“He’s the, he’s the originator of the skull rings”
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This week:
💦 Daffodils baptised in butter
💦 Diet coke costs £7 at Frieze Masters?
💦 Balm for the soul / we go into hibernation
Events
Honestly, there aren’t many events in London this week. Sorry. Most things opened last week to coincide with Frieze so this week is kinda empty. Anyway, maybe it’s a good thing? Maybe you should get some rest? You look tired.
🧊 Oct 22 | 6 - 9pm | Hannah Tilson: Swoosh, Well Projects, Margate, CT9 2PF | Exhibition runs through 7 November | Free
Exhibitions
John Giorno, Almine Rech, until 13 November. Information here.
Hanging in Almine Rech are large square canvases in Pop Art colours. On each, blazoned from corner-to-corner, is a snippet of John Giorno’s concrete poetry. Two bodies of Giorno’s work are presented here - Rainbows and Perfect Flowers - both of which are sensuously playful and spiritually uplifting, with sound bites like: ‘Clematis / clinging / celestial / devoted’, ‘Waterlilies / sucking / mud’, ‘Daffodils / baptised / in butter’, ‘Honeysuckle / eating / the smell’. Not only was Giorno hanging out with the likes of Warhol and Rauschenberg in the 60s, but was collaborating with legendary beatnik writers like Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, whose voices you can hear - forever immortalised - by dialling +44 2045 388 429 (do it!). When it first launched 50 years ago Dial-A-Poem was free and revolutionary and subversive and erotic - it still is all of those things, and the modern-day ubiquity of free entertainment has only just taken its edge off.
Hot links
👠 “The saddest thing I ever heard, and I grew up in the Soviet Union!” - Balenciaga skipped the catwalk this year and screened a special 10-minute episode of The Simpsons. If you’ve been frieze-blinkered and this cartoon-fashion moment passed you by, watch it immediately on Youtube. The NYT writes that although the collab may surprise you, in fact, ‘the brands share a similar ethos: an appreciation for self-referentiality, rule-breaking and bridging the highbrow and lowbrow’.
👩❤️👨 “Our world of alienating, empathy-less, pornoified, bureaucratised bad sex” - A reading of philosopher (and first female/first non-white/youngest ever don at Oxford’s All Souls) Amia Srinivasan’s new book leaves ArtReview’s Tom Whyman asking ‘is [not wanting to have to bother] perhaps true of most, if not all, sexual desire?’ spittle remains on the fence about this one.
💁🏻♂️ “As if proving he could both season the beef and pop an ovary in one move” - Congratulations to Salt Bae for really riding his meme wave, in a way few can. From sprinkling salt, to 19 restaurants globally, he consistently makes headlines - and sells £1.5k gold-flake steaks to the idiotically rich. There’s only one restaurant critic alive who can destroy his credibility and that’s Jay Rayner, who brought his own table, chair and chequered tablecloth to do it.
☠️ “Depp was the first to talk. ‘He’s the, he’s the originator of skull rings,’ he just about hissed” - Rolling Stones journalist Erik Hedegaard recalls the time he tried to interview Johnny Depp and Keith Richards, while they tried to make him feel as uncomfortable as possible. Chaos ensues as they threaten to throw him off the roof and sodomise him with a banana. For anyone on the receiving end of a gallery director’s tirade this week, this is a balm for the soul.
💗 “The Internet is Gen-Z’s culture” - Louis Menand digs into the data and suggests characteristics associated with labels like Gen-z / Baby Boomer are just a load of hot air and the monikers should be dropped, reassuring the reader that ‘the falling off in sexual activity in the United States and the U.K. is population-wide, not just among the young’. spittle is not reassured.
🌉 Coupledom and capital, intimacy and apocalypse - Artist Justin Beal explores the life and work of little-known American architect Minoru Yamasaki, whose most famous buildings (Pruitt Igoe & the Twin Towers) were both destroyed on TV, and who was the victim of a devastating critical volte-face courtesy of NYT architecture critic, Ada Louise Huxtable. Beal’s book explores the idealism of the modern vision, and how this lays the foundations for our globalised, hyper-capitalist present.
💸 Just How Sustainable Are Those Prices? - After a killer week of auctions in London, which saw lots by young artists go for over 10x their high estimate (and followed by strong sales at Frieze), The Art Newspaper tackles the perilous question which faces every hot-young-artist-cum-market-darling who attracts interest around the autumn auctions.
Add-to-Cart
David Adjaye applies his architect’s eye for precision to the humble book stand, available to purchase via the Chisenhale website. An edition of 7, price on request can only mean one thing; we won’t be taking this home, but we’ll be dreaming of it for a while still.
Parting shot
Overheard at the entrance to Frieze Masters
Security Guard: Oh sorry, that ticket only gets you access to Frieze London, not Frieze Masters.
His Friend: But he just bought like, five paintings today!?!
Love,