SHAHZIA SIKANDER, Elusive Realities (2000) 20000 USD
Unlike Fashion Week where seats are by invite only, art auctions are an open forum. Either that, or the Philips Collection on Park Ave and 57th has poor security, because they just ignored my “hasn’t paid-off her student loans” youthfulness, and let me roll-up with the homeowners. I sat at the back of the room, shy and paddle-less next to the only other person also in his early twenties, also paddle-less. Unlike me, he’s black; looking around, he is the only black man in the room.
He is wearing dirty white Nikes, navy blue chinos, and a matching blue, lightweight sweater with the collar of his tan button-up folded neatly over the neckline. He’s holding open a torn black notebook that would have been a Moleskine if he had the money. On the pages, in tight, tight rows of blue ink, he wrote the lot number for each artwork and the exact amount the piece sold for. He is writing so slowly, so neatly, and so silently that I should find his exactitude disturbing if it weren’t for his overwhelming gracefulness.
What I’m trying to say is, this dude knows how to wear clothes. He knows how to co-exist with expensive art. He knows how to enjoy the auction experience without a perceivable flicker of insecurity or ego or heavy cologne. Every other person in the room (including myself) is out of place. We couldn’t dress ourselves for the occasion. We can't figure out how to exist in a big white room with vaulted ceilings without fidgeting. Our eyes shifted and our egos twitched every time a peer lifted his paddle.
Gentlemen, if you are over the age of 60, please do not wear leather pants and Kanye sneakers, ever, but especially not to an art auction. Hey, Middle-Aged White Man wearing gladiator sandals with his suit? Get outahere. I don’t want to see your chest hair, and I double don’t want to catch a flicker of light reflecting off a thick gold chain hiding in the thicket of your chest pubes.
For those who are also unfamiliar with Day Sales, art auctions are apparently where Americas go to practice double-kissing, perhaps confusing “fancy” with “European.” Americans can’t get away with greeting each other with a kiss on each cheek; we don’t have the raw sexual prowess of the French. Hell, we don’t even have the sexual prowess of the Canadians. We also can’t get away with wearing sunglasses indoors. So, Mr. Polo-shirt, unless you’re Larry David underneath those shades, please remove them. And Miss, you, next to him, I know I’m no expert, but this does not seem like the time or the place to show us your bellybutton. I love your two-piece suit, but a top that reaches the hem of your pants feels like a moral imperative when faced with a painting that just sold for 320,000 USD.
In between my judgmental observations of the crowd, I manage to learn some new terminology. For example, the man who plays Judge Judy really does say, “Fair Warning, Going Once, Twice…” and then smacks a gavel on the podium. Sometimes, less preferably, he just says “Fair Warning” in a patronizing tone like my Dad’s, which keeps jolting me upright in my chair, like a caution to pay closer attention.
Honest question to the men here: if your suede, designer driving shoes are scuff-free, did you hover-board here? All my new shoes are magnets to homeless pee, discarded cigarette ash and whatever sticky shit people spill on the 6-train. Did you get out of the cab and brush your shoes like the horses in your stable? Nonsense, you have staff for that kind of labor.
With a THWAK lot 111 just sold for 106,250 USD to a man in a Yankees cap. I know athleisure is trending; however, the only place it is appropriate to wear a black terrycloth bomber jacket over a white T-shirt and a Yankees cap, is to your son’s little-league practice on the Upper West Side. Surprisingly (considering his childish demeanor) the Yankee outbid the Scary Christopher Walken White Guy wearing a double-breasted blue blazer and khakis. Like Yankee, who thought he was going to a baseball game, Double-Breasted read his wife’s social calendar wrong; he thought he was docking the sailboat today not going to an art auction, classic mistake.
Overwhelmed by the literal manifestations of almost every stereotype of Manhattan’s elite, I go back to watching Mr. Moleskine write down numbers with calming blue calligraphy. His clothes fit him perfectly. They are worn but freshly laundered, even ironed. The color tones match suggesting he used a mirror before he left the house, which is more than I can say. With the reveal of every new lot, Moleskine doesn't shift in his seat or glance around the room. He just sits there with his legs planted firmly on the ground, his back comfortably upright in the chair, and allows his eyes to alternate between the work of art and the journal where he tracks the piece’s corresponding price. Unlike the rest of us paranoid, social-climbing plebeians, Mr. Moleskine belongs at the Philips Art Auction and we would all be well served to take note.