The scope of loss in California is as tragic as it is unthinkable. I’m so sorry for what has happened, what continues as I write, and what lies ahead. The way that things can change in an instant, with everlasting repercussions, puts it all into crushing perspective and makes the proceedings below seem inane. Accept my heartfelt apologies.

This story qualifies as reason enough as to why I struggle to read fiction. Could anything more outlandish be conjured? Irrefutable sources have told me that, over the last several years, artworks by a handful of German artists, such as Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Günther Uecker, and Gotthard Graubner, have been forged by a motley crew of unaffiliated offenders that may or may not include, incongruously enough, members of the local branch of a certain motorcycle gang of international repute. In this instance, even I will refrain from venturing to mention them, for all-too-obvious reasons. (Fear of imminent death.) Have I hedged myself sufficiently?

If I had a hammer (and a paintbrush), I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer in the evening, all over this land. I’d hammer out danger, I’d hammer out a load of expensive fake artworks, too.

The alleged forgeries range from material as pedestrian as signed catalogues sold on eBay to drawings and paintings, and they have consistent signatures that are markedly different from those seen elsewhere, according to parties close to those artists or their estates. In the case of the supposed Polke works receiving scrutiny, they have alleged divergences from the Ben-Day dot stencils that he employed throughout his career.

A Polke exhibition that just concluded at Van der Grinten Galerie in Cologne was largely comprised of these allegedly questionable Polkes, according to people close to the artist’s estate who warned the gallery against exhibiting them. The works were inherited by a man from his parents, since deceased, who purchased them directly from Polke, according to the gallery. From my sources, that backstory has never varied when this material has surfaced.

I contacted Nadia van der Grinten, who together with her husband, Franz, co-own the gallery, and she responded, “Many people are attacking us without opposition or proof. Yes, I’ve heard all this before, they are throwing dark light and it’s not nice.”

A sneaky snap, apparently taken on the down-low, of art dealer Eberhard Klein that became the basis of an allegedly counterfeited certificate of authenticity for what is said to be a fake Sigmar Polke painting. Part of a larger ring of fake German artworks?

Separately, another canvas was recently offered for sale to a friend that just so happens to bear the same suspect signature as the works referenced above. The painting was offered with a “certificate of authenticity” attributed to veteran Polke dealer Erhard Klein, accompanied by a photo of the aged dealer bent over the work in the midst of inspection. Yes, he examined the piece, but the dealer was apparently caught on camera, completely unaware, in the midst of observation.

When the authentication document was sent back to Klein, he replied: “…this letter is not from me and the signature is also forged. I told Mr. XXXX [redacted] that I didn’t know the picture ‘The Devil of Berlin’ and didn’t have any documents about it.” Hopefully, there will be a cessation to these shenanigans soon, but avarice is as congenital as cognizance, so I’m not optimistic.”

My upcoming exhibition at Jupiter Gallery NYC, opening March 14, readdressing and reinterpreting the 1935 essay by Walter Benjamin in the age of computer omnipotence.

Back to the Upper Engadine in Switzerland, where I’ve been residing for the last seven weeks, writing and preparing for my next solo show at Jupiter Gallery NYC, “Art in the Age of Robotic Reproduction,” opening March 14.

I’ve snowboarded in the past, with tremendous trepidation, long before the premature deaths of Michael Kennedy and Sonny Bono and the debilitating injuries that have befallen Michael Schumacher, all due to inadvertence on the slopes. I am fearful about most things in life, other than publicly humiliating myself in pursuit of anything art related (you only have to ask my kids), but I’m not the first to toil away in the mountains, assiduously avoiding tearing down them with imprudent abandon.

The Schachter family (most of them), Adrian, Sage, and Ilona (Gabriel was straggling not far behind) at the art-saturated house of Giovanni Segantini in Maloja, a home/studio as lived in today as a few centuries ago. Photo Diana Segantini

Alberto and Giovanni Giacometti, Ferdinand Hodler, Giovanni Segantini, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Richter all spent considerable time living and working in this storied region of magical light and landscape. Nietzsche had the idea for his four-volume philosophical opus Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883-85), when he chanced upon a “pyramidal block of stone” beside nearby Lake Silvaplana, as revealed in his book Ecce Homo: How One Becomes What One Is (1908), which features subheadings such as “Why I Am So Wise,” “Why I Am So Clever,” and “Why I Write Such Good Books. I’ve yet to experience such revelations, but I soldier on undaunted.

In 1996 Swiss artist, collector, and industrial heir Ruedi Bechtler took over the Hotel Castell, founded in 1912 as a mountain rehab clinic—now the latest trophy for the Hauser and Wirth Hospitality Enterprises. I hope we won’t need a rehab clinic after they homogenize it.

I count 11 hotels and restaurants in the burgeoning Hauser and Wirth hospitality empire (organized under a corporate umbrella, Artfarm), not including a handful of hotels that have been announced, such as a new Groucho Club in the English countryside and Sils, close to where I’m sitting. I can reveal another subsidiary of the enterprise, also a stone’s throw from here in the town Zuoz: a takeover of the trophy Hotel Castell, founded in 1912 as a mountain rehab clinic and owned, since 1996, by Swiss artist, collector, and industrial heir Ruedi Bechtler.

As it stands, the hotel is dripping with art in every nook and cranny, featuring the likes of Martin Kippenberger, Ida Ekblad, Kerstin Brätsch, Sylvie Fleury, Wade Guyton, Angela Bulloch, and tons more. I can only imagine it’s a matter of time before the Castell’s inimitable character is flushed out by the gallery conglomerate and the premises are prettified with obvious suspects from its core stable of artists. I foresee that we’ll need to revisit a version of Castell back when it was a Swiss sanatorium, à la Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain, after Hauser homogenates its latest acquisition.

My 2019 image turned out to be rather prescient, as Hauser voraciously gobbles hotels and restaurants, repurposing art as decoration for its ever-increasing hospitality businesses. Lord knows what’s next.

I joined a nearby pool—the aggressively uphill, peripatetic treks are awfully arduous—and noticed the art magazine Ursula (named after Manuela Hauser’s mom), the in-house, and widely distributed, Hauser and Wirth organ. Over the course of the last month, many mags stacked on the front desk of the spa have come and gone, snatched by attendees, yet the unblemished Ursula issue remains, immaculate and ever present.

Hauser and Wirth Hospitality’s house organ, Ursula, a publication left behind by spa-goers for more than a month before someone finally nabbed it, evincing a glimmer of hope that folks not just want to experience art, but to possess it, too.

I wondered if market-maligner Scott Reyburn—what a tormented existence for an art and economic writer to inhabit—may finally be onto something with the disquieting headline “Lingering art market slump prompts the question: is art no longer a ‘must have’ for the wealthy?” For those of us perpetually hustling and/or struggling to make a living in the art trade, it’s a-nothing-short-of-alarming prospect to ponder.

Local artist Not Vital, who is anything but—an artist with an international reach and mindbogglingly prodigious output—in front of the Castle of Tarasp, erected in the year 1040, owned and maintained by the artist. As herculean an effort as any I have seen. Ever.

On a more agreeable note, there are dozens (and dozens) of great galleries in the Engadine valley and museums such as the Muzeum Susch, the Engadiner Museum, the Segantini Museum, the Berry Museum, and Tarasp Castle, dating from the 10th or 11th century, owned and maintained by the prodigious local-born global artist and designer Not Vital. (That’s his real name—should have been mine.) All of this serving a seasonal resort destination spanning 60 miles with a full-time population of approximately 25,000.

The too-cold-to-paint-in summer studio of local artist Patrick Salutt (from a nearby agricultural family in Zuoz)—a contemporary vein of 1930s-era Social Realism through the lens of Swiss farmers.

This is a good thing, as my credo, to paraphrase Fran Lebowitz, has always been: “I’m not the type who wants to go back to nature; I’m the type that wants to go back to the hotel.” I recoil from the sun, can’t tolerate the beach, and the only sport I engage in is full-contact art. Give me four bars of wi-fi, and I’m anxiety free. The quantity and quality of art on offer is nothing short of staggering, ringed by a mountainous landscape—jarringly picturesque beyond description—at an altitude more than 6,000 miles above sea level; so high, in fact, that top athletes come from around the world to train for endurance sports here.

In 1966, Swiss painter Niele Toroni developed the method of painting grids with a #50 brush repeated at perpendicular (30 cm)
intervals, here applied directly to a wall of the eminently charming gallerist Elsbeth Bisig Tschudi, in the town of Zuoz.

It all began when Bruno Bischofberger opened an outpost of his Zurich gallery in St. Moritz in 1963, since closed. Bruno’s ghostly presence pervades the valley. Bischofberger has long been my model as the consummate, inveterate hoarder—“Hoarder #6,” my no-reserve auction, will migrate to Phillips in July of this year (chalk it up to instability at Sotheby’s, which held it the last five years). Though no longer actively dealing, Bruno is in the midst of erecting a series of edifices in Männedorf (near Zurich) to house his stuff, ranging from Swiss folk and Scandinavian glass to all things 1980s art.

Ladina Florineth, the former ski instructor and present proprietor of the seven-room hotel Villa Flor in S-chanf, with an epic. personalized 1998 Julian Schnabel painting (a frequent guest) wedged into a slot cut into the ceiling to accommodate it.

One of the most formidable dealers extant is Karsten Greve, who began collecting at the ripe age of 20 with an acquisition of a Cy Twombly, with whom he worked closely. He had to hide the work (under his bed, he told me) from his parents, all in the medical profession, as it was as inscrutable to them as it was to most of the lay public at that time. They considered him the black sheep of the family as a result. I read that two-thirds of all of Twombly’s works have passed through Greve’s hands at one point or another, a notion he didn’t dispute. That’s a whole lot of scribbles.

Kenny and Karsten, about as unlikely a pair as you’re wont to find in the art world. There are few I admire more than dealer Greve, for his razor sharp eye, legendary exhibition history, and the breadth of his collection.

By the age of 24 Greve had his first gallery in Cologne and at 78, he’s either manning one of his spaces daily (St. Moritz, Cologne, Paris) or on a plane racking up miles visiting museums and collectors. His vast and storied collection of modern and contemporary masters is the subject of as much envy as speculation as to its full scope—safe to say, it’s cosmic in its enormity. I got so excited by his encyclopedic Wols exhibition, I ardently beseeched his director for an on-camera interview (to what end, I’m still not exactly certain at this juncture, as I sort through audio and transcription issues).

The Wols exhibition at Karsten Greve in St. Moritz was beyond a museum show in its intimacy and the scope of its reach. Portions brought to mind the mark-making of a rat scratching its way from beneath the floorboards.

When the answer came back affirmatively, I was so nervous I spent hours in preparation, researching the life of the artist and gallerist. What ensued was a freewheeling 90-minute discussion about Wols, 1913 to 1951, during which Greve spoke freely about a range of topics in addition to the artist. There’s a stunning two-volume publication that took years to produce, and it is a must. Karsten—whose life is wallpapered in Twombly, Bourgeois (he introduced her work to Europe), Fontana, Manzoni, Chamberlin, and others, of course—bleeds art.

Back to earth, or what’s left of it, or what will become of it… In the wake of Trump’s expression of intent to expropriate Greenland and Canada, and rename the Gulf of Mexico, coupled with his sidekick Musk’s meddling in German and U.K. politics, the next four years are certainly going to be, umm, unpredictable. Just how much so and to what end remains to be seen. With that in mind, I partially redrafted the lyrics to the 1940 folk anthem “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie, itself a riposte to Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America.” The new title: “This Land is MY Land (and Every Other Land, Too).”

My car (a 1998 Japanese-market Honda Integra Type R: don’t ask) parked in front of Chesa Futura, Norman Foster’s home and architectural handiwork built in 2004 in St. Moritz, comprised of 275,000 wooden shingles.

In a perverse twist on Thomas Moore’s 1516 book Utopia, Toyota has created a development called Woven City, which is really a corporate incubator where residents are meant to develop, test, and validate future products and services for the industrial concern (even the children, I bet). Think of it as the perfect coda to capitalism. Why pretend? Just couch your entire existence in your company/brand affiliation. On reflection, I would categorically volunteer to live in an art city—call it Art World—composed exclusively of museums, galleries, schools, auction houses, fairs, publishers, collectors, and studios. Sounds rather ideal, actually. For now, St. Moritz is as close as I’ll get.

To conclude on a hopeful note, the previously mentioned, scarcely touched issue of Ursula magazine was pilfered from the pool today, a hopeful sign that people still want to possess art-related material.