On Thursday I went to LACMA to see Steve Martin talk about art. Dave Hickey, his interlocutor, had a hard time keeping up — but who can share a stage with Steve Martin? I wrote about it for Jacket Copy, and then the piece appeared in Saturday’s paper. Here’s how it starts:
If the events of a certain November 2010 night in New York City hung over LACMA Thursday, they did so not as a dark cloud, but as a punching bag.
The occasion: Steve Martin — actor, director, banjo player, author — in conversation with noted art critic Dave Hickey. The subject: Steve Martin’s book “An Object of Beauty,” and, by extension its subject, art and the art world. The rub: a similar conversation at New York’s 92nd Street Y in November did not go well, to the extent that a note was delivered to Martin’s interlocutor on stage asking, essentially, that they stop talking about art so much.
“It made New Yorkers look really bad,” said Jillian Spence, sitting in the front row at LACMA before Thursday’s conversation began. She’d come to get a copy of Martin’s book signed for her father, a big fan who is very ill; when she was a child, they listened to his comedy records together. A New Yorker herself with a tangible accent, she is a member of the 92nd Street Y — “an active, embarrassed member” who said people should expect Martin to talk about his book — “or you shouldn’t be here.”
The sold-out audience at LACMA knew what to expect, and included comedic luminaries Martin Mull, Ricky Jay, Eric Idle and Carl Reiner. The event, part of the 15-year-old peripatetic Writers Bloc author conversation series, was introduced by the organization’s Andrea Grossman. “We in Los Angeles want to hear Steve Martin talk about art!” she said to a round of applause.
There’s more here. I even cornered the oh-my-god-so-cool Carl Reiner and asked him what he thought.
