Oeuvres and Hors D’Oeuvres
Vernissage snacks and characters.
Around this time of year, I tend to remember the heyday of Chelsea, circa 2007, when the area known as Gasoline Alley packed nearly 350 galleries. The opening of the season— usually the first Thursday evening after Labor Day, such as today, when art galleries present their strongest shows of the year— would see rivers of people going up and down the galleries more or less between 22nd and 27th street and between 10th and 11th avenue.
It used to be also that in the majority of openings one could almost have dinner by simply sampling the many cheese and crackers at every opening as well as consuming a week’s worth of alcohol with the seemingly inexhaustible supply of cheap, room-temperature white wine and beer. Like any other form of nostalgia, my longing of those no longer plentiful hors d’oeuvres at openings likely obscures the fact that the majority of those snacks and crudités —fluorescent Monterey Jack cheese cubes, Terra chips and tiny raw broccoli florets (which I often imagined were hurriedly picked up by a gallery assistant in Gristedes an hour before the opening)— were not very appealing, but we consumed them anyway out of boredom or the classic mild social anxiety attached to opening rituals: drinking and eating gives you something to do when you can’t find anyone to talk to. The social lubricant effect of alcohol makes openings livelier (and the improved experience could ostensibly encourage a deeper appreciation of the work for critics and collectors) but it also has a strategic function. As a dealer friend told me, “You want to hold people at the opening; otherwise, they are going to leave. They will not stand empty handed for an hour.” That, in addition to the fact that being the only gallery not offering drinks makes one look bad in relation to the competition. And speaking of competition, I also happened to notice every now and then how certain galleries that did not have the same reputation, quality of artists and/or good attendance at openings would sometimes have better finger food— as if their exhibition shortcomings could be compensated by offering caviar. Others, especially emerging galleries and artist-run spaces, would also compensate the less established artists with a better party atmosphere. In those spaces, which still holds true today, beer is a more common staple, with tubs of melting ice and empty Bud Light cans lying everywhere around the show, giving the opening a 90s art school vibe.
It was also in the early aughts that the food-based work of Jennifer Rubell came into prominence. Rubell studied at the Culinary Institute of America, and using that expertise started making interactive edible sculptures that had a perfect home in the opening rituals of art fairs and galas. One of her most memorable interventions was the opening of Performa 2009, where she placed, among other things, a 2,000 pounds of ribs with honey dripping from the ceiling for the guests.
There is a long list of artists who make appetizers as art (a sub-category of food-based art), but one that I would consider the Mexico representative is César Martínez, who has worked on that subject for three decades now and who continues this practice today. “My thing is performance”, he told me, as he described his “performancenas” (performa-dinners), or gastronomic events where guests are served a variety of dishes in the shape of Pre-Columbian or classical sculptures, or using casts of historical political figures (I particularly like the dish “Huevito Juárez”, a cast egg sculpture in the effigy of the Mexican president Benito Juárez). An extensive mid-career retrospective of his work will open in Mexico City on September 13th, 2024.
Food might be considered a minor element of exhibition openings, but we all know the role it plays in strengthening professional bonds and relationships. Going back to those golden years of opening cornucopia in New York I particularly recall the after-exhibition dinners of Apexart— the nonprofit run by Steven Rand in Tribeca. After the opening, there was usually a per-invitation only dinner in Steven’s house (he lived on the upper floor of Apexart). I have a very fond memory of those dinners, as those were my first years in New York and I always met very interesting people at those gatherings; from personal experience I know that very important relationships, dialogues and likely new projects emerged from those dinners (which were discontinued at some point, as I suspect they eventually became too onerous and cumbersome to organize and maintain).
That very pairing of the de rigueur hors d’oeuvres and drinks at openings and artistic element can also become the challenge with openings: while food and drink do help augment the experience of the exhibition it sometimes, and problematically, becomes the draw to the event itself. Those of you who experienced the hors d’oeuvre golden age in Chelsea might remember that it also sparked a gold rush of party crashers— a class of professional unwelcome guests who would come to openings exclusively to eat and drink. “There were like 6 of them,” my New York dealer Doug Walla remembers. “They would know each other. They would arrive and demolish the food table.” I personally recall a regular in particular, a woman who would surreptitiously take large portions of party trays when she thought no one was looking and would dump the contents of cheese cubes and crackers onto a bag. “Some of them are shameless” —I was told by another dealer, recalling an art critic who always edged his way in, mainly to drink. “I have blocked him.”
But others in that group where more ambiguous and mysterious. One of them, a dealer I spoke to told me, was a regular to talked to everyone, “real smart, pleasant, he remembered your shows. Once, after a long conversation, I learned that he was homeless.”
Another mysterious opening visitor that many of us recall was an older man with a vague resemblance to Einstein —bushy mustache, mad scientist hair, tie and a ragged suit jacket with colorful patches in it. He did not appear to be there for the snacks and drinks, but would mostly wander through the exhibition, talk to the guests, and, most surprisingly of all, look at the work: an anomalous, simple visitor amidst a sea of networking artists, curators, critics and collectors. I do not know his name; I will call him Mr. Einstein-Chelsea.
As years went by, the Terra chips and cheese plates reduced in size and abundance — and the champagne was often hidden away in a kitchenette or in the viewing room of the gallery, to be taken out only when a VIP would show up. Nonetheless, in some instances there has been an inversion, one that relates to an additional pressure associated with openings: the after-opening dinner paid for by the gallery. These become yet another complicated affair about insider access, where a lot of uninvited guests attempt to crash the dinner. “It then becomes about exclusion”, another dealer told me; “and about people knowing when they are invited or not.” This has led to some galleries to cancel post-opening dinners altogether, and instead maintain the food element at the gallery so that people can remain at the show and see the work, in spite of the inconvenience of freeloaders.
The 2020 pandemic upended the entire system in very particular ways. When the art world opened up again, cheese trays were not only considered an unnecessary expense but, mainly, petri dishes for viruses. And yet we now seem to be going back to form. If history is any indication, the food element in galleries will likely continue evolving. “It has cycled”, Doug tells me.
One day, a few years ago, I was taking the subway from Chelsea. As it is common with me, I was distractedly humming or singing something. Then I heard a voice behind me.
—“Are you singing opera?”
As I turned around I saw none other than Mr. Einstein-Chelsea. We started a conversation —the first time , and perhaps last, that I spoke with him. I was weirdly kind of starstruck. He did most of the talking, as I was still perplexed by the fact that he had approached me. He had, as I recall, a German accent (perhaps Austrian?). He spoke on and on, meandering about his life stories, and all I recall thinking was that I really needed to remember that conversation; but between the subway noise, his German accent, his meandering conversation, my being distracted listening because I kept thinking that I needed to remember, and my poor memory, I have forgotten most of what he said.
But now that I think of him I feel that Mr. Einstein-Chelsea embodied something about that era of the art scene in New York, and perhaps of any art scene: the emblematic spectator, the professional exhibition attendee, someone that in fact all of us, permanently in search of a public, are in need of. Like the canapé, they are ever-present at the launch of the art experience, unassuming, ubiquitous but not fully visible, tangential yet essential to the social ritual of exhibition openings. I still see him in my mind, forever wandering around from opening to opening, with his hand holding a plastic cup with cheap wine.
If you see him today at an opening please give him my regards.
Note: the online class Pedagogy, Art Practice and Humor launches next week! (Sept 11-13, 2024). Click here for more information.
Your Mr. Einstein Chelsea’s name is Sim! He cozied up to me and Tom Eccles when we worked together at Public Art Fund a million years ago. He cornered Tom alone once asking for a studio visit and Tom agreed… Sim asked us to meet him at his storage unit! It was pretty desolate as we made our way through the maze of identical storage spots and Sim led us into his. I thought we might not make it home that night. But…we mostly saw models he had made for enormous bronze sculptures it was clear he would never be able to realize. I remember one in particular: a Ferris wheel meant to be cast at least as large as life sized. He had made a large “table top” version in plywood. It was extremely detailed and even rotated. It was very very dusty.