It’s going to be hard for anyone to top this year’s Christmas Carnival. Organized by ArtList, the peer-to-peer online marketplace, last night’s fête of consumerism, commercialism, and Pop art was a collaboration between 10 artists, each of whom brought their own “Christmas Kiosk” to a legendary lieu.
“We wanted to do something that brought back the history of the house and had something to do with the season,” said curator Roya Sachs, who hosted the event with Astrid de Maismont. “Consumerism has become an integral part of being a human being, especially [in] New York, we don’t even notice it. That’s the idea of tonight. It’s about noticing our consumer behavior but also letting loose and enjoying it.”
When Sachs mentioned the history of the townhouse, which is now owned by her family, she wasn’t kidding. Designed by Paul Rudolph, it was once owned by fashion designer Halston who hosted a number of birthdays for Andy Warhol there as well as impromptu gatherings of the Studio 54 crew including Liza Minelli and Bianca Jagger. But the townhouse has never opened its doors to an artistic collaboration of this scale, and it seemed like every crevice of the building was crawling with revelers.
Booths at the Fête
At the various booths, guests had the opportunity to solve a vintage porn Penthouse puzzle with Grey Area and Robert Lazzarini, buy a “Jeff Spoons” sculpture (a rendition of Jeff Koons’s iconic Rabbit made of spoons) by Japanese artist Nobutaka Aozaki, purchase a copy of an image taken from Gunter Sach’s photo stash which Sebastian Errazuriz made with his camera, or interact with an all-American harajuku girl from Bazaar Teens, a collective including Dustin Yellin, Andrew VanWyngarden, and Lacey Dorn. Most popular of all was the performance piece by the Bumbys, an anonymous duo, clothed in sunglasses, headphones, and bandanas who offered a “fair and honest appraisal of your appearance” on a scale of 1-10. (Safely, most were in the 9 range.)
The guests, which included Vito Schnabel and Peter Marino, seemed to be channeling the hijinks of the townhouse’s legendary habitués. Even Dustin Yellin got naked at one point and sat on the lap of a man dressed as Santa.
“If we sell all the pictures I’ll have $100,000,” Sebastian Errazuriz told artnet News’ Cait Munro about his stated plan to spend whatever money he made that night, “so I’ll need the help of my friends…. Maybe [we’ll get] a helicopter, limo, some other stuff. If we only sell ten grand, I can probably just find a really expensive club and invite my friends over.”
Errazuriz was charmed by the locale. “You don’t do an artwork here without considering the history of the place,” he said. “This is a guy [Gunter Sachs] who convinced Brigitte Bardot to marry him by flying over her in a helicopter, throwing a thousand roses down at her, then jumping into the sea, coming back out, and saying, ‘Do you want to marry me?…They were Kim and Kanye with class…and all the money in the world.”