Every trip to New York, for the last ten years anyway, has included a Saturday romp through the hundreds of commercial galleries in Chelsea. It’s like iTunes shuffle, you never know what you might come across. I had a few destinations in mind as well so we made sure we saw the A.R. Penck paintings at Leo Koenig, the Jean Michel Basquiat show at Gagosian, but I never expected to see Francis Bacon paintings in a gallery down there along with a large Philip Guston I had never even seen in books. I asked if anyone had bought the Guston and they said it wasn’t for sale.
It always surprises me when I see people talking to an art dealer in Chelsea and appearing to be seriously considering the purchase of a piece. Are these scenes staged? Do people actually buy high priced artwork on a whim? Of course they do and that’s what makes the world go ’round.
I wouldn’t be suspecting ulterior motives if we hadn’t stopped in a gallery at the end of 25th Street where someone was sitting at a desk behind an obligatory Mac laptop and three artists’ names were rubbed on the entry above the door. One of the gallery’s walls was painted a toxic shade of yellow and an “L” shaped piece of painted wood was mounted to the right of a hole that had been cut in the drywall where a piece of plywood, about four feet square, was exposed. The tops of a few wood screws were also visible.
New Yorkers are in better shape than we are. They run up and down the stairs of subway stations and walk, walk, walk. When the galleries closed we hiked over to Fifth Avenue and found Nomad, the fancy restaurant our nephew works at. This was a surprise visit so the maître d’ asked us to wait in the lobby and after ten minutes or so someone came out and led us down the stairs to the kitchen. The stainless steel work area was immaculate and dramatically lit. The workers were all standing over a huge, long table. Random inspirational words were printed on on the wall next to a large picture of Mick Jagger. The scene was more intense than any of the galleries we had been in. Our nephew, the artist.
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