COURTESY FILM MAGIC
Usually the token Hollywood star to grace this stately Rhineland town with its presence during Art Basel is Leonardo DiCaprio, and when he comes, he’s actually here on business: he’s one of the world’s top 200 collectors. But DiCaprio seems to be over the fair now that he’s finally secured his Best Actor Academy Award, and so this year Basel-goers had to settle for another Oscar-winner, albeit one of slightly lesser renown: Adrien Brody.
What Adrien Brody is doing here, no one is quite sure, and the fact that he has decided to call himself an artist—he had work in the Benrimon Projects booth at Art New York last month, and presented something called “Hot Dogs, Hamburgers and Handguns” at Art Basel Miami Beach—doesn’t really explain it, because, to quote John Baldessari, going to an art fair as an artist is “like watching your parents fuck.”
But my lord, was Adrien Brody everywhere. Constantly at the Grand Hotel Trois Rois, for instance, and also stalking the Messeplatz. Most prominently, on Wednesday he was seated at the head of the table at dinner with Pace Gallery president Marc Glimcher, as I reported yesterday in a story on Jonas Mekas.
Not much to ponder there, exactly, but then while having a conversation with someone involved with Pace Thursday night, he didn’t seem too surprised at the Glimcher-Brody bromance. Maybe there could even be an Adrien Brody show at one of the outposts of the Pace empire? The projection seems about right: Jay Z to James Franco to Adrien Brody?
The person at Pace did say that, to his knowledge, Glimcher has not made any proposal regarding an Adrien Brody show at the gallery. And when approached for comment regarding the dinner meeting and a possible addition of Adrien Brody to the Pace Gallery artists roster, a representative of the gallery said that is not the case. “Adrien Brody is a friend of the gallery’s and of Alexander S. C. Rower, President of the Calder Foundation,” the representative said.
Well, I guess we won’t be seeing paintings of hotdogs and hamburgers made by the co-star of Dragon Blade at Pace anytime soon.