Welcome to Total Animal Soup

If you wish to get hold of the invisible...

“If you wish to get hold of the invisible, you must penetrate as deeply as possible the visible.” - Max Beckmann

I was sitting at the bar at Keens chewing the last olive in my gin martini when I realized something was missing. It wasn’t my date, the stool next to me was empty and no one was coming to take it. I was fine with that, or at least that was what I was telling myself. And it wasn’t the fact that the place had sold to the owner of Catch, months later it still felt the same, even though I did come back to check on it once a week. The mutton chop was still bigger than my face, the burger that you “can only get at the bar” would still be waiting at my table, and Miss Keens was staring down at me through her gold frame and from some unplaceable time, her elbow resting on a taxidermy head, comforting me, letting me know that if we were alone tonight, we were alone together.

No, I realized, there was a writer I wanted to read, stories I wanted to hear, and I couldn’t find them anywhere.

I’ve been obsessed with art for over a decade. Ever since I bumped into this world, I’ve been devouring everything there is to read about it. Which, honestly, hasn’t been a whole lot. When people ask me now how I learned, I don’t know what to say. If I’m feeling extra honest, I tell them the truth: that I just bumped into the art world in a poker game in 2012 at a German painter’s studio in Dumbo, and then learned whatever I could ever since by asking annoying questions, lurking instagram hashtags and the backgrounds of apartment tours, and sitting up late at night pouring through old auction catalogs and Artmarketmonitor links and Kenny Schachter podcasts while one girlfriend after another sighed and rolled over in bed and away from me and my addiction.

I love art, but I love the stories about it almost as much. The personalities and the passionate opinions, the geniuses and the snakes, the patrons and the crooks, the pawns and the kings. And the art news is fine, the coverage of what shows have opened, what sold for how much in auctions, and so on. But I’m curious about what it all means. What’s really said in the hushed conversations on the terrace in the Three Kings or the seats of Rockefeller Plaza before the paddles get raised? And I want to hear it from someone who really lives it, who doesn’t just copy and paste platitudes about the art market like it was their freshman econ paper, but knows what it’s like to risk it all, to really empty the bank account and buy that Garcon a la Pipe. I might.

So I guess I’ll be that writer. Every week I’m going to share stories in the worlds of art and culture, and bring you raw takes and passionate arguments, both my own and from the lovers, creators, pushers, dealers, and hoarders I know.

If you don’t know me yet, I guess you can say I’m a risk-taker. And by that I mean: professional gambler. I was a poker player, a sports bettor, I wrote songs and invested in companies and failed a lot along the way. After another of those failures I woke up one day and realized that someone might call me an “art collector,” though I don’t really think of myself that way. I started in art with what felt like a big bankroll to me, a gambler in his 20’s, but I realized later was nothing by art collector standards. That disadvantage was outweighed by my impressive resume: no art education, no family wealth, no mentor, and no connections. Yet here we are, years later with lots of art and even more stories. From the felt at Foxwoods to the halls of the Met, from the blue collar to the white cube, there are some good tales to tell, and a lot of takes on the news of weeks to come.

Sometimes you’ve got to put your mouth where your money is.