Hot shots and top dogs

Spectator, The, Feb 12, 2000 by Dunlop, Ian

BOOGIE-WOOGIE

by Danny Moynihan

Duck Editions, L9.99, pp. 254

Imagine paying over L1,000,000 at auction for a ceramic urinal which probably cost 100 to make, or nearly the same figure for a porcelain sculpture of a pink panther embracing a dumb blonde, the sort of thing you would avoid winning at a fairground. Crazy, you would say, but it depends on the context. In most fields of business, yes, but in the contemporary art market of the 1990s these are sane, calculated actions. Urinals and panthers are, after all, trophy objects by big names in the art cosmos - Duchamp and Koons - and everyone in the know expects to pay over the odds for such works. How else does the hot-shot collector prove to his peers his commitment to the great gamble which is collecting contemporary art?

The contemporary art scene really is crazy. The artists know it, the dealers know it and even the collectors know it. 'It's a game,' says one of the characters in Danny Moynihan's entertaining comedy-ofmanners novel about the New York art scene. 'It's about the art game and the art of the game.' It is a world which obeys its own rules, speaks its own language and contains its own heroes and villains. It is a world which is a sitting target for the satirist, and although Tom Wolfe came close to getting it right in The Painted Word, he approached this world as an outsider and you never really felt that he liked art or was interested in the contemporary scene. Danny Moynihan has a better pedigree. The son of an artist, he has exhibited his own work, curated shows for other artists, collaborated with Damien Hirst on an opera, and has had first-hand experience of the art world in both New York and London. The cover, which includes small reproductions of works by Damien Hirst, Sarah Lucas, Marc Quinn, Jeff Koons and others, reveals his connections.

In Boogie-Woogie, named after a painting by Mondrian, the author introduces a cross-section of New York art types. Enter Art Spindle, the top-dog dealer who wears cravats and Armani suits, sleeps with the wife of one of the city's biggest collectors (and whoever else he can get his hands on), and is adept at manipulating the passions and ambitions of the artists and collectors in his orbit. He is joined by Elaine Yoon, a demented and energetic dyke who does video art or thinks she does, Jo Richards, a conceptual artist who looks like Matt Dillon, Beth Freemantle, a re-made wannabee who plans to open a new gallery, Dewey Bozo, a gay curator and art critic, Alfred Rhinegold, a bad-tempered, wheelchairbound owner of a version of the Mondrian of the title, Bob and Jean Maclestones, the collectors of everything from Brancusi to Basquiat and sundry other low and high lifes. If you do not know the contemporary art scene you might think these characters were unreal and a little two-dimensional, but anyone with a passing acquaintance with their real-life counterparts - Larry, Charles, Cy, Damien et al - will know they ring true.

Around them the author has woven a series of overlapping stories told in short scenes and staccato dialogue. He has a good ear for the dumbspeak of artists and their admirers, who communicate by means of three or four words ('yeah', 'ah ha!' and 'great'), and also for the convoluted prose of art critics coming to terms with the banalities of conceptual art. Ile also has an eye for the comic, and at times sadistic, sex games of his characters. The novel reads like a film script - a point made by the blurb on the jacket, which reminds us that this technique was used by Robert Altman in his movies about Hollywood and Nashville - and to some extent the style also imitates the jazzy rhythms of Mondrian's painting. To keep the characters in mind it is best to read the whole book in one sitting. Once you get going it is hard to stop and Charles Saatchi rightly comments on the jacket, 'No sleep for you the night you open it!'