Reading, watching, listening, learning
links and images
Read this e-mail from Deborah Needleman, the ex editor of T and famed basket maker. She hosts barter & exchange workshops: You work for her (making yards of plaited rush), and at the end, you learn how to make a rush placemat. “It's lovely work but repetitive, and while you need no experience, you do need to pay close attention to create work that is uniform.” It’s quaint and hits on the nostalgia we all have for a pure experience. I think this is what my husband would call a complex pleasure (a simple pleasure is buying a basket). In June, she’s teaching a class to make a garden basket for harvesting flowers ($700). If you prefer a traditional pay-for-play thing.
russian church in the forest, 2024 See the Karen Kilimnik show before it closes at Gladstone. She lives in a wonderful fantasy land. (Years ago, I reviewed a show of hers for Artforum, but it wasn’t much of a review, I just said what everyone else always says about her which is she is great.) Chloe Sevigny’s story of what happened to her Karen Kilimnik painting is SO TRAGIC!
It’s a question that has puzzled me for a long time: Why can’t people buy their own art? The answer is always, the galleries won’t sell it to them, which typically means they are buying the work of someone who is already famous. This never seemed like that good of a deal (compared to finding the work of an unknown artist, which might well appreciate), and it seemed like what rich people were doing was outsourcing the “networking with gallerists,” not art collecting. That’s all fine, but I look down on it just the same. I can make my own friends! I was thinking about this because one of the big art advisors has fallen, so swiftly and in flames. I guess the real question I have of art collectors who send out their minions to make these decisions: Imagine being so rich you can’t have the pleasure of spending your own money?
The media is the greatest reader of media, and that’s why I love media reporters so much. (Why not let them read about themselves!) Case in point: This article about a mass e-mail between writer celebs over a McNally Jackson book event is insane organic press for the bookstore, compounded by the well-deserved profile of Sarah McNally that ran last month. (Did you know Sarah has 250 employees? What can’t she do?)
