Is the Affordable Art Fair Fair?

Darling. Sit. No, not there, that's a Prouvé. Peggy gave it to me. Guggenheim, sweetie, not the one from Pilates.

Someone asked me this week what an "affordable art fair" is, and I fainted. Straight down, like a Tiepolo ceiling. I came to on the chaise with a cold compress and a Fernet, and the first thing I said was "Diana?" Vreeland always kept smelling salts in her Chanel for exactly this. She'd have understood.

An affordable art fair, mon petit chou, is an art fair where the prices are written on the wall. In numbers. Next to the painting. Like a deli counter. One simply doesn't. At Basel the price is "available on request," which is French for "we've seen your shoes." Leo Castelli never printed a price in his life. He'd simply look at you, and you'd know, and you'd sell the house in Southampton.

And there are two of them. There's the Affordable Art Fair, and there's The Other Art Fair, which is also affordable. So it isn't "the other" at all, is it? It's "the same, again." I said that to Truman once, about a second wife, and he laughed so hard he dropped his little hat into the Grand Canal. Everyone thinks it was Capri. It was Venice. I was there. I was always there.

A reader, bless, writes: Why doesn't Hirst show at an affordable art fair?

I fainted again. Onto the Aubusson this time, which is how you know it's serious.

Oh, sweetie. No. I asked that very question in 1994, at a group show on West 22nd Street, to a sculptor in a mesh top who... no. Chelsea is closed. We are not reopening Chelsea.

Affordability is simply the one medium he has never explored. Sharks, yes. Formaldehyde, butterflies, pill cabinets, diamonds on a human skull: yes, yes, yes, oui. A price you could say out loud at Thanksgiving? Never. It isn't snobbery, darling. It's materials. Andy used to say the best thing about a museum is the gift shop, and the best thing about the gift shop is that it's the only affordable art fair with good lighting.

And yes, as you so bluntly put it, it's an affair like any other, minus the audacious wigs. At Frieze the wigs are operatic. Towering. Load-bearing. They arrive before the collectors and leave with their own advisors. I once saw a baroness's wig take a meeting at the Beyeler without her. At the affordable fairs, both of them, the hair is real and damp from the parking structure. And I saw a man in a fleece. A fleece. At an art fair.

I fainted a third time. They had to call Stavros. You don't know Stavros. No one knows Stavros. That's the point of Stavros.

Now rise. I'm naming a species.

The Budget Baron. He attends both affordable fairs on the same weekend, in sunglasses, so neither one finds out about the other. He haggles over a $900 watercolor as if he were acquiring the Medici. Then he hangs all four of his purchases in the guest bathroom, which is, frankly, the most honest curatorial decision I've seen since Documenta 9. I loathe him. I adore him. I would never be photographed with him, not even by Helmut, God rest him, who photographed everyone.

So, is it fair? Tragically, yes. It's the only fair where the art is for the people actually looking at it, which is so gauche I can feel a fourth faint coming on.

My editor reminds me that this newsletter also prints its prices in numbers, like a grocer. I've asked for a transfer. To Paris. In 1971.

Priced accordingly.