Month: January 2011

Categories
art

Dinner at The Ivy

Yesterday I vlogged, today I blog.

Had a spectacular day.  Started early, far too early…really happy!   Walked the dog in Soho Square.  Breakfast at Maison Bertaux with darling Tania Wade.

Bought a Noel Fielding piece.

Tania asked after Jake who she met this summer.

It was the first time somebody had asked after him and I really had no feeling, no twinge, no tangible moment of nostalgia whatsoever.  On this blog, however, there are a flurry of enquiries about him every day…why?   His name is regularly googled, and the break up post about him almost always appears in the top ten most read daily posts.  Who is making sure that this happens?  He can’t possibly be that vain?

When Georgina asked me if I ever spoke to Jake I paused and wondered what we would ever find to talk about?  He wasn’t a bad man…he was just a normal man.  A regular guy with a sad and unusual back story.

Anyway, after breakfast I had a hair/beard cut and then I met up with Toby Mott.  We went to a very raw but heartening NA meeting on Frith Street…then we went clothes shopping on Bond Street.  I didn’t buy anything.  So many beautiful people promenading along Bond Street…unlike Oxford Street where the uglies congregate.   Toby was on very good form and we had a wonderful time together..he thought the Amanda debacle very funny.

Toby vanished into Tottenham Court Road tube station and I hurried back to Soho where I met Andrey my Russian friend who is studying politics at Cambridge.  He has been hitting the gym and looked amazing! When we got back to the hotel room he took time showing me his perfect body…just like a straight boy to do that!   Proud and delighted that he is being admired but appalled that I might be thinking about jizzing all over his chest.

Quite unexpectedly I bumped into Nick Love who looked so handsome.  We hugged for a good long time.  I was really pleased to see him and I think that he was really pleased to see me.  I adore him.

Andrey left to meet his Mother and after a well deserved nap..woke up just in time to pull on some tweed, spray on some vetiver and nip over to the Ivy where I met Charlie P and Konrad Wyrebek for dinner ($62).  Konrad, to my delight, doesn’t drink alcohol.

DELIGHTFUL DINNER..calves liver and bacon.  Very funny conversation, Charlie is very, very funny.  We were meant to be discussing our Sundance trip but didn’t much before Konrad arrived.

Charlie and I, like a couple of old lags, sparring for his entertainment.  Konrad enchanting, handsome and super smart.  Discussed my favorite artist and Konrad’s great inspiration..Gerhard Richter.  We romped through a lively conversation about Polish art, Kantor, galleries/gallerists, politics etc.

Konrad told us about a relationship he had once had that lasted 6 months but took a year and a half to get over.

Charlie and I amuse ourselves with bogus descriptions of how we met, “I met Charlie on Burlington Arcade, his crinoline caught in a door…”  or during the blitz..etc. etc.

We talked American politics and how the disgusting Murdoch wants to destroy the impartiality of the British press.  I started roasting Obama but Charlie persuaded me not to be so down on the President.  He said, quite rightly, “Politicians dissappoint.”  He went on to say that as a liberal I shouldn’t be ripping on Obama as it just  makes it all that much easier for people like Palin to succeed.   He’s right.

I just don’t want to go through what I went through with Blair.  The great Blair was our greatest disappointment but, unlike Blair, Obama seem to be a good guy..underneath it all…and we must give him a chance.

I, and people like me, must give him a chance.  I must stop reading the POISONOUS Huffington Post.

As we were pulling on our coats Konrad thanked us warmly for dinner, took loads of pictures and said, “I am usually so bored by people.”  Darling, I thought, so am I..so am I.

Boredom is my greatest enemy.  Yet, as I confided to Konrad, lately I have had the merest splinter of self doubt…and as we know a splinter can be very, very painful.

Walked a little with Konrad through Soho.

He may come to Paris with me this weekend.  That would be fun.  I liked him (and his wonderful enthusiasm for life and art) a great deal.

Categories
Rant

No Hot Water!

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Categories
art Gay Money Rant

How do you Solve a Problem like Amanda Eliasch?

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Amanda Eliasch is very, very rich.  She is the ex-wife of Johann Eliasch, owner of tennis racket and sports wear company Head.  Currently Amanda is trying to get me to remove a blog reference made last week after she posted some nastiness about me on Facebook.

Sadly, as Jake found to his dismay, even if I removed any or all evidence… the blog will remain in the virtual ether forever and ever. FOREVER.  Then, she persuaded some weird friend of hers to say that I only have 3 readers a day…that’s like telling a man he has a very small penis.

Let me remind you how I know this woman Amanda Eliasch…she was/is going out/hooking up/in confused hyper emotional ‘relationship’ with my old friend the genuine article… writer Tim Willis.  Poor Tim, the first time I was summoned to her house he was a quaking, smoking, drinking wreck. Exiled to the tennis court at her architecturally significant, now recently sold Beverly Hills house. His already weakened body covered in welts from Amanda’s sharp little tongue.

The 1st and least problematic of the litany of problems with Amanda: she is a bully.  In some lame attempt to stop me from posting anything about her on my blog she reminded me that she had let me visit her home. OK. So? I reminded her (pompous hag) that I let her visit mine. The next barrage of emails, no doubt, will include reminders that she paid for a couple of lunches.

The emails after that will include homophobic slurs.

Well known to architects, and interior decorators as a person who loathes paying her bills, (I know two personally) She is currently working with ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard who told me he went to Eton… does anyone know if this is true? I met ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard with Chris “The King” Cortazzo the  realtor.  Why will ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard definitely get paid for renovating Amanda’s new home in LA? The simple fact is: ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard is far too well-connected not to get paid.

As well as converting Amanda’s brown Wimpy home (ex Janet Leigh) into a white clad Wimpy home ‘interior designer to the stars’ Martyn Lawrence-Bullard is also converting a small apartment in Sierra Towers Los Angeles as something ‘nice’ for Elton’s Nanny and child.

I really did not want to start the year slagging an old slag but hey, at least I’m not writing about Jake, eh?

The most perplexing problem with Amanda: she is totally bonkers… and not in a good way. She has no style, no friends and leaves a nasty taste in one’s mouth whenever one chances upon her.  Her conversation is limited and punctuated with barking noises… is this some sort of tick?  I have never once been able to get a reasonable opinion or for that matter ANY opinion out of the woman who wasn’t cribbed from some Daily Mail commentator/op ed…consequently her politics are slightly right of Hitler’s.  Amanda once complained to me, like many of her ilk, that there wasn’t a decent right-wing newspaper in Britain.

Now, I know that she will take issue with the ‘no friends’ claim but after her $500k fiasco of a birthday party last year where half her Facebook friends didn’t turn up… and, like an eastern European traveler, she tangoed for her startled guests then… to their growing horror played a sycophantic film ‘produced’ by her friends waxing ’bout how wonderful Amanda is. I wonder how she manages to keep the friends she has!

Good God! You can’t make this stuff up!

Amanda is surrounded by a certain type of woman, the ball breaking Aliai, Lady Forte, the ball breaking Tracy Emin and the drunk most of the time but harmless… unless sober when she too becomes a bone fide ball breaker… Kay Saatchi.  Throw a few insignificant men into the black lacquered pot and bob’s your uncle: Amanda’s World.

The unforgivably huge problem with Amanda (and British social-climbing women like her) she is ever so slightly homophobic. She likes to remind gays that in Amanda’s World they have no right to demand rights or equality ‘what ever that is?’… that we have no place in the army or in sport and she questions our integrity in the school room.  She tells us that we are of ‘no use’ to her… unless we are ‘decorating’ or ‘making things look pretty’.

Amanda, like her ball breaking friends, is also a low-grade racist and treats her black chef with imperial disdain.  Amusingly she has a desire to be close to film stars and celebrities but they are not eager to be seen with her.  Her life interminably chasing yet another film festival, film opening, red carpet event… is pathetic at best… tragic at worst.

Amanda, if she doesn’t mend her ways, will end up like Wallis Simpson who, though remarkably chic, died isolated and miserable. At Wallis’s funeral the bulk of the wreaths came from vendors all over Paris who, without doubt, missed her very generous patronage.

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Categories
art

Billy Childish

Billy Childish 2/1/2011

I spent the morning writing lists.

Decided NOT to go to Florence as I couldn’t make the bloody SNCF website take my frigging credit card.  So, I booked into Dean Street Town House and decided to spend some days in London instead.  After all..London is by far a more exciting city than Florence.

By Midday I had made all manner of plans with various friends.  Toby Mott, Tim and others.

Whilst in town have resolved to throw myself into AA meetings, which I have been loathed to do since I arrived.

The day could have ended there but, on a whim, decided to pop in on artist/writer/rocker/father of two Billy Childish who is enjoying something of an art world reprise.

The day would get not only very much better but also very expensive.

I have known Billy since we were at Medway Art College Foundation Course in the late seventies.   Another one of my up and down explosive relationships…but I have always been a great supporter of his and he me.  An unlikely friendship.

When I lived in Whitstable I would spend most Sunday afternoons with Billy and his Mother June.  Delicious roast chicken lunch every Sunday.

For the longest time I thought that he would end up like artist and dandy Sebastian Horsley:  successful once dead. Thankfully that has not come to pass.

Billy’s monumental new work has become monumentally well received.  After a sell out show at the Basel Art Fair and a major New York exhibition in an important gallery planned for the end of the year I can perfectly understand why he seems so confident.

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These new paintings are unbelievably beautiful and really hard for the Art Establishment to ignore.   The new work has an impeccable provenance.   Obvious influences include German Expressionists: Erich Heckel, Kirchner, Nolde.

Dreamlike reworking of earlier paintings as well as bold painterly portraits of Billy’s great heroes (Jean Sibelius) and when I was there, an epic series of paintings reworking images from the Battle of Wounded Knee.

Billy has been cruelly left out in the cold for nearly thirty years.  The art world added insult to injury by choosing to patronize the second-rate antics of Tracy Emin over her acknowledged mentor and ‘inspiration’.

I remember introducing Jay Jopling to Billy in Whitstable one Sunday afternoon and was shocked by Jay’s indifference.  Jay told me after the meeting that he thought Billy ‘aggressive and tricky’.

It brings a tear to my eye to see him finally and rightfully accepted into the fold.

Today I filmed him painting in his studio.

People ask him how long it takes to paint a painting.   “What can I say?”   Stabbing at a ten foot high canvas with his charcoal.   “An afternoon or thirty years?”

The new work is huge.

Of course it’s huge!  He is no longer restricted…physically…no longer painting in his bedroom.  He is being acknowledged.  He has a huge studio.  His wings no longer clipped.

These paintings are important.

We talked at length about Tracy Emin his long time ex girlfriend…who, when he saw her the time before last, rudely told him that she could not be bothered to hang out with anyone who ‘hadn’t realized their potential‘.

Tracy!  What a pompous cow!  Liar to boot.

Anyway, since the upturn in his fortunes she is suddenly very friendly with Billy.  He will, by far, crush her with his fame and fortune….even though he has no intention of doing either.

Tracy is a silly girl…she believes in her own greatness whilst all the time using made up stories to fuel interest in it.    Tracy, you mad cow…listen to me…we all realize our potential sooner or later…sometimes quickly…sometimes slowly.

I have a huge collection of Billy’s work.   Beautiful things.

Julie, Scout and Billy 2/1/11

Categories
Travel

New Years Day 2011

New Years Eve ended up being more active than I planned.

After a leisurely dinner at home Carol, Marc and I drove to Herne Bay, the next village east along the Kent coast, and dropped in on my photographer friend Dylan Woolf who’d organized a huge NYE party with dinner and fireworks for a hundred or more local people.

Dylan’s sister Julia and her husband Sim (edited Shrek and Nanny McPhee) are old friends and have the most gorgeous house in LA.  Julia is very funny so I hung out with her almost all of the evening.  Delighted to see an old teacher of mine, Peter Latham (Julia and Dylan’s uncle) and his kids…great to spend time with all of them.

Rather amazingly I bumped into Easterly and Matt Cox who are Kent aristocrats and the cousins of my local nemesis Susanna Atkins.  Not only were they rather incredibly at this party but, as it turns out, have just bought the pile opposite Dylan…the hugest architectural gem of a house, faced with flint, wide floor boards,  elegant architrave, quirky crenellations and gothic mullions.  It is a mesmerizing puzzle of a derelict house with Victorian additions to a Georgian frame.    Huge potential and a million headaches.

Heavily pregnant Easterly is on her way to India for an adventure before the baby is born.

Great to see them..we snuck away and celebrated a quiet 12 o’clock in their vaulted, semi derelict, drawing-room away from the herd.  They handed me a piece of Christmas cake that was so laced with rum I couldn’t eat it…and then quoted one line from my blog that always makes them laugh out loud when ever they say it:  “Yum Fucking Yum!” (Haloooween)

Very Heartening.

It’s very English to live on a building site with two babies and one on the way whilst you are renovating an historic home.  I totally admire their guts but wouldn’t expect anything less.

New Years Day has been, thus far, just as one would expect…eclectic.

My friend Georgina who owns the Copeland House B&B where Nicola stayed last week had staffing issues.  She has been so incredibly kind to me since I arrived ferrying me to the hospital etc. so I gladly got up early to help her out of a tight spot this morning.   I was in the kitchen at 8am peeling smoked salmon onto plates and filling the tea urn.

Georgina told me that her friend Pauline the barrister found the gay references in my blog ‘sickening’.  A little bit of friendly advice Pauline…if you don’t like it..don’t read it…you homophobic cow.  Next time I see you in the high street…walk the other way.

Two faced hag.  You’d think with two faces she’d have learned how to put on make up?

After helping Georgina we headed off to Pamela Leung’s and her husband for a new years breakfast party.  Pamela is an amazing, world-class ceramicist.  I couldn’t help myself from buying a very beautiful sculpture to celebrate the new year and the sale of my Cindy Sherman which made three times what I paid for it.

Pamela’s work: mythic creatures, allegories, thick glazes, exquisitely modeled.  Will take picture before I leave tomorrow.

After our wonderful breakfast (full english) we decided to drive to Margate to see David Chipperfield‘s new Turner Contemporary Gallery on the harbour.  It is DISGUSTING.  It looks at best like a supermarket at worst like a neo-brutalist nuclear power plant.  Admittedly it isn’t finished but the scale, choice of materials are just so at odds with the landscape.

It is neither challenging nor audacious…it is simply a big glass blob that Chipperfield obviously asked his tea boy to design while he was doing something more prestigious.

We drank hot chocolate and ate perfect Victoria Sponge at The Mad Hatters on Love Lane.   If you ever find yourself in Margate on a wet New Years Day…there’s no better way to spend it.

Fell asleep in the car on the way home with little dog on my lap and Alan Bennett on the Radio.

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