Category: Travel

The cool thing about a lot of the galleries here is that they are on such a grand scale–gorgeously designed art warehouses for big ideas. There are a lot of wonderful intimate spaces, sure, but the cavernous spaces of Mary Boone, Gagosian and Luhring Augustine are like art carnivals, just spectacular. Gagosian has a super show up of sculptures by David Smith from the 50’s and 60’s, really a mini-museum show of work based on the human form. Mary Boone has a few like super gigantic catoony paintings by Brian Alfred (pictured below left, a time-lapsed painting?), and Luhring Augustine has some sculptures by Rachel Whiteread. I don’t know about the rest of you, but if you’ve seen one Rachel Whiteread, you’ve seen ’em all, honey. Actually, I did find myself drawn to their nuance and delicacy. For this body of work she created casts of the insides of cardboard boxes in plaster, illustrating the aesthetic and conceptual complexities of the utilitarian cardboard box. One of the highlights of yesterday’s outing was a short film called Zoo by a Finnish artist, Salla Tykkä at Yvon Lambert. The camera follows a Hitchcock blonde type woman (below right) around a zoo as she observes and photographs, the point of view shifting back and forth from the animals’ to hers. The soundtrack is ominous and filled with menace. An underwater rugby game is intercut into her trip through the zoo. The film ends with her walking into the water of the bear pen, then cuts to her floating face down. Hey, this is my story! The film uses Hollywood narrative strategies to encourage us to watch ourselves watching, as gendered spectators and participants. We also saw Louise Fishman’s giant gestural abstractions at Cheim & Reid, Tony Oursler’s entertaining video sculptures at Metro Pictures, yet more silly Fischli+Weiss work at Matthew Marks’ up-Chelsea space, enough already, and an interesting show at Jack Shainman of work by Hank Willis Thomas. He’s taken out the text and logos of advertising imagery, revealing the visual strategies and cultural stereotypes used by the advertisers. Michael Raedecker has an interesting show at Andrea Rosen, of pretty and minimally embroidered paintings matted with clumps of hair.

Today we took a stroll through Soho. I haven’t been there since the late 80’s and early 90’s, before all the galleries moved to Chelsea, so it was a bit of a shocker to see how significantly the vibe there has shifted. It’s like an art ghost town, only the former galleries aren’t empty, they’re Prada stores.

Yesterday BC and I strolled through a few more Chelsea Galleries (more about them later). We were a bit surprised and unnerved to see the gallery where I was supposed to be showing, that was supposed to have closed, OPEN. I stopped in to get my two prints that they had and talked with the gallery assistant. He said that the gallery got an extension from the landlord, but that he hasn’t been paid in weeks, the director’s in the hospital but he’s not “allowed” to say what he’s being treated for, and the current show is coming down halfway into its run. I took my damaged prints, said goodbye and good luck, and split.

Yesterday BC and I hiked up to Chelsea and visited a few galleries. Nan Goldin has a show up at Matthew Marks, same old moody saturated stuff. Next door we saw a show by Fischli+Weiss, a video of two people in a bear and a rat costume, stupidly frolicking in caves and across beautiful landscapes. The animal suits were effectively displayed, barely visible in floor-to-ceiling darkened glass vitrines. Kara Walker has a knockout show at Sikkema Jenkins, of drawings, paintings, cutouts, and a video, Eight Possible Beginnings. In the video, she uses cut-paper marionettes to paint a portrait of the African experience in Antebellum south. Very powerful, really disturbing, with totally gorgeous imagery. Max Protech has a nice show of abstract paintings by Thomas Nozkowski, nearly recognizable abstractions that bring to mind cityscapes, constellations, and Emily Wilson’s work, which really should be shown here. Sonnabend has a show up documenting collaborative work by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret made in India in the early 50’s, beautifully displayed furniture and architectural photographs. We bumped into Chuck Close, who didn’t say hi (he looks so little in person!), at Pace-Wildenstein, where Tara Donovan has a fabulous installation on display, of hundreds of thousands of stacked translucent plastic cups, laid out in a rectangle appx. 50′ x 60′ x 5′ high, and creating a magical topographical recyclable polar landscape. Tom Sanford has a show up at Leo Koenig which seemed hyped beyond anything I could make of it. His ambivalence to culture seems reflected in his ambivalence to paint and imagery. We ended our two-street Chelea gallery outing with a show of Basquiat “Heads” at Van de Weghe, which BC didn’t really like, but Basquiat’s spontaneity and convoluted narratives always draw me in. There are also some cool Marilyn Mintner photos on billboards throughout Chelsea, very effective venues for her glamourous grime scene investigations. More a-gallerying next week.

BC and I just got back from MoMA, and the Edvard Munch retrospective. I started blubbering in front of the “Madonna,” and actually cried in front of the “Kiss.” I’ve only seen his print of the “Madonna” with the sperm and the fetus, but this version, beside being so magnificently painted, was just of the woman, and utterly sexualized and sensually rendered. “The Kiss” is just the story of my romantic life, tumbling into another and losing oneself. The show is a humdinger of an exhibition, laid out chronologically. You first encounter Munch’s work from his 20’s, seeing him mimic the styles of his contemporaries and gradually developing his own vision, and then you turn a corner and BOOM, The Frieze of Life, his series of works on the themes of love, anxiety, and death, his vision and style now very much his own. There’s so much narrative and color and expression, as well as draftsmanship and painterliness–and so much feeling.

Today we visited the Frick Collection. It’s a smallish museum, with an intensity of masterpieces sited in an opulent gilded age setting, the paintings surrounded by 18th century furniture, sevres porcelain, and small bronzes. There aren’t just three Vermeers, there are three beautiful Vermeers, and not just a Bellini, but of St. Francis basking in a heavenly light that bathes all the marvelous details in a warm glow, as well as a touching late Rembrandt self-portait, a Renoir tucked at the base of the stairway around the corner from a Bronzino portrait and a Degas, and Holbein’s tour-de-force portrait of Sir Thomas More next to El Greco’s “St Jerome.” The paintings are not arranged according to subject matter or period, but set in relation to each other and their surroundings. In the larger gallery are four portraits by Whistler, one in each corner of the room, and each a “symphony” on the theme of a single color or two. I find myself drawn more these days to Whistler, whose paintings are like cake frosting, a lushness poised to melt into abstraction. The Gainsboroughs are thrilling for their subject matter and arch artificiality, but I’m not very interested in the paint. Unlike the late Goyas on display downstairs, which are painted in broad powerful strokes. Several portraits directly prophesize the coming of Manet.