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 and recently sold by the same collector for $43,762,500, also fitting.


The difference between Andy Warhol and Damien Hirst is that with Warhol it was all about fame and money; fame he achieved, wealth only posthumously. Hirst has made his cake (or had it fabricated) and is eating it all the way to Coutts & Co. With Bono in tow, today’s successful artist can become a celeb too, with bona fide rock star status and the cash flow to match. For all his aspirations, Warhol was like George Best or American baseball player Hank Aaron: they expanded the audience to mass while opening future doors for athletes to earn corporate executive salaries, though Warhol was never able to sort it for himself like HIrst managed. One could not exist without the other.


Art used to be more like a religion, with educational, historic, technical, analytic and cultural aspirations; but over time, as most religions came to be replaced by the blind pursuit of material wealth, art followed suit, and swiftly at that. Forget Pop, Minimalism, Conceptualism and any other -isms you can conjure, most art now is all about Economic-ism. Over the years, the balance of power has shifted from critics and dealers who used to be able to make or break a career to artists and collectors (and artists that collect) who are now ruling the roost.


People believe that art is subjective, and lacking inherent value—though I can on one level understand why it entails a certain leap of faith to fathom paying £75,000,000 for what amounts to £6.86 of pigment, canvas and stretcher bars. But what cannot be overestimated is the point that once art came off the cave walls, it’s been covetously and conspicuously collected. The first time contemporary art entered the realm of high-end, expensive evening sales at auction was in 1997 when a children’s heart specialist went to jail for embezzling money from a surgery fund in order to feed his collecting habit. Such is the fervor that grips collectors that one could even steal money from the hands of dying children to fulfill the desire for more acquisitions. That’s what I call a hardcore collector.


Calculable measures exist that can be systematically applied to ascertain the inherent values of art. There is a laundry list of things that contribute to constitute value in the art world: who’s selling (the gallery and it’s reputation, and auction exposure), who's buying (the stature of the collectors), who's writing about it and which museum is exhibiting, or rather, whose private museum is supporting it. Although it used to be that museums were museums: independent, quasi-objective, publically supported institutions with posterity at heart, today they are being replaced by private vanity enterprises resembling ornate bonnet ornaments atop a wealthy patron’s prized automobile. Private museums are becoming arbiters of taste and in the process, market credibility boosters. Or trying to.


Funny enough, the same piece of art can have as many prices as the depth of knowledge of the particular buyer permits. The difference between neophyte art collectors versus a jaded buyer is that a newcomer thinks they are buying something with a designated price requiring payment. A professional collector is like someone negotiating down the price of a container of milk, not paying for it for two years, and then canceling the deal because the milk went sour. Newbies have no idea what they can get away with in the snake pit of art. They are our favorite dupes. Just kidding.


Visiting the Basel Art Fair in Miami last year I eyed a Warhol portrait of Mao on canvas for a client when a friend called spotting serious dialogue going on with another potential buyer in front of the work I admired. I quickly made my way to the booth of the dealer and noticed he was in serious conversation with a doctor and medical entrepreneur I had only just had breakfast with that day. The art community is like picking up a rock and finding 300 intertwined worms, it’s that incestuous.


I parked myself behind my “friend’s” back and began my surreptitious counter-negotiations. Unbeknownst to the good doctor, due to my friendly relationship with the dealer, I was told what was offered on the Mao but that a further day to conduct due diligence was requested, which nowadays entails doing price research for comparable sales in the worldwide auction market on Artnet, a cheap pay-per-search tool that has revolutionized the way art business is conducted. I was offered a price six-figures less if I pulled the trigger then and there, which I did and made my way completely unnoticed during and after the ordeal.


Sadly, there appears a diminished amount of passion in the art world (for the art anyway) as the days of connoisseurship are mostly behind us; old school collectors who never sell and artists with no regard for private planes and Hello Magazine belong more and more in a vitrine in a natural history museum. Mind you, I find nothing wrong trading the multi-billion dollar Hirst market—the fact that you can rather pleases me, but let's not confuse the big money deals with appreciation.


When it comes to certain collectors and supporters though, you can't deny someone like Charles Saatchi his due in his relentless mining of artistic talent; it’s a full time job and a physically strenuous one at that. Constantly chasing young, new art (with my bad sense of direction) is a fulltime job way too exhausting and expensive to think about. But in the process, he rather foolishly dealt away masterpieces that would have permitted him to trade into retirement with impunity. Instead, Saatchi horse-traded his way into a lower tax bracket. The saying rings true that you sell art to make money and keep it to make wealth.


Not only are most curators, advisers, and dealers professionally non-qualified (many unqualified too) but also art is the last bastion of unregulated, multi-billion dollar business activity in existence. There are various ways to legally insider trade in the art world including front running major museum shows prior to public announcements. This entails being privy to information on the programming of a major museum (or gallery) ostensibly through board members or employees, as to who will be featured in upcoming shows and then buying (and selling) on such non-public knowledge for quick profit.


Perhaps curator and adviser are among the most misused descriptive words in the art world after the over-use of the word important in relationship to describing art works. Correct me if I am wrong in assuming art never cured a strain of cancer. Some artists certainly carry themselves in such a self-important manner like peacocks with their feathers in full display. But I admit there has been research to the effect that living with art can contribute to prolonging your life. I must admit I tend to agree—they say having dogs increases life expectancy so why not the same for looking at and appreciating art too? Besides, I’d much rather have a painting, or better yet, a dog hanging from the wall.


When it comes to making, buying, selling and presenting art we are, to a certain extent, all hookers of one stripe or another, which I readily acknowledge. But I know an art dealer of sorts, always surrounded by a bevy of girls, unfailingly gorgeous. When I questioned him about the somewhat seedy appearance of such a mélange, he replied: “How did we meet?” True enough, I did ask him to fix a friend up (yes, a friend), though it never occurred to me he’d be chartering for the occasion. He went on to relate how many billionaire collectors he made business with out of his procurement activities in the escort sector. As Malcolm X put it, by any means necessary.


As far as buying and selling at auction, you had better know what you’re doing as you are invariably up against the savviest purchasers in the world. And these days that really does mean the world over, as we are truly in an interdependent, global environment after years of lip service to that effect. In the past, dealers banded together at public sales to keep prices artificially low, and then bid amongst themselves after a given sale. Today it’s the reverse, or so they say. But even if you own buckets of Basquiats and you obscenely bid one up auction to bolster the market, nevertheless he who he who plays with a paddle pays.


In New York in the 1940’s, the amount of what we know as contemporary galleries could be counted on the fingers of one hand. What is merely a short time later there are a plethora of commercial venues worldwide. Also, for the first time in history, we are in an age of so many billionaire dealers and collectors, and what is more, dealers and collectors who are billionaires from art, including such legendary hoarders as the Nahmad’s, Berggruen’s, Mugrabi’s, Ernst Beyeler (recently deceased) and Bruno Bischofsberger, amongst others.


Safe to say most artists and galleries are like cottage industry entrepreneurs except for a gallery business model like that of Larry Gagosian who appears intent on nothing less than world domination, establishing beachheads far and wide, from New York to Athens via Paris, London and Rome. There is no one in gallery land in his rearview mirror.


A hedge fund friend at the onset of the recession said he’d hoped I realized the works I yearned for and dealt in would be rendered valueless. He obviously wasn’t the type to beg, borrow or steal for art. Having no means has never been an impediment to a true collector. In the past ten years there has been more growth in the worldwide art market than in the previous 100 years. Though the recession has clearly and concretely caused a shift in what is sought after and effected values, we are today at historic high levels for art. For every bust in the art market lurks a bigger boom down the horizon and vice versa. The art market is a lovely, endless cycle, but one that seems to grow and grow over time with no bounds in sight.


No one could ever have imagined how art fared so well in light of the crushing recession that brought the world’s economy to its collective knees. But clearly trends have shifted today—in the recent past, $25m Jeff Koons sculptures were being flipped like burgers on the resale market before the crates were even unpacked, and at the same time, you couldn’t give a Monet away. Today, contemporary art is a long way from selling for the prices of office buildings but Picasso’s, Monet’s and Van Gogh’s are reaching dizzying heights as we are in the midst of a flight to quality, with art viewed as a safe harbor in uncertain economic times.


Sure there continue to be plenty of naysayers and party poopers that moan that it’s an artificial bubble bound to burst. And true enough, there are many people in it for the wrong reasons, but this is also a good thing, as it only contributes to broaden the markets and create spillover opportunities for the various segments of art. With 1000-point intraday swings in stocks, interest rates at historic lows, banks teetering and companies uneven at best, art has never looked like a better place to be. And the dividend it throws off in good times and bad is the visual pleasure gained by looking. The continuing international economic instability is a major factor driving today’s market for art. And the ever increasing worldwide attention—there are more people today making, looking at, writing about, showing and buying art then at any previous time in history.


People are still endlessly speculating that this artist is overvalued and what that artist is making is not even art. When you go to an emerging art fair like Frieze, I would guess fully 85% on what is on view will become relatively worthless over time. Perhaps even more. But then again, there are also awful Picasso paintings. In the breadth of an artist’s career you encounter a bell's curve; but that is a good thing as it creates access points for people to enter the market at differing price levels. For instance not everyone could afford a Giacometti sculpture (the last public record of $104m didn’t help) but you can find what is considered a less prized etching, almost as gripping.


Most people in art only look at the pictures and adverts in art magazines unless they or their artists are themselves written about. To read, learn and discover more about today’s art forget Frieze and other specialist magazines, try bloomberg.com, the FT, Wall Street Journal—the financial press and fashion mags (and GQ!) do a much better job without trying to impress with unknowable art speak so often encountered in the art journals.


There was even recent coverage in the Economist solely on the past, present and future financial outlook of the oeuvre of Damien Hirst. Though this analysis was flawed (you need specialists entrenched in the field of practice for meaningful insight) it reflects that the times they are not a changing, but they have changed and forever. Too bad Warhol didn’t live to experience a time where there are charts and graphs depicting an artist’s price performance and aesthetic economic indicators and buy/sell signals; chances are it all would have ended up as grist for his canvases. And as for the wrongly long- term bearish sentiment on Hirst in the Economist, I forecast in 10 to 15 years time, the market for Hirst fakes alone will amount to billions.


Art fairs, most of which I have actively participated in at one time or another (and been thrown out of, hard to imagine), are the most effective and convenient way to do reconnaissance about what is afoot at any given time. They are wonderful information gathering affairs as well as the closest the art world gets to fostering a sense of community; we all travel to the same destinations and socialize with many of the same people across multiple time zones. But the fairs are also deeply hierarchical enterprises. The decision making process as to who gets to have a booth, and in which section that booth is located in are based largely on capricious, political factors. Even who gets admitted as a guest and when (there are earlier entry slots for the VIP VIP’s) are status-laden choices by the powers that be.


With the nonstop attendant social flurry, the Miami Basel fair is undoubtedly number one on the charts for schmoozing the art party circuit. However, in hot market times at fairs there is competition to purchase new material, and fast, which in such a public forum is not the ideal way to understand and participate in the market. Art should be a slow burn, a contemplative process, not an ad hoc, spur of the moment, decision-making experience.


The mindset of many students in today’s art academies seem to be as much about seeking tuition in PR, self-promotion, and networking as about learning to draw a nude accurately. After Marcel Duchamp put a urinal in an exhibition and declared it art in 1917, the Yellow Pages have became an integral tool of the artist. The readymade, Duchamp’s term for plucking an industrial object out of a catalogue and re-contextualizing it in a gallery setting and calling it art had been replaced by what I call the had-it-made—where a few calls to a fabricator can overcome any shortcomings in virtuosity. How many art stars of today could draw other than a stick figure?


Also, the caution and conservatism you see at the graduate level in art is mindboggling; they are often no different than business or law departments, a professional finishing school readying the mini entrepreneurs to crack the art market. One student during critiques I was giving told me that a known visiting contemporary artist told her not to use a particular material for a work, which assertion in my estimation had absolutely no foundation in reason. The visiting artist probably couldn’t think of anything else to say, though I admit you really are on the spot in some of those critique sessions having to think on your feet all day to needy young artists. So what did the artist do? Of course she trashed and remade her work. At the grad level at least, it’s about connecting with guest lecturers and visiting artists and paving the way to a lucrative niche of one’s own.


Fifteen years ago I bought two artworks, one by Janine Antoni and another from Glenn Ligon both from a struggling artist who had been given the works as gifts. When I tried to sell the pieces years on the results were astonishing: both artists independently declared the works to be not art. In the case of Antoni, the piece was hand-painted plaster casts of her nipples that formed the basis of a later work made in gold. In fact, this was more “art” then the art she normally exhibited. And even more baffling, the Ligon works I purchased in good faith were classical charcoal renderings of some kids involved in a famous rape assault in Central Park at the time. Both artists made efforts to preclude me from selling the work I rightfully owned. It boiled down to issues of trying to control perceptions of the artists and the works. Only in art can someone equally state that an object lifted off the street or appropriated from a newspaper or magazine is his or her creation and simultaneously declare that something made the old fashion way is garbage. Anyway, I traded one and sold the other at auction as the houses don’t seem overly concerned about the intent of the artist when it comes to what is or isn’t art.


The museum realm, more mid-level than Tate or Serpentine scale, resembles small town politics, with little money and little opportunity to make a sizable impact. In a time when even the biggest institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum in New York, have been so strapped for cash they can’t paint the walls between exhibits, museums are losing their capacity to make a bang. Being in such financial straits has in turn reduced the scope and adventurousness of public museums programming capabilities and thereby removed the stinger of these venues. Many times, they can no longer afford to make a difference, instead opting for easy to swallow, crowd pleasing events. With less and less funding, there is sadly less at stake for institutions across the board.


Another casualty of the recent transformation of the art world is the slow death of the critic. To make an impact today, an art writer has to become a judge on a reality TV show to make themselves heard like New York Magazine’s Jerry Saltz. What Saltz did do that will have lasting repercussions is utilize facebook to transform criticism as we knew it into a democratic participatory sport, and a contact one at that. I still remember quaking in my boots over 20 years ago every time his illustrious wife, New York Times writer Roberta Smith, visited a show I curated; her reaction could reduce me to tears—not to mention the joy (to my bank account) she could equally dispense with a favorable review. Those days are largely behind us. Even a bad article by Smith was capable of moving markets.


Don’t get me wrong, I am no cynic, but rather an art making, buying, selling, critiquing, presenting and collecting hypocrite. There is no place I’d rather be personally and professionally, mainly due to such ambiguities and gray areas that still exist in the wild, wild world of art. For the uninitiated, the art world has its very own language, but don’t be daunted. And it’s not all about money either; art is the only free lunch left in town as galleries and most museums don’t charge admission. Go on and try it.

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 them that much needed label to be able to say they have one. Otherwise why aren't we talking about those paintings in relation to Kusuma or Bridget Riley? Just old fashion geometric abstraction. Like admitting that Close is just old fashion super realism. All this conceptual construct to hide behind mediocrity or desperate sensationalism. Not asking for answers, just seeing a big blurr in everything ending up being about $$. Like the USA only talking about how much the movie made, not what it was about, good, bad or boring. But you know this. Anyway, got your essay on Thek in the big book. Hope England is more fun.

Water Damage, Aug 2010

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 of my art collection, layered against every surface like sedimentary rock. I instantly surveyed the damage and assessed a few pieces partially submerged in water and a further two framed works directly under the flow that had originated from the ceiling. Once the immediate shock wore off, and that took some getting used to, I had to leap to action. First up were the two paper works, which were covered in water—though the extent of how much had penetrated the frames was still unclear. Next, an art chair crafted in wood that had already suffered visible buckling and varnish lifting, which had to be dragged from the deluge. More difficult to formulate rescue tactics for was a site-specific tree house installation, the scale of the real thing, attached to the ceiling and floor; had it been alive it would have thrived in such soggy circumstances. But it wasn’t and in fact was constructed in papier-mâché and appeared about to revert to that state.


The tree was literally too much for me to process, so utterly overwhelming, I left it for a time. I grabbed the two frames and proceeded to deconstruct them to determine the level of damp inside. In the corner of one drawing was a little pool like a child’s toy tilted from side to side to observe liquid flow. That the frame had been made 20 years ago was apparent by the series of endless little metal spikes, installed one by one, around the entire perimeter of the frame that amounted to a 20-minute extraction process alone. After both works were safely out of the frames they appeared fine and unscathed until a closer look revealed that both boards that the drawings were mounted to were indeed soaked. This brought on a terrible choice—i.e. to wait for a conservator to arrive later in the day (and risk suffering further moisture damage) or attempt to pull the works off their delicate hinges without tearing the drawings themselves. Last time I was faced with a similar dilemma I was unpacking a Polke on paper that had a piece of tape inadvertently affixed to the face of the paint. I ever so delicately and carefully removed the tape and the result was not pretty. The piece of tape with the bit of painting that lifted off had to be rushed to a conservator like a severed finger in a matchbox. Damn, conservators are good and convincing: the unsung heroes of the art world. In this case I managed to safely remove all the hinges and the drawings were fine.


Next up the looming tree house. Funny as my wife and I had been arguing of late that the tree should go into storage as it so thoroughly dominated the room, but I have been steadfastly resistant to de-installation. Either my wife precariously crawled out onto the roof to stuff waste into the gutter pipes or fate and nature are strangely compliant to her ways like everyone else seems to be. I managed to prune all the branches off the tree, which freed up the tree house portion to be separated from the trunk, thus enabling the base to be removed from the lake that had accumulated beneath. After an hour or so of terror, the worst was averted along with an insurance claim. In the end, no one can ever really own art, we are just temporary custodians charged with safekeeping, but beware: water is a constant threat and the scourge of art. And loaning to museums.

MBT Shoes: My Boring Trainers. MODERN Magazine, Fall 2010

MBT Shoes on work by Arik Levy

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 taller. Imagine that! All without invasive surgery—please can you sign me up? Now! At my age, you can’t afford to dismiss every new-fangled, seemingly spurious claim. Besides, everyone is entitled to an opinion…to hope.


What I refer to are MBT shoes, the Swiss creation (never known for their maverick fashion sense) for power walking aficionados. The company web site, referred to above, employs the terminology “the anti-shoe”, a characterization more accurate than imaginable. These must be the ugliest thing for feet since 1970’s style orthopedic shoes were introduced to give credence to the idea that nothing good for you could taste, look or feel good. Not in the deepest recesses in Florida would these shoes fit in. But somehow for me, they work.


OK, I admit it, to engage in the process of power walking at full tilt in MBT’s, which resemble rubber rocking chairs, ends up recalling Sally Fields having a psychotic episode in the film Sybill or a goose-stepping SS soldier in a Mel Brooks movie. Needless to say, my kids are not amused. Especially when I team them up with a suit. But rolling on MBT’s is like floating on marshmallows, with an accompanying feeling of detachment; you can close your eyes and drift. I walk so much now I feel Socratic, I even coined a term: Walkism, to indicate the peripatetic process of giving up driving and running in pursuit of a different mental space, where time is slowed and thought expanded (other than when simultaneously Blackberry-ing).


But as we know, there is no free lunch, and MBT’s assault on fashion is not the only downside. If you check Internet forums, you would think wearing these ortho-sneakers is the worst thing since the plague health-wise. Also they are so towering, falling off them is a constant threat; but at the least, I can now commiserate with my wife’s 10-inchers. Another existential dilemma is that it induces what feels like paranoia, but with cause, as people from hooligans to innocent kids cannot help but incessantly mock your determined gait rocking to and fro while lurching down the street like a lunatic. At times it’s beyond disconcerting, feeling like the dupe of a mime in a public square every corner.


In the end, even if it’s a mere placebo, it’s enough, as I find it the only exercise (mostly) anxiety free. They even have an MBT standalone boutique in Harrods, which must mean something? And whether or not my buttocks gets further toned or even firmed for that matter, since reading the myriad MBT claims, I notice most men don’t seem to have an ass. And, for an avowed car fan, walking so much is the closest I've come to green.

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 of activity from art transactions to hyper-networking, the boom is back. The fair layout reflects a hierarchy of more established, blue chip art on the ground floor and contemporary on the second. Nowadays, I would rather wait till it drops down a floor so there's more wheat, less chaff-its worth the extra hay.


Some of best art in Basel was the graffiti seen through the train window entering town. Seriously, the overall quality of material on display was staggering and would rival the best international institutions. The art market is like a fast train but with no destination. Can it sustain itself? Save for nuclear Armageddon, I fear to say it will, look for continued strong, record-breaking, headline making, art activity in the near future.


There should be a World Cup for hustling invites and passes at fairs. One morning after prodigious Basel party-hopping, I sent my suit to the cleaners and housekeeping returned with my passport, cash, and a large taxi receipt from Basel to Zurich. Rough night; no one ever said the art world was for the feint of heart.


Museums are akin to books, fairs more like magazines: a quick fix for those with short attention spans and a need for immediate gratification. For a while, a 30% discount on art was the new 10%; now, 10% is the new 20%. The walls they were a changing, with passing time the fair replicates itself in new form like a snake shedding it’s skin, as inventory is shifted when shifted and constantly hung anew.


After hours up and down the aisles I was left with a hammering pain in my toe more than any recollection of specific art works—now I know why I had observed so many on crutches. I never realized how anal the Swiss are until being scolded for public phoning on various occasions by locals who practically made citizens arrests. Also, while arguing with hotel security about entering a crowded bar, 15 simultaneously walked past. But the Jean Michel Basquiat retrospective at the Beyeler Foundation...what a site to behold, warranting the astronomical figures the paintings are now fetching. And going some length to explain their ubiquitousness at the fair. When an artist achieves a big museum retrospective or makes an unusually high number at auction, the works flood from the woodwork into the booths and public sales.


Another “new” 9-foot-wide Damien Hirst jewel- cabinet, entitled “Memories of Love,” sold at Basel for $3.5m. The price reflected a 50% decline from an exact work sold at the £111.5m Sotheby’s Sept 08 sale: “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever”, the day my headline would have read: “Merrill sold, Lehman fold”. In stocks, such market dumping is known as churn and burn, with Hirst, it should be known as churn and earn.


In 2008 I curated an exhibit with Pritzker Prize winning Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid at Sonnabend Gallery in New York upon which NY Times critic Ken Johnson reflected: “No architect has ever made good art and this is no exception.” Such sweeping generalization is at best dumb and worst dangerous. I wonder if he’s ever bothered to view a Le Corbousier painting. I helped to facilitate another Zaha Hadid show at Gmurzynska Gallery in Zurich during the fair (which fact seems to have eluded the gallery) that is an installation incorporating Constructivist masterworks by Malevich, Rodchenko, and Lissitzsky and Hadid herself. The installation uses the Public Square and façade of the building as a framing device transforming what originated as a 2D rendering into a walk-in line drawing with magical effect. Ken Johnson could cure his myopia if the NYT would splurge on a trip to Zurich sometime before the exhibit ends in September. Architecture as art is an up and coming new collecting category located between design and sculpture and a great new way to domesticate progressive architecture in a home setting. Look for values to progressively rise.

"From Long Island to London: A Memoir in 1000 Words" from A Hedonist's Guide to the Art World, edited by Laura Jones

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 exhibited his own work at various galleries including the Sandra Gering Gallery in NYC and International 3 in Manchester. He is now open to suggestions. 


From Long Island to London: A Memoir in Art in 1000 Words (More or Less) 
By Kenny Schachter

I was born a middle class fat kid in Long Island, nearly catatonic due to a heavy-handed father and the early death of my mother. Cosseted in the suburbs, there was little in the way of cultural titillation other than reading car and sports magazines and collaging the contents onto my very 1970s, very cork walls.

Procrastinating from a law exam, I hesitantly visited the estate sale of Andy Warhol, which opened my eyes to the commercial side of art; prior to that, and because I had never before stepped into a commercial gallery, I naively thought paintings travelled non-stop from the studio to the museum. When I finally did enter the sterile white walls of a gallery, I was spontaneously smitten (and horrified), took an unsecured loan to acquire a Cy Twombly print, and soon began dealing in works on paper like an idiot savant.

Cognizant that there existed a gaping hole in the breadth of my art-historical knowledge, (anyone can become expert in post-war art in six months if they bother to read), I conned my way into a teaching position at the New School for Social Research rather than suffer another course as a student. After taking an adjunct position on probation, I wormed my way into teaching and lecturing - from New York University, Columbia and Rhode Island School of Design, to the Royal College of Art and Manchester University.

Self-taught about the past, I started curating hit and run exhibits of non-affiliated emerging artists, while also showing my own art and writing. Why not? In effect I had become a middle class, Jewish, outsider artist from Long Island.

Some of the people I exhibited prior to their gallery affiliation were Cecily Brown, Fred Tomaselli, Rachel Harrison, Wade Guyton, Andrea Zittel and Janine Antoni. My calling had become known, albeit as a late bloomer, not having entered a gallery until I was 28. In addition to supporting the work of younger artists, I worked with underappreciated and undervalued artists like Vito Acconci and Paul Thek. It has always struck me as odd that so much energy is spent supporting and writing about artists like Emin, Hirst, and Taylor-Wood who already have a massive network of support. So rather than fret too much, I use them (along with the likes of Jay Jopling and other media figures) as grist for my own send-up art pieces.

Though I swore I’d never open a gallery - I was curating but never much liked the process of selling (not the best mindset for a dealer) - I commissioned conceptualist-turned-designer Acconci to create his first built interior. Though the design was meant to be temporary it was comprised of thousands of pounds of steel, so when I determined to move to the UK, I was faced with a dilemma: store the entire gallery in perpetuity or find a way to flog the contents of the space. In the end, I auctioned the gallery including the front door, desks and walls at a design sale at Phillips. It seems there is always a way round a problem.

Being virtually the only collector of the late artist Paul Thek for years, I recently collaborated on an exhibit of his work at the Reina Sofia Museum in Spain and a 500 page text with MIT Press, the only in English prior to upcoming Whitney and LA County Museum exhibits in 2010-11. The art world is finally taking notice 22 years after his death, so better late than never.

Despite a violent mugging at knifepoint while sitting at an exhibit I’d organized entitled I Hate New York in a temporary space in Shoreditch, I moved to the UK in 2004. The move to London might have been instigated by a midlife crisis, but I prefer to tell myself it was a mix of complacency, boredom with the homogeneity of New York, and some desire for adventure that drove me to jump ship.

I bought a site on Hoxton Square with a view to developing it with Zaha Hadid, prior to her winning the Pritzker Prize. Despite being one of the world’s most progressive thinkers and architects, I felt that she was largely ignored in the country she had lived and worked in for 35 years. Since then, I have organised countless exhibits and projects with Zaha from a show at Sonnabend Gallery to commissioning her design of a car. I then achieved planning permission to erect her first building in London to coincide with the 2012 Olympic Swimming Pavilion, although Zaha remains skeptical I can pull it off in this day and age of tightened credit markets. We live in hope.

In today’s fungible world, geography is less a factor in our lives then ever before; all we need are our Apples and Blackberries and we are good to go. But there are some subtle differences between London and New York: under the veil of civility, Brits are a fairly violent lot (football matches often being an excuse for a good brawl); the health care system in the UK (largely due to a distinct lack of hygiene) is more than a bit primitive, and the complexity of getting around town is mind boggling. I need a Sat Nav just to get to the newsagents at the end of my street; as for going to a handful of galleries, well that can take days.

But since moving, I have not missed New York for a day, though some things are hard to shake, namely my Long Island accent, which my kids will surely never let me forget.

I have participated in and been thrown out of art fairs due to both my outspokenness and my flouting of the capricious fair rules. I once facilitated an intervention by Vito Acconci in the Basel art fair that was deemed to cut off the circulation down the aisles. They threw me out. I then filled a booth at the Armory Show in New York with secondary market offerings. The Armory specifically precludes such material (or used to anyway). Again, I was thrown out.

As for the Frieze art fair in London, they never invited me to visit, never mind to have a stand. I suppose the series of articles I wrote highlighting the pretentiousness of the proprietors didn’t help much. The closest I got to joining was when I intercepted a VIP invite that was meant for a former inhabitant of my house, that I happen to know well. But let’s move on.

Despite the hiccoughs, I am still at it. By no foresight on my part, art became bigger than the big business that I initially ran away from. I went from dealing in the art of the young unknowns - a lot like selling t-shirts in a market stall – to dealing in Monet, Van Gogh and Picasso. A shift I could never have dreamed of in the beginning. Working with artists, I have nearly been stabbed to death, been shot at with a gun loaded with blanks (at the time I didn’t know if the fluid on my lap was blood, urine or Margarita - thankfully it was the latter) - and repeatedly had my life threatened by disgruntled emerging artists. Hence my appreciation of artists no longer breathing: they’re much easier to deal with than the ones that still have a detectable pulse.

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 art soars by night. But as suspected, art made new records after less than ten lots into the first sales—that would be the $106m Picasso if you have been buried in volcanic ash. To think art has reached parity with office buildings; but, better than shares, hedge funds, Goldman Sachs(!), currencies, Greece, Portugal, Spain (and UK?), where else can you achieve short term returns of 20, 30, 40%+ in today's markets?


The forecast is for a long-term boom in classical art, as well as recognized, signature works by contemporary practitioners. The New York Times stated re the contemporary sales: "Americans dominated the buying, in contrast with last week’s sales of Impressionist and modern art, where Europeans, Asians and Middle Easterners were the big spenders." Wait till the European, Asian and Middle Easterner laggards catch on to contemporary... Tomorrow’s next hedge fund star: the art manager.


Strangely, there are many day to day art professionals that bemoan the historic figures attained by art, says one: “…art that sell(s) at auction die two deaths: We do not see them again for decades, and cannot think of them without also thinking of money.” The first is the result of the free market system (consider the alternatives) and the latter the result of the free market system (alas, its all vanity). Why the constant pooh poohing about the big bucks Picasso? Why can't everyone coexist, the trophy hunters and enthusiasts in trenches? There is certainly a trickle down as one segment begets the other. But hey, guess what: we can all relax! In effect the $106m pays all our art world salaries. Even the $8m paid for young Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's proboscis sticking out of an actual hole in the floor; pretty much anything will go nowadays.