Wet Run

It was raining so hard I had to run (didn't have to but need to seize the initiative when it crops) with no glasses on, the result was kind of like Mr Magoo. I am a step or two away from legally blind not to mention a stigmatism—my corrective lens need to be ground down so as not to resemble bulletproof glass. Wasn’t so much harrowing for me as for the hapless passers-by. Not being able to focus so much on my other-than-immediate surroundings was like going into a trance. I read of an ancient Arabic scholar who used the word unlearning to describe peasants who, with no formal education, could memorize the Koran by heart. This was more a matter of unseeing. At one point a postbox resembled a woman and at another, a group of four tourists huddled together in hooded raincoats I mistook for a horse. I stepped off the sidewalk to avoid pedestrians and when I tried to remount didn't realize the curb was two-tiered. My foot slid across the top level and I saved myself just before falling headfirst into oncoming traffic and becoming road kill. Near the end I resembled a wet t-shirt contestant, but more like a slightly chubby one on reality TV. A runner called out to me and I didn’t know if I knew him or he was voting for me. Maybe I should do an existential experiment and take off my specs for a week. If so, watch your flank.

"Gold and Picasso: Going Topless", for the Fall 2011 issue of Marc Faber's Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

Gold and Picasso: Going Topless.


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 every time the shares experience such a decline (and precipitous may be too gentle a description in this instance), a spike in the same direction for the art market in general is all but certain. That would not seem to portend a happy fall season for the upcoming spate of auctions, fairs, private treaty sales, exhibits, etc, etc. More like a happy fall in the loopy prices seen in the market of late, like the purchase for $250,000,000 of a Cezanne painting, the Card Players. Throw in the downgrading of the USA—how they deserve even an AA+ beggars belief, if I performed as badly surely I’d struggle for a B-; the imminent collapse of Europe; and the summer sacking of the UK in riots that witnessed mass pillaging and worse. It was always clear if widespread hardship rendered people unable to buy food, they’d ultimately take it. Rice was among the items depicted in the arms of London looters. Thus, all the ingredients would seem to be in place for the ideal recipe for the death knell of the art market as we know it.


Guess what? Not for the sake of being a gratuitous contrarian, but I am still bullish for the upcoming 2011-12 art market, and foresee records tumbling, not to the downside but rather falling upwards as new highs will be achieved before there is any palpable correction. Talking about fundamentals, the factors fueling the recent frenetic art market activities are only becoming magnified in the face of such worldwide jitters and uncertainly. Shares? If 500-point intraday swings don’t make you queasy, I am sure there are some strategic opportunities on the horizon. Currencies? I don’t think anyone in their right mind would proffer a guess as to the short term gyrations we are about to experience, other than the Swiss Franc seems poised to continue to behave like a balloon freshly filled with helium. Property? Still a mixed bag, with only the best of the best in the top regions performing, and there are less top regions by the day. Commodities? A whipsaw investment not for the unwary as speculation about the sustainability of China’s continued growth, pressure on demand, and spiraling costs. Interest rates seem to reside full time in the doldrums, unless you find zero an exciting number. Cash is going to earn negative returns for the next two years according to Bernanke’s statement last week and bonds can’t go much higher—and there is no sovereign default risk with Picasso. In a macro sense, the USA appears to be morphing into the new Japan, according to Bill Gross (more or less), who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co. quoted on Bloomberg.com. Such a grim scenario gives new meaning to the doom and gloom in the GBD Report, which perhaps should consider dropping the boom in favor of a few extra heaping portions of gloom and doom.


But every cloud has a gold lining, if you are an art collector or holder of physical gold, which seems to have been going topless all summer. Where will it stop? I can imagine $2,400 to $2,800 an ounce in the short term, in the same fashion as I can comfortably accept that sooner rather than later the $250m Cezanne record will be eclipsed, pushing further into the clouds the stratospheric value placed on unrepeatable trophy art. Gold equals Picasso, and Picasso = gold. Picasso is the measure of value against which all else in the art market is compared, not to mention Warhol hasn’t been faring too badly either, thank you very much. Let us put to rest the notion that art is an erudite, unknowable, illiquid vehicle seen as a frivolous pursuit of the wealthy to impress upon their friends. Previously I would have said it was a pastime led by the Greenwich, Connecticut hedge fund elite, but markets and investigations have pretty uniformly battered them all of late. Art is a store of value, a systematic, objectively (for the most part) measureable asset class viewed in such a way by more and more collectors, investors and institutions, even. As a whole, art has never been as liquid, global and covetable as it is now, from China to Brazil, New York (still) to Russia, and India and Europe (still). These are good times for art and will continue to be so, for at least the next year or two. Baring some unforeseen, unspeakable tragedy all things art will trend up, but even a cataclysmic event can add to art’s allure. People want art so badly nowadays they are literally prepared to steal it; there's been a spate of art thefts, it's that desirable.


Some rather curious art world manifestations (shenanigans?) that have come to light recently are the notion of a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC) to list on the London Exchange’s AIM, somehow involving art works and SplitArt, an actual art exchange to buy and sells shares in specific works of art. In their own (not entirely convincing) words: “SplitArt will operate the first regulated market for art, indeed the company is in the application process to obtain its license from the CSSF (financial sector supervisor of Luxembourg) and thus establish an electronic trading platform for art securities (MTF Multilateral Trading Facility) that will offer a wide audience access to a new transparent and potentially liquid market with low transaction costs.” I am not so sure how many people would be lining up to have their Picasso’s fractionalized like a time share in Florida, but one you can’t use for holidays. But stranger things have happened. Also, there are more and more funds with tangible collectibles as the core of their holdings like cars and wine, and more banks willing and eager to jump on board, from lending facilities to advisory services. These are all telltale signs of a maturing market with wider breadth and acceptance than at any prior stage in history. In my estimation, the plethora of new art initiatives, even the far-flung and unorthodox, is ineluctable evidence of the concept that art is more, much more, than a pretty picture. In effect, art is flying off the shelves faster than electronics in a London melee. We are in an age of art's rising economy; call me the voice of Boom amidst the chorus of Gloom & Doom. The right art is a safe harbor in today's rocky waters and a great place to dock cash.

Art4August

Today’s art collecting tidbit: Do NOT purchase art at art fairs, any, ever. Demand steeply exceeds supply (or so you are led to believe) and one is bound to get caught up in the irrational exuberance and impulse of unconsidered buying. The same applies for auctions; simply don’t. Ditto buying at commercial galleries during what is considered high season—for me that is eleven months a year. Rather, engage in what I call Art4August, Get the dealers when they are down on their collective knees, or cash flow anyway. Turn the tables on the typical master slave relationship that is the norm when patronizing snooty art galleries. Summer collect! When business crawls to a near halt, vist spaces or reach out to dealers for jpegs. The art supply is more or less consistent whether its Calders or Colens; there’s always death, divorce, taxes and pruning in all seasons, and contemporary continues to be churned out at an alarming pace, I meant carefully and willfully created. Sure the rule still applies to buy what you love, but make sure you love what you buy—do diligence!

freudian slip

freud was very much like uk version of phillip pearlstein, a stubborn realist. his early paintings AND drawings are kooky, weird and eccentric and should, in the long term, be the most esteemed. 7 days a week he had a dinner reservation at the wolseley-he painted the owner which went to sf moma-where the food is mediocre and the atmosphere sublime. he once asked me if we knew each other from the house of some socialite or another to which i replied, insincerely but honored to be acknowledged, in the affirmative. he was an artwork unto his artful, elegant self.

info mafia

From an Observer article on Ted Talks, "Is 'Facebookistan' the most powerful country on Earth? Rebecca MacKinnon of the international bloggers' network Global Voices Online claims it is starting to act like one. Private companies are starting to behave like governments. They're applying censorship or responding to requests from regimes and creating what she calls "a new layer of private sovereignty". In the old days, there were nation states; in the new world order, there are supra-national corporations exercising power without restraint." Watching the slimy Parliamentary phone hacking hearings, News Corp is the super duper, super evil, superpower bar none. Father/Son Murdoch make the info mafia of fb et al look benign.

Life After Art School, Royal College of Art, June 29, excerpt

Our Life After Art School event on 29 June 2011 was an honest, wide-ranging discussion of issues ranging from how to deal with the vagaries of the gallery system to the importance of emotional maturity. Here’s an extract. 


The speakers: 

Kenny Schachter, Collector, art dealer and writer
Martina Schmuecker, Performance artist and lecturer
Kit Grover, Director, Kit Grover Ltd
Charlotte Schepke, Gallery Director
Richard Wentworth, Artist and Head of Sculpture, RCA
Sarah Douglas, FuelRCA


Necessary making

Kit Grover: I needed to make work, and if I didn’t have the money for paint I would have used mustard. I don’t understand the pressure exactly to instantly leave school and be represented and be aiming for this success. I guess I had very humble aspirations. I really only cared about paying my rent, that was the only thing that scared me, I figured that my identity as an artist did not depend on any gallery, any of my friends, anything except what I felt like when I was doing it.

Martina Schmuecker: But that also has something to do with time… Certainly when I graduated, the time pressure of 2005, before the financial crisis, was to present products, to have finished objects, and this place [the RCA] has always tended to be very in favour of the object. From my personal experience in the final show here, I did the same thing and was in the last half year here very much on track with producing products. I produced three products which I then left in the space for the technicians to deal with. I didn’t even pick them up after the show

Richard Wentworth: So they’re gone?

MS: So they’re gone. Yeah. Exactly.



Build your own infrastructure

Sarah Douglas: Martina, as someone who makes work which is not very commercial, do you feel your identity as an artist depends on any infrastructure?

MS: I definitely need an infrastructure, everybody needs to make money. Everybody needs to pay the rent. But for my work, I discovered a year after I came out of college how interesting and how good these people were I studied with, and how much you can actually do with them, and I was quite surprised to then work with people that I absolutely did not get on with while I was here, who were then brilliant in putting on shows, writing texts, giving me advice. Basically I think I need approval of the quality of my work, definitely, but I think this critique comes from my peer group, which is very important for me in making and showing my work. So in terms of public representation and galleries, I have not really found the space or that gallery that I would like to work with. I always think this is a two way relationship that you can have with somebody who is a collector, a dealer, a gallerist, and this has to work in two [directions]. If it is just this relation with somebody who you fear but who you can’t talk to but maybe they’re from somewhere like White Cube, maybe you want to be there in that glow –

RW: That’s not a glow.

MS: Maybe not any more.

RW: Never.

MS: OK, but I think that as an artist, this will not get you very far, it will not work for you and it will not work for your work. And I think in this time after the financial crisis anyway there is now a certain level of freedom to have a life, I think, as an artist, as well as having success, and I think that’s pretty good.

SD: What do you mean by a life as an artist?

MS: To have some sense of agency, or mission in a way.

SD: So that it becomes political?

MS: It almost becomes political, although I can’t say that my work is political. I definitely have political interests with it, which I follow, and I think that political side of the work becomes more important in the world. I work on that very much. I don’t know, art is still a product, you make it and you sell it, but there might be more to it now, which I think is really good.


The red herring of youth

SD: I remember going to a talk when I was here when a renowned gallerist said if you haven’t made it four years after you graduate then give up, do something else.

KS: That’s revolting. I think that’s a ridiculous notion, there are emerging artists that are 80 years old, as well as students right out of school. I think when you talk about the market or what’s creative success, it’s a complicated question. Before the crisis, in 2004 to 2007, very young emerging artists were the rage in the market, and for me it just got boring. I always said I wouldn’t pay historic prices for artists with no history. I’ve seen it on every side, making art, critiquing art, staging exhibitions and selling it, and selling everything from artists first out of school to working with Picasso and Impressionist and modern paintings, and it’s sadly an extraordinarily reductive process that leads towards success. I’ve worked with collectors and worked with curators and worked with institutions but in the hardcore world of the marketplace the thing that drives collectors is really sad. If you really looked into it you’d all change careers and slit your wrists or something, it’s rather horrific. I mean people want to buy the art that’s in the same vein as the art that other people make, and people make 3000 of the same painting for a reason. For instance Vito Acconci, one of the most brilliant people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with, he’s not making art any more because he’s done an about-face and he’s doing industrial design and he’s a self-taught architect and this is a person who’s been “emerging” for 50 years. I think Vito Acconci is like a brain with two feet, and he’s not even cognizant of these materialistic forces that drive the entire world, from China to me. At the same time, when you think about making a living in the art world from your work only, to cater to the collectors and the galleries, it’s all a rather sad master/slave relationship but it’s unavoidable. It really is a sheep mentality. Last auction a young kid, 26 years old, had a painting that’s estimated at $50,000 and sells for $300,000 and he’s the soup du jour you know? I found a way to make a living outside of it, I think when you focus too much on the commercial side it soils the whole relationship. The things I love doing most are the things with zero commercial ramifications, to the consternation of my wife, but really that’s what you have to do, of course you can succeed on your own terms in the art world but you have to have alternative means so there’s a safety net. It’s just a very difficult, arduous and long running process.

KG: I wanted to say something that kind of picks up on a combination [of issues] – I know you didn’t mean that thing about artists having a life as a separate thing, but just, a very short personal thing which I think affects a lot of young artists is that when I got picked up when I was 24 –

KS: By what gallery?

KG: Holly Solomon. My emotional development as a person with a life was absolutely zero, I was just really good at making stuff, and I was very shocked that people bought it and the speed at which they wanted it replenished, and that was horrific. The problem was the discrepancy between, just for lack of better word, my natural talent and my intellectual growth as just a young person, and they were wildly out of synch, and they never really got into synch in that context, ever with a dealer. So I just think, it’s something you have to be very aware of. Everyone’s hunting for new blood, and I’m sure many of you do things which are drop dead wonderful, and seductive to these voracious collectors and people who have an interest, but it may not be in your best interest. You have to check your own self knowledge… I had this one skill which was way up here and the rest of me was way over there. And I’m sure that maybe some of you share that and if not you may know someone who does. It’s important in this context, with how rough the commercial world is, especially aspiring to these notions of success.


Other people’s patience

MS: But can I say something in defence of the collectors or the buyers? I mean they are a lot of people around that are quite patient and quite interested in things that take a longer time. Also, what I realised after college is that most of my peers who are from London or England, probably had been talking through their BA or through their time before, to people already, whereas I didn’t have that.

RW: You mean talking to collectors?

MS: No, not really talking to collectors but talking to people who were interested in their work, and some of them might have been people who might start to buy stuff or collect stuff, and some of these people are quite good at waiting and at looking what is happening with your work over the years. I only found that out a couple of years after I left here, that this was actually what was happening. Also in working within the art world, you make relations, and some of them are good and some of them aren’t, you learn along the way, and in a way you have to keep a quite open mind of who is good for you and who isn’t.

RW: Is that description of other people’s patience, does that run parallel with your own social maturity as you realise that that person who bored you, frightened you, seemed predatory, all the things that people can seem – we meet people all day long and we like them or we don’t like them very quickly and later we change our mind a bit… Is that thing of people being interested in you something to do with you giving off a different temperature?

MS: Probably. I’m not really sure about that because I think the interesting thing I learned in London was how good small talk is, and how useful it is. In Germany you don’t have small talk, if you have small talk you’re complaining, that’s the German version of small talk

KG: It’s not just Germans!

MS: Maybe not, I don’t know. Once I sort of got that, I found it easier to have conversations or to start conversations – still not very easy but – and then you kind of realise that you need people to relax in your presence as well, it’s not only that you need to relax in other people’s presence. They might be scared of you as well which is quite odd. And yeah, it probably has to do with social maturity.

9/11 10 Years On: An Admission

I was sleeping recovering from something or other, probably self-induced, when the phone rang and my wife informed me a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. Knowing her propensity to hyperbolize, I dismissed it as at best a random small aircraft incident, but turned on the TV nonetheless. First one, then two planes were depicted crashing into the buildings, the smoldering towers became a shocking, gaping hole in our collective consciousness (literally and figuratively). I stood on the corner of my West Village residence a mile away from the wreckage and watched in disbelief. At the expensive of being horribly desensitized, I was sorry I walked back in when the actual buildings went down. I admit to the morbid human frailty of the impulse to rubberneck. Yes, the deaths must have been agonizing beyond imagination; the suicidal jumpers went missing from the local media. The devastation will never be lost on us. I wouldn’t dream of belittling the events of the day, but there was something, somehow unthinkable and grandiose at the same time when two of the world’s tallest towers were nearly simultaneously razed flat. Terrorism as spectacle. How can you read fiction when no imagination can conjure such a massacre? The immediate fear of gas mains bursting resulted in our being evacuated - the smells alone that ensued for months were a putrid reminder of all that was incinerated human, manmade and other. I visited the devastation and the area was white-dusted with an eerie dry snow, piled high. There was a single, smallish, lattice-like skeletal presence of structural remains. It was otherworldly. Nowadays, 9/11 colors all we see and think and the towers remains in their absence, like missing teeth from the NY skyline. 10 years on we can only stoically await what will come next whether a dirty bomb, or small scale nuclear or chemical conflagration.