Breaking news: stocks take a historic plunge amid a global rout and oil slumps to a 13-year low. Even more shocking is that the art market squeaked by during the latest spate...
Andy Warhol “Abstract Painting”, circa 1982. Courtesy Anton Kern Gallery, New York. © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts The Foreground Though it feels like it’s been forever upon us, Zombie Formalism is a recent breed of mostly male, mostly generic...
Joe Bradley, Untitled (2015). Image: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter Though neither of us could recall the exact circumstances under which we met (endemic to the times), I’ve known Joe Bradley since roughly 2001. I was immediately taken by the artist...
At 1,822 meters in altitude, St. Moritz, in the Swiss Engadine Valley, is among the highest peaks in the Alps and a sporting mecca, having hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1928 and 1948, one of only three cities to do so twice (besides Innsbruck, Austria and...
What’s most magical (and it’s nothing less) about Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict is discovering Guggenheim's voice through her voice. During the making of this documentary about the socialite, bohemian and art collector (1898-1979), 100 hours of tapes were unearthed....
Covering Art Basel Miami Beach since its inception 14 years ago I frankly didn’t think there would be any stories left to tell, yet there’s inevitable change and flux afoot though not entirely for the better. Miami is one of the few, if not only, places the art...
Jim Shaw, Dream Sculpture (2006), Image: Courtesy of Phillips I covered the fall New York art auctions—focusing more than usual on the art itself for a change—for another art publication, and the editors there knew full well in advance that my writing voice verges...
In last week’s New York auctions of Impressionist and Contemporary art, $2.3bn was transacted in two weeks and though less than the last spate in May ($2.7bn, a record high), nevertheless it was above the $2.1bn presale estimate. Any diminution in value this season...
Postwar and contemporary art auction at Christies. Image courtesy of Kenny Schachter. The Auctions Vice Media dropped into my house in London a short while ago to shoot for an upcoming series on the art market that they’re in the midst of producing for HBO; I was...
Kamel Menour at his booth at Frieze London 2015, with works by Camille Henrot. Photo: Linda Nylind. Courtesy of Linda Nylind/FriezePhilip Roth with portrait by Kitaj. Image: Courtesy of Stephen Ongpin Gallery The Good, Bad and (Very) Ugly of Frieze Week Picking up...
I know this sounds like a set-up for a Richard Prince joke painting but it’s true: I went to a shrink to help cope with anxiety issues last week and when he found out what I did for a living, all he could ask about over the course of the next hour was art market...
Leonardo DiCaprio and Kenny Schachter in the late 1990s. MARCO BRAMBILLA Could we be in for a rough ride this fall in the high-flying, gravity-defying top end of the contemporary art market? That was the billion-dollar question on the lips of the summer art crowd from...
Magnus ReschA Twitterstorm erupted in the US last month over the findings of survey of 8,000 art galleries based in the US, UK and Germany. Cultural researcher and Larry’s List co-founder Magnus Resch found (no surprise here for those in the know) that running an art...
Andy Warhol, One Dollar Bill (Silver Certificate), (1962). Courtesy Sotheby's.Sotheby’s July 1 Contemporary Evening sale. Photo: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter. The school year for the international art world stretches from Frieze London in early October to the London...
Eric Fischl. Photo: Kenny Schachter. Art Basel 2015 was a story both thrilling and catastrophic, ending with a real bang. Literally. But before I get to that, and the fair, I made a quick stop in Zurich prior to going up to Basel to see some art and art people....
Kenny Schachter as the art court jester. Image: via Kenny Schachter. I began writing diaristic pieces for artnet.com more than 20 years ago, so it’s only fitting that I return to roost in 2015, where it all began. Only now the chronicle is beginning to...
Kenny Schachter wearing Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s Phantom (2015) at the New Museum. On my second day in New York the snow was so heavy that I feared I would be forced to spend a terrifying night at the museum with “Surround Audience,” the New Museum’s just-opened...
People look at works of art displayed during the The Armory Show in New York (photo: dpa) There should be a rule in art journalism: always lead with Damien Hirst. Hirst is having a fuck-all, wildly ambitious (over-produced?) show to coincide with his...
Schachter wearing Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s Phantom (2015) at the New Museum. The first part of Shachter’s Armory Week report is here. On my second day in New York the snow was so heavy that I feared I would be forced to spend a terrifying night at the...
Razvan Boar, Ass Smile, 2015. There should be a rule in art journalism: always lead with Damien Hirst. Hirst is having a fuck-all, wildly ambitious (over-produced?) show to coincide with his soon-to-be-released tell-all book, written with help from James Fox, who...
Simcho Che I am convinced that the art market is in an extended bull run the likes of which have never been seen before. Sure, nothing goes up forever, but we are experiencing fundamentals fostering the fever to buy more art at ever escalating prices. A qualified...
Simcho Che. I am convinced that the art market is in an extended bull run the likes of which have never been seen before. Sure, nothing goes up forever, but we are experiencing fundamentals fostering the fever to buy more art at ever escalating prices. A qualified...
The Best of London in 2014 Let us put aside the oodles of money, the stupefying levels of celebrity worship and the trend of early retiring art brats and focus on the good stuff: the art, the artists, the museums, and the galleries, like it’s 1999 instead of 2014....
Installation view of Korakrit Arunanondchai, 2557 (Painting with history in a room filled with men with funny names 2), 2014, at Carlos Ishikawa. The Best of London in 2014 Let us put aside the oodles of money, the stupefying levels of celebrity worship and the trend...
© Art Basel For weeks I’d been telling myself, and anyone who would listen, that I was going to skip the 2014 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach. It had been a busy fall. October’s Frieze London fair is at least on my home turf, but then there were whirlwind trips to...
Miami Beach.For weeks I’d been telling myself, and anyone who would listen, that I was going to skip the 2014 edition of Art Basel Miami Beach. It had been a busy fall. October’s Frieze London fair is at least on my home turf, but then there were whirlwind trips to...
Subway Gallery (Foto: Courtesy of Kenny Schachter) I paid a visit to the Subway Gallery situated in a 1960s-era kiosk under London’s Marylebone Flyover, in a subway station run by a vintage Westernwear-wearing cowboy, artist, and gallerist personifying British...
The entrance to the Dorchester Hotel in London (photo: dpa) I was a last-minute stand-in for an ill guest at David Tang’s 60th-birthday party on Tuesday at the Dorchester Hotel, where he is also the proprietor of the restaurant China Tang. It was a celebrity...
An elevator painted like the 1963 portrait 'Liz #3 (Early Colored Liz)' by US artist Andy Warhol during a preview of a contemporary art auction at Sotheby's in New York (photo: dpa) In The Graduate, the hapless protagonist is given career advice in a single word:...
Jeff Koons’s Balloon Monkey (Orange) (2006–13) outside Christie’s last week. In The Graduate, the hapless protagonist is given career advice in a single word: Plastics. Today, that word would be art. Just as in the ’60s there appeared to be a great future in plastics,...
FIAC. LILI ROSBOCH FOR ARTNEWSOn the heels of the Frieze art fair in London, I was off to FIAC in Paris, a breather before November’s monster modern and contemporary art auctions in New York. FIAC, which has been spiffed up over the past decade and returned to its...
(c) Marc Domage On the heels of the Frieze art fair in London, I was off to FIAC in Paris, a breather before November’s monster modern and contemporary art auctions in New York. FIAC, which has been spiffed up over the past decade and returned to its exquisite digs in...
Photo: Courtesy Frieze London It must have been an omen of sorts. When I arrived at the extravagant new London headquarters of Phillips auction house last week to preview the house’s inaugural sale there, I was greeted by the slapstick sight of a smartly dressed...
An untitled work by Sigmar Polke from 1998, which sold for £1.06 million ($1.69 million) on a £600,000–£800,000 ($955,000–$1.27 million) estimate at Christie’s London. It must have been an omen of sorts. When I arrived at the extravagant new London headquarters of...
Collector, curator and art world gadfly, Kenny Schachter just published on his Facebook page a telling email exchange between a young collector and a dealer. Schachter is put off by the dealer’s arrogance. The title of the post could have been: “Dealer to Collector:...
Kenny Schachter is a private dealer and curator living in London. His latest curatorial project is a show of Paul Thek’s work at Pace Gallery that will be on view from September 25th to November 9th at 6 Burlington Gardens. The show, Nothing But Time, Paul Thek...
Pace is the place for art’s celebrity arms race Turning up today is Jay-Z and band with plenty of fawning art stars in hand like self absorbed kids playing in sand No matter your chops nothing will stop the gallery from showing you the art world from blowing you There...
Lucio Fontana canvases at Helly Nahmad's Art Basel booth. No more disclaimers this time around, let’s just jump back into the thick of it, starting—where else?—with more dinners and parties, of course. During the relentless march of fairs and biennials, the art world...
The scene at Art Basel 2013. Forget about you, dear reader, how will I manage not to bore myself to tears with this? Art Basel feels like round 87 in a long, drawn-out boxing match and I shudder to think that I have to put fingers to the keyboard so quickly after the...
The crowd at Jeff Koons's opening at David Zwirner Gallery The art fairs that have proliferated in every town and time zone the world over have come to take up such a signficant portion of how I view art that remembering my bearings at one—am I in Brussels this week,...
In 2009 I wrote about the death of the Cologne Art Fair, having served on the selection committee for 2 years prior, but it was a premature call. It’s still a great place to see art without the usual European and American art mongering suspects breathing down your...
A rainbow ring in the clouds over Art Basel Miami Beach News reports leading up to the 10th iteration of Art Basel Miami Beach were more concerned with where to find the parties rather than the art. But the insurance value of the art clocked in at $2.5 billion, so...
Gerhard Richter, Abstraktes Bild, 1992. $ 1,248,000. Sotheby’s New York, May 10, 2005. $14,082,500. Sotheby’s New York, Nov. 9, 2011. Why do so many art people seem to be hoping for an art crash? Why can’t they accept that in these uncertain, unstable times art has...
A beauty shot of Kolnmesse, site of Art Cologne 2012 In 2008 I wrote an obituary for the Cologne Art Fair, and guess what? It’s still dead. Call it fair overload. Markets are driven by a degree of psychology: when stocks go down, the good, bad and ugly all get dragged...
Sotheby’s (BID), the world’s largest publicly traded auctioneer said second-quarter earnings rose 48 percent for its best quarter ever, though the share price is, at the time of this writing, down over 40% since May 2011. It has been repeatedly pointed out that about...
Ai Weiwei, Colored Vases, 2007, at Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, at the VIP Art Fair I’ll say one thing for New York art dealer James Cohan’s new internet-only VIP Art Fair, Jan. 22-30, 2011 -- it was received with great fanfare, as if no one had ever encountered or sold...
Are we headed for the billion-dollar picture? It certainly appears that way with $104m+ paid for a Giacometti and Stevie Cohen’s $110m acquisition of a Jasper Johns Flag (worth more than the country it depicts) ahead of the sale of Jurassic Park author Michael...
Steve Wynn and Sylvester Stallone at the Galerie Gmurzynska stand at Art Basel Miami Beach 2009. Photo by Patrick McMullan, Inc. Like a casino, void of natural light and any sense of time and with about the same odds of beating the house, so goes another iteration of...
Scott Reeder, American Dick, 2007, Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 76.2 cm At the most glamorous of the many fab parties leading up to Art 40 Basel, a museum director told how she’s gone on a day trip to the Venice Biennale, after which she went for a massage and was roused by...
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...
A Banksy graffiti was recently sprayed with graffiti itself: the tagline was: Price-Less. And true it is as the graffiti genre has been swiftly and broadly hit by the onset of recession. Yet, even something priceless has a price less today than a year ago. We have...
I have made art for years for little or no audience—what better activity could there be in the face of such economic uncertainty? If ever there was an occasion for the mantra: Just Do It (Yourself), its now. Remember how time used to equal money; guess what? It no...
The entrance to the Saatchi Gallery on Boundary Road, where it remained in residence from 1984 to 2003 First there was the austere, New York-quoting Saatchi Gallery on Boundary Road, akin to big museum halls, large and imposing with London artist Richard Wilson’s...
There is a new meaning of art appreciation today that has nothing to do with rising investment value. Consider it a reversion to a quaint time in the recent past, say, pre-2004. The era of big, flashy, overproduced art is a thing of the past. Now I understand the...
First there was the austere, New York-quoting Saatchi Gallery on Boundary Road, akin to big museum halls, large and imposing with London artist Richard Wilson’s unforgettable oil-filled room, 20:50, tucked into a corner. Wilson’s work looked even more terrifying in...
Art Basel and Frieze have been bailed out, nationalized and are presently under federal administration. Not so far fetched in a world that was up in arms when Hugo Chavez nationalized a country club, yet embraced the governmental rescue of Goldman Sachs. In real life,...
FOSTER AND ROGERS GRANT ZAHA HADID PERMISSION FOR HER FIRST EVER BUILDING IN LONDON. So it was December 3, 2008, but that would be Sue Foster head Hackney Planning and Ray Rogers, Design and Conservation Manager. In 2004 upon moving to London from New York, I...
Tumble weeds tumbling down the corridors of the 42nd Art Cologne fair, the oldest fair, even predating Basel on the first public day of attendance. Time used to have it where life expectancies weren’t anticipated beyond the early forties and history has repeated...
Art Cologne 2008 gets ready for (no) business Yes, I have been guilty of such disingenuousness myself on more than one occasion, but let it be known, after the marathon ten-hour opening and nearly week-long Art Cologne (probably the longest fair of them all), we have...
Design Miami/Basel gets underway in the Markthalle Basel I have sold toys, insurance, neckwear and art. And now cars and furniture, the former for fun and the latter for money -- and because I seem to have trouble getting into the fine art fairs. At Art Basel in...
The current show at Kenny Schachter Rove in London, "Between a Rock and a Hard Place," curated by Danny Moynihan, with works by Jannis Kounellis (left) and Edward William Cooke Over the spring I purchased two paintings and four drawings by a prominent British painter...
It’s well over a year since we moved to London and I still haven’t attained the peripheral vision necessary to navigate the width-restricting elevated curbs on the Hammersmith Bridge on the school run every morning. Even my tiny Mini cannot cope with the hurdles...
When will the reassessment come, the day of reckoning, for a time when demand not only influences art but instigates it, determines the form? Isn’t the repetitive nature of some art production in endless series just another name for creating more of the same stuff?...
In 1973 Ethel and Robert Skull, as the result of a divorce settlement, staged a significant auction of contemporary art in New York; significant in as much as it was the first time a major evening auction transpired featuring solely contemporary art. Immediately after...
I Bought Andy Warhol (Harry Abrams, 2003) is a slim new volume by California private art dealer and art market chronicler Richard Polsky, a frequent contributor to artnet.com. The premise of the book is to weave the search for the Holy Grail, i.e. the hunt for the...
UPTICK: THE THREE Why bother? Many artists toil away day after day in the solitude of their studios not with the intent of creating transcendent objects and to be immortalized by posterity as if in amber, but rather to get some good press and become another famous art...
Does your portfolio have the right balance of mutual funds, real estate investment trusts (REIT's) and art funds? It should, says Michael Moses at NYU’s Stern School of Business, who with professor Jainping Mei created the Mei/Moses Fine Art Index...
A John Curin painting appeared in an advertisement for an upcoming auction at Phillips in an art magazine. When Andrea Rosen of the eponymous gallery got wind of the consigned Curin lot, she notified the auction house of a sales agreement in effect that every client...
From the 1913 Armory Show in New York which was front page news to Jackson Pollack appearing on the cover of life magazine to Warhol and the Pop movement, it seems that contemporary art has been falling further and further out of the consciousness of the general...
Imagine the worst Howard Hodgkin painting come to life in a horrible nightmare hijacking your very existence: covering walls, floors, utensils, and everything else in sight. Such is the impact of the recent exhibition of Lucas Samaras at PaceWildenstein gallery....
The World Trade Center (WTC) disaster was sad, nauseating and unfathomable. After being brought to our collective knees, New Yorkers walk around with a continual knot in our stomachs wondering what will be next. We are gripped by fear for the futures of our children,...
The manners in which contemporary art galleries and museums function is based upon models that have not changed for decades. One would think with the entrepreneurial nature of the gallery business and the lack of institutional structure and layered bureaucracy...
What in heaven's earth is Jeff Koons thinking with regard to his new series of paintings aside from money? They are without doubt the most awful crop of crap to emerge from the studio of a leading light of contemporary art since...there is no comparison to be made, as...
Lesson number one for those contemplating staging an international contemporary art fair in the future: get more than a contract when signing up participants, get a deposit. Lawyers raison d'ítre is to get clients out of contracts, but the leverage of money in hand is...
As evidence that there can be no strictly linear movement up in the art market without regard to quality and consistency, there has been a marked downturn and backing off with regard to Damien Hirst's auction performance in 2001. Though his last extravaganza at New...
From 1986 to the summer of 1999 Borocco Restaurant (below Canal on West Broadway) was a favorite art world hang out in the heyday of the Mary Boone-Schnabel-Fischl-Salle-Basquiat, rein of power. A time forever, memorably etched upon the minds of those that caught a...
Phillips was tepid at best and at worst, a dangerous place to go to market with your contemporary art wares. The conclusion was don't sell at Phillips work that could be accepted for consignment at either Sotheby's or Christie's (in contrast to some big-ticket items...
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