Look, it was already weird to have one nickel for every hanging endangered sea creature chair sculpture South African white guy Porky Hefer made for the Leo DiCaprio Foundation to show at Design Miami in 2018 auctioned my Millea Bros. that turned out to be from the asset liquidation portion of client funds-spending art adviser Lisa Schiff’s bankruptcy proceedings. So the very possibility that we might be at two nickels now is off the charts.
And yet, there it was, hanging right in front of us—and behind the Endangered Orangutan Lounge Chair. Casual observers may think this Endangered Blue Whale Hanging Chair is just an Endagered Shark Hanging Chair with a slipcover. Connoisseurs will see it is covered in recycled t-shirt fabric handwoven to look and feel like your grandma’s bathmat. And conservators will note that the baleen curtain made of strings of beads are, according to the condition report, experiencing “active bead loss.” But honestly, who among us wouldn’t want to just curl up in the mouth of a whale for a few days? It worked great for Jonah. Eventually.
Also at Millea Bros [again] is another lot that I think must have come from Schiff: Sterling Ruby’s acid-washed denim flag, made in 2015 as a benefit edition for the Chinati Foundation. Is there any artwork that captures the moment better than an American flag ghost, with its estimate slashed in half since February, with the proceeds going to pay back some collector who got fleeced on the sale of an Adrian Ghenie painting?
In a way, it’s too bad it’s all being liquidated, because these two pieces—and Schiff’s art collection generally—are the fruit of her life as much as her crimes. They’re superlative examples of the kind of art that piles up along the way when you travel the circuit of art fairs, galas, and opening dinners. Fundraising editions and leftover PR pieces, artworks donated to benefit auctions, gift bag swag, and kickback pieces bought on heavy discount from the galleries where you bring your whales. All accumulated in the service of people with actual wealth—for whom the entire system exists—with their expropriated money.
Maybe all Schiff’s works could have been kept together as a more significant, cautionary gesamtkunstwerkdokument, like how Danh Vo turned all Martin Wong’s tchotchkes into an installation so it could be preserved—and acquired. A Schiff Study Collection would be a snapshot of this frenzied moment, now obviously over. But that would have required much more adventurousness on the part of her collector/investor/client/creditor/victims, who, never forget, were most interested in flipping Adrian Ghenie paintings.