Photo by Paula Court, courtesy PERFOMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and Gagosian

The cast in the Guggenheim rotunda in Francesco Vezzoli’s "Right You Are (If You Think You Are)"

Photo by Paula Court, courtesy PERFOMA, the Guggehneim Museum, and Gagosian

Cate Blanchett in the Guggenheim theater, before her entry into the rotunda during Francesco Vezzoli’s "Right You Are (If You Think You Are)." In the background, screens showing Anita Ekberg and Dianne Wiest

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Well, not entirely. Vezzoli may hide behind the quote from Pirandello about the premiere of Right You Are that appeared in the brochure: “It has truly been a great success. Not for the applause. But for the astonishment, the bafflement, the exasperation, and the dismay I caused the audience. You don’t know how much I enjoyed it.” But bad art begins with an artist, and Vezzoli comes out of this embarrassing affair looking no better than the rest of us who sat through the event, shaking our heads at its awfulness, but knowing that at the end we’d still offer polite applause.

And when the final lines were spoken, that’s exactly what we did. In a profile of Vezzoli that ran last week, New York magazine dubbed him an artist who “has his celebrity cake and eats it, too.” “I am often accused of wanting it both ways, to share in the celebrity of my actors, but at the same time, I crave for a sort of intellectual acceptance,” the magazine quotes him saying. In short, there was no cake. We ate it. It was terrible.

Editor's Note: The original version of this article incorrectly stated that the performance was produced by Gagosian Gallery; in fact, it was commissioned by PERFORMA and produced in collaboration with Gagosian and the Guggenheim.