LOOKING AT ART WITH SPARK: No. 77

The flight from New York to Paris is just a couple of hours longer than the flight to L.A. so when my editor gave me the choice of covering Art Los Angeles Contemporary or the Paris/Nice bicycle race it was, as they say in neighboring Belgium a pas de cerveau (trans. 'no brainer'). 

What I know about bicycle racing barely extends beyond what I've picked up peddling along the Manhattan waterfront with my regular posse of stock analysts and security traders. They told me to watch Germany's John Degenkolb and that while in Paris I should go to Dominique Bouchet and make sure to order the rack of lamb. I mention this to illustrate just how out of touch the Wall Street crowd is from the rest of us. To think that someone who makes a living writing art criticism would spend sixty bucks on a piece of meat even if it did come with polenta is more evidence than I'll ever need to see just how insulated these guys are.

But the sad and indisputable fact remains that it is they, my buddies in their ridiculous lycra bicycle tights, who are closer to the pulse of the art world than I'll ever be.

While sharing a couple of fabulous bottles of Pouilly Fumé with some Italian sportswriters I was reminded of just how marginal we arts professionals are with our expensive graduate degrees and fancy specializations. Here in Magny-Cours where the race just completed its third stage nothing could be further from the world of ideas. My Italian colleagues are bemused at best at the thought that someone would be willing to shell out 36 million euros on a stainless steel balloon dog. To them it's just another symptom of the madness of money. What gets them impressed (and their astonishment is truly contagious) is when a man can cycle over 1500 kilometers in a week's time and not collapse into a coma.  

Right before I left, my buddy Nathan, a market maker at Nyx Securities (can someone please tell me what a market maker makes) bought a small sculpture at an art fair in Madrid. It's by a young Catalan artist named Eddie Jiro who though well known in Europe is just beginning to make a name for himself in New York.

Probar mis Calzoncillos, mixed media, Eddie Jiro 2014

Without batting an eye, Nat paid 74,000 euro.

He thinks it was a bargain.

I did the research.

He's right.