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By C. Antonio Romero
SAN FRANCISCO, 13 MARCH 2008—We keep our eyes
open for curious collisions of events and details
in the torrent of news and web pages that streams
across our desk in any given day, usually seeking out the ironic
turns that twist wry grins onto our often mock-dour faces.
Today, three elements combine to catch our particular fancy:
- One of the peculiar details of the sudden "bimbo implosion" of
Democratic party rising star Elliott Spitzer is the name of one of the
front companies for the prostitution ring that did him in: The
Emperor's Club of Contemporary Art
The web site of the
Emperor's Club has of course vanished, but the Internet's collective
memory (Google's cache of the Web) is of course
nigh-infallible:
"One of the many ways by which we create and add
special value to already extraordinarily affluent lives, is by enabling
direct access to some of the world's most captivating, authentic
contemporary art available....
the best advice is always the
same: make visual pleasure and quality the benchmarks of your buying so
you are certain to derive a deep satisfaction from the piece [sic].
"Representing artists of superior mastery, and catering to members of
the absolute highest financial and cultural affluence, experience for
yourself the deeply satisfying joy of owning Emperors¢ Club Contemporary
Art..."
No word on whether the art in question included any interpretation of
the Ars Amatoria.
(And we'll refrain from recycling old jokes about horticulture.)
- Those whose budget doesn't permit collecting art on an ongoing basis
might be more interested in sampling it by the evening at the Hotel des Arts San Francisco,
which has transformed many of its rooms into exhibitions, by enticing
local artists to design the interiors and paint the walls as murals.
Some of the rooms may prove a bit too distracting to sleep in, but
they're bound to be fun to look at.
Far less charming, but
somehow bound up with these other two in our reading, was a BBC story
out of France about the sordid side of the French
rental housing crisis: people exchanging sexual (or more innocuous)
services for free or reduced rent, often finding their contre
service arrangements on the Web.
Take a quick look through the bookshelves of
any decent-sized newsagent, and tucked between the biographies of the
former French First Lady and the former American First Lady is the
extraordinary account of Laura D. Her book, My Dear Studies
(Mes Chères Etudes
), details the anonymous young
woman's slide from being a fresh-faced undergraduate, to a poverty-stricken student,
to a 19-year-old selling her body to pay the rent....
We cannot help but remember an old
Benny Hill sketch that featured a lodging establishment called the Hotel Sordide.
Photo above:
Larry Fink: Homage to George Grosz
Photo courtesy of The
powerHouse Gallery
C. Antonio Romero is the
Nouveau and technology editor of Culturekiosque.com. He last wrote on
Obama Super Bowl Ad and "Yes We Can Song" Show Campaign's
Media 2.0 Savvy
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