Coco, Karl et Patrique

. It is a FREEZING cold day here in New York City. The kind of day the chill goes through you and you feel you are right on the ocean.

I was walking in the park, which is not a good place to stay warm, and decided to go to the Chanel Mobile Art exhibit since I surmised (correctly as it turned out) that there would be few people at this free event today due to the chill.

Cold weekdays are for the hardy unemployed, not the hardly unemployed.

This exhibit with a space designed by Pritzker Prize winner Zaha Hadid contains works by many artists who all use the Chanel quilted bag as their muse.


There are loads of really beautiful lads and lassies all in black Chanel gear milling about to help guide you through your "experience." Everything now is not commerce-masked-as-art or food or a drive or a walk, it is an "experience." It is marketing. It is words.


Hadid's art cube reminded me of Woody Allen's orgasmatron in Sleeper. Going into this womb, I was greated by beautiful Chanelized women with accents who adjusted my mp3 player with the language of my choice and the volume of my comfort so I could walk through this 35 minute aural-gasm narrated by Jeanne Moreau, no less. Jeanne's smokey voice talks you through the various installations. She even tells you when to stand up and when to turn left, etc. I appreciated that. I bet her French was even better than her English, which was excellent.

Jeanne and I spent the next 35 minutes together having an experience that leaves you wanting.

Wanting a Chanel quilted bag.

I even want one now. Yipes.

So there is this negligible fine line between art and commerce. So what? Well, it creeps me out because I feel I lose trust. I did however appreciate that if I decided to give into it it was a nice meditative experience to be had. And I had it. And it was peaceful, but never moving. But peaceful and warm and dry and full of pretty things and restorative sounds.

And this boy still wanted a purse.

Argggghhh!

My own art piece against the mirrored wall of the adjoining space. I call this "Sans Flash avec pluit." "Avec Flash et moi"