THE DETAILS ARE THE ART

On discovering my taste, public art, and the discipline of paying attention

I Found My Eye

It’s Frieze week in LA and it has fully become the Netflix Is A Joke of the art world. Activations everywhere. Frieze even showed up in my lobby. Artists coming at me hard.

I texted my group chat: what kind of art are you guys drawn to? Mostly because I was excited to report that I have finally discovered mine. Purim is coming up — a holiday about hidden identity. Mine, apparently, is Post-Impressionist. Done. I know myself.

I’ve been doing The Artist’s Way, and week two is about recovering a sense of identity - not who you’ve been told you are, but who you actually are when you’re paying attention. I didn’t expect the answer to arrive this fast or this clearly. But apparently my subconscious was waiting for a museum.

Years ago, when I was producing The Hills on MTV, we spent hours crouched in a van called Video Village — seven of us watching the cast go on dates or sit on couches or do absolutely nothing while we waited for something to happen. So many nights sitting in the parking lot of Koi, watching them ramble and riot while we stared at monitors and ate second-dinner pizza while they had crispy rice.

One of the girls had just bought a house. Her friend asked what style it was. She wanted to sound grown up. She was 23 and it was genuinely impressive.

She said: “It’s traditional, Spanish, modern, mid-century, Mediterranean.”

Her friend nodded along completely.

Aww, sweetie. It was a new build. Contemporary in the way a hotel room is contemporary.

I am fully the actress who just discovered a new charity and is now speaking about it as if it has always been her life’s cause. Post-Impressionism is roughly from the 1880s to the early 1900s. Key artists include Vincent van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, Georges Seurat, and Paul Cézanne. Less about documentation, more about feeling. less landscape, more women. Less what the world looks like, more what it feels like to be inside it. Interior life, yes please. That’s my taste.

The Pearlman Collection at LACMA

My chic friend Jenni Konner took me to LACMA for the reveal of the Pearlman Collection donation. We wore our best sophisticated-but-subtle fits. We kept turning to each other going — can you believe how cultured we are? We live in LA. We know how rare it actually is to use it.

Such a good story. A Jewish businessman named Henry Pearlman who made his money in cold storage and fridges, spent his life collecting art, and ended up with a Van Gogh. An actual Van Gogh — Tarascon Stagecoach, 1888.

Which he is now giving away to the public, because public art is more important than hanging in a billionaire’s powder room. The family donated the entire collection to LACMA, MoMA, and the Brooklyn Museum, and then stepped back and let the curators do their thing.

He wasn’t Rockefeller rich. He wasn’t old money or big rich in that way. He was just a Jewish Russian immigrant man who loved art so deeply and with such respect that the collectors and artists let him in. That’s a different kind of wealth entirely.

The show is called Village Square — nearly 50 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Modigliani, Toulouse-Lautrec. And here’s the thing — they weren’t just great artists in the same era. They were actually friends. Again, I just learned this last night. But pretty cool to be a group of friends that define a genre. The Brat pack of art.

After the Bath

My favorite piece of the night was Degas’ After the Bath, Woman Drying Herself.

She is completely collapsed into herself, utterly spent. I saw a TikTok recently that said: do you need to sit down in the shower? Because that’s a symptom. That’s your body telling you your ferritin is low. Ferritin is the protein that stores iron in your body, and when it’s depleted you don’t just feel tired you feel like you are made of wet cement. Every single one of my friends said yes to the shower question because we all have low ferritin. Mine is 27 (needs to be 80.) We have all been walking around exhausted and emotional. The Degas understood. Maybe women have always had low ferritin.

With photography I always feel like I could do that, I couldn’t, but I feel it. There was also a block art exhibit there that night. That one I genuinely felt like I could do.But standing in front of the Degas, I didn’t feel that at all. I just felt seen.The intimacy of post-impressionist work is what pulls me in. It’s not as simple as the male gaze — it’s the male gaze into the interior. I personally enjoy the male gaze, sue me! I want to be one of these women. Someone paint me please. I believe I have a face for art. I didn’t say a model. Couldn’t this be me? Think about it!

In More Art Interests

I have been following Rose Florence on Substack for her art obsessions.

I find it completely transportive. This is where I also discovered that Matisse’s great-grandson makes ceramics. His name is Alex Matisse and he founded East Fork Pottery in Asheville, North Carolina

Matisse is my mother’s favorite artist. Which means for years, if anyone asked me what kind of art I liked, I said Matisse. And I do love Matisse. But I now understand that was inherited taste, not my own eye. There’s a difference between what you grew up with and what you would have found on your own. The Artist’s Way is helping me figure out which is which.

Homework: Herb & Dorothy

Jenni recommended a documentary I’m watching this weekend — Herb & Dorothy.

on PBS and YouTube link above. A postal clerk and a librarian who spent decades buying art before it had a market. If it fit in a taxi and they loved it, it was theirs. They befriended the artists before anyone knew their names, and then gave it all away. To the public. Because that's where it belongs. Public art keeps beauty from becoming a private hobby. This might be my new cause!

Other Details I’m Paying Attention To

Erewhon has officially announced that you can’t order the Hailey Bieber smoothie by name anymore, but they know exactly what you mean when you say it.

Started a Notes app with my friend Lauren where we both list what we’re working on — it sounds simple, and it is, but having someone else see your list means you actually mean it. She calls it being on “the board” of each others lives. Highly recommend! Did 80% percent of my tasks! 80/20 rule applies here.

Always take the walk. Been taking daily walks and talking out load (headphones in so I don’t look crazy.) Look what I found, beauty!

Attention is how you build a life. Details are how you know it’s yours.