Good Housekeeping
I went to a dinner tonight for The G.R.E.A.T. initiative: Gender rights and equality action trust. In the news recently Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as the chief of the International Monetary Fund after allegedly chasing down a house keeper in a hotel suite,...
Garoffice
I decided to convert a garage in my house into an office emulating a Hirst vitrine by erecting a glass wall to view a car like sculpture, and worked with Ab Rogers to carry it out. When we drive we can’t see the design and when we park, we leave them. The cars ended...
A-Z of Modern Art
Artists: There are many wonderful things about the arts and artists, especially the childlike innocence involved in the act of making things as a career choice. Artists have license to spend a lifetime involved in childlike creativity; they never have to leave the...
Starving Collectors
just travelled back from berlin gallery weekend; the dealers and all the collectors were seated in the rear of the plane, and two of the duos of first-namer artist celebs, gilbert & george and tim & sue, were sat in business. today, it’s starving collectors...
Robert Smithson, Entropy and my Shoes
Robert Smithson states on the subject of entropy, “You have a closed system which eventually deteriorates and starts to break apart and there's no way that you can really piece it back together again. Another example might be the shattering of Marcel Duchamp Glass,...
Interview by Andrew Taylor (The Sun-Herald, Sydney, Australia )
Andrew Taylor: Last year, you predicted that we would soon see a billion-dollar work of art. How many years away do you think that is? Kenny Schachter: I say confidently in 3-5 years a painting will sell for $1b. AT: Who do you think is likely to shell out that...
A Royal Ride into the Next World
World-wind Ghana trip with family that would shock a fish in a tank of formaldehyde. Went to visit Paa Joe workshop outside Accra, a folk artist specializing in what he calls Proverbial Caskets, one of which I had commissioned, and will write on. They are crafted...
More Crap on the Art Market: A Lecture on Art as Asset for a Bank
Alfred Barr, the first curator at one of the very first museums of modern art (that would be the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which opened in 1929), stated that art is more important than war. I think that is a profound and telling statement especially in light...
Oy Vey Vey
Its incredible to think, at this stage of game, that an artist can be still be considered a politically destabilizing threat. But that is the present fate of Ai Weiwei, who's head has been kicked in and now resides, courtesy of the government, in a prison cell the...
Aquaventure. Non-stop Water. Non-stop Fun.
The things we do for kids-extreme water sliding amongst the sharks at Atlantis in the Bahamas for Easter. Without being too glib and condescending, how can you describe the depraved level of kitsch and bad taste? The Dale Chihuly's in the casino (you must pass through...
Art from A-Z. It’s a Mad, Mad World: the Market and Machinations from Soup Cans to Nuts
Artists: There are many wonderful things about the arts and artists, especially the childlike innocence involved in the act of making things as a career choice. Artists have license to spend a lifetime involved in childlike creativity; they never have to leave the...
Prince-ly Hubris
Richard Prince recently lost a copyright case lodged against him for using 41 (not 1, 2 or even 5) unauthorized photographs by Patrick Cariou in his “paintings”. Let us avoid passing judgment on the merits of collaging in a guitar, hands and adding a few splodges of...
The Merchant is the Enemy
Japan Redux
With Japan on the brink of nuclear meltdown after the loss of life and tragedy of an earthquake and tsunami, it seems more than superfluous, absurd and insensitive to speak about art, but things march on. Even commodities, which along with art have been the recent...
Cash is Crap, Sell the Kids, Buy Art
Dancing on Ice Part 2
We continued our assault on the environment today with helicopter rides strafing the cars racing along the frozen lake and then a 2-hour snowmobile ride before getting towed by hapless reindeers to the dinner venue. The snowmobiles go 100 km an hour and are very...
Lapp Dancing
I am within the Arctic Circle, the northern most reaches of Finland (Kittila), a region formerly occupied by the Lapp people; though now considered derogatory, I find the term rather sexy. An ice driving program brings me here with a group from Germany and...
Springtime for Hitler
I watched John Galiano’s loving ode to Hitler on the Sun’s website, which was surreptitiously filmed on a phone. Such a drunken outburst was like a cartoon in a macabre, Anna Nicole Smith kind of way. Not only does he despise dirty Jew faces, but even more so, ugly...
Art About Nothing.
Art About Nothing Why is there so much art about so little? Happy Haters I was in such a state of exuberance at scalini's last night the man at the adjoining table asked me to step out for a fight. Though I have a proclivity to swear and am American, fisticuffs was...
The VIP Art Fair: Internet dating?
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...
Weed: Another (assisted) Speech for 13 yr Old.
Last year I did my speech on being green, and how I thought we all had to do our part to make the world a cleaner and safer place to live. This year I am doing my speech on another kind of green—marijuana and whether or not it should be legal and if so, for what...
Chace or Dakota? Richard Phillips at White Cube London
The exhibit is called Most Wanted, I suppose referencing Warhol’s America’s Most Wanted series, silkscreen paintings of dangerous criminals on the lam. Here Phillips is presenting realistic likenesses via traditional handmade paintings of young movie stars: Chace...
Internet Dating Art World Style: Final thoughts on VIP Art Fair.
The Internet based VIP (View-In-Person) art fair was launched with great fanfare, supposedly the new format was said to forever redefine the notion of how we encounter and collect art. After initially registering, the only encounter I had was with 15 error messages...
Dennis Oppenheim, RIP
In appearance, Dennis Oppenheim was like a raggamuffin, slipshod in dress, kind of frozen in the 70s. The works were all over the place too but with an undeniable magic touch, from the sunburned book impression on his chest to his wacky machines - Rube Goldberg wedded...
Warhol: A(nother) Speech for my 14 year old.
What comes to mind when you think of Brillo Boxes, Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s Soup Cans? Andy Warhol, an artist that changed the way art is made and seen./p> Warhol made art like a director would shoot a movie, not to mention the body of films he made. He directed...
anti aging
Running slows down the space time continuum, for some the process is faster than for others (others like me and jeffrey deitch). Kenny Schachter
Symmetry
“Car traders are a bit like art dealers. If they see a great profit in something, they’re not going to want to pass it on to the investors.” Used car dealers, art dealers, perfect symmetry. Kenny Schachter
Shaken and Stirred
I suffer from protein urea whereby my kidneys can't process the protein in my system, which leaks into urine. Known as hypertension, I am basically exciting myself to death. A telltale sign is suds or dense bubbles in pee-like you are literally being shaken and...
a dying breed…
a dying breed "newly made period pieces that are already, as you read this, beginning to fail the test of time" a brilliant, searing zinger by roberta smith on piotr ulanski in yesterdays ny times, criticism the old fashion way: critical. first tier works arguments...
Love is blind, money blinding.
“A&F (Art & Farce?) Markets proposes a new, centralised and liquid marketplace for art. Through its unique structure, A&F Markets allows investors to buy and sell ʻsharesʼ in major artworks (www.artfinance.fr)”. Sounds like a surefire measure to moneterize...
Larry G.
Larry Gagosian, with 11 galleries in 8 countries, has for the first time in art (dealing) history created a viable model that practically transcends the primacy of the founder. Why not a leveraged buyout, hostile or otherwise, a listing and float? If Norman Foster can...
Painting & Sculpting.
Chuck Close, Lucien Freud, Alex Katz, Marc Quinn, Gary Hume, Stella Vine and countless others have painted or sculpted Kate Moss (why is another issue); yet not one is recognizable as her. Can't contemporary painters and sculptors paint and sculpt? Kenny Schachter
The Inherently Trivial Work of Pablo Picasso, et al.
In an article entitled: Picasso: Most of his Work is Inherently Trivial” in the UK’s Guardian by feminist Germaine Greer, she quoted Picasso: “I am only a public entertainer who has understood the times and has exploited as best he could the imbecility, the vanity and...
An Essay for my 14 Year Old
PORSCHE By Adrian Schachter Ferdinand Porsche in 1931, an Austrian engineer, started the company PORSCHE. He was working in the automotive industry in Germany and helped to create the first Volkswagen, the Beetle, which has sold millions and millions (Hitler actually...
New World Order. (Excerpt)
The west is the new emerging market. Specifically, Italy is on the verge of IMF intervention, and on the brink or just past is: Greece, USA, UK, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, France, and I’m sure I am missing a few. Why today a day cannot go by without lip service to...
Nothing but Time
The newspaper works of Paul Thek, which began in earnest in late 1960's and continued unabated until his death in 1988, had a narrative arc defined by an idiosyncratic expression of hope and beauty, and ended in a more ambiguous state of disillusionment. They are...
The Bride Stripped Bare, Bared: The Art of Zaha Hadid.
Publication Accompanying Exhibit at Gmurzynska Gallery, Zurich When the spheres of art, architecture and design collide as they do in the works of Zaha Hadid, the result is a tectonic shift in the notion of how form can be depicted. Albert Gleizes and Marcel Duchamp...
It’s a Mad, Mad Art World: the Market and Machinations from Soup Cans to Nuts
Andy Warhol dreamt about money, made art about money but never made the money he fantasized about till after his death. His auction record during his lifetime was a mere $385,000 in 1986 for a piece fittingly titled “200 One Dollar Bills” purchased by Paulina Karpides...
a lovely rant sent to me 9/13/10
No need to explain your views, as your writing does that. It just brought back the question as to when art becomes entertainment. Regarding the dots, a strategy: Make something to sell the monied masses that can't stand to live with most of my stuff but still give...
Water Damage
I woke up to a half dozen dog droppings and urine puddles from our two “house” trained toy poodles—they only go in the house. I was doing a second reconnaissance to gauge the extent of the feces damage when I noticed a flood in the conservatory which houses a portion...
MBT Shoes: My Boring Trainers.
“Help solves knee and back problems; relieve tension in the neck; ease joint pains; help to tone and shape firm buttocks and thighs (!); while burning more calories when standing, or slow running compared to ordinary shoes.” Not to mention they make you a few inches...
Boffo Basel. Basel Art Fair 2010
There's been a tectonic shift in the market to conservative Impressionist, Modern and classic Contemporary art evident at the 41st Basel Art Fair, but I must admit it seemed as though everything was flying off the shelf indiscriminately. There was an orgiastic frenzy...
From Long Island to London: A Memoir in 1000 Words (More or Less)
Kenny Schachter has been collecting and curating art forever. The recipient of a Rockefeller supported grant, he has also taught and lectured all over the world. He does get around. He received planning for Zaha Hadid's first commercial building in the UK and has...
Art Market Spring 2010, Forecast: Clear Skies Ahead
The Spring New York Auctions of Impressionist, Modern and (even) Contemporary art all blasted through the highest expectations, in the midst of a stock market convulsing in an unprecedented manner; are we in a new age of uncertainty and chaos? Shares crash by day as...
The Role of the Vehicle Designer – Where is it Headed?
remarks on a lecture and the Royal College of Art, Vehicle Design Dept. Incredibly, barely a week goes by without the announcement of a new car company – many with green credentials, hopeful to make the world a cleaner, more efficient place; but just as many are for...
Love Is Real
I went to a nearly one weeklong bar mitzvah in Israel, previously not one of my favorite destinations, for the daughter of a fabulous art collecting couple from the UK. It kicked off in Herzliya, a beach resort just outside Tel Aviv. To build up tolerance for the...
Facebook: Meta Community or Life Inhibitor?
As the sage John Cougar Melloncapm put it so aptly: Some people say I'm obnoxious and lazy That I'm uneducated And my opinipn means nothin' But I know I'm a real good dancer Don't need to look over my shoulder To see what I'm after Everybody's got their problems Ain't...
Unilateral Cyber Squabble
“Kenny: You have to learn to post your comments in the thread; you can't only post on the Wall. Cut-and-paste these into the...thread. I am going to delete them in the next hour. Thank you" this was message i just received before my postings were unceremoniously...
TEFAF vs. AFF
While the world descended on the latest iteration of TEFAF (The European Fine Art Foundation), the Maastricht fair with literally billions worth of art on view, I made it to AFF, (the Affordable Art Fair) the only T being served in the café of the tent in Battersea...
Billion Dollar Baby
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...