A rainbow ring in the clouds over Art Basel Miami Beach News reports leading up to the 10th iteration of Art Basel Miami Beach were more concerned with where to find the parties rather than the art. But the insurance value of the art clocked in at $2.5 billion, so...
We are facing an unprecedented confluence of international macroeconomic conditions that have collided with the unintended result of pushing prices for rare and desirable collectibles far into the stratosphere. Never before have these forces raged with such ferocity...
VMAX JUNE 2 Why are wheels being soda blasted ? They are chromed , no cost for refurbing wheels ? That alone could add thousand or so ? What's the guarantee offered ? Dyno sheet from engine ? VMAX JUNE 2 Charged twice for dyno £880 No piston or liners listed ? ...
This is about death, cars, craft, and the power of contemporary art to suck it all in and spit it all out, or shit it out in this case. I took my wife and four boys aged 14, 13, 11 and 8 on a world-wind trip to Ghana to visit the Joseph Ashong aka Paa Joe Workshop...
We were leaving a party in Jerusalem and decided to forego the bus back to Tel Aviv and make a dash to the hotel. We got into a random taxi outside the Dung Gate (a highly memorable designation) of the old city and the driver was of Saphardic descent. My wife asked:...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
“Bright colors do better than pale colors. Horizontal canvases do better than vertical ones. Nudity sells for more than modesty, and female nudes for much more than male. A Boucher female nude sells for ten times the price of a male nude. Figurative works do better...
Kenny Schachter Nowadays, jokes involving race and religion are not funny even when they are funny and not racist. I am clearly not speaking about the joke that is galiano and james brown (uk hairdresser in this case). But here’s one nevertheless: Lewis Hamilton...
Judd Tully provided excellent HK art fair coverage for artinfo.com. He noted that In the first few hours of the preview, one dealer sold to a European collector she already knew. Another gallery that featured a Chinese star “fielded significant interest” at $2 million...
I went to a dinner tonight for The G.R.E.A.T. initiative: Gender rights and equality action trust. In the news recently Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned as the chief of the International Monetary Fund after allegedly chasing down a house keeper in a hotel suite,...
I decided to convert a garage in my house into an office emulating a Hirst vitrine by erecting a glass wall to view a car like sculpture, and worked with Ab Rogers to carry it out. When we drive we can’t see the design and when we park, we leave them. The cars ended...
Artists: There are many wonderful things about the arts and artists, especially the childlike innocence involved in the act of making things as a career choice. Artists have license to spend a lifetime involved in childlike creativity; they never have to leave the...
just travelled back from berlin gallery weekend; the dealers and all the collectors were seated in the rear of the plane, and two of the duos of first-namer artist celebs, gilbert & george and tim & sue, were sat in business. today, it’s starving collectors...
Robert Smithson states on the subject of entropy, “You have a closed system which eventually deteriorates and starts to break apart and there's no way that you can really piece it back together again. Another example might be the shattering of Marcel Duchamp Glass,...
Andrew Taylor: Last year, you predicted that we would soon see a billion-dollar work of art. How many years away do you think that is? Kenny Schachter: I say confidently in 3-5 years a painting will sell for $1b. AT: Who do you think is likely to shell out that...
World-wind Ghana trip with family that would shock a fish in a tank of formaldehyde. Went to visit Paa Joe workshop outside Accra, a folk artist specializing in what he calls Proverbial Caskets, one of which I had commissioned, and will write on. They are crafted...
Alfred Barr, the first curator at one of the very first museums of modern art (that would be the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which opened in 1929), stated that art is more important than war. I think that is a profound and telling statement especially in light...
Its incredible to think, at this stage of game, that an artist can be still be considered a politically destabilizing threat. But that is the present fate of Ai Weiwei, who's head has been kicked in and now resides, courtesy of the government, in a prison cell the...
The things we do for kids-extreme water sliding amongst the sharks at Atlantis in the Bahamas for Easter. Without being too glib and condescending, how can you describe the depraved level of kitsch and bad taste? The Dale Chihuly's in the casino (you must pass through...
Artists: There are many wonderful things about the arts and artists, especially the childlike innocence involved in the act of making things as a career choice. Artists have license to spend a lifetime involved in childlike creativity; they never have to leave the...
Richard Prince recently lost a copyright case lodged against him for using 41 (not 1, 2 or even 5) unauthorized photographs by Patrick Cariou in his “paintings”. Let us avoid passing judgment on the merits of collaging in a guitar, hands and adding a few splodges of...
With Japan on the brink of nuclear meltdown after the loss of life and tragedy of an earthquake and tsunami, it seems more than superfluous, absurd and insensitive to speak about art, but things march on. Even commodities, which along with art have been the recent...
We continued our assault on the environment today with helicopter rides strafing the cars racing along the frozen lake and then a 2-hour snowmobile ride before getting towed by hapless reindeers to the dinner venue. The snowmobiles go 100 km an hour and are very...
I am within the Arctic Circle, the northern most reaches of Finland (Kittila), a region formerly occupied by the Lapp people; though now considered derogatory, I find the term rather sexy. An ice driving program brings me here with a group from Germany and...
I watched John Galiano’s loving ode to Hitler on the Sun’s website, which was surreptitiously filmed on a phone. Such a drunken outburst was like a cartoon in a macabre, Anna Nicole Smith kind of way. Not only does he despise dirty Jew faces, but even more so, ugly...
Art About Nothing Why is there so much art about so little? Happy Haters I was in such a state of exuberance at scalini's last night the man at the adjoining table asked me to step out for a fight. Though I have a proclivity to swear and am American, fisticuffs was...
Ai Weiwei, Colored Vases, 2007, at Gallery Hyundai, Seoul, at the VIP Art Fair I’ll say one thing for New York art dealer James Cohan’s new internet-only VIP Art Fair, Jan. 22-30, 2011 -- it was received with great fanfare, as if no one had ever encountered or sold...
Last year I did my speech on being green, and how I thought we all had to do our part to make the world a cleaner and safer place to live. This year I am doing my speech on another kind of green—marijuana and whether or not it should be legal and if so, for what...
The exhibit is called Most Wanted, I suppose referencing Warhol’s America’s Most Wanted series, silkscreen paintings of dangerous criminals on the lam. Here Phillips is presenting realistic likenesses via traditional handmade paintings of young movie stars: Chace...
The Internet based VIP (View-In-Person) art fair was launched with great fanfare, supposedly the new format was said to forever redefine the notion of how we encounter and collect art. After initially registering, the only encounter I had was with 15 error messages...
In appearance, Dennis Oppenheim was like a raggamuffin, slipshod in dress, kind of frozen in the 70s. The works were all over the place too but with an undeniable magic touch, from the sunburned book impression on his chest to his wacky machines - Rube Goldberg wedded...
What comes to mind when you think of Brillo Boxes, Marilyn Monroe and Campbell’s Soup Cans? Andy Warhol, an artist that changed the way art is made and seen./p> Warhol made art like a director would shoot a movie, not to mention the body of films he made. He directed...
Running slows down the space time continuum, for some the process is faster than for others (others like me and jeffrey deitch). Kenny Schachter
“Car traders are a bit like art dealers. If they see a great profit in something, they’re not going to want to pass it on to the investors.” Used car dealers, art dealers, perfect symmetry. Kenny Schachter
I suffer from protein urea whereby my kidneys can't process the protein in my system, which leaks into urine. Known as hypertension, I am basically exciting myself to death. A telltale sign is suds or dense bubbles in pee-like you are literally being shaken and...
a dying breed "newly made period pieces that are already, as you read this, beginning to fail the test of time" a brilliant, searing zinger by roberta smith on piotr ulanski in yesterdays ny times, criticism the old fashion way: critical. first tier works arguments...
“A&F (Art & Farce?) Markets proposes a new, centralised and liquid marketplace for art. Through its unique structure, A&F Markets allows investors to buy and sell ʻsharesʼ in major artworks (www.artfinance.fr)”. Sounds like a surefire measure to moneterize...
Larry Gagosian, with 11 galleries in 8 countries, has for the first time in art (dealing) history created a viable model that practically transcends the primacy of the founder. Why not a leveraged buyout, hostile or otherwise, a listing and float? If Norman Foster can...
Chuck Close, Lucien Freud, Alex Katz, Marc Quinn, Gary Hume, Stella Vine and countless others have painted or sculpted Kate Moss (why is another issue); yet not one is recognizable as her. Can't contemporary painters and sculptors paint and sculpt? Kenny Schachter
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