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Anthony Haden-Guest

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CHEERS

01.02.1612:00 AM ET

The Bars Where Warhol Made Merry: New York’s Coolest Art Hangouts

The art world socialized in its own discreet hotspots, until the McNally brothers opened Odeon—and suddenly the worlds of celebrity and overt wealth joined in too.

In the mid 1970s when I moved to Manhattan the Upper East Side was still very much the art district. And Les Pleiades, a French restaurant on East 76^th, notorious for the execrable paintings on its walls, was where the art world in which Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend were totemic presences on daily display.
That was where European dealers would be likely to show their faces soon after they got in from JFK and for more casual cruising there was the Bemelmans Bar in the Carlyle or Three Guys, just across Madison, a diner that Warhol used often enough and liked well enough to put into his diary. It was an old school art world, deceptively genteel, steely fingers in soft gloves.
Then the earth moved. SoHo.

You will have noted that only dealers seem to have occupied that particular haute art continuum, not artists, the inevitable Andy aside.
With the rise of SoHo, though, a melt began, as the art world we know today was being born, and the most public birthing took place in hangouts.
Fanelli’s at 94 Prince was one of the first and deservedly so. Records show that a saloon had been on the spot in 1863. It became Fanelli’s in 1922 and its well-worn ambiance, which includes a wall of vintage boxing photos, commended it to the crowd who took over as the art boom took hold.

Other art-inflected eateries were budding, like One Fifth and Raoul’s.
Below SoHo in the raw, freshly named district, TriBeCa, were El Teddy’s, Magoo’s and Puffy’s Tavern on Harrison and Hudson.
Then in 1980 Keith and Brian McNally opened Odeon on West Broadway, along with Keith’s wife, Lynn ...

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/02/the-bars-where-warhol-made-merry-new-york-s-coolest-art-hangouts.html?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning

How the Illuminati Stole the Mind, Soul, and Body of Hip-Hop

The true story of how an 18th-century secret society came to dominate today’s music industry (allegedly).

Have you noticed how a lot of musicians have been covering one eye when posing for photos? Or making some kind of triangle with their hands? Or both? And what’s up with all the occult imagery in videos for Jay Z’s “On to the Next One” and Kanye’s “Power”? Is it just because it looks cool and mysterious?
The conspiracy-minded say there’s something more sinister to it. This is evidence, they say, of a vast, nefarious secret society—the Illuminati—and its plan to institute a New World Order.
Like all of the best conspiracy theories, this one begins with an acorn of truth and ends up in a forest of speculation.

There really was a secret society called the Illuminati, and it really did aspire to transform society by surreptitiously placing its members in positions of influence. The group was formed in 1776 by a young Bavarian professor named Adam Weishaupt. Historian John Roberts described Weishaupt as equal parts lofty idealist and petty narcissist. On one hand, Weishaupt really did want to bring about a less religious, more egalitarian...

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/02/how-the-illuminati-stole-the-mind-soul-and-body-of-hip-hop.html?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning

Third-Party Guarantees

Classic Cars See Third-Party Guarantees

December 29, 2015 by Marion Maneker

RM Auctions 1953 Jaguar C-Type 13.2m USD

Kenny Schachter provides a bit of news buried inside his Artnet column. There he reveals that third-party auction guarantees have come to the classic car market via the ever-savvy Adam Lindemann who may have become:

in all probability the first to have guaranteed a vehicle at public auction in August of this year: a 1953 Jaguar C-Type Works Lightweight in the RM Sotheby’s auction in Monterey that sold for $13,200,00.

Sell for Money, Hold for Wealth

Dealers Sell for Money, Hold for Wealth

December 29, 2015 by Marion Maneker

Urs Fischer candle work of Bruno Bischofberger and his wife

Kenny Schachter makes a trenchant point about art dealers of the old school in his Artnet column today. “Dealers make money selling art but make wealth hanging onto it,”1 the collector/dealer/observer says as summation to this point about Bruno Bischofberger:

If possible, even more astounding than Bruno’s dealing activities is the legendary breadth and encyclopedic depth of his acquired-by-any-means art and design collections. From Engadine furniture, Swiss folk art, historic glass and ceramic works to modernist chairs and works from the 1980s, Bischofberger has experienced life through his relentless acquisitiveness that has never ceased to stagger and stimulate me (and countless others). Having closed his St. Moritz and Zurich spaces, he’s opening a series of buildings in stages (designed by his daughter Nina Baier-Bischofberger and her husband Florian) to house his vast treasures, a fully fleshed memoir in objects.

Kenny Schachter on St. Moritz and Vito Schnabel  (artnet news)

Are We In an Up or a Down Market?

If More Buyers Spend Less Money, Are We In an Up or a Down Market?

January 1, 2016 by Marion Maneker

The end of the 2015 brought a spate of news articles declaring the end of the art market boom years. This isn’t the time or place to go into the details except to point out that, apart from the establishment of a very few public prices in the nine-figure range, 2015 was most notable as year of rotation, consolidation and retrenchment.
What’s very clear is that the market that Tobias Meyer christened the ‘masterpiece market’ is waning (or narrowing) as collectors focus on works that they can define for themselves as ‘quality.’ Evidence of this trend comes from the strength in the day sales and strong numbers in categories and artists that have previously not been the focus of price competition.
Scott Reyburn captures this in his column today in the International New York Times:

“There is a plateauing of prices at the highest end of blue chip,” said Allan Schwartzman, a co-founder of Art Agency, Partners, an advisory company in New York. “And this is healthy after five or so years of unprecedented rise. But this may be more a sign of how difficult it is to source top material.”
While the best of artists like Bacon, Basquiat, Richter and Warhol might be at short supply at auction, Mr. Schwartzman said there was still a tremendous amount of dealer activity in postwar and contemporary art in the under-$2 million range. But it is difficult to quantify private sales in galleries and at art fairs.
“What I would say is that there are at least 10 times more collectors seriously engaged in the market than there were a decade ago,” Mr. Schwartzman said.

A Year of Highs and Corrections in the Art Market  (The New York Times)

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