In 1992, Rob Pruitt installed black-power posters and soul music records on the walls of a prestigious NY gallery, said it was a commentary on African-Americans and marketing, and waited for impressionable young graduate students to bring him their panties. Instead, he was called a racist and asked to never art again. Six years later, he weaseled his way back into the good graces of the creative community by offering them a 50-foot-long line of coke, which he was smart enough to (barely) disguise as art.
Rob Pruitt
"It's a commentary on how much I love cocaine."
His 1998 installation, fittingly titled Cocaine Buffet, has become something of a legend in the New York art scene. The cocaine was laid out on a series of narrow mirrors that curved and snaked across the floor of a rented studio space for a span longer than a school bus. It was supposedly part of some larger exhibition, but everybody knew what the coke really was: A peace offering that only a New York artist in the '90s with nothing left to lose could come up with.
Art in America Magazine
Yup, that's the face that goes perfectly with the above sentence.
125 Comments