Art Basel and Frieze have been bailed out, nationalized and are presently under federal administration. Not so far-fetched in a world that was up in arms when Hugo Chávez nationalized a country club yet embraced the government rescue of Goldman Sachs. In real life, the Swiss government subsidized the participation of eight galleries at Frieze this year. Welcome to the posteconomy economy, worse than the end of history and direr than the death of painting. Despite some denial, today’s art marketplace is in a recession. Fortunately, this could spell the end of economics-ism, the movement in which new art costs a fortune and has fortune as its subject.

The booming times brought us many art fairs, which only seemed to breed more fairs. Was this a good thing? For a dealer it’s no different from spreading one’s wares on a blanket on St. Mark’s Place, which is what all of us may be reduced to shortly. The rough times we are in, sure to be a long wade, herald a vastly changing dynamic in fairs, with many stories yet to unfold. In my case the tales started well before the onset of recession.

My relationship with Frieze, to single out one prominent fair, has been contentious: I have written unflattering articles about the too-cool-for-school attitude it displays, evidenced by one of its directors, who said that the hardest work was deciding whom not to invite. My never getting in over the past five years since moving to the U.K. did nothing to endear us to each other. Fatefully, one night I was seated next to the wife of the director and launched into a wine-fueled tirade that Frieze is not the Tate and its principal far from Nicholas Serota, despite his belief that the fair is akin to an institution. My therapist suggested an apology letter; I guess truth is no defense.

My history with fairs includes being thrown out of the Armory and Basel for various indiscretions, with some of the expulsions deserved and others less so. One year at Basel Miami I was asked to participate in an architectural intervention, so I commissioned Vito Acconci to create a crisscross framework upon which to hang Elizabeth Peyton, Karen Kilimnik, Ed Ruscha and Acconci himself — his photos, that is. Vito fabricated igloo-shaped armatures to serve as supports. Word spread that we were trying to sabotage the traffic flow and disrupt the fair, an absurd notion, since I was after sales as much as anyone. Finally a Viennese dealer on the selection committee came running round, arms flailing, screaming disapproval. The following year Basel Miami went on without me.

At the Armory show — which was meant to be strictly for primary-market material but no longer is — I installed a booth with historic Mary Heilmanns, Ross Bleckner’s birds and killer Kilimniks. Although sold out, I was also forced out. Was it my lack of primary material or a long-ago brief fling with one of the committee members?

A few years after Acconci-gate, I was allowed back to Basel Miami, but only in the shipping-container section, low on the fair totem pole. I elected to forgo the allotted container and build my own, designed by Zaha Hadid. But the piece entailed the installation of 50,000 led lights and was nowhere near completion at the fair’s opening; the jumpsuit-clad electricians might have been mistaken for performance artists, but the booth could not be entered. Not a wise approach for selling the Hadid sculptures within.

At the last Design Miami in Switzerland, I suffered a bad reaction to blood-pressure medication while spieling to collectors and nearly fainted. I had a fleeting thought that the last thing I’d see before sudden death would be a series of overpriced design objects — that I had commissioned. After the brief trip to the Basel emergency room and a normal ekg, I returned to the fair to tend to my objects. During that fair, dealers and collectors were tripping over one another trying to ingratiate themselves with Brad and Roman. They sound like a porn-producing team rather than the saviors of the art market. Is that what we have been reduced to?