Painting & Sculpting.

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

An Essay for my 14 Year Old

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...

New World Order. (Excerpt)

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...

Nothing but Time

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...

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...

Water Damage

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...

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...

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...

Love Is Real

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...

Unilateral Cyber Squabble

“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...

TEFAF vs. AFF

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...

Billion Dollar Baby

Are we headed for the billion-dollar picture? It certainly appears that way with $104m+ paid for a Giacometti and Stevie Cohen’s $110m acquisition of a Jasper Johns Flag (worth more than the country it depicts) ahead of the sale of Jurassic Park author Michael...

Upcoming Film on Michael Landy

A large part of Michael Landy’s career is about garbage, which is rather interesting as our lives are consumed with so much of it on a daily basis. in addition to installations Landy makes phenomenal black and white drawings that are exquisite in their detail, with...

First Day of Trading 20-10

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...

Art Basel Miami Beach 2009

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...

ArtTactic Podcast

In this episode of the ArtTactic Podcast, Kenny Schachter, writer, independent curator and owner of Kenny Schachter Rove dissects the results of Sotheby's and Christie's first Major Contemporary auctions of the season, which were held last week in London.  Further, he...

Frieze

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...

Scrap Scrappage

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...

Appetites…

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...

Rethinking the Shape of Everyday Life

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...

More on Pop Life at the Tate…

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...

Pop Life at the Tate

With three of my kids in tow (13,12,10) we visited the Tate’s Pop Life show and were repeatedly admonished not to enter various rooms with frontal nudity. Undeterred, we waltzed into the very closed and guarded doors of the Jeff Koons and Cicciolina porno room. After...

Some Thoughts on the Art Market

In no way is the worst over in the art economy or the wider global financial world. Beware that next year should be at least as equally excruciating as the past 12 months. The stock market, gold and oil will test their lows in the coming year, the same with Richard...

Alternative Investment Evening

The formal component of Antion Olaio’s art imbues painting with another dimension altogether for there are figurative paintings with overlaid text, accompanied by a music video sing-along. These multi-media constructions function as story telling devices with built-in...

BBC One: Art in Troubled Times

The big moment for publicly funded art in Britain was the Second World War. "Something absolutely remarkable happened during the war", says actor Simon Callow. "The theatre suddenly was right at the heart of society." After the war, the idea of "art for all" led to...

Dick in hand

Dick in hand

Scott Reeder, American Dick, 2007, Oil on canvas, 101.6 x 76.2 cm At the most glamorous of the many fab parties leading up to Art 40 Basel, a museum director told how she’s gone on a day trip to the Venice Biennale, after which she went for a massage and was roused by...

Puss ‘n Boots, Dick ‘n Hand

At the most glamorous of the many fab parties leading up to the 2009 Basel Art Fair, the granddaddy of them all, a museum director related the story of a day trip to Venice to see the Biennial after which she went for a massage and was awoken by the sensation of...

Price-less

A Banksy graffiti was recently sprayed with graffiti itself: the tagline was: Price-Less. And true it is as the graffiti genre has been swiftly and broadly hit by the onset of recession. Yet, even something priceless has a price less today than a year ago. We have...

Time Isn’t Money (Anymore)

I have made art for years for little or no audience—what better activity could there be in the face of such economic uncertainty? If ever there was an occasion for the mantra: Just Do It (Yourself), its now. Remember how time used to equal money; guess what? It no...

I love Saatchi

I love Saatchi

The entrance to the Saatchi Gallery on Boundary Road, where it remained in residence from 1984 to 2003 First there was the austere, New York-quoting Saatchi Gallery on Boundary Road, akin to big museum halls, large and imposing with London artist Richard Wilson’s...

Cars and Couture

There is a new meaning of art appreciation today that has nothing to do with rising investment value. Consider it a reversion to a quaint time in the recent past, say, pre-2004. The era of big, flashy, overproduced art is a thing of the past. Now I understand the...

Fair Fatique

Art Basel and Frieze have been bailed out, nationalized and are presently under federal administration. Not so far fetched in a world that was up in arms when Hugo Chavez nationalized a country club, yet embraced the governmental rescue of Goldman Sachs. In real life,...

Nothing but Time

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...

Hoxton Needs Hadid

FOSTER AND ROGERS GRANT ZAHA HADID PERMISSION FOR HER FIRST EVER BUILDING IN LONDON. So it was December 3, 2008, but that would be Sue Foster head Hackney Planning and Ray Rogers, Design and Conservation Manager. In 2004 upon moving to London from New York, I...

Cologne Art Fair, An Obituary

Tumble weeds tumbling down the corridors of the 42nd Art Cologne fair, the oldest fair, even predating Basel on the first public day of attendance. Time used to have it where life expectancies weren’t anticipated beyond the early forties and history has repeated...