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A work by Barbara Kruger in Spruth Magers Lee's (Cologne/Munich/London) booth features the catatonic looking face of a woman undergoing some sort of arduous cosmetic procedure. Across her face is written text descriptive of any number of patrons of Tuesday's VIP preview: "Super rich, Ultra gorgeous, Extra skinny, Forever young."

And yet, in front of the Kruger, the gallery has cleverly installed a sort of reality check, a marble bench by Jenny Holzer into which is chiseled the following grim message: "More than once I've awakened with tears running down my cheeks. I have had to think whether I was crying or whether it was involuntary, like drooling." Now that's what life is really like!

…AND SERENDIPITOUS JUXTAPOSITION

Then there is a very nice, albeit inadvertent, juxtaposition with the Kruger/Hozer duet. Across the aisle, at Galleria Christian Stein's (Milan) booth, is a large, new mirror painting by Michelangelo Pistoletto. Entitled Reporters, it features three photojournalists moving into the picture from the left, armed with and aiming their hulking cameras at, well, at you, if you stand before that unpainted portion of the mirror.

Ah, the paparazzi treatment—befitting you if you are super rich, ultra gorgeous and so forth. If you are merely a reporter, however, tough luck. Then it's boring, and the Pistoletto is just reporters taking pictures of a reporter. Then again, there would be a sort of infinite regression: reporters reporting on a reporter! A picture about taking pictures of the picture's viewer! Mindblowing.

…AND THEN JOHN BALDESSARI

But all at once, matters metatextual and metavisual and metameta had to be thrown aside because a famous conceptual artist had appeared. It was John Baldessari! That's the thing about art fairs—artists. The producers themselves, sometimes they are hanging about. So Baldessari pops by Spruth Magers Lee's booth and stands in front of his artwork there and some people take some photographs, paparazzi lite.

It's very fitting for Baldessari—photos of him with his art—because his work has itself always been pretty meta, pretty cerebral. One thing to be said about Baldessari is that he would have a hard time being inconspicuous. Unlike artists smaller in stature who can dash about unobserved, Baldessari is a tall, imposing man. With his mop of white hair and longish white beard and his general alacrity—which may come from teaching, he is known to be a brilliant teacher out there in L.A.—he has something of a Santa Claus aspect. He is hard to miss.