The New York Times‘s Julia Chapin does a little night out number with Bruce High Quality Foundation:
The Bruces, who keep their individual identities anonymous to protest the star-making machinery of the art market, are a rotating group of five to eight men in their 20s and 30s, most of them graduates of the Cooper Union. They’re known for subversive performance art, humorous videos and conceptual sculptures all infused with Ph.D. quantities of art history references.
One of the Bruces, who wore a blazer and a sunburn and appeared to be the group’s ringleader, said that the dozen or so sculptures at the W Hotel were selling for $12,000 to $60,000. And they were a highly intellectual jumble: one of them had an inflatable pool, stuffed animals and a video monitor playing Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” Some had been sold to collectors, he said, before the show even opened.
“Instead of living in a cave, we decided it would be better to observe the art world up close,” said another of the Bruces, who had a baby face and a thrift shop polo shirt.
Around 9 p.m., an assistant announced that it was time for dinner out by the pool. A tall, lanky Bruce sauntered through the thronged lobby quoting Samuel Beckett and Allan Kaprow, a pioneering Fluxus artist. But when he pushed through the thick doors there seemed to be miles of palm trees, canopied daybeds and steamy pools that looked like the grotto at the Playboy Mansion — no dinner in sight. Luckily Jacqueline Schnabel, Vito’s mother, was passing with her daughter Lola and the artist Francesco Clemente and led the lone Bruce to an area with a full bar and a long table set with candles.
And the Beat Goes On (New York Times)
