Every week, Artnet News brings you Wet Paint, a gossip column of original scoops. If you have a tip, email Annie Armstrong at [email protected].
LOVE WINS ABOARD ROMERO BRITTO’S BESPOKE CRUISE SHIP DINING EXPERIENCE
I know why you all are here. Wet Paint readers are aware that I get out of bed for only the most rarefied art events that New York has to offer. For weeks now, you have been wondering: “What incredible art experience has she been hooked up with for Valentine’s Day?”
I can now reveal that, last night, I was aboard a simulation of a dining room on a Princess Cruises ship to experience “Love by Britto: First Artistically Inspired Dining Experience Celebrating ‘Love.’” Yes! I spent an entire evening immersed in the sumptuous beauty of Romero Britto, the Miami-based artist who bills himself as the most collected and licensed artist in history. You have may seen his kaleidoscopic pop art in recent years at JFK Airport, or in one of his 10 retail outlets around the United States, or on a Miami police car. It’s everywhere.
Out on Pier 59 in Chelsea Piers, there were plates, photo walls, wine labels, paperweights, and even toilet paper roll stickers, all incorporating the 61-year-old artist’s inimitable style. And there was, of course, food, courtesy of chef Rudi Sodamin, who was crowned “Maverick of the Year” in 2024 by the F&B@Sea Awards.
The experience was . . . epic. A few blocks away from Laura Owens’s opening at Matthew Marks, my date and I were led to our table with a sweeping view of the glorious Hudson River and an indoor golfing range. The maître d’ informed us that dinner would start in 30 minutes, so he encouraged us to head upstairs to the “champagne wall.” There, guests ring a bell attached to a floral wall, and a hand pops out with a glass of champagne. The crowd was loving it, and every boyfriend was begging to take a video of his girlfriend getting champ’d up for the ‘gram.
The vibes were so rad, I kept expecting Lisa Vanderpump to roll through. Britto himself attended a run-through of the dinner the previous night, I was informed. Who might have accompanied him? Jeb Bush has been one of Britto’s muses. Disgraced former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has been, too. The two of them are so close, in fact, that Bolsonaro notoriously stopped by Britto’s studio in March 2020, early in the coronavirus pandemic, with a few people who may have been carrying the virus.
The meal began with a cocktail called the Heart of Glass, pictured above, made with peach schnapps and Britto-branded Prosecco. It tasted like your bathwater when a Lush bath bomb has dissolved into it.
If you are a fan of food at art galas, you will love the “Love by Britto” dinner. A duet of prime beef and wagyu was so rare that it came to the table a touch cooler than room temperature.
Did I mention that every single plate featured something in the shape of a heart, a signature Britto motif? For dessert, there was a heart-shaped chocolate lava cake that was exactly as good as the Domino’s version. My date had some vanilla ice cream with berries that the menu said was inspired by Tyra Banks‘s “smize” and the Lionel Richie song “All Night Love.” The romance was practically pulsing through the air.
After the meal, Chef Sodamin came by our table. His coat was decorated with sea service medals that recalled L. Ron Hubbard’s naval uniform. What is it like to cook with the heart in mind? “The heart shape is history,” he responded ever-so-coolly. “The whole meal was inspired by this.” And then he kept moving.
The $214 tickets for the final night, tonight, are sold out, I regret to report. But if you want to have the experience, you can book it on your next Princess Cruises cruise. Or maybe you can punch a hole in the wall in your home, and serve your beloved a glass of champagne through it. In the meantime, I’ll be over here eating leftovers on my commemorative Britto plate.
THE VIBE SHIFTS AWAY FROM INSTAGRAM
Show of hands: How many of you have sat through a talk on contemporary art in the past year that did not mention Instagram’s impact on the art market? Six months? How about in the past four weeks? (…I have!)
For my entire career, Instagram has been a hot-button topic in the art world. The image-sharing social-media platform changed the way that people look at and consume art. Is it an incredible tool that allows for limitless discovery of new artists and gallery shows around the world? Or is it a popularity contest, rigged by an algorithm that appeals to the most base of human impulses, ultimately whittling down any semblance of a unique perspective in its users? One thing is for sure: we’ve sure spent a lot of time chit-chatting about it for the last decade.
For reasons that are obvious, using social media platforms like X and Instagram feels a little more noxious during Trump’s second term. In fact, I’ve noticed a slow, trickling brain drain. It hasn’t been a mass exodus, but since the new year some of the art industry’s sharper minds have announced their departure from the app, which could have real implications for how the art industry functions.
On January 20, Trump’s inauguration day, critic Barry Schwabsky sang his swan song, writing “It’s been fun while it lasted, but all things must pass.” On February 3, curator Helen Molesworth threw up her hands. “Hail me down on the street, send me an email, give me a shout on the phone… Logging out,” she wrote at the end of a post that compared quitting Instagram with quitting smoking.
Schwabsky, who seems to be in a much better place since then (he called me from Antigua), told me that his reason for leaving the ‘gram was simple, yet abstract. “It became harder to notice anything,” he said. “Fundamentally, I just only want to do things I feel good about doing… There was just something about it that started to make me feel not very good.”
Schwabsky said that he had effectively used the platform to find new and interesting art in the past. Then, due to algorithm shifts, the app’s exploratory function seemed to wither away. “I know a lot of artists whose lives have been changed by something that came to them via Instagram, so it’s a shame in that way,” he said.
Indeed, the art world faction that seems to get the most out of Instagram are artists, who use the app for exposure and easy communication with interested gallerists, collectors, and patrons. I called up painter and sculptor Cameron Welch, who deleted his Instagram in a few months ago, to see how its impacted his career. He seemed unconcerned.
“It’s been really generative, I’m much better without it,” said Welch, who said he knows of many artists who have done the same and haven’t looked back. “I’m definitely talking to people in person much more, it hasn’t really affected me career-wise,” he said. “My existing relationships in the art world have become much more cherished and genuine because I don’t have that passive relationship with them.”
Molesworth told me over the phone that she does have vague concerns about not being able to plug her podcast to her 30,0000 followers, but it’s far outweighed by the relief of having left the platform. “When it first started, I loved it,” she said. “It helped with the global nature of the art world. I thought, “Oh thank god, I can see what Stuart Comer is seeing, and maybe that means I don’t have to see everything! But then that started to end. People posted less and less cool stuff. And it just became work. The people I used to love following aren’t really posting anymore. Instagram ruined it when they made it a continuous feed, and flooded it with ads.”
We’ll see if the trend continues to snowball. A return to artists dropping off slides at galleries? Even more cold emailing? A version of Bluesky that is focused on image sharing? I’ll keep an eye on it.
WE HEAR
A warm mazel tov from Wet Paint to chef/collector Daniel Humm, who proposed to Succession actor Annabelle Dexter-Jones with a portrait of her by Francesco Clemente (who is, of course, Humm’s collaborator on Clemente Bar)… Artist Richard Prince was among those in the VIP section with actors Robert DeNiro and Sacha Baron Cohen at Sir Paul McCartney’s surprise shows at Bowery Ballroom this week… Artist Sarah Mehoyas has taken over ownership of the beloved Bushwick meadery Honey’s… Loic Gouzer’s art auction app Fair Warning has tapped advisor Sarah Calodney as a new partner… M+B founder Benjamin Trigano’s hotel in Hollywood, Mama Shelter, announced its sudden closure just a few days before L.A.’s Frieze week… And speaking of sudden changes, did you notice that Santa Monica Post Office changed its name to Post-Fair?… The premise for Plaster’s new “Thirsty Thursday” column bears a pretty similar conceit to “Wet Paint in the Wild,” if you ask me… Actor Michael Shannon waxed poetic about Henry Taylor in his Perfectly Imperfect essay (a brief passage: “This guy is the most brilliant painter I have seen in a long, long time. I actually got the coffee table book. I never get the coffee table book. He just moved me to tears.”)…. And finally, we hear that a group of art-lovers gathered at Fanelli’s on Monday to drink a cold Coca-Cola in honor of the great Walter Robinson. I’ll miss his astute perspective as much as I’ll miss his puckish pointers in good gossip’s direction. Cheers to his life and legacy.
