December 31, 2004
the New Year
Until this afternoon around 3:30 I still had no image for a New Year's post. Then I spotted Allie helping the harried (actually, sometimes pretty intense, witness the cell phones), last-minute shoppers waiting in the checkout line at the...
December 29, 2004
the tsunami, how can we help?
a boy drinks a bag of clean water in Chennai, capital of the tsunami-stricken state of Tamil Nadu, south India Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2004 [excerpt of caption from AP] Of course we want to do something, but how? Along...
December 28, 2004
Susan Sontag
Peter Hujar Susan Sontag [1974-1975] Susan Sontag died on Tuesday. Beginning almost twenty years ago I had included her as a part of the homeland I had just adopted and which she had acquired at birth. Because of my...
December 27, 2004
Lutz Bacher and Jesper Just
Two shows, both already gone, both video installations, but I'm not making anything of whatever other similarities they may have. They are very different artists, doing very different work. Okay, there is singing in each of the pieces, but combining...
December 26, 2004
art bloggers in hard print
Wow. I haven't seen the January Art in America, but I've heard, through subscribers who have already received their copies, about the "FRONT PAGE" article, "Art in the Blogosphere." The issue still hasn't reached the stores, and there's nothing on...
Chie Fukao
Lital Mehr was holding down the fort at Bill Brady's ATM Gallery on Avenue B and East 10th Street a week ago when we stopped in to see the first New York solo show of an exciting young Tokyo...
December 23, 2004
the winter happy plant
My mother grew up in a large German Catholic family on a prosperous dairy farm in Wisconsin. Tradition was important, so important that even into her children's generation the excitement of St. Nicholas Eve, December 5th, managed to give...
December 22, 2004
I guess this explains a lot
A lot has changed in 65 years. The country which built this great skyscraper now seems to have decided it can do so much better without wisdom or knowledge; we're in for a very bumpy ride. I took the...
December 21, 2004
today's "Europeans," civilization's imposters?
"To the whites, the lives of their black office boys or chauffeurs seem unimaginably separate and isolated from their own. . . . But to the urban Africans, the 'Europeans' are the ones who seem isolated, in their remote and...
December 20, 2004
Winter Solstice
Solstice lights Only now that my birthday has passed (even when quite old, late-December children sometimes remain pretty sensitive about their personal nativity celebratory rites) I can start to think about the pagan Saturnalia, the forest peoples' Yule or...
December 19, 2004
today's MTA photo ban protest
my own rather lame sign, as seen somewhere in the system this afternoon (the sign on the guy's left reads, "I'm here on a research grant from Al Queda") this sign became a moving beacon for today's odyssey (the...
"Black Box BRD"
"Der Kampf ist vobei, die Wunden sind offen" ("The battle is over, the wounds are open") The 2001 German film, "Black Box BRD," is in a documentary form, and it uses the Baader-Meinhof/RAF story as structure. Barry recently found...
December 17, 2004
Joymore
Carlos Roque, detail, Processed Normal Without Frames 2004, fifteen drawings, permanent ink and color pencils on paper UPDATED AND CORRECTED INFORMATION IN THE TEXT BELOW Great show! Joymore is the kind of gallery you hope to find in Williamsburg...
photographers' 'Flash Mob' subway ride
REMINDER: Don't miss being a part of the photographers' 'Flash Mob' subway ride protest against the MTA proposal to ban all cameras from the entire transit system. The organizers' plan is to meet tomorrow, Saturday, at 1 o'clock in the...
December 16, 2004
still no evidence of a Kerik nanny
But at least they're finally looking around. The NYTimes may hope to redeem itself for sitting out the Bernard Kerik story in its first weeks. The paper's news and editorial departments had totally ignored the developing stories about Kerik's shady...
December 15, 2004
the Barnes Foundation for all
galleries of the Barnes Foundation In a compact, tightly-argued piece in this morning's NYTimes Roberta Smith puts the brouhaha over the disposition of the collection of the Barnes Foundation into a clear perspective.Once more we are reminded that no...
December 14, 2004
stop the insanity of the Jets stadium
the immediate, threatened neighborhood As incredible as it may seem to idealistic small-d democrats who, however discouraged by national or state politics, may still think we have a say in what happens to our own city, we do not....
Karl Rove gives it to us
Ward Sutton KARL ROVE SUMS IT UP FOR LIBERALS 2004 syndicated cartoon detail See the entire 16-box Ward Sutton cartoon on The Village Voice site. My personal favorite/horror has got to be, "WE USED 9/11 AND NEW YORK CITY...
December 13, 2004
Thomas Allen
Thomas Allen Lure chromogenic print 20" x 24" Thomas Allen Swell 2004 chromogenic print 20" x 24" Books and the images they inspire, captured and re-configured here a second time. Thomas Allen has a very smart, and very elegant,...
Lombard-Freid Fine Arts
Jordan Wolfson Infinite Melancholy 2003 video, 4 minute loop, still image of installation projection The title's a handful. Lombard-Freid's "The Festival of Dreams (part 1): Songs of Innocence & Experience" is a small group (four artists) show, but there's...
December 12, 2004
the Bernard Kerik complex and the missing nanny
but what kind of complex? Anyone who is familiar with the basics of his career knows that Bernard Kerik's nanny story is a red herring, but is there any evidence that there even was a nanny, or at least...
December 11, 2004
Jenny Laden
Jenny Laden Adina (armchair) 2004 watercolor on Mylar 42" x 32" I've been looking at Jenny Laden's work for a few years, and it's never looked as good as it does now. Gorgeous. She has a show right now...
December 10, 2004
Nelson Leirner
Nelson Leirner Maracană (2003) plaster, ceramic and plastic, 120" x 130" x 9.5" Nelson Leirner Figurativismo Abstrato (2004) sticker on wood, 67" x 86.5", detail Ooops. Tardy again. Nelson Leirner's show at Roebling Hall's new space in Chelsea closes...
Richard Jackson
Richard Jackson Dick's Deer (2004) large detail of installation Umm. I'm somewhat without words here. And I'm not even going to alude to the full-size, spinning structure, "Living Room," in the front of the gallery. So go look for...
"Democracy Was Fun"
Momoyo Torimitsu Horizons (2004) mixed media, detail of installation Robert Boyd, Patriot Act (Xanadu: A Place Where Dreams Come True) (2004) DVD, still from video Riiko Sakkinen Colonialism (2004) mixed media, installation view UPDATE (December 11): The show has...
December 9, 2004
East Village USA
Crash (John Matos) Mass Media (1983) acrylic and spray paint on canvas, detail with admirer McDermott & McGough A Friend of Dorothy (1986) oil on canvas, large detail Nelson Sullivan My Life in Video (1982-1989) still from the video...
December 8, 2004
Darrel Morris
Darrel Morris has been extended at lyonsweirgallery until December 18th, even though (not surprising) most of the work on view may already be sold. Much of the exhibition consists of small works on paper, some with heartbreakingly-sensitive short texts,...
December 7, 2004
fight the proposed MTA photo ban!
They're still trying! Trying, that is, to outlaw photography in the New York transit system. Last June I wrote about a fantastic zap I had participated in called by "The Photographers Rights campaign." That same group has called another...
Gloria Steinem
Gloria Steinem, Winter Miller and Mandy Siegfried on the set of "The Penetration Play" in the Mint Theater space last night It was supposed to be an evening of theatre. It was, but it ended with much more. Winter...
Thomas Erben
Gautam Bhatia Escape to the Good Life (2002) charcoal on paper 17" x 70.5" Yes, it is a group show of contemporary Indian artists, but it's not an Indian art show. Thomas Erben has curated a show in his...
the Book Fair and the Library
view of the upward reaches of the Library room inside the building of the General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, including detail of a faux-marble pillar and the ironwork which supports the huge skylight with its gilt-decorated opening mechanisms....
December 4, 2004
Lucky DeBellevue
Lucky DeBellevue untitled (2004) chenille stems and plastic ball 31" x 11" x 82.5" detail view The gallery show closed three weeks ago, on the day I visited it and snapped this picture, but the image continues to attract...
