Category
A friend of Hopper: Guy Pene du Bois’s Opera Box, 1926 I tend to think of New York’s Whitney Museum as the house of Hopper. Right now they’re hosting another retrospective of this fine painter’s work with a twist. Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time is on display now through April 10, and it’s…
Continue readingYou’ve only until January 9 to catch John Baldessari: Pure Beauty at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His work, boldly visual and laugh-out-loud funny, ranges over all mediums; some of us find such precociousness a bonus. Go.
Continue readingNot to mention religion. Below is an excerpt from the New York Times Arts Beat Blog, a response to the Smithsonian’s recent excision of the late David Wojnarowicz’s (pictured above) work from their current exhibition, after harassment from the head of the Catholic League and a few bullying Republican Congressmen. Bravo to Wachs and his…
Continue readingWhen I first moved to New York I knew a girl who fancied herself a kind of Holly Golightly. Oh, her nights! Always, she was full of stories about the latest film that mustn’t be missed, or that cool art opening she crashed the previous weekend. She represented the possibility of inclusion: one day those…
Continue reading
At the Robert Mann Gallery this spring I had my first encounter with the work of Joe Deal. His vistas deify the beauty found in desolation—the sprawl of fields, plateaus, and badlands beyond our urban sprawl. A space opens in your head when viewing his work, wonderlands wrought by time and the elements but miraculously…
Continue reading
“It’s endurance art,” I whispered to my spouse as we made our way through Marina Abromavic’s The Artist is Present at the Museum of Modern Art (through May 31). Actually it’s about a great many things–like the willingness of viewers to accept, embrace, that which might discomfort the sensibilities (depictions of violence, nudity either from…
Continue reading
One of the kings of the postwar Color Field School of Painting. Top, Early Fall, silkscreen. Below, the artist at work.
Continue readingWith her husband Christo, Jeanne-Claude was responsible for one of my favorite New York afternoons–that day my spouse Jonathan and my friends Mark, Nia, Dave and Joe sent out for Central Park to take in the phenomenon that was The Gates. Under those stunning splashes of orange we joined millions of visitors on that cold…
Continue reading
Genius is not a generous thing In return it charges more interest than any amount of royalties can cover And it resents fame With bitter vengeance Pills and powdres only placate it awhile Then it puts you in a place where the planet’s poles reverse Where the currents of electricity shift Your Body becomes…
Continue reading