New York for Beginners (9 page)

Zoe shook her head.

“Female arm decoration to go out and be seen with. Preferably blonde, size zero.”

Zoe’s small-town brain required a little time to process this new information.

“Come to the opening at my gallery the day after tomorrow, and then I’ll introduce you to real New York society,” Mimi said. It sounded more like an order than a suggestion. Then Mimi shook her head. “What rock have you been living under, darling?”

Maybe Zoe Schuhmacher really had been living under a rock—one called Herpersdorf bei Ansbach. In the rural, middle-class German town she grew up in, there just weren’t any rich people. At least not any she knew. In the seventies and eighties, the people with money were the ones who drove a Mercedes instead of an Opel; the ones who could afford to fly to their vacation destinations, instead of driving to Austria or Italy. Everyone else in the town liked to talk about them. But there was only one person who was actually considered rich: the Ansbach pharmacist. He owned all three pharmacies in town and lived with his family in a bungalow. Zoe’s mother thought it was enviably modern because the pharmacist’s wife “never had to climb stairs.” The pharmacist’s daughter got a horse for her fifteenth birthday. In Zoe’s world back then, that seemed to be the height of frivolousness. Zoe wasn’t even allowed to take riding lessons at the local stable. Her mother told her it was better not to even begin with “a rich-people hobby.”

When she got older and spent time in Munich, Zoe had observed gossip-column high society from a distance and had her first encounters with people who had at least five first names followed by a
von
Something-or-Other. As a teenager she attended picnics at various estates, where there had somehow always been fresh strawberries with whipped cream.

But real, live Rockefeller wealth—or in Zoe’s case, Mimi and Whitney wealth—wasn’t part of her world. For Zoe Schuhmacher, it was something out of a Hollywood movie.

The Rich and the Super Rich, or: Who Are the Legendary 1 Percent, Anyway?

“Until I was twelve years old, I thought everyone owned a house on 5th Avenue, a villa in Newport, and a railway line.” Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr.

These days, a US household must earn more than $380,000 a year to be considered among the richest 1 percent in the country. On average. In New York, of course, that isn’t nearly enough. That will only make you part of the upper middle class. In New York, you have to make at least $609,000 to belong to the 1 percent, and in Greenwich, Connecticut, $908,000 are necessary.

The superrich, however—the top 1 percent of 1 percent—only count in billions. See also hedge fund managers.

(
New York for Beginners
, p. 87)

8

Zoe walked along 26th Street, where there was one gallery after another. Andrea Meislin, Lehman Maupin, BravinLee, and of course Mimi Mellon. The top dog, Gagosian, was right around the corner. A little bell chimed as she entered Mimi’s exhibition rooms, but there was no one in sight. Zoe looked around and wondered what kind of conscience-altering drugs she had unwittingly consumed with her lunch. The white walls of the former industrial rooms were plastered with the monumental paintings of the American punk artist Astarot Frist. Identically sized squares in psychedelic candy colors were repeated at identical distances on white canvases. The series was called “The Square Paintings” and was intended at first impression to simply make the viewer happy, it said on an information sheet that was screwed to the wall under plexiglass.

But the longer Zoe’s gaze shifted from one vibrantly colorful square to the next, and she tried to find some kind of rhythm or pattern to the colors, the more nervous she became.

“You’re not the only one to react that way,” Mimi said, laying a calming hand on Zoe’s shoulder in greeting. “Not one of the over five hundred squares has the exact same color as the other. He’s purposely trying to create subconscious restlesness.”

Today, Mimi was wearing a quirky fur vest with pompoms dangling from the collar over a cream-colored silk blouse and black leather leggings. Her hair was woven into an innocent, assymetrical schoolgirl braid. She had huge, black horn-rimmed glasses balanced on her nose. Downtown chic.

“It looks sort of like an unsorted periodic table,” Zoe said, dimly remembering eleventh-grade chemistry class.

“That’s where Frist’s idea came from. Every work has the name of a chemical element. You’re standing right in front of
Ac—actinium
. Careful, it’s radioactive!”

“And people hang these things in their living rooms?” Zoe asked, wondering briefly if she shouldn’t change professions and just paint lots of colorful triangles or circles.

“Not only in their living rooms, you philistine.” Mimi said, laughing. “
Lanthanum
is even hanging in the Museum of Modern Art.”

“How much does something like this cost?”

“Up to $3 million.”

Zoe looked around Mimi’s gallery and did a double-take. “Then you have about $21 million hanging here on the walls?”

“At least.” Mimi said, grinning. “There are more in storage.”

“How many did Frist paint?”

“You mean by himself?”

“What do you mean, ‘by himself’? Can someone paint not by himself?”

“Frist hires people to paint for him. He has assistants. All told, there are around eight hundred Square Paintings. He himself painted maybe twenty-five of them.”

“And art collectors will pay millions for paintings that weren’t even made by the artist?”

“You can bet your Louboutins. Haven’t you ever heard of Andy Warhol’s Factory?

Art, Zoe had learned the evening before while eating dinner with Mimi at Sant Ambroeus, had really only started to be seen by the movers and shakers as a serious investment in 2006. Cosmetics tycoon Ronald Lauder shelled out a spectacular $135 million for the Gustav Klimt painting
Adele Bloch-Bauer I
—the highest price ever paid for a work of art up until then. That was a call to all those who had too much money lying around: the hedge fund managers.

“Since the hedge fund managers discovered the art market, auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s have become contests to show who has the biggest . . . um . . . wallet,” Mimi had told her. “The ones who drive the prices up—the new rich—only buy works by well-known artists.”

“No wonder,” Zoe had added. “If you wear Chanel on your body, you want to have Gerhard Richter hanging in your foyer.”

“It has nothing to do with acquiring an aesthetically beautiful piece anymore, or completing a collection. It’s all about trophy hunting now,” Mimi said.

The press conference for the new Frist exhibit would be starting shortly. Zoe decided to view it as research for her new arts vertical. Mimi had told her the artist would be there, which was a promise that something interesting would happen. Frist was known for doing unusual things in public. At an exhibition in London, the press had asked him to stand in front of one of his works. He had done that, but had also pushed his nose up into a pig-like snout while all the cameras were flashing.

But that was probably art, too, right? And it was a statement, wasn’t it?

Frist arrived for the press conference on a skateboard, which Zoe personally found a little silly. Mimi obviously found it just plain stupid, because the skateboard left black rubber streaks on her new parquet floor. The thirty-eight-year-old Brooklynite wore a chunky black knitted sweater, retro-style Adidas sneakers, and was covered with bling like an old-school hip-hop artist.

“We’re delighted to have Astarot Frist with us in person to open the exhibit ‘The Square Paintings, 1997 to 2012,’” Mimi said into the microphone and began her interview with the artist, which had been announced in the press material. Frist’s body stood next to her, looking into space, whistling softly, but Frist himself seemed to somehow not be all there.

“Where did you get the original inspiration for ‘The Square Paintings,’ Astarot?” Mimi asked. She gave him her best knockout model smile, for which all of the other men present would have happily committed murder.

He turned his head. His lips stopped whistling, and his eyes looked straight ahead, right through the journalists and slowly arriving art collectors, as though he was looking through a tunnel into nothingness.

“Astarot?” Mimi tried again to bring him back to Earth. No reaction. “Astarot?”

Zoe would have liked to help Mimi by punching Frist in the side. The whole “I’m a crazy artist” act was getting old. But she didn’t dare.

“OK,” Mimi announced, staying completely cool, “the press conference is over.” This provided material for endless stories that would just make Frist’s reputation more interesting. Bad press was good press, wasn’t it? Zoe suspected Astarot and Mimi had come up with the little theater piece while giggling in the back room before the show started.

In the meantime, the gallery was as full as a nightclub on a Saturday night. Black Town Cars were lining up in rows in front of the door, continually spitting out new visitors. Zoe got herself a glass of champagne from the bar and made her way through the crowd. Between the designer-suit-wearing Upper East Siders and the cool Downtowners all in black were groups of fashionably dressed college kids, who couldn’t possibly have had the kind of money necessary to buy one of Frist’s paintings, unless they were secretly working on the next Facebook in their dorm rooms.

“They’re only here for the free food,” Mimi explained. “And because we don’t ask for IDs when we serve alcohol, like a normal bar would.”

“Really? Then why don’t you throw them out?”

“As long as they’re suitably dressed and well behaved, they fit in fine. After all, they reduce the average age by about twenty years,” she said. Then she raised her drink in such an enthusiastic toast that Zoe was afraid the glasses wouldn’t survive.

“Have you had too much bubbly, Mimi? The gallery owner shouldn’t get drunk before she’s sold the paintings, should she?”

“Already done,” Mimi answered.

“What? Getting drunk, or selling the Frists?”

“Dominik Gunn already bought them. All!”

There were a good sixty miles between New York City and Greenwich, Connecticut. But when this distance was driven in a stretch limo with a bottle of champagne and a chauffeur, it seemed only half as long. It took some time to get used to the fact that one sat in a stretch limo facing sideways, and that the lighting on the ceiling constantly changed between silver, gold, and silver-red-gold, like a light show in a disco.

Zoe was resting her head on Mimi’s shoulder, and through the dark glass windows she could see the Hudson River piers speeding by. They were driving north on the West Side Highway. In the limo, it felt like the mood at four a.m. after a wild party celebrating the World Cup. Copious amounts of adrenaline had been partied off, and a deeply satisfied, weightless calm had overcome the passengers.

Dominik Gunn languorously stroked the perfect thigh of his wife, whom Zoe didn’t dare to observe more closely, because she was reasonably certain she wasn’t wearing panties under her short chiffon dress. The thin material didn’t leave much for the imagination.

“Darling,” he said, “did you let Oscar know he should whip up a little midnight supper for our guests?”

“The staff has been informed, of course,” Darling whispered into Dominik’s ear.

“Dominik Gunn is forty-one, worth $9 billion, and the thirty-fifth richest man in America,” Mimi had whispered into Zoe’s ear as they were getting into the limo. “He manages hedge funds and wagers on all kinds of things, like the downfall of the euro, the bankruptcy of Greece, or gold prices falling—probably on all three at once. He’s one of the most aggressive art collectors of the new millennium, and only buys trophy art.” And then she had added, a touch more quietly, “Apparently, he earns a billion dollars a year.”

The chauffeur left I-95 and turned onto a dark country road. The high trees at the edge of the road cast black shadows. It was a full moon. The driver soon stopped at a gate. The night watchman waved them through politely, although he couldn’t possibly have seen through the darkened glass whether anyone was actually inside. They obviously knew each other. The driveway was about 400 calories long, Zoe estimated—that’s how much you’d burn if you had to jog it.

When Zoe climbed out of the limo, she was instantly awake again. A castle-like building, lit up as though ready for the filming of a Hollywood blockbuster, stood impressively in front of her.

She felt as though she’d landed at Buckingham Palace. The uniformed personnel stood at attention by the pillars when they walked in and waited to take the guests’ coats. There was a maid for every garment.

“We’ll skip the house tour this time,” Gunn announced when they all were assembled in the library, which could have easily competed with a reading room at the New York Public Library.

“Thank God,” Mimi murmured, taking a drink from the tray that a butler was silently offering. “Last time I almost starved to death while Dominik was showing me his golf course, basketball court, and NHL-approved ice skating rink.”

“He plays golf, basketball, and hockey?” Zoe asked, amazed. Gunn couldn’t have been taller than five foot seven, and he had a beer belly that made him look eight months pregnant. Darling, in contrast, seemed to have no body fat at all, aside from a perfect pair of double-Ds. The two of them fit together perfectly, like a yin-yang symbol.

“Of course he doesn’t play them!” Mimi said. “His neighbor to the left has an antique French carousel imported from Paris, and his neighbor to the right has an Olympic-sized pool equipped with a wave machine
and
an ice-cream parlor. That’s hard to beat.”

On the way to the dining room, Zoe passed paintings by Lichtenberg, Gursky, and Hirst. But she could barely concentrate on the art because her stomach was growling so hard. She entered a gold-paneled room, which looked kind of like a Disneyworld version of the banquet hall in Versailles. Two other works of art were hanging directly behind Gunn at the head of the table. Even Mimi couldn’t tell her anything about them. One was just a white canvas, and the other, which was exactly the same size, looked to Zoe like a child’s crayon scribble in white, black, and gray. An early Jackson Pollock, perhaps?

The gallery sign under the right corner solved the mystery:
War Between Pepper and Salt
was the title. By Dominik Charles Gunn Jr., aged three.

“Your son is a little artist!” Zoe said to Darling, who was standing next to her. None of the guests had dared to sit down yet. Obviously, rapt admiration of the art was part of the program.

“Yes, he’s a monumental talent,” Darling answered, but made a face as though looking at the childish scrawl gave her a migraine.