Chelsea Peers

I spent the week looking at art.  There was the New Now sale at Phillips featuring several Afro-American contemporary superstars, complete with a pop-up basketball court--then Swann-- gallery viewings, photography in East Harlem,  and a small Chelsea space which auctions dusty and vintage treasures which smell of old New York. I travel alone.  Masked and mingling, anonymous-- my itinerary included no destination which required a fee or the presentation of mandated documents.  But somehow visuals seem acceptable with a mask. Crowd activities just don't feel right; it's as though everyone is partying and pretending to be 'back' but it's a kind of forced celebration.  I don't trust it.  Actually I don't trust myself these days. I'm liable to speak my post-pandemic mind and one thing that has emerged from the grief and the anger and the Black Lives Matter movement is a kind of naked honesty.   

Most of all I loved the dusty space with the stacks of estate canvases and once-discovered objects whose owners had passed away or been replaced by descendants who value space over things.  I lingered until they were sick of me.  Walking east from 11th Ave. an SIR truck passed.  I waved like an idiot, remembering all those fantastic rehearsals and evenings in studios which felt as though I'd 'arrived' as a musician.  One night there was a private performance of a reinvented Blondie with a tiny audience.  I was privileged.  

From the Highline the profusion of new architectural structures gives 'concrete jungle' a new meaning.  It's kind of fantastically overwhelming and feels nothing like the perpendiculars of tradition. The paths were packed with tourists photographing, taking selfies, shooting video.  Glass windows reveal fishbowl lives of the apparently rich occupants of these new buildings which require plenty of income.  No one seems to care that they are observed; it's a culture of posting and Instagram-- everything is up for public 'grabs' so why bother with curtains or shades? But it's also a visual carnival of shapes and profiles.

In between the new are the remnants-- the stalwarts of old buildings where long-time renters hang on to their little corner of a city which has grown like weeds around the stumps of their abodes.  Thousands of apartments tower over their modest 4-story existence, rob them of sun, expose them to the hordes of walkers trying to wrap their insatiable tourist heads around the spirit of New York.  

For me the greatest 'jolt' is the Hudson Yards... it's absolutely a transplanted vision grafted onto the hips of the Manhattan profile.  It was disorienting and although I've viewed it many times from the river, walking through its plazas and amusements was like being in another state.  I'm not the only person who found the Vessel an architectural failure, but its current status as a sort of empty morgue is more than ironic.  Who knew it would become a living blingy monument to death?  

In the 70's we'd sometimes climb a fence and explore the Yards.  I remember the SVA students had their annual exhibitions there-- warehouses and space-- accommodated performances and films.  One came often to my gigs... invited me shyly to see his work there, among the old tracks and the pitted earth.  It was  a sort of journey into a cavernous house with electric music and crowd-echo-- plastic cups of wine and hundreds of aspiring artists in their Doc Martens and plaid...  I felt 'old'; I was something over 30... and I searched out my painter, in a small dark corner where his work was a heart-stopping revelation... studies in white, like contemporary Vermeers, that took my breath away.  I was speechless.  He was drunk-- kind of a cliché for painters at their own openings... but I tried to convey my utter admiration for his work.  He was young, midwestern-- played drums in an indie band... had this sort of James Dean tormented innocence aura.

A few nights later he rang my doorbell.  People did that in those days.  He brought a bottle of cheap wine, and the painting, wrapped in a rag.  It was so beautiful.  Yes, we listened to Luna I think it was... his friends... and yes, we slept together.  He was passionate and intuitive the way painters were, in those days... I felt I'd been initiated into one of his works.  I felt painted, from the inside.  It was a one-night thing for me-- or maybe one week.  I waved at him across the subway tracks at Columbus Circle years later.  I think he designed windows for Tiffany and that sort of thing.  He was no longer a boy.  I still had my bass.. he threw me a salute and a midwestern kiss with his talented hand with which he now only rarely painted.

Walking through the Yards in late September sunset, Year-of-the-Pandemic + 1, I remembered this... the smell of the train tracks, and the faint aura of turpentine on his skin.  These things do not happen anymore-- meetings in the privacy of dark crowds and old underused warehouses where unknown history has unfolded, and few things were photographed.  The walls and the ceilings and floors have been removed like old debris... moneyed people occupy the piled homes with stainless steel kitchens and marble saunas... with gyms and theaters and adult play spaces.  

There are few urban fairy tales like this now, things that happen only in utter privacy and the dark.  Certainly not in this ironically masked culture when everything else is laid out in online platforms and Instagram posts.  And the painting--- someone stole it from my home one night; I gave a party-- I think I mentioned the tragic story in another blog.  One of my guests... put it under their coat, slipped it out the open door... I hope it is loved, wherever it is.  Occasionally I imagine I will see it at an auction, in a thrift shop or gallery... but in the context of this culture, it is a small thing.  It would surely be overlooked.  And as old as I have become these days... as poor and as unacknowledged, I felt kind of young walking through the sad newness of this architectural Disneyworld-- the plazas and the courts-- the arenas and playgrounds...  I am initiated... I am masked... but I am seeing.  I am experienced, I answer the Hendrix question.  Here we are now; entertain us.

Bed Post

I think I’m going to write a novel called The Talking Bed.  Of course, I don’t even need a Google-search to know, like most things, it’s already been done.  Fortunately for us, titles aren’t copyright- proof or we might have a way to filter the tsunami of crap that’s come down the pike in the name of culture.  But since we all seem to resort to under-the-blankets for several varieties of trust or confession, the concept is amusing.   Besides, there’s no privacy anywhere—no truth, no real contract for solitude, certainly no guarantee for prayer.  Why not betrayal by one’s own bed?

I watched an old Bergman film last night--- The Passion.  Tough to say whether it’s my predilection for the Swedish cultural reverence, or the period, or the crashing tedium of recent film-watching…but it stayed with me.  From the opening scenes-- -the pace, the cinematography, the quiet breathing of Max von Sydow—it was hypnotic.  It felt important.  For me, anyway. 

Cut to the Contemporary art sale at Phillips’ tonight where the Emperor’s New Clothes has become something to own rather than an ironic warning.  Most offensive for me is that artist who sticks chewing gum on a canvas in an unattractive arrangement and banks 6 figures.  The catalogue actually has the balls to relate the fact that the guy doesn’t even chew the gum himself but hires college kids to do it for him for 50 cents a piece.  Kind of a Warholian joke or maybe a metaphor for what the banks are doing to us.  Wasn't it also a 'green art' project we did when the kids were in kindergarten and were learning about recycling? Don’t get me started. 

At the risk of becoming the cranky old woman, because anyone with education and memory must have some opinion here, I am searching to find things of recent manufacture that feel ‘important’.  I’ve retreated to my little book-lined anthill of indie songwriting and poetry and simply wince when one of my rich friends gushes about their latest Damian Hirst Butterfly purchase.  Last night for food-money I had to ghost-write an article on one of the big young collectors.  I have to admit I can’t find much to criticize--- the guy, although massively wealthy, seems relatively intelligent and philanthropic and of course, the gist of the article, he has created his own Private Museum. 

The old saying ‘you can’t have everything; where would you put it?” is no longer valid, because of course, you put it in your own Private Museum.  From there you can lend it out, give it away, auction it off, store it-- -whatever… an enormous tax write-off, a solution to having your 45 room triple-penthouse look like a hoarder’s hideout, a relief from renting apartment-priced storage from Crozier or Cadogan Tate,  not to mention insurance.  It is also kind of a living monument to yourself--- your taste, your sophistication--- at least in principle.  And a way of covering up your mistakes, your unwise purchases in the name of philanthropy.  Let's face it-- some of these things don't wear well in your private living room.

So in one of his clever flippant hedge-fund manager remarks, the guy says, of course, art has no intrinsic value: it is just marketing.  Maybe your art has no value, I retort silently, but mine does.  I have starved for weeks, gone without new shoes and clothes for years, to have some small painting I simply couldn’t live without.  Can Mr. Private Museum live without his art?  He can.  In fact, I’ll bet he could live without his wife because although she seemed nice enough, I really couldn’t tell her apart from at least 3 other Private Museum wives who sat at an adjacent table.  

I’m also beginning to see a definite trend of artifice in these trophy women—like some of them used to have soft, blowy hair, or neat ponytails and well-tailored dresses.  Now they seem to have these megalo-hairstyles like somewhere between the Jersey Housewives and Barbie.  I sense a certain rococo tendency in the jewelry and accessories… like even a charity dinner is a red-carpet moment for these well-photographed housewives.  Like a Dave LaChapelle thing…just a little more blingy than chic. 

Oh, Andy, where are you now?  Will your hundreds of soupcans and thousands of Marilyns be enough to go around?  At least my old guitar continues to increase in value because there was little demand  and few produced because they were for actual real musicians back then-- and when you play it—well, it sings.  It’s old and it’s done thousands of gigs and at least for now it hasn’t been bought by some hedge fund hoarder who will hide it in a guitar mausoleum.  I’ll be playing realtime unique music on it while Forbes magazine photographs Mr. PM proudly displaying a wall of 5-cent gum chewed and spat out maybe by the same drunk NYU students who just stuffed one of the artist’s bills in our jar.   

Lebron in the City

Forget the oil spill, the World Cup, Lindsay Lohan’s expiring Get–out-of-Jail-Free card…. Here’s … Lebron. Not only does his sheer stature occupy serious pixel real estate on your TV, but now his management has decided to play with prime –time TV in a new game where the odds are interesting gambling sites a good deal more than the recent play-offs.

Maybe he’s jealous that Lamar Odum is picking up an extra paycheck from the Kardashian show, or maybe he felt jilted that he wasn’t invited to the televised wedding. Suddenly the traditional meaning of ‘game’ is no longer enough… there has to be a press angle, a reality show. For a player who has the potential status of a Michael Jordan, this kind of publicity seems somehow unfitting… but now there is Hitchcock-worthy suspense, a media-spin signing competition with huge ESPN resonance, and no doubt advertising time is beginning to rival superbowl minutes.

The current boy-King is currently in Greenwich--- not a traditionally homey place for black people, unless, of course, you are a Knickerbocker or a Yankee star. This is hedge-fund territory, a town of no malls and many Ferraris, maybe the country’s largest per-capita wine cellar acreage.

Anyway, we will sit looking at our cellphones and take our place in an audience larger than that of any recent presidential address for a one-hour extension of a pronouncement which could at best be slowed down to a 30-second sentence, including family and professional appreciation. What will he be wearing? Armani? Tommy Hilfiger? Will it be blue and orange? Tommy has done these colors-- lives in Greenwich, along with Alan Houston, David Cone….getting warmer? Will he be holding his child, standing with his wife? Will she be wearing a hat? Will Mrs. Obama’s favorite designer be making an emergency trip to Greenwich? What does Mrs. James look like anyway and will she be signing up for the newest version of Housewives of Greenwich?

The suspense is killing me. Not. But speaking of TV, I was forced to sit in front of the set to witness one of those Project Art-star episodes, produced by the fashion-savvy Sarah Jessica Parker who is Bravo-friendly and not well-known for her art expertise. And Simon de Pury…. Was it not enough for Phillips to have sold out to a champagne company…now they belong to a Russian conglomerate whose ruthless retail philosophy has little to do with art but much ado about marketing? The Warholian joke has long been exhausted, and besides the numerous PBS documentaries and the prayer that the computer age will improve the art of television, there is little compatibility between art and the TV runway. Mr. de Pury looks and acts ridiculous and the so-called gallerists are over-styled and pathetically a-philosophical. The Brooklyn Museum must be more desperate than during the 1970’s.

I was frankly baffled by the thought process of each and every one of the ‘artists’, and found one of the bottom-3 pieces very slightly better than the signature work of the visiting art-star of the week whose work is a sad and sorry example of what passes today as bankable and collectible. Bring on the Russian influence--- the grunting sexy tennis stars and the botoxed new breed of Spies--- the litigious girlfriends and models, the histrionic drama-queen skating stars and dancers.

What happened to Tolstoy and Chekhov, Gontcharova and El Lissitsky? Okay, Chagall moved to Paris. What next… Lebron in Moscow? Something suspiciously Russian about all the drama… the Nets have gone Russian… Chelsea… but not many Nets players in Connecticut… So could it be that the Knicks are about to be bought? We’ll be watching at 9 PM… which is 2 AM Greenwich time? The one that’s closer to Moscow.