Courage, Carbone, and "Oh My God"

Is it the quality or the marketing?

Happy Easter everyone. I spent the afternoon eating at an outpost of a brand I’m loyal to: Keith McNally’s Pastis, then walking over to see Francesco Clemente and Saint Laurent’s artist/ brand collaboration. It only feels right on a day that started as a biblical holy day and became a branded day of marshmallow bunnies to talk about branding and how it relates to quality. With May coming and the big New York art fair and auction season right around the corner, all this might also relate to art.

In case you missed it, Mario Carbone of eponymous restaurant fame went on Andrew Schulz’s podcast to say, among other things, that the best Italian food in New York is better than the best Italian food in Italy. Schulz tops him by saying that actually every cuisine’s food is better in New York than in its native country because in New York you really have to step it up and bring your A game to survive.

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I don’t even know where to start with this take, but one easy place is: many of the most successful restaurants in New York aren’t even popular for the food, Carbone’s likely included. They have masterfully built brands based on the “vibes” of their spaces and the exclusivity of reservations. Often these are Disney-like remakes of classic fare, but with a combination of online hype and scarcity of reservations. There’s nothing illegal about this, and congrats to these restauranteurs on their successful businesses. This is clearly the opposite of the “food needs to be the best in the planet to survive in New York” argument, however. Sadly, what these prove is that unlike in Italy, where many restaurants have stayed in business for generations with a combination of quality and affordable prices, often what it takes to succeed in New York is mediocre food bolstered by hype and exclusivity.

As I watched this, I couldn’t help but think of Courage Bagels in L.A. No one would have said the bagels in L.A are better than New York or really anywhere. And the place itself is every caricature I dread- cute gentrifying hipsters bring instagram hyped bagels to Silverlake residents queueing up in line for hours. And top it off, some detractors say these might not even be bagels. They’re not boiled the traditional way, they’re crispy “Montreal Style” bagels that may in technical fact just be pieces of bread. Then I tried them and…they’re good. Really good. In fact, compared to the “new wave” bagel places in New York, I’d say they’re just outright better.

So I don’t think these categories are mutually exclusive. In art there have been people who are both great personal brand builders and great artists. Often this combo leads to them being the most well known, the mega stars. Warhol and Basquiat, sure, but also people like Salvador Dali.

Recently the museum group I’m part of visited the home of one of the world’s legendary art collectors: Ronald Lauder. I’ve read about his approach to art, and he seems to keep to the same talking point, this time included. He says there are three categories of art: “oh” “oh my” and “oh my god.” Unsurprisingly, he only buys the third category.

Seeing what art he actually lives with gave me a new understanding of this. Just like with food, when buying art there is more than one time you decide to go for it. In the case of food there’s the moment you hear about a restaurant, be it from a friend or a food blogger, and then there’s the moment you put it in your mouth and chew. In art too, a friend gallery owner can wax poetically about it’s greatness or scarcity, but at the end of the day once it’s up on your wall its you who is stuck spending the rest of your days looking at it.

Lauder started with some advantages most of the rest of us don’t have, of course. An almost unlimited budget effectively freed him up to be a controlled experiment for “Oh My God’s.” For him this meant things that he thought were so great that even years later he would continue to love looking at them. And this appears to be true, some of these paintings have been hanging in this same apartment for decades, and he seems to get joy out of seeing them every day.

I’ve been around art long enough myself now to know how that applies to me. Sometimes I’m interested in something at first because of the hype, the context, what someone said to me or what they’re interested in. Over time though, I’ve become more honest with myself about what I like, what I really love, and what I know is just a passing hype.

I wish I could say Carbone is right and that with art, if not with food, that the shows and artists that succeed in New York are just the best ones because the competition is so high. In reality I’ve watched as short term success often has as much to do with who you know and how you market yourself. That’s why I think it’s important for those of us who love art, just like with food, to really stand behind the things that we truly love and move us.

It’s about to be one of my favorite times: May New York auction season. I’m going to cover them in depth here, starting with a preview before even seeing them. One aspect of an auction month is that some artworks receive a ton of promotion and others just come and go with no fanfare at all. And yet, when all the champagne is poured and gavels are hammered and the artworks go to their new homes, its just you and the painting on the wall- the same way it’s just you and the taste of what’s on your fork- whether there was hype or not.