“Spring is nature’s erection, everything straightens up. Summers and winters are long, there’s time, but the short springs and autumn, when things happen very quickly, are action week.” So said David Hockney in a 2009 Financial Times column that has lodged in my craw ever since, and I’d wager it’ll embed in yours for equally as long (more on the recently deceased artist to follow). By the same token, Switzerland’s iteration of the Basels is the art season’s petite mort (post-orgasm high); though, in my present impecunious state, there was no such release for me.
Arriving on the heels of the Swiss electorate’s narrow rejection of the “No to ten million!” immigration cap referendum, held the weekend before the fair, and Trump’s ignominious White House cage-fight fiasco—next to what used to be the Rose Garden—I felt right at home. I envisioned a giant installation at the Basel fair entrance in the same vein: a no-holds-barred death match featuring Gagosian, Zwirner, the husband-and-wife tag team of Hauser & Wirth, and the beleaguered Pace family, all pitted against one another.
The other big fight is Basel Basel vs. Paris Basel. Paris has already begun to encroach on the primacy of the staid mothership in the battle for fair supremacy, and that will continue. The Swiss version is increasingly coming to resemble Maastricht, an event that is all but unreachable, save for a travel itinerary that feels like it’s out of the John Hughes classic Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
A room with a view! The eyeful from my bed in the apartment I am staying at in St. Moritz while I write this. What’s that song about God having a sick sense of humor? Oh right, “Blasphemous Rumors” by Depeche Mode. They must have stayed here, too. Photo: Kenny Schachter.
I managed to find a reasonably priced (a relative notion) hotel in the lilliputian city that was within spitting distance of the fair (a 30-minute walk). This was a nearly insurmountable task in a place where bloating a 100 CHF-a-night room ($124) to 300 CHF is de rigueur during fair week. Multiply that by 10 if you want an airport-hotel level of quality. At breakfast, I was thunderstruck to find the Met’s venerable director, Max Hollein, ensconced at a table; when I expressed as much to him, he told me he’d been frequenting the establishment for years—I can only imagine to hide from the hoi polloi. I won’t release the name so we’ll both be assured a reservation next year.
I didn’t have bandwidth for the proceedings this year and lasted less than two days, and I was not alone in that regard: en route in Zurich the night before, I overheard Mitch Rales, the co-founder of the Glenstone museum, stating that he intended to skip Basel altogether and instead visit a few museums in the region.
Only Mendes Wood gallery, as trendy as hot, with five locations spread across the Americas and Europe, would be so pretentious as to post a no-photography sign at an art fair, and only I would be so childish to be moved to take a sneaky snap of it. Photo: Kenny Schachter.
The Basel booth layout—a hierarchical map of the stratification of art-world power (in layman terms, it’s a money thing)—is structured in concentric rings, which dissipates in energy as you travel outward from the centers of the two floors that the fair occupies at the convention center. I found the momentum vaporized early on this year, markedly, as you ventured further afield from the megas, more so than in the recent past.
What I did observe was art-dealing leviathan Larry G, looking as tanned as he is insouciant (very). I bravely requested a quote, something besides “You’re an asshole,” which he brusquely barked at me the last time I asked:
Gagosian: I don’t like gossip.
K.S.: How long are you here for?
Gagosian: Thursday. (This was Tuesday, during the “exclusive” First Choice VIP opening.)
K.S.: Wow that’s a big commitment for you.
Gagosian: I could leave tomorrow.
Also within the first hour, former gallery owner Gavin Brown in his capacity as a partner of Gladstone, told me: “I’ve already had it, I can’t wait to get out.” Another prominent New York dealer I queried, whose identity I’ll preserve to protect her anonymity offered this:
You want a quote on what? Basel? The Knicks? Basel is boring. The fair. Not the town. I’m leaving Friday. There was so much more energy last year, maybe the fair is too big for the scale of the current art world. And I felt branded the whole week, why can’t it just be a fair and not a conglomerate. Do you like Basel’s new tagline, The Only One? I tried three times to see the digital sector but the doors are always locked. How was that? Can Jerry stop writing about Pace? I left NY with the best energy I have had in like forever, for this? Toilsome.
As to the fair’s “There’s Only One Basel” campaign, the number is multiplying, and they’ve begun to cannibalize each other. Perhaps they should change it to “One of the Only Ones.” What I will acknowledge about Swiss Basel: I’ve long measured my life by how many I have left in me. I’d gather it’s down to about 16. Help the aged.
A new gallery model as grand and spectacular as any Gagosian outpost; but, in this instance created by German art star Albert Oehlen in a building he owns in Cologne. Take note, Pace. Photo: Kenny Schachter
I bumped into Adam Lindemann browsing the aisles, and he commented that Swiss Basel can never compete with the prospect of sipping a glass of Champagne on the Seine in Paris. But I guess closing his gallery and returning to “air kisses, handshakes, fist bumps, side hugs, head nods, winks, waves, big smiles, thumbs up, and good vibes” at art fairs (as he said in Artnet just shy of a year ago) couldn’t sustain him for long. I can report that he’s opening a small space on 57th Street in NYC in the fall. Old habits die hard.
Neither here nor there, but speaking of upstart galleries: I can also announce a new model, as grand and spectacular as any Gagosian outpost, has opened. This one was created by German art star Albert Oehlen in a building he owns in Cologne, showcasing paintings by Malcolm Morley (through September 30). Take note, Pace.
A 1962 Jannis Kounellis canvas at German/Swiss dealer Karsten Greve’s gallery in the main fair. The inscrutable legend was kind enough to grant me a rare interview—why, I still can’t figure out. This canvas, an abstraction in text, has a surface that lures in its seductiveness, celebrating the materiality of paint in and of itself. Photo: Kenny Schachter
To be clear, there was no shortage of great art in Basel. At Liste, I particularly responded to the works of Joe Mama-Nitzberg in the presentation by Los Angeles’s O-Town House. He is a conceptual wordsmith with a schoolyard-joke reference of a name (figure it out) and a queer sense of humor as delicious as his color palette.
In the main hall was a 1962 Jannis Kounellis painting at Karsten Greve, the inscrutable German/Swiss legend who was kind enough to grant me a rare interview—why, I still can’t reckon. The canvas, a gelatinous surface of pencil lines and abstracted text is a drippy celebration of the materiality of paint in and of itself.
Jean-Luc Moulène, the little-known French conceptual photographer and sculptor (by me, anyway) at Galerie Chantal Crousel and Thomas Dane in the Basel fair—a small, concrete object entitled Contre Crâne (“Against the Skull”), as enigmatic as it is covetable. Photo: Kenny Schachter.
Jean-Luc Moulène, the little-known (by me, anyway) French conceptual photographer, sculptor, and installation artist at Galerie Chantal Crousel and Thomas Dane exhibited a series of diminutive objects. I was drawn to a small concrete and metal sculpture entitled Contre Crâne (“Against the Skull”) that is enigmatic and covetable.
At Meyer Riegger gallery, the famously belligerent 76-year-old Swiss painter Miriam Cahn pivoted from painting distorted figures to intimately scaled subjects, like a faucet, a coat, and a computer. I was taken with the cooked chicken Cahn symbolically painted over a fragment of the Swiss flag. Her recalcitrance is laudable. She once scheduled a studio visit with a friend who drove two hours to the meeting, only to discover she’d changed her mind mid-course and inverted her canvases so they were concealed. A woman after my own heart.
The famously belligerent 76-year-old Swiss painter Miriam Cahn once scheduled a studio visit with a friend who drove two hours, only to discover she’d changed her mind and turned all her canvases backward. At Meyer Riegger gallery, she switched course and substituted a small chicken for her more well-known figures (symbolically painted over a Swiss flag). Her recalcitrance is laudable. Photo: Kenny Schachter.
I was less impressed by the new body of paintings by Avery Singer at Hauser & Wirth, on view at its Zurich flagship and booth at Zero10, the digital arm of the Basel fair. Singer’s paintings, at $800,000 a pop, are congested computer and robotically rendered hodgepodges that I think will come to resemble floppy disks in a temporal micro-flash.
Zero10 was staged in a standalone building near the main event and opened late in the afternoon on Tuesday. (Hence the dealer complaining about the locked doors.) Once again, money talked, and digital art walked—in this instance, across the street from the central halls of the convention center. It will continue to, until management comes to its senses and integrates this genre with art-art. (As happened with photography after a million years.)
Here’s how Kanye might have presented himself when I spied a glimpse of him at Zero10 fair with his infamously, scantily clad artist/architect/creative-directing wife, Bianca Censori, if he practiced a little reciprocity once in a while. Photo: Kenny Schachter.
The appearance of Kanye West and his wife, Bianca Censori, was widely reported. Celebrities invariably mutate pseudo-erudite art folk into groveling teen groupies. (Even celebrities with previously expressed Hitler sympathies.) I’m sure West’s fortune—what’s left of it—has nothing to do with it. Kanye and Co.’s every move was documented on social media by dealers and fairgoers alike, even on the Instagram story of a malcontent like Gavin Brown.
Years ago, when West was married to Kim Kardashian, he stayed at a friend’s and wouldn’t let Kardashian leave their room until he chose every article of clothing and jewelry she wore—which he laid out on their bed each day. He would throw a major strop (Brit slang for a tantrum) if she failed to comply. If he’s so insistent on his wife walking around nearly naked much of the time, shouldn’t he reciprocate and follow (in his birthday) suit? I’m afraid the image I made to illustrate this point will singe in your grey matter as much as Hockney’s springtime revelry.
The art world’s Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg rolled into one, doing an art-world version of the corporate takeover underneath our collective noses—striking a menacing pose resembling the Machiavellian artist depicted in Picasso’s canvas, which sold at Hauser for a reported $35 million. Photo: Kenny Schachter.
Now let’s move beyond Basel.
Joe Hage arrived in London from Lebanon in 1967, at the age of four, the only child of a carpenter and houseworker, who, despite being “very poor,” he’s said, were caring and supportive. He studied philosophy at Cambridge, before becoming an accountant and international corporate arbitration lawyer. Above all, though his father never had much commercial success, beyond polishing wood in local churches and on building sites, he instilled in his son the idea that the highest calling to aspire to was business.
First the HENI Project Space, Joe Hage’s print arm of his conglomerate, and now Barbara Hepworth exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery sponsored by Joseph Hage Aaronson & Bremen, his law firm. The man is everywhere at once, in one guise or another. Hirst, Bacon, Hockney, Doig, Lord knows what’s next… Photo: Kenny Schachter.
See Jordan Peterson’s video interview/podcast with Hage, “Beauty is the Point: Joe Hage,” episode 352, April 2023, a fascinating listen if you can get past the host’s insufferable, incessant ramblings—worst of all his art-market musings—which consume the majority of the broadcast.
Joe took his father’s message to heart, becoming the art world’s equivalent of the tech triumvirate of Bezos, Musk, and Zuckerberg—a portlier personification of the imperious Steve Jobs, clad head to toe, monochromatically, in black jeans and T-shirt (rather than Steve’s signature turtleneck). He treats art with a sensitivity similar to the way the above-mentioned tech overlords respect our privacy, i.e. without much, especially when it comes to releasing an endless stream of prosaic prints by Damien Hirst. And he does his damnedest to avoid a paper trail, digitally or otherwise, though I have reported on him in a handful of my previous columns.
While Hockney painted Joe Hage in front of Pieter Bruegel’s Tower of Babel, warning of the perils of consolidating power with unbridled, covetous tyranny—the art-trepreneur coaxed him into a takeover of his estate. Photo: Kenny Schachter.
Most revelatory from the Peterson interview is that Joe’s favorite quote comes from Steve Jobs: “Real artists ship” was one of Jobs’s defining mantras, and it is Hage’s business model. It originated in 1983 during the creation of the Macintosh computer, when the Apple co-founder wanted to compel his team to stop obsessing over minor, theoretical refinements and finally deliver the product. Said Hage in the Peterson podcast:
You have to get things out. And if you’re not really shipping, then you’re not really an artist, you’re just some… you’re a poser, and those claims that, ‘Well, I didn’t sell out,’ it’s like, well, that’s because you don’t know how to and no one ever offered you the opportunity. Yeah, and then people often maintain that stance as a form of moral self-glorification… You can get people who just think that money is disgusting, should have nothing to do with art. It’s purely about sort of critical theory, and aesthetics, and history, and stuff… But I have just always been fascinated in that relationship between how you can turn an idea into money and the economics, if I could have the economics of creativity, which I find really fascinating. And so by chance, I was lucky enough to get friendly with some artists…
Hage is the art world’s corporate marauder, usurping Larry G’s hegemony by spreading his tentacles further and wider, with a portfolio of private-wealth and artist-management clients: Hirst, Peter Doig, Gerhard Richter (before Zwirner took over), Zaha Hadid’s estate, Francis Bacon’s estate, and others. And now, I can reveal that his empire has been expanded to include the estate of David Hockney, according to multiple sources. Look for Hockney to have a prolific post-death output exceeding that of Brancusi’s estate (just added to the diminished roster of Pace Gallery) when exhibited at Kasmin Gallery.
Joe Hage, the art world’s very own corporate marauder, is not leaving a paper trail, digitally or otherwise. Except when it comes to my Artnet columns over the years, ha, ha. Sorry, Joe. Photo: Kenny Schachter.
Hage also financially supports institutions far and wide, such as London’s Serpentine Gallery (helping to fuel director Hans Ulrich Obrist’s peripatetic art-life, I am informed) and the Courtauld Gallery with its current “The Joseph Hage Aaronson & Bremen Exhibition: Barbara Hepworth in Colour,” which runs in London through September 6. Unsurprisingly, the Hepworth estate is next in his sights, I’ve learned.
All the while, Hage continues to operate two law firms, Hage Aaronson & Bremen in the U.K. and Joseph Hage Aaronson in the U.S. For some color as to the nature and reach of his legal clients, his firm has represented some nefarious characters over the years, such as former president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych (2010–14), until he was unceremoniously unseated for embezzling billions and fled to Russia. Also, Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of the former exiled president of Angola, sanctioned internationally for allegations of massive corruption. Hage has not responded to my repeated inquiries at the time of this writing.
A partial recipe for The Kenny Formula, concocted by ubiquitous Artificial Intelligence platforms, is as ridiculous as it sounds, but hey, it’s got a few valid points I can’t argue with—as this unprepared artist found out in an Instagram story I subsequently posted. Photo: Kenny Schachter.
After losing a child more than seven years ago, my only remaining joys are being with my three kids, making art, writing, teaching, and trying to assist other artists. But everyone has their limits. Mine are frequently breached when I get unsolicited messages asking me to help people sell their art and find them galleries, oftentimes without so much as a please or thank you. The last such inquiry I received smacked of a generic A.I. response to the prompt, “Who can assist launching my career?” This hunch was affirmed by the artist—I posted the exchange without naming the offender, as I am wont to do.
Afterward, a friend sent a ChatGPT synopsis that laid out guidelines for contacting me in excruciating detail, coining a name for it: “The Kenny Formula.” I couldn’t argue with the recipe: Send him an email once, and don’t follow up. If I reply with one word, “Take it as a win, that’s just how he types.” Don’t ask him to buy anything or get you into a major gallery. And don’t send him a generic text block.
Best of all was the directive to acknowledge my writing and/or humor—I can’t argue with that. With that in mind, I will seize this opportunity to reciprocate and thank YOU for the considerable time and effort you’ve spent coming this far and reading (all) this!
