Frey House, Palm Springs Art Museum

I have now been to Palm Springs three times.  The first time was December 1999 for a family vacation.  The most memorable part was getting Jessica and Emily’s ears pierced on 12/31/99, the end of the century, at the now-bankrupt Claire’s that pierced the ears of millions of teenage girls.  The second was Coachella where we rented a house that was walking distance to the event where we housed our kids and their friends for a few days.  Then this past week where we went to the Inman Conference.  Not sure I am running back but the desert is quite beautiful.

Fred and I spoke at the museum to a small group from the Inman conference on Disruptive Art, Disruptive Companies.  After our conversation with the group, we toured the Frey House.  Set high up in the San Jacinto mountains sits Albert Frey’s home.  Completely in 1964, a 700 square foot house literally set in the craggy rocks overseeing the valley below.

Frey kept the house to a minimum with built-in furniture so that everything has a place, similar to a boat.  He used inexpensive materials to create his home.  The property cost him $30K and it cost him $30K to build it.  Truth is, if you look at data, that is consistent with building today.  If you buy something for $1m and expect to gut it and rebuilt, expect it will be $1m to do it.

He was the master of modernism in Palm Springs.  Not sure the concept of the phone in the bathroom but there it is.

The kitchen is no different than a New York apartment except the appliances are from a different era.

The best is how Frey built his home around this boulder that is set smack in the middle of the home.

After we walked the home, we made our way to the Palm Springs Art Museum, that oversees the Frey House.  We were given a tour of the Warhol show from the Collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Family.  I would have preferred to see the other installations in the show.  Warhold was most definitely a creative genius but I think of him as a marketing graphic designer who pushed boundaries more than anything else.  No haters, please.

The album covers are great.

He did many shoes.  Years ago I was at a gallery who had many of the shoes available to buy.  What I noted to the gallerist is that none of them were signed.  It was part of the collective genius of Warhol’s factory.

His prints of people are iconic and many of them were commissioned.

Most iconic is the soup.  As he was grappling with what to create, his friend suggested he make art out of something that he used every day, and hence soup was it.