Anyone willing to loan me an empty parcel of choice NYC real estate—and a tent? I picked up this pose from Mr. Koons. Photo: Kenny Schachter
With a new art season upon us, I’ll briefly (fear not) parse the glut of ink already spilt on high-profile gallery closures and restructurings of last season, predict what might lie ahead, and propose a few mitigating measures.
First, despite all the hoo-ha, a significant number of existing galleries opened new spaces, counterbalanced by a smaller percentage of closures, according to the 2026 Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report.
Price pressures in the ultra-contemporary sector (for lack of a better term) have been pervasive and persistent and show no signs of abating. The joy of being an old emerging artist nowadays. Rest assured, nearly 70,000 years after the onset of cave paintings, art remains as coveted as the moment it was extricated from those walls. Nevertheless, plagued by centuries of sameness, the stale market model is overdue for change.
Because of the onslaught of suffocating, hyper-inflated rents and staggering increases in logistical expenses—try renting an apartment in New York, where even the smallest, viewless warren can spark a bidding war above the asking price—more dealers are operating without permanent spaces; 14 percent in total, according to the Basel/UBS report, up six percentage points from the previous report. This manifests itself in a retrenchment to appointment-only offices, domestic contexts, digital strategies, and art agencies (a hybrid breed of artist representation). But don’t get me wrong: Art fairs, auctions, and galleries—mega, medium, and minuscule—aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
After numerous hacks, I was nearly crushed by the pervasiveness of crypto crime but drastic times call for drastic actions, so I’m considering jumping back into the game (though games are meant to be fun). Haters are going to hate, granted. Photo: Kenny Schachter
A lot has been written about art’s diminishing audience and prospects for consumption, even as the greatest wealth transfer in history unfolds. (But then again, when have people not died and bequeathed art, money, and homes in which to stash it?) I dismiss a chunk of this as part and parcel of the endlessly expanding demand for near hysterical, attention-grabbing clickbait. Oh, and about those boomers off-loading all that cash and art: May I ask why none of it has been sent my way?
Much can be gleaned from the paradigm shifts in defense strategies that employ small-scale technologies on the tragic frontlines in Ukraine and throughout the Middle East, where low-cost drones and mines continue to enervate superpowers. Precision surgical incursions, as opposed to the legacy of behemoth armaments that criminally consumed billions in resources—and continue to do so unabated—have delivered sobering slaps in the faces of Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, and Xi (not to mention others).
Regarding parallels to the art world, what better place to look than back to the history of do-it-yourself ventures, social-media initiatives, and a second coming of NFTs. (There, I said it—you can wipe the scorn and derision from your mouths.) Let’s begin at the beginning. Between the late 15th century and the early 16th, Albrecht Dürer’s mother, Barbara; his wife, Agnes; and his sister were deployed by the artist to sell prints from his hometown of Nuremberg as well as in regional markets and fairs (yes, even then) on a commission basis.
William Hogarth, whose moralizing series of prints I consider a precursor of conceptualism, organized his own auctions beginning in 1745, displeased with the fact the prints were his most noted and valued works. Hogarth even designed a registration ticket for prospective bidders featuring a satirical image, The Battle of the Pictures, where his art was under assault by more staid fare—a takedown of critics, collectors and auctioneers alike. Mistrustful of commercial auctions, Hogarth launched another auction event, bypassing the houses altogether. Sadly, neither was remunerative for the artist, and they ultimately harmed the market for his oils.
My own version of Hogarth’s Battle of the Pictures and soon to be the invitation for the Hoarder 7 auction. Stay tuned… Photo: Kenny Schachter
Hogarth’s auctions were an inspiration for my ongoing Hoarder series of no-reserve sales; stay tuned, the seventh iteration is coming soon. More often than not, my auctions don’t perform any better than Hogarth’s, but what choice have I? Plainly and simply, I need these liquidity events. The conservatism of the art market is as tired as I am from thinking about all this—and writing about it—instead of celebrating Labor Day weekend.
Of all people, it was Gustave Courbet who established the archetype for rogue artist interventions beginning in 1855, erecting his own freestanding architectural structures to stage independent exhibitions of his paintings. Courbet’s first scheme was undertaken after an enormous Julian Schnabel-scale work was rejected by the official jury under the direction of Napoleon III, who was initiating the world’s fair.
Financing to erect the standalone wooden halls contiguous to the official exhibitions—and down the block from a similar effort by Édouard Manet a decade later—came from a wealthy patron of Courbet’s. Accompanying the initial undertaking, comprised of 40 paintings, the artist drafted a manifesto that launched Realism as an art movement. Not only did Courbet repeat the grand gesture in 1867, but the second outing featured 140 works in an even larger pavilion.
Courbet created a template for subsequent generations (including Manet and what came to be the Impressionists) for taking matters into your own hands and bootstrapping a career. Take note, disgruntled artists. Without the deep-pocketed patronage enjoyed by Courbet, Manet (another maverick) resorted to the next best thing: He borrowed money from his mother, Eugénie-Désirée Manet, signing a promissory note in 1866 to finance a renegade gallery he could call his very own.
A 2018 video work revisited, referencing Hogarth’s Battle of the Pictures, back when artists like Wool, Warhol, and Prince et al had better markets! Video: Kenny Schachter
Manet’s foray into real estate development showcased 50 canvases and was a financial debacle, publicly panned and largely ignored. Not a single work sold. I can imagine his mom was none too pleased by the dismal upshot, nor amused by the unpaid debt.
Granted, building a gallery from whole cloth is prohibitive—more so than ever—but the migration of retail trade from bricks and mortar to e-commerce has resulted in a surfeit of empty storefronts ripe for the picking. Throughout the 1990s, I traded art for space, and I’m sure there are landlords aplenty still amenable to similar deals.
Looking past the crime and greed that snuffed out the NFT craze as swiftly as it birthed Beeple and too many others to mention (without upchucking my breakfast), many legitimate artists were galvanized to circumvent the futile search for gallery representation and make a living off their art for the first time in their lives. I know this for a fact, as literally hundreds of them got in touch and told me so.
Besides, Jerry Saltz and I raised a bundle for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention by releasing one of our own. Hold your noses—I am considering dipping my toes back into the fray. Why not? Yes, I have been repeatedly hacked—as a friend said, when you’re a target, you get shot—but who hasn’t had their credit card number misappropriated, or their life savings embezzled by a (then) close friend? (The Great Art Fraud is a fun watch, at my expense, next time you’re in the U.K.)
On the subject of legal woes (fodder for an ongoing column?), I have long been an advocate of the pivotal, groundbreaking conceptualist Vito Acconci, whose wide-ranging output spanned performance, video, sculpture, installation, design, and ultimately architecture. Vito and I did a book together, he designed a project space for me in the West Village (2002–04), and I curated many shows for him over the years.
You can’t count on others, like Napoleon III, to get the job done, sometimes you gotta take things into your own hands to show your own art, like the OG do-it-yourself effort of Gustave Courbet. Credited to unknown photographer.
Like Paul Thek, but much worse, Vito suffered at the hands of a capricious market for relentlessly flitting between mediums and modalities of creative output. Vito’s legacy has dissipated by the day since his death in 2017, culminating with his landlord seizing the contents of his estate after the accrual of rent arrears over an extended period of years. Art, architecture, and archives were sold off after the landlord prevailed in his legal action that culminated in a $410,000 judgment against the estate.
I can now reveal that the contents of the Acconci studio—dozens of filing cabinets of vintage writings and photos, framed photo-text works, drawings, sculptures, and architectural models—have been purchased outright by Michael Hue Williams, a former London gallery owner who now operates a 50-acre sculpture park and gallery on premises in the Oxfordshire countryside.
Funnily enough (in an ironic sort of art world way), Hue Williams had his own scrape with insolvency in 2009, when his gallery, Albion, filed for the U.K. equivalent of bankruptcy before voluntarily liquidating in 2013. Hue Williams himself sued artist James Turrell to compel the production of works; the lawsuit was settled, but do me a favor and read about it yourself—believe me, you won’t be disappointed you did.
The ongoing rash of art heists has continued throughout the summer, even becoming violent in a worrisome turn of events. As recently as this week, thieves snatched four Renoirs from a museum in the French Riviera on loan from the famed Musée d’Orsay in Paris, making off with two after police gave chase. I can understand the pilfering of gold and jewels, but mediocre, minor Impressionist paintings? The burglars must be far better at flogging art than I ever was. Perhaps they’d be interested in assisting during my next Hoarder auction.
Could gallery invasions be next? I’m actually surprised commercial enterprises haven’t been affected by the crime wave, as the perpetrators would encounter far less stringent security and safety precautions. Though that hasn’t proved an impediment with institutions to date, they could at least avoid admission fees.
Hogarth’s dual purpose engraving (entitled Battle of the Pictures, 1745) that also functioned as an invitation to bid at his self-initiated art auction, the precursor to my ongoing Hoarder sales—number 7 in the series coming soon! Photo: Public domain, courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art
I was sorry to hear of the passing of 97-year-old Yayoi Kusama. Though bedridden much of the past decade and shielded from acquaintances and the public, Kusama apparently died brush in hand, preparing for an upcoming show at David Zwirner with some of her final works. The dealer has proposed that her last decade may have been “the most extraordinary and successful” of her career. The spectacle of the announcement when the artist had barely been laid to rest brings to mind the late paintings of de Kooning in the throes of battling Alzheimer’s. But enough said on that. For now.
Kusama had long accused artist Lucas Samaras of copying her mirror room installation in a 1966 Pace Gallery exhibit after her initial installation in 1965 in a less high-profile gallery and apparently threw herself out of a window in response. Upon first hearing of this accusation four or five years ago, I managed to contact Samaras and schedule a studio visit. To describe the full extent of the experience would entail far more words than available in this context, save to say it was among the weirdest of my 35-plus-year career.
For starters, I did a double take arriving at the residential tower on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and was directed to the 28th floor. Samaras answered the door, slight in stature with his signature biblical-length beard, clad in a simple V-neck T-shirt and nondescript pants. He led me into a small room with a row of large computer screens on a desk that I’d have mistaken for a stock trader’s command center had a few of them not been simultaneously broadcasting talent-competition reality-TV shows.
Without so much as offering a glass of water on the hot summer’s day, Samaras asked me what I did for a living. I replied that I wrote about the machinations of the art world, often taught and lectured on the subject, and made art. Without a moment’s hesitation, he deadpanned, incredulously: “Why?” Half exasperated while fighting the urge to burst out in a fit of laughter, I meekly replied: “Good question. I don’t really have an answer.” I still don’t, other than I never figured out anything much better to do.
We casually chatted as he scrolled through past artworks on the screens, before I struck up the courage to pose the Kusama question, to which Samaras responded that she lifted some early studio drawings for his version of the mirror rooms off a table in his workspace in the early to mid-1960s. Before departing, Samaras asked if I wanted to see his apartment—obviously, I jumped at the opportunity.
Entering the pitch-dark, endless labyrinth of rooms shielded from the sun and kaleidoscopic city views by a series of black sheets covering every window—and there were a lot—I encountered a retrospective’s worth of the most wondrous career-spanning self-portrait Polaroids, drawings, and objects wallpapering the entire premises, floor to ceiling. Just prior to my exit, Samaras asked if I would like to take a gander out of the window, then furtively parted an ever-so-small aperture in the sheets for me to peer out at the expansive vista.
As to the resolution of the she-said, he-said nature of the great mirror room melée, it’s ultimately irrelevant. Kusama and Samaras were profoundly prescient artists decades ahead of their time, and we are all thankfully the beneficiaries of both.
The French performance artist Orlan is proving that there’s more than one way to suffer in the name of art, and make a spectacle of yourself in the process. Her material is her own body and skin. Her medium is plastic surgery, usually performed on her on camera. Her work represents a small step for Conceptual art, and a big step for feminism–both in the backward direction.
Here’s another gem on a video from the exhibit: It had “all the charm of a Marx Brothers movie without the jokes” and “never transcends the level of a documentary, and a poor, rather boring documentary at that.” How could you not absolutely love her!
Kenny Schachter