Quick Impressions: Kara Walker, Juergen Teller, Et. Al.


Last night was one of those great nights in New York city when the whole world seems to be trawling its blocks, wearing every conceivable item of clothing and heading every which way. The people watching was great, the art was much and varied, and the wine was scant. (Recession much?) I started at Sikkema Jenkins, where new work from Kara Walker (above) and Mark Bradford was up. Mark Bradford, who I wasn’t familiar with, has a stunning large piece just in the entrance.

The image above doesn’t really do it justice, I recommend checking it out. Magnus Plessen at Gladstone is also worth a look.

I wandered further up, to Juergen Teller at Lehman Maupin. Unfortunately, I don’t have an image of his crops of nude statues that coldly toy with sexuality and artificiality. I think I enjoyed some of those more than the juxtaposition of his muses in the galleries.


Maybe it was the show, or maybe it was the time of night–about 7:30, but the crowds really started to kick in. And a very good looking crowd it was. I had a slightly awkward moment when a middle-aged WASPy women, who had asked me what gallery we were in, got the mistaken impression that we were going off together in search of wine…but never mind that.


I lost her at the heads. This photo doesn’t quite do justice to Jaune Plensa’s massive illuminated sculptures at Galerie Lelong. I only wish he hadn’t taken to inscribing words accross them. “Anxiety,” “Wrath,” etc felt overly didactic, if didactic is ever a good thing in art. By this time things were kicking, I had lost the people I was with, and I headed down to Zwirner and the Kitchen on 19th St. Both had great, fun, crowded openings (perhaps because they had booze : ). As for the art…I’ll have to check it out under other circumstances.

I tried to squeeze another opening into my night by going down to SoHo, but there was a line halfway down the block to get into this exhibition! The people in front told me they had waited for an hour, and I decided to walk myself home. Somewhere along this walk I realized it was also Fashion’s Night Out , with lingerie stores offering cookies and boutiques with bands.

Was anybody else out last night? Any recommendations?

Neighborhood ASS

In the spirit of neighborhood patriotism, I thought I should do a little gallery research beyond LaViolaBank, Heist, the intermittent Reena Spaulings, little Dispatch–all within a 2 block radius just in my little corner of the world.

Artlog has thorough neighborhood gallery maps which led me to the Asia Song Society, or ASS, as they like to call themselves. At times in Chinatown there are issues with odd translation, so I thought this might be one of those times.

Until I saw the poster for their most recent exhibition:


I recommend reading the fine print. I have no idea what’s really going on here, but it made my day.

From the Horse’s Mouth: Impressions of Warhol

Warhol’s persona is almost as iconic as his images have become. Here are some New York art dealers fascinating stories and first impressions of Andy Warhol from The Art Dealers:

“The boy is a very important artist, Andy, because he helped America. He mixes very much with youth, and with all the chic people—you know, the bums. When you have such a stupid expression as Andy has—when he is being silent, before the smile starts—when you look like that, you can do anything you want in the world. As Christ said to all those priests, “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” and Warhol is a horrible child.” -Alexander Iolas

“I saw the first Andy Warhol show, the Brillo boxes, at Stable Gallery. I went to the opening with James Harvey, a painter supporting himself as a freelance package designer. It was he who had designed the actual Brillo box, and strangely enough, he was a friend of Andy’s. Jim nearly collapsed when we went in and saw people actually buying Warhol’s identical versions. All Jim could do was write it off as part of the madness of life.” -Joan Washburn

“Warhol very badly wanted to join my gallery, to be with artists he admired, like Johns. I turned him down at first because I felt his work was too similar to Lichtenstein’s. Warhol told me I was very much mistaken. Was there another gallery interested? Yes, I was told. If I didn’t take him, Andy said, then he had no choice but to go to Eleanor Ward’s Stable Gallery. And he did. His show there a year later was fantastic: the Brillo boxes, the Marylins, and the Elvis paintings. I realized I had made a big mistake.” -Leo Castelli

“A few weeks later a very strange man with a terrible complexion and mottled gray hair came in, looking for drawings by Jasper Johns. Although I told him they were very expensive, $400 or $500, he asked for the drawing of a light bulb. I showed him the Lichtenstein girl with the beach ball, and he said his own work was very similar. He then asked me to visit his studio. I was intrigued by him and went to his place on Eighty-Ninth Street, where I saw beautiful antique furnishings alongside twenty-five paintings of Campbell’s soup cans and cartoon characters. He was playing rock-n-roll music so loudly we couldn’t really have a conversation.” -Ivan Karp

“Also at that time I had my first encounter with Andy Warhol. He was about halfway into his soup-can series when I visited his studio. I spent quite a bit of time chatting with him while looking hard at those paintings. I decided virtually on the spot to show them in California, and Andy was thrilled with the idea. He had no representation at the time; he sold one or two thins with Martha Jackson and Allan Stone, but he had no New York gallery. We struck a bargain then and there, and the paintings arrived in California in July 1962. I showed them by encircling the gallery with the thirty-two soup cans, all of them the same size, 20 inches high and 16 inches across.” -Irving Blum

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