The (real) GawkerForum does the fairs

Regular MAN readers know that I've long been amused by GawkerForum, the I-was-there-at-the-hot-party-and-you-weren't portion of ArtForum's website. GawkerForum is all about access and the bubble -- not the alleged bubble of the art market, but the love of living inside the art world, pretending nothing else exists. The site has pretty much nothing to do with art. The Miami fairs provided an opportunity for GawkerForum to be it's most outrageous, and it didn't let us down. Some highlights:

"Attending these art fairs is a bit like combat reporting, where you keep hopping on whatever helicopter is heading out to the next battlefield." -- Linda Yablonsky. (Except for the bullets, the suicide bombers, and the land mines... yes, exactly!)

"An old friend from New York came last, showing up almost two hours late. 'I went to four parties last night, and the last one wasn't even really a party. Someone gave me a Vicodin at some point. It seemed like a good idea at the time,' she recounted. I looked at her with a fair amount of concern and asked how business was going. 'Oh god, it's great! Are you kidding?' "  -- William Pym. (Party, CVS, same thing.)

"I was happy where I was, listening to Todd Eberle and David Tieger describe the G-5 jet on which Larry Gagosian spirited them to the German foundry where the stainless steel elephant that Tieger had purchased from Jeff Koons's "Celebration" series was belatedly reaching its final stage. "I mean, it had been so many years, I didn't dare even think about it," Tieger said, "So this was a fantastic experience." As was uncrating it on his front lawn in New Jersey, where the staff, which includes a few Muslims, apparently draped the elephant's head in a chador, turning the whole scene into a kind of cr�che." -- Linda Yablonsky.

"Then it was back to the same old same old: go upstairs to the Penthouse party that hotelier Andr� Balazs and Nadine Johnson were giving for Bruce Weber and Sofia Coppola? Or retire so I could get to the breakfast at Dennis Scholl's art-crammed Dilido Island home before the Debra Singer-led tour of it ended and the Art Basel Conversations "Philanthropy" panel began?" -- Linda Yablonsky. ("Or should I just quietly read the new Harry Potter book in my hotel room?" Yablonksy did not go on to write.)

"It was art-world speed dating, the perfect spot for dealer-on-collector, collector-on-collector, collector-on-dealer, and dealer-on-dealer action: I spied Barbara Gladstone with the Rubells, the Rubells with Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, the Eisenbergs with Pascal Spengemann, and Spengemann's business partner Kelly Taxter with Andrea Rosen, all within ten minutes."  -- Michael Wang. (This is well-written, especially because I'm pretty sure Wang wins the GawkerForum prize for the highest number of names dropped in one sentence (8).)

"With little food and an interminable wait to see the William Kentridge survey inside, many of us longed for the manse on Key Biscayne. I ducked into a taxi and headed back to Miami Beach: $47. I haven't paid so much for transportation (without leaving the ground) since . . . well, last month in London." -- Brian Sholis. (Ever noticed how GawkerForum types only go to things when they're guaranteed to be crowded, when seeing art will be impossible? When I was at Kentridge there were about a dozen people there. Even W.K. himself was able to stroll quietly through the galleries.)

"Later, huddled around the fireplace at the fabulous apartment of Mr. Hans Rasmus Astrup (Fearnley is his mother's name), Trisha Donnelly let slip what she called a "rectum-ification" while Adam Putnam denied us all a "de-abstractification" of his budding oeuvre. Both terms reminded me that I forgot to ask Halperin what exactly she meant by the phrase "coincidental erogeny" earlier that afternoon. -- April Elizabeth Lamm. (OK, I admit, that one was from a GawkerForum entry about Oslo. But admit it: It was too fantabulous not to include, wasn't it?)