Someday My Prince Will Come & A Well Lit Greyhound Station

Paul McCarthy is just one twisted dude. Sorry. We all love Walt Disney and really do not have any problems with his vision of America and storytelling. How many Angelinos get teary eyed reminising about sneaking onto Disneyland's Tom Sawyer Island and having a smoke back in the day?  Rite of passage. Huck Finn would have been proud.

So when McCarthy twists our beloved and classic wholesome tales into a huge shit fest it's a little upsetting. But ultimately very funny. Here's a nude and beautiful (bulbous nose notwithstanding) Snow White, on a fourposter bed slowly stretching. Woken up by guess what? Not a Handsome Prince's kiss but 7 little m..f..ckrs whacking off.  Funny. Very Funny. TBS Funny. 

Then she's cleaning the floor Cinderella style after an awful drunken parents party gone mad with pizza boxes, spilled vodka bottles and bathroom mistakes everywhere. Uncle Johnny impaled on a broomstick in the rec-room? Well, he did kind of deserve it, really. The gift shop has a vacuum cleaner abandoned in miduse, a lot of Disney dolls re-purposed with Paul Walt signatures on them. We like this idea much better than anything Jeff Koons has ever manufactured. The show sticks with you like gum on your shoe

The sets are made up of huge colorful flowers, jungle overgrowth, redwood pathways and neat 50's lighting on a random San Fernando Valley tract home. Absolutely georgeous. He took over the entire 67th St Armory on Park. Way to go, Paul McCarthy!

Now for Dullsville U.S.A. The Guggenheim take over by James Turrell is another grand idea. We all love James Turrell for the spiritual, time sensitive light shows. He has an amazing way with subtle light changes much like the aurora borealis. Mesmorizing really. The desert sky creeping over with rose to evening satin blue/purples.

But standing in the Guggenheim rotunda, why do we feel we are in a Greyhound Station in Tucson? The only difference here is we are missing the great feeling of relief when our bus finally pulls in.

Yes, you do meet the nicest people on a bus. But watch out for your stuff when you get up to go to the lavatory. Guaranteed, some one will mess with your backpack left on the seat. No airplane trip here.

Save the energy going through the Guggenheim rabbit warren upstairs. Just dumb squares of light in the corners of the rooms. Very boring. 

Just because you can command the entire Guggenheim exhibit space, doesn't mean you should.  Nobody has ever tamed a Frank Lloyd Wright building. He famously hated art and especially disliked sculpture. He said something like "...sculpture is the stuff you bump into when you step back to look at bad paintings" Architecture again triumphs over art.

 The Guggenheim.

Frieze Art Fair comes to NYC

We love the arrival of this new art fair from London to Manhattan!  

The light is great at Frieze. It's in a huge canvas tent on Randalls Island which lets lots of light and fresh air in, a nice break from other art fairs with recycled TWA Airlines "oxygen."  So you don't get tired and the art is presented really well with lots of room to see it, not all jammed together in miserable little aisles.  And the Frieze staff was really nice to us with press passes and free catalogs and stuff. Many glittering famous people were there, most of whom we could not recognize by name, but you probably would from movies and tv shows. And the actual big name gallery owners were present in their booths to say hi in a friendly way. 

This is a refreshing breath of fresh air in the stale artworld of burned out fairs. Very much unlike the dour Armory which is marginally entertaining but very dreary. But to us, even the Armory is a joy compared to the others like Scope and Pulse where you feel you are walking through the dog pound, sad eyes glomming your every step, "pick me, pick me" telepathically beaming out to you. And someone had the brilliant idea of a multicultural cuisine roach coach in the middle of Scope so there was this horrid stink of curry flavored MSG encrusted tacos cooked in repugnant vegetable oil recycled from Burger King, spreading in oil covered clouds everywhere. Shame on you Scope organizers!  We will never try to sneak in with our bogus passes to your event.


Now for some of the art:  Paul McCarthy's dwarf sculpture is brilliant in a blue color with an arm disintegrating displayed nicely at Hauser and Wirth, There was a cool car that came apart at another gallery and some very good painters at others. A nice sculpture was at Team Gallery with a huge 88 which is probably related to a NASCAR car or some reference. Tracy Emin had some very nice neons of female naughty bits on a gallery wall. Unfortunately that is about it for us. We were collared and led to the door by a military looking security dude who wanted us all to get press passes, not just one of us. But guess what? We all got press passes then! They are very nice here.

Some other journalists asked how we could write about an entire art fair with so many booths when we spent most of the time at the beer garden, which was lovely by the way. "How could you possibly write a review of this important art fair after only one hour?" They asked? Well, we didn't say it would be a good review. Go yourself. It's really fun.