Guess it is about art, anyway

Glancing over tabloid photos of singer Lily Allen with some old guy last week wasn't exactly riveting, but then again I didn't know who the dude was, or who he was married to.

Remember when Sam Taylor-Wood didn't show up for her talk at the Contemporary Arts Museum in the summer? I had heard it was all about a messy divorce, that she couldn't afford to leave England 'cause the shit hit the fan hard. I didn't know that she was married to Jay Jopling, the boss of fancy-pants gallery White Cube. I also didn't know that he was the white-haired dude making out with Lily Allen in those pics either. Too funny.

Good thing in England artists and gallerists are sucked into that all-to ugly celebrity limelight, and the Daily Mail has shit to spit galore:





"Some months ago Sam Taylor-Wood was asked the secret to a happy marriage. ‘Don’t compromise,’ she said."

...

"As a couple, Sam and Jay were the epicentre of a world which was glamorous and at the same time gritty. For them great financial success had not come at the cost of credibility – artistic or intellectual. Their profiles had risen without tipping into all-consuming celebrity.

Their position at the heart of an edgy, subversive scene and intricate network of friends and associates from every social stratum never once seemed in conflict with a family home, parenthood to two little girls and a marriage as conventional and stable as they come. That was then."

...

"Their marriage had survived so much, including two bouts of cancer for Sam, now 41. And it had brought them so much: their daughters Angelica, 11, and Jessie Phoenix, two, and – at the time the announcement was made – a reported fortune of £100million.

Each let it be known that this would be an amicable dismantling of their lives together and that they planned to continue living under the same splendid roof – their £10million three-storey townhouse in Marylebone, Central London (once famously thrown open for part of Kate Moss’s 30th birthday celebrations) until the details were settled.

But that, too, was way back then – and, crucially, before pictures of 45-year-old Jay and 23-year-old singer Lily Allen together confirmed rumours of a fling and left Sam ‘devastated’ by her estranged husband’s indiscretion."

...

"One close friend said: ‘Sam has said that the situation at the moment is very, very hard. She and Jay want to do everything they can to protect their girls, but the truth is that the situation is getting very sticky and unpleasant. Sam could not believe it when Jay started dating Lily Allen. She thought it was below the belt as they had agreed neither of them would start dating until the dust had settled. Sam was livid because it really upset Angelica.

'She is at an age where she reads the papers and it was awful for her to have to go to school the next day. Sam also felt very publicly humiliated. She had suspected that Jay was seeing people but she thought he would honour their agreement. Now she is having all sorts of doubts about how he behaved during their marriage.’

Those doubts have, perhaps inevitably, crystallised into a determination on Sam’s part not to walk away from the 11-year union without securing what portion of their wealth she believes she is entitled to."

Sam Taylor-Wood, That White Rush, 2007




via the Mail