New York for Beginners by Susann Remke

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,