Untitled (2025)
The picture above was taken in July at the Los Angeles gallery CLEARING.* The artist's name is Henry Curchod and his immensely pleasurable show really knocked me out. Click on his name to see more. For now, we talk about galleries and how to enjoy them with me.
It’s September, and the galleries are due to awaken from their long end-of-summer naps. The fall shows will crank up here in a week or so or three or four. I will be there.
I’m especially stoked in 2025 because first there was Covid and then there was this shitty thing with my hips – debilitating bone-on-bone arthritis that required replacement surgery in both legs. That's a gnawing, upsetting amount of time not to walk around looking at art. But I've convalesced and can move my body properly again and go places. I’m going places.
After decades of art-gawking and gallery-slinking, I’ve more or less stopped attending openings unless I have some personal connection to the artist or gallery, and it’s more likely the case that I don’t. Openings are crowded, and that's fine because occasionally I see friends. But openings present a practical problem: people are in the way of the art.
I go to galleries on weekday afternoons. I go alone. Sometimes with one of a small handful of friends I’ve vetted for the purpose. Those friends understand my rules, which are fully reasonable and not at all cranky.
First, the negatives:
Don’t drive. I’ll drive. I don’t like the way you drive.**
Don’t mention money in the gallery. One afternoon I was at the Beverly Hills Gagosian space for a Cecily Brown show and I saw Flea talking to one of the employees. I bet he bought a painting and I bet even then no one was talking about money. I always feel like I'm being stuck with needles when this happens. If the subject comes up I'll say, "Hmmm" and wander off for a bit like I don't know you. If the artist is famous and the work is bigger than the walls in your home, you don’t actually care anyway. David Geffen bought it already and he’s about to flip it in the divorce.
Don’t talk loudly about anything. This is also a needles moment. I hate being in public and being noticed, observed, regarded. Don’t talk at all, really. There’s time for that when we leave for a snack. We will be leaving soon for a snack.
Don’t shit all over everything. I’ve been with that particular person in art spaces too many times. They’re smarter than the show, the artist, the curator, the gallerist, the other people standing five feet away. It's not the hating I object to, it's the volume. There’s time for that when we leave for a snack. We will be leaving soon for a snack. Especially if you’re talking loudly.***
The rest:
Do whisper – WHISPER – funny things to me in the gallery. Be mean if there’s a mutual understanding that both of us hate the show. Or maybe I like the show and you don’t and you’re surprising me with your hostility but you’re still funny about it so let it rip. Whisper.
Do enjoy that snack with me before or after or, if we’re going to more than one gallery, in the middle. Best version of an afternoon is two galleries, then a break for some pastry and a daytime beverage, then one more gallery. All of these places should be relatively close to each other. It’s Los Angeles and driving around and parking again is exactly what no one wants.
Do talk with me about the art during this pastry break and also in the car afterward. Love, hate, a combo plate, whatever. Now is the time.
Then all of us have had a good time looking at art and maybe hating it or maybe loving it so much we post pictures on Instagram and tell local friends to go. Those pictures are not of either of us. They are pictures of the art. That’s another rule.
*CLEARING is gone now. I hate it when good galleries close. CLEARING was good.
**There are like four friends who are allowed to drive. They know who they are.
***I’ll be leaving without you if I hear you say, “I could do that.” You didn’t do that. And you can take a Lyft.
