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.

Send in the Clowns

While I was in graduate school I worked for a few art galleries.  One of them was an upper-crust private art business in a gorgeous townhouse--- the kind with the spiral staircase and the grand entry hall that in those days only seriously monied people had.  I was still in my early 20's but had to greet and show paintings to wealthy Japanese business men who were building corporate-sponsored museums back in the 1970's when so much art was being exported to the far East.  For this purpose, the gallery bought me a fancy silk dress and beautiful leather shoes, even though I was living in a cheap cramped  studio apartment with a poor guitar player and a scruffy dog.  They often left me alone for days to run things while they travelled the world, visiting collectors.

Toward Christmas of my first year there, I had to show a very special Renoir painting to one of these men.  I sat behind a large desk with my hands folded, as I'd been instructed, trying to look older.  He spoke no English but handed me a beautiful leather briefcase filled with new bills and told me to count out $1.5 million, the price of the painting.  I'm pretty sure there were mostly $1,000 bills in there… and even those took some time to sort.  While I counted, he took out a cigarette from a solid gold case; I noticed his teeth were yellow and crooked.   He didn't watch me.  When I was done, I handed him the briefcase and he gave me a card with presumably a shipping address.  He bowed, said thank you, and I led him down the grand stairs to the door where his limo was waiting.  I stuffed the bills into a bag, stuffed the bag into my huge sack-purse and went to hail a cab.

Anyone who has been in Manhattan at Christmastime knows there is stiff competition for a taxi, especially in mid-afternoon on 5th Ave headed for 59th Street; after 15 freezing minutes, I got on a downtown bus.  I was well aware of the irony of me, the young grad-student with a frumpy worn-out Fred Braun leather bag in a recession, carrying what today would amount to $6-7,000,000… hopefully an unlikely target for a pickpocket or mugger… clinging anxiously to my purse.  At the bank, I went directly to one of the desk-officers where I announced I had a large cash deposit… More than $5,000, the woman asked, looking me up and down?  Considerably more, I blurted out.  So they secreted me in a room where I worried that I'd have miscounted and would be responsible for a bill or two.  In those times, $4/hr. was good pay.  Oddly, the gallery owners never seemed nervous or vigilant; it was like they trusted me with keys, their checkbooks, their homes and personal business.

I left the bank with a huge sigh of relief, a notarized deposit slip and some Morgan Guaranty chocolates they reserved for special clients…  and went back to my Cinderella nights hanging out at village bars where my boyfriend played and I knew the bartenders because otherwise very few of us could afford to buy a beer.  Years later I realized that I'd kind of lost my art virginity that day when the impact of the money eclipsed the experience of the painting.  I'd seen these Japanese men often with their beautiful handmade suits, their young well-dressed concubines getting their hair cut by Vidal Sassoon and wearing little Tiffany diamond necklaces.  They were buyers, they were cultured and elegant, and American luxury items were commodities they prized.   I didn't 'get' that I was facilitating this 'drain' of art that I might never see again, but the level of collecting in  those pre-billionaire times was beyond my comprehension, as was the competitive greed factor which would eventually turn the art business into a hedge-fund-like market of manipulation and insider trading-- of fakes, forgeries and deals.

I once related this story to some rock and roller who was mystified that I hadn't considered getting on a plane to somewhere with more money than I could ever spend-- living the life of a criminal emigre on some exotic island.  But I hadn't.  In fact I was even happier to hang out in dive bars where hamburgers were $1 and a taxi home was out of the question.

My second financial loss of innocence happened when I had a crush on some lame guy who worked for television.  I'd had 100 boyfriends and suitors but this guy seemed untouchable and mysterious.  It was his birthday; I took the day off, cooked for 15 hours-- his favorite fried chicken, potatoes, baked a triple chocolate cake, wrapped everything in a basket, told him to meet me in Central Park where I'd reserved a row boat and rowed him out on the lake where we ate, and I played Happy Birthday on a little wooden music box and lit candles, gave him presents and fortune cookies, balloons.   I rowed him back to shore so he could get back to his job, I was ready to surprise him that evening outside his apartment only to find he was returning home with some tall dark tart from work who hadn't even bought him a doughnut.  I was devastated.  Lesson 2:  there's money, and there's love.  Or there's sex and nothing else matters, at least for the moment.  And acting mysterious and unapproachable doesn't make you any more valuable or rare.

Somehow even the discussion of money when you are falling in love seems inappropriate and a little obscene.  You don't leave a sales ticket on a gift, but these days  everything in this culture seems to have a digital price tag and we know the value.  Billionaires are everywhere in this city and it all seems a bit cheap, the way that Japanese businessman bought the painting without even looking, without feeling the pain of the cost.  We know the price of cars, and iPhones, botox and a new set of expensive white teeth.   I know personally the price of my first engagement ring took a toll on my heart and I preferred a cheap silver band from the poor songwriter who made my heart sing when we lay down.

But I am in the minority here, and as we get older, ripped jeans and old clothes aren't quite as appealing and we all wait in line in banks and in stores.  Rich or poor, our loves abandon us, and the ability to drown our sorrows in material goods seems less and less therapeutic.  That Renoir painting might be worth $100,000,000 today, but most young collectors would rather have a Basquiat or a Warhol Elizabeth Taylor.  Today that bag of money might buy a 1-bedroom apartment in Harlem.  Time moves on; few of us even see $1,000 bills these days-- these transactions are electronic and swift.  Girls work in fancy galleries today because they want to be part of the world of money, not because art is magical and access to the huge libraries is worth an amount of overtime. People buy art and often rarely look at it; it is a commodity, it has lost the sense of precious rarity that things used to have when you had to travel many miles to see them in person, when only a few select individuals could own the things that belonged in museums, and they pursued these things with a collector's passion and love.

And how many of us fail to acknowledge the modest treasures of our lives--- our special things, our old dolls and toys which dance in our memory-- our loved ones who may not be our dream fantasy husband or wife but the person who gives with their heart, who greets us on our birthday with a black coffee/no room and a street pretzel, who doesn't forget who we once were, who we still may be, and who we will no longer be, when the relentless calendar has passed a few more milestones?  We can create our dreams, but we can also acknowledge that person next to us on the bus--- rich or poor, Prada or Target; we walk the same streets and sleep beneath that same close full moon that seemed to whisper in my ear as it walked alongside me last night-- 'Isn't it rich'… ?

Not-so-sour Grapes

I woke up today from one of those post-apocalyptic nightmares where you are stuck in some barren landscape in a precariously fragile building which is the only protection you have from seeping white slime or fallout or whatever form the horror takes in this particular version of the dream.  I suppose this is some left-over haunting from the Cold War era where we were constantly being instructed in safety protocol 'in the event of…'  Generally my personal dream features a dog I've forgotten, or a child; this morning, my baby boy was missing---I was panicked, and somehow found him asleep in his little trundle bed, all clean and fresh in little bunny pajamas… untouched by the hoarfrost of melted clouds.

Then you transition into the actual circumstances of your life-- -the stacks of books,  guitars needing attention, the quilts and laundry, the unrecorded songs, the piles of lyrics, unwashed dishes… and somehow these loose ends are welcoming.  The tranquility of my familiar personal chaos comforts me.
On my voicemail a message from an old schoolmate who has decided after 2 unhappy marriages and 30 years of Wall Street and country clubs, that we should make a 'go' of things.  He is tired of the debutantes who at our age are looking grandmotherly anyway, and sick of the socialite bankers and the Hamptons.  Manhattan Bohemia beckons, and he has dialed my number.

Somehow I turned on one of those highbrow talk shows tonight and there is not just the billionaire husband but the it-boy son of my most beloved college roommate.  Apparently her choice of spouse was much more successful than either of mine, although I remind myself that she had sort of a nervous breakdown and I visited her in an upscale mental hospital in Connecticut where she began to wean herself from our slightly warped friendship.  I also remember her calling me at one point more recently to tell me her daily pile of antidepressants was becoming larger than an average dog's dinner-- bragging that she had a closet filled with mink coats and couldn't get off her bed.  Going further back,  her remarks that her fiancee looked exactly like me, that we could be twins--- which was not far from the truth--- so I looked carefully at the screen to see how my male counterpart weathered the years.   He was snide and smarmy, actually--- and here he is, delivering this rehearsed little aphorism which is about as profound as mis-translated Plato… and Charlie is giving him that extra gracious smile he gives these hedge fund assholes because he saw The Music Man when he was a kid and knows all about con men and 'the think method' which is maybe a little charming when applied to a kid's marching band, but not when these toxic pillars of mediocrity are stripping their country of a future so they can line their fat uninspired pockets.  I'm beginning to think the guy is truly pathetic and not even smart and has some kind of desperate power fantasy or maybe even on an early road to dementia.  Did I miss something Sr. Massimo Unimpressivissimo?  I have to admit the son had her lovely eyelashes and was cute while smug for his age, obviously not bothered by the fact that his Dad had propelled him financially from wannabe to 'is'.

No wonder my son--- the same one who slept so peacefully through my dream holocaust-- resents me.  He has to compete with these excessively privileged people.  And I have to admit, there is the faintest  twinge of some unkind emotion that flits across my face, like a passing car headlight… and then I assess the sex appeal factor of this guy which is a very low number, even factoring in the massive wallet size and the triple-floor penthouse in a very exclusive CPW building with a spectacular view.

I have no view--- well, some brick walls, a few pigeons, a century-old courtyard below… a modicum of reflected light during a brief period every afternoon.  Then again, no one is pointing a gun at me or hacking into my mobile for the latest inside trading trickery or media stunts because I don't even have a cell phone.

I once dated a celebrity and found myself literally suffocating at the dinners and looking at my watch.  I hated the dresses he bought me, returned the jewelry and although the free screenings were okay, everyone seemed just a little bit smaller in person, and except for some really lewd remarks whispered to me by one of my favorite writers who had a serious drinking problem, very few laughs.  Celebrity sex gets boring too… and you can't just go get yourselves a big mac at 3 AM without someone taking his photo.  It was essentially too high-maintenance and I fantasized about going home with cute Irish bartenders from sleazy Hell's Kitchen pubs and sleeping in their unwashed sheets on a lumpy mattress on the floor of a tenement.  Until I did.  The celebrity was furious, but the bartender and I were very happy for a time.  It was the perfect ending to a fractured New York fairy tale.

So while very few would envy my life, I somehow pitied my roommate tonight.  I doubt she worries about her social security, but those of us without a consistent mate have really conducted a lifelong experiment in love and its various manifestations.  I've had plenty of men in many forms, and drawn many conclusions.  Her financial footprint is certainly larger, and her possessions could perhaps fill a large mansion but I will leave a huge pile of un-pirated intellectual property I've created and written during all those evening hours when she's sitting in the front row at fashion week and attending functions and dinners, and getting styled and regaled and made-up.  I've seen fewer plays and films but read more books and borrow from the library.  She doesn't play guitar and can't even carry a tune, as I recall.

Tomorrow I will return the phone message of my Wall Street friend and tell him I can't make the dinner, or the weekend, because somehow in my version of Cinderella, I refuse the glass slipper and still kiss the prince.  I will ride my C train back home to the dust and the bare floors and toast my old guitars and the rising sun and drink my first coffee as it sets.  Amen.

Say Graceland

Tonight I phoned one of my old downtown rocker friends.  He’d been having his share of small personal tragedies, and trouble finding work.  We’d spoken about putting our old band back together.  So it turns out, he’s actually in LA—renting a place in North Hollywood with a pool and a Jacuzzi for $600 a month, which for the uninitiated buys maybe an unfurnished week in an average cramped dumpy light-deprived roach and roodent-infested NYC apartment.  ‘There are people here,’ he tells me.  ‘There are Marshall stacks and a Goth scene.  You don’t have to take a 45 minute train ride to Canarsie to hear a goddamn band.  Manhattan is dead.’ 

Of course I am a born-and-bred New Yorker who has sacrificed everything to own my tiny piece of real estate.  I always maintained that anyone who disses my city is a sour-grapes loser.  But tomorrow is the annual coop meeting where I will have to sit with the outcasts and over-80 tenants  and vote in a bloc against the hedge-fund assholes and bankers who’d love to turn this classic pre-war into a resort.  Gut the whole damn thing--- out with the old.  I am getting to the age where the Starbucks baristas aren’t so cheery about pouring my free venti refill, the grocery boys don’t jump to open the door; they sit and watch while I struggle with my personal economics.

The corporatization of New York is an old story; the face-lift-- -the weed-like overgrowth of  21^st-century context-less buildings which have really altered the logic of the old plan.  It’s a little bit Hong-Kong-y--- maybe trending toward Dubai?  Whatever… maybe this city is becoming a hideousity--- like an architectural Donatella Versace.  I mean—20 years ago, I was incensed by Starbucks—now that’s the least of my worries. 

I’m not quite ready to jump my old ship—but that phone call tonight was sort of the first indication that maybe, just maybe, my dream has become my albatross… that whatever we are struggling for here in this center of the cultural universe--- maybe it has already left, or been chased away.  It’s true, there is no rock and roll in Manhattan.  There are only versions of original bands, and then the tribute shows.  Nothing is real. 

I always hated LA.  I tried to move there way back with my rockstar husband.  I had no drivers license and I couldn’t find a bookshop I liked.  I couldn’t understand why people wanted a star on Hollywood boulevard when everyone knows there are trillions more stars in the universe than people.  Everyone looked like a character in some play; I couldn’t find the Kerouac version and I couldn’t find any grit.  I spent a few nights at the Rainbow…just didn’t fit in.  I missed CBGB’s and the Mudd Club.  Now I’m in New York, ensconced—rooted—and I still miss them.  Maybe while we were all buried in our phones and facebook pages---everyone left… including the music scene. 

He also told me he was hanging out with one of my former bandmates, who left to marry some producer out there.  Apparently her happy posts on facebook said nothing about her domestic misery and failed affair.  Apparently in my little narcissistic world of  writing and desperately trying to ‘keep it real’ musically, I am missing the point of everything.  Maybe I have deceived myself.

I’m listening to Bloomberg now.. these new companies… they are all like a major convoluted explanation for someone to get paid… the concept is a variation on something else… an excuse for making money.. an excuse to get venture capital, hire people, move around like they’re doing something… sell stock, etc…  medical ideas are unaffordable… $140,000 for a pill…takeovers in the ‘medical device’ industry.  Something is wrong.  No one should be taking over.  They should be giving away.  Giving.

I’ve joked that Manhattan is now for the billionaires and those that serve them:  the sycophantic celebrity-sucking nouveau middle class.  So yes, the irony of stars being a dime a dozen---or less—but it seemed, 50 years ago, that people were distinct--  that they looked like who they were--- they were unique.  Even in fashion--- voiceless models were unique: there was Twiggy, Jean Shrimpton, Lauren Hutton—Penelope Tree.   Now all these blonde vegan froth actresses maybe started out looking like something, but they get their noses shaved down, their skin scraped, their lips plumped, their hair processed.  Black people have straight blonde hair.  At least 10 actresses look exactly like Jennifer Lopez.  Or maybe I have cultural cataracts.  Whatever.  I didn’t mix people up back then.  Now I have to look at captions. 

This couple moved into my building.  They were not very good looking:  pudgy and awkward.  The wife had brown frizzy hair and squinty eyes.  Now they have grown thinner and thinner; the husband wears Gucci loafers and combs his hair straight back and has learned that Wall Street slow-strut.  The wife looks like a Pilates instructor.  All the lumps and bumps have disappeared.  Especially the ones on her nose.  Her skin is smooth and her eyes are wide open.  Her daughter’s nose is straight, too—like they had to destroy all genetic evidence of any flaws.  They have matching Balenciaga bags.  Yesterday she was blonde.  Beyonce-blonde.

This woman I know posted on facebook that she’s now homeless.  She came to see me last year with her daughter and granddaughter. People in my building—the staff-- -they questioned me about them.  They asked who they were.  They’re PEOPLE, I said.  People.  My doormen said they looked like trailer trash.  The doorman.  ‘They’re people from the Midwest who have had lives.’  How do I know them?  The real story? I bought something on ebay.  It came broken.  I wrote to the seller and she began writing to me.  She listens to my songs and reads my poems.  She comments.  She’s interested.  So she rented a car and drove here.  ‘They have bedbugs, these kind of people,’ my super said.  Fuck you, I didn’t say.  I own this place.  They would like it if I didn’t own, but we’re stuck.  The thing is--she looks like someone, this person.  She looks unique…the way I did, the way everyone did before they realized everything could be fixed.  What if someone decided to flatten the world?  To shave down the mountains and fill in the ditches and oceans…so it would be easier to ‘mow’?  Well that’s what’s happening here…people look generic.  Hair is generic.  You can change everything--- your face, your body, your age, your hair texture…you can put on 8-nch heels and look tall even if you’re stout and pudgy with short legs… so suddenly a piglet is a gazelle.  It’s messed up.  Like those toys where you put the dog head on the gorilla body.  We can do this now.  We can get an Alec Baldwin face on a popsicle body.  You can be 4 ‘2” and have Charlize Theron’s face… or at least her make-up.  I see about 50 people a day who look exactly like Tyra Banks.  Beyonce.  Who the f- is she? Show your ID.  Shake it.  Double shake it like you do.  That’s Beyonce Knowles.  Another fake name. 

Maybe Manhattan is just the fat-Elvis version of what used to be New York.  People like the fat Elvis.  Just not this person.  

My neighborhood poet today was wearing a down coat and sunglasses.  It was overcast and 80 degrees.  She was pre-occupied and shuffling.  Please, I wanted to say--- don’t leave me.  I look down--- my shoes are so out of style they could possibly be cool in LA.  My clothes are shabby and I’m a version of myself that might be my own fat Elvis.  

Another friend who moved to Nashville just called and asked me to overnight him  a pastrami sandwich.  Since the old Second Avenue deli has gone,  I looked on the internet to find out where to get the best pastrami, just in case he was serious.  Turns out it’s in Nashville.  Nothing is real.  Say Graceland.  

Where Art Thou

I've taken to reading anthologies. I'm low on fresh 'log', appalled by the Times lists, the New Yorker...David Foster Wallace has been dead nearly 2 1/2 years. So the ones I choose are the so-called alternative collections--what I like mostly is they don't separate fiction and non-fiction, poetry or graphic narratives. It's random-- the catchword of our culture, and the former title of a publishing gargantua. Only now, post-mortem, do I get the humor.

It's not the writing per se, but the reminder that all these niche-writers co-exist---post-Katrina journalists, Haitian activists, torture survivors, doodlers, animal rescuers, ex and future cons, sadists, perverts, and those compelled by unbearable lives. I like trusting Eggers et al to muck through Esquire and Slate issues and reprint with font democracy-- no ads, no boldface bylines.

Walking through Chelsea today I am reminded about our challenged language and why, despite the OED addition of colloquialisms and IM acronyms, we rely on strings of adjectives to describe the enormous range of objects which ally themselves under the noun 'Art' (which I first mistook, having heard Shakespeare at an early age, as a verb; maybe closer to some meaning). Galleries today are anthologies at best... but the whole system of nomenclature needs an overhaul. The auction houses have for years been struggling with a soft-focus line between Photography, Contemporary, Latin, Chinese...when a huge number of works wander across borders.

And for those who actually follow the philosophical progression of what art is or is not (I had the course in grad school--- with the anthology that is so dated it's become current)...the true vanguard can be unexhibitable. I'd even suggest that non-marketability might be a prerequisite. But that's like recording music only mosquitos can hear... one risks deleting a huge audience which has not just made 'art' as necessary as a household TV, but a virtual Wall Street institution. The incredible thing is---unlike fine and large diamonds which are only for the monied--- it's the same $10 paint and canvas--- or whatever... and who sets the line between what is auctioned at Hotel Parking Lot $19.95-and- under sales...or the top lot of the evening Contemporary auctions. Piles of wrapped candy, dead fish--- basketballs... what if a Hirst spin-art piece found its way into the Marriott ? How many Hedge Fund masterminds would pick it out?

So what is art? Should it be domesticated, like lap-dogs, for the rich? Is it 'decorative'? I admit to loving my paintings. I love the colors, the composition--sometimes the subjects make people squirm, but there's an element of aesthetic priority there...
Still...I expect the artists on the edge to be doing things that are hideous, disturbing, provocative. I also concede the concept of the art 'market' can only support some conceptual projects. Of these, we need souvenirs for our walls--- drawings or even photos or bits of hair and blood. Saleable things. In the old days, foundations supported public art projects. Now corporations support them--- the same corporations which own and trade these artists-- whose CEOs sit on museum boards and allocate funds for their artists' exhibitions. Is this different from insider trading?

Am I getting old or do the endless columns of reviews seem to be rehashing the same praise in the same language for the same cyclical reinventions of the past 2 or 3 decades? We have copyrights for music, but the mindless glut of pop melodies has us audio-tranquillized so we scarcely care whether we've heard a song last week or 25 years ago. And does it matter? When a forgerer can't even get away with an exact copy...is unintentional imitation anti-art? Sherrie Levine and Mike Bidlo have made a career of it...

I spend less and less time in galleries... I am in and out...can't find much to dwell on, and I am less well-dressed than the average weekend gallery gawker these days. Not to mention the staff. Larry Gagosian really does resemble a Duane Hanson real-estate agent. And obviously he has his own tanning bed. Something truly inapppropriate and downright sleazy about these new gallery moguls. Caveat emptor. The business is self-regulating. Dangerous. Greedy. I pity the artists. Other artists envy and pity the artists. Some artists ignore it all and keep their work under their beds. This is the work we need to see. The unpublished, the unphotographed, the unanthologized.

When I was 21 and graduated with awards from my highbrow Art History program, a well-known philosopher/aesthetician called me and asked me for a date. He was rather old--
not handsome but huge on brain-appeal, and I guess I was bohemian-hot back then, and I was new in New York City, single, and fair game. Of course I was terrified and overwhelmed. Flattered. He took me to see Rocky. By the 4th raw-egg drink, I realized he was putting me in my deserved place. He's now been dead for decades but I wonder where he'd have taken a Gagosian to lunch. McDonald's? Maybe the dumpsters behind Chelsea Piers which one could see from his galleries were anyone to open a window and let some reality and fresh air in.

The Emperor's New Art

I've been visiting the auction houses this week, checking out the Contemporary Art sales. People used to show up at these exhibitions because 1. they're free, and 2. they used to provide an opportunity for celebrity watching. I can remember the first time I went into Sotheby's and Christie's in London. The place was sort of funky. Bums were in there, warming up...looking. Art collecting was for a small group of informed and passionate afficionados who had some aesthetic and spiritual need to own visions of painters and sculptors, to see them every day in their own home, because they were uplifting and made them a better person. Eccentrics, some of them. For celebrities, the nouveau aristocracy, art gave them class. Art gave them something unique and rare. A sort of window onto something they aspire to.

Today, the Wall Street Journal tells us, art is a kind of essential commodity for the very rich. It is recommended as a portfolio component. Actually, the art market has become a gigantic hedge fund. And not just any hedge-fund. A personally 'loaded' one. Like old Gibson guitars, Warhol and Basquiat are symbols for the very rich 40-somethings of everything they kind of missed out on while they were grubbing through their MBA requirements. They are nostalgic for something that evaded them-- the bohemian, the funky underground thing. A very recent kind of nostalgia, because these people are not old yet. But they are tripping all over one another, like desperate housewives at a Filene's 4-hour sale, to outbid and grab the brass ring of a contemporary art masterpiece. And since they don't really have time to get an MA in art, they must rely on the professionals. The dealers. The advisors. The consultants. A newish breed like the conspicuously overdressed real-estate agents whose percentage of the ever-increasing selling price is reaching obscene proportions. And the auction house 'experts'? Like the Art Gallery owners, like the Museum Curators, they tip the scales, they convince us that even the hideously dressed Emperors of Art are in unprecedented finery, and that although these things are supposedly unique and priceless, everyone will be wanting one in six months. The return on their investment in nostalgia and culture will far exceed any hedge fund performance. They will guarantee this-- didn't you read the Wall Street Journal yesterday? Well, they will hold the market up, if need be.

If you hang around the pre-sale exhibitions, you will begin to see a certain similarity between the auction house employees and used car dealers. Of course they are dressed better, and you cannot actually test-drive the goods. You will ask them for a condition report, just to seem informed, and they will describe in detail the 'expert' opinion of their in-house 'describers', many of whom have actually had a few art history courses. They will give a thorough analysis of the 'health' of the canvas, deny the existence of any restoration, describe what it looks like under u-v light. will even offer to show it to you in the dark, lit up. I don't know about the average investment banker, but I can't even read my own mammograms, let alone decipher a black-light image of a Mark Rothko which, just two nights ago, was hammered down at 72.8 million dollars. Housepaint, this is. Housepaint which will deteriorate quicker than the finish on that used BMW. Not to mention the fact that the entire African continent could be fed and clothed for one year. Or the fact that these artists don't see a penny of their own auction price. But you can't hang charity in your loft and impress your colleagues and their wives and girlfriends. You can't sit on the boards of Museums which has become a rather sexy seat this year. And does it irk you that 99 percent of the artists in New York City do not get even one crumb of a piece of this art-money pie? They are starving. And most of them cannot even set foot in the city because it is far too expensive. You will see them wandering around at the pre-auction exhibitions, salivating at the estimates, fantasizing in their smelly grungy thrift-shop clothes, like bums sneaking guiltily in through the back door of a porn flick because they are so lonely.

A friend of mine bought some biotech stock last year. Like a million shares. The company is new, spends money on research, has a negative profit. Suddenly they get a bite on their research line...a big fish is on the hook. The stock doubles, triples--- 2 dollar shares are now 26 dollars. The guy sells his million shares. Suddenly has 24 million dollars. Where did this money come from? The company has no profit, no product yet-- in fact, the fish opens up its mouth and slips off the line. The stock is back at $2. But my friend has this 24 million. Tell me-- because I can't quite understand-- where did this money come from? From a company with no product, no money? Monopoly money. So what does he do? He goes straight to the auction house, skulks around, looking at Basquiats and Warhols which may or may not be real because hey...who's going to blow the whistle? These guys are dead. Why should the authentification committees refuse to authenticate when they stand to make fees and profits? And the auction houses? Twenty percent of the first whatever of hammer prices. That's just from the buyers. They take from the sellers, too. And then there are the storage charges, the insurance, the photo fees. Who do you think foots the bill for those glossy catalogues they give you if you're a fish on their line? You do-- the buyer. And you pay for the champagne cocktails, too. So what if it's fake? What's in it for them? They're not even liable, if they believe it's real. They can always find a grand-niece or an old girlfriend who will swear after a champagne lunch that she saw it in the day. Why not? I lived with my own father for 17 years and I couldn't swear to his signature. Or even his old, worn clothing. My own, after a point. Andy Warhol once signed a picture to me because he liked my band. He said-- I didn't do this, but I'll sign it. You think he cared? You think he'd mind seeing these poor schmucks spending 25 million dollars for a screenprint on canvas which they call a painting? Untouched by human hands. And certainly untouched by Warhol's hands. But hey, what's the diff? They're paying with Monopoly money anyway, for Monopoly art.

Maybe next year they'll sell to Donald Trump and he'll put a few hotels on their new art real-estate. And maybe he'll buy some art to hang on the walls of the hotels that he put up on the Warholian real-estate art the hedge fund guys bought and on and on like a Hall of Mirrors.
Ad Infinitum. Like the price of art.

To be continued.