Isn't That Rich?: Life Among the 1 Percent Read Online Free PDF

department store.”
    A friend’s regal mother concurred. “Of course, the old-school collectors find the whole thing absurd,” she confided over high tea at one of Manhattan’s most discreet private clubs, housed in a belle époque mansion. Her blond lacquered hair, set in a genteel coif, recalled when women went to beauty parlors and not salons.
    “I remember going to school in Paris as a young girl and spending weeks at the Louvre. It was divine. When my husband and I were first married, we went to an old-line gallery and purchased our first nature morte. While it was less expensive then compared to today, we still put it on a layaway plan. It took us a year to pay off, and we thought we were so daring. Anyway …” She took a spoonful of salmon mousse. “It was a different time. Today, it’s ‘I want it, and I want it now.’”
    “Are you going to Art Basel?” That’s the question one hears up and down Madison Avenue in October and November.
    Recently, I was having lunch with a public relations professional who puts together events for the annual Miami art confab. She explained how her clients go to parties while their consultants roam the fair, snapping iPhone photos.
    “Sometimes they buy, but for the most part, they wait,” she said, nibbling on her Nova and bagel.
    “For what?” I asked.
    “To see if someone else is interested,” she said. “If this one or that one wants it or gives it the nod, then they’ll pony up the money.”
    “And if not?”
    “The key is everybody wants what everyone else wants.”
    “Which is?”
    “That’s part of the game, figuring out what everyone else wants.”
    “How do you do that?”
    “To tell you the truth, there are, like, three guys deciding what everybody should buy,” she whispered. “Three guys.”
    “Perhaps they all convene and decide at the diner,” I offered.
    A few days later, I was having breakfast with a good friend in his Madison Avenue aerie, where the morning sun illuminated the Greco-Roman sculptures, Renaissance paintings, Georgian silver, and midcentury Modern furniture.
    “When I go to Art Basel, I don’t see art collecting as much as I see competitive spending,” he said. “I see the same people who thirty years ago were at Studio 54 who are still behind the velvet rope. Only now it’s Art Basel, and the entrance fee to an A-list party is a hundred thousand dollars for a starter piece.” He offered me a serving dish of gravlax on toast points.
    “Does that get them the piece and the invite?”
    “Generally both. I’m not sure they know what they’re buying, but they want to be players, and they take a dealer or consultant’s advice. It’s like the CliffsNotes of the art world, and then they take the plunge.”
    “Do they do any research?”
    “That’s the thing about the art fairs. It’s the big-box retailer of the art world. You go up and down, aisle after aisle. Of course, there are reputable dealers, but, if you asked the collectors whether they got a condition report on the piece or asked about provenance , they’d probably say, ‘What’s that?’”
    Shortly after that conversation, I was in the sleek, spartan gallery of one of the most respected blue-chip dealers, who sat with beautiful posture in a Mies black leather chair.
    “Thirty, forty years ago, people bought and built collections slowly. Many of the great collectors even paid over time,” he told me. “They savored each piece, got to know and support the artists.”
    Now, he said, “they’re having dinner at their new ten-thousand-square-foot loft and realize they need a collection. They’re often very nice people in a hurry. And of course, they get the collector’s bug and become insta-experts.”
    “As in?”
    “My consultant is better than your consultant. This gallery is better than that one. And it’s all backed with the insta-library. X linear feet of books on every artist. One cannot have the insta-collection without the