Continuing the last post
Educated liberals are obliged as intellectuals to be internationalists while siding often, as a matter of course, with economically conservative arguments for cheap labor. Social conservatives are allied with economic conservatives in the same way, and the weaker parties on both sides—conservative and liberal—without any spokesmen of their own, end up represented by those with the agendas of their own moneyed class.
"Big deal," you say. "What else is new?"

Americans have no patience for psychology. Out of an unwillingness to become involved and a desire for quick fixes liberals as much as conservatives allow themselves to conflate human care with pity, though liberals are far more willing to indulge. But there's a huge difference between importing labor, whether by force or by recruitment, and the simple opening of doors. It makes perfect sense that new arrivals if given the chance would beat out a native-born underclass, as it makes sense that a country that allows such competition would defend economic globalization. Such a state already has shown an indifference to its native population as forceful as any defense other countries have ever made of theirs. After all, the comparison made most often over the past week has not between the immigrant populations in France and the US but between immigrants in one and a large segment of the native born population in the other.
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Went to Christie's today. Saw a portrait of Colin by Elizabeth Peyton. (details are here)


It makes some sort of sense that the best description I've read of the man is in a fucking auction catalogue.

Renowned in the New York art scene, Colin De Land and the activities at his galleries, first in the heyday of the 1980's East Village at Vox Populi on East 6th Street, and then from 1988 until 2003 at the American Fine Arts on Wooster Street in SoHo, branded him as a conceptual artist as much as a gallerist. He became an art dealer by accident, when he offered to sell a Warhol painting for a neighbor who needed money for drugs. The milieu at American Fine Arts was characterized by a relaxed work atmosphere. Exhibitions did not always open on time and they often defied convention in installation. They were often critiques--of painting, of video, of institutional authority, of art itself. He permitted an artist to close the gallery for his month long slot in protest of commercialization in the art world. At times he exhibited fictional artists, such as the famous John Dogg, whose work was suspected, though never confirmed, to be a collaboration between Colin and Richard Prince. In addition, he showed many artists early in their careers, including Cady Noland, Jessica Stockholder, Mariko Mori and Alex Bag. On one occasion, when the art market was at its worst in the middle 1990s, Colin held a benefit at and for the gallery, and more than 200 artists donated works, even though most were represented by other dealers. It was precisely this kind of fabulous eccentricity that Peyton found alluring about Colin.