Clubs That Aren’t “Clubs” but Really Are Clubs
Luckily for Whales and those who enjoy riding the largesse of their wake, there are forms of advanced social climbing that don’t involve golf or membership in an old-money WASP club.
If you’re a Whale who, like most Whales, already has his own pool, tennis courts, beach, and all the other accoutrements of country club life at your exclusive disposal in your own backyard, or having been accepted into the golf club, have lost interest in golf, there is one club you can join that offers more rarefied, elitist, and cultured fun than the most exclusive country club in the world. Though totally lacking outdoor amenities, it does boast clubhouses in every major city in the world and holds jamborees in an international network of vast palatial edifices where club members are feted and celebrated on a weekly basis somewhere on the globe.
Better yet, at this club’s functions nouveau Whales not only get to bond with the most sophisticated and worldly Whales in the world, they get to hobnob with movie stars, supermodels, famous directors, highbrow cultural icons, celebrities from every walk of life, and the latest certified genius of the month. What’s more, this club doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation. In fact, if you’re kinky, you’ll be doubly welcome.
The best part is, there’s no membership fee, no annual dues, no formal application process, no risk of rejection, and no one can blackball you.
We call it the Art Club. And its only membership requirements are that you love to shop and have several hundred million dollars to spend on museum-quality art. Its clubhouses are ultratasteful private galleries with names like Gagosian, Pace, Matthew Marks, Acquavella, White Cube, and Ace, and the palatial settings for your jamborees are the greatest museums in the world.
Besides all the parties, openings, cocktail parties, and celebrity friends that come with the mega spending that is a prerequisite to membership, what makes the Art Club doubly appealing to Whales is, even if you’re colorblind, if you buy enough art at the galleries mentioned above, odds are you will have made a very shrewd investment. In fact, statistics indicate the Art Club is as profitable as the best hedge funds. According to Dr. Rachel Campbell of the Finance University of Maastricht, since the 1960s, on average, the art market has gone up 11 percent a year in value. The art market outperforms everything but insider trading. Look at casino king Steve Wynn. He purchased Picasso’s La Rêve in 2001 for $60 million and in 2013 sold it to then-reigning hedge fund king Steven Cohen for a cool $155 million. And that’s after he put his elbow through it showing it off to friends.
Not only does the Art Club membership include Whales of every size and description, it existed before the birth of Jesus Christ. Emperors, tyrants, queens, kings, princes of commerce, robber barons, tycoons—their favorite pastime has always been art collecting. Why? Because it allows them to reinvent themselves, i.e., to social climb. One isn’t just buying art, one is buying culture, class, sophistication. It doesn’t matter how you made your filthy lucre—arms, exploitation of child labor, strip-mining—spend enough of it on art and your sins will be washed away and you’ll be heralded as a Whale of taste and breeding.
Keep spending money and the club will never stop throwing parties for you. Between September and June, art galleries, museums, and auction houses in New York, LA, London, Paris, Hong Kong, Basel, etc., have more openings, shows, cocktail parties, art fairs, dinners, and museum benefits than you will have time to attend. Plus there are the parties that all the other Whales in the club will invite you to to show off their collections and try to hondle you into swapping your Damien Hirst for two of their old Franz Klines.
EMPOWERING THOUGHT #47
If you’re a Whale who liked trading baseball cards as a kid, the Art Club is for you. Buy enough “blue chip” art and the simple fact that you purchased a painting will increase its value. Think how good you’ll feel knowing that your taste, or lack of it, has shaped the aesthetics of the age you live in.
Contemporary art has become the twenty-first-century equivalent of wampum, those strings of shells American Indians once used as money. Just as wampum was worth what the Indians decided it was worth, so it is with art—particularly modern art; its value is arbitrary and nonintrinsic. The market value of art is determined primarily by the ego of the Whale, i.e., what one Whale is willing to pay to keep another Whale from adding it to his or her collection of “wampum.”
Yes, critics, dealers, and museum curators play a role in determining what is deemed “great” art or “bad” art. But when it comes to judging what are the best Hirsts, Princes, Koonses, Hockneys, etc., the greatest paintings or sculptures by those modern masters are those the Whale is willing to pay the most money for. Whales have the last word, not critics. Which is yet another reason that Whales love to burnish their image with art.
As long as nouveau Whales keep joining the Art Club, the already astronomical prices are guaranteed to go up—unless there’s a war or a plague or . . . Not to leave the reader with a depressing thought, know that the climbing skills that you are learning in this book will still come in handy even if you have to burn your Basquiat to stay warm.
How does one get started climbing for wampum and becoming a member of the Art Club elite? Is it just a club for sophisticated big-city Wall Street billionaires who minored in art history back in college or grew up in Whale families known for their connoisseurship? Do you have to know someone who already belongs to the club?
The simple answer is no, but to show you how the Art Club works, let’s say you’re a recently widowed forty-two-year-old housewife from the New Jersey suburbs by the name of Vicki, whose late husband was kind enough to leave you the $500 million he made in the toxic waste disposal business.
You, Vicki, know nothing about the art world except what you’ve seen in the movies and read in the New York Post. But you like pretty things, love to shop, and most important, know there’s a more glamorous world waiting for you on the other side of the Hudson that you’re curious about. The trouble is, you don’t have a clue how someone like yourself would ever gain access to the inner circle of that brand of fabulousness.
Believe it or not, Vicki, your personalized invitation to gallery openings, museum galas, parties, and dinners where you’ll be hobnobbing with the bold-faced names and beautiful people pictured on the pages of Vogue and Vanity Fair is just one phone call away. What’s the magic number? It’s listed in the phone book. In fact, we’ll give it to you: (212) 708-9400.
Now, when the operator answers and says “Museum of Modern Art,” ask for the acquisitions department and tell whoever answers the phone that you would like to come by tomorrow and give the museum $5 million.
When they hang up on you, have your lawyer call them back and explain that you, Mrs. Nobody from Nowhere, are indeed serious and have in excess of $500 million to cover the check. Also have your lawyer make it clear that you are not interested in making a donation that goes toward the maintenance of the museum’s existing programs, or contributing to the construction of a new wing that will have someone else’s name on it, or any of the other boring stuff involved in the running of a museum. You want your $5 million to purchase a single painting by a living artist whom they would like to add to their collection. Guaranteed, twenty-four hours later, you will be treated to lunch in the trustees’ dining room of the Museum of Modern Art.
During this lunch, you will add another stipulation to your gift. You get to go with them to the famous artist’s studio to help them pick out the painting you’re buying for the museum.
They will try to talk you out of this. Have your lawyer prepare a contract that includes your stipulations and place it and a cashier’s check for $5 million on the table. The museum representative will tell you this is not how they do business, and that they know best how to spend a patron’s money. We guarantee, if you politely tell them that you will take the $5 million to another museum, they will snatch the contract out of your hand, sign it
, and take the check.
Congratulations, Vicki: You’ve just become the newest member of the Art Club! Your membership will become official within forty-eight hours, at which point every single one of the most prestigious art dealers in New York City and beyond will have heard about you, the new Art Whale to surface on the scene.
Why did we tell Vicki to specify her $5 million be used to buy a work of art from a famous living artist? Because a dead painter can’t tell everyone what impeccable taste and connoisseurship Vicki has.
Vicki should also know that when she goes to the painter’s studio, the curator in charge of this acquisition will try to get all the credit for her deciding to spend her millions on this artist whom Vicki never heard of before she joined the club. To prevent this from happening, as soon as Vicki shakes hands with the artist, she should announce that she has always dreamed of owning one of his/her paintings. “As soon as I got my $500 million, I told myself I have to have one. But you’re such a fucking genius, it would be selfish of me to hang your painting on my wall; I should put it in a goddamn museum and share it with the whole frickin’ world.”
We know, it sounds corny and vulgar, but Art Whales say things like that all the time to artists. In part because famous artists love flattery backed by cash so much, they will show their appreciation for the intelligence Vicki showed by calling them a “genius” by giving her a small work on paper with a personal inscription. Congratulations, Vicki, you now have an art collection.
The curator will be pissed off at Vicki for stealing all their glory until she asks them to become her personal art consultant. Chances are, they will tell her they are honored but, because of a conflict of interest, they can’t. The curator will then recommend someone else for the job who will invariably be his/her husband, wife, boyfriend, or girlfriend. An art consultant is generally paid a flat fee, augmented by what Vicki’s dead husband would refer to as kickbacks, or favors, schmears that sometimes but not always involve cash. An art consultant is a paid best friend whose job it is to keep you buying museum-quality art and eventually persuade you to donate it to their girlfriend/boyfriend/friend/husband/wife curator at the museum. Because Vicki has read The Social Climber’s Bible, she will know they are trying to screw her.
Why do we say that? Because there isn’t enough museum-quality art available to those new to the game to keep you spending. The dealers won’t sell the best paintings/sculpture to you no matter what your art consultant says because they save the best for Whales who are regular customers.
Now that Vicki is a member of the Art Club, the fun and profit for you will come from figuring out a way of screwing more established members out of paintings, sculptures, etc., that they thought they were in line to buy. This is where art collecting becomes a game.
Though we wouldn’t presume to tell you what kind of art to collect, you will have more fun and be invited to better parties (which is two-thirds of the reason anyone joins the Art Club) if you collect the works of hot artists who are young enough to have sexy friends, yet not so young as to be a risky investment, as opposed to collecting dead Old Masters.
Do not just let your art consultant arrange meetings only with his or her favorite dealers. Insist on being introduced to the directors of every single one of the top galleries. Knowing that you have given MoMA $5 million, the dealers will be very nice to you. You should also know, Vicki, that no matter what your consultant and the dealers say, the “best” paintings by whatever artists you have expressed interest in will not be shown to you when you go to the gallery. Why? Because you are new to the game. And it is in the “interest of the dealer,” i.e., he will make more money, if he sells the best paintings to more established members of the club, due to the fact that being in the collection of an Art Whale with an established, first-rate collection (one that museums covet) will elevate the sticker price of all the other paintings/sculptures by that artist. How do you get around this, Vicki? By using much the same approach your late husband did when he muscled his way into the toxic waste disposal business.
Do not dress up for these initial meetings. The less chic you are, the more seriously you will be taken in the early stages of your Art Club life. (Do not worry, Vicki, very shortly you will have a great many events to buy couturier clothes for.) Look thoughtfully at the first painting you are shown. No matter how ugly, grotesque, shocking, strange, or beautiful the painting may appear to be, tell the dealer it’s “too decorative.”
Decorative is the worst thing that can be said about a contemporary work of art. While your art consultant and the dealer are trying to figure out if you actually know what you’re saying, announce that you are not interested in “studio sweepings.” Then ask to use the restroom.
While they think you’re in the bathroom, slip into the rooms of picture racks in the back of the gallery. They will be arranged alphabetically. Once you locate the ones that contain canvases by the painter you’re interested in, give a shout out to the art dealer and your art consultant in the same tone of voice your late husband used when dealing with garbage men who tried to skim: “Who the fuck you savin’ these for?” Again, do not worry about seeming crass. Part of what makes the art world so fun is that it is so blatantly crass.
The dealer will of course tell you that they are on hold or are already sold. If the market value of each canvas is, let’s say, five hundred thousand dollars, offer to buy three for a million cash, now or never, and the chances are those paintings will magically become unsold and no longer on hold.
You will now be invited to every party, dinner, and opening that dealer throws for the next year. More important, you have established yourself as a savvy connoisseur. When you go to the next gallery, you will be shown better paintings. And you will only have to spend five hundred thousand dollars in total to become that establishment’s new best friend. By the time you drop into the third gallery on your list, museum-quality paintings by the hot artist that your art consultant told you to be interested in will be pulled out without your having to pretend to go to the bathroom so you can sneak back into the racks.
Spend $20 million on living painters/sculptors at an assortment of galleries over the next three months, go to the art auctions at Sotheby’s, and bid a record price, say, for a Richard Prince painting of a nurse or a Jeff Koons porcelain of Michael Jackson and his monkey, and dealers and museum directors will be fighting over who gets to throw the first party in your honor. Your days will be filled with studio visits. You will now know the thrill of having certified geniuses suck up to you. And you’ll be invited to more celebratory events than you can attend, even if you go out seven nights a week and triple-book. Name any person in the world you’ve always wanted to meet, and a dealer who has something he wants you to buy will arrange it. Sex, drugs, boys, girls, five-course dinners where all the food is blue. You only have to say what you want and there’ll be an art dealer ready, willing, and able to give it to you, Vicki.
Donate another $10 million to the Museum of Modern Art, and you’re on the board of the Museum of Modern Art, ergo, you’re friends with other board members. Which means that in less than six months, you’ve gone from being a suburban housewife in Jersey to becoming pals with the likes of Wallis Annenberg, Sid Bass, Leon Black, Clarissa Bronfman, Glenn Dubin, Marie-Josée Kravis, Philip Niarchos, Michael Ovitz, Ronald Perelman, David Rockefeller, and Alice Tisch. What will you talk about with these fancy people you had absolutely nothing in common with until you started shopping for art? Art, of course.
People who would have been horrified by your lack of sophistication, taste, and vulgarity less than a year ago will now be inviting you to fly on their private jets to art fairs—Art Basel in Miami, Art Basel in Hong Kong, Art Basel in Basel. Courtesy cars will whisk you round the fair to make sure you get all your shopping done in time to attend even more lavish parties thrown by luxury brands and fashion houses.
For argument’s sake, let’s say Vicki spends $200 million of her $500 million on art in her firs
t two years as a member of the Art Club. She will not have blown $200 million, she will have made a $200 million investment that in all likelihood is now worth $250 million. When you buy a yacht, a plane, or a Ferrari and try to sell it two years later, it’s a secondhand yacht, plane, or Ferrari. Not so with art. Better yet, Vicki’s now $250 million collection, if she so desires, can be traded, transported across international borders, sold for cash, and/or be used for collateral. Since banks are happy to loan money on museum-quality contemporary art—especially if it belongs to a collector who’s on the board of the Museum of Modern Art, i.e., has the influence to make sure the market values of her favorite artists don’t decrease in value—Vicki can leverage her collection and buy even more expensive paintings. Which will be worth even more in another two years because they’ve spent that time hanging on Vicki’s walls.
What someone like our Vicki chooses to do with her collection when she finally shops till she drops is up to her. It is our hope that she does what a good Whale should do and bequeaths part, or better yet all, of it to a museum so it can be appreciated by small fish and Whales alike. To our way of looking at the world, the Art Club is what social climbing can be at its very best.
EMPOWERING THOUGHT #48
If you are Mountaineer with a highly developed sense of aesthetics, possess a Taste Meister’s personality traits, and would like to have access to all the parties and perks that come with membership in the Art Club but lack the financial wherewithal to join, do not give up hope. The art world is a service industry in which merely rich social climbers cater to the needs of obscenely rich social climbers. Convince your NBF Whale to invest in art instead of boring stocks and bonds, and the art world will love you almost as much as they love your Whale, plus you might just get a commission.
The Social Climber's Bible: A Book of Manners, Practical Tips, and Spiritual Advice forthe Upwardly Mobile Page 21
