Gagosian’s uptown gallery was quite a motley scene last Friday evening, as an unorthodox assortment of art enthusiasts gathered to toast and, of course, view Richard Prince’s latest exhibition, The Tiffany Paintings. A veritable social experiment: well-to-do Park Avenue types not-so-subtly investigated downtown fixtures like Max Snow while sipping wine in the back courtyard. Marc Jacobs and Lorenzo Maritone perused the works alongside Rick Owens and Mary-Kate Olsen, and Terry Richardson induced a frenzy upon arrival. A stealth Glenn O’Brien wove through the crowd while Rachel Zoe posed for the cameras and a nervous cluster of over-dressed (and very underage) prep school students at once tried to blend in and make their mark.

However, it was Stan Light, a Prince fanatic who traveled all the way from Dallas, Texas just for the opening, who caught my eye. Dressed simply in a yellow-checkered shirt and jeans, he pointed to his red degrader limited edition Richard Prince Vuitton bag. “One of the ultimate goals of my life is to have him sign it,” he said with a twinge of longing in his voice. Sadly, artist and admirer were star-crossed that evening  (Prince arrived just moments after Light’s departure). But his pilgrimage, however unsuccessful, is certainly testament to the almost rock star status Prince has come to achieve.

Despite the fascinating guests, it was, of course, Prince’s paintings that coaxed me so far uptown that evening. Further exploring his fascination with subliminal messages in print and advertisements, Prince exhibited a series of both large and small-scale paintings, each of which features a Tiffany and Co. ad from the New York Times in the upper right corner. The sometimes foggy, sometimes monochromatic canvases were a continuation of Prince’s nod towards the Abstract Expressionists, but with Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s cited as an inspiration, it was clear that these works extended beyond the obvious luxury gems and color fields. Beneath layers of black, purple, orange, blue or crimson paint lurked laser-printed news clippings. Prince highlighted headlines of artist’s obituaries and dark editorials to play off the heart-shaped baubles, dripping diamonds and platinum pendants within the Tiffany ads. And as I stared at one especially eerie black work, which pairs a holiday watch ad with the headline, “Driving from Ucross to Sheridan in the Depths of an Owlish Darkness,” I couldn’t help but see the similarities between Prince’s works and Capote’s Holly Golightly: both, at first, pleasing to the eye but suppressing dark yet intriguing stories below the surface.

“I think they’re very witty,” remarked Larry Gagosian. “They’ve taken something kind of obvious and turned it into something quite mysterious.”

But for Jeff Koons, a steadfast Prince fan and long-time friend of the artist, it was the paintings’ dueling messages of death and optimism that were most captivating. “The two [ideas] opposed each other the between the [Tiffany] advertisements for things which are celebrating weddings or engagements and show a meaning of attachment to letting go. When one dies you let go.”

Richard Prince’s Tiffany Paintings will be on view at Gagosian’s 980 Madison Avenue Gallery through June 19.

A week ago, the Tate gallery staged a large party to celebrate the opening of Pop Life, née Sold Out, its blockbuster investigation of the dominance of Warholian mass production in the art market. It seemed a fittingly hubristic affair, the after-party taking place in Tramp, a nightclub in the genteelly unfashionable St James’ – last relevant, well, never.

The show itself has been astutely judged, one of those delicate compromises that trades off between the desire to grab the attention (WARHOL! KOONS! HIRST! MURAKAMI!) of the real world, the people who actually pay to go to these things; the backers, the people who actually buy and fund this art; and do this without alienating the terminally unimpressed art world. This duality extends from the curatorial direction of such an exhibition into its various half lives: normal service demands a huge art world attendance on the opening night, followed immediately by a total communications black out.  At this point the broadsheet critics submit their reviews, and the next tier, the cultured middle classes, those with Tate membership say, visit. Finally after all chatter has been wrung from this lame spectacle, the exhibition is allowed to moulder into what it was always intent on becoming, the tourist attraction. At no point does the show become anything more than a spectacle, as for all the intellectual burden of curating such an exhibition, the very nature of the public institution silences the work, preventing it from holding any sort of dialogue with what is actually going on in art.  

Until the police get involved. The morning after the party, a team from Scotland Yard, London’s shorthand for meddlesome incompetence and bureaucratic violence, descended with the kind intention of ensuring that the Tate weren’t going to put themselves into any legislative danger by mistakenly displaying art which might not actually be art. The rest is popular history. Richard Prince’s Spiritual America was removed, the room in which it was installed closed, and the media, drunk on the opprobrium generated by the recent high profile discovery of a paedophile ring operating from a provincial nursery school, jumped on it.

Enough has now been written in useless declamation to spare you my opinion on the event, the work, the controversy, save one observation on the way these much maligned ‘blockbuster’ shows remind us of the complex work public institutions are engaged in. A recent post by Jorg Heiser on the Frieze editors’ blog drew attention to the difficulties faced by Stockholm, a city where contemporary art “isn’t necessarily automatically accessible and welcome,” but which has established six institutions in the last ten years, and plans to establish up to thirteen more in the next two, with the express purpose of bringing first rate contemporary art to the city. In a way this difficulty is never more acutely revealed than when publicly funded galleries display works of high kitsch. Such a post-modern blurring of the radical distinction between kitsch and avant-garde throws our shared compromises about what we culturally agree art is off kilter. It takes an event like this to remind us that the images of Koons and La Cicciolina in flagrante, or the mediated porn art Cosey Fanni Tutti was agressively making in the seventies are no longer particularly challenging, or which in Koons’ case perhaps never were, while Spiritual America reminds us of a shameful act in our past we’re desperate to collectively repress.

And while there are deep layers of irony present in the hysterical reaction of a prurient press to a piece of art engaging in fierce if unannotated criticism of the unashamed amorality of mass media, the reassuring message is that in a jaundiced age of empty spectacle, people still have a subconscious desire to be offended by a projected idea of avant-gardism. So kudos to the Tate, for redrawing the battle lines so plainly.

Pop Life is at the Tate Modern until January 17th, 2010.

In light of this past season’s collaboration with Gerard Malanga, Adam Kimmel’s decision to hire Jim Krantz, who used to shoot for Marlboro (as in the cigarette), is hardly surprising.  Kimmel sent Krantz down to the same Utah ranch he had used to photograph the Marlboro Man ads to shoot artist (and Kimmel regular) Dan Colen along with some local ranch-hands, in what will doubtless be seen, all intentions aside, as a nod to Richard Prince (whose Cowboys series was itself, at least superficially, composed of Marlboro ads without — that is, ‘cropped-off’ — the Marlboro name).  The final product is a highly-stylized affair, to be sure, and in stark contrast to the typically raw and Beat-y and nearly personal look-books shot by Kimmel’s brother Alexei Hay; but I have to admit, with the above as evidence, that it works — quite well actually — and it’s a sure sign as any that Adam Kimmel will continue to be a designer whose collections (and respective lookbooks) are to be anxiously looked-forward to in the seasons that follow.

Jim Krantz’s photographs will be on display at Galerie Yvon Lambert in Paris (108 rue Vieille du Temple) alongside a video display by Meredith Danluck.