How to Attend an Opening

Consider the middle-income Manhattan executive, say, who is invited to attend the weekday-evening vernissage of his favorite nephew, an artist. He thinks he is entering the charmed circle of bohemia. He finds himself in a small up stairs room where dozens of people exactly like himself are sipping watery punch and gabbling uneasily. His only consolation is that the room is so crowded that he can't see the pictures.

Actually, his nephew's kind of opening is as out of date as The Moon and Sixpence. The openings that today's most authentic bohemians frequent take place on a Saturday, and during regular gallery hours. The dealer serves no drinks. The public is welcome, even solicited with an ad in Saturday's Times.

But the "public" that comes consists largely of artists, collectors, curators, critics, and miscellaneous chums.

Rituals and Taboos. They are all part of the New York art scene -- an open-minded society. Said Louis Tananbaum, a Wall Street stockbroker who was making the rounds of the galleries last Saturday with his wife Linda:

"My great discovery was that you didn't have to be invited to a Saturday opening. You don't have to know anybody.

All you do is talk to one person at a gallery, and he'll say, 'Have you been to such and such an opening?' That's your next stop."

Starting the conversation takes a knack. For, like any inbred subculture, the art world has its own rituals and taboos. Dealers, of course, are always happy to talk to a stranger on the theory that he or she may turn out to be a customer. Unfortunately, so many well-known collectors pound the pavements on Saturday afternoons that the amateur buyer is apt to be abandoned in the middle of a price list. Artists giving a show can be approached easily enough by way of a compliment, preferably sincere. After that, the ball must be kept rolling to produce the desired results. Technical questions are usually safest, for example, "Tell me, Mr. Bannard, which particular shades of Dutch Boy house paints did you use?"

For the beginner, it is well to remember that art-world habitues eat, sleep and breathe art, even though most of them cannot afford to cover their walls with it (especially the many art students and part-time art teachers). Thus they are accustomed to staring earnestly at even the looniest creations. Remarks like "Is this some sort of a put-on?" instantly brand anyone as an outsider.

Flight Pattern. Last week in Manhattan, no fewer than seven major exhibitions opened on Saturday. The crowds that cruised through them followed an invisible but well-defined flight pattern either up or down Madison Avenue between 79th and 57th Streets.

Clothes counted, but not much. Folk over 35 preferred the "expensive square" look: Italian tailoring for the men, boots and casual furs for the wives. The younger element went in for "proletarian mod"--long hair, long coats and long pants on the girls, 19th century haircuts, leather jackets and blue jeans for the men.

Look and Listen. Peak hour, when good friends gathered to greet one another, was around 4 p.m.--a time when the newcomer might be well advised to gaze raptly at the art and keep his ears open. Indisputably, the most rewarding place to do both last week was the brand-new Lawrence Rubin Gallery on West 57th Street. Sometime Paris Dealer Rubin had lured a gilt-edged stable of color-field abstractionists away from other dealers. The walls of his gallery were ablaze with the rainbow hues of Frank

Stella and Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and Jules Olitski.

The crowd on the gallery floor was just as many-splendored. Among artists, Larry Poons put in an appearance, as did Lucas Samaras and Christo. Critic Clement Greenberg was there, as were Collectors S. Carter Burden Jr. and Richard Brown Baker. Yet an eavesdropper might have heard one artist confiding: "There's a strange cloud hanging over us this year. It's keeping all of us from producing."

At the supercool Dwan Gallery, Billy Apple, who works only in neon, could be heard declaring his rapture over the "non-sites" displayed by Robert Smithson. "Fantastic!" cried this artist of light, contemplating bare metal bins filled with chunks of coal and gypsum. Why? "Because it's not for sale! That's what art ought to be. You can't merchandise it. There! You see?" He pointed at two mods tramping across a "non-site" made from mirrors set on the gallery floor, with gravel piled atop them. The mirror splintered beneath their heels. "He'll never sell that,'' cried Apple. "Beautiful!"

No one, in fact, makes better use of open openings than other artists. Abstract painters check into the techniques of figure painters, and vice versa. Malcolm Morley, whose bag is photographic realism, lingered at the Fischbach Gallery to admire Allan D'Arcangelo's smashingly bold black-and-white striped abstractions. Elder statesmen lend their prestige to young hopefuls. Robert Rauschenberg looked in at the Castelli Gallery to bestow his benison on a brash, new California satirist named Richard Pettibone, who had assembled an "Andy Warhol retrospective" out of miniature copies of Warhol soup cans and Brillo boxes.

There the crowd was young and exuberant. Someone observed that the big spenders were at Larry Rubin's. "We just need middle-sized spenders," purred Castelli, diplomatically ignoring a peace pipe being passed about the room in back of him.

Fortunately for Rome-based Beverly Pepper, her sedate Marlborough-Gerson Gallery still believes in evening openings. Hence, she was able to summon an elegant gathering on Friday night to drink real liquor and view her gleaming, stainless-steel sculptures. The wall-to-wall gathering included Authors Gore Vidal and A. E. Hotchner, Sculptress Marisol and Director Sidney Lumet. Then, on the following Saturday, the gallery was able to charge $1.50 to all the usual Saturday visitors for an "Italian" orphans' benefit." Only the promise of a suitable benefit had enabled Beverly to persuade New York's striking longshoremen to remove her sculpture from the ship's hold in time for the opening. "I felt like I was in the Perils of Pauline," she said, "lying on the tracks with the train bearing down on me."

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