Boxed

Last night I came home from a gig in the freezing tailwind of a tempered arctic weather-pocket-- three subways and a couple of cold stretches on foot with my gear.  Shivery, I turned on late-night television, along with a brief blast of warmth courtesy of my otherwise underused hairdryer.  Not much to watch, except My Lottery Dream House-- where this utterly charming host shows recent ticket-winners three alternate choices of new digs, with new money, and they choose.   The host/agent is someone you want to hang with at a bar-- this helps.  He is kind and warm and the scenario is one which keeps many poor Americans hopelessly addicted to leaking major portions of their hard-earned salary to Lotto dreams.  It's a lot more democratic than those Bravo shows--- Million Dollar Listing, etc... where we watch toxic real estate agents and their more toxic clients greedily wheeling and dealing and spending more than ten times my average annual income on open house entertainment.

Two weeks ago, the day that the $238,000,000 Manhattan apartment closed, I began this blog.  Thinking about that apartment, to be delivered as a 'White Box', according to press, makes the Lottery Dream House shoppers look provincial and homey.  In fact, I cannot imagine any Lottery Dream House contestants taking on the Manhattan real estate market where their average windfall winnings would dwarf into maybe a one-bedroom uptown.  Income requirements in most buildings in New York are far beyond those of even the luckier Lotto millionaires.

I am currently reading a book called Dark Money (also a film,  2018) which I highly recommend.  The manipulation of not just our economy but public opinion and political systems by these cloaked communities of highly moneyed individuals and self-interested foundations is not just nauseating and evil, but revelatory and jarring.  It explains and accounts for the disturbing misuse of ethics and religion to solicit unwitting American dream-buyers onto these horrific bandwagons which are puppeted by money machinists.  I have also been reading a brilliant investigative journalist named Lucy Komisar who has been following the Dark Money for many years; her exposés of offshore bank accounts and trillions of non-taxed unreported dollars are riveting.  I am not the writer she is and sadly unequipped to explicate the shameful state of our oligarchic economy. But Lucy reveals the facts behind the horrifying polarization of extreme wealth and the epidemic of poverty and inequality that co-metastasizes while we look at our phones and share our tiny narcissisms on Instagram.

For years I worked in a gallery which was a living 'White Box'.  It was a backdrop for paintings and objects which showed without prejudice or context as pure living art.  The space was easily transformed with lighting, with people-- without.  Empty, at night, I could play my guitar and experience the chill of real acoustic reverberation.  One large room, and the sense of space most of poor New Yorkers are denied both on the streets and in our tiny barely-affordable apartments.

But for these hedge-fund owners-- the ones who pay no taxes and set up fake philanthropic foundations which garner goodness points but are really just tax shelters and loopholes which leapfrog to the next level of ownership-- a White Box is a kind of diploma.  I mean-- who needs 16 bathrooms?  I can barely clean one.  Having grown up in a family of mostly women with only one-- well, we survived, didn't we?  There is actually a funny episode on Lottery Dream House where the big winner wanted a home in the Hamptons.  When asked what his priorities were, he answered--  "We're in the Hamptons, so we want lots of bathrooms!"  I visited my rich friend once in one of her luxury Manhattan renovations which she regularly flipped; when I remarked on the fragile tilework, she replied-- you don't think we're going to USE that bath, do you?

For the rest of us, I recommend the series of photographs Gordon Parks took of a Harlem family in the 1950's, where their one bathtub served overtime as both washing machine and storage.  In my first apartment, the living-room bathtub often served as an extra sleeper.  But these were the days of old New York-- when millionaires lived on Park Avenue and were relatively quiet and even a little sheepish about their spending and collecting.  Those innocent days when journalism served to inform the public and people listened or did not and usually had a conscience and were appalled at what they saw and some of us tried to change things.

In my closet I have several white boxes.  One holds cotton spools and threads of all colors.  One is filled with tiny patchwork samples of printed cottons I have collected over the years.  One holds colored papers--- origami, wrapping tissues and samples of things.  I open any one of these and a night is passed-- of memories, color, visual collages... and then back in the treasure box, back in the closet.  I feel rich-- me in my bed, dreaming in technicolor of my old mother with her knitting-- the two of us, in the yarn store, holding naturally-dyed skeins next to one another, imagining our blankets and sweaters and scarves.

A White Box, as opposed to a Black Box, implies some kind of architecture or system which is visible although not available for tampering.  The Black Box is utterly invisible, except for input and output response.  It begins to occur that this $238,000,000 White Box would not be affordable without the Black Box mentality behind it.

Ken Griffin, the hedge fund manager and White Box buyer,  has spent about 700 Million dollars recently snatching up real estate and breaking records.  He makes poor Michael Dell's $100,000,000 apartment look positively paltry.  Ken has recently gone through a hostile divorce and obviously has money to pare and shed.  Or to park in an apartment as opposed to the shaky banks.  He surely has a box in that building on the Cayman Islands where trillions of dollars sit, although there are only 45,000 official residents.  Or in Basel, where 1/3 of the world assets sit-- safely protected by the Swiss government or by shell companies and corporate 'layering'.  Also, we learn, he had an 'agreement' with the builders.  This means the same money that purchased also helped fund the building in the first place... my brain box hurts-- it's all a big 'shell' game.. and as my son tells me, at this level, the cash doesn't exactly change hands.  I mean, billions of dollars takes up space.  White Box Space.

Scream 4

Having been subjected to an EL-AL-worthy screening at Sotheby's this week, I was taken past lines of docile-looking policemen to the 10th floor where Munch's 'Scream' was on display along with other stealthfully framed art-nuggets.  Nuggets, because some of them seemed quite literally to glow in the simulated daylight.  I have to admit that I was not just a little disappointed.  I have been to Oslo, seen the Thielska in Stockholm many times, and this crayon version, despite the hype and the staging and the 'poem' underneath--- well, it didn't knock me out.  In fact, I couldn't really 'hear' it.

Okay.  I wandered around, admired the glossy Picasso and the Gauguin, both of which looked freshly painted or maybe repackaged.  The clever frames, and the combination lighting--- a little seductive, but you definitely know you are not in any museum.  It is more like an upscale 'store'-- Prada or Armani-- or Harry Winston.  The whole scene-- with the well-dressed employees, their precocious formality and sly solicitous condescension,  resembled not merely a 'set' but a bit of a 'set-up'?

In fact, watching the actual sale, there was a distinct scent of staginess.  The auctioneer's comments  seemed scripted, the waving hands like a scene from Wall Street 4.  In a debt-fueled catastrophic world economy, zeros seem almost arbitrary and fictional.  I mean, who are these people--- and why are they here, abusing and distorting the art market, and who really cares?  I'm sick of seeing super-sized engagement rings and Vera Wang weddings.  How many hedge-fund-financed apartments have I visited lately with the required Richard Prince Nurse, the Damian Hirst, the Jeff Koons hideosity, the stock Warhol, Twombly, Richter... ad nauseam?  Even the Double-Elvis which used to excite me--- it all seemed like wall-treatment, not art.  It's oversized, and overdone, and --well, it feels downright cheap to me.  What happened to small pictures that draw you in-- paintings done in squalid damp studios in absinthy nights of unrequited passion, of wet lamplight and shadowy women behind doorways?  Something intimate and personal?  Something only you could own?  A painting on the wall that seduces-- every night-- like a kind of visual Sheherezade?

Honestly, it is not sour grapes.   I will venture that even the Basquiat Boxer didn't inspire me.  It all looked rather flat and frankly I don't want to own these things.  Okay, I am jaded and have seen 35 years of auctions now--- London, Paris,  especially New York.  I coveted these things when they were new and affordable.  I even invested, in those days, when Apple stock was a shot in the dark at $22.00.  But today the Scream felt like some Michelin Man version of what I used to admire.  A cartoon.  I do not want Mickey Mouse on my wall, diamond dust or not.  I have maybe outgrown these over-used pop-icons.  I'm sick of seeing Elvis and the Beatles and too-many Marilyns.   In a gallery in dark cold Norway where the 19th century seems a bit closer, the Scream has some authority, some meaning.  But here at Sotheby's among the well-dressed-- and the captions and the overweighted catalogue descriptions- it just looked a little Casper-esque.   Maybe the Warhol version would work for me-- and at 1/20th of the price and an extra layer of irony, it would seem a bargain.

Besides, it is Scream 1(?) of 4.  Did Hitchcock do Psycho 2?  He did not.  The shepherd who screamed 'Wolf' too many times? Remember the anecdote about the British philatelist who bought two of the rarest and priciest airmail stamps in UK history?  He immediately destroyed one.

How many of these artists at auction would make it today?  Would anyone pay attention to a Bonnard or a Delvaux or a Twombly unless he got raves in the Wall Street Journal and a one-man show at Gagosian's Basel booth?  Would Gagosian recognize a badly-dressed true artist on the street with his artwork?  Would anyone do a studio visit to someone who lives in a basement flat and has a vision?  Unlikely.  A certain amount of creativity in our culture has to do with reinforcement--- with  reward and recognition and then the courage or motivation to go on.  Not to mention money.  All of which taints the artist in a way--- too hard not to want to please, or to displease for attention, or to shock the audience or-- better yet, jolt oneself into some kind of artistic epiphany because the average collector maybe spends more time on Madison Ave at Saint Ambroeus having a morning latte or savoring the pretty amazing hot chocolate.  Imagine these people unable to distinguish between a bottle of Two-Buck Chuck and a fine Chateau Lafite except by pricetag,  especially if you switch up the bottles.  Well, there you have the art market, for some.  

My own mirror dates me with no mercy.  But I, unlike these 9-figured paintings, never expected to be timeless.  One of my photographer friends made a comment today--- he picked up a book on The Lost Vanguard of Russian art and remarked 'I never get tired of looking at these'.  A thumbs up for him.  And yes-- a few of these things in our lives: the NYC post-storm sunset-- the moon over the East River--- my wall of books-- the face of someone we truly love-- some of my pictures, like small deep windows,  the soul of the artist mixed with my own now from so many hours of intimate 'seeing'.

Still, personally, I like my music loud and my art quiet.