Rembrandt van Rijn, Portrait of the Artist, ca. 1663–65, oil on canvas, 45 x 37 inches (Kenwood House, London).
I returned to the Met after reading Roberta Smith’s masterful appreciation of the great Rembrandt self-portrait that the Met has on loan from Kenwood House, London (until May 20th). It is indeed a great painting, and I have nothing to add to her superb article other than to note that the perfect circles depicted on the wall behind Rembrandt that she writes about aren't circles but instead, because the wall goes back at an angle, they are ovals (circles in perspective) — an even more challenging thing to draw.
I
think Rembrandt depicts himself with his right hand in his pocket —a wonderful nonchalant gesture especially in contrast to his careworn facial expression — but I
can't be sure because the reflections on the glass make it almost impossible to see the lower part of the painting. This is just what I was discussing in the previous post. One would think that, for their signature painting, Kenwood House could spring for the few hundred pounds that "Museum
Glass” would cost.
You can see the reflection of the guard in the glass as if it were a mirror.
Also, while at the Met, I went back to theSteins Collect exhibition and managed to sneak a better photo of the dog in Matisse’s Tea, 1919. I think it's more noticeable in this photo that the dog's right eye is brown, and the other eye is mostly black.
Henri Matisse, Tea, 1919 - Detail of the dog.
And finally, while I'm on the Steins Collect and color, I noticed I made a mistake saying Mme. Matisse's glove in the Woman with a Hat, 1905, was blue. It looks blue in the photo, but it's green. Just want to set the record straight.
Last Wednesday was the packed opening of this enormous (32 artists) group exhibition on the Grand Concourse and 166th Street (until June 5th). It was made up of well-known artists (such as Mel Chin, Sylvia Plachy and John Ahearn) as well as unknown artists (at least to me). Most of the artists had their own rooms and made site-specific installations. It's an impressive exhibition, well worth the trip all the way uptown.
The Andrew Freeman Home, The Bronx
The Andrew Freedman Home is a fascinating place in itself. In 1924, multi-millionaire Andrew Freedman bequeathed the 100,00 square foot building and estate to be used as a retirement home for the rich elderly who had lost their fortunes. He left enough of an endowment so the home had all the luxuries: white glove dinner service, fine dining, a billiard room; as well as a grand ballroom and wood-paneled library — both of which have been restored. (Apparently Freedman felt sorrier for people that lost their money than for people who never had any.) By the mid-eighties the building fell into disrepair and it’s now mainly vacant; but they’re working on other uses — this art exhibition being one of them. (Someone — I can't remember who — told me that Peter Frank said, "This is the best crummy space since PS1." Good line.)
Last Monday evening, April 2nd, Norte Maar held a benefit in Chelsea at the Mitchell-Innes and Nash gallery on West 26th Street . It was not only to raise funds but also to honor Julie Martin of E.A.T. (Experiments in Art and Technology) They had tap dancing; a performance of David Tudor’s Rainforest I (1968) performed by Composers Inside Electronics (see photo below); and a preview of a terrific ballet, The Brodmann Areas,
choreographed by Julia K. Gleich. You can see the full ballet April
12 - 15th at the Center for Performance Research in Brooklyn. Click here for more information.
Composers Inside Electronics channeling the electronic output of David Tudor’s Rainforest I through different objects rather than a loudspeaker.
John Chamberlain, Glossalia Adagio, 1984, painted and chromium-plated steel (Philadelphia Museum of Art).
I don't think Chamberlain came up with a viable way to use color in sculpture.
His color still looks applied to the surface and arbitrary; and color still makes his sculptures seem weightless. I must admit, though, that Chamberlain showed more range and variety than I expected — but I expected very little.
What's with these crowds? Could Chamberlain be that popular? Amazing!
Line to get into the Guggenheim John Chamberlain exhibition.
E. 81st Street looking toward the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The weather was glorious — the type of weather that reminds New Yorkers of 9/11. Rather then spend the day outside like a normal person, art-nut that I am I decided to go to the Met and check out The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso and the Parisian Avant-Garde (until June 3rd). When I went before, it was so crowded I couldn't see it, let alone enjoy it. And there were so many other art activities going on in New York at the time I really wasn’t able to give it the attention it deserved. This time I slowed down, and I’m glad I did. Not only are there some great paintings, but it was enlightening to see some modest work by famous artists, and some personal work too (gifts, casual drawings, studies, small paintings).
The
Steins in the courtyard of 27 rue de Fleurus, ca. 1905. From left: Leo
Stein, Allan Stein, Gertrude Stein, Theresa Ehrman, Sarah Stein,
Michael Stein (The Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley).
This is more than a show about an art collection, significant as the art is; it’s also about the art collectors, the Steins: Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael, and Michael's wife Sarah. They were well off, but not so rich they could buy whatever they wanted, so they mainly collected inexpensive work by artists that were relatively unknown at the time (the turn of the twentieth century).
The siblings Leo and Gertrude Stein shared a studio at 27 Rue de Fleurus where they hung their collection and he painted and she wrote. They were great networkers (famously introducing Picasso to Matisse in late 1905), opening their studio every Saturday to anyone with a reference. As a result hundreds of people were exposed to the avant-garde art of the time.
The Met exhibition includes films, photographs and letters of the Steins. Soon after the entrance to the show is a mock-up of Gertrude and Leo's studio with a series of wall-sized projected slides of the studio from contemporary photographs. This gives a pretty good idea of what it was like: it was small (460 square feet), the work was hung floor to ceiling, and there was very little furniture. It must have been an intense and mind-boggling experience for their guests.
Leo became progressively deaf and eventually he could not participate in the Saturday salons, so, in 1912, he decided to get his own space. He and Gertrude divided the collection (amicably except for a fight over a Cezanne) with Leo taking the Renoirs, Gertrude taking the Picassos, and the two of them sharing the rest. Soon the visitors to the salon, now hosted by Gertrude alone, were mostly literary people rather than visual-art people.
I like seeing familiar paintings in a different setting because I discover new things about them.
Henri Matisse, Woman with a Hat, 1905, oil on canvas, 31 ¾ x 23 ½ inches
(San Francisco Museum of Modern Art).
For example, this time I was able to identify more of the imagery in Matisse’s Woman with a Hat, a painting that's still shocking even though it's been around for more than 100 years. When I saw it before, I'd spend so much time gawking at that outrageous hat and colorful 19th-century French outfit that I never took the time to figure out all that was going on. It always looked like an unidentifiable mishmash of clashing colors to me. I think I've figured it out now, at least some of it. The sitter (Mme. Matisse) is wearing a long blue glove, and her arm is extended and bent inward. She's holding a light blue fan that is painted with flowers, and it's opened out almost to her neck. I'm not sure what the green vertical stripe below her hand is -- maybe a walking stick; and I still don’t get what the pointed area on the right side of her dress could be. It's either part of the fan, or Mme. Matisse is incredibly buxom.
Henri Matisse, Tea, 1919, oil on canvas, 55 x 83 inches, (Los Angeles County Museum of Art).
Another painting I learned something about, one that I used to look at a lot when I lived in Los Angeles, is Matisse’s Tea, 1919. It was said to be Diebenkorn’s favorite painting in the County Museum, and it certainly is charming. You have to love the painting just for that adorable dog. What I noticed for the first time is the dog’s right eye is dark brown (not black) while his left is black with just a speck of brown. This, I think, makes the dog’s eyes seem softer and even more lovable. Matisse is a subtle one!
Matisse, Tea, 1919, detail of the dog
By late 1905, early 1906, Matisse was generally acknowledged to be the leader of a new school of painting, Fauvism. The Steins (mischievously?) made sure Picasso saw Matisse’s Woman with a Hat when he came by to dine with them. Picasso, who was working in a neoclassic manner at that time, must have felt his work was pallid in comparison. This painting and another painting Picasso would have seen at the Steins, Matisse’s Blue Nude (below), spurred him on to begin his Demoiselles D’Avignon. In fact, Picasso’s Head of a Sleeping Woman can be thought of as a vertical version of Matisse’s Blue Nude.
Henri Matisse, Blue Nude, 1907, oil on canvas, about 36 x 55 inches (Cone collection, Baltimore Museum of Art).
Pablo Picasso, Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery), summer 1907. Oil on canvas, 24 1/4 x 18 3/8 inches (Estate of John Hay Whitney).
An interesting thing about Picasso's Head of a Sleeping Woman is there’s an unpainted border around the edge of the entire painting. As a result, the paint seems to lay on top of the surface and the image appears to start at the surface (the canvas) and come forward into the viewer’s space. I discussed this phenomenon before in regard to Demoiselles D’Avignon and Monet's Water Lilies.
Picasso, Head of Sleeping Woman, detail.
Finally, there are two trends here having to do with exhibitions in general and this show in particular. There's a tendency lately, with blockbuster exhibitions, to hang work high, presumably to make it easier to see in a crowd. It doesn't bother me because I'm relatively tall, but it might be a problem for short people when they finally make their way to an individual painting. The other trend, an entirely positive one, is the increased use of the non-reflective, almost invisible "Museum Glass." Regular glass, even glass that claims to be non-glare, reflects light and can be very distracting, especially if the painting is dark. (I remember an exhibition of Rothko's late brown paintings where some of the paintings were covered with glass, and they looked like mirrors.) I noticed that The Steins Collect exhibition made extensive use of this glass. Wondering if the Met went to the trouble and expense of changing most of the glass in this show, I called them and asked about it. They said they wouldn't change the glass of borrowed work but "Museum Glass" is the trend now. That’s great news!
In the last two days I attended two panel discussions: one of the worst I've ever seen, Cindy Sherman, Circle of Influence at the Museum of Modern Art on March 26th (sorry, no link because the MoMA website apparently doesn't archive past events) and on March 27th one of the best, A Conversation with the Curators: American Vanguards at the New York Studio School.
The MoMA panel was made up of artists (George Condo, Kalup Linzy, Elizabeth Peyton, and Collier Schorr) who were supposed to discuss, to quote the program, “Cindy Sherman's influence on contemporary art practice, including issues such as feminism and identity.” Condo was first and he presented a muddled and vague talk, mainly about his own work. The little he said about Sherman’s influence amounted to noting they were of the same generation. And then the panel went downhill from even that low.
Elizabeth Payton showed about 30 slides of her own boring portraits and said literally NOTHING! She didn't even identify the portraits. NOTHING -- BUPKIS! Next came Kalup Linzy who’s known for performances where he takes on roles of different characters (sort of like Sherman, right?), but all he did was sing Cyndi Lauper's “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” (I kid you not) and show a few slides of his work. Last came Collier Schorr who showed a mildly interesting video made up mostly of pictures of adolescent boys. That was it! The discussion that followed made no sense even though the moderator, exhibition curator Eva Respini, posed interesting questions.
Okay, I admit I’ve been to worse, but this was the freakin’ Museum of Modern Art, for God's sake. Wouldn’t you expect better? ... Jaw dropping!
The New York Studio School panel, on the other hand, far exceeded my (very high) expectations. For one thing, the panel was made up of some of the top art historians of 20th-century American art: William Agee, Irving Sandler and Karen Wilkin.
Here were three art historians with a masterful knowledge of the period. They not only supported their arguments with an impressive body of facts, but they gave you a deep understanding of how rich and complicated this period was. I loved that they kept interrupting each other (Sandler had trouble getting a word in) and enthusiastically and passionately arguing about such things as:
the “Americanness” of the work these artists did in the 1930’s (Agee: the exuberance and inventiveness definitely made it American; Sandler: no, they were still “disciples,” and even their mature work, in the 1940‘s, was New York art, not “American.” But they all agreed that being American and making American-type art was important to all of them);
the relationship of the artists to the American Abstract Artists (AAA) group (too dogmatic for them) and Surrealism (they liked Miro-type abstract surrealism but not the Dali-type -- although Stuart Davis claimed to reject both);
and the influence of the too-little known artist John Graham (they all agreed it was huge and that Graham was ”the glue that held them all together”).
Here are some of Graham's paintings that are in the exhibition:
John Graham, The White Pipe, 1930, oil on canvas mounted on board, 12 ½ x 17 inches (Grey Art Gallery, New York University).
John Graham, Blue Still Life, 1931, oil on canvas, 25 ⅝ x 36 inches (The Phillips Collection).
John Graham, Seated Woman, c.1942, oil on canvas, 48 x 35 ½ inches.
Christina Kee, the moderator, did an excellent job of reigning in these strong personalities and asking them fruitful questions. And unlike almost every other panel discussion I've been to, the questions from the audience were mostly good ones; and even the ones that weren’t were changed into good ones by the answers. All in all an exhilarating experience.
I take back what I wrote about flashy spectacles being so common that they’ve become stale. Here are two exciting and I believe profound ones: Adrian Villar Rojas's A Person Loved Me in The Ungovernables, the New Museum's otherwise tepid Triennial; and Jeff Koons's proposed public sculpture for the High Line.
A Person Loved Me was created on site for the Triennial by a team of six people from Argentina. It was made to crack as it dries and, ultimately, it will be destroyed at the end of the Triennial, on April 22nd. What I find so moving about it is the eerie anthropomorphism of the work. It's as if the sculpture was once an alive, partly organic robotor weapon from some alien futuristic world. You can experience this better close up:
Detail: Adrián Villar Rojas, A Person Loved Me.
And The New York Times reports the Koons proposal is a
full-size replica of a 1943 steam train suspended from a crane, possibly
installed at the intersection of 10th Avenue and 30th Street. The Friends of the High Line are trying to raise $25 million
to commission the sculpture, and I hope they can
pull it off -- it would be thrilling. Here's a photo of the proposal taken
from the Times:
Image by James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Jeff Koons, (courtesy of Friends of the High Line).
BTW, the article states that "CSX
Transportation Inc. had agreed in principle to donate the third section
of the elevated rail bed, allowing for the park’s completion." I hope CSX will be as generous to the Jersey City Embankment.
Other Art News:
The Times also gives a revealing peek into the way the Gagosian Gallery sometimes does business. Charles Cowles, former art dealer and erstwhile publisher of Artforum, in need of money, approached Larry Gagosian to sell his mother's Lichtenstein. Gagosian said he could get $3 million for it but, to quote the Times:
... the gallery had offered the painting
for considerably less to a collector, Thompson Dean, a managing partner
of a private equity firm, telling Mr. Dean that he had an opportunity to
get an incredible bargain. “Seller now in terrible straits and needs
cash,” said a July e-mail to Mr. Dean from a Gagosian staff member. “Are
you interested in making a cruel and offensive offer? Come on, want to
try?”
The invaluable Art Newspaperhas come out with worldwide art museum 2010 attendance figures. They break it down by the popularity of particular exhibitions as well as total annual attendance. The Louvre is number one with an attendance of an amazing 8,880,000; and the Met is second with 6,004,254, up from 5.2 million in 2010. The Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Rio had the largest attendance for an exhibition -- 573,691 for "The Magical World of Escher."
And finally, Tyler Green is as excited as I am about the new "Closer to van Eyck" macrophotography website I wrote about here. Green points out a tiny blue jewel in a broach on which Jan van Eyck painted the reflection of the window in the chapel where the altarpiece is housed. Keep in mind a viewer wouldn't even be able to see it with the naked eye.
Broach, the Singing Angels' panel of the Ghent Altarpiece
James Panero, managing editor of The New Criterion, makes a good case for the preservation of old art institutions like the Barnes and Gardner museums. Scroll down to the last third for the best of it.
Johnny Ramone was really into clothes. Check out this New York Magazinearticle adapted from Commando: The Autobiography of Johnny Ramone.
Typically masterful and brilliant, T. J. Clark reviewsPicasso and Modern British Art at Tate Britain and Mondrian Nicholson: In Parallel at the Courtauld Gallery: Almost all visual art made in Britain in the 20th century has the instinct of hiding (and good manners) built into its every move ... .
There are two completely different LES exhibitions near the New Museum definitely worth seeing: Not Vital at Sperone Westwater (until March 31);
Not Vital, Hanging & Weighting (2010).
and one of the wildest shows I've seen (and walked on) in a while, Franklin Evans at Sue Scott Gallery (until April 15). Below is only a small taste.
Franklin Evans, Wallcollectionwallsystems, 2012, mixed media, 120 x 300 inches.
I know it's weird, but I like Whitney Biennials. I like learning about new art and artists, and I especially like the arguments that arise from the shows. The main problem I’ve had with past Biennials, and large group shows in general (e.g. The Armory Show), is there’s so much art competing for attention that only flashy spectacles — usually expensive ones — succeed in getting our attention. But these kinds of extravaganzas are so common now that they’ve become stale. Not only is there none of that in this Biennial, but, to the credit of curators Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders, this is a not a Biennial of blue chip artists from blue chip galleries. Instead the work seems sincere, unpretentious and intimate — intimate in that it’s hand-made, DIY work and thus more personal than art done by assistants or fabricated in a factory.
But, unlike Roberta Smith who thinks this is “One of the best Whitney Biennials in recent memory,” or Peter Schjeldahl who wrote it was “...decidedly among the best ever,” (sorry, no link — New Yorker paywall), I think this show is pretty lame. There’s plenty of okay work, but there’s very little that’s new or inspiring.
It’s possible that this kind of unpretentious and intimate art works best on a modest scale, and in a venue where the expectations aren’t so high — a place like the Dependent art fair, for instance. But off the top of my head I can think of several artists who would be better: Shane Hope, B. Wurtz, David Altmejd, Charles Garabedian, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Judy Pfaff, and videos by John Miller, Victor Alimpiev and Cliff Evans. And if they want to revive an artist or two or three, how about Alan Saret, David Park, John McLaughlin or the film-makers James Nares or Klause Vom Bruch?
The installation and performance art in particular (and there’s a lot of it) looks tired and self-indulgent. Los Angeles artist Dawn Kasper moved all her belongings to the third floor and will be using the space as her studio for the duration of the Biennial. This is an idea that has to go back to Lascaux. Marina Abramovic and about a hundred other artists have done it before. And Kasper's own work, at least from what I can see of it in the clutter, looks like warmed-over Los Angeles feminist art from the 1970’s.
Installation view of Dawn Kasper (in the plaid shirt), This Could Be Something If I’d Let It, 2012 Whitney Biennial.
Judith Koether presented some truly awful 1980's-style East Village-type paintings around one of the Whitney’s signature windows forming an installation that I guess was to make them look avant-garde or something.
Installation view of Judith Koether, The Seasons, 2011, synthetic polymer and oil on glass.
And then there’s Joanna Malinowska who re-interpreted a Joseph Beuys performance into an American-Indian ritual and also converted Duchamps’s bottle rack into a stack of faux bison tusks. If there such a thing as sophisticated kitsch this is it.
The fourth floor is given over to the creation and rehearsal of dance performances by Sarah Michelson and Michael Clark. (For more on these dances check out Aaron Mattocks’s series of articles for Hyperallergic.) Are the Biennial curators claiming that the creation of art, the choreographing and rehearsal of a dance, is art in itself? If so, is
it worth showing in a forum that’s supposed to include the best and
newest art? Besides, let's face it, like most creative enterprises, choreographing a dance is a slow, deliberative, trial-and-error process and painfully boring to watch.
At the risk of being accused of being a Bushwick booster, I recently saw a better solution than watching live rehearsals, in a group show of Bushwick art called “What I Know” organized by Jason Andrew at NYCAM (New York Center for Art and Media Studies). It was an 8-minute video by choreographer Julia K. Gleich set to a score by Nico Muhly, entitled 14 Seconds. It condensed the development and rehearsal of a dance so that one could actually see the evolution. (This video can be seen by appointment at the Norte Maar gallery.)
(I noticed a minor but interesting problem. Because these dancers are not used to breaking the fourth wall, they studiously avoided eye contact even when they weren't rehearsing — not that I blame them; it’s embarrassing. But that’s the position they were put in — awkward all around. At least Dawn Kasper wasn’t bothered by it since she seems to be naturally outgoing.)
I guess you can call the two artist-curated exhibitions within the exhibition a type of installation art. Nick Mauss installed an eccentric section of art from the Whitney’s collection and, more successfully, Robert Gober presented the work of the self-trained, visionary artist Forrest Bess. This is nice and interesting, but what has it to do with the Biennial? Are they saying curating, if it’s done by artists, is a new art form? And again, if so, is it worth showing in this forum?
One work getting universal acclaim is Werner Herzog’s Hearsay of the Soul, a five-screen digital projection of the landscape etchings of the relatively unknown 17th-century Dutch artist Hercules Segers. It is set to exquisitely beautiful music: a haunting hymn sung in the Wolof language of Sub-Saharan Africa; a Handel aria; and music by the Dutch cellist and composer Ernst Reijseger. Critics report they were moved to tears. I, on the other hand, felt manipulated. With that music, ANYTHING would be moving, and almost anything else besides five close-ups of landscape etchings would be deeper and more interesting. Why do we accept this kind of heavy-handed schmaltz on film or video but not with the other visual arts? Take a look of this clip of Ernst Reijseger chewing the scenery (overacting) to see what I mean.
The painting, photography and collage selections are better, if also somewhat antiquated. And it’s to the Whitney’s credit that this time they offered enough space for a lot of work by each artist. But keeping the space open, supposedly to allow for the interaction of work by different artists, makes it difficult to focus on one artist at a time. Not surprisingly, artists with their own rooms, or at least a corner to themselves, have been getting raves — Nicole Eisenman, for example.
Nichole Eisenman, mixed media monotypes, 2011.
But as impressed as I am with her facility, I can’t help feeling I’ve seen work like this that's been around since the 1920's (German Expressionism for example). And Andrew Masullo has also been getting praise, and I do like his work, but come on, hasn’t this type of abstraction been around since at least the 1940’s? And why is he arbitrarily limiting his pallet to tube colors?
Andrew Masuillio, installation view via ArtFagCity, 2012 Whitney Biennial
I really liked the tiny hand-made sculptures of Matt Hoyl, and although he didn’t have his own room or even a corner, I think because the work was so small they created their own worlds — worlds separate from the Biennial distractions. But even this work isn’t particularly unique. Donald Lipski (his early wall pieces) and others have done similar sculpture, and usually with more humor.
Installation view of Matt Hoyt, Component Objects, 2010. Mixed media. Collection of the artist.
Behind the space where the dance rehearsals were taking place is an installation I unreservedly loved: Wu Tsang’s Green Room, a replica of a green room in a Los Angeles Latin tranny bar (which also sometimes serves as an actual green room for the dancers). The installation includes a video interview with the owners of the bar and with some of the drag performers. The hot colors, dark, close quarters and over-stuffed interior made for an intense experience, and perhaps the only unique one at this Biennial.
"Re-attributed" Van Gogh painting: Still Life with Meadow Flowers and Roses, 1886, oil on canvas, about 39 x 31 1/2 inches (Kröller-Müller Museum ).
On January 22, 1885, Van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo that he was
painting "a big thing with two naked torsos, two wrestlers." That painting was presumed to be lost until researchers at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Holland, using a new technique, the impressive-sounding Macro Scanning X-ray Fluorescence Spectometry, were able to detect it under a still life in their collection -- a painting they “deattributed” to Van Gogh in 2003 but which now is proven to be authentic.
Doubts about the still life were due partly to the canvas’s unusual size, at 100 x 80 cm. Van Gogh’s Parisian flower still lifes are generally smaller. Historians have now realised that the size of the canvas was a standard format for figure paintings at the Antwerp academy.
Macro Scanning X-ray Fluorescence Spectometry photograph showing Van Gogh's wrestlers.
Will Brand (Art Fag City) and Jerry Saltz have good posts (i.e., I agree with them) on the Dependent art fair which took place in a cheap Comfort Inn on the Lower East Side March 10th — in the same week as the mammoth Armory Show. The tiny rooms were used as galleries and the art was installed everywhere: bathrooms, beds, dresser drawers. It was crowded, and people were amiable and playful.
It reminded me of how the Armory Show has changed — and not for the better. The first Armory Show — not the very first 1913 one, the first art fair one — took place in a funky old hotel in Gramercy Park in 1994. There had never been an art fair in a hotel before, at least to my knowledge, and this was a blast. The rooms, hallways and stairways were packed with a lighthearted crowd. It was all very strange but all the more festive because of it. There was a sense that the art dealers were doing their creative best to promote their artists on a shoestring. Sure they wanted to sell art, but selling art didn’t seem like the ONLY thing. Now there isn’t even the pretense of anything else.
On a related manner, there's been a lot written about Damien Hirst manipulating the art market — one of the better posts is here. But one thing I haven't seen discussed as a contributing factor to the astronomical prices artists like Hirst, Richter and Koons have been getting is that there are more extremely wealthy people today then there have been since the age of the Robber Barons (many of whom were also art collectors). And the wealth of this group has gone up so much that the relative prices (of what they think is a scarce resource) have not increased all that much. To this growing number of billionaires, spending $3 million on a painting is like
an ordinary
person spending $300. This is what is driving the prices up, or at least is partly responsible
for it. With a relative pittance, they can buy
respect, power, prestige, whatever (or believe they can). It's a bargain!
One of the things I love most about New York and other great cities is the mind-boggling variety of visually interesting things you can see by just walking down a street: people, of course, mostly wearing black clothing, but enormous variety within that, Korean markets with their flowers displayed in front, ornate old churches, Art Deco bistros and thousands of businesses, every one different (unless it's a chain, and there are relatively few of those in great cities). (See Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities for the importance of diversity in big cities.) In addition, over time older cities naturally accumulate a great number of buildings with different architectural styles; and sometimes these styles are even mixed together in the same building; and sometimes they have decorated tops that can’t even be seen from the street.
To celebrate the abundance of this architectural diversity, I took photographs of several buildings along one of the many streets in Manhattan that yield unexpected delights — the eastern end of 29th (the western end of 29th Street is unfortunately pretty bleak). This isn’t a grand area like the Financial District, nor is it festive like Times Square or Fifth Avenue, and it isn’t quaintly beautiful like the West Village; in fact the street as a whole isn’t at all charming or even particularly different — but that’s what makes coming across these buildings such a joy.
Starting from the farthest west is this brick carriage house and next to it one of the rare wood clapboard buildings left in Manhattan — both on the National Register of Historic Places.
201 E. 29th Street
Here is a typical late 19th-century brick tenement you find all over the city, but this one has a silly, adorable addition in the front:
143 E. 29th Street
Next is the Belgian restaurant Resto. The facade is different stylistically from the rest of the architecture on the street, but it's all the more interesting because of it. I couldn't get a good picture so I'm using a photo from this food blog.
Resto - 111 E. 29th Street (Between Park and Lexington)
I'm cheating a little here since the entrance to this luxurious hotel is on Madison, but the entrance to the hotel's restaurant is on 29th, and you can best see the building from 29th Street.
The Carlton Hotel, Madison Avenue at 29th Street.
Lobby, Carlton Hotel
About a year ago I was thrilled to come upon this quaint church and garden (below) in the midst of a busy high-rise district, and the joy I felt at the time is the impetus for this post.
The Church of the Transfiguration surrounded by high-rise buildings, 1 E. 29th Street.
The Church of the Transfiguration,
also known as "The Little Church Around the Corner," is one of the most
famous Episcopal churches in the United States. Established in 1848,
its congregation has taken pride over the years in being welcoming and
inclusive. The church has also been involved with theater for a long
time -- it has been the the national headquarters of the Episcopal
Actors' Guild since its founding in 1923. The interior of the church is dark and cozy and contains beautifully carved wood and some of the oldest stained glass in the country.
Marble Collegiate Church is another active and welcoming church on the street. Although its Sanctuary is currently undergoing renovations, people are encouraged to visit their 29th Street lobby. The colorful banners hanging from the fence represent prayers for the thousands of soldiers and civilians killed in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Marble Collegiate Church, 5th Ave. at 29th Street.
Next is the very hip Ace Hotel, and in it the John Dory Oyster Bar, The Breslin Bar and Dining Room, and the excellent Stumptown Coffee. Their lobby is open to the public and, despite being full of more people using MacBook Airs than you'll find at any Apple store, it's a pleasant place to drink your Stumptown coffee.
Stumptown Coffee at the Ace Hotel, 20 W. 29th Street.
And last, the grand finale, the bustling blocks around 29th Street between Fifth and Sixth with hundreds of small, some tiny, stores that sell ribbons, buttons, costume jewelry and notions of all kinds. This is the New York capitalism of legend, the capitalism of the old Lower East Side, where new immigrants open up small shops, hire family or other immigrants, work incredibly hard and (sometimes) make a better life for their children. I'm not talented enough to capture this scene in a photograph; you need to experience it in person. I find the area very moving.
First the good news:
Despite some doubts about the attribution, the J. Paul Getty Museum acquired what is almost certainly a major work by the 18th-century French painter Antoine Watteau.
Antoine Watteau, The Italian Comedians, c. 1720, oil on canvas, 50 ¾ x 36 ¾ inches (J. Paul Getty Museum, #2012.5)
The other good news is that the trend to put art resources online is continuing:
Thanks to the Andy Warhol Foundation, Bomb Magazine has placed online more than 1000 interviews from the last 30 years including interviews with Laurie Anderson, Eric Fischl, Sol Lewitt, Christian Marclay, Dan Graham, Richard Serra and Sonia Delauney.
The Ghent Altarpiece can be seen in super high definition at a new website: Closer to Van Eyck.
Van Eyck, The Ghent Altarpiece, 1432 - Detail of Eve.
If you missed this year's Moving Image Art Fair or didn't want to spend the time standing up to watch all those videos, at Art Fag City you can see some of them online in the comfort of your home.
The Getty Research Institute has made access to its collection of two million photographs a lot easier.
Art in America is supposed to have its archive online, but as of now I only find an occasional article and photos of the covers of issues from the 1980's onward. Watch for more.
Now for the bad news:
As a reminder: The original Pennsylvania Station, NYC, razed in 1963.
The Barnes Foundation had the gall to move the seminal Henri Matisse mural, The Dance, 1932-33, from its site in Dr. Albert Barnes's home in Merion Pennsylvania to the Barnes Foundation's new site in downtown Philadelphia. As Tyler Green convincingly demonstrates, Matisse made the mural specifically for that setting and was particularly interested in how it interacted with the green landscape outside as well as how it gave support to the easel paintings inside (“[My] decoration should not oppress the room, but rather should give more air and space to the pictures to be seen there."). In a 1934 letter to Alexander Fromm, Matisse wrote of the mural: "Architectural painting depends absolutely on the place that has to receive it, and which it animates with a new life. Once it is placed there, it cannot be separated."
Matisse's The Dance in it's original site:
An undated photo shows the Barnes Foundation and its world-renowned art collection in Lower Merion, Pa."The Dance," a mural by Henri Matisse is at left. (AP Photo/Barnes Foundation).
Matisse's The Dance in its new site:
Finally, there are two noteworthy articles about the East Village in the eighties:
a Village Voiceinterview with Philip Glass, and a scorching and fun article by former Village Voice art critic Gary Indiana, One Brief, Scuzzy Moment.
