DIGEST 71: The Arcades: Live!
At Auction June 11-17, 2025
I am mounting a live version of the Arcades on June 26 in Ridgewood. You may be asking yourself, “what does that mean?” To which I can only reply, “What does that mean?” This is to say: much depends on how comfortable various participants are with bottom-only nudity. In all seriousness, it will be a show of historical design from the 17th century to the present, in conversation with a contemporary artist. It has an actual, live component so there are space constraints: if you’d like to come, email me at david@the-arcades.com and I’ll see what I can do (an email invitation will be going out shortly, but feel free to reply here). This feels like a natural extension of what I’ve been doing here and of course, it builds on my my deep and abiding commitment to the American theater (I played Oliver Twist in Oliver! in 5th and 7th grade productions). More importantly it provides me with a venue to display and sell what I have now been hoarding for more than a year. The question will be whether the selling and the staging twisted semi-erotic scenes from my inner life are in fact compatible aims. I think of those conflicts of interest as being core to these emails too :) I hope you’ll join.
Finally, I want to shoutout friend-of-the-stack and one of my first paid subscribers, Nate van der Ende, whose interior design for spiritual friend-of-the-stack Jack Driessen landed in AD. I styled the shoot but this is Nate’s work and I’m proud of him! Also shoutout to Sophie Stone who is in AD here, and Adam Greco (who was IN Oliver with me!) who is in AD here—feels like Arcades nation is kind of killing it atm…
I am selling some stuff at Maiden here. For my precious new subscribers: Landed cost (the final cost you pay) = the hammer price (the highest bid) + the premium (a set percentage added to the hammer price that the auction house takes) + shipping (you’re always on the hook for this) + sales tax. To the listings!
Tole peinte is just painted tin. This is so dumb.
Rarest of birds: Arcades artist who is alive and not born in 1922. Morris was born in 1977 and he makes these very finely detailed charcoal drawings. I like her demonic energy.
Do you guys think we will look back on De Sede modular sofas like how we look at camaleonda’s now? Like pity in our eyes as the off-gassing Chinese knock offs slowly poison the TikTok influencers who bought them? Don’t know/don’t care—I like the patchwork black leather. We were going to make huge patchwork leather floor cushions for the Maiden Name season that never got produced—they were going to be crazy expensive :)
This is missing the other triangular piece but I actually think it’s better like this. Less mob house and more Munich penthouse 2010 (scary clean, you didn’t even take a step inside and you’ve already broken one of the “rules”).
Ladies, male-ladies, make sure you’re in a committed relationship before you bring this into your home.
I really fucking would at this point.
These are rather chic no?
Thomas Lenk (1922-2014) Berlin-born artist, known for his sculpture and prints (that clearly have a relationship to sculpture), Documenta in 1968, Biennale in 1970. Very nice. Do check out this auction.
This one’s for the girlianca’s. Really someone should buy.
You cant afford this lamp. Happy pride! <3