Gawker
This is an occasional column from one of the authors of The Underminer: or, The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life. That's right, a book! Weren't you working on one of those? Whatever happened with that?
Hi! Hey! Weird, YOU are at Bottino!? No, no, I'm so glad to run into you here! Hold on...I'm talking to one of my studio assistants.
...and after that, you need to tie together five yachts and suspend them over a children's hospital bathed in squid ink...yes. OK. Bye.
How funny that you are here. I didn't know you liked to come to Bottino, the social center of the West Chelsea gallery scene! Well I'll take it as a sign the art season is in full swing and everyone's coming to see what we creatives have been up to.
I'm so glad I was up here in the sort of public front section and not at my table in the back because I would have missed you.
Hm? Oh I'm here with my close close close friends Matthew Marks and Perry Rubenstein and Leo Castelli. We are just having a strategy sesh about my work and also celebrating our close close close friend Roberta's masterful piece in the Times about the whole Mass MOCA scandal, which I am not sure you read because I know you don't really follow— You did? Oh, no sure sure sure. Sorry I didn't mean to make it sound like you were clueless or anything! Ha!
I mean, can you BELIEVE Mass MOCA!? How DARE they cut the funding of my most brilliant colleague, Christophe Buchel, when he went over his 160,000 dollar budget, two times over, and delayed the opening of his work by months with his strange requirements? So what if he demanded near impossible things like a fuselage of a 737, a two-story Cape Cod cottage, a leaflet-bomb carousel, an old bar from a tavern, and a vintage movie theater? He is an artist, and has no choice but to follow his vision. How do they expect an artist to CREATE in that kind of environment!? We really live in an oppressive time. It's like Entartete Kunst all over again. Deplorable.
People like Buchel and I are ARTISTS! And we ARTISTS are allowed to do whatever we want because we make ART! Watch.
Hello? Sir? Yes, you there. What do you do? Oh, you're a high school teacher. Commendable. Well, I'm an ARTIST. Now get on your knees and drink my saliva.
See? I make ART.
Who can deny the power of Buchel's dirty, trash-laden historical dioramas? I look at the way he dumps crumbled cinderblock and dry wall into a pile and I just WEEP at the authenticity. And that authenticity takes money and time and creative freedom!
If they wanted something cheap, they should have just gone down to New Orleans and scrounged some poor folk artist's oil paintings out of the trash. Or simply exhibited pictures of The Ninth Ward or Baghdad or the Minneapolis Bridge disaster, which, I have to say, are sort of GOOD as art pieces, but don't quite capture the pain and anguish of the human soul as well as a Buchel diorama.
Which reminds me! I am so excited for my next project! I am working with Bridges.
The Getty has cleared funding for Damien and I to encrust the Golden Gate Bridge with diamonds. Just as soon as I finish this large piece for the Tate Modern.
Can you hold on one second? I have to talk to my assistant again.
What do you mean you are tired and need to see your family? I don't give a crap! I need a plum tree, four yaks, a pair authentic Mork and Mindy suspenders, and five butthairs off of Lisa Rinna's anus, freshly plucked. NOW.
Anyway I am just so grateful that my good good good friend Roberta finally gave a voice to those of us artists, nay, visionaries, who feel penned in by stupid, thoughtless institutions that only supply 12 assistants and 500,000 dollars for us to realize our art.
We are fighting, and will continue to fight the good fight for expression and artistic freedom for any and all artists. Well, I mean, the artists who go to Art Basel. Not like other ones who don't have careers. Well you know what I mean.
Oh! Sorry, I have to go, they're serving our octopus vinaigrettes.
Ciao!
Comments
The eerie thing is just how much this reminds me of the creatives at the advertising agency I used to work at.
In all seriousness, Mass MOCA is a really crazy, fun place to go if you're ever in North Adams, MA. Though, why would you be. On the way to Belchertown, perhaps.
@LolCait:
Is Belchertown anywhere near Fartville or Gas Springs?
Other thing is, you could substitute the nouns and this monologue would still be dead on for a theatre director, opera conductor, Kanye West...
talent is all about regression.
today it's homeless-shelter installations, tomorrow, a dump on a piece of cardboard.
Topographical maps and globular lower intestinal type shapes (when are colons not stylish?)are the new deer and sparrow this year. And bubble dresses are still in. Carry on.
@gonzosmom: It's just west of Ialmostpoopedington.
Where was Smith when P.S.1/MoMa kicked Shaun Leonardo to the curb before he could perform his punch in the face piece in "Emergency Room" last winter. Bottino sucks too.
Thanks to my exposure to Thai food last night, I have already created at least 5 major, very exclusive exhibits in an arte povera style in a private space, here, in the office. I think some people are aware of my projects, and some may well accuse me of corporate sponsorship, but my art is so intimate that even I, the Creator, am, at times, bound to avert my eyes.
@the_mayoress: If you replace the verbs, articles, and prepositions, too, it could just as easily be about buying bread, or sailing a yacht, or eating a bananana. Makes you think.
@DavidWatts: No, makes me want to step on your foot and steal your lunch money.
@tammyfey: I salute you, comrade, for your commitment to the cause.
This morning my dog created a work entitled "Kibbles, Rawhide, Stick and Unidentified". Unhappy with her first version, she decided to reconstitute and reintegrate the work. I'm waiting for her to produce her second installation, which should have a looser, more fluid sensibility.
Right now she is not yet known by the New York art world but some of the major galleries have indicated an interest in her work. Hirst has discussed collaborating with her, perhaps bejewelling one of her pieces. She's supposed to contact him the next time she works with shoe laces or kitty litter.
@tammyfey: I think I saw your latest exhibit on NYmag's Approval Matrix.
@whomever: People still go to Bottino? I think I was there in 2000 last. Learned about clenbuterol that night. You're not on clenbuterol? Silly me. Look at you. Of course you're not. Props to you and your 'clean living'.
Couldn't they just slap another artist's name on it and call it 'found art'?
Art Basel in Basel or Art Basel Miami? Miami? Oh. (Cough.)
Not to question, REALLY, The Underminer's contacts--he does do a lot of fundraising--but really, what did the MOMA crowd think about Montebello's half-page photo? Yes, that one--a few weeks ago--he was wearing a vacant expression and a tie that featured little "chinese" men wearing little cone-shaped hats, plowing rice fields? OH, he didn't see that? Well, hoisting boats and all does exhaust one...and of course, the Met only deals in regular art, so why would he care? All the history; it just so isn't his scene.
Not to get all editorial on you guys, but the underminer comes across as a bit of a phony this time.
Leo Castelli has been dead for years.
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