New Year’s and the art world have champagne in common. Waking up not very early on Jan 1, 2024 I found the confetti had moved behind my eyes and the fireworks had relocated to my temples. There was still the lingering joy of the celebration; I had had a wonderful New Year’s Eve and a triumphant 2023. I laughed, which hurt, maybe due to the sheer absurdity of feeling this bad after such a festive drink. It reminded me of the previous weeks of Miami Art Week, where tequila had been prevalent alongside the champagne.
Gretchen Andrew.
Design Miami/ and SCOPE had an official Tequila sponsor, Maestro Dobel. I learned that fine tequila is often served in a champagne glass because it allows the aromas of the tequila to collect and concentrate. This is particularly important for high-quality, aged tequilas with complex flavor profiles. The narrow rim of these glasses further intensifies the aromas before reaching your nose, enhancing the tasting experience.
Greeting the New Year with Champagne
While we quickly switched to mezcal, the maître d’ of the Fontainebleau’s Mirabella of course greeted us with champagne. We were, after all celebrating, the new restaurant’s first Miami Art Week. There are many supposed origins to why champagne is associated with celebration. I favor the poetic and apocryphal. A bottle of champagne must be consumed in a single evening making its Big Night association logical, but I will here perpetuate another explanation.
See the Widow Clicquot presenting Champagne to the Russians then the French then the Russians then the French then the Russiasn again as the physical territory that is champagne was subsequently conquered. Madame Clicquot greeted each new victor with champagne, both ingratiating herself to whomever conquerors and forever associating champagne with victory.
A VR-Driven Vision for the Future
I was thinking of champagne when Oliver Miro, founder of Vortic, spoke at Untitled about his VR-driven vision for the art world’s future. In this future we might all still gather in beautiful places but only without the physical art. We could wander around, well-dressed and wearing VR headsets, still drinking champagne. Such would save the environmental absurdity that is shipping artwork from one fair to another while still engaging our other senses. We’d see the art digitally while still tasting the biscuity champagne, still feeling its bubbles and moose, still meeting the people we meet at these things.
During Miami Art Week we tasted the absurd amount of truffle added to the risotto at Mirabella at the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, smelled the salt air while cruising the boardwalk on Citi bikes. I am still feeling sand in my shoes. What we saw, I suppose we could have seen it via an immersive VR environment of the quality Vortic presents.
Oliver Miro, founder of Voritc, speaks at Untitled and shares a vision for the art world where we might still gather in person but leave most of the art viewing to VR.
For Voritc and Miro, this possible vision is driven by a deep care of the environment and an obsession with the technology’s unrealized potential, but I like it for another reason. I like it because it presents a model of essentialism.
When I first dedicated my life to art, something I did with a dramatic resignation letter, I celebrated in Dolores Park with champagne and a 99-cent cup of ramen noodles. I wanted to set forward a framework in which I poured my focus and then meager resources into what mattered to me: Champagne and Top Ramen. Not Prosecco and Ramen Izakaya Goku. This is at the heart of Champagne Essentialism, and I think of Vortic’s vision too, prioritizing and focusing on what makes something, whether a painting, an art fair, or a life, essential.
Gretchen Andrew Proposes an Art World New Year’s Resolution for 2024
Philosophical essentialism refers to the belief that objects have a fixed, core essence that defines what they are. Tech-driven optimization culture for the productivity-obsessed defines essentialism as being about making deliberate choices and focusing on what truly matters, eliminating non-essential. We can think of Champagne Essentialism as a form of art-world or personal development in which we identify our core values and use them to guide our decisions and actions. Sounds like a plan for 2024?
As artists, we ask ourselves all the time what really matters. Medium Essentialism, the theory, proposed by Clement Greenberg in the mid-20th century, argues that each artistic medium has its own unique essence. For example, the essence of painting lies in its ability to manipulate flat surfaces with color and texture, while sculpture’s essence is in its shaping of three-dimensional forms. According to this view, a successful artwork should fully exploit the possibilities of its chosen medium, avoiding unnecessary elements from other media.
What might happen if we apply this to the art world as a whole? I’m still getting on a plane, still seeing you, and still drinking champagne. The rest I could potentially be flexible about this year.
