Do books even make good Christmas presents?
The answer is no.
Every Christmas well-meaning people who don’t really know me give me a book for Christmas. There is a misconception that I like books. I don’t. I like perfect books. Very hard to find…
Tarnished Idealism
Ex-art-world-employee Janique Vigier:
For stories of bitter competition, petty grievances, ruthless ambition, and mostly tarnished idealism, nothing beats books about art dealers.
Don’t rewrite history, start with the classic: Duveen: The Story of the Most Spectacular Art Dealer of All Time. Get a nice copy of the first edition, the one with the Steinberg illustrations. It’s practical: he manipulated people like Frick and Rockefeller, paid butlers and drivers to tell him when aristocrats were selling their Old Masters. (Learn how to get what you want.)
My first boss gave me a copy of The Art Dealers and told me to memorize it. It’s a famous oral history of American dealers, from Sydney Janis to Paula Cooper. I did memorize it, but all the wrong parts I guess, because I got fired. What makes you a good dinner guest is not always good for your “career.” This is really for someone who likes the “image” behind the anecdote: Franz Kline, a terrible driver, speeding in his Ferrari on the West Side Highway. Leo Castelli saying the decisions he made out of weakness turned out best.
Jean Stein’s West of Eden is horrifying. It also provides an oblique view of the beginning of the Ferus Gallery through Walter Hopps and Ed Moses’ work as psychiatric attendants to Grace Garland’s daughter, i.e. the most infamous gallerist in LA made his money taking a schizophrenic woman to Disneyland.... (Editor’s note: They fucked her, too.)
If you need something breezy, I suggest Peggy Guggenheim’s Confessions of an Art Addict. Everyone is always “setting off somewhere” and saying things with “perspicacity.”
The most sober, roundabout and truly FASCINATING of art books is Christopher Wood’s A History of Art History. He takes a LONG view, like ‘altars from 1368’ long. Good for the erudite stepdad.
I tapped Visitor Design/Chris Habib to recommend three art books, because that’s what he collects. He directs you to Hassla press. “They are killing it.” (1) Laurie Parsons: 36 Slides 1986-1990. “I love Laurie Parsons, she dropped out of the art world and never went back,” Habib says. (Editor’s note: Bob Nickas wrote about her disappearing act for Artforum: Whatever Happened To: Laurie Parsons. Essential reading!) (2) Richard Kern’s CARS. “Car crashes.” (3) Shannon Cartier Lucy: Better Call It Grace. Lucy was a heroin addict and art student in the 90s and had to leave NY, and then came roaring back with a painting show last year. This is already sold out, so you need to ask your local bookseller if they’re holding back a copy.
MY OBSESSION WITH ANN PATCHETT
I used to think Ann Patchett was synonymous with “sweeping novels for wives sold at airports.” I have no idea why I thought this, I just always did, and never picked up any of her books. Also, I’m sorry, but who walks into a bookstore and just idly picks up a book with an illustration of a dragon fly on the cover???
Then, a few years ago, Harper’s published an absolutely batshit story about Ann’s inappropriate relationship with her personal assistant, who used to be Tom Hanks’s personal assistant. A few months after this piece came out, I was getting drunk in Livingston, Montana at the home of writers Amanda Fortini and Walter Kirn, one of my favorite couples in America, and we were, as usual, talking shop. “What writers are good? What writers are bad? And who is lying about it online?”
I expressed shock that Ann Patchett was such a great writer—a batshit crazy person who has never met a boundary she didn’t cross. Amanda noted that Harper’s was just the tip of the iceberg, that Ann has a history of writing about her sycophantic relationships, that she wrote an excellent, if inappropriate, book called Truth & Beauty about her best friend Lucy Grealy—a difficult and ugly heroin addict, who also happened to be a talented writer who barely wrote—within a year of Lucy’s death.
It is a perfect book!!!! And completely salacious: Lucy is without a doubt a disastrous, self-involved narcissist who squandered all of her talent partying and doing drugs...when she wasn’t feeling bad for herself because she was disfigured (the bottom half of her face was, more or less, completely smooshed)...Here’s Lucy Grealy on Charlie Rose, if you’re curious as to how ugly she was.
Isn’t it so unlike me to recommend a book about an ugly woman! And yet, you can just tell that Lucy was cool and Ann will never be cool, and that’s why Ann could write, and Lucy couldn’t... One of the most fucked up female friendships to ever be put to the page, for the history books. (Thanks to book-critic-turned-Hollywood-darling Michelle Dean for alerting me of this article about how upset Lucy’s family was about the book when it came out.)
~BONUS REC~ Ann Patchett’s The Story of a Happy Marriage. Some great insight into “how she made it” in this essay collection. If you’re looking for inspiration to write your first book, or know someone who needs that.