Every week, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint, a gossip column of original scoops reported and written by Nate Freeman. If you have a tip, email Nate at nfreeman@artnet.com.
THE SCHNABEL ALSO RISES
Sometimes when you see Vito Schnabel’s name in a column like this one, it has something to do with his companion at that moment. Our esteemed colleagues at the Daily Mail, for instance, have mentioned the art dealer no fewer than three times in as many weeks, and each time it’s been to offer an update on his relationship with neighbor Irina Shayk, the supermodel who happens to be the onetime partner of mega-star Bradley Cooper. Are they dating, or do they just like taking long walks around the Palazzo Chupi, Papa Schnabel’s Pepto-pink Italianate landmark on New York‘s West Side?
Julian Schnabel and Vito Schnabel at the LongHouse Reserve Summer benefit on July 20, 2019 in East Hampton, New York. (Photo by Sonia Moskowitz/Getty Images)
Look, that’s important stuff. But we’re here to tell you about a big development in the life of Vito the art dealer. Lest we forget, Vito Schnabel has, for nearly two decades—since he was just 16—been organizing great shows in New York, and since 2015, he’s run ambitious programming out of Bruno Bischofberger’s former space in St. Moritz.
For the past few years, he’s staged a few shows annually out of a space in the far West Village, on Clarkson Street. Though the Vito Schnabel Gallery offerings have leaned toward older artists, he’s more recently started working with exciting younger talent such as the 30-year-old rising star Ariana Papademetropoulos.
Installation view: Ariana Papademetropoulos, Unweave a Rainbow © Ariana Papademetropoulos; Photo by Argenis Apolinario; Courtesy the artist and Vito Schnabel Gallery.
Now, Vito Schnabel is readying his next move. Next year, he’ll be taking up a large space in the heart of Chelsea’s gallery corridor, at 455 West 19th Street, near 10th Avenue (as well as keeping his outpost on Clarkson). That puts him within spitting distance of Brit gallerist Timothy Taylor’s New York outpost, essential art space The Kitchen, and perhaps most crucially, David Zwirner’s two-flanked temple to contemporary art on the other end of the block.
“It’s really exciting,” Schnabel told Wet Paint. “It happens to be on this great block with all the great galleries, but the idea of having foot traffic isn’t as important as having enough space. I was looking all over town…. I’ve known the space was being built for a few years, and five months ago, during COVID, decided I was going to take it. I can do more historical exhibitions that I haven’t had the space to do.”
Robert Nava. Photo courtesy Pace.
The debut show in the new space will be skew a bit younger and hotter: the first New York solo by the fantastically polarizing star Robert Nava, who has set the market on fire with his cave painting-esque homages to the bad-boy Bad Painters who once palled around with Schnabel the elder. The show opens in February 2021. Later that year, Nava will have a show at Pace, the mega-gallery that added him to its roster last month (and is preparing to open another Nava solo in Palm Beach in January). Pace also represents Julian Schnabel. You know what they say: It’s all in the family.
JAVANKA BANISHED TO BILLIONAIRE-FILLED ISLAND
Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump walk on the south lawn of the White House. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)
Maybe you’ve heard that the soon-to-be-powerless power couple Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are looking to get out of Washington, DC as quickly as possible. Despite his worst efforts at a coup that included the ranting of a seemingly drunk witness, Donald Trump will be leaving the White House in January—and Javanka will be riding shotty on Marine One.
The only question is, which luxury neighborhood’s denizens will shun them at restaurants for the next few years?
Just imagine with Jared and Ivanka will build here. Photo courtesy Google maps.
While I’m sure they’d love to tiptoe back into New York as if the last four years never happened, fat chance—so instead, the dynamic duo will be be heading to the Sunshine State.
This week it was reported that the couple bought a $30 million plot of land on Indian Creek Drive, one of the most exclusive addresses in Miami Beach, if not the country. The homes dot the coast in a circle around the Indian Creek Country Club, which is known to be so notoriously hesitant to admit Jewish or Black members that Governor Jeb Bush boycotted playing there. If even the Bush kids are taking the moral high ground against your golf course, maybe rethink things, guys!
How quaint. Photo courtesy Wikipedia.
From their new perch, they will be surrounded by art-collecting neighbors, including Norman Braman, who, with his wife Irma, played an integral part in bringing Art Basel to Miami Beach and bringing the ICA Miami to its new home in the Design District.
Their yard alone contains Richard Serra’s massive sculpture Blade Runner and Mark di Suvero‘s La Petit Clef. Inside, there is a room that exists just to house a half-dozen de Koonings; elsewhere hangs a massive Basquiat work, Philistines (1982), which they purchased a few years ago from the developer Tom Worrell, Jr. They also still own Jasper Johns’s Diver (1961), which they bought at Christie’s in 1988 for $4.2 million—at the time, the most money ever paid for a work by a living artist.
Norman Braman and Marco Rubio. (Photo by Michele Eve Sandberg/Corbis via Getty Images)
Perhaps Jared and Ivanka think the Bramans will be sympathetic considering their longtime support for the GOP, including millions given to Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign. But they may be in for a rude awakening: Since Trump steamrolled Rubio in the 2016 primaries, the Bramans appear to have ceased funding Republican candidates.
POP QUIZ
Congrats to all who correctly answered last week’s quiz. The work pictured was indeed a collaboration between the artists Alex Israel and Josh Smith, and it was purchased by Rosa and Carlos de la Cruz from Reena Spaulings in 2014.
Here are all the correct respondents: Blue Rider Group executive director Dan Desmond; former Luhring Augustine director Lisa Kohli; Yayoi Shionoiri, the executive director of the Chris Burden Estate and the Nancy Rubins studio; Fiona Laugharn, research associate at Pace Gallery; the artist Neal Flynn; Meredith Darrow, the founder and owner of Darrow Contemporary; friend of the column Tom Lee; writer and critic Phyllis Tuchman; and Erin Montanez, assistant researcher at Peter Freeman.
Now for this week’s clue. Name the artist who made this graphite-on-paper sketch, and the collection it’s in.
Winners get the hats that are set to be shipped in January, which will make for a nice late stocking stuffer!
WE HEAR…
A work by Kara Walker at the Red Rooster in the Overton neighborhood of Miami.
… The Miami outpost of Harlem’s famed Red Rooster opened its snazzy Overtown digs this past weekend, featuring an incredible collection of works by Rashid Johnson, Kara Walker, Derrick Adams, Pope.L, Theaster Gates, and Chris Ofili—as well as several local artists … the Tulum art-adjacent festival Art With Me became a superspreader event after hundreds of attendees came down with the coronavirus following the early November event … Red Scare podcast cohost Dasha Nekrasova has landed a role on season three of the hit HBO show “Succession” … Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe directed the music video for the Bonnie “Prince” Billy & Matt Sweeney collaboration “Make Worry For Me” ….
Musicians Matt Sweeney and Bonnie “Prince” Billy in a set made by Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe. Photo courtesy Drag City.
SPOTTED
Harmony Korine and Jimmy Buffett. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
*** Harmony Korine popping into a number of pop-up galleries in Miami’s Design District—conveniently, his studio is in the Melin Building *** Playwright Jeremy O. Harris going on Seth Meyers via Zoom from Europe, explaining that he’s yet to return to New York because “if I’m in Dimes Square and the Metrograph isn’t open it will feel like my life is over” *** A number of art-worlders soaking up the warm vibes in Miami at the end of Zombie Art Basel, dining alfresco at the 27 Restaurant in the Freehand Hotel, including Almine Rech director Paul de Froment with his wife, the designer Marie Laffont, along with Mitchell-Innes & Nash director Josephine Nash, artist Marcus Jahmal, and not one but two Artnet News columnists—Know Your Rights scribe Katarina Feder, and yours truly *** Stephanie LaCava, the art-world chronicler who delivered one of the year’s wittiest gallery-set titles with her novel The Superrationals, at the Breakers in Palm Beach *** The owners of Indochine finally putting the finishing touches on their outdoor seating, just in time for the first snow of the season ***
Brave the cold for spicy shrimp! Photo courtesy a tipster.
PARTING SHOT
