Since Roberta Smith wrote his long article on the "high baroque period" Chelsea is entering, many have posted it, quoted it, stolen it, footnoted it, talked it. Many others are still wondering what the **** is that "high baroque" period. Reality is, Chelsea rocks and insofar has not been SoHo-ized. That's a reason for loving it passionately. It's been now 10 years since Matthew Marks moved from Madison to Chelsea in 1994, being not only the first to venture in the gritty yards and deserted streets of the Far West with commercial aim (DIA Foundation had established its headquarters in 22nd Street in the amazingly early year of 1987), but also the pioneer of the Chelsea boom. And, after 10 years, a visit to Chelsea is still a kind of adventure, the long walk from the subway, the creepy garages, the taxi-washers, the parkings, the auto parts stores, the trucks, the freights, the gas stations, the no-amenities-just-galleries, the desolated sidewalks, the near-by piers, the gigantic old warehouses casting an imposing shadow over the gallery buildings. Chelsea is cold and eerie, uninviting and weird, inspiring and evocative, hard and cool. It is New York.
The more I hate SoHo, the more I love Chelsea: you won't find any Prada, any posh restaurants, any tourists, any crowds (except on Saturday afternoons, and they're easy), any MoMA store branch, not any cheap or expensive store. Just a row of galleries and garages. It's sort of true New York vs. fake New York; tourists vs. Manhattanites.
I love the funny contrast between the macho-style of the taxi drivers, mechanics, collision workers and the super-gay-cool-silly look of the gallery employees behind the solid, blind metal gates of all those temples of contemporary art. There's no fake in Chelsea, apart from the fakeness inherent to the art world: here you have an in-your-face atmosphere where your rough and raw "On-the-Waterfront"-like dock-worker immigrant drinks the same gas station coffee as the Brooklyn-transplanted young, successful art dealer. High and low, the two New Yorks, and beyond, authentic stuff.
SoHo on weekends bursts with tourist crowds from Europe searching the flagship stores of the latest fashion designers, and one has it not easy to access the Walter de Maria installations, the Judd Foundation, or some of the very few important galleries that resist/refuse in SoHo. SoHo is a big mall that has taken over by assault and intimidation (mean checks and money), perverting and destroying a once-cool area of art and artists. SoHo is, like Times Square and the new MoMA, a tourist trap to avoid by all means. So fake, untrue and made over that is pukey-yucky.
Chelsea has not been SoHo-ized and will probably never be: if something happens, it will be the end of Chelsea as a gallery-district and its relocation to other place. That's just a cyclic movement in Manhattan-New York. The next, of course, Hell's Kitchen. It's going on. But for now, let's go down to the yards to check some art. Lest it last, long.
