If you click on “Philly” on the last post you get “currently not on view.”  I can verify that I became aware of the existence of The Fatal Temple during a few short periods of public display after it languished in storage for years.  Apparently Arshile Gorky is wrong to think it is an important work of art, and the Philly brain trust knows better. It is an oil and not a light-sensitive work on paper. Arensberg’s donation of The Poet and His Muse from 1925 is also rarely exhibited, although this period and work is generally considered less significant than Fatal Temple there’s still a lot of people who’d like to see it.  Max Ernst’s seashell from 1928, the primary phase of frottage since its invention three years earlier, from Arensberg. They also have a good little Rouault collection from various sources but they generally don’t see the light of day, none at the moment.

Collectors know this is an historically important painting, but Philly hasn’t grasped it yet and only shows it once in a while:

Peter Doig, Figure in Mountain Landscape II, 1998-9

Look at all the redundancy in the modern galleries before you tell me about space restrictions. The expansion in three years will make room for more head-scratchers.  Expanding could have been a way to respect the John G. Johnson's estate's wish for keeping its collection together (once the courts rule the museum's way there's no looking back), and do the same for Arensberg, instead they keep major Arensberg gifts in storage and hang Johnson's Veroneses and Titians above eye level.  Without Arensberg and Johnson it's a quaint regional museum.

Their Demuth and Sargent watercolors are up now though.

What's up for one more day (fair week edition)

It would seem I decide which art fair to go to by where Michael Werner is showing.  This works if you like German art from the 80s ‘neo-expressionist’ generation, though they of course represent others, and if you do, you know they’ll whip a few things out that are worth the time and price of admission, and the other booths are bonus stimulation.  That led me to the Independent once after they started charging for it, and this year to the ADAA Art Show, my first visit ever to this, which confusingly for some is being shown at the Armory while the Armory remains an art show.

Daniel Richter, Ophelia

I can recall going to the Armory twice while Zwirner had Daniel Richter, seeing his Owner’s History Lesson at one and his Ophelia at the other.  These were two of the great paintings of their era and I enjoyed staring at both immensely. However, Daniel Richter has for whatever reason moved on to Regen in LA and they are not at a NY fair it would seem.

Both Werner and the other booths delivered to my satisfaction.  Werner has two works on paper by Picabia to grab collectors coming from MoMA, a transparency and a Spanish woman from the 20s, several works on paper by Beuys including pencil drawing of a girl with her back turned in front of a cross which blew me away in its ‘multiples’ simplicity, three Doig landscapes from the early 00s, a wonderful Penck work on paper, a fun Polke, a Schwitters in the upper corner of their tight office full of works for sale, a Baselitz, etc., the best Werner booth I’ve seen.

As the show is considered stodgy, traditional, and geared to older Upper East Side collectors, the mix of old and new nonetheless meant there was a lot of great older stuff. The new work was generally not down my alley but hot NY names that are selling.

Leonora Carrington, El templo de la palabra, 1954

Leonora Carrington’s prices have gone way up since she died.  Had she sold well in her seventies or before she probably would have moved to New York or Paris, but she was dead broke most of her life, with Edward James at times supporting her by buying up what was around.  This has enhanced the history of Mexican art and perhaps made her more enjoyably impervious to NY fashions. At the Mary-Anne Martin booth "The Temple of the Word" (major, well worth seeing in person) is/was up for $2.5M + they have a few Carrington works on paper + works by Kahlo, Tamayo, Gerzso, and Toledo, great viewing overall.

Donald Morris had four or five Joseph Cornells which the staff will take off the wall to show his inscriptions and additional collages on the back. Hauser and Wirth had Gorky’s depressed eary 30s drawings from his Nighttime, Enigma and Nostalgia series (above), based on di Chirico's Fatal Temple, which I'm well acquainted with because Albert Eugene Gallatin donated it to Philly. All Louise Bourgeois at the Peter Blum booth. All Norman Lewis at the Rosenfeld booth. Gallery St. Etienne lists Heckel, Kirchner, Mueller, Nolde, Pechstein, and Schmidt-Rottluff but they also had two good works on paper by Schiele... not major works (to go with the minor selections of them at National Gallery East).. like the Vuillards at Jill Newhouse but worthy of being detained by.

Giorgio de Chirico, The Fatal Temple, 1914

Checked out Clio (open tomorrow) along with a bunch of new Chelsea shows (not open tomorrow) and, as usual, "independent" "outsider" "anti-fair" consists exclusively of art school trends, with the exception of two or three religious painters from around the globe who go by previous generations' art school trends. A standout for me, though, was the Georgian Ia Liparteliani.

What's up for one more day

A year or so ago while reading interviews of Tapies I was thinking about a spacial representation in which Beckmann’s dramatis personae was in the front

Paris Society, 1947

with an empty room in the back. I hadn’t at the time seen  Beckmann’s  empty room, his last painting. (Met til this evening)

Backstage, 1950

Also the most recent and second time I had visited the St Louis Museum of Art I had not slept the night before, but figured that seeing their vast Beckmann collection red-eyed would be part of the fun.  Little did I know that they had a well-attended show of floral arrangements in front of, and matching the colors of, the paintings, which attracted crowds that would openly state their preference for the flowers over the Ernsts and Beckmanns. I was counting to ten, and if that didn’t work I would count to twenty, and as it turns out I managed to not make a major scene.  Especially large was the crowd around the floral arrangement in front of Columbine:

Carnival Mask, Green, Violet and Pink (Columbine), 1950

Don't miss at the 75th and Madison outpost the Marisa Merz retrospective through May 7, and gallery 464 at 5th Avenue has Krishna Reddy's mixed color intaglio from 1968 "Demonstrators." The highlight of MoMA's floor of 1960s art, up til March 12 and of which I may type more about, is Henri Cartier-Bresson's photographs of May '68, which I don't recall being up when the floor was initially hung.

Also there I cannot get enough of the Picabia retrospective: a masterfully curated show of one of the most influential and original painters of all time. Breton said he was the first painter he knew of to use abstraction. Michael Kimmelman wrote about the 'transparencies,’ images juxtaposed by layering, in 1989 “one need only visit the display of works by Sigmar Polke now at the Mary Boone Gallery to realize Picabia's influence.”  Pierre Cabanne said to Duchamp “the Picabia-Duchamp meeting largely determined the break you were in the process of making” to which Duchamp said “yes,” referring to the break from Cubism to non-retinal painting and readymades. Duchamp started painting machines first but related the practice immediately to Picabia who took it in different directions.  Picabia has had a deeply personal and emotional impact on me for a while and I am sorting through more typing about him for this space that I will return to in a week or so.

Bo's'n Pettibon's retrospective is up at the New Museum til April 9 and his tenth show at Zwirner opens this week (Update 3/2: 'Raymond Pettibon's exhibition TH 'EXPLOSIYV SHOYRT T  will now open at a later date') along with a new Alice Neel show. Near the New, David Diao waxes nostalgic about 5 1/2 years spent in Hong Kong as a child at 54 Franklin til March 11.

In Midtown, this is the last week for Flor Garduño's photographs at 145 e 57 3rd fl, an assistant to Manuel Alvarez Bravo (above).  DAG's selection of Bengali works is at 41 e 57 suite 708 til March 10, Pace McGill has free speech-related photos from the US.

I used to get upset when the Dia Beacon would take down Hanne Darboven's Kulturgeschichte rooms coinciding with my visits, but now a much larger version (above) is at their Chelsea outpost at 535 21. Wangechi Mutu's content seems to be moving towards the decorative, i.e. collector's living rooms, at 530 21. André Butzer's last figurative show received a critical trashing and now he's found abstract expressionist religion, “The ostensible uniformity of the paintings underlines the variations between them," 519 24.  Yinka Shonibare MBE's Victorian Philanthropist's Parlour is at 533 26.

There was an article in the Guardian a while back ‘(Andrew) Motion, chairman of the judging panel for next month's David Cohen prize for literature, was trying to kickstart a debate on who was "the greatest living writer in the British Isles".

‘So far the engine has refused to spark into life. The suggestions are few, and one or two may be facetious: Amis, of course; the poet Tom Raworth; the novelist Lesley Glaister; the footballing penseur Wayne Rooney (why not Coleen?). ‘

I was the one who ‘suggested’ Raworth and join all the others in lamenting his passing.  I think a link and a second link got me to Motion’s website; otherwise I agree with Charles Bernstein this past October ‘If Andrew Motion is a poet, I don’t want to be a poet.’  So my loyalties as to who was the ‘greatest living writer of the British Isles’ had at least been noted in a formerly palatable newspaper.  If you ask me about the best reading I’ve ever attended his will come immediately to mind.. this one starts at 29:45..



Piri’ Miri Muli’ concerns: he uses the line break within the word a few times, including the first poem in his selected, to force an inversion of meaning within the sentence which came much more often in his verse, retaining a control of content used for anything but and other effects.  Also, having lived for a time in Mexico, he weighed in "Gaslight" on Enrique González Martínez’ owl in response to Rubén Darío’s swan..

poetry is neither swan nor owl
but worker, miner
digging each generation deeper
through the shit of its eaters
to the root - then up to the great tomato

What's up for one more day

3 shows ending tomorrow:

Petzel’s curatorial response to the Trump inauguration that includes works from long before this year and different perspectives, including a bust of Snowden installed temporarily in a park. 456 W 18th Street

If you would prefer the human foot to be red, disembodied, glowing, in groups of four, and only visible from straight ahead then Louise B. has you covered. 547 25th

Never seen before Eisenstein drawings take their place in the erotic genre at 510 26th St. Sergei the horny bastard! He even has one of an acrobat pleasuring himself as a cover for Stendal’s (sic) complete works “Egotism.” I don’t think I’m the only one who still has his Monsieur Beyle shelf by the bedside.

Also in DC a wonderful show of photos of a Rajisthani girl and her mother and sister including letters documenting her predicament by Gauri Gill at the Sackler through Sunday.

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