Sorry to have only stumbled upon this just before Christmas. But Glenn O’Brien’s slide show on GQ.com of his trip to ABMB is not to be missed. We could have chosen any one of the 25 slides to show you how perceptive, charming and hilarious the whole slideshow is but we ended up with this one toward the end. O’Brien forgot to charge his digital camera. So he grabbed a notebook to make some sketches instead. Here’s a sample:
Gagosian had really good Picassos and Princes and Basquiats. Too bad Picasso didn’t take drugs or play golf, maybe I would have had one. Gagosian was really crowded. I’ve never seen Larry in his own booth. I wonder if he sits in the storeroom holding court, or maybe is video-surveilling from an undisclosed location. Anyway, it was like a little museum but more crowded.
I ran into Sante D’Orazio and his party crew again at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, talking to gallery director Maxime Falkenstein, the suave gentleman who commutes between New York and the new gallery in Brussels. Max was kind enough to invite me to dinner at Joe’s Stone Crab that evening. I went and ate a lot of famous crab legs sitting next to the famous Hollywood mogul and art collector Michael Ovitz, who explained to me the ins and outs of fast recreational driving in Europe. He budgets speeding fines into his travel plans. I decided I should budget the speeding ticket into my annual trip to Pennsylvania for Christmas. There’s a Mercedes trap on I-80 about halfway through the state. Also ran into Lisa Phillips, who runs the New Museum, and Manuel Gonzales, who buys art for big bankers, both here because Barbara Gladstone not only sells an impeccable roster of artists but has an impeccable roster of friends.
Art Basel Miami Beach, Not-So-Confidential (GQ)