We finished our drinks and limoed down to Soho, only to find hundreds of art-horny patrons crowding around the entrance of the Jack Tilton Gallery, an hour and a half before the doors opened. It was p etty exciting. There I was in the center of the cyclone, the eye of the human hurricane raging in the heart of New York art, smack in the middle of this preposterous, anti-art artwork of pure human sex. While I attempted to somehow control the carnival, Max chatted with Jack Tilton, the gallery owner, about how he d never seen such a big turnout for any art opening in New York. Maybe if the strippers called themselves artists, they wouldn t be shut down.
Art is about context and chutzpah.
That is the question, the tiresomely obvi ous question that the television reporters asked me as the last come shots had dried, and the last art patrons drifted out the door. Don t ask me, I replied. Art is in the eye of the art appreciator, as subjective as beauty, love, tragedy or pornography. When early Renaissance painters depicted scantily clothed Greek-style gods and goddesses in the midst of sex acts with one another as well as various bulls, swans and sheep, rather than the usual Medieval crucifixion scenes, there was outrage. That s not art.