Plus, a new game with a prize of a free Wet Paint hat, and which millionaire NFT artist is moving to Marfa, Texas?
Annie Armstrong
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Who is your favorite art world power couple? There are many to choose from. Gagoyant is an obvious pick, and then there are party-circuit champions Yvonne Force and Leo Villareal, dynamic curatorial duo Cecilia Alemani and Massimiliano Gioni, #couplegoals inspirations Carroll Dunham and Laurie Simmons, and many more. I’m delighted to have a new pair to throw into the ring. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Kennemin.
That’s right, about three years ago—a pandemic romance! how novel!—Tracey Emin, the YBA phenom behind such immortal works as My Bed and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 found love in a hopeless place with Artnet News’s own Kenny Schachter.
I first caught wind that this might be a thing when Schachter gave me a call a few weeks back as we were competing for the same scoop about Calvin Marcus’s defection from David Kordansky (you win this round, Kenny). Towards the end of the call, I asked him about a rumor I had heard regarding who he had recently been dating. He wouldn’t confirm who it was, but hinted, “It rhymes with lemon.”
For some context, Schachter and his wife Ilona Rich were separated at the time, so there’s no foul play here for those wondering. This also wouldn’t be the first time Schachter dated a prolific artist—as opposed to the case of Lucas Zwirner, I know for a fact that Schachter dated Elizabeth Peyton. For Emin’s part, dating an art market fixture is also not unfamiliar territory to her either, as she dated Carl Freedman in the 1990s and famously toured the country with him in a Cadillac, once camping out in a tent on the beach that would eventually turn into The Last Thing I Said to You Is Don’t Leave Me Here (1999). Good news, Tracey: Kenny also has a lot of fancy cars that maybe the two of you can prowl around in!
Both Schachter and Emin remained close-lipped about further details on their relationship status, but I have it on good authority that the recent male figures in Emin’s work are inspired by Schachter. When I asked Schachter about this, he responded simply, “She doesn’t need me for any inspiration.”
Bootleg versions of the drug have cropped up at bodegas in Soho. Photo by Annie Armstrong.
While the idle rich have been alight in conversation about the virulent misuse of Ozempic, a diabetes medicine that’s been co-opted by the healthy as a way to become unhealthily thin, the art world seems preoccupied with the status of another drug that gets detourned for extraneous use: Adderall. On October 12 of last year, the FDA announced that there was “a shortage of the immediate release formulation of amphetamine mixed salts, commonly referred to by the brand name Adderall.” The shortage has still not let up, and the art world is getting desperate.
There’s some ambiguity between those complaining about the situation who truly have a medical need for the drug and those who use it for its favorable side effects like torpedoing through your day on as much government-approved speed as possible, increased longevity on a night out, or, well, the same reason some people use Ozempic.
I’m no doctor so I won’t say who needs the drugs and who doesn’t, but here are some stories from art world folks who feel hung out to dry by the Adderall drought.
Having lost patience waiting for prescriptions to get filled—and for unofficial dealers to provide—Jamian Juliano-Villani told Wet Paint that she switched her prescription to Vyvanse, an alternative drug chemically composed of something called lisdexamfetamine instead of amphetamine salts. The artist has had a lot to focus on in the new year with the re-opening of O’Flaherty’s, and described the switch as “disappointing.” Womp womp.
Word on the street is that pills can vary in cost on the black market between $7 to $15, which is a pretty expensive habit if you want to take it daily.
Alex Tsebelis, the founder of the notoriously “arts-adjacent” modeling agency No Agency, told me that he nearly got into a fight with a CVS employee who wouldn’t fill his prescription. “He said he wasn’t going to make arbitrary decisions about who got filled first since he wasn’t the regular pharmacist. I complained and moved the prescription to Capsule, who seem to be doing an ok job again after really sucking post-pandemic.” The next edition of the agency’s popular newsletter will be dedicated to the shortage, and the unforeseen consequences it has had on creative industries.
For those who have gone cold-turkey without the stimulant, unforeseen behavioral patterns have started to crop up. One anonymous Chinatown gallery-owner told me that she’s travelled as far as the Bronx to get to a pharmacy that can fill her Adderall prescription, and if she can’t find one, “I lose all impulse control.”
What does that mean exactly? “When I was unmedicated, I’d throw parties to get more attention, texted like 200 people in a day (including all of my ex-boyfriends), and indulged my high-risk business impulses.” The anonymous dealer’s director chimed in to add, “Oh god, and she had to have the volume on her phone on, so all day I’d hear her clack-clack-clack texting all of these people.”
One advisor I spoke with anonymously confessed that their inability to procure the little blue pills “has really affected my ability to stay motivated/finish tasks.” They detailed a recent instance where, during an install at a client’s home, they sent an art handler to the house only for the collector to call and say, “Your guy is here, but the painting isn’t.” The advisor explained it was hardly the handler’s fault: “it totally slipped my mind to tell him where and when to pick up the fucking work… incredibly embarrassing.”
Hopefully the shortage ends soon, but until then, let’s lend some extra grace to our more distraction-prone art world friends. They’re suffering enough, clearly.
Jan Gatewood is on the hunt for where his Richard Prince Instagram painting from 2015 wound up (do you know?)… Swivel Gallery has picked up representation of Amy Bravo… Some more fascinating dispatches on the state of Marfa, Texas, following the big news of Bjarke Ingels’s new development there: both Beeple and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey have recently bought homes in the rapidly Hamptons-ifying little town… Lomex Gallery is opening a satellite space across from its current spot on Walker Street in Tribeca (we hear the rollout of the space may be “disruptive”)… Rachel Rossin has been added to Magenta Plains’s roster following the smash opening of her new work at the Whitney Museum… Gallerist/jeweler Will Shott is releasing a line of jewelry with artist Tully Dugan on Henry Street this weekend… Metrograph has brought back their brunch program, thank god… The Guggenheim Museum has acquired one of Anthony Akinbola’s beloved “durag paintings,” and the artist admitted that, “I’ve only ever been in the Guggenheim once and that was just a few years ago”… (I mean, I get it! It’s hard to make it uptown!)…
Takashi Murakami and Beeple chatting in the aisles at Art Basel Hong Kong *** Marilyn Minter, Laurie Simmons, Lily Allen, Patia Borja, and Chuck Schumer milling around the Planned Parenthood gala *** The downtown kids all migrated south for SXSW, where the buzzy newsletter Perfectly Imperfect hosted a showcase of some beloved names like Blaketheman1000, The Hellp, Cobrasnake, and Isabella Lovestory *** Gayle King and Catherine Keener at Gagosian‘s opening of DALL-E generated prints by Bennett Miller *** Kennedy Yanko bidding on a Hiba Shabaz painting at the Art Production Fund gala’s auction run by Sara Friedlander while Fran Leibowitz, Elizabeth Glaessner, and Robin F. Williams sat hoping they’d be next off the waitlist for a Maria Tash ear piercing the gala was providing in the bathroom *** Jarrett Earnest regaled the audience at Peter Schjeldahl’s memoriam with a riveting and moving story about the time the duo took mushroom tea together *** Stacey Abrams, Awkwafina, Michelle Williams from Destiny’s Child, and Hasan Minhaj at the opening of the new permanent UTA Artists Space in Atlanta *** Marlene Zwirner and Matthew Brown sure looked cozy together at Paul’s Casablanca during Louis Osmosis’s afterparty for his new show at Amanita ***
From the left, clockwise, Lucas Zwirner (image via Artnet), Elizabeth Peyton (Photo via: zimbo),David Zwirner (Photo by Simon de Pury), Harold Ancart (Photo by Justyna Fedec courtesy David Zwirner), and Dianna Agron (Photo by Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Utopia Films).
I thought it was time to do what I do best and stir the pot a little bit with your weekly dose of Wet Paint. Recent speculation over who could play Tom Sachs and Sarah Hoover in a biopic following their recent string of scandals got me wondering what other salacious gossip could be optioned—and, if it did, who should play who?
Thus, I present a new little game. If you email me at [email protected] with the best casting calls for a given prompt each week, I will personally mail you one of the limited edition pink Wet Paint hats.
Remember when Harold Ancart unexpectedly departed from David Zwirner, likely at least partially due to a lovers quarrel between him, Dianna Agron, and Lucas Zwirner? And then about a year later, Lucas made it up to his father by recruiting Elizabeth Peyton to the gallery stable, amid rumors that he was also dating her?
Well, I think this could make a great Nancy Meyers-style rom-com about the people representing your art contending with the people representing your heart. And I’m dying to know who you’d want to cast.
I have some of my own ideas that make prominent use of the Skarsgård family, cast maybe Renée Zellwegger as Peyton, Jim Carrey with a beard as Ancart, and Felicity Jones as Agron. Don’t see my vision? Let me know who would work better at [email protected].
