Although not everyone was lucky enough to rack-up a sale on day one, there was plenty of challenging, unusual, and high quality work on offer. At Santa Monica–based Copro Nason Gallery’s booth, painter Thomas Woodruff was signing copies of the Laguna Art Museum catalog for “In the Land of Retinal Delights,” a show focusing on artists who have graced the pages of Juxtapoz magazine. The booth had accompanying works on offer, including Appetite for Destruction (1978), a stunning and controversial painting by Robert Williams, the founder of Juxtapoz, which was being offered for $350,000. The work features a robotic lover offering flowers to a woman who, with her underwear around her ankles, looks like she has been raped, while an alien pounces over a fence poised to attack. Appetite was used for the cover of Guns N’ Roses’ first album of the same name in 1987, before controversy forced Geffen Records to move it to the inside cover. Copro was also offering original art by the king of underground comix, Robert Crumb, like a cover of XYZ Comix from 1972 for $100,000.

Perugi Artecontemporanea gallery, from Padova, Italy, had the hilariously violent animations of Laurina Paperina on display. Paperina has pitted different artists against one another in short DVDs shown on small monitors. In a match of Shirin Neshat versus Paul McCarthy, Neshat eventually beats McCarthy to a bloody pulp after he lifts up her skirt and exposes himself. The videos are going for $1,500 for the first 4 editions out of 10, or $3,200 for an entire installation of three DVDs. Gallerist Andrea Perugi mentioned that a fan of Paperina’s work was Norwegian collector Erik Snorre Ofjord, who had stopped by the booth. The president of the French private foundation La Maison Rouge, Antoine de Galbert, had also made an appearance.

At Rosamund Felsen Gallery’s booth, a collector stopped by trying to get a deal on Steve Hurd’s The Roar #3 (2009), an oil-on-canvas work of a lion for $7,000. “Is it negotiable?” she asked. Felsen agreed to discuss it further, and the potential buyer said she’d be back. “There is a lot of uncertainty,” Felsen admitted. “We don’t know how long it will take to bounce back, or should I say creep back.” The veteran dealer of 31 years, based in Santa Monica, said important collectors like the Rubells had stopped by her booth. Kaz Oshiro’s Fender Deluxe Reverb Amp 1 (2008–09), made of acrylic and Bondo on stretched canvas, was a dead ringer for an actual amplifier, although a bit more costly at $20,000. Oshiro’s work references artists John McCracken and Donald Judd, as well as the Finish Fetish artists.

The first day of Pulse seemed to be full of hope, and although it remains to be seen how everything will pan out over the weekend, (mostly) everyone started off the fair with his chin up and a positive attitude. For an economic downturn, collectors, curators, and artists came out in force, although most likely with thinner wallets.