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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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

In an article entitled: Picasso: Most of his Work is Inherently Trivial” in the UK’s Guardian by feminist Germaine Greer, she quoted Picasso: “I am only a public entertainer who has understood the times and has exploited as best he could the imbecility, the vanity and...

PORSCHE By Adrian Schachter Ferdinand Porsche in 1931, an Austrian engineer, started the company PORSCHE. He was working in the automotive industry in Germany and helped to create the first Volkswagen, the Beetle, which has sold millions and millions (Hitler actually...

The west is the new emerging market. Specifically, Italy is on the verge of IMF intervention, and on the brink or just past is: Greece, USA, UK, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, France, and I’m sure I am missing a few. Why today a day cannot go by without lip service to...

The newspaper works of Paul Thek, which began in earnest in late 1960's and continued unabated until his death in 1988, had a narrative arc defined by an idiosyncratic expression of hope and beauty, and ended in a more ambiguous state of disillusionment. They are...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

remarks on a lecture and the Royal College of Art, Vehicle Design Dept. Incredibly, barely a week goes by without the announcement of a new car company – many with green credentials, hopeful to make the world a cleaner, more efficient place; but just as many are for...

I went to a nearly one weeklong bar mitzvah in Israel, previously not one of my favorite destinations, for the daughter of a fabulous art collecting couple from the UK. It kicked off in Herzliya, a beach resort just outside Tel Aviv. To build up tolerance for the...

As the sage John Cougar Melloncapm put it so aptly: Some people say I'm obnoxious and lazy That I'm uneducated And my opinipn means nothin' But I know I'm a real good dancer Don't need to look over my shoulder To see what I'm after Everybody's got their problems Ain't...

“Kenny: You have to learn to post your comments in the thread; you can't only post on the Wall. Cut-and-paste these into the...thread. I am going to delete them in the next hour. Thank you" this was message i just received before my postings were unceremoniously...

While the world descended on the latest iteration of TEFAF (The European Fine Art Foundation), the Maastricht fair with literally billions worth of art on view, I made it to AFF, (the Affordable Art Fair) the only T being served in the café of the tent in Battersea...

Stock market down 300, Giacometti up 100m: who would believe it? Kate Moss recently made headlines when she said nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. The societal focus on being slim, both male and female, has never been more acute. Then Walking Man I, a 6-foot...

When you look at a piece of art what thoughts pass through your mind? One of the first things I think of is what went into making it and how long did it take. Art is an amazing process: besides the making, why? When I look at Damien Hirst art I think the opposite:...

On the first trading day of 2010, oil topped $80 and gold gained $25 to $1121.50; what is art but another asset class in today’s commodities driven economy. Manufacturing is expanding and money is sticking to art like glue. Look for it to continue to do so but only...

Like a casino, with no natural light or sense of time and about the same odds of beating the house, so goes another iteration of the Basel Art Fair, this time in Miami.  Fittingly, gaming impresario Steve Wynn made the rounds towed by a towering blonde, presumably as...

When the Daily Telegraph titled an article “Frieze Has Lost their Cool” it signaled more than anything an era of change in the contemporary art market. The subject of the piece was that 40 dealers less than the previous year had been accepted. After the article went...

As the modern car industry has ground to a halt and valuable older cars are being wastefully crushed to stimulate new car buying, we must seek out the undervalued and underappreciated designs of years past that are well-worth preserving and investing in, rather than...

Two recent articles on Mauizio Cattelan and Damien Hirst made note of their formidable art collections. According to Hegel, when a child finds opposition in the form of the other, the first inclination is to eat it. Could that account for the voracious art collecting...

A response to an article by Alice Rawsthorn, New York Times Chris Bangle, former head of design at BMW, expects future car owners to be less concerned about the exterior of vehicles and more focused simply on the interiors. That’s why the resale values of BMW’s are so...

It’s not enough for Murakami to spin his own gold but he had to make a literal tie-in with the inclusion of all manner of doodads fabricated from precious metals and gems by the likes of Kanye and Pharrell. In the case of Pharrell, he bedazzled a few of his favorite...