From More Intelligent Life: Art and (Gross Breaches of) Etiquette.
Paper Monument, a fledgling art magazine, has interviewed 30 art-world notables–critics, artists, dealers and a blogger–and has collected their answers to the same basic questions, such as “What are the rules of etiquette in the art world?” And “When does a breach of etiquette play a role in embarrassing or awkward encounters?”
The result is hilarious and surprisingly useful. It turns out that the proper number of air-kisses to dispense is a mystery to everyone. At art openings, courtesy dictates embargoing cruel comments for a distance of six blocks. Descriptions of etiquette breaches are excruciating to imagine, but addictive to read: a performance piece throws sawdust on a mentally disabled man, who has a fit before being led away by the gallerist; an unknown visitor devours an artist’s personal pizza pie; a collector’s daughter rubs out her cigarette on her stepfather’s Mondrian (after calling her own mother a “fat whore”).
