STYLES 6/7/98

by Erich Kuersten

It's been a drab week in the rain-soaked city of New York, but through the mist and steady downpour, the art world is shifting on its axis and the styles are changing...

ART WORLD GEARS UP FOR AUCTION WEEK... May is the time when SOTHEBY'S and CHRISTIE'S hold their spring auctions and stodgy old art buying Europeans, American noveau riches, and all their lackeys, ambitious younger girlfriends and spoiled art-dealer children all descend like migratory birds on Manhattan to enjoy the springtime and pretty pictures before flying off to their summer roosts in California, the Hamptons, and the French Riviera. If you want to join them, dress snobby (or in rags), drink lavishly from the free wine table and gesture disdainfully at the art on the walls to any who will listen about its lack of "resonance". See you there!

The INTERNATIONAL ARMORY ART FAIR will be running what Liz Smith rightly calls "THE event of the cultural season" this Thursday, so get that black tie on, or , even better, find somewhere else to be. I was just at the Armory Fair in the fall, and managed to escape with two pockets full of perfectly seasononed canapes from the buffet table without anyone noticing (at least no one said anything). God Bless the Moneyed!

PRINCE EDWARD GOES TO HOLLYWOOD. But call him 'Ed Windsor' because he's all about being a player and not a Prince. We hear he has SIX films in the works. Maybe he will wind up linked to a hot young American starlet while he is out there. The scandal would be good for him (there are rumors he's gay, which long-suffering consort Sophie Rhys-Jones vigorously denies) and Hollywood loves to mix its blood with royalty. Plus, then maybe then Sophie would leave him, which might make him finally propose to her. On the other hand, watch out "Ed", its a fast-paced dangerous town, filled with the decadent pleasures of flesh and powders...

FUTURE TREND: INDECISION AS POLITICAL AGENDA...They've been the bastion of indie ethics for a long, long time, and then they guest-starred on the SIMPSONS. The mainstream has embraced alternative to the point where each is the other, and maybe compromise no longer means compromised. That SONIC YOUTH has had their moment of Lollapalooza hoopla in the sun and is now back in New York, unfazed and untainted, is proof it's possible. Call it a compromise in the era of indecision. The president might be a lech, but at least he's a pro-choice liberal sympathizer, so..... nothing. Punk ethics are merged and dissolve in the diamond sea, but aren't really gone, merely incorporated. Look for their forthcoming album 'A Thousand Leaves' to epitomize the new respectabilty of uncertainty as a lifestyle and the age of telling your grandchildren about the day you sold your "never sell out" t-shirt and were applauded for it by the indie press. I predict more.... stay tuned.