At the Armory Show
Note: Kind of old, and more of the same old shit - I apologize. I'm currently looking for a new job and working on research project for the folks at City Hall, which has been tough on the creativity. But I have some new ideas floating around, so there's hope for me yet.
He doesn’t really want to go to the Armory Show. Honestly, which is more enjoyable: swapping dramatized tales of last night’s debauchery over eggs benedict and milkshake-thick Bloody Marys at NoHo Star, or trekking over to the Hudson for an overcrowded art fair? But he hasn’t gone to a museum or even a movie theater in weeks, and the prospect of another mindless Saturday depresses him. He likes to think of himself as relatively cultured and art savvy – he was only one class away from an art history minor, after all. The Armory Show is the perfect opportunity to brush up on the contemporary art scene without having to do the gallery-hop thing, which he finds kind of disconcerting. Museums and fairs are the way to go – one stop shopping. He texts his friends that he’ll meet up with them in a few hours.
The L train is pulling up to the Bedford station just as he’s walking down the stairs. Perfect. He doesn’t like waiting on the platform, where he always feels like a square. Today he’s wearing the new, wildly overpriced jeans he bought with his tax return, a red Fred Perry track jacket, a Valentino oxford shirt from Century 21, and a pair of brown Jack Purcell sneakers he got for $20 back home in Seattle. Oftentimes he’ll try out a more adventurous outfit in front of the mirror before opting for something a bit more conservative. Preppiness gets in your blood. Sitting across from him on the train is a beautiful woman who is intently completing some sort of official form, which gives him an opportunity to really give her the once over. Her hair is short, which he digs (friends have attributed this proclivity to the fact that his mother has short hair; he doesn’t like this theory very much). She’s wearing a crazy blouse with an almost Elizabethan collar, and her boots are chunky and black. She doesn’t once look up from her forms.
At Eighth Avenue he transfers to the uptown E. The short-haired woman gets on the same car. She looks like the type to attend art fairs. He fantasizes about striking up a conversation with her as they walk to Pier 50. Maybe she would be interested in a guy like him. The key is to be sincere. He settles on an opening line. She gets off at Penn Station.
He smokes a cigarette while walking down 50th Street. Dunhill Lights. The first cigarette of the week always gives him a headache; he only smokes on weekends. As he gets closer to the River the sidewalk becomes crowded with other fair-goers, all of them exuding a faint sense of self-satisfaction that has nothing to do with the beautiful weather. Once they get to the Pier everyone is sort of confused – where is the majestic stairway, the bustling interior promenade, the skylit galleries? In fact, the only common thread linking the Piers with Museum Mile is the exorbitant entry fee.
After squeezing his way through the edgily-dressed hordes, he finally makes it into the interior of Pier 90, which resembles nothing so much as a very long, very wide hospital hallway. There are booths on each side and in the middle, and the scene reminds him of a high school science fair. He begins sauntering through the crowd, weaving his way in and out of the booths. Some of the art is interesting; most of it is not. Looking at a sculpture made of green foil and construction paper, he thinks the most philistine of thoughts: I could do that. This thought has never crossed his mind before, not during the Duchamp documentary, not at the Jeff Koons exhibition, not even at the performance art opening in Soho where the featured medium was chocolate pudding. Everything here looks so calculated. He keeps picturing one of his asymmetrically-tressed neighbors cackling maniacally while rolling around in a pile of cocaine and money swindled from a gauche investment banker hoping to buy some taste. Honestly, at least half of the people at the Pier look like they wandered in from a Goldman Sachs mixer. A conversational sampler:
- “It’s like he’s trying to deconstruct deconstruction, or something.”
- “I didn’t like it in Basel, but I like it now!”
- “This would look fucking fantastic in the second bedroom.”
He much prefers the other segment of the crowd, which consists of beautiful young gallery assistants and their gay friends. The gay friends are pretty funny in an Oscar Wilde sort of way, and the girls are everything he thinks he’s looking for. Where do they hang out on Saturday night? Not that it matters – he figures that this sort of girls is interested only in guys who are rich and foreign (he is neither), or poor and self-destructive (he is both, actually, but not in a compelling way).
By the time he makes it out of Pier 90, he realizes that after forty minutes he is already bored. The sight of a few people walking around with drinks briefly piques his interest, but he can imagine himself accidentally spilling his Stella and shorting out a pornographic train set. He smokes another cigarette before walking over to Pier 92. The lobby of Pier 92 is even hotter than its counterpart, but aside from that it looks like he's in for more of the same. And then:
“I’m so sorry, but we’re not going to be able to let anyone into Pier 92 for at least twenty minutes. It’s a fire code thing – we’re very sorry”
He shrugs to himself – actually raising his shoulders and smirking to no one in particular. The woman next to him looks over warily.
His phone rings on the long walk back to Eighth Avenue.
“Guy, how was the show?”
“Hit and miss. Definitely hit and miss.”
He doesn’t really want to go to the Armory Show. Honestly, which is more enjoyable: swapping dramatized tales of last night’s debauchery over eggs benedict and milkshake-thick Bloody Marys at NoHo Star, or trekking over to the Hudson for an overcrowded art fair? But he hasn’t gone to a museum or even a movie theater in weeks, and the prospect of another mindless Saturday depresses him. He likes to think of himself as relatively cultured and art savvy – he was only one class away from an art history minor, after all. The Armory Show is the perfect opportunity to brush up on the contemporary art scene without having to do the gallery-hop thing, which he finds kind of disconcerting. Museums and fairs are the way to go – one stop shopping. He texts his friends that he’ll meet up with them in a few hours.
The L train is pulling up to the Bedford station just as he’s walking down the stairs. Perfect. He doesn’t like waiting on the platform, where he always feels like a square. Today he’s wearing the new, wildly overpriced jeans he bought with his tax return, a red Fred Perry track jacket, a Valentino oxford shirt from Century 21, and a pair of brown Jack Purcell sneakers he got for $20 back home in Seattle. Oftentimes he’ll try out a more adventurous outfit in front of the mirror before opting for something a bit more conservative. Preppiness gets in your blood. Sitting across from him on the train is a beautiful woman who is intently completing some sort of official form, which gives him an opportunity to really give her the once over. Her hair is short, which he digs (friends have attributed this proclivity to the fact that his mother has short hair; he doesn’t like this theory very much). She’s wearing a crazy blouse with an almost Elizabethan collar, and her boots are chunky and black. She doesn’t once look up from her forms.
At Eighth Avenue he transfers to the uptown E. The short-haired woman gets on the same car. She looks like the type to attend art fairs. He fantasizes about striking up a conversation with her as they walk to Pier 50. Maybe she would be interested in a guy like him. The key is to be sincere. He settles on an opening line. She gets off at Penn Station.
He smokes a cigarette while walking down 50th Street. Dunhill Lights. The first cigarette of the week always gives him a headache; he only smokes on weekends. As he gets closer to the River the sidewalk becomes crowded with other fair-goers, all of them exuding a faint sense of self-satisfaction that has nothing to do with the beautiful weather. Once they get to the Pier everyone is sort of confused – where is the majestic stairway, the bustling interior promenade, the skylit galleries? In fact, the only common thread linking the Piers with Museum Mile is the exorbitant entry fee.
After squeezing his way through the edgily-dressed hordes, he finally makes it into the interior of Pier 90, which resembles nothing so much as a very long, very wide hospital hallway. There are booths on each side and in the middle, and the scene reminds him of a high school science fair. He begins sauntering through the crowd, weaving his way in and out of the booths. Some of the art is interesting; most of it is not. Looking at a sculpture made of green foil and construction paper, he thinks the most philistine of thoughts: I could do that. This thought has never crossed his mind before, not during the Duchamp documentary, not at the Jeff Koons exhibition, not even at the performance art opening in Soho where the featured medium was chocolate pudding. Everything here looks so calculated. He keeps picturing one of his asymmetrically-tressed neighbors cackling maniacally while rolling around in a pile of cocaine and money swindled from a gauche investment banker hoping to buy some taste. Honestly, at least half of the people at the Pier look like they wandered in from a Goldman Sachs mixer. A conversational sampler:
- “It’s like he’s trying to deconstruct deconstruction, or something.”
- “I didn’t like it in Basel, but I like it now!”
- “This would look fucking fantastic in the second bedroom.”
He much prefers the other segment of the crowd, which consists of beautiful young gallery assistants and their gay friends. The gay friends are pretty funny in an Oscar Wilde sort of way, and the girls are everything he thinks he’s looking for. Where do they hang out on Saturday night? Not that it matters – he figures that this sort of girls is interested only in guys who are rich and foreign (he is neither), or poor and self-destructive (he is both, actually, but not in a compelling way).
By the time he makes it out of Pier 90, he realizes that after forty minutes he is already bored. The sight of a few people walking around with drinks briefly piques his interest, but he can imagine himself accidentally spilling his Stella and shorting out a pornographic train set. He smokes another cigarette before walking over to Pier 92. The lobby of Pier 92 is even hotter than its counterpart, but aside from that it looks like he's in for more of the same. And then:
“I’m so sorry, but we’re not going to be able to let anyone into Pier 92 for at least twenty minutes. It’s a fire code thing – we’re very sorry”
He shrugs to himself – actually raising his shoulders and smirking to no one in particular. The woman next to him looks over warily.
His phone rings on the long walk back to Eighth Avenue.
“Guy, how was the show?”
“Hit and miss. Definitely hit and miss.”
posted by rd at 9:12 AM
|
