The hottest commodity at Art Basel in 2025 was neither canvas nor bronze, but rather these idiotic collectibles that have netted Pop Mart’s founder untold billions. The dolls are described as naughty little monsters, which brings a certain Artnet writer to mind, but I can’t put my finger on it. Photos by Kenny Schachter, unless noted.
I felt foreboding prior to my departure from New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport for the Paul Thek exhibition that I curated at Thomas Dane Gallery in London (through August 2) and to attend the 56th edition of Art Basel in Switzerland. This was because I measure what remains of my life in how many Basels I will attend (cogently), as pathetic as that sounds, and also because of the woeful lack of air traffic controllers in the U.S., following dangerous cutbacks to the Federal Aviation Administration. Also, we had a near crash landing after an emergency return to Newark on my first attempt to get to London.
I won’t burden you emotionally by repeating myself, after amply covering this harrowing experience on various social media platforms, but please listen to the song I wrote about the incident that is included in this article. If I didn’t spend a chunk of my waking hours embarrassing myself and, more joyfully, my kids, I wouldn’t be me.
My rocky, unsettling flight is reflective of the state of the world and the (relatively) minuscule universe that constitutes the art economy. On the ground in Switzerland, I heard repeated stories of U.S. residents who didn’t bother attending Basel for fear of not being allowed to return to the States, as well as non-citizens concerned about not getting through customs and being sent directly back home. That, I admit, I hadn’t heard before.
These days, the only news is “breaking news,” and the art world equivalent is an article, one of many on the subject, by my friend and colleague Melanie Gerlis for the Times of London: “Going, going, gone: have millennials killed the art market? Thirty years of boom may be turning to bust, with big beasts failing to sell at auction, buyers spooked by Trump’s tariffs and a new generation of collectors who don’t want what’s on sale.”
My absolute Art Basel highlight was Mary Lovelace O’Neal, 83 years old and still firing away on all cylinders in the studio—I should be so lucky—featured at Jenkins Johnson, of San Francisco and New York.
One pornographically over-estimated Giacometti goes unsold at auction, consigned by the not-very-savvy offspring of a renowned collector—Stefan Soloviev and Sheldon Solow, respectively—and the sky is falling. It’s not. Here’s my breaking news: There are too many Chicken Littles, aka art journalists, proclaiming the falling of the skies of the market. Yes, a few nuts have indeed dropped, but it’s a hiccup (or temporary convulsion, whatever) in the bigger scheme of things. Chickens have been an unanticipated theme for me this summer, for some odd reason (read on).
Have you ever noticed that none of these prognosticators (including the above and below) ever have skin in the game of making, buying, or selling art? Apologies, but that’s a fatal flaw to understanding the mechanics of culture creation, dissemination, and the hoarder mentality. There are a zillion reasons why people desire to possess stuff: social cachet, spec-u-lecting, filling emotional voids, or a substitute for sex, as Gerlis reported June 14 in the Financial Times—”Sex, love or money? What art collecting is about.”
The elixir of youth? Sit beside those (a little) older. In these cases geniuses Larry Poons and Michelangelo Pistoletto, both on hand for this year’s iteration of Art Basel.
Or bad toilet training, which she politely left out—which is exactly what Herr Sigmund (Freud) ascribed voracious accumulation to (entirely true) in his Interpretation of Dreams. I call it endemic to the human condition, or a virus. However you want to characterize it, Mera Rubell summed it up to me as: “Art is what young people need, what old people need, what the world needs—to live.”
Mera had to go and ruin the moment by topping off her sentiments with: “Especially in the face of rampant technological advancement.” Oh Mera, why, oh why, can’t you simply open your mind, like Dakis Joannou, the celebrated Greek Cypriot collector whom I collaborated with on an NFT a few years ago when he was in his early 80s (he’s now 86)?
To be perfectly clear, as an artist/writer/lecturer/curator/collector and occasional seller—don’t miss “Hoarder 6,” the latest in my ongoing series of online auctions and exhibits, July 8–17, at Phillips New York—I am neither oblivious nor immune to the effects of a deep correction. Acutely so. But I won’t tire of repeating that since art came off the cave wall, it’s been rapaciously collected, and will continue to be, save some nuclear conflagration; which, I shudder to think, is not entirely inconceivable today.
Nicolas Galley, the director of the executive masters program in art market studies at the University of Zurich, where I have been a lecturer since the program’s inception in 2013 (and on whose advisory board I sit), told me: “We had the largest class ever in 2021–23. Indeed, 2023–25 has been a smaller class, yet 2025–27 looks quite standard and the application process is still open.” Guess what? Subsequent generations of students will live to be bored to tears by me in Zurich and elsewhere.
To paraphrase Gerlis (and Marc Spiegler, who’s quoted in the article), when they’re not on their phones, young people are more interested in paying for experiences like hotel stays and art-themed “fancy dress parties” than acquiring assets. With due respect to all the above, I don’t even know what the fuck an “art experience” is, let alone where to find one. If such a thing as fancy dress art bacchanalias exist, I’ve never heard about them, been invited to one, or met a person that has (or wanted to). In any event, experiences don’t transpire at the zero-sum expense of coveting and owning art.
Two of my kids in their 20s make art professionally, and they sell no small amount more than I do. And their youthful art dealers are flourishing and expanding as I type. Twenty-nine-year-old Adrian exhibits at Amanita, run by a fistful of folks in their 20s, with two spaces in New York and—I can announce—another in the works in Rome (plus a bar in New York opening shortly, wallpapered with Adrian’s creations). Sage, 22, is showing in a group show that opens on June 27 at the New York branch of Long Story Short, which has additional locations in Los Angeles and Paris.
You couldn’t state it more succinctly than Sharon Merzbacher (all of 30, ugh), a Swiss independent consultant and collector who happens to be the granddaughter of Werner Merzbacher (1928-2024), the legendary collector who lived up to his ears in masterpieces—hung cheek by jowl, stacked and piled to the ceiling—in his exceedingly modest Zurich home, which I adored visiting:
I have the sense that there is a lot of interest from people in their late 20s and 30s looking to buy art. They are curious to meet artists, understand the value of artworks, as well as look for experiences introducing them to the art world—be this through artist-attended dinners or studio visits. I have seen that that engagement and education in intimate settings has led them to buy.
When I queried 27-year-old crypto investor and engineer Dean Eigenmann, based in Zurich, about his collecting interests on social media (where else?) he replied: “Yo was afk.” Umm, to which I responded, “Yo, wtf does that mean?” “Away from keyboard,” I learned. I may have to start employing that myself, though I rarely stray from mine. Turns out he purchased an unwieldy Lukas Heerich sculpture from Berlin’s Max Goelitz gallery at the Liste fair in Basel, which I admittedly skipped, as the 2024 iteration was so anemic. Said Eigenmann on collecting:
People are always gonna buy art, but the market should become more accommodating to newer buyers. But I think generally I’m super optimistic about the art world. There’s amazing contemporary works being made when you know where to look, and a lot of it tends to be from smaller up-and-coming artists and galleries.
Henri Gisler, 33-year-old scion of Victor, owner of Zurich’s Mai 36 Gallery, reported selling to plenty of young people, 25 and up, especially in Asia. Henri said that collecting art is more popular now, but then hedged: “It’s not easy, but it’s never been!” Henri likened art world conservatism to the German turn of phrase Schwellenangst, which roughly translates to the fear of crossing the passageway between rooms.
The art world is mind-numbingly change-resistant to an extent I haven’t witnessed, after a wildly varied series of disparate career stretches—admittedly all equally unprofessional spells—in law, finance, fashion (as to why that was obviously doomed from the get-go, keep it to yourself), and art dealing. The art world doesn’t simply retreat from innovation (despite much lip service to nurturing new audiences), it recoils in disgust.
Undoubtedly, there are smaller galleries that would rather save face than money that are on a dangerous, fast-track trajectory toward debt and worse. I specifically know of some young dealers suffering from overly optimistic, premature expansion, but nothing will vary—it’s Darwinian attrition and has been the situation for perpetuity.
Would you buy art from this guy? Johnny boy from his website. Thanks for the screengrab.
The primal impulse for greed and disingenuousness is endemic to our species to a colossal extent, which seems particularly acute in the art market. Short-term cash-grabbing schemes are rife, including this doozy that a young California-based art advisor by the name of Johnny Wolf allegedly used recently to get access to various highfliers in the market. (Whether he’d have to work so hard today is less certain.)
Deploying the name of Lady Gaga’s dogs (Google the kidnapping of the animals for some real drama) in an email address—not quite up to the level of the prosthetics that Philippe Ségalot wore to sneak into Art Basel prior to its opening, back in the quaint time when it was necessary to physically see what you wanted—Wolf allegedly convinced artist Emma Webster and/or her galleries to sell him a work that he immediately flipped to another flipper that ended up withheld at an auction house when she got wind of it.
I DMed Wolf for comment, to which he replied: “ohhh!! fun! I love this one. Yes, it scored me a Warhol flowers”—the Webster he neglected to mention—“I need another one btw, do you have one? Or maybe a Lenz Geerk?” You’ve been forewarned, Lenz. Webster did not respond to a request for comment, and the collector who bought the painting from Johnny and consigned it to an Asian auction asked to remain anonymous.
On a side note, Eva Presenhuber staged a museum-level, encyclopedic exhibition of early Franz West works in Zurich concurrently with the fair. When I tried to secure a catalogue (a must-have item), she wouldn’t let it out of her hands without the 30 CHF I didn’t have. Pointing to noted Swiss collector Michael Ringier seated in her office, she retorted, “I would have given it to you, but you haven’t done any business with me like he has!” That lack of courtesy must be some form or another of an economic indicator. When I bumped into Presenhuber at a lunch the following day, she didn’t relent. I thought I’d have to issue a promissory note.
The best part of any fair is what happens outside the main tent. You simply need to scratch beneath the surface, or simply visit the stellar museum exhibition, like the once-in-a-lifetime “Medardo Rosso: Inventing Modern Sculpture,” among the best shows I’ve ever seen, at the Kunstmuseum Basel, for which I loaned a Paul Thek sculpture. (It originated at the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig in Vienna.)
I insist you take a sojourn to Country SALTS, the idyllic rural farm/exhibition space founded by independent curator Samuel Leuenberger that also features the impressive studio of his partner, Claudia Comte.
There was also the second iteration of the ArtMeta Digital Art Fair, founded by Roger Haas, who’s from a well-known Swiss art logistics family, and Georg Bak, a noted historian on the art form, plenty of which was on hand. I was especially drawn to the early code-based conceptual works on paper by Jean-Claude Marquette (b.1946) at RCM Gallery in Paris. Basel, if you’re listening, buy this digital art fair pronto—it’s profoundly of its time (I exhibited in it and spoke on a panel). Much has been written on Basel Social Club, which usurped the spirit and energy previously found at Liste
A John Armleder installation at Country SALTS, Samuel Leuenberger’s farm space not too far outside of Basel. At some point in your art life, I insist you make the pilgrimage.
Samuel Leuenberger, curator of Art Basel’s Parcours, the outdoor sculpture initiative of the fair, from 2016 to 2023, launched the alternative space SALTS in 2009 in his dad’s former slaughtering house in Basel, and augmented it in 2020 with Country SALTS, on the picturesque, fully functioning farm outside the city that serves as his home (and the studio of his partner artist, Claudia Comte). At some point, promise me that you’ll don your overalls and make it there. It’s wonderful and revelatory, as is the indomitable proprietor, Samuel.
Me and my chicken friends—pretty much my only ones—at Jimmy Connelly’s family flat in London before Basel. I wonder if I can sneak a few to my premises in New York City?
Leuenberger’s chicken compound, designed by artist Sandra Knecht, was particularly relevant to me, as I’m in the midst of a two-part exhibition featuring live fowls. The first was in London last month with artist Jimmy Connelly and his family, and the next is at Old Friends Gallery in Chicago on August 14—I’ll leave that to another occasion to explain.
Based on Rudolf Stingel’s expensive gold-plated casts from pieces of insulation material that museum visitors scratched into, my chicken versions are made with the assistance of my little feathered friends, pecking into canvases plastered with their foodstuff.
Before proceedings began, dealer Andrew Fabricant (who’s flying solo, as I covered in a previous column) proved impressively prescient when he told me this:
Avoiding Basel-Basel this year. Collectors are a no show—only fucking advisors—and everyone sends out their lists three weeks in advance. It’s like 3rd-party guarantees only worse. The (traditional art fair) model is dying—just like the auction houses and big box galleries… It’s all become a pantomime and a cabaret, hasn’t it? Time to reassess this miasma of shit that the “art world” has become…
That said, a group of prominent European and Asian collectors did step into the void to make up for the lack of an American presence on the ground.
From my upcoming coffee table book featuring a series of idiots at art fairs that are compelled to obscure the joy of looking at art with their naked eyes. Victims of one sort or another.
Now some brief thoughts on the actual fair, during which two of my overriding goals were not to get run over by the ubiquitous trams while glued to Maps, and not to go bankrupt spending money that I don’t have. (It doesn’t take as much as a handshake to secure a purchase in what is the only commercial context where just a nod will suffice to consummate a deal.) Fairs are, and will always be, bell curves, but the bell is getting markedly smaller these days, and this year was no exception.
Paul Thek’s Self Portrait as Hot Potato, from the collection of my esteemed recently departed friend, Ted Bonin. Not affording it didn’t stop me from securing a long-duration layaway plan from Mai 36 gallery days in advance of the fair, and I saved them the cost of shipping in the process.
I bought works on paper by Paul Thek at Mai 36 in Zurich before I so much as got on the train to Basel and a piece by Miriam Cahn from Meyer Riegger, which has four outposts in Germany, Switzerland, and Korea. Oh yeah, and Pace sold a 1960s work by Thek at the fair to a major U.S. museum for a staggering sum (in the millions), sad considering that the artist died destitute with only a single drawing in a U.S. institution.
The Miriam Cahn work I purchased at the fair from the Meyer Riegger gallery—a friend recounted how, after a two-hour drive, the (at times belligerent) 75-year-old Swiss artist turned her canvases against the wall (and out of view) after scheduling the visit with him. I liked her more after he told me..
About admittedly shifting collecting habits and how flawed the model of fairs are, the only objects that flew out the door were Labubus, a series of 100 limited-edition dolls sold from the Art Basel Shop for 200 CHF (about $245) each and immediately re-traded for up to $5,000 each. The stupid toys were created by Hong Kong-born, Belgium-based, 53-year-old artist Kasing Lung in 2015. The company that sells them, Pop Mart, went public in Hong Kong in 2020, and its founder is worth more than $17 billion. Labubus are described as mischievous but kind-hearted monsters—they remind me of someone, hmm…
Sure their habits are changing, but collectors have not stopped since art came off the cave walls, and they’re not about to—they’re as resilient as New York City cockroaches.
Regarding the upcoming fall season, if we get past the specter of looming world war, I was told by a seasoned auction executive last week:
We have good pipeline for Fall forwards. But we have a real issue NOW with a consignment freeze, it’s next to impossible to secure property. Come Fall I think the floodgates will open and there will be too much, and consecutive sales, not sure of the order, between London, Paris, and Hong Kong, then New York in mid-November. It will be just way too much. We need to OPEC our sales! Cut the oil output! So yeah, I see difficulty in the short-term. But (Fall) rebound in terms of volume but not prices. I’m not saying prices will recover but volume and choice will
French Fluxus artist Robert Filliou said, “Art is what makes life more interesting than life.” With today’s tumult, I’m not sure anymore. Nevertheless, it’s all that distinguishes us a species, a line I also repeat too much, after reading that Duchamp said it. Art collectors are another kind of genus, as resilient as New York City cockroaches. So, here’s my concluding proclamation: Hear ye, hear ye, art ain’t going anywhere, or buyers for that matter. Fingers crossed.