April 24, 2008
Vincent Gagliostro with Margaret Thatcher at Pulse
Vincent Gagliostro After Louie, an excerpt video [stills, and large details of stills, from installation] Margaret Thatcher showed a video by Vincent Gagliostro at Pulse. I'd like to describe it as an art trailer for a full-length film not...
Posted by james at 11:37 PM | Full Post
April 17, 2008
to hell and back with Ratzinger
Goya Inquisition Scene (1816) oil on panel 18" x 28.75" [three notes: beginning in the Middle Ages the Church had prescribed the conical hat, generally yellow, as a distinguishing mark for Jews; Jewish conversos were the principal concern of...
Posted by james at 1:01 AM | Full Post
March 16, 2008
hooker just a cover; Bush and bankers crushed Spitzer
farm foreclosure sale during the Great Depression My obsession* with this story welcomes further ratiocination: Greg Palast makes some connections which Wall Street, the White House and their joint instrument, a discretionary Justice Department, would prefer to to keep...
Posted by james at 11:52 AM | Full Post
March 11, 2008
spring-ish, and surrounded by a promise of summer
These crocus guys have been livening up our garden for a week or so already. Yes, the little trifoliate leaflets around them belong to our local frais de bois....
Posted by james at 7:58 PM | Full Post
March 10, 2008
play in your own yards, and leave Spitzer alone
William Hogarth Enthusiasm Delineated 1761 This is stupid, if not just evil. No, I'm not talking about Eliot Spitzer. Let him deal with his family; it's not our concern. People are screaming at the Governor about his marital infidelity...
Posted by james at 8:46 PM | Full Post
March 6, 2008
Times Square bomblet outperforms march of a million
In 2003 nearly a million people marched in the streets of New York against a war (to which the majority of the country was opposed even then) only days before it began and the U.S. press hardly mentioned they...
Posted by james at 10:52 AM | Full Post
March 4, 2008
no, not that "Armory show", and not Breuer's building
Drill Hall floor of the Armory Drill Hall vault of the Armory We were at the press preview for the Whitney Biennial this afternoon. This year the venue has been expanded to include the Seventh Regiment Armory, in whose...
Posted by james at 7:35 PM | Full Post
February 28, 2008
The Seventh Regiment Armory's "American Aesthetic"
Louis C. Tiffany window in the Library of the Armory I've been walking through the front doors of the Administration Building of the Seventh Regiment Armory on Park Avenue for decades, but until this past Monday I had never...
Posted by james at 3:54 PM | Full Post
selling off the High Line to developers - no, really!
fourteen floors, most of them condos, to be built on top of our park I admit that I've known about this building for some time. I've been quietly fuming about it (something I don't do often - the quietly...
Posted by james at 12:09 AM | Full Post
February 14, 2008
Rirkrit, where are you? or, artists have to eat too
view of the gallery installation, with art suspended from bamboo poles and marine rigging in a reference to the innovative poles inside Peggy Guggenheim's gallery, Art of This Century [Stephen Ellis's 2000 untitled oil and alkyd canvas is in...
Posted by james at 7:26 PM | Full Post
February 7, 2008
WAGMAG benefit at The Front Room tomorrow
Philip Simmons's "Study for High Noon", one of the works included in tomorrow's benefit Barry and I both love art, Williamsburg and Greenpoint, Williamsburg and Greenpoint artists, Williamsburg and Greenpoint galleries, and WAGMAG, that invaluable guide to Williamsburg and...
Posted by james at 2:47 PM | Full Post
January 27, 2008
475 Kent: the insanity of New York housing policy
a silent cry from a witness across the street two days ago Whatever the bureaucratic, commercial or political story which lies behind the human tragedy of New York City's dreadful and totally irresponsible eviction of over 200 men, women,...
Posted by james at 7:51 PM | Full Post
January 18, 2008
painful "Scenes of Gypsy Life", in painful seats
Janáček in a Slovak-Moravian borderland village a century ago, recording singers onto wax the performance Did anyone see either of the two performances of the Gotham Chamber Opera's "Scenes of Gypsy Life" presented this week at the Morgan? Barry...
Posted by james at 3:18 PM | Full Post
January 14, 2008
of public toilets: old ghosts and profligate chimeras
like almost every other public convenience in this city, the two facilities inside the 23rd Street/8th Avenue subway station, one of which is marked by this old whited-out tile sign, has been closed for decades Now once again [see...
Posted by james at 4:23 PM | Full Post
December 16, 2007
Smart on 23rd Street
The first Smart of winter. The Mercedes Smart (yes, Mercedes) will finally be available in the U.S. by the end of January. We spotted this little beauty (a cabriolet with manufacturer's plates) parked across from our building as we...
Posted by james at 8:46 PM | Full Post
December 2, 2007
new New Museum (extra)
A few footnotes to my earlier post on the architecture of the New Museum: This piece was my favorite continuing thing in the old New Museum, where it hung near the front door for years. This ACT UP/Gran Fury neon...
Posted by james at 2:39 PM | Full Post
November 29, 2007
new New Museum building is a new New York treasure
raindrops on the roof of the temporary tent at the entrance obscure the Bowery facade each of the building's sets of stairs is a star, including this interior tower the aluminum mesh covering the facade shades this row of...
Posted by james at 7:20 PM | Full Post
November 17, 2007
Reverend Billy free this time, but the assaults never stop
cover of a 1909 pamphlet created to protect the right of free speech at a time Emma Goldman was being prevented from speaking How often does the NYPD have to be reminded about the First Amendment? Two days ago...
Posted by james at 8:57 PM | Full Post
November 9, 2007
Asian Contemporary Art Fair
Lu Peng showed up everywhere, but this particular painting was holed up in the VIP room We were at the preview reception of the Asian Contemporary Art Fair last night. As a veteran of just about every similar event...
Posted by james at 10:14 PM | Full Post
October 13, 2007
Clayton Patterson at Kinz, Tillou + Feigen
[four stills from the video installation of the film, "Captured"] How do you write about a chronicler with a soul? How do you write about a bard with a camera? We can't begin to understand the importance of people...
Posted by james at 12:48 AM | Full Post
October 12, 2007
Ashley Gilbertson's "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot"
The captured fighter claimed to be a student who had gotten stuck in Falluja. A marine responded. "Yeah, right, University of Jihad, motherfucker." What the fuck It's a hot title, only partially-disguised by the military alphabet code. Ashley Gilbertson's...
Posted by james at 12:18 AM | Full Post
October 10, 2007
October 6, 2007
gallery photo prohibitions harass all visitors
say no to the no Lately you may have noticed a decline in posts here about gallery shows. There's a reason: I'm not feeling it just now. I'm going to sound like a grouch, if not just a scold,...
Posted by james at 7:01 PM | Full Post
October 5, 2007
Dame Ethel Smyth's "The Wreckers"
John Singer Sargent Ethel Smyth 1901 pastel If this hundred-year-old opera had always enjoyed the success it deserves today I'd probably be whining about the endless parade of productions of La Boheme, Aida, La Traviata, Carmen and The Wreckers....
Posted by james at 4:44 PM | Full Post
October 3, 2007
second annual New York Art Book Fair
Noah Lyon's print mural, wrapped around a wall above his colorful booth Slavs & Tatars poster ("the money, it's not so smart, says the Tajik guy") Soiled Mattress and the Springs, sounding here more hardcore than laid-back, accompanied by...
Posted by james at 4:54 PM | Full Post
October 1, 2007
Michael Cline at Daniel Reich
Michael Cline Picket 2007 oil on linen 62" x 36" [detail] In time, Michael Cline's jaw-dropping show of oils at Daniel Reich, "Folks", may be recorded as a cultural benchmark, both aesthetic and social, for offering us such a...
Posted by james at 1:37 PM | Full Post
pink cupcake exceeds sell-by date: CLOSED
lights out The pink cupcake is dark tonight. Dead. And long may it rest, in oblivion. I was immediately sorry for what the closing of Burgers & Cupcakes might mean to its employees, but minutes after I heard the...
Posted by james at 12:48 AM | Full Post
September 30, 2007
PWOP 2: last night's second "Parade Without A Permit"
drum corps section the vanguard past the Stonewall site the campaign theme not as bad as it looks the curious gather on the sidewalks We're saying the First Amendment isn't just for the homos. It was a fabulous party....
Posted by james at 9:46 PM | Full Post
September 28, 2007
apparently Sylvia Rivera still scares the cops
Sylvia at New York City Hall, with the community she helped create, in an undated photo "Hell hath no fury like a drag queen scorned" [Sylvia Rivera, 1995]. At the Sylvia Rivera Law Project's after-party following its fifth anniversary...
Posted by james at 2:39 PM | Full Post
September 27, 2007
RHA asks Speaker Quinn about 1st Amendment, police rules
the RHA visits Speaker Quinn at the Stonewall Democratic Club open meeting Yesterday the junta in Burma invoked a colonial-era section of the nation's criminal code under which the government can use police or military force against any group...
Posted by james at 8:52 PM | Full Post
September 23, 2007
RHA, allies "Parade Without a Permit" for right of assembly
The Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA] logo incorporates the group's Regulation Pink Gasmask®, which has been donned by members since 2006 while they pursue their perilous mission fighting the American mainstream - an environment which they argue, and few would...
Posted by james at 7:29 PM | Full Post
September 22, 2007
a "7th haven" on international Park(ing) Day
hanging out in a park and free bike repair station on 7th Avenue at Charles yesterday Park(ing) Day, it's about serious greenstreets See Jim Dwyer's column for a word picture of the larger footprint of New York's part in...
Posted by james at 11:32 AM | Full Post
September 21, 2007
platform beauty
untitled (pink line) 2007 I still wouldn't set anything down on it, but sometimes there's a bit of beauty in the lowly subway platform. Of course it doesn't show up if you bring something along to read while you...
Posted by james at 8:04 PM | Full Post
September 19, 2007
Hudson River Park, languor and vigor
We wandered through Hudson River Park along the West 20's and 30's on Sunday afternoon, intermittently dodging the distractions of speedy human-powered wheeled traffic (much of the pedestrian path remains to be built), construction equipment, the banshee screams of...
Posted by james at 12:40 PM | Full Post
September 13, 2007
Kissinger to be Grand Marshall of Steuben Day Parade
the Realpolitiker's very favorite Tracht UPDATE: For concerned citizens of the world who might find the information useful, I've learned that Kissinger is expected to speak at the Parade Gala Benefit Banquet scheduled for 7 o'clock tonight, Friday, at...
Posted by james at 9:06 PM | Full Post
the Chelsea Symphony is super!
supernal music between the altar and the first pew Barry and I are big fans of the two-year-old Chelsea Symphony. It has little to do with allegiance to a home team, even if that's what got us into the...
Posted by james at 2:12 PM | Full Post
September 12, 2007
Greenpoint public library benefit Saturday
"Del Baldwin, Tence Massey and Anna Pope are preparing library books for circulation." Barry and I will be participating with Leah Stuhltrager as jurors in a benefit for the Greenpoint branch of the Brooklyn Public Library on Saturday. The...
Posted by james at 1:32 PM | Full Post
September 11, 2007
no roll call for our own victims, on 9/11 or any other day
GUANTANAMO DELENDA EST! It's the eleventh of September again. Yes, it happens once a year. But I'm not interested in adding to the revanchisme stoked by every mention of the terrible events which occurred in my city six years...
Posted by james at 1:38 PM | Full Post
September 2, 2007
Mercedes micro delivery spotted outside bagel shop
pride-of-ownership emblem, or NYC-traffic-defense gizmo?...
Posted by james at 1:04 PM | Full Post
September 1, 2007
tree and bird cover high above the garden
untitled (14 Mourning Doves) 2007...
Posted by james at 2:14 AM | Full Post
August 30, 2007
"war on terrorism" is new McCarthyism: Gibran victim
we have a history Except to most of the poor citizen infantry of every description and every station which it has been enlisting for six years, the so-called "war on terror" has always been fundamentally about controlling the powerless...
Posted by james at 2:00 PM | Full Post
August 29, 2007
new ArtCal launched
As the chief says, "we're still working on a few features and tweaking the design", but the new ArtCal site is now live. By next week at this time, with the opening of New York's vigorous fall gallery season,...
Posted by james at 1:01 PM | Full Post
August 23, 2007
UPDATE on Deutsche Bank fire
It seems that the tangled story at which I could only hint in my Tuesday post, "Ayn Rand linked to Deutsche Bank skyscraper tragedy?", has caused some serious bustle around the city desk at the NYTimes. The lead story...
Posted by james at 12:01 PM | Full Post
August 21, 2007
Ayn Rand linked to Deutsche Bank skyscraper tragedy?
skyscrapers have very complex lives I've just read that the name of the sub-contracting company in charge of the demolition at the Deutsche Bank building is the John Galt Corporation. Who is John Galt? I immediately recognized the intriguing...
Posted by james at 2:02 PM | Full Post
August 20, 2007
summer afternoon - summer afternoon
view through our open French doors on a cool, cloudy August afternoon...
Posted by james at 6:09 PM | Full Post
frippery
untitled (fuzz) 2007 Now it's just a website frippery, but this happy mix lining our courtyard-garden path makes me smile every time I walk through it....
Posted by james at 5:55 PM | Full Post
August 18, 2007
two Greenpoint survivors
Its neighbor's roses and its own arbor gate standing at the edge of the sidewalk are homey touches for this unreconstructed wooden Federal house on Green Street in Greenpoint. The house is built in exactly the same form as...
Posted by james at 8:25 PM | Full Post
August 13, 2007
Chris Quinn can't even get a pothole fixed
she's busy (Quinn sharing with the Police Chief and the Mayor) Over the past several months I've written repeatedly about my frustration and disgust with Chistine Quinn's attack on our First Amendment rights in her role as City Council...
Posted by james at 1:40 PM | Full Post
August 4, 2007
Mayor's office withdraws proposed NYC photo ban
crowd before an animated Norm Siegel at July 27 First Amendment rally The Mayor's office has backed off from its outrageous set of proposed rules for people using photography anywhere in New York City. It's a great victory for...
Posted by james at 1:04 PM | Full Post
Duke Riley: news from the [water] front
under arrest securing the Acorn This story had legs from the start, sea legs. Barry and I were watching it on line as it grew all day yesterday, and apparently it's still going. I would say that this late...
Posted by james at 10:40 AM | Full Post
July 31, 2007
eruv on 6th Avenue
Last week on the day I took shots of this symbolic fence (the thin [nylon?] wires in the photos) along 6th Avenue just below 23rd Street I couldn't find anything on line confirming that it represented a currently-valid eruv,...
Posted by james at 4:38 PM | Full Post
July 30, 2007
a visit to Brooklyn Museum
Judy Chicago The Dinner Party 1974–1979 ceramic, porcelain and textiles [installation view] Nayland Blake Untitled 2002 charcoal on paper [installation view] Florine Stettheimer Heat 1919 [installation view] [detail] Ree Morton Regional Work #2 1976 oil on wood with Celastic...
Posted by james at 4:58 PM | Full Post
July 29, 2007
Daniel Reich in the Chelsea Hotel
Jeffrey Tranchell Gold Bar 2007 enamel on wood 3.25" x 32" [installation view] Mike Smith untitled 2007 latex, ink and enamel on canvas 24" x 18" [installation view] Mike Smith untitled 2007 latex, ink and enamel on canvas 20"...
Posted by james at 10:40 AM | Full Post
July 28, 2007
NY Union Square First Amendment rally July 27, 2007
BICYCLIST DOWNED BY THUG COP, ARRESTED, THEN UN-ARRESTED How much do you have to piss off a New York cop (unknowingly, in fact) before he assaults and arrests you? When Joe Nerolla rode his bike over a large piece of...
Posted by james at 12:55 AM | Full Post
July 26, 2007
tell Kelly, Quinn and Bloomberg we are still a free people
LA police un-permitting a march in MacArthur Park, May 1, 2007, demonstrating that more and more everything which is not permitted by law is forbidden Tomorrow evening, July 27, folks who want to fight for our right to assemble...
Posted by james at 3:01 PM | Full Post
"to squeeze the cars, first primp the public ride"
(of course it's never been easy getting downtown) a view of central Paris some years before the current mayor's congestion campaign, in a print by Nicolas Guérard, "Les Embarras pour la circulation, au Pont Neuf à Paris" (early eighteenth...
Posted by james at 12:08 PM | Full Post
July 25, 2007
Wall Street Journal touts ArtCal
I guess none of our fans read the Wall Street Journal (I suppose that's quite possible), because no one told us until today about this item by Lauren A. E. Schuker from last Saturday's edition. It's all about telling...
Posted by james at 4:11 PM | Full Post
yellow Koi
This guy in the Battery Park City lotus pool is about eighteen inches long, and what you see here is the actual color....
Posted by james at 3:11 PM | Full Post
July 24, 2007
butterfly effect
These two Painted Ladies were very busy in the 28th Street flower market this afternoon. They ignored me entirely, but I can totally understand the reason for their concentration: They have only two weeks to live and to reproduce,...
Posted by james at 4:19 PM | Full Post
July 18, 2007
our friendly press, on the future of art blogs
I wasn't going to single out this one article in one periodical for a post here on my site, thinking it would appear too self-serving, but then I realized that people were already reading the provocative piece by James...
Posted by james at 6:26 PM | Full Post
July 15, 2007
roof garden update
looking cool After yesterday's post, I suppose even I might have been able to predict this one. The (five-year-old) roof garden outside our apartment is a great joy, even in the winter. But it's so hard to get living...
Posted by james at 7:25 PM | Full Post
July 10, 2007
New Museum rises on the Bowery
coming soon to a changing neighborhood Looking at this stage more like the Pompidou than the casual stack of clean, minimal, white spaces which will eventually sit on the side of one of the oldest and most historically-evocative streets...
Posted by james at 12:37 AM | Full Post
July 7, 2007
Williamsburg and Bushwick, my big sky country
I do think that until you've visited the high prairie you don't fully understand the term, "Big Sky Country". I've been to Montana several times, and I understand. But today I live in a Manhattan canyon, so I also...
Posted by james at 11:41 AM | Full Post
July 1, 2007
arrested in NY for reciting First Amendment to police officer
(too much free speech) An AP story in Newsday reports that Reverend Billy was arrested Friday night while loudly reciting the First Amendment to police. Could anything make it more clear what's going on in this city? It's time...
Posted by james at 12:11 PM | Full Post
June 29, 2007
Chris Quinn asks our civil rights to "take one for the team"
in this case an objective clearly worth a monstrous sacrifice Was the sacrifice of our right to assemble and speak just a matter of "taking one for the team"? And if it was, what will there be left to...
Posted by james at 2:13 PM | Full Post
police to regulate when we can use cameras in NYC
just another day on the street Last time it was the MTA, and now the Mayor of New York City wants to keep us from taking its picture. The Transit Authority eventually gave up on its proposed photography ban,...
Posted by james at 12:38 PM | Full Post
June 28, 2007
Shepard Fairey takes on U.S. rotten moral currency in print
I had almost forgotten that I had this image. It's been on my computer for a week. Once you get past its nightmare-come-alive reference, I think this Shepard Fairey* piece is very beautiful, not least for the color and...
Posted by james at 11:56 AM | Full Post
June 25, 2007
RHA and Queer Justice League march for assembly rights
We were colorful, loud, beautiful and cute, joyful and fierce, and we never really stopped moving, even when the march did. One of the group described himself today, after eleven hours of sleep, as a survivor of "the anarcho-queer...
Posted by james at 11:39 PM | Full Post
NYPD rough up, arrest civil rights lawyer and wife
Geeeesh. Lawyering while black. Well, maybe that's a bit harsh, since there's no way to demonstrate that the New York police officers who beat a civil rights attorney and his wife yesterday would have behaved any differently had the...
Posted by james at 6:14 PM | Full Post
NYPD secretly granted permits to Dyke Marches for years
Friday night's NYC Dyke March In the middle of everything else he was balancing this weekend Tim Doody of The Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA] forwarded this I-Witness Video item to me on on Saturday, when I only read it...
Posted by james at 12:28 PM | Full Post
Queers slam Quinn during Stonewall anniversary march
scene early today at the support truck bike for an "unpermitted" march RHA/Queer Justice League contingent [more tomorrow]...
Posted by james at 1:45 AM | Full Post
June 23, 2007
NYC: yes to "street fairs", no to homo festival
the view from the parlor today It's not the pedestrian street we had in mind. We awakened this morning to the sweet refrain of amplified hawkers of corporately-manufactured goods, and the stench of greasy food. Yes it's another so-called...
Posted by james at 11:45 AM | Full Post
June 22, 2007
trans march led by police wagon, loads of handcuffs ready
One of our sources tell us that tonight's Trans March was phenomenal! Donald Grove commented on Bloggy's post about the Audre Lord Project's experience trying to secure a permit for a transgender march tonight. This is the text of this...
Posted by james at 11:31 PM | Full Post
panel on radical history of Lower East Side
ACT UP demonstration for access to clean needles, seventeen years ago After yesterday's post, which was totally connected to current political activism, I'm going to turn back and examine what the territory looked like in the 80's and 90's....
Posted by james at 1:55 AM | Full Post
June 21, 2007
Radical Homosexual Agenda zaps Quinn on police authority
outside balcony left balcony center and balcony right Tonight The Radical Homosexual Agenda struck once again, dramatically zapping Chris Quinn deep inside City Hall during her presentation at the the "Celebration of LGBT Pride" hosted annually by the City...
Posted by james at 3:20 AM | Full Post
June 17, 2007
sad ending for Brooklyn College MFA suit
still I was stunned when I first heard about the "settlement" of the Brooklyn College MFA students' cases against the City of New York, the NYC Parks Department and Brooklyn College, cases which had cited First Amendment violations and...
Posted by james at 3:51 PM | Full Post
June 7, 2007
Bicycle Fetish Day in Williamsburg
I've always loved bikes and bikers, perhaps almost obsessively (excepting the fiends who ride on sidewalks or yelp at pedestrians), and so on a recent Saturday afternoon I was determined to investigate the 3rd Annual "Bicycle Fetish Day", an...
Posted by james at 10:18 AM | Full Post
June 6, 2007
follow the arrow
untitled (arrows) 2007 Most people were looking at the big hole (the site of the once and future World Trade Center) when we walked through the World Financial Center Winter Garden yesterday afternoon with visiting family members, but this...
Posted by james at 11:02 AM | Full Post
May 26, 2007
April 22, 2007
raw NYPD brutality, spawned by Kelly, Bloomberg and Quinn
stills captured from video on NYCindymedia site On Thursday I wrote about a demonstration in which I had participated (put together by The Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA], Assemble for Rights NYC, and other groups and individuals), which was directed...
Posted by james at 11:59 AM | Full Post
April 19, 2007
police "control" un-permitted parade protesting Quinn
I survived this afternoon's "Parade Without a Permit" more or less unscathed, although I was pushed to the ground while photographing the police exercising their "control" of our right to free speech. At the start of the parade in...
Posted by james at 7:20 PM | Full Post
boarder
untitled (boarder) 2007 dusk, on our Chelsea corner...
Posted by james at 12:47 PM | Full Post
April 18, 2007
Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA] "un-permitted parade"
"keeping control" (wire and flesh, inside a holding pen during the 2004 RNC) No, Chris, in America the police are not supposed to write the laws and "control" demonstrations. Yesterday morning on the Brian Lehrer show NY City Council...
Posted by james at 5:24 PM | Full Post
April 5, 2007
cupcake preservation?
cupcake as landmark? I know I'm going to regret bringing the subject up again, and not only because the additional notoriety may only be what the owners of Burgers & Cupcakes want. But I did a post one month...
Posted by james at 4:33 PM | Full Post
March 31, 2007
ACT UP party tonight
This t-shirt was designed by the legendary activist artist collective Gran Fury 17 years ago. Today South Africa has national health care. A lot of people still think they can do something to help drag our own country into...
Posted by james at 10:47 AM | Full Post
March 30, 2007
ACT UP renewed, and transformed
across from the Stock Exchange yesterday If yesterday's ACT UP twentieth-anniversary action demonstrated anything, it was the coalition's own renewal, and its transformation from an AIDS activist group once largely made up of young middle-class queer white males into...
Posted by james at 2:21 PM | Full Post
March 28, 2007
ACT UP back to the Wall, this time for single-payer healthcare
going back for more, 20 years later Apparently as a nation we can accept throwing away something like half a trillion dollars (and counting), and very likely some 700,000 lives, on a remote elective war whose only accomplishment was...
Posted by james at 11:24 AM | Full Post
March 13, 2007
marquee poetry
In this image of the Waverly Theater (now the IFC Center) marquee, as seen from across the street yesterday afternoon, it's not immediately apparent that motorists, approaching from the left on this one-way street, got to see only the...
Posted by james at 2:38 AM | Full Post
March 2, 2007
the pink cupcake comes down this month
going soon from your neighborhood The giant, spinning, flood-lit pink cupcake perched above the curb on the top of an advertising canopy on West 23 Street has to be removed within 30 days. The city's Department of Transportation [DOT],...
Posted by james at 10:53 AM | Full Post
February 18, 2007
subway abstractions
Barry had a copy of Harpers, but I had neglected to take any reading material with me today when we headed off to Williamsburg. Of course that meant that we would have an unusually long wait at the head...
Posted by james at 9:17 PM | Full Post
February 5, 2007
Tribeca industrial lofts
a steamy Cortlandt Alley, on a freezing Saturday afternoon Not all of Tribeca has been turned into luxury lofts - yet....
Posted by james at 3:58 PM | Full Post
February 4, 2007
NBC Nightly News has puppies!
always good for ratings Sherry Mazzocchi, of Blog Chelsea, writes to us that she sees NBC has apparently taken for a constructive suggestion the example Barry had used to condemn the triviality of what the networks represent as news....
Posted by james at 5:36 PM | Full Post
February 2, 2007
Homeless Museum at home to guests this Sunday
Filip Noterdaeme THE NEWEST™ 2006 model (plexiglass, LED screens, figurines, remote-controlled robotic system) [installation view]* The Homeless Museum (affectionately referred to as HoMu by both adoring fans and its own creators) will be welcoming visitors once again this Sunday....
Posted by james at 1:35 PM | Full Post
February 1, 2007
"blogger summit": WNBC wants in
MSM news During the station's introductory presentation last night at what was billed as New York's first Blogger Summit, the host, WNBC, reported that its own advance survey revealed that zero percent of their invited blog respondents thought that...
Posted by james at 12:38 PM | Full Post
January 18, 2007
J.T. Kirkland at J.T. Kirkland
scattering the drawings - as much fun as the Gramercy - showing, among other pieces, Line IV 2006 ink on archival scrapbook paper 24" x 24" on the top left, Bulb I 2006 ink on archival paper 12" x...
Posted by james at 3:07 PM | Full Post
January 17, 2007
gone yesterday
untitled (vinca) 2006 This image was taken on January 6, just ten days ago, when temperatures hovered near 70 degrees and a gentle rain was falling on our roof garden outside the breakfast room window. Last night the temperature...
Posted by james at 6:14 PM | Full Post
January 12, 2007
the two Times Square demonstrations
hundreds of anti-war demonstrators on the north side two intrepid pro-war demonstrators on the south side New York activists were able to attract a couple of hundred demonstrators to the Times Square military recruiting station on Thursday night, responding...
Posted by james at 11:51 PM | Full Post
January 7, 2007
June in January
I don't mean to unduly upset anyone not already concerned about climate change, and I know that as scientific evidence it's merely anecdotal, but tonight while I was sitting in front of an open window checking my email I...
Posted by james at 1:34 AM | Full Post
December 17, 2006
Wooster on Spring
this collage is probably mostly an accident, but stunning nevertheless [for 41 more images go to my 11 Spring photo set] Why is it called "street art"? And does art created in the street step out of character when...
Posted by james at 6:32 PM | Full Post
December 7, 2006
Target free speech
who, or what, does have the right to "speak" in public, and how much does free speech cost? Coming home from the opening at the Whitney at Altria last night, I spotted the graffiti comment on the poster shown...
Posted by james at 5:22 PM | Full Post
November 30, 2006
November 18, 2006
rural-ish Village with a dark urban history
Some of the last roses and last leaves of, er . . . autumn, seen Friday through the tall iron fence which surrounds Jefferson Market Garden which, through much of the mid-twentieth century, was the site of the New...
Posted by james at 9:18 PM | Full Post
November 17, 2006
guerilla gorillas on the wall
I captured these four charming apes on Marcy Street in Williamsburg yesterday afternoon. Their keeper's name, "GoGorillaMedia.com" appears, rather discretely, on the lower right corner of each poster....
Posted by james at 6:22 PM | Full Post
October 25, 2006
if you see something, say something.
about terror far more real than that imagined by hysterical post-9/11 SubTalk warnings [altered poster sighted on the C train this afternoon]...
Posted by james at 5:46 PM | Full Post
October 21, 2006
morning glory thorns
untitled (razor wire) 2006 These morning glories, seen on a fence in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, on a late afternoon earlier this month, seemed totally indifferent to the manufactured thorns installed at the top....
Posted by james at 6:56 PM | Full Post
September 30, 2006
this is not a gay film not a a gay film a gay film
I was shocked I was I went to a presentation by the artists and book signing at Aperture on Thursday night, and this is one of many duplicate posters I found clipped up and down parking signs and light...
Posted by james at 11:08 AM | Full Post
September 26, 2006
the American Airlines homo scare: even worse than reported
UPDATE ON THE AMERICAN AIRLINES INCIDENT: the airline's straights-only security rules don't fly I have now heard from our friend David Leisner, who was quoted in the The New Yorker story I wrote about on Thursday evening. David was one...
Posted by james at 12:15 AM | Full Post
September 17, 2006
the old Vinegar Hill
untitled (asphalt siding) 2006 I'm pretty fond of the siding this nineteenth-century house in Brooklyn's Vinegar Hill aquired some time in the next....
Posted by james at 7:52 PM | Full Post
September 11, 2006
the antidote to 9/11 24/7
I wasn't going to say anything more today about the fifth installment of our annual orgy of mourning and revenge, the anniversary of September 11. But things just got out of hand once we walked into Pierogi this evening and...
Posted by james at 9:37 PM | Full Post
September 5, 2006
polished Gehry
The old Chelsea confronts the new: The faded remainder of a painted twentieth-century advertising sign for a popular auto body polish faces the sparkling highlights of a nearly-completed Frank Gehry building on the West Side Highway. The top of...
Posted by james at 11:39 PM | Full Post
September 1, 2006
clowns commuting to Brooklyn
rushing the turnstiles happy together favorite hunky clown just ordinary commuters DIY nose jobs but hard to miss I knew pretty much what to expect. I was told a horde of clowns would be descending onto a subway platform...
Posted by james at 11:36 PM | Full Post
August 27, 2006
brick wannabes on 9th Avenue
(nice try, but I wasn't fooled for a moment)...
Posted by james at 3:03 PM | Full Post
August 23, 2006
The Bronx takes off
David Schillinglaw Box Fresh, Get up your antenna and Hell Bent, all 2006, all mixed media on paper and all 17" x 11" [installation view] Graham Gillmore Cattle Bruisers and Ships paint on paper, 36" x 24" and See...
Posted by james at 11:57 PM | Full Post
August 17, 2006
Tribeca ghost
". . . and Push"? UPDATE: I just Googled the text of the [1910?] wall advertisement and found this possible explanation for the obscure message on Forgotten New YorkThis sign had been a mystery to me for some time....
Posted by james at 2:52 PM | Full Post
August 15, 2006
keeping our twenty-first century subway humming
These electrical cable enclosures, which appeared almost exactly at eye level, easily amused me while I was waiting on the N/R platform at 42nd Street yesterday. It's amazing that the system somehow manages to work - most of the...
Posted by james at 7:48 PM | Full Post
July 25, 2006
the most dangerous war
Timothy Buckwalter [title not given] 2006 acrylic ink on paper 8.5" x 11" The destruction and invasion of Lebanon is very likely to spell disaster for New York, and for any other people or place rightly or wrongly perceived...
Posted by james at 1:29 PM | Full Post
July 19, 2006
older New York
a scar in the late nineteenth-century paving stones on West 27th Street, looking west...
Posted by james at 11:48 PM | Full Post
they've lost the potato chip!*
[an image either Barry or I captured only days after September 11] Oops. The only remaining recognizable relic of the sacred World Trade Center buildings is missing, but I guess we're still more or less on target to spend...
Posted by james at 1:12 PM | Full Post
July 18, 2006
thoughts of Israel somehow always cancel thought
U.N. peacekeepers react at the sight of citizens who were killed when Israeli warplanes targeted their vehicles Saturday (July 15th) AP I've just read two disturbing pieces in today's NYTimes Metro section describing the reaction of New York's "leaders"...
Posted by james at 4:27 PM | Full Post
July 11, 2006
faced postbox
I saw this rusty postbox sitting on a canted sidewalk at the edge of a West 22 Street mid-block construction site a few days ago. Someone who had been by before was kind enough to try to make it...
Posted by james at 1:31 PM | Full Post
July 8, 2006
Chris Moukarbel at Wallspace
Chris Moukarbel Untitled 2006 DVD projection [still from installation] Who owns 9/11? Even the question is scary, but most of us would answer in disgust, "George Bush". Nevertheless we would have to admit that this quick response ignores the...
Posted by james at 1:33 PM | Full Post
July 4, 2006
a close afternoon of small pleasures
Cotoneaster [?] lining the footpath urban riverside scene Koi pond poppy above the Hunger Memorial We walked all of the way downtown from 23rd Street yesterday with a friend who was visiting from Berlin. Most of our path brought...
Posted by james at 6:43 PM | Full Post
July 3, 2006
a table for the 'farm'
I found the table I'd been looking for! Now I may never be tempted to leave town, at least not before morning papers and iced coffee. Even the plants seem happier....
Posted by james at 8:20 PM | Full Post
June 20, 2006
our little scrub farm
it only appears restful between regular campaigns replacing casualties with new recruits Our apartment envelops this bit of the outside on its north side, but nature refuses to forgive a building for totally blocking all direct sun with its...
Posted by james at 9:25 PM | Full Post
June 16, 2006
egret seriously rambling
a truly Great Egret For some the Ramble is more for fishing than hunting expeditions, although we also observed the latter as we circled the north side of Central Park Lake with Barry's visiting uncle yesterday on an absolutely...
Posted by james at 8:58 PM | Full Post
June 6, 2006
Brooklyn College MFA works resurrected, with scars
I wrote a little while back that I would show some of the damage the school had done to work created by Brooklyn College Masters degree students. While this small post can't show the full extent of the physical and...
Posted by james at 1:51 PM | Full Post
June 4, 2006
nature, Johnson, Kelly, Bertoia
Last week while visiting the garden Philip Johnson designed in 1953 for the Museum of Modern Art I was charmed by the anthopomorphic postures of the Bertoia chairs, also just over fifty years old, which are found strewn (rather mysteriously...
Posted by james at 6:13 PM | Full Post
June 3, 2006
spring Barry
Barry talking to his wonderful mother in MoMA's Sculpture Garden last week. The beautiful bright blue Impatiens crowded into their geometric beds looked quite jealous....
Posted by james at 8:58 PM | Full Post
May 25, 2006
the penis art which threatens New York families
Augusto Marin's notorious provocation This is just one of five sculptures by Augusto Marin which is included in the Brooklyn College MFA thesis show shut down three weeks ago by the Brooklyn Parks Commissioner. This self-appointed guardian of New...
Posted by james at 8:55 PM | Full Post
May 23, 2006
Brooklyn College MFA "Plan B Prevails"
WHEN DOES A PHALLUS DESERVE RESPECT?* Robert Mapplethorpe Louise Bourgeois 1982 [image of Bourgeois holding her "Fillette"] Now it's official. Er, maybe I should write "anti-official": The Brooklyn College 2006 MFA thesis show is re-opening, mostly. It was shut down...
Posted by james at 12:57 PM | Full Post
May 19, 2006
postponed: Brooklyn College MFA students press conference
I've just gotten word that the Brooklyn College MFA Press Conference originally scheduled for 1 pm today has been POSTPONED. Details to follow. I'm not going to speculate here, but I find this last-minute change very interesting. On a related...
Posted by james at 12:08 PM | Full Post
May 18, 2006
Brooklyn College MFA students announce press conference
UPDATE: [noon, Friday, May 19] The Brooklyn College MFA Press Conference originally scheduled for 1 pm today has been POSTPONED. Details to follow. FIGHTING THE CENSOR'S (ST)INK Brooklyn College MFA students, members of the faculty and attorneys Norman Siegel and...
Posted by james at 6:09 PM | Full Post
May 13, 2006
MFA show shut down for reference to Cheney sex?
Lèse Majesté? Was sex the beard for political censorship? From a story in the Fine Arts section of the NYTimes on Friday:In addition to the hand-and-penis sculpture, works in the show included a video with sexual overtones in which...
Posted by james at 11:12 AM | Full Post
May 11, 2006
on the Brooklyn College massacre, Riverdale Press rocks!
[this editorial is too good to stay in the Bronx; Barry reformatted it from a PDF so I could upload it here] THE RIVERDALE PRESS Thursday, May 11, 2006 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The return of the censors In 1988, Chicago police arrested...
Posted by james at 1:23 PM | Full Post
May 5, 2006
Brooklyn College decides sex wrong for New York public
Crain's reports that Brooklyn College has opted to move their school MFA exhibit rather than fight the City's shutdown."In keeping with the public nature of the space, as well as its position as an honored war memorial, Brooklyn College has...
Posted by james at 4:34 PM | Full Post
May 4, 2006
who owns New York?
coming soon to a neighborhood which may be your own I spotted this developer's sign hanging on the side of a building next to the [momentarily] empty lot on 6th Avenue and 28th Street. Does the zoning department know...
Posted by james at 5:37 PM | Full Post
April 29, 2006
parrot's back
Two summers back I passed this guy's lofty perch on 8th Avenue at least ten times a week on my way to and from the Cancer Center, but last year I never saw (or heard) him once. Two days...
Posted by james at 3:20 PM | Full Post
April 8, 2006
tape dog
[seen on the platform of the 8th Avenue Canal Street station]...
Posted by james at 2:56 PM | Full Post
March 30, 2006
Metro Mall plays April Fool early
a noble experiment A Queens shopping center has cancelled Saturday's Metro Mall Art and Science Fair which had been organized by Jacques Louis Vidal. The young artist had planned a very imaginative sculpture/event along with 26 other artists and...
Posted by james at 5:24 PM | Full Post
March 18, 2006
'Permanent Bases' and Rachel Corrie, both in The Nation
There are few issues more important to our own survival and that of the entire world than the state of Israel and the war in Iraq. In two consecutive issues this month The Nation's contributors offer enlightenment in these areas...
Posted by james at 11:13 AM | Full Post
March 6, 2006
Jenny Holzer: bigger will be bigger
Le Corbusier* via Jenny Holzer via Larry Silverstein Speaking of large works of art [from my March 4 post: "...the Whitney rooms are devoted almost exclusively to large works; almost everything can be seen easily from a distance."], Jenny...
Posted by james at 1:42 PM | Full Post
March 5, 2006
violinist and pink youth
[seen the other, far side of the tracks last night]...
Posted by james at 12:34 PM | Full Post
February 13, 2006
still sticking with snow
These two storm details were captured during a walk across West 22nd Street late yesterday afternoon. The first image reminds me that snow isn't so fussy about spreading its largess; even man's stuff get's the full treatment. The second...
Posted by james at 6:34 PM | Full Post
February 9, 2006
there's nothing like a good cloud, or two
Welcome competition for the skyscrapers. The picture? Yeah, I know this is pretty dull stuff, even if you think a beautiful sky, or at least it's appreciation, is an exceptional thing in Manhattan. So let's just say this post...
Posted by james at 9:13 PM | Full Post
needing a thumbs up
Sticker-decorated but otherwise empty Gay City News box seen on 6th Avenue this afternoon. Anybody out there know anything about the image?...
Posted by james at 9:00 PM | Full Post
November 12, 2005
Rockefeller Center takes on the Empire State Building
the money shot But, continuing the sex metaphor, getting there was at least half the fun. Last Sunday Barry and I went to the top of the old RCA Building in Rockefeller Center. We went because we wanted to...
Posted by james at 1:54 PM | Full Post
November 3, 2005
Chelsea towers
these two are rare exceptions to the classic, and ubiquitous, wooden barrel versions...
Posted by james at 10:48 PM | Full Post
October 31, 2005
an interval within the Affordable Art Fair
in between the art 2005 A quiet moment within a physical break between dealer booths on Pier 92 Saturday....
Posted by james at 3:51 PM | Full Post
September 30, 2005
FREEDOM NIXED FOR SACRED SPACE - WAL-MART IN TALKS
and eventually, when interest in them flags, we can use the two big footprints for parking So, after watching four years of people fighting over the big hole, we're now to have nothing more than some dreary architecture sheltering...
Posted by james at 12:51 PM | Full Post
September 22, 2005
don't expect freedom of speech or assembly in New York
bedlam immediately followed the arrest of the organizer of Cindy Sheehan's appearance in Union Square [the guy in the yellow shirt is a plainclothes punk "kid" who tried to start trouble before the rally began, according to a witness,...
Posted by james at 5:13 PM | Full Post
September 20, 2005
our sidewalks are now for sale
everybody into the streets! They could hardly have come up with a petty outrage more perfectly designed to get me going. Hummer, blocked sidewalk, trashy action movie: Could anything be more civilized in a crowded neighborhood on a warm...
Posted by james at 5:52 PM | Full Post
life on the edge - of the reservoir
I was up by the Central Park reservoir (the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir) yesterday. It was one of the last days of summer and I was anxious to find some sign of color or life other than the green...
Posted by james at 2:46 PM | Full Post
September 18, 2005
do birds drink?
I was walking with Barry and some friends along 11th Avenue just above 24th Street when I spotted a birdhouse shape on the far side of a tree [by coincidence one of my most favorite trees in the entire...
Posted by james at 6:50 PM | Full Post
"Floating Island" sighted off Manhattan
It was already early Saturday evening. We were walking down through Hudson River Park with a destination in mind, but we had started to assume that we would arrive too late to see the posthumous [performance?] of Robert Smithson's...
Posted by james at 5:32 PM | Full Post
September 12, 2005
Madison Square Garden eyes another architectural treasure
Farley Post Office Building [at the top of the front steps] BAD HABIT Years ago they tore down the magnificent old Pennsylvania Station and replaced it with the current monstrous obscenity which became the latest incarnation of the peripatetic...
Posted by james at 12:10 PM | Full Post
September 6, 2005
ArtCal now has pictures!
Robert Boyd Heaven's Little Helper (from the series Xanadu) 2005 video still (Manson Girls) News flash! ArtCal now has pictures as well as information. Well, it is all about the visual arts, so offering some images along with direction...
Posted by james at 5:06 PM | Full Post
August 30, 2005
the art of United Architects
United Architects World Trade Center Proposal Project 2002 Plexiglas [detail of installation] It was my favorite when I saw it in a magnificent exhibition organized by and presented at Max Protetch now more than three years ago. It may...
Posted by james at 12:22 PM | Full Post
August 27, 2005
fiores stravagantes
in the Channel Gardens, Rockefeller Center, on Thursday...
Posted by james at 5:42 PM | Full Post
miniature Manhattan wildlife II
up the wall He's back! I'd seen nothing since last July, but there were two sightings of our roof garden lizard this morning, both on the wall above the planters. Barry thinks we actually saw two separate little creatures,...
Posted by james at 11:54 AM | Full Post
August 17, 2005
de Menezes in light jacket, walked casually, used transit card
British newspapers front pages, August 17, 2005 carry pictures of the body of Jean Charles... Jean Charles de Menezes walked at a normal pace into the subway station on July 22, used his card to pass through the turnstile,...
Posted by james at 12:16 PM | Full Post
August 15, 2005
finally, a VJ Day which liberates the queers too?
exactly 60 years later: the kiss watched 'round the world, its original models, and some contemporary enthusiasts Although there is at least one same-sex couple in the group* kissing in the image above, they didn't make it into the...
Posted by james at 4:21 PM | Full Post
August 9, 2005
one for the revolution
This revolutionary [paint on panel] was spotted attached to the same wall as the arrow and the penis. The paving stone she's hurling in anger would have made a better weapon than the large granite blocks of Wooster Street...
Posted by james at 8:08 PM | Full Post
art on and off the street in Soho
it starts with the realistic electrical box (complete with pull-switch) in the lower right corner, and it points toward a pudgy paper penis person pasted above it by another artist The building walls across from Deitch Projects on Wooster...
Posted by james at 7:30 PM | Full Post
something like a green shitsu, resting
Usually there's a tree of some kind in the middle of these things, but then the grasses don't grow so luxuriantly as they have in this little curb garden, seen on Waverly Place this afternoon. Yes, the usual neat...
Posted by james at 6:59 PM | Full Post
August 8, 2005
forget about "design" here - just enjoy it
[spotted in Astoria last evening, squeezed between a Cosco and Socrates Sculpture Park]...
Posted by james at 12:10 AM | Full Post
August 7, 2005
good design can still surprise
is it a "make-do"? I spotted this wall sconce in a stairwell at PS1 this afternoon, and I thought it was an rigged one-off. Then I found another, virtually identical to this one. What does it mean? They looked...
Posted by james at 11:30 PM | Full Post
good design is forever
still looking good I'm thinking it's a design from the 1950's, but someone out there probably knows for sure. In any event, my point is to show how beautiful it is. Look at the stuff the MTA has installed...
Posted by james at 10:49 PM | Full Post
August 1, 2005
so, what was the difference this time?
the signs on Fifth Avenue read "Witness To Israeli War Crimes," and that seems to have stuck in more than one important craw Steve Quester and his remaining four co-defendents in the trial of the M26 arrestees were sentenced...
Posted by james at 8:21 PM | Full Post
a greeting for developers?
spotted yesterday on North 3rd Street in Williamsburg...
Posted by james at 12:06 PM | Full Post
July 31, 2005
miniature Manhattan wildlife
Eastern Fence Lizard, Northern fence subspecies I think it was one of his relatives. I don't know when a modest garden of pots on a low Manhattan roof qualifies as a natural wilderness, but I'm thinking that ours must...
Posted by james at 9:44 PM | Full Post
July 29, 2005
before Billy Joels, before potato barns, before the Shinecock,
untitled (rose scallops) 2005 . . . there were these communities. I'm very fond of shellfish, and my taste in art and food, especially food preparation, includes a powerful strain of minimalism. I spotted this gorgeous cache of shellfish...
Posted by james at 7:09 PM | Full Post
July 26, 2005
what to do if stopped for a subway search
not so simple now, even for white guys, but maybe it never was UPDATE: I received a very constructive comment on my last post, "bag the entrance searches, we need exits!", from Matt of the "Flex your Rights Foundation,"...
Posted by james at 3:32 PM | Full Post
July 25, 2005
bag the entrance searches, we need exits!
the wrong kind of crowd control It's a good thing it was Penn Station, because virtually none of New York's Transit system stations could be evacuated for either a real or a false alarm. Chief Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg's...
Posted by james at 1:40 PM | Full Post
July 20, 2005
more on Smolkatown
for picking weeds It probably won't be news to anyone in the new music scene, but this account of vicious New York city police thuggery may be a surprise to many of my readers, even those who have seen...
Posted by james at 3:26 PM | Full Post
July 11, 2005
MTA: stadium treated as emergency, but security gets yawn
leaving it up to the riders Barry has just about covered the issue, with the help of Newsday's estimable Ray Sanchez, but a letter to the editor published in the NYTimes helps to illustrate the scale of the criminal...
Posted by james at 7:22 PM | Full Post
July 10, 2005
meet Bubba
Bubba waiting for us on Bedford Street in Williamsburg today I have always been interested in cars. Actually, I'm something of a car nut, in spite of my interests and principles otherwise. Yeah, I know, it's 2005 and we...
Posted by james at 11:21 PM | Full Post
June 26, 2005
Williamsburg beach
last Sunday, folks parked at Grand Ferry near its successor crossing, the Williamsburg Bridge, here a dark bow across the East River with the towers of two earlier spans beyond...
Posted by james at 7:08 PM | Full Post
June 21, 2005
"don't walk/walk" with a great shirt
Not much is ever left unembellished, or unremarked, in Williamsburg. This one is thanks to Barry's sharp eye....
Posted by james at 5:25 PM | Full Post
June 19, 2005
Madame Jumel continues to entertain
view of the eastern end of Sylvan Terrace through a window of the octagon drawing room inside the Morris-Jumel Mansion George Washington slept there. A 1765 wooden American Paladian villa sitting in upper Manhattan on a rise which originally...
Posted by james at 12:54 AM | Full Post
June 16, 2005
disgusted, but not quite shutting up
" . . . the inside of the stadium in Liberty City" Yes! Just when I think I've been doing pretty well with my own campaign of "inner emigration"* [because, basically, we are clearly not a democracy; I don't...
Posted by james at 7:12 PM | Full Post
May 6, 2005
the World Trade Center site as a grand public plaza
Pietro Gualdi Grand Plaza of Mexico City, Following the American Occupation of September 14, 1847 1847 oil on canvas [one of my all-time favorite public squares, for the richness of its life - once we left] Over seventy years...
Posted by james at 12:11 PM | Full Post
May 4, 2005
Smolka photo found!
Chief Smolka doing his thing UPDATE/FOLLOW UP: When I posted my April 30 story, "political police thuggery in New York," I wrote that I was unable to find the dramatic photograph which acccompanied the print edition of the NYTimes...
Posted by james at 4:11 PM | Full Post
April 25, 2005
Wiener Kunst for the outsider
Richard Hoeck and John Miller Something for Everyone 2004 video installation view Sabina Hörtner Twins 01 2002 Eddy marker on multiple cardboard sheets installation view Marko Lulic Hart und weich Nr.2 [Hard and Soft No.2] 2002 painted wood platform...
Posted by james at 10:38 PM | Full Post
it's such a fecund scene
Spotted in Williamsburg on the inside of the narrow extruded steel pole supporting a parking sign....
Posted by james at 12:23 AM | Full Post
April 20, 2005
Ratzinger's history in New York
how do you say "booga booga!" in ten languages? In an email with the subject line, "My encounter with Pope Benedict XVI," a friend and awesome activist colleague of mine reminds us today that our outrage over what Josef...
Posted by james at 10:50 AM | Full Post
April 13, 2005
NYC police are now proven liars, but nothing will change
Welcome citizens! (wire and flesh, inside the holding pen on Pier 57) AND THEY'LL DO IT AGAINThis is the political nightmare we fear the most. -- joseph KeifferSix letters in the NYTimes today discuss yesterday's news article about the...
Posted by james at 11:29 AM | Full Post
April 4, 2005
toward a more beautiful New York
sign race This was the scene on 23rd Street a few nights ago. Boston Market was installing a long canopy stretching to the curb, presumably to compete for attention with its fast food and fast life neighbors. This miniature...
Posted by james at 3:10 PM | Full Post
March 31, 2005
garbage flowers
I spotted this garden planted just outside the long frontage of the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd Street today. I was on my way to the American Folk Art Museum located next door. Each "flower" bore one green...
Posted by james at 2:07 AM | Full Post
March 29, 2005
best in show - but it was no contest
untitled (1936 Lincoln Zephyr door handle) 2005 I saw no vehicle which pleased me more at the New York auto show than this seventy-year-old prop for the introduction of one manufacturer's 2006 model. I spent the entire afternoon at...
Posted by james at 12:45 AM | Full Post
March 26, 2005
like a huge, colored Eostre egg
untitled (piebald Met Life Building and van doppel) 2005 There can only be one explanation for the exuberance of this neighborhood display tonight: The fecundity feast of Eostre [sic]. Excerpts from the Wikipedia entry for Easter:The English and German...
Posted by james at 10:11 PM | Full Post
March 25, 2005
it's clear we really want these leaders
Jor-El, father of Superman I haven't posted much of a true politcal nature lately. Frankly, I've felt that the game is over as far as this benighted nation is concerned. We've failed as a society and as a republic....
Posted by james at 9:02 PM | Full Post
March 24, 2005
but how would a vegetarian say it?
spotted tonight in the 23rd Street 1/9 subway station My first thought was, this is Chelsea, and some of our neighbors have interesting ways of showing affection, but then it occurred to me that the message could have been...
Posted by james at 11:45 PM | Full Post
March 23, 2005
2nd Annual Drinkin' and Drawin' Championship
intense bar scene from last year's competition Dunno exactly why, but this sounds like a wonderful thing. The promoters (yeah, that sounds so big-deal), M.River and T.Whid, have their explanation:It might be interesting if an art idea conceived in...
Posted by james at 11:58 AM | Full Post
March 20, 2005
"push button for luck"
11th Avenue and 22nd Street, Saturday, March 19th I'm gratified to see that someone has found an honest use for these dummy buttons which are found all over the city. The Department of Transportation installs them to make pedestrians...
Posted by james at 12:51 AM | Full Post
March 5, 2005
Bombay Talkie
untitled (Talkie stair sculpture) 2005 Sorry, but I forgot to ask for specifics about the sculpture, since we were virtually closing the restaurant Wednesday night when I snapped this image and there was no one around at the time...
Posted by james at 12:51 AM | Full Post
February 18, 2005
art and politics at The Gates
the "politicization" of the gates! Many thanks to Noah Lyon for giving me the opportunity of pulling together my last two posts about art and politics (and maybe a good many more of these blogs, going back almost three...
Posted by james at 10:46 PM | Full Post
whose gates?
paradise, an imaginary park where "Fair Use" really is doctrine Hide those cameras and sketchpads if you're planning on using them in Central Park this month, and even if you're not going, think of an alternative phrase to describe...
Posted by james at 1:02 PM | Full Post
February 13, 2005
The Gates
actually, this was the only gate we found whose curtain was wrapped about its architrave I just didn't get it. Barry and I went to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude's project for Central Park, The Gates, this afternoon, well, first...
Posted by james at 12:38 AM | Full Post
February 7, 2005
"we are concerned about how we use the people's money"
inside historic, if somewhat seedy, City Council Chambers, an easy camaraderie prevailed in the midst of testimony which will supposedly decide the fate of the Jets stadium proposal Crowds of construction union workers, most of whom typically live in...
Posted by james at 3:32 PM | Full Post
February 6, 2005
Texas pick-me-up
parked outside Pierogi 2000 this afternoon:...
Posted by james at 11:48 PM | Full Post
January 23, 2005
dead of winter
This picture was taken from the quiet side of the apartment. It's a view of our Shadblow as seen early in the afternoon of the day after. And, I really hope it's not dead....
Posted by james at 12:41 PM | Full Post
January 22, 2005
somewhat snowed, but not snowed-in
the corner of 23rd Street and 8th Avenue tonight at 7 o'clock We were on our way to a gallery opening. The "impressionist" blur is the result of the slow shutter, but it's pretty close to what it looked...
Posted by james at 8:43 PM | Full Post
the High Line, before
below the railroad viaduct called the High Line, "CONSERVING FOR TOMORROW"...
Posted by james at 1:03 AM | Full Post
January 17, 2005
Hearst Tower diagonals
I hadn't noticed until recently that Sir Norman Foster's exciting project for completing the 1928 Hearst Building in midtown Manhattan includes a relatively small but significant salute, or nod, to the design of the art deco original. In the...
Posted by james at 6:58 PM | Full Post
January 8, 2005
one-stop shopping in Brooklyn
untitled (Metropolitan Avenue marketing) 2005...
Posted by james at 12:03 AM | Full Post
January 4, 2005
the Austrian Cultural Forum
Günther Domenig, on the architect's imagination. I love visiting the Austrian Cultural Forum building. Once you've greeted the very-New York concierge guy behind the desk inside the door of the narrow 24-story tower on 52nd Street, you could actually...
Posted by james at 6:40 PM | Full Post
January 1, 2005
must be the rural part of the South Bronx
including at least one farmer and feed dealer There's a fairly happy story in Newsday this morning, reporting the relatively unaggressive approach of NYC police to last night's local Critical Mass. The monthly event promoting pollution-free transportation went off...
Posted by james at 2:52 PM | Full Post
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...
Posted by james at 11:16 PM | Full Post
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...
Posted by james at 12:10 PM | Full Post
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...
Posted by james at 8:32 PM | Full Post
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...
Posted by james at 12:55 AM | Full Post
December 17, 2004
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...
Posted by james at 10:49 PM | Full Post
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...
Posted by james at 11:43 AM | Full Post
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....
Posted by james at 9:11 PM | Full Post
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...
Posted by james at 8:09 PM | Full Post
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...
Posted by james at 12:37 PM | Full Post
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...
Posted by james at 8:30 PM | Full Post
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....
Posted by james at 3:15 PM | Full Post
November 30, 2004
bad donut!
I just learned that the donuts I love to hate are more distasteful than I had thought. Krispy Kreme* contributed $90,260 to the Republican Party and only $1,842 to the Democratic Party during the 2003-2004 election cycle, according to data...
Posted by james at 1:40 PM | Full Post
November 29, 2004
Krispy Kreme
donut detritus What is it they say about sausage making? Along lines of the same argument, I think Chelsea's Krispy Kreme fans should stay clear of their favorite donut haunt on the nights the raw materials are dumped on...
Posted by james at 1:25 PM | Full Post
November 25, 2004
a very small Thanksgiving story
store-bought cut celery Overheard from the loudspeakers at our neighborhood Whole Foods this afternoon, clearly audible above the sounds of colliding shopping carts being pushed by harried people with long shopping lists, [almost] all prepared for elaborate home-cooked feasts...
Posted by james at 12:06 AM | Full Post
November 21, 2004
ArtCal steps up
Limborg brothers Les très riches heures du Duc de Berry: Novembre (1412-16) Barry has now set up ArtCal, a way-cool art openings/events calendar, and it's linked on the left side of both his site and mine, where it's easily...
Posted by james at 2:45 PM | Full Post
November 16, 2004
new MoMA, a clean well-lighted space, and maybe no more
[EDITING CONTINUED, WITH AN ADDENDUM, MID-DAY NOVEMBER 17] one of my favorite "discoveries" today: David Hammons's High Falutin' (1990) in the Contemporary galleries, with Barry contemplating its delights We were there about two and a half hours, had a few...
Posted by james at 11:54 PM | Full Post
M26 justice - developments
Sentencing of the four remaining M26 defendents, until now scheduled for November 18, this Thursday, has been stayed pending the New York State Court of Appeals decision on whether or not it will review the unsealing of their older dismissed...
Posted by james at 7:32 PM | Full Post
November 14, 2004
running through Chelsea
seen on the south side of West 24th Street, Saturday at 6 pm We hit a number of Chelsea galleries this afternoon, but we were both more more relaxed, and better dressed for the weather, than this gentleman....
Posted by james at 12:43 AM | Full Post
November 11, 2004
Reno knows
We spotted this wonderful, much-used Toyota last night while walking to the E train Spring Street stop. I had already taken this shot before I walked around the side of the car and saw the door emblazoned with a...
Posted by james at 9:52 PM | Full Post
November 10, 2004
Queens International 2004
Troy Richards, This Light You Speak Of (2004) installation view of site-specific installation: Jolly-Ranchers, Plexiglas and resin 108" x 51" [QMA reception revelers faintly visible below] We absolutely did get out to the Queens Museum of Art (QMA) last...
Posted by james at 12:18 AM | Full Post
November 7, 2004
slain on the altar of our national suicide
I don't know what to say about this story, but it has moved me more than I thought possible. November 6, 2004, 4:39 PM EST A 25-year-old university worker from Georgia shot and killed himself at ground zero Saturday morning,...
Posted by james at 1:52 PM | Full Post
November 5, 2004
"Haroun and the Sea of Stories"
Wednesday, the stage at the New York State Theater, before the lights darkened We went to New York City Opera Wednesday night to see Charles Wuorinen's new opera based on a short novel by Salmon Rushdie, "Haroun and the...
Posted by james at 2:01 PM | Full Post
November 1, 2004
"undecided" about the "anyone"
Thomas Nast cartoon, featuring Boss Tweed ( referencing the 1876 disputed election) The caption: Boss. "You have the liberty of Voting for any one you please; but we have the Liberty of Counting in any one we please." "Do...
Posted by james at 11:46 AM | Full Post
October 30, 2004
Critical Mass on 23rd Street
Okay, next time I'll be on my own bike. The perineum probably could have managed it this time, but I hadn't gotten the bike ready. Also, last night when at least part of an especially colorful and joyous Critical...
Posted by james at 2:12 PM | Full Post
time-sensitive art alert
I'd call it an art zap. Ephemeral by design, the success of Joe Ovelman's street images depends upon our seeing them - quickly, almost necessarily today. This time he's spread the work throughout Chelsea, and there's something like a star...
Posted by james at 1:38 PM | Full Post
election night gatherings
"Sooo . . . What do you wear to a civil war anyway?" A week ago I wrote that I would probably post a list of progressive spaces which are encouraging visitors to hang out next Tuesday evening, on...
Posted by james at 1:16 AM | Full Post
October 27, 2004
how to get a flu shot in New York
outside Chelsea Health Center, Tuesday, 7:45 am [if you're only interested in the logistics, go straight to the bold area within the text below] I'm not going to go into the political, social, even moral issues surrounding the disastrous...
Posted by james at 12:36 PM | Full Post
October 23, 2004
American Fine Arts must not die
American Fine Arts [no website] opened a smashing new show, "Election," last night, but the legendary gallery founded by Colin de Land (and currently located in the last home of the equally fabulous gallery created by Pat Hearn) will close...
Posted by james at 12:19 AM | Full Post
October 18, 2004
M26: justice has a conniption fit
Innocent until proven guilty? Not anymore. One of the most basic principals of our law has been trashed regularly and systematically by our courts since September 11th. While what is happening to four peace activists here in New York at...
Posted by james at 7:54 PM | Full Post
the House and Peter Hort
Benjamin Henry Latrobe Design Proposed for the Hall of Representatives, U.S., Section from North to South (1815) ink and watercolor on paper For weeks now Barry and I have both been dismayed by the strange candidacy which Peter Hort...
Posted by james at 1:03 PM | Full Post
October 16, 2004
New York stopped in its tracks
from the front of the bus, 9th Avenue in the forties, on a Saturday afternoon (these vehicles aren't moving) We live in Manhattan. We're supposed to be able to get around the city without each of us piloting two...
Posted by james at 8:32 PM | Full Post
September 24, 2004
death comes to the New York Philharmonic
James Abbott McNeill Whistler Symphony in Blue and Pink (ca. 1870) Disclaimer: I'm posting this even though I didn't attend either of the two New York Philharmonic performances reviewed by Justin Davidson in today's Newsday. I should be a...
Posted by james at 1:14 PM | Full Post
September 15, 2004
fucknewyork
Ahhh. The Underground Railroad has the dope on the wonderful little video I posted one month ago. This is from the director, Matt Lenski:We're both native New Yorkers - I was born in Manhattan and lived on Eldridge and Houston...
Posted by james at 7:03 PM | Full Post
September 12, 2004
"never forget"
Only moments before I snapped this picture we had left a restaurant downtown, for a dinner totally unrelated to the third anniversary of September 11. The image is a view from Broadway and Fulton Street of Creative Time's "Tribute...
Posted by james at 12:48 PM | Full Post
September 5, 2004
Bloomberg defends police sweeps, some speech
What's wrong with these statements, both of which were reported yesterday by Newsday (in an obscure article devoted to another subject altogether)?When a caller to his weekly radio show criticized the unusually wide arrest net cast by police, [the Mayor...
Posted by james at 2:14 PM | Full Post
September 4, 2004
lotus
From 15th Street and our short glimpse of Pier 57 Barry and I headed down the pedestrian path along the Hudson this afternoon until we reached this exquisite lotus in the Koi pond just above North Cove in Battery...
Posted by james at 8:45 PM | Full Post
Guantanamo-on-the-Hudson, two days later
It was pretty quiet this afternoon around Marine & Aviation Pier 57, where nearly 2000 people were arrested and detained this week while they were exercising freedoms they imagined might be protected by the American legal system, or, in...
Posted by james at 8:31 PM | Full Post
lackeys showing their masters that they're in full control
The nation which is being told that everything went smoothly in New York this week can't be shown enough evidence to the contrary. Another friend and indefatigable activist colleague of ours had a lot to say about on Gotham Gazette...
Posted by james at 2:29 PM | Full Post
we're all inside a police net now
Sandy Katz, a former ACT UP comrade who served as aide to Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messenger, has sent his friends this account of his own experience with our new domestic order. On Tuesday afternoon he accidently became caught up...
Posted by james at 12:09 PM | Full Post
the Hearst Tower Project
completing the Hearst Building It's probably the most interesting building now going up in New York. That may not be much of a recommendation these days, but seriously, Sir Norman Foster's solution for completing a 75 year-old skyscraper is...
Posted by james at 1:20 AM | Full Post
September 3, 2004
memorializing internment on a pier
Welcome citizens! (wire and flesh, inside the holding pen on Pier 57) I'm sure we haven't heard the end of the story of Guantanamo-on-the-Hudson, but in the meantime here's a small footnote to the account of what thousands experienced...
Posted by james at 3:22 PM | Full Post