Art Fair

Walking around this year’s Seattle Art Fair, I can’t help but notice Basquiat’s aesthetic infused in many of the paintings. Will agrees. Each year, he comments, there’s some new zeitgeist influence—one year it’s Diebenkorn, another Hockney, etc. Nevertheless, we keep running into strong work. We are standing in front of one painting unique in its throw-back, pictorial style and formal oil painting technique. Julie remarks that the figure in the painting seems a combination of Will and I, a generic Matthews Brother in untucked white shirt, rolled-up baggie pants, bare feet. That he is on a high wire, balancing in air—with one leg up, one hand waving while the other grips the balancing pole—feels psychologically right, too. Look, Ma! I have a brief conversation with a gallery owner from Korea who seems pleasantly surprised that I ask after one of the abstract prints. “Hardly anyone knows about screen prints,” she says. We huddle around the work for a while, pointing to this and that move.  Will drags me off to a little corner of Klimt and Schiele pieces. The prices are astronomical. When we head back outside, we walk into the afternoon Mariners game foot traffic. It’s easy to spot the arty types inside all the baseball gear. And I guess we fit the bill, too, for a woman asks directions to the fair. How many folks going to the baseball game might stop in for a quick look at the art? How many art lovers, like us, would grab spare tickets and catch the game? Less than 1%? I take out my phone and snap a few random shots of shadows and building reflections. It’s what I so often do after going to an art show. My sense of looking, of seeing, has been awakened. The trek up the cement steps is perfumed with piss; a pigeon drops down a tiny shit bomb on my shoulder. Life is good.