Monthly Archives: January 2009

Seth Price at Reena Spaulings Fine Art

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Art’s commercial aptitude was apparent last night in the unlikeliest of places—my block. I’ve written about the spread of gallery hopping in Manhattan, but it’s officially reached the last stop of the F train in Manhattan. Seth Price had an opening at Reena Spaulings Fine Art last night. I googled the location, 165 East Broadway. I knew the google map was wrong because there was nothing on the block it showed but a Chinese restaurant.

How wrong was I, I discovered when I climbed the old stairs after a crowd of mid-20s folks who seemed to know where they were going. The floor above the Chinese restaurant is Reena Spaulings Fine Art. Instead of 4 people milling about, there were over 40 drinking, smoking and chatting around—oh yes—the art.

Sitting around the corner from said gallery now, having coffee, watching Chinese people practice New Years dances in the park across the way, the scene of the neighborhood just gets better now that I can include galleries. I understand why Renee Spauling and the LaViolaBanks Gallery, also on East Broadway, are here. The spaces are enormous. There are many tiny gallery spaces in the area immediately north of here, but these are massive. Based off last night, I’d say they draw a good crowd.

But where was art’s commercial potential last night? That takes us back to the art; Seth Price’s works are so polished and intelligent they might sell themselves even in this market.


Stressing the importance of dates, Price has created a series of calendar pieces where he has painted older paintings in a square in the top of a canvas and a calendar locating them in time along the bottom. For me, works like the one featured above, where molded objects or faces break through a flat, plasticine surface were less explicit and more appealing. I didn’t stay for the video, which I suspect was the best part.

Absinthe as a Lifestyle: Rimbaud and other French Decadents

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“For me, my glory is but a humble ephemeral absinthe drunk on the sly, with fear of treason and if I drink no longer, it is for good reason!” – Paul Verlaine

“After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see things as they are not. Finally, you see things as they really are, which is the most horrible thing in the world.” – Oscar Wilde
In addition to Van Gogh, famous absinthe drinkers (make that addicts) include the French poets Rimbaud and Verlaine. A new book by Edmund White, Rimbaud, highlights the affair and drinking habits of these two poet maudits, and the Time’s review of it gives you condensed insight into the poet’s embroiled lives. Rimbaud, left,
“cultivated the lice in his hair and tried to make them jump onto other people; he smashed up heirlooms; he sold his hosts’ furniture to buy gallons of booze, especially absinthe, on which he would proceed to get blotto, waking up in pools of his own merde (one of his favourite words). Finally, he seduced Verlaine, made him abandon his wife and infant child, and led the poor sap off on a sordid set of adventures that culminated, a couple of years later, with an exasperated Verlaine shooting Rimbaud in the wrist and serving a term in prison.”
Also from Parisian society of the time–called Decadent with good reason–we have Edgar Degas’s L’absithe. Intersetingly, the French had no illusions about absinthe’s addictive nature, but rather seem drawn to and fascinated by sin. Absinthe at that time was like heroin chic of the 90s. So despite my earlier denunciation, I can see now where all the cultural stigma, and thus its sinful appeal, stems from. Absinthe was a lifestyle.

Why art auctions might not meet their reserves

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On one hand, great hope of new leadership and a seachange in the fortune of the U.S. is in the air, and on the other hand, we have visual confirmation of the art market’s decline. The below is estimated to sell for 2 to 3 thousand GBP. What exactly is it, you may ask? As Art News Blog put it, bold mine:

An item of interest in Sotheby’s upcoming London auction on the 6th of February is a piece of shit, literally. It’s called CLOACA FAECES (NEWYORK, 26.01.2002, 2.30 P.M.) by the Belgian artist Wim Delvoye.

Is it any wonder that the art market’s not doing so hot? More disgusting than interesting, it’s called Cloaca Faeces, it’s art, and it’s on sale at Sotheby’s in early Febraury. Sure, shit has been done before in the art world, in cans and other places, but that’s no reason to repeat the feat.
Maybe President Obama can add to his agenda for change: don’t let the failing art market commit suicide.