I’m just getting around to reading some older stuff I had saved. I was reading Jerry Saltz’s review of the East Village show at the New Museum, and I have a couple of favorite quotes to share:
For a time the East Village was the art world’s duodenum—no matter how it came out, almost everything passed through it.
…
As with so many others, the East Village was my last chance; probably it was my only chance. I badly wanted to be part of the Soho art world, but it was too codified for a nonperson to get any traction. That scene essentially had 18 artists, eight dealers, seven collectors, and six critics; and I, like almost everyone else in the EV, wasn’t one of them. The East Village was a place where just being around or staying up late seemed to confer status on those who couldn’t get arrested otherwise.
James and I feel a bit like Jerry in that second quote. Merely by hanging out and seeing lots of art, we have achieved a kind of “status” we couldn’t have imagined would come from being art fans.