On this special date—the Monday after Frieze Week LA—I would like to extend my best wishes to all, even the haters and losers. We made it through. I did it all this week, or as close to all of it as I could with merely a press pass.
Here are my final stats, which I think are not too shabby for someone with nothing to buy or sell:
(3) Art fairs
(3) Press previews
(1) Artist talk
(7) Parties
(3) “Let’s just grab a drink/coffee” meetups—and we actually did it
(4) Deleted drunk Instagram posts made from various bathrooms
(2) Of the biggest boobs I’ve ever seen in my life*
(15-20) Deitch sightings
That was too much! I’m so tired! But I went as hard as I felt obligated to—as someone who was not cool/hot in high school and has to get it all in now. I can’t offer any wisdom, but I do feel I have the authority to create a definitive top ten list:
10) Wristbands
Maybe you hate wristbands, especially if you need one to gain access to somewhere and don’t have one. But in an age of face/eyeball scans, can we give it up for good, old-fashioned wristbands at events? Seeing Tim Cook and his bodyguards hobnobbing around Frieze reminded me that we are probably on the event horizon for the disappearance of any old-school security tech. Honorary mention: A printed-out list (so if I’m not on it, you can write down my name!).
9) Watching Brad Troemel get told off by Gen Z at Hop Louie
If you, like me, were a culturally oriented millennial in NYC during the Bernie Sanders era, you know who Brad Troemel is. He’s our generation’s top anti-art-world art-world poster. He’s still out there doing meme critique, and on Friday night, he was at the bar at the party at Hop Louie. I happened to overhear a very cool-seeming 25-yeard-old woman say, “Is that fucking Brad Troemel? I fucking hate Brad Troemel,” and then go up and yell at him that she thinks his content isn’t shit while he was waiting in line for his drink. It healed a vibe within me that has been harshed since 2016. Also, why was Brad Troemel dressed like my cousin who owns a speedboat in Alabama? Like I said, happy Frieze Week to both haters and losers.
8) The Brazzers security guy at the Raw Talent x Rosie Marks x Brazzers party
Photographer Rosie Marks released a book of photos on the subject of Brazzers, the iconic porn production house, and there was a party in the penthouse of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel on Saturday night honoring the book’s release (for which the absolutely iconic Kelly Cutrone did the PR!!!). There, I saw the biggest boobs I’ve ever seen. It was cool.
I also interacted several times with the bodyguard for the porn stars in attendance, who was straight out of a noir film. In my memory, he was wearing a fedora and a pinstripe suit. The hotel security seemed afraid of him.
7) Crying
I cried four times. Mostly out of exhaustion, but also out of the deep, abiding knowledge that almost no one to whom I spoke this week would care if I lived or died. Also, a lot of the art was bad. But that’s Tinseltown, baby…
6) On a happier note, there was a Merlin James painting of boats at Frieze
If you are a painter and you’re not already Merlin James-pilled, you need to be. Merlin James is one of those painters whose combinations of poeticism, humility, light, and air manages to single-handedly blast away all of what is bad about the art world.
In a sense, it might be easy to miss Merlin James’ work at the fair. Its lack of flash is actually the quality that makes it so obvious amidst halls of large-scale, high-finish artworks. I loved his painting of boats in a grey ocean at Maureen Paley’s booth at Frieze.
5) Asking every brunette man I met at a party if he was Daniel Radcliffe
Doesn’t Daniel Radcliffe come to Frieze? Like, where was he? Are you him?
4) Pictures
You heard it here first—pictures/imagination are in for painting, and the body/pure abstraction are out. Maybe it’s a sign of the times…we’re going cerebral, retreating to the imagination to avoid the misery of experiencing the here and now.
3) The Derek Eller Gallery booth at Felix
Archival drawings by Joseph Yoakum, some truly very weird paintings by Clare Grill, a top-tier bathroom hang that included a lovely acrylic painting by Areum Yang…I have been impressed by this gallery’s program before, but I feel like they were one of the only ones at Felix this year that got really weird with it, and I appreciated that a lot.
2) Harry Gould Harvey IV’s drawings at Post-Fair
With the tech right so ascendant and the tech left doing Zizian stuff, it seems like a good moment to remember that computer interfaces didn’t have to be the way they are today…cybernetics and systems theory once offered a way that thinking-about-thinking might be beautifully reflected in our technology.
Perhaps that is why Harry Gould Harvey IV’s tentative, exploratory, spiritual drawings of systems spoke to me at Post-Fair.
1) Gallerists showing art they actually like
This is just off the cuff, and I have no definitive proof for it, but I got the impression that, with all the ups and downs of the economy in recent years, the formula for what works at these fairs is sort of breaking down, and lots fo dealers were simply showing things they like.
The result was that the quality of work across the board felt rather higher than it has in recent years (which isn’t to say there wasn’t some bad art), and that felt good.
If you’re an art dealer—trust your instincts. You’ve got great instincts.**
**This is a great thing to say to people at parties.
