Kenny Schachter Gets Hot and Bothered at the Ironically Titled Frieze New York

Kenny Schachter Gets Hot and Bothered at the Ironically Titled Frieze New York

artnet News | Kenny Schachter

While I was checking into my hotel for Frieze New York, a fellow guest made a comment about how much she liked my writing—at the precise moment my credit card got declined for being blocked. Yes, writing doesn’t pay, but, thankfully, selling art does. The episode was very embarrassing, even though it was due to security; you need to file a travel itinerary with HSBC well in advance to avoid it. New York is a city for getting things done, unless you want to navigate from one part to another. There are said to be as many as 60,000 Ubers (and the like) stuffing the streets here, which has done little for mobility. A driver related that the more cars, the less business. When will the law of diminishing returns begin to negatively impact art fairs? The time is now.

The only thing more ubiquitous than the black cars clogging city streets are the number of police (far more than when I left New York in 2004), and, conversely, the proliferation of the pungent smell of pot. A recent study in Colorado where weed is legal—New York will inevitably follow suit—stated that artists were the substance’s second-largest user group after the food-services industry—which means that if your meal tastes a little weird at one of Hauser & Wirth galleries’ cafes (in LA or Somerset), it’s because the staff is high. All of them. By the way, you can’t walk a block on Madison Avenue from about 50th to 80th Streets without tripping over an art dealer (or a rich artist). It should be renamed Art Street. I was tempted to walk up and down with a few phonefuls of JPEGs at the ready…read more

Image: Video still courtesy of Kenny Schachter.