Chinatown galleries had their opening receptions last night. The crowd seemed a lot lighter than usual. Los Angeles opening crowds are difficult to gage and even tougher to keep the attention of. It was hard to tell whether because there are more galleries in Chinatown now than a year ago, if there were the same amount of people milling about but more of them in the actual gallery spaces, or if there were just less people. Los Angeles is a notorious been-there-done-that sort of town. If the bloom is off the Chinatown rose, where will the next L.A. trendy bud blossom?

The art was godawful. Even the snootiest snoots pulled out of pretense gear and admitted as such. The lowlight of the evening was seeing Lord Mori Gallery’s title sheet for a group show and noticing that they spelled Dani Tull incorrectly. What slacker fuckups. There were over-the-top bad paintings at Black Dragon Society. Big assed bottomless caricature girls, really thrift-store quality stuff. Everything else was so lame and resigned to ephemera that it really was just a shitty, pretentious attempt at smugness.

The charming Chung King Road was still a great place to socialize. I got handed about a dozen postcard announcements for stuff coming up.

There was a happening sort of thing at Downtown’s The Smell which was much hipper than Chinatown. there was an installation of lamps made out of plastic spoons by Leslie Jay Griffith which was outstanding. The Smell is pretty cool, they have this table that is like the front desk and I walk up and ask “How much is a spoon lamp?” and the kid at the desk goes “I dunno … fuck … uh … How much you want to pay for it? Really, I don’t know anything about selling.” It was funny because most galleries are actually like that but would never admit it. they would just go, “Well, the collectors who are buying those are comfortable to go beyond post-structuralist decor blah blah fuckin’ blah .. .. ..”

I went out to sushi and realized that since my car is working, I am going to go to Las Vegas. Adios muchachos.

I revisited the Julian Schnabel show at Gagosian gallery today. The art sucked doggie ding-dong in a plain sort of “lets-get-this-dingdong-sucking-done-with” way. As I reported a few weeks ago, Schnabel has recreated a poorly-rendered thrift store portrait of a woman with a painted slash thru her eyes. A concurrent show opened in New York as well. The hardcover catalog for the show featured a reproduction of Jasper Johns’ Target painting topped with four heads chopped at the eyes - that was a fucking stretch to associate with these paintings. Anyway, the girl at the front desk - not the beautiful Sarah Watson, who was at lunch when i visited - said they all sold for around $250,000.

So a little more on the Gagosian opening. Schnabel was there in a half-buttoned shirt (revealing lotsa chest hair) and sunglasses. I had heard legend of the beauty of his squeeze, model Olatz, but she was run-of-the-windmill Eurocute, and it was nice to look at her in a gaudy red dress and then watch every head turn to gawk at the classy ladies of Chac Mool Gallery strutting by in basic black.

Except for performance artist Steve Irvin, every black guy in attendance was copping a major Basquiat clone look. Didn’t they hear - there ain’t gonna be no sequel ’bout that brotha. It was weird to see Mickey Rourke and Dennis Hopper at the same gig, since they had a falling out a few years back about who would be involved in the Charles Bukowski movie Barfly. I have recently been reading a fabulous biography of writer Charles Bukowski where details of a spat between Dennis Hopper and film director Barbet Schroeder develop over who would direct Barfly. The book says Bukowski found Dennis Hopper to be completey fake and only hanging around because Bukowski was getting popular and was developing an aura of hipness. Ironically, my neighbor and great artist Llyn Foulkes has for many years been expressing the same opinion about Dennis Hopper. It was weird to see the same opinion in print coming from Bukowski. Both he and Llyn Foulkes are known for being crazy, and yet, both are astutely perceptive.

Llyn unfortunately can’t answer simple questions like “How many paintings do you have in storage that a gallery in New York could have to put together a show?” without rambling on and on about how much he hates his dealer Patricia Faure. An hour later, still no number of paintings from Llyn. Crazy, man crazy. Ramble about Dennis, but get with it when someone talks business.

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The opening reception here Saturday night went off very well. It was comical putting the show together because after it was hung, I realized that the titles were on the backs of each painting. Oh shit! So I got slightly creative - it was 4:30 a.m., I couldn’t take the mounted paintings down, but i did have a list of titles. So I designed a price list with each painting’s title listed with a number and then drew a schematic of the wall display with corresponding shapes of the paintings. Then I made a game that if you could correctly match all 22 titles with their wall placement, you got a free monoprint (Dez had made some for promotional purposes last week). So the opening was dozens of people really getting into the game. Sold a few pieces too, that was cool.

Watched five minutes of the Oscars. I will take back everything negative I ever said about the art world when i watch these smug talentless narcissists revel in mistaking celebrity for importance.

While I slave away at producing the next issue of the print edition, Coagula columnist Brian Higgins emailed me some thoughts. Pure poetry, Higz, pure poetry:

Looking forward to the new Whitney Biennal is like anticipating the return of Night of the Living Dead. The dead return from the grave to feed on the flesh of the living. The zombies are slow moving, and easy to blow away, but their human counterparts are more worried about arguing over who is in charge than in defeating the menace. The tension in the film is tremendous and I find myself rooting for the zombies. Who is not sick? Let him cast the first stone.

Find out which LifeSaver you are.

Well, nobody tops Gagosian Gallery. Period. There was an opening reception there tonight for a lousy Julian Schnabel show. Saw the following there with my own four eyes:

Elton John (kinda dumpy in person, but not bald like I thought he was)
Gwynneth Paltrow (arrived late, coming from the gym)
Benicio Del Toro
Dustin Hoffman
Gary Oldman
Marissa Tomei
Billy Zane (someone told me “That guy is an asshole”)
David Lynch (flirted intensely with painter Jennifer Faist)
John Waters
Ridley Scott
Chloe Sevigny
Mickey Rourke
Viggo Mortenson
Gina Gershon (she looked familiar, I was thinking, does she work at my bank?)
Claire Forlani (no frickin idea, some girl pointed and got all excited)
Johnny Ramone (I pointed and got all excited)
Rik Rubin (talking to Johnny)
Danny Elfman
Jerry Casale
Seymour Cassel
Matt Dillon
Vincent Gallo (Again, no idea, real skanky guy, someone almost fainted, though)
and last, and certainly least, Dennis Hopper.

Beat that, Margo Leavin Gallery. Beat that, Acme Gallery. Beat that, Ace Gallery. Beat that, Chinatown Art Scene. I think not. I think not even close. Not even a second place. All that, and Sarah Watson behind the front desk. Larry Gagosian - the art world’s Bill Gates.

Addenda, to yesterday’s post, Desiree Buckman, whose solo show opens here Saturday night, went to CSLA, so I was ahead of the curve but spaced about it .. .. ..

An update on Saturday’s post here: Christian, the mad genius robot builder told me that he hasn’t picked a name for the robot yet, he is still getting his robot factory back in order. Further updates as events warrant.

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A few weeks ago, a European television show Tracks (I think that is the name) for the Arts channel in Europe (ARTE I think) taped a documentary of artist Carlee Fernandez. She was on the cover of Coagula so the director, a European woman named Ira, wanted to interview me about Carlee. I have done a few things in front of the camera in my time and most of the time it is a waste of everyone’s time, especially mine. But my philosophy of life is the same as Lyman Bostock’s, you keep taking your at-bat’s until someone bumps you off.

So Carlee and I were seated at a table and I noticed something pretty funny. this woman Ira would get an idea and start discussing it and three or four Eurodudes would jump up and do whatever she said “I sink vee need zee camera angle to be coming from over zair” she would say and the little socialist crew would already be mounting the tripod exactly where she was pointing. Wild. So I knew that this was a serious production, so I made sure to speak slowly and in short phrases so the Euromasses can understand. I held up a copy of the mag and mockingly made an ironic sales pitch, and Ira loved it, but in my heart of hearts, I was really doing this as a promo and I think the uberfilmster fell for it.

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So there has been buzz about artist Kaz Oshiro who just graduated from Cal State L.A., a school with a bit of buzz developing about its grad students. For one, they are not trustfunder private school snits with high expectations and second, they are not dreamers with student loan debt form hell. Since they built this huge Luckman Arts Center, there has been a reason to travel east to this school.

So at the opening of Kaz’s show, Gallerist Rosamund Felsen showed up with her boyfriend Grant Mumford. She reportedly berated him as a “stupid fat fuck” when he started feeding at the college’s ample table of munchies, reminding him they would be going to dinner in an hour. Dude, ditch the bitch, she sure as shit ain’t rich. Someone should tell Kaz that, as he just agreed to have a solo show at her gallery. Old Pruneface herself got a good artist this time.

Kaz Oshiro is a painter in the tradition of CSLA professor Dan Douke. Both make large paintings that so look like objects that they utterly fool you. “Art that doesn’t look like art” as the art history books described mid-’70s Douke paintings that looked like actual cardboard boxes tacked up on the wall - but were actually meticulously painted stretched canvases. Kaz updated this trick to include large Marshall Stack amplifiers. I first saw his art - a “painting” of a truck bumper, at 50 Bucks Gallery (when it was in downtown) some time last year. It had a buzz about it then.

The Charles Gaines show at CSLA’s Luckman was a reminder of how you never really see conceptual art anymore, at least not dry academic conceptual art. Made me want to shake the hand of every painter in Los Angeles.

So, this being Southern California, there is a slight crack in the wall - an earthquake shiver, but it is noticeable because it is a L I T gallery wall, making the crack very visible.

So this silicon gel is supposed to seal it - but it overwhelmed the space with a strong GLUE-like smell. And I am trying to edit the next issue of the magazine and had to turn on fans and then of course, the place got freezing. I was totally spazzing out - even by my high-strung standards. Makes me start weighing having a gallery when it starts to affect the magazine, which is my first love.

Is that not art gossipy enough? Okay, how about this: Artists Leigh Salgado, Lisa Adams and Lisa Blas were out tonight at a Venice sushi bar, treated by Peter “moneybags” Shelton. I guess Peter sells enough artwork through L.A. Louver gallery that he can get three women (or babes as anyone who hasn’t been run through a collegiate brainwashing meatgrinder would call these beautiful women) to tag-along (save your p.c. shit, Peter is from the generation of men who look at women as objects and all three of these women are near the front of the line of pleasantly objectifiable women). Probably up to five women could grab onto Shelton’s repulsive ponytail at once and hold on. But apparently, some women find that mane of hair - or that fat art star wallet - to be attractive. Hey, power to you Pete - or Pedro as they were gigglingly (and perhaps mildly mocking) calling him.

Anyway, the trio was, uh, feeling no pain shall we say, and called to thank me for my review of the Lisa Adams solo show at Bergamot Station posted on this site a few nights ago. Or maybe Peter Shelton is just boring company and they wanted someone they could talk to who wouldn’t just be staring at them and drooling.

I just never get around to calling Pac Bell to get my number unlisted .. .. ..

I went to the mall today (this probably happens three times a year) to go to a one-hour photo place to get film developed with pictures for the next issue. I had three throwaway cameras - not exactly something you bring into the film developers in order to brag about publishing California’s largest art magazine.

At the Gap (which I did not set foot in), there was a huge window display of a hanging banner with something like “White is What We Wear” or some shit, and an all white-bedecked couple: Anjelica Houston and sculptor Robert Graham.

So my first thought was wondering how many people walking by each day knew he was an artist. Then I started thinking about the mall as an installation. It sorta puts installation art to shame. It is junk and tacky decor but there is experiential random insight on a deep and societal level if you walk around for ninety minutes waiting for your film to get developed. So I noticed that - while economically America is seeing a shrinking middle class disappear into very separate upper and lower classes - the mall reveals that a division between being either really fat or really healthy is forming as well. It was blubber or bods and very little in between. Other little pleasant quirks also came. So I got more out of walking around and looking at the whole ensemble/installation than I ever have any crap thrown around “site-specifically” at a gallery.

Moments like these are refreshing when you get out of your little art world and see truths in the larger context. Then of course, you start to wonder, why am I wasting my life in the art world . . . you can catch yourself by realizing that it inevitably beats the mall world. Nice place to visit, wouldn’t want to live there .. .. ..

Well, the pix turned out well and I am back into my little art world existence. The gallery is empty. The show will be hung later this week. The anticipation mounts .. .. ..