New Art City by Jed Perl: book review

New Art City by Jed Perl: book review
This book, along with de Kooning: An American Master by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan, covers the well-worn territory of the “heroic” period of American Art and the importance of New York City as the locus that made the new art possible. Indeed in Mr. Perl’s book, subtitled Manhattan at Mid-Century, the City itself is the main character whereas in the de Kooning book, the city is the backdrop and catalyst for the remarkable career of one painter.
The history of this period has become myth, legend, caricature and satire for generations yet both books offer fresh insight and perspective from a vantage point that is several steps removed from the gallery propaganda and art world hype inimical to books about this period. To speak of the “triumph of American painting” was to glorify and obfuscate an historical shift of power from the Old World to the New, from the old guard to the avant-garde.
I have been immensely pleased with the writing in both of these books: the story is told in a straight forward jargon-free and direct style that is appealing and fresh as the art that is described. I haven’t yet finished New Art City but I am confident that it will sustain the sense of drama, destiny and desire for the new art in the new city for many readers as the Stevens/Swan book has done for de Kooning.

Drawings by Vincent

Get in the van, go to the Met, see the drawings. You won't be disappointed.

22nd St. Double Bill: Daniel Libeskind / Sue Williams

Freedom Tower by Daniel Libeskind

Painting by Sue Williams

Daniel Libeskind@Max Protech
A retrospective for the battered architect of the new WTC tower.
Opens Oct. 7 (now open)
511 W 22nd St.


Sue Williams@303 Gallery, 525 W 22nd St.:
this show of recent paintings by an artist at the top of her game, right next door to the Libesking exhibit at Max Protech.

Top 10 shows, top 10 Chelsea galleries, top 10 small museums, etc. to see right now

-from The Autumn Art Scene The L Magazine

What Art to see in NYC: Fall '05 (part II)

More Art to see in NYC: Fall '05:


Jeremy Blake; sodium Fox @ Feigen Contemporary
Went to see this latest projected "time-based painting" today... great activity for a rainy afternoon. Jeremy Blake continues to intrique me with his multifarius multilayered multimedia extravaganzas. Definitely worth checking out even if the weather improves.
535 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011
Tel 212.929.0500


Memling's Portraits is at the Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, (212) 288-0700, through Dec. 31

View from the Eiffel Tower

Artdaily.com - The First Art Newspaper on the Net

Artdaily.com - The First Art Newspaper on the Net

Artdaily.com - The First Art Newspaper on the Net
3D images of Architecture

Google Homage to Frank Lloyd Wright

This from a CAD blog...could't resist "borrowing" it.

Two Franks

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao by Frank Gehry
http://www.rockwool.dk/sw58000.asp
Beauty and the Industrial City
“Not since the Sidney Opera House, has a building achieved more recognition and admiration than the new Guggenheim art museum in Bilbao (1997).”
Definitely one of the first buildings of the 21st Century.

Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water
http://www.paconserve.org/fw-building.asp

The Story of Fallingwater
“Fallingwater is recognized as one of Wright's most acclaimed works, and in a 1991 poll of members of the American Institute of Architects, it was voted "the best all-time work of American architecture." It is a supreme example of Frank Lloyd Wright's concept of organic architecture, which promotes harmony between man and nature through design so well integrated with its site that buildings, furnishings, and surroundings become part of a unified, interrelated composition. Wright embraced modern technology to achieve this, designing spaces for living which expressed architecturally the expansive freedom of the American frontier.”

What Art to see in NYC: Fall '05

Art to See in NYC:
Russia! @ the Guggenheim


This show is exquisite. My favorites are the early modern masterworks collected by Sergei Shchukin. The Picasso and Matisse paintings from this collection alone are worth the price of admission.

"Shchukin collected passionately, and he largely based his decisions on instinct, focusing on one or a few artists at a time. Among his favorites was Claude Monet, whose work he first acquired from 1898–1904. From 1904–10 he collected the works of Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh; and from 1910–14, he championed Matisse, Picasso, and André Derain. Shchukin developed an especially close relationship with Matisse, buying thirty-seven of his paintings within a few years and inviting him to Russia." -from The Guggenheim web site

Van Gogh Drawings @ the Met
This is one for the ages.

Jeremy Blake @ Feigen Contemporary
“Time-based painter” Jeremy Blake recent work including his new film Sodium Fox on view now at Feigen Contemporary.
535 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011
Tel 212.929.0500

Bronzino/Velazquez : Linear and Painterly

From the classic Principles of Art History(the problem of the development of style in later art) comes this comparison of two modes of seeing and consequently two modes of painting: linear (Bronzino) and Painterly (Velazquez).


In the words of Heinrich Wölfflin:
Bronzino

“is particularly interesting as the presentment of a sumptuous costume perceived by an exclusively linear taste. No human eye can see things in this way—I mean with this even firmness of line. Not for a moment does the artist depart from the absolute distinctness of the object, it is as if, in the representation of a bookcase, an artist were to attempt to paint book by book, each equally outlined, while an eye attuned to appearance only grasps the shimmer playing over the whole in which, in varying degrees, the separate form is submerged. Velasquez had an eye thus attuned to appearance. The dress of his little princess was embroidered in zigzag patterns: what he gives, however, is not the ornamentation in itself, but the shimmering image of the whole. Seen uniformly form a distance, the patterns have lost their distinctness, yet without looking indistinct; we can see perfectly clearly what is meant, but the forms cannot be grasped, they come and go, the highlights of the fabric play over them, and the whole is dominated by the rhythm of the light-waves … which also fills the background.

p.45-6

Learning in Motion: Web Animation

Here is an elephant walking, based on the work of Eadweard Muybridge.

This is an article about animation.

Animated Gifs from Math World

Animated Gifs from Math World
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/topics/AnimatedGIFs.html

Tessellations
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/topics/Tiling.html

Animated GIFS

Animated GIFs in Photoshop 7 and ImageReady
http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=31536&rl=1
This is an in-depth tutorial on creating animated GIFS. Refer to this article to review everything you need to know to create animated.

Examples of Student Animated GIFS

Buoyancy:
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/gallery/animations_buoyancy.html
These animations were created by 8th graders (at Poly Prep) to demonstrate their knowledge of the Archimedes Principle.

Savage Earth:
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/gallery/animations.html
My students (again, at Poly Prep) were asked to create animation to illustrate earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes.

Cell Biology:
http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/gallery/animations_cell.html
These animations were created by 7th grade students (yet again, at Poly Prep) as part of a science unit on cellular processes.

Introduction to Animation Using Flash

What is Flash?
Macromedia Flash is a multimedia graphics program specially for use on the Web
Flash enables you to create interactive "movies" on the Web
Flash uses vector graphics, which means that the graphics can be scaled to any size without losing clarity/quality
Flash does not require programming skills and is easy to learn
-from W3Schools.com
http://www.w3schools.com/flash/flash_intro.asp

Animation Basics

Idlewild: Tutorials: Bouncing Ball
http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/01b/bball.shtml
This is everything you need to understand the basic principles of animation, especially squash and stretch.

Cartoonster: Fun Animation Tutorials
http://www.cartoonster.com/
This site demonstrates the effect of frame rate (frames per second). Squash and stretch are also covered again in this simple tutorial

Flash Basics

Phong (Flash Animation Tutorial)
http://www.phong.com/tutorials/flash/animation/index2.php
“When an object squashes and stretches, it appears to be composed of a softer, organic, elastic material. Objects which do not stretch appear rigid and plain.”

Acky.net Tutorials: Flash : Bouncing Ball
http://www.acky.net/tutorials/flash/bouncing_ball/
This is another approach to the bouncing ball, try it this way for homework: try to understand “Easing In” and “Easing Out”.

Macromedia Software
http://www.macromedia.com/
Download the trial version of Flash MX 2004 from this site, if you want to work at home.


FLASH Tutorials:Animation the old Fashioned Way with Flash
http://www.samspublishing.com/articles/article.asp?p=28807&rl=1

Animation Tutorials for Flash
http://webdesign.about.com/cs/flashtutsanimation/

STOP MOTIONFrame Thief
http://www.framethief.com/download.htmlShareware for stop motion animation


Examples of Animation
Schlumberger SEED, the science education web site.
Using Macromedia Flash, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe ImageReady, I created these animations to illustrate a unit on Science in the Bathroom.

In the Bathroom
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/bathroom/index.htm
Using Macromedia Flash, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe ImageReady, I created these animations to illustrate a unit on science in the Bathroom.

Bubbles
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/bathroom/bubbles.htm
Illustrations and a flash animation linked on this page; “Watch the soap bubbles form”

Mist on the Mirror
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/bathroom/mist.htm

Floating Duck
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/bathroom/duck.htm

The Bath is Too Cold!
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/bathroom/toohot.htm

Flushing Vortex
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/bathroom/vortex.htm

The Drying Hairdryer
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/watch/bathroom/dryer.htm

Illustrations and animation about other science topics:
The Cartesian Diver
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/lab/diver/index.htm

Permeability
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/lab/permeability/index.htm

Build a Buckyball
http://www.seed.slb.com/en/scictr/lab/buckyball/index.htm


Salvadori Foundation education and the built environment.
http://www.salvadori.org/aoc
This site is an animated companion to The Art of Construction by Mario Salvadori. I created over 150 illustrations and animations on this site.

Floating Island To Travel Around Manhattan Island

Floating Island
Just got back from the launch celebration of Robert Smithson’s “Floating Island To Travel Around Manhattan Island” on Pier 45 in the far West Village. This Art event promises to be one of those quintessential New York experiences not unlike Christo and Jean-Claude’s Gates Project seen just over six month’s ago in Central Park. 2005 may be remembered as "the year Conceptual Art went mainstream."

Last Chance to see the Matisse: The Fabric of Dreams @ The Met.

This is a totally enjoyable exhibit of the paintings of Henri Matisse displayed alongside many fabrics from the painter;s private collection. In some cases, the fabrics are more beautiful than the paintings. If you get a chance to see it before it closes on the 25th of September, you won’t regret it. Matisse: The Fabric of Dreamsis a quiet and elegant presentation of overwhelming beauty.

Aboriginal Art in Northern Queensland, Australia

Well, it's certainly a long way from NYC but here we are in North Eastern Australia in search of the real deal: authentic aboriginal rock art, that is. Well, after being inundated with innumerable "aboriginal" art galleries in all of the tourist centers, I finally got to see some of the actual rock art in situ. I imagine it's almost like seeing the cave paintings at Lascaux in France or Altimara, Spain (also on my list of things to see).
While there has been little of worth to see in any of the "galleries" in Port Douglas, Cairns, Palm Cove or in the Daintree Village, Mother Nature has provided us with more wildlife than I have seen in a lifetime.

Animation Links

Animation Links

Animation the old Fashioned Way with Flash
http://www.samspublishing.com/articles/article.asp?p=28807&rl=1

Frame Thief
http://www.framethief.com/download.html
Shareware for stop motion animation

Creating Animated GIFS
http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=31536&rl=1

Animation Tutorials for Flash
http://webdesign.about.com/cs/flashtutsanimation/

Cinemation: History of Animation
http://library.thinkquest.org/C0110532/index.htm

Einstein / Picasso: An Interesting Read

Reading Einstein/Picasso Space Time and the Beauty That Causes Havoc by Arthur I. Miller, I was struck by the following quote within a quote:

Positivism fit very well with the materialism of the day and its unsavory association with rampant industrialism and literary and theatrical commercialism. The avant-garde felt the world was drowning in mediocrity. There was “a sense prevalent among intellectuals of alienation and exclusion from the forefront of public life, coupled with a political disillusionment which was exacerbated by the scandals and corruption of contemporary political life."
-Keith Beaumont, 1984 Alfred Jarry: A Critical and Biographical Study. Leicester: Leister University Press

Sounds a little too close to home with the current “Two Hummers in every Garage” time we live in. N’est-ce pas, mes amis?

Freedom Tower Redux

"I feel better about this than the original," said the building's chief architect, David M. Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. "The building is simpler, architecturally. It is unique, yet it subtly recalls, in the sky, the tragedy that has happened here."

I feel better too. The original design with it’s asymmetrical tower intended to mimic and parallel the nearby Statue of Liberty seemed rigid and forced. The forms lacked elegance and seemed contrived and contorted.
The original design featured a torgued rectangle which is an inherently unstable design visually; this is not the kind of message you want to send in a structure on this site. The new design is much sleeker and the crystalline structure speaks of clarity and crispness.
According to Nicolai Ouroussoff, of the NY Times:

The new obelisk-shaped tower, which stands on an enormous 20-story concrete pedestal, evokes a gigantic glass paperweight with a toothpick stuck on top.

Resources@Abstract Art Dot Com

Abstract Art Dot Com
A good resource for seeing abstract painting and sculpture from 1960 to the end of the last century (not much in the way of 21st Century work).

An interesting take on the post-painterly abstractionists, color field painters, minimalists, geometric abstractionists, abstract expressionists and often-neglected (some say rightly so) groups: the lyrical abstractionists and abstract illusionists.

More on Sean Sculley

"Bricks and Mortar" indeed, keeping the tradition of abstract painting alive:

For almost thirty years Sean Scully, at times single-handedly, has kept the tradition of abstract painting vital and renewed. Employing a vocabulary of horizontal and vertical forms that is deceptively reductive, the artist both humanizes and sanctifies the formal language of painting. Scully’s paintings envelop us physically with their internal structure and light. The artist’s recent paintings, known as the Wall of Light series, are inspired by and reference architecture and light and body and light, seeming opposites reconciled in the picture plane.

See images from the Galerie Lelong web site.

FERNANDO RAMIRES

Pissarro's embroidery, Cézanne's brick-and-mortar.

Holland Cotter of the NY Times gets it exactly right in his description of the difference between the two 'Pioneers of modern Painting':Pissarro's embroidery, Cézanne's brick-and-mortar. Wish I said that...actually I tried to convey a similar distinction in my review (see below) but, truth be told, Mr. Cotter "laid it down and it stays down."

Funny, "bricks and mortar" is an apt description of the latest show by Sean Sculley@ Galerie Lelong in Chelsea going on right now.

“He has built a 9 x 12 foot stone wall of sweeping brushstrokes, with flashes of light for mortar.”
-From the Village Voice listings
Thru June 25th. 528 W. 26th Street, Chelsea

William Kentridge@Prospeck Park

Among the very best concerts ever held in Prospect Park just ended.
The concert featured a performance by Hugh Masekela, the jazz trumpeter par excellance. After a spirited and moving set by Mr. Masekela and his band, an unprecedented presentation of a different sort took place at the bandshell.
William Kentridge presented 9 Drawings for Projection - a collection of animations accompanied by a string quartet conducted by Philip Miller.

Now I see the connection between Robert Gober’s latest work and the drawings on William Kantridge: the straight-forward hard-nosed graphic style is common to both.

William Kentridge: Quite the Opposite of Cartoons
by Philippe Moins


Soho Eckstein is a fat person; some kind of real-estate magnate. With his striped suits and pudgy features, you would place him somewhere between Bolshevik caricatures of capitalists and the expressionist images of the Weimar Republic.

Felix Teitelbaum we only see from the back--to begin with at least. Passive and dreamy, he's around for the rise of Soho Eckstein, and again for his downfall, which is the only time we see Soho in a more humane light. Around them, South Africa, confiscated by the whites, breaks free. Felix only becomes active when he deceives Soho by having an affair with Sarah Eckstein, the entrepreneur's wife. Even then, only his tongue is active, as if his sacred body dedicated all of its life to this substitute for sex.

In each short animation, Felix Teitelbaum progressively resembles his creator William Kentridge more and more, like those self-portraits from the Renaissance in which the artist depicts himself in one corner of the picture. However, there is also something of Kentridge in Soho Eckstein, this privileged white man who thinks that nothing can resist him, and builds massive monuments to his own work.

In a universe of devastated landscapes, wounded bodies, and out-dated means of communication (bakelite telephones, megaphones, and stadium-style loudspeakers) and measuring instruments (theodolites and sextants) signaling unknown shores, the heroes of this animated drawing evolve--and the term animated drawings can be taken in its most literal sense.

In contrast to the first episodes in which Soho and apartheid absolutely rule, where everything is either good or bad, black and white, as judged by our western viewpoint, a more subtle, moving and sincere point of view followed, culminating with Felix in Exile, History of the Main Complaint, and Weighing and Wanting.

The uncertainty of the times and the relationships between people is mirrored in the landscape and figures which are rendered in black, sometimes soft, sometimes hesitant, charcoal, drawn mostly in shadows and sketches rather than with well-defined details.

-Read more here.

Cézanne / Pissarro@MoMA: Two Thumbs Up

This tightly organized and focused exploration of the relationship between two precursors of modern painting makes for perfect viewing on a Summer's day. For us who have become accustomed to the radical simplifications and distortions of Picasso, these paintings seem tame and almost timid, yet it is the incredible and indelible influence of Cézanne that made Cubism possible in the first place.
A revelation of this show is how important Pissarro was to Cézanne. Many paintings by Pissarro directly inspired the paintings by the “Man-from-Aix”. Almost as Picasso and Braque would do in the next century, these two painters worked together to forge a new vision. Also like Braque and Picasso, it is difficult to tell who painted what at several junctures in thjeir shared output.
A general observation about the main difference between the two painters: in almost all cases (a major exception being and early still life by Pissarro in which the paint was laid on thick with a palette knife) Cézanne is the bolder of the two. Pissarro tended to break his forms into smaller units while Monsieur Cézanne tended towards a less nuanced and blockier application of paint. In fact, it is easy to see the appeal of divisionism or pointillism would have for Pissarro, who became a practitioner and fellow-traveller with Signat and Seurat.

MoMA membership: the best deal in Town!

As I've said before, for 75 clams, you can't beat the membership @ MoMA... I just recieved 2 more guest passes (a toal of 4 this year). Considering the $20. admission price, what's not to like? I am planning to visit tomorrow (Wed.) to see the Freidlander show.

Update: just got back from MoMA; got in to the member's preview of the Cezanne/Pisarro exhibit: thumbs up, more to follow.

"Vermeer in Bosnia" : A Summer Read

I couldn't resist this book, the title alone grabbed me. I have always been a "Vermeer nut" and this book jumped off the shelf at the Superhero Supply Store in Park Slope.

Read an interview with the author, Lawrence Wechsler on the American Prospect Online.

One of my goals in life is to see all of the known paintings of Vermeer; there are about 35 of them. I estimate that I have seen a total of about 25-6 (there are 4 at the Met, 3 at the Frick and another 4 at the National Gallery); I sort of cheated by by getting tickets to the Vermeer show at the National Gallery about ten years ago…but the idea is to travel to all of the museums. It remains a goal. (I have seen The Art of Painting at the Kunthistorisches Museum in Vienna and The Lacemaker and The Astronomer at the Louvre).

Of course, there was a Vermeer painting stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum which may never be recovered…

Read more about Museums with Vermeer Paintings from the Essential Vermeer site.

Exhibits to See This Week: a personal listing

Okay, okay…things to do THIS WEEK:
I have a little time off to check out the following shows:
Wednesday or Thursday (Moma is closed Tuesday)
Freidlander @ MoMA:
First of all, if you haven’t figured out that the membership fee of $75. is the best deal in town, well I guess you like waiting in line to spend the $20. on admission. Being a member gets you in with no wait, (I even like the “members coat check”) and this year I received two guest passes…well worth the $75. Here’s the rub: I bet the membership fee rises next year to at least $100. You heard it first, here. Even then I may consider the membership but that depends on the exhibition schedule and how often I would plan to visit. Support the Arts! Join a museum!
About the exhibit, Freidlander promises to be a knockout, he's done it all in photography. I also want to check out the Highline exhibit about the planning and design of the elevated railway that courses through Chelsea and the West Villiage.

Wednesday or Thursday (The Whitney is closed Monday and Tuesday)

Remote Viewing (Invented Worlds in Recent Painting and Drawing) @ the Whitney: A major overview of recent abstract paintings and drawings.
Did you know that there is an “Artist” or “teacher” category for membership at the Whitney that is only $40.? Nice deal if you plan to visit a few times a year, it’s a no-brainer…again, no lines and invites to member previews and other perks. With this year being a biennial
http://www.whitney.org/exhibition/biennial.shtml
year, makes even more sense. I am always impressed with the way the Whitney smacks me out of my complacency with cutting-edge shows time after time. Last year’s standouts: Bill Viola, Tim Hawkinson and Ellen Gallagher all blew me right out of the water, absolutely right on.


Thursday or Friday (The BMA is closed Monday and Tuesday)
Monet’s London @ BMA

I know, I know Impressionism is so two centuries ago and I wouldn’t dare see this show on the weekend; the idea is to get there early on Friday (around 10 a.m.) and enjoy this pairing of Monet, Whistler, Derain and a host of photographs and stereographs.

Check back to see reviews of these exhibits; not bad pickings for a slow week in the city.

Flash Art By the People

Here's an interesting take on the Flash revolution:

Cartoons By the People For the People
— When Disney closed the doors of its Orlando, Florida animation studio in January 2004, many saw it as the death knell for traditional hand-drawn animation. Of the 18 big-studio animated films to be released this year, only a handful will be done in 2D animation and of those, only a couple will even make it into theaters, according to KeyFrame-Online.com. In 2001, the first Oscar for an animated film was given out and the 3D animated Shrek took the prize.

IMHO, I find a lot of the Flash animation that is out there to be "rude, crude and insensitive" but the fact is that Flash makes animation easy. Flash puts the means of production in the hands of the artist and changes the equation of studio/assistants/budget.

To see some of the Studio 827 Flash Art see "In the Bathroom"
created for the SEED Science and education web site.

Kindred Spirits: Bellamy/di Suvero@Storm King

If you’ve never been to the Storm King Art Center in Mountainville, N.Y. do yourself a favor and take a day trip. The current exhibit reveals two kindred spirits in the most beautiful Hudson River landscape; while this does not replace the “Kindred Spirits” recently sold by the NYPL ( perhaps a void to large to fill), it may soothe the soul and provide a little respite from the heat wave.

“comprising more than eighty of Richard Bellamy’s photographs of the sculptures of Mark di Suvero and more than twenty works by di Suvero opens at the Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York, on June 8,2005. Richard Bellamy and Mark di Suvero is the first exhibition to bring together the work of these two close friends and, as the exhibition reveals, kindred spirits.”

Directions and info. to the Storm King Art Center

"The New Illiterati"

"It is not the person ignorant of writing but the one ignorant of photography who will be the illiterate of the future" - Lazlo Moholy Nagy


-Walter Benjamin "News About Flowers" from Art of the Twentieth Century A Reader edited by Jason Gaiger and Paul Wood. p.110

Jim Nutt, Henry Darger et al @ Feigen Contemporary

An interesting mix of artists in the Life and Limb exhibit at Feigen Contemporary (535 West 20th St., Chelsea, through July 30th). With 26 artists in this show, it’s a mixed bag but there are enough quirky connections across media, decades, styles and genres to make for an interesting cocktail. My favorites here include the three early modern titans Max Beckman, James Ensor and George Grosz coupled with a few more contemporary nuts such as Jim Nutt and Henry Darger. This is a fun show for the summer doldrums.


Feigen Comtemporary site.

Lars Arrhenius
C-prints by Lars

London Underground, also by Lars
Check it out, fresh and funky C-prints of the London tube.
Lars has an interesting C-print in the Life and Limb show.

Iron deficiency in Bilbao Diets

This just in from the NY Times Arts discussion forum:

datsmi2 - 2:15 AM ET June 9, 2005 (#8821 of 8822)

Serra's new installation at Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

At the recent opening of Richard's Serra's entire floor thru exhibition of his new installation at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao,Spain I observed a dozen or more desperate urchin poor children pushing up against Richard Serra's new sculpture kissing the surface hoping that the art would provide them with substance and succor and the needed iron they lacked in their diets. It was a truely inspirational sight to behold.

I wonder if they still use lead-based paints in Spain?

Recommended Viewing: Julio Gonzalez@ Instituto Cervantes

Richard Serra’s most recent extra large-scale steel sculptures are Janus-like in that they look both towards a new century and back at the last. These massive torqued ellipses, spirals and maze-like enclosures represent the culmination of the tradition of welded metal sculpture started by Julio Gonzalez and subsequently Picasso in the early-thirties of the last century.

Looking forward to this new century, Serra’s work seems to predict an Art that is industrial in scale, technological in means and unpredictable in effect. If you haven’t walked through the sculptures themselves you have not experienced the intense wonder and indescribable vertigo induced by such seemingly cold and impersonal slabs of rusted steel. I haven’t been to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain but it is definitely on the list. A close second would be a trip to see the Julio Gonzalez exhibit; easily reached with a Metro card.


Recommended FREE Event Through June 18
Exhibition
Julio González: Sculptures and Drawings
Instituto Cervantes Gallery
Tuesdays through Fridays: 12:30 to 6:30 pm
Saturday: 10:00 am to 1:30 pm
Sundays and Mondays: closed
Collection of the
Institut Valencià d Art Modern (IVAM)
Free admission
Instituto Cervantes at Amster Yard
211-215 East 49th Street
New York, NY 10017
Tlf:1 212 308 77 20
Read the NY Times Review of the Julio Gonzalez exhibit here.

What Art to See in NYC: Late Spring into Summer 2005

Wowie-zowie! Late Spring in NYC and the Art world still offers many interesting exibits to see before the sleepy summer.
Springtime in Nueva York:
Here is my "to do" list, check back to see reviews and postings related to this rejuvenating and refreshing encounter with the best in museums, galleries and off-beat locales not-just-for-locals.
My short-list (not in order of prominence or priority):

Hilla Rebay: The Art of Tomorrow @ the Guggenheim Museum through Aug. 10.
Anyone with an interest in abstract painting and the development of abstraction in America should see this exhibit.
Remote Viewing (Invented Worlds in Recent Painting and Drawing) @ the Whitney through October 9th. If you are interested in some contemporary takes on abstraction head to the "uptown concrete bunker for difficult art during difficult times." BTW, the Whitney has won (in compromise) the bid for expansion after several false starts over the last decades; this is a good thing as we need the Whitney to kick around every other year for the biennnial mishmash.

The Whitney is Dead! Long Live the Whitney!

Did I fail to mention Monet's London at the Brooklyn Museum of Art? See this one on a weekday; Impressionism always draws crowds.

"the movement of abstract art...bears within itself at almost every point the mark of the changing material and psychological conditions surrounding modern culture." p.31
-Meyer Shapiro "The Nature of Abstract Art" from Art of the Twentieth Century A Reader edited by Jason Gaiger and Paul Wood.


On another planet entirely is Neo Rauch @ David Zwirner through June 18th. Read about it on another artblog.

A Little Help From My Friends

The skinny, my friends: My entryKrooklyn
http://krooklyn.contagiousmedia.org/ is now in 6th Place and comin' on strong!
If you have a blog that links to this site, we gain in our quest for #1. We are in 6th place and hope to move up to fifth place with YOUR HELP.
You hold the key to unlock this door
BTW, contest ends in 2 weeks...

Krooklyn, "Every Blog has a little Krooklyn in it."

What will happen to NYC Arts in the off-season?
With the end of the art season and the summer doldrums approaching, NYC Arts will finish out the Contagious Media Showdown and go into slo-mo until the end of August...we may (or may not) be posting from down under at the Great Barrier Reef when the spirit moves us.

Johns Reviewed in the NY Times

..."another round of seeming constipation and truculence."
-from today's NY Times Arts section. It's nice when the MSM (main steam media) agrees with us after the fact...

J.J. @ M.M.: A Little Disappointing

Jasper Johns is an indisputably important artist; one responsible for helping chart the way out of the Abstract Expressionist corner that painters found themselves in the late fifties. That said, his latest showing (his first showing of new work in eight years) is disappointing in that it consists of 30-odd variations on the same image; the serial technique (essentially variations of the same image) is a bit long in the tooth by now, in this case a catenary curve described by an actual hanging piece of string in some cases and a painted string in others.

-from NYC Arts, "I quote myself to myself."

As you all know by now, Contagious Media Showdown is a sort of "stupid web site" contest. We have an entry that has been picking up a little momentum as of late:
Krooklyn
http://krooklyn.contagiousmedia.org/
Please link to my site, we are serious contenders in the blog links category, thanks to y'all/
You hold the key to unlock this door
BTW, contest ends in 3 weeks...and we can go back to being just a plain old boring art blog.

Krooklyn, "Every Town has a little Krooklyn in it.

Stopped by to see the latest exhibit What Sound Does A Color Make? at EYEBEAM earlier today, it sounded more promising then it actually delivered, but this after a quick walk-through. I plan to go back and give it another shot; EYEBEAM has the spirit and the Moxie to be a real player in the NYC arts scene.

Misc. on Blogger

Well, here's a neat blogger person who supports our Krooklyn efforts... and we return the favor with a "link back". Misc. is a sort of miscellaneous collection of Art related items, pretty neat at that it is too.
Can youse guys out there with a blog link to Krooklyn too? All favors will be repaid in full. See below for more info.

Krooklyn is at #7 in the Contagious Media Showdown, Technorati category.

A Little Help Goes a Long Way

Short version: My entryKrooklyn
http://krooklyn.contagiousmedia.org/ is now in 6th Paceand comin' on strong!
If you have a blog that links to this site, we gain in our quest for #1. We are in 6th place and hope to move up to fifth place with YOUR HELP.
You hold the key to unlock this door
BTW, contest ends in 3 weeks...

Krooklyn, "Every Town has a little Krooklyn in it."

Krooklyn in Kontagious Media Kontest

Short version: Contagious Media Showdown is a sort of "stupid web site" contest. This is my entry:
Krooklyn
http://krooklyn.contagiousmedia.org/
Please link to my site, we are serious contenders in the running; in fact we are in 6th place and hope to move up to fifth place with YOUR HELP.
You hold the key to unlock this door
BTW, contest ends in 3 weeks...

Krooklyn, "Every Town has a little Krooklyn in it."

Krooklyn : Dumber and Dumberer

O.K. once again bloggers, here's the deal: Contagious Media Showdown is a sort of "stupid web site" contest. This is my entry:
Krooklyn
http://krooklyn.contagiousmedia.org/
If you have a Blog, please link to my site in order that we may have a respectable showing.C'mon bloggers, together we could be big.
For more info. see previous posts.
Thanks again for all of your support, it will come back to you, scout's honor.

Krooklyn, "Just like I pictured it."

Losing sleep, Contagious Media ? Robert Slutzky Passes On

Not to beat a dead horse, but jsut like Giacomo and Aflleet Alex, our entry in the Contagious Media Showdown can not be counted out. Our site, Krooklyn (a work in progress) is moving up to # 47 overall (out of 85 total) and more importantly holding steady at #8 in the separate category of "Technorati".

Here's how you can help:
just link to Krooklyn on your blog, and we gain in the standings.

What's at stake here? Pride, bragging rights and a juicy check for a thousand skackeroos... not to shabby for a poor boy from Krooklyn.

On another note, the painter Robert Slutzky recently passed on. His paintings were in the great tradition of Mondrian’s New York City paintings; he will be missed .

Krooklyn in the Top Ten! #48 Overall!!

Krooklyn
http://krooklyn.contagiousmedia.org/
is at # 10 in the "Technorati" category, as of this moment, thanks to the bloggers who have created a link to my site, this is definitely respectable and all kindness will be paid back in full.

"What does "Krooklyn have to do with Art?"...
Well, there is that exhibit at the museum of Contemporary Art called "Contagious Media" which is in conjunction with the Contagious Media Showdown presented by the folks at EYEBEAM...

Krooklyn Movin' On Up!

My entry
Krooklyn
http://krooklyn.contagiousmedia.org/
is at # 48 as of this moment, thanks to all of you who have checked it out and also special thanks to the bloggers who show me the love with a link, big thank you; we are looking to finish strong so keep it coming.
Reminder: a Blog that links to my site, gives us a strong showing in the "Technorati" category.
Just like Giacomo, just like Afleet Alex we are not out of the race.
Please refer to earlier posts if you need more info.

"Krooklyn, My Krooklyn"...sung to the tune of "Maryland, My Maryland" recently heard at the Preakness.

"What does this have to do with Art?"...
Absolutely Nothing.

Calling All Bloggers! Throw Me A Bone Here...(pleeze)

O.K. bloggers, here's the script: Contagious Media Showdown is a sort of "stupid web site" contest. This is my entry:
Krooklyn
http://krooklyn.contagiousmedia.org/
If you have a Blog that links to my site, then we will have a respectable showing in the "Technorati" category. Thanks so far to the ten bloggers who have done so, we are in the running.
C'mon bloggers, a little help here.
For more info. see previous posts.
Thanks again for your support.

Krooklyn, "Just like I pictured it."

Krooklyn: A Work in Progress

First, thanks to those of you who have already visited my entry: "Krooklyn" in the Contagious Media Showdown sponsored by the fellow travelers at EYEBEAM. My aim is to have a respectable showing, and thanks to you fellow bloggers (who link to my Krooklyn site) it's already happening. Unique visitors count in the tally so 'spread the word' in any way you can.

In a short while the showdown will be over and this little experiment in net nonsense will be herstory.

Every little bit helps and it will come back to you, if not in this lifetime then in the next, I promise.

Hilla Rebay@ The Guggenheim
Went to seet the Art of Tomorrow exhibit just yesterday. While not a blockbuster there are a number of gems in this first-time exhibit paintings by Hilla Rebay alongside many paintings collected at the former Museum of Non-Objective Art (now known as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum). Rudolp Bauer comes off looking very good, Kandinsky emerges triumphant as always and H. Rebay's paintings look a little thin and slighty anemic. See had the eye but not the hand, the will but not the means; yet her contribution to advanced art can not be easily dissed.
If you are interested in the long history of abstract art in America this is a must-see. The Daniel Buren Eye of the Storm exhibit contimues there as well.

Krooklyn @ Contagious Media Showdown

O.K. people, here's the skinny: Contagious Media Showdown is a contest. This is my entry:
Krooklyn
http://krooklyn.contagiousmedia.org/
More unique visits = more points to win. Tell your friends, tell your ex-spouse. We need you to check this out and go back for more updates often.
Oh, yeah: If you have a Blog that links to my site, more points.

C'mon people, a little help here.

Thanks, 'preciate it, team effort.
"All Power to the Blogs"
All Krooklyn, All the Time

J.J. @ M.M.: A Little Disappointing

Jasper Johns is an indisputably important artist; one responsible for helping chart the way out of the Abstract Expressionist corner that painters found themselves in the late fifties. That said, his latest showing (his first showing of new work in eight years) is disappointing in that it consists of 30-odd variations on the same image; the serial technique (essentially variations of the same image) is a bit long in the tooth by now, in this case a catenary curve described by an actual hanging piece of string in some cases and a painted string in others.


Jasper Johns: Catenary Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 West 22nd Street through June 25, 2005.

Gober's homage to Duchamp goes to the highest bidder: MoMA

It seems that MoMA will be the future home of Robert Gober's latest installation seen at Matthew Marks Gallery last month. Carol Vogel in the NY Times gets it right in saying that this peice is an homage to Duchamp.
(See our recent review below: Robert Gober: Timing is Everything).

Read more about it in today's NY Times.

Art of this Century: John F. Simon, Jr. @ Sandra Gering Gallery

Sandra Gering Gallery
"Endless Victory"

This exhibit of new work should be seen by anyone with an
appreciation and understanding of Mondrian. I often think of Mondrian as the first digital artist; in
Mondrian's mature paintings we have a binary approach to color (on/off) and a limited direction of line (either/or) and a reduction of the
visual stimulus to discrete blocks of “picture elements” (pixels).

John F. Simon Jr. has combined an amazing array of visual stimuli that builds on Mondrian's greatest New York City paintings: the Victory Boogie-Woogie and Broadway Boogie-Woogie. Mr. Simon creates an "Art of This Century" that is intelligent, witty, wry and compelling.



This show is open through May 28th.
534 West 22nd St., NYC
Tuesday - Saturday, 10am - 6pm.

The exhibition will feature Endless Victory and Endless Bounty, two new editions in which John Simon expands both the content and presentation of his software art. By incorporating a wide range of media and programming styles in the software, Simon makes it possible to combine the central aspects of his artistic practice — coding and drawing. The screens that display the software are framed within elegant compositions of intricately cut and engraved Plexiglas. The first edition, Endless Victory, is inspired by Mondrian's unfinished painting of 1943/44, Victory Boogie-Woogie. Using traffic flow in New York City as a motif, Simon improvises on the endless merging, dividing, overtaking, turning, starting and stopping motions that surround him. This piece continues themes begun in Simon's earlier work, ComplexCity (2000).The second edition, Endless Bounty, emerges from the tension between Simon's urban lifestyle and his longing for nature. The software flips between the two ideals displaying maps, drawings, photographs and three-dimensional models in a continual effort to capture our gaze.

The ART World

The ART World
Art is defined in many different ways. But, it's best defined on a piece of paper. There are all different kinds of styles in art. In the early days people tried to master perfection in a face, a nature scene, and all other things around them. Now people are looking for style and creativity when people look at art. A popular art form that contains a lot of style is abstract art. This type of art is unique because it's a design that in many cases gives you a message, rather than art that is based on a real life picture. But, abstract is only one form of stylish art for art is stretched in so many different ways. People have even played around with the human face made it into more of a design. Art has never stopped changing and as I speak someone is creating new art forms.
Admiring other people's art is great, but in my opinion it's not at all as satisfying as creating your own masterpiece. Although, occasionally you run out of influences and you may have to look at other people's work. People make art f'or many different reasons. For example some art is supposed to make you feel relaxed (Matisse), some is to make you think (Picasso), and other artists make art only for their pure enjoyment (me).
The most interesting art that I recently came across was at the Drawing Center in Manhattan. The art was done on graph paper by a woman named Emma Kunz. She invented a method using the graph paper to make designs. That is my definition of art.
Alex D., age 12

Take a Walk on the SoHo Side

Take a trip to SoHo this spring (remember SoHo?) to see some Art. There are still a few galleries holding out in the former Arts district, in between the boutiques and chic restaurants. A particularly strong showing on Wooster Street features several known masters of minimalism, a Bauhaus master and a pair of outstanding “outsider” artists. While you're there, stroll down Canal Street to take in the bizarre bazaar before it too morphs into a high-rent district faster than you can say "Williamsburg".

The Drawing Center
35 Wooster Street, New York, NY
3x Abstraction: New Methods of Drawing
by Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz, and Agnes Martin
March 19 – May 21, 2005
Agnes Martin’s drawings have never looked so good as they are presented here alongside two of the strangest and most esoteric off-shoots of theosophical speculation since Kandinsky and Rudolf Steiner. I’m speaking of Hilma af Klint and Emma Kunz; both of whom have rarely been seen in New York. The important publication “The Spiritual in Art Abstract Painting 1896 – 1985” accompanying an exhibit at LACMOA featured a chapter “The Case of Hilma af Klint” but as to Emma Kunz, it is my first encounter with her inspired graph paper drawings. Many well known painters (Alfred Jensen, for one) have followed similar paths yet here is a true original; a pioneer of abstract art as ground breaking as many more touted male painters.
Down the street, Wooster that is, is an exhibit of more familiar pioneer abstract artists paired together to great effect: Josef Albers / Donald Judd @ Brooke Alexander Gallery. Judd liked the “real space and real color” of sculpture yet the Albers “Homage to the Square” paintings hold their own in this exhibit.

Structure & Color
Josef Albers / Donald Judd
@ Brooke Alexander Gallery
59 Wooster Street, New York, NY 10012
Until May 21, 2005

See more Hilma Af Klint images here.

Modern Art at Auction: See the Works for Free, Buy for Millions

So you don’t want to pay $20 to see great works of modern art at MoMA? Check out the Impressionist and Modern Art exhibit at Sotheby’s this weekend (and early next week), you won’t be disappointed. There are some really strong examples of Fauvist painting by Braque, Derain, Dufy (both Jean and Raoul) and Vlaminck along with a slew of School of Paris masterpieces. A painting by Chaim Soutine and a late Picasso (Women of Algiers) alone are worth the trip. Take a break and have a latte on the roof terrace of Dean & DeLuca’s and you will feel like a millionaire.

My personal favorite is an early Kandinsky,
Zwei Reiter und Liegende Gestalt (Two Riders and Reclining Figure). Estimated at 15 – 25 million dollars, it’s a little out of my price range but definitely worth the trip to East 72nd St. and York Avenue.

The first decade of the last century was truly a watershed period in the history of Art comparable to Florence in the 1420’s or Rome in the early 1500’s. The works on view here are very high in quality, quantity and price.

Cartoon Skeletons: Pigpen and the Dead

From Artist Michael Paulus' Website:
"A character study of 22 present and past cartoon characters (including Pigpen)".

Speaking of skeletons and Pigpen, here is an interesting letter to the editor published the NY Times:
THE GRATEFUL DEAD
When the Bad Trip Began
To the Editor:
Seth Mnookin gets it right concerning the decadence and decline of the Grateful Dead, and ultimately of the music itself as the band became too popular to play in anything smaller than stadiums ["Now the Dead Will Always Be With Us," last Sunday]. What he gets wrong is the timing. The beginning of the end was already chronicled in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" in 1967, with Mountain Girl, Jerry Garcia's girlfriend at the time, bemoaning the introduction of hard drugs into the Haight during the "summer of love." In addition, the death of the original band member Ron (Pigpen) McKernan in 1973 marked a significant change in the musical direction of the Dead.


The throngs of urchins, burnouts and hangers-on at the huge arenas was a shallow echo of the close-knit atmosphere of the earlier concerts, where you saw the same faces in the crowd and felt like part of something unique, American and ours.
AL DOYLE
Brooklyn
Published: April 24th, 2005

Robert Gober; Timing is Everything

Robert Gober @ Matthew Marks
Timing is everything. I was just lucky enough myself to catch this show on the last day of the exhibit, ducking in on my way to Chelsea Piers for some R & R.

Robert Gober’s installation came at the precise moment when the leadership of the Catholic Church changed hands. The headless body of Christ on the Cross was surely of the moment, and as a metaphor and portent for the future of the Church this installation hit the proverbial nail on the head, as it were.
Art based on the events of 9/11 comes at a time when many artists across disciplines ranging from theater, dance, film, graphic novels are grappling with an event that will shape the world we live for a long time. New York artists of all stripes are just now recovering from the shock and are able to address this harrowing era in ways that may help all of us come to terms, Art is an important and potent ritual that is vital to survival and recovery from tragic events.
Robert Gober does not shy away from the most difficult subject nor does he give us easy answers, smug platitudes or quick fixes of cathartic grief. This installation currently served as the memorial to those who perished; at least that may have been the artist’s intention. But an more apt and compelling memorial will be hard to find.

“Mr. Gober has turned the Marks gallery into a kind of church, complete with a central aisle, an altar and two inaccessible side chapels. When we peek through the nearly closed doors of those chambers, we see the legs of a figure (male in one case, female in the other) seated in a bathtub with water running from its handmade pewter faucet.

There is even clergy: the first work on display involves a priest's shirt and collar. And also the suggestion of stained-glass windows, with their traditional tales of trials and tribulations: a suite of eight drawings, four on each side wall, that depict fleeting, partial views of embracing couples. They are drawn on replicas of two-page sheets from The New York Times of Sept. 12, 2001, which have, appropriately, been drained of color. The newspaper pages on one wall have been reproduced normally; the opposite wall has mirror images of the same pages, a device that knits the room together spatially and also implies that in some way we are still stuck in the reported events.”

Roberta Smith NYTimes
Published: March 25, 2005

Robert Gober has produced a large-scale installation of new sculpture exploring questions regarding sexuality, human relationships, nature, and religion, all informed by the current political climate. The artist conceived this new body of work over a three-year period, beginning shortly after the events of September 11, 2001, and culminating shortly after the recent presidential election.

-from the the Matthew Marks Gallery, 522 West 22nd Street.


The next exhibition @ the Matthew Marks gallery space will be Jasper Johns: Catenary, opening May 7, 2005. Something to look forward to, hopefully Mr. Johns will be in good form for when 'he is good he is very good, and when he is bad...'

FS/LS: The Good and the Not-So Good in Chelsea

New Work by Frank Stella @ Paul Kasmin, Lucas Samaras @ Pace MacGill

Frank is still working space. Like many artists of his generation, Stella emerged from under the shadow of de Kooning. In fact, Frank once had a reproduction of 'the king’s' work taped to the wall of his studio to remind him of “what not to do”. And of course, Stella’s early black and white paintings were the anti-de Kooning: an antidote to miles of second-rate, second generation re-treads of the masterful meanderings of Willem I. (Stella’s early work prefigured so much that lesser talents have made entire careers out of their implications; Sol Lewitt, for one).
Since 1975 and the “Painted Bird” series first seen at MoMA in that year, Stella has displayed a knack for creating sculptural work which to my eye appear to be like 3-D recreations and ruminations inspired by master Will. It seems that the ambiguous and open-ended gesture-based abstraction was impossible for Frank to resist forever so Frank finally gave in to the power of the small postcard taped to his wall so many years ago.
Some of Stella’s work fails in the same way that de Kooning did on numerous occasions: too much Sturm and Drang without a solid core; this is the price of risk. I’m sure that there are as many Stella “misses” as discarded de Kooning drawings. All of this is old news yet few people regard Stella as “hot” in the over-heated tulip-crazed frenzy of Chelsea.
I have long been a FS fan and if you haven’t read his “Working Space” yet, it’s an education in itself.
As for this show, it’s a stunner, even better than his show at Paul Kasmin last year. My personal favorite involves an open-ended “Buckyball” intertwined with various other free-form sinuous curves.

PAUL KASMIN GALLERY New Work by FRANK STELLA from April 2 – May 14, 2005.
293 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10001


Lucas Samaras @ Pace MacGill, Chelsea

"LS? Who is LS?" I wondered aloud as I entered the gallery yesterday in Chelsea, ducking out of the cold rain. Oh, yeah. Good ol' Lucas Samaras, the irascible, unpredictable, irreverent and just-plain 'in-your-face fun where you’d least expect it' artist. As you walk in and you see all of these people sitting at computer work stations not unlike any cubicle farm dot-com hell from the recent past. As it turns out, LS has created some dozens of iMovies and umpteen Iphotos for your viewing pleasure.
Now don’t get me wrong I have great admiration, respect and genuine awe of much that LS has created over the decades, especially his fabric paintings but as someone involved in new media, this is “a little too little, a little too late.” All of the ho-hum Photoshoped self-portraits are such old news that it is a little embarrassing to sift through them; this is “art of this century” by someone from last century.
Other voices, to the contrary.

Lucas Samaras :: PhotoFlicks and PhotoFictions
Pace / MacGill
534 West 25th Street

Max Ernst @ The Met / Diane Arbus, Too

Max Ernst
Through July 10, 2005
Ah, good old Max Ernst, the first multimedia artist. I forgot how various and varied his work could be. This show is a knockout on several fronts: for the sheer quantity of iconic works and for the range of formats included. The only works missing from this retrospective are the miniscule paintings from the Arizonia years. This exhibition is a must-see for anyone unfamiliar with his technically expansive paintings, his inspired and lurid collages and the “frottages” made of rubbings of diverse textures.


Diane Arbus Revelations
March 8, 2005–May 30, 2005

I ducked in to see the Diane Arbus photos on exhibit; it’s a good double bill with the Max Ernst show. You could easily see both shows without getting “museum-headache” –that awful feeling of information overload that one gets at the larger museums… the shows complement each other in odd ways, maybe because they are so foreign to each other yet there is a shared eeriness or tinge of voyeuristic pleasure in transgressing “good taste” that makes these shows so prescient right now.
I recently watched Kubrick’s masterful “The Shining” and realized for the first time that the Diane Arbus Twins http://www.archiviokubrick.it/film/shining/making/arbus_twins.gif
was the inspiration for Kubrick’s treatment of the sibling ghost sisters in the film; no wonder they are so haunting. “If you’re going to steal, steal from someone good.”

Just for fun, see the twins on this page (towards the bottom of the page).

Gehry in NYC

One of my favorite architects will soon have three major structures in New York City...see for yourself:

#1. The New Brooklyn Nets Stadium (in development)
Bring Basketball to Brooklyn


“This is an important opportunity for everyone,” added Frank Gehry. “Our goals are to create a great Arena for a great team, and to create something really special for Brooklyn.”

#2: Headquarters of IAC/Interactive in Chelsea (under construction now)
Frank O Gehry in Manhattan

Does anyone know what the third one will be?

The Michelangelo Code

The idea that art imitates life is always being turned around out with life imitating art (Schwarzenegger as the Gov’ner is right out of a Phillip K. Dick Sci-fi send-up) but this new one is too much!

In today’s news that there is a conjecture that Michelangelo forged the “Laocoön” marble sculpture; this is comparable to Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code” speculations about the Catholic Church.

“A scholar has suggested that "Laocoön," a fabled sculpture whose unearthing in 1506 has deeply influenced thinking about the ancient Greeks and the nature of the visual arts, may well be a Renaissance forgery - possibly by Michelangelo himself.”

NY Times, 4/18/05

Endless Walking but Getting Nowhere

Julian Opie’s Walking Animations
Animation of “Kiera Walking” on this page is an example of the electronic billboard currently installed on the steps of the Tweed Courthouse on Chambers Street, downtown NYC. There are two separate “animated” billboards, each one shows a figure walking but getting nowhere, very Zen and also both hi and lo-tech. I’ve seen this animation at night and it is very effective visually as the moving lights cut through the surrounding visual clutter, such as the tail lights on the car in front of you.
Seen during the day, the walking figures come alive as their movement is echoed by the many everyday New Yorkers walking to and fro. The futility of the urban constant rush is also wryly commented on as these figures spin their wheels yet go no further. Isn’t the Department of Education housed in the Tweed Courthouse?

See photos and read more at Gothamist.

Fric Fischl @ Mary Boone Gallery

Sure, go ahead and see the Damien Hirst “paintings” at the Gagosian gallery. Decide for yourself if they are interesting or not. I found them a trifle tedious after the initial surprise at the use of Photorealism (such a tired style at this point). But while you are on 24th Street, check out the recent paintings by Eric Fischl.

In contrast to Mr. Hirst (who showed thirty paintings), Mr. Fischl presents us a handful of large-scale paintings. These new works are continuations of the style forged in the go-go eighties and it is more than curious that these painted are being exhibited at this point in time in Chelsea. The world changed so much since Eric Fischl burst on the scene in 1984 at the Mary Boone Gallery yet these images almost seem like items from a time capsule from the era of Michael Douglas in “Wall Street”. These images seem forced and strangely cloying, in spite of the fact that they are well painted; all that talent could be put to better effect than essentially copying photographs at a large scale and adding a dash of bravura brushstrokes. For all the smoldering desire in the images there is a ho-hum feel to the whole venture.

Through April 23rd
541 West 24th St.

Why is there an Arts Blog?

To provide an unbiased and informative view of selected highlights in the NYC arts: on the streets, in the galleries, museums and auction houses.

What makes this source important?
A down-to-earth yet educated and sincere look at the art with an eye for trends, interesting and stimulating exhibits and relevant news in the cultural life of this great city.

Are the views represented here truly unbiased?
The opinions expressed here are free from commercial interest and not affiliated with any for-profit business.

Does this mean that this site aims to be a comprehensive listing without personal likes, dislikes, or values of any kind?
No. Discerning the best and most compelling art from the wide range of current exhibits without hype, without an agenda and with an eye toward sharing insights into what is for many an awfully complicated scene. A broad perspective, mature and nuanced inquiry and an educated eye inform the views expressed here.

Can people add comments and opposing viewpoints to counter the opinions expressed here?
Yes, definitely.

What to see in NYC:
Max Ernst @ the Metropolitan Museum.
Does anyone remember the last NYC retrospective of this enigmatic artist? The show at the Guggenheim (I think in 1974) was a real eye-opener. More to come on this important exhibit.


Frank Stella @ Paul Kasmin Gallery
New Work April 2- May 14
An old standby, Frank Stella is always the thinking man’s artist. It may take a while before we catch up to his latest works but the never fail to provide visual force to what can be static and stale in lesser hands.

Damien Hirst’s sculpture, installed at the Lever House

While I definitely agree with Jerry Saltz’s opinions of the recent paintings “by” Damien Hirst, (see the article “The Emperor’s New Paintings”) I can’t agree with his take on the sculpture recently installed at the Lever House:

this from Jerry Saltz, published in the Village Voice, 4/5/05:

Worse than the paintings because it's permanent—not to mention marring the entrance to the beautiful Lever House on Park Avenue—is Hirst's hideous Virgin Mother, a 35-foot bronze eyesore of a naked pregnant woman with a cutaway view of her womb. ...Virgin Mother should be removed straightaway and those responsible for placing it here should be fired or whatever is done with reckless, imbecilic billionaires.

Yes, the Lever House is beautiful, especially in light of the recent renovation but this provocative sculpture is a perfect compliment to the pious modernism evoked and evinced by this building. I hate to say how utterly innocuous are the stone sculptures of Isamu Noguchi next to this brash bronze monstrosity. I love the irreverent insouciance of this strident Virgin Mother who literally bares all with such cosmopolitan élan and verve. I can’t explain why I love it (I know I’m supposed to like the Noguchi sculptures) but I took some people to look at the sculpture in the pouring rain and we all felt a similar sense of awe. Damien Hirst, after all is a sculptor first and foremost.

Art Criticism in the Age of Blogging

Not to be a “blog snob” but, it seems that Michael Kimmelman of the NY Times in his recent article: "This is Your Brain on Pause" agrees with our opening day (see our earlier posts on 3/12/05 and 3/14/05) assessment of Damien Hirst’s recent show of “paintings” at the Gagosian Gallery. In a word, they are bad; and in the sense that Warhol was “badder” and certainly did it first, Mr. Kimmelman is in agreement with us.
Blogging gets there first, trumping other reports with the immediacy and topicality of the speed of light while the lumbering apparatus of the paper news goes limping into the 21st century like a senescent relative from the old country, barely tolerated by today’s “fresh direct” generation.
Hate to say it, but does anyone under sixty years of age care about “classical” music? If so, they don’t go to concerts and they certainly don’t buy it in the record stores (a quaint notion in itself).
But, back to Damien Hirst, the artist known best for his sculptures, which is his true métier. There is currently a fabulous sculpture by Mr. Hirst at the outdoor concourse beneatht he Lever House at 53rd and Lexington. I call the sculpture “the Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” although it is probably closer to about 40 feet in height, the bronze sculpture depicts a striding pregnant woman with her flesh literally splayed open in the artist’s signature deadpan science-museum expository and explanatory presentation depicting the unborn fetus and the half-shorn skull in anatomical correctness; all of this in such a matter-of-factly “just out for a stroll’ way that passersby, janitors, tourists and myself including are left standing on the sidewalk scratching our collective heads. Now that’s Art, no matter what else you can say, this piece is striking and strident in a fresh and direct way.

, Mr. Hirst's flat-footed pictures, blithely lacking finesse, ignore photorealism's first goals and aspire only to be passingly ghoulish.

And absent invention, they hang there like corpses. They also arrive amid a booming youth market, as shallow and money-obsessed as Mr. Hirst, and just as enamored of fashion, but with a higher premium placed on solo handicraft and earnestness or at least on the appearance of it. Other paintings abound in Chelsea for comparison - not universally good, but generally craftier about the medium, making more of paint's expressive potential and its physical allure. Just up the block from Gagosian, on 24th Street, are shows by Magnus von Plessen, Jules de Balincourt, Martin Kippenberger, Eric Fischl and Gary Hume that at least feature more painterly paintings.

- Michael Kimmelman, NY Times Published: April 3, 2005

Look to this site, "NYC Arts" for a review of Eric Fischels' recent paintings coming soon.

To continue the riff about animation:
Wikipedia History of Animation
Finally a history of animation with links, links and more links.

A Brief History of Animation

This is a link to as clear and concise a history of animation can be found anywhere. Well done. For more of the context but sadly no images, here is "A RATHER INCOMPLETE BUT STILL FASCINATING HISTORY OF ANIMATION" By Dan McLaughlin. This site is crying for images, but definitely worth a look, thanks Dan for doing the heavy lifting.

Basquiat@ The Brooklyn Museum of Art

Weighing in on Basquiat@ The BMA

Like the Human Torch in his paintings, Jean-Michel’s “Flame-On!” rocked the art scene in the early nineteen eighties.
It makes perfect sense for Brooklyn-born and bred Jean-Michel Basquiat to have his homecoming at the Brooklyn Museum, (his show at the Whitney in 1992 is but a distant memory in the collective psyche of New York City). Where else but here should we see the Basquiat paintings and drawings with new eyes; eyes that have been primed by the look and feel of Williamsburg, itself a reflection of East Villiage scene which engendered J.M.B. in the first place. SAMO indeed: “same ‘ole ____” that being the tag used by the artist in his earliest attempts to gain the notoriety he craved.
The music of Miles, Bird and Hendrix fueled Basquait’s improvisational style and infused the high-keyed color and outrageousness that is central to these haunting images.

Basquiat@ The Brooklyn Museum of Art

Through June 5

Marlene Dumas @ Zwirner & Wirth

I went to see the Marlene Dumas show of paintings at Zwirner & Wirth just last week, as I happened to be in the neighborhood and ducked into the gallery. I’d never heard of this artist before, yet I felt that the paintings were honest and straightforward without being overwrought or pretentious. The paint is thin and applied with a fresh confidence; obviously this artist is not relying on assistants and others to “help” (see Damien Hirst in an earlier posting).
As it turns out, the NY Times ran a review of the show :


Marlene Dumas's Number Comes Up

“But the city has a fresh opportunity to see what the fuss is all about... Her work intermingles high and pop-cultural imagery and touches on favored hot buttons, from politics to female sexuality to race. Her overall subject can be construed as the ambiguity of the pictorial image, a major critical talking point right now.”

- By CAROL KINO
Published: March 27, 2005

This is painting that is as tough as nails, that tackles many issues without losing the sense of the nature of touch, gesture and surface, infused with a deftness and light. John Currin, the much-lauded “best painter in NY right now” wishes he could paint this well.
Did I fail to mention that paintings by Marlene Dumas fetch the highest prices of a living female painter?

Marlene Dumas
Selected Works
Zwirner & Wirth
32 East 69th Street
From February 18 - April 23, 2005

New Yorker Cartoons: Now Showing

I love the fact that the spot illutrations in the New Yorker magazine are now sequenced like key frames in a movie storyboard. See the article in the NY Times.
What do you think?

Williamsburg: what goes around comes around

I took a walk around Williamsburg today. I have to admit I’ve avoided it in favor of the galleries in Chelsea, but after seeing a recent article in the NY Times about the imminent re-zoning of the Brooklyn waterfront, I felt compelled to check it out.
Funny, the scene there seemed like the East Village in the early eighties: lots of graffiti, scruffy boutiques and trendy restaurants interspersed by the bodegas and Polish restaurants.
I did manage to stop in an art gallery and the art on view also seemed eerily reminiscent of the East Village art of the eighties: what goes around comes around.

Daniel Buren @ The Guggenheim: An Early Look

A New York moment: getting in to the opening nite gala for the Daniel Buren installation / exibit @ the Guggenheim Museum. Outside was the blustery snow of Ole Man Winter's last gasp; inside the crystaline reflections of a 100 foot-high mirror spanning halfway across the huge atrrium of the museum. I'm told that the view during the day is stunning: sunlight streaming though the oculus (which is otherwise sheided from direct sunlight). A house of mirrors, a fun house side show, an experiment in space/time... a cubistic vision of an old friend? All of these come to mind as one tries to make sense of what is so confounding visually as to defy easy definiton and instead, one should just surrender to the senses and enjoy the sheer novelty.
Read more about the exhibit in the NY Times article by Linda Yablonsky, excerpted below:

Mr. Buren's central piece at the Guggenheim, of course, is no little shack. For the artist, it represents an imaginary cube large enough to contain the entire museum. As engineered from the artist's drawings by a Parisian architect, Jean-Christophe Denise, and the Guggenheim's technical designer, Stephen Engelman, the structure's two adjoining walls meet at the exact center of the rotunda, making it appear as if a corner of the cube had been thrust into the void from the street. Short, bright-green vertical stripes resembling film sprockets line the balustrades of all six tiers, giving the Guggenheim's spiral the look of a giant zoetrope about to go into a serious spin.

Indeed, visitors will need to get their sea legs before starting up the ramps. What the mirrors will show, besides their own reflections, is a building that appears to shift its weight at almost every step. Because of a natural distortion caused by the play of mirrors against the vertiginous ramps, there are moments when it becomes difficult to distinguish the architecture from its mirror image, inducing a sense of vertigo.

I was teaching a Photoshop class at the museum where my students were re-touching photos of the mirrored cube and sure enough, several of my students (all adults) experienced a nausea not unlike sea-sickness as a result of the dizzying perspectives on their computer screens: a "virtual vertigo" if you will.

Gregory Colbert's Ashes and Snow @ Pier 53

If you are in the West Village / Chelsea area, go to see Gregory Colbert's "Ashes and Snow" exhibit in the "nomadic museum" at 13th St. on the Hudson River. Tuesdays are pay what you wish (children are always free). Check out the images on the website, but it won't prepare you for the incredible installation on the pier. I espeecially was moved by the video projection and found similarities between the work of Bill Viola, recently shown at the Whitney

"...Viola creates projective narrative environments that explore the nature and consciousness and universal human experiences such as birth and death. The artist's subject matter is rooted in the history of Western and Eastern art, as well as in such spiritual traditions as Sufism and Zen Buddhism."

-from the Whitney Museum web site

The same could be said about the video by Mr. Colbert if you insert the nature of the bonds between man and the animal kingdom, between primal and instinctual connections and the place of man in the circle of life. Sounds corny and a little like cruchy granola but I left my cynical self on the island of Manahatta and was transported to another time and place as I walked to the end of the pier under the canopy of the temporary structure built for the exhibit. That the show is housed in an ad hoc confabulation of shipping crates only adds to the richness of the experience.

What do you think about the Ashes and Snow images?

The Elusive Truth About Painting

More on Damien Hirst: as I surmised in an earlier blog his new "paintings" are really based on photographs which "others" "painted"... no wonder these images have no presence or soul.
This from today's NY Times article by Carol Vogel:

Still, he [Damien Hirst] doesn't consider himself a serious painter. "I would feel uncomfortable putting myself in a category with other painters like Goya or Bacon," he said. "I'm more interested in the images than the painting."...

He readily admits that, as in the case of many artists working today, while his hand is involved in every painting, some of his assistants - most of whom are trained artists - do some of the painting for him. "I have a great team," he said.

Is it too much to ask of an artist today to paint their own pictures? I admit some of the images have interest but in an unteresting way, I mean isn't Photorealism so last century, a seventies thing?

DAMIEN HIRST : The Elusive Truth

I stopped by the Gagosian Gallery today to see the latest paintings by Damien Hirst. So did a lot of other people. Many were the people who felt compelled to see what this latest enfant terrible had wrought.
I doubt that the paintings were entirely by his hand and I suspect that there was a lot of help by the way of mechanical aids of some sort: projecting images onto the canvas in order to trace the image and the use of photographs as source material as well. Such is the state of painting today. This is not to say that the images were devoid of interest, it is just that they were so generic in feel and vapid in touch that they lacked any individuality (Warhol killed that, didn’t he?).
The images of pharmaceuticals lined up in neat rows on shelves reminded me of the paintings of Wayne Thiebald as the pills looked as delicious as the pies and cakes. Again, not much new here. The truth be told, Damian Hirst had some tremendously shocking and exciting installations (the Shark in formaldehyde being a personal favorite) but too may of his paintings lack something, a soul if you will. Check out the images on the Gagosian gallery web site, they look better as photographs on the web than in real life. Art in the age of mechanical reproduction indeed.

DAMIEN HIRST : The Elusive Truth
Mar 11 - Apr 23, 2005
Gagosian Gallery
555 WEST 24th STREET
NEW YORK NY 10011
TEL 212 741 1111
info@gagosian.com

Art in NYC Milestone: 1,000 hits!

Alreet people, that's alright. This site will reach the one thousand visit mark in the next few hours or so. Thank you to all of the visitors who made this small milestone possible. The next goal is ten thousand.
As always there is a lot going on in NYC. Check out Gregory Colbert's installation on the Hudson. more on this soon, I may visit it this weekend.

Rubens Drawings @ The Metropolitan Museum

After finishing the biography of Willem de Kooning: “de Kooning An American Master” by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swann, I went to see the drawings by Peter Paul Rubens at the Met. Rubens was a favorite of de Kooning, (along with Ingres and Picasso, two other consummate draftsmen) and it was through the lens of de Kooning’s skewered perspective that I came to appreciate anew the work of his forbear.
Of course, modern art has little in common with the high baroque exuberance and technical virtuosity of Old Masterly skill evinced by the drawings by this “Peter the Great” yet the similarities were telling. Charcoal, that soft, nuanced and delicate record of an artist’s gesture was common to both these Northern Europeans. On close inspection, I noticed that Rubens rarely closed his forms with a contour but instead he would subtly overlap several lines with tiny interstices in between , this gave the work a slight visual vibration and a life to the forms as if they were “breathing”. This, of course, was a characteristic feature of a de Kooning drawing.
It would be something to see a de Kooning / Rubens show n’est-ce pas? Now that would raise some dust, charcoal and otherwise.


If you can’t get to the Met to see the drawings in person, there is an excellent online companion to the show.

More Snow to Make "The Gates" Even More Fun To See Again!

Beyond my hopes this new snow comes to enliven and enhance the incredible experience of Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Gates in Centeral Park. Enjoy Nueva York!

Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Creamsicles in Central Park

Ah, just what I had been hoping for: a great snowfall to bring a new perspective to “The Gates”. Now we can see “The Gates” with new eyes. Remember Creamsicles? Those delicious evocations of summers past are memorably reconstituted at a giant scale for all to see in the Park: child-like wonder is the result. Wide-eyed wonderment from locals, tourists, mad dogs and Englishmen has replaced the usual curmudgeonly New York glumness. Conceptual Art is Dead! Long-Live Conceptual Art.

Tim Hawkinson @ The Whitney

Tim Hawkinson gets my vote for the whackiest and most far-out exhibit of the season. I went to the

"Whip-me" Museum

ostensibly to see the Cy Twombly exhibit (a bore!) and instead was diverted into the much more interesting Hawkinson exhibit. More on this to come.

Sotheby's Cape Cod Tag Sale: Duck Decoys

I stopped by to see the auction of Property from Kennedy Family Homes (New York:
15 Feb 05 - 17 Feb 05)at Sotheby's today.From what I glimpsed it looked like an old-fashioned Cape Cod tag sale with cheesy watercolors of the sea and duck decoys! Yes, I witnessed the auction of three duck decoys which went for five thousand clams. Is that a good price?

de Kooning : "The King"

Did you know that "de kooning" means the king in Dutch? I just finished the first section "Holland" of the Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan recently published biography. The rags-to-riches immmigrant boilerplate is here re-told in an engaging and fresh style. I hope that the last section "Twilight" doesn't try to gloss over the fact that the last fifteen or so years of de Koonings output was suspect from many angles... more on this later.
Joop Sanders, a former painting teacher of mine, is quoted throughout as he was a fellow Dutch expatriate and F.O.B. (de Kooning, that is). Like many New York artists, the shadow of "de king" loomed large and much of the art of the last 50 years is a reaction against the macho/loner/magalomaniacal/hard-drinking/womanizing painter. We are still too close to really get an historical perspective on all of this but this biography promises to be interesting if not entirely un-biased.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude's Gates Unfurled 2/12/05:

The Gates: A jolt of optimism for these parlous times

Just got back from Central Park where the Gates were unfurled today. Although the gates were erected over the course of the last week, today was "the unfurling"; each gate held aloft a cocoon containing the bright orange nylon awaiting this day to emerge. For Christo fans, this was an epiphany; for art lovers an event; but for many this was a chance to get out in the park and take a look through new eyes with fresh colors, shapes and ideas to mingle with and muddle through.

Read more about the gates from the artists website.

This from the official website of Central Park:

On February 12, New York City and Central Park launched an extraordinary art event. Celebrated artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude unfurled THE GATES, PROJECT FOR CENTRAL PARK 1979-2005. On view for 16 days, the 7,500 gates will line 23 miles of pathways in Central Park, from 59th Street to 110th Street. Saffron-colored fabric panels will hang seven feet above the ground, blowing in the wind and delighting the public walking beneath with a warm glow of translucent color. The gates will seem like a golden river appearing and disappearing through the bare branches of the trees. The exhibit is free for everyone to enjoy and will not interfere with normal Park activity.

Beckmann/Picasso at Feigen Gallery Extended

With the recent Matisse / Picasso and the Max Beckmann shows at MoMA Qeeens still fresh in our collective memory, this thoroughly engaging show turns out to be one of the highlights of this season.
Mythic in ambition and accomplishment, Beckmann shared with Picasso an interest in harlequins, acrobats and the theater in many signature works. Beckmann, of course, knew of the Spaniards work and this show presents many paintings and prints produced immediately before or during his stay in Paris in the late thirties.
Both Picasso and Beckmann backed away from pure abstraction and their images remained rooted in “the real”; even the most distorted of Picasso’s images always refer to something: woman’s head, a kiss, or a guitar.

“Works of art are objects of metamorphosis-like the gods.” – Andre Malraux, Picasso’s Mask, 1974. p.239

The pairing of these artists makes perfect sense and offers many reminders of the strength and vigor of both these titans. Proteus and Prometheus indeed as Jan Krugier put it so succinctly (the Jan Krugier Gallery is co-presenting the show with Richard Feigen). This show has been extended two weeks (until February 12th) and I was able to see it last week.

Read more about this show at Richard Feigen Gallery.