Casting the Net to LA
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David Hockney‘s garden, October 24, 2004. Photo: Charlie Scheips. |
I spent last week in Los Angeles staying with David Hockney at his lush compound in the Hollywood Hills. I lived in LA from the mid-1980s to 1991 — first as David’s assistant and later as the organizer of the Los Angeles International Contemporary Art Fair. By the time I left I thought I had my fill of LA but since then every trip back has rekindled my love for the place. It can be heaven. Read more
Bohemia: Now and Then
Virgil Marti at Elizabeth Dee
Last Thursday night, I started my evening meeting New York-based photographer Christophe von Hohenberg at Bottino’s — the Art Set’s favorite boite since it settled in Chelsea in the middle 1990s. It’s owned by Danny Emerman, whose previous restaurant Barocco was the dining mecca for the then SoHo art crowd during the 1980s. A couple years ago Bottino’s was always jam-packed during cocktail hour but Mayor Bloomberg’s smoking police have of course ruined that too. Read more
Design for Living
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The Block, SouthWest Studio, Marfa, Texas. |
On Tuesday night, I went over to the Cooper-Hewitt, our national design museum housed at Andrew Carnegie’s mansion at 91st and Fifth Avenue, for the National Design Awards Gala. It’s the fifth year for the awards having been launched originally as part of the White House Millennium Council in 2000. The council was a product of the Clinton years though, and First Lady Laura Bush was a no-show Read more
Hot and Cold
Martin Creed
Half the Air in a Given Space 2004
If the crowds seem a little sparse in Chelsea’s galleries this weekend it is because a huge chunk of the Art Set has jumped over to London for the second annual Frieze Art Fair at Regent’s Park.
Founded by the Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover, publishers of the British contemporary art magazine frieze, the fair, which opened last night and continues through Monday, has about 150 of the world’s top galleries — with more than 30 from New York this year. Read more
The Lobbyist
Mural by Eli Subrack aka assume vivid astro focus at the Whitney’s Now Art Now: A Celebration of Artists.
The cover of this past week’s New York Times Magazine — New York issue — was a wry (though un-credited) take-off on artist’s Roni Horn’s work of a decade ago.
The magazine’s voice of authority is significantly weakened with limp pieces like photographer Tina Barney’s attempt to define the next thoroughly modern Medicis in her Patron Sweethearts spread. The question begs: does anyone there even know who the Medicis were? Read more