Was talking this morning with DG super-friend August about that special brand of envy that New York breeds: Jealousy over the creative accomplishments of others.

What inspired it was the New Yorker profile of young composer Nico Muhly. In it he comes off as brilliant, down to earth, privileged, lucky, cool—in other words, the perfect object of envy, hatred, and self-loathing by Gawker standards. But THEN August led me to the vicious comments about Stefan Sagmeister’s current show at Deitch. A sample:

yawn…wake me up when a graphic designer does something interesting…

My mum has most of those statements as fridge magnets.

More self-indulgent, overly pretentious arse water from Sagmeister then… fun fun fun!

Whatever you think about Sags, dude has done some clever stuff. But there’s so much hatred out there, and I suspect a lot of it in this case is about the fact that he’s showing at Deitch—that is, a fancy gallery rather than a billboard. Which made me think of this great article by Jim about the sort of envy and resentment that art breeds in graphic designers.

My point being, we all know that envy is the prevailing emotion in NY’s creative classes. Nothing new there. But surprising how little-aware people are when they’re in the throes of it.

Update: Sags just designed a new logo for Rem Koolhaas–designed museum.