Really? He’s made his mark by dissing the art world for corruption at the Hay Festival in 2016 and by producing long, funny pieces from art fairs around the world that dish the dirt on who’s bought what from whom and for how much. That is, of course, what everyone wants to know. Unless they’re mega-dealers, apoplectic with fury at Schachter’s continual blow-by-blow detailing of their super-rich clients’ frantic buy-sell-buy antics in the market for bankable artists. In fact, Schachter had done just that (after semi-promising not to) to one vituperative dealer’s major clients only days before. ‘I can see the steam emanating from his ears,’ says Schachter, his grin broader than Tiananmen Square. As Schachter’s friend Danny Moynihan, the artist and film-maker, puts it: ‘Kenny’s made as many enemies as he has friends because he won’t hold back about anyone or anything. And if something terrible happens to him, he’ll be the first to write about it.’
And he has written plenty of copy about Philbrick, shining a light on his own connections to the disgraced dealer while others have laid low. But they can’t hide one harsh truth. Philbrick was so successful that Schachter introduced him to friends, notably Lisa Reuben, the daughter of Simon Reuben – who, with his brother David, is one of the ruling patriarchs of a very powerful London family who made their first fortune in the Russian aluminium wars of the Nineties, before moving, even more lucratively, into property. As almost a sideline, they’re major backers of 5 Hertford Street.
Schachter’s kids – who ‘know everything about art’ – used to say that Inigo would end up either as Larry Gagosian or in jail. They may have had a point; at least three entities currently claim they own a Stingel portrait of Picasso that Philbrick had arranged for them to buy, including a company controlled by the Reubens, as Bloomberg reported.
This greatly upsets Schachter, who had dinner with Lisa Reuben the night before our meeting: ‘It’s coloured our relationship, of course, but I love her so much.’ Her, and the Reuben family – ‘because I don’t have many friends, and they’re just my best friends.’
Schachter has three children, Adrian, Gabriel and Sage (his second oldest son, Kai, died in 2019). Sage is now the youngest student – ‘the only one born in 2002’ – at New York University; Adrian, 23, is doing well as an artist; and Gabriel, 20, is going to work with a fund. They are, Schachter says fondly, ‘spoilt brats’, and they have indeed led a technicolour life – their former Tregunter Road house, one visitor reports, was done by the acclaimed designer Ab Rogers; there were pods for the young boys to sleep in, and a chute to whizz them down from the attic; ‘insane’ art was everywhere, together with a swimming pool in the basement.