Ah yes, another successful Art Day, come and gone...
You see, the concept behind the "Art Day" is a simple one: when one writes for a living, one slowly but surely goes stark raving mad unless one makes an actual appointment (and here, I mean an iron-clad obligation to oneself which absolutely must be met), once a week, to get out of the house--preferably, for an entire day, though a single afternoon is acceptable--this in order to consume the work of other artists who, surely, are also and at the same time going stark raving mad in their own very quietly acceptable fashions... The procedure is simplicity itself: one books, first thing in the morning, an appointment at a spa (for me, this is Eden Day Spa, in Soho), this for a 90 minute session of deep tissue massage. One leaves two hours later feeling refreshed, renewed, revitalized, and, perhaps most importantly, re-ready to consider that, indeed, there just might be some new works of art out there, some MODERN works, that are actually worth consuming (trust me on this one--you skip the massage, and you're going to be about half as willing to consider the validity of any new series you come across that day. Considering that I'm willing to give my time to less than 1% of what's out there, these days... Well, you can easily see how getting the stress knocked out of me by a small Asian women with hands of steel becomes, not a luxury, but a necessity when pondering all that is new in the art scene here...) One then takes a long and leisurely lunch, at which time one flips through a copy of the current week's "Time Out New York"--you hit the Art section, and simply go through the listings, gallery-by-gallery. Stick to anything in Chelsea, and then from there, mark-up whatever may be going on at the Met, the MoMA, the Whitney, and the Guggenheim (you'll be probably get about half a dozen interesting hooks from the former set, and one or two from the latter, depending). One tears out the relevant info, pays the bill, gets up, takes a stretch, cracks his knuckles, gazes off at the horizon line with a sort of dreamy, half-lost "I'm-ready-to-see-something-NEW-so-bring-it-on..." look...
And off you go for your inspiration.
As for me, on this fine and sun-drenched day, I opted to walk everywhere, and as a result said Art Day did take a bit longer than planned (five hours total--and I only worked in about half the items I'd intended to), but being outdoors and taking in the air more than made up for anything I might have missed (and which I can always get to later). My itinerary, below:
-- Araki's "Painting Flowers and Diaries" at Anton Kern, 532 W 20th and 10th
-- "Breaking and Entering: Art and the Video Game" at Pace Wildenstein, 545 W 22nd Str and 10th
-- "Dialogue: Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock" at the Robert Miller Gallery, 524 W 26th Str and 10th
-- Gerard Richter at the Marion Goodman Gallery, 24 W 57th and 5th
Here I took a break at Rockefeller Center, admiring the tree (in all its excess--I swear the star atop it would feed and house NYC's entire homeless population for a month...), along with the ice-skaters in the rink just below. Heading back downtown, I popped into a church (St. Patrick's, which I'd never been inside of before--quite nice), browsed a few boutiques, suddenly found myself more than a little tired (getting up at 4am is still a relatively new thing, for me), and took the subway the rest of the way back down to Soho, where I stopped by the Open Center to pick up a new catalogue (5-day intensive on Aromatherapy--think I'm going to quite enjoy that one). So, yes, still to come, on my next Art Day next week:
-- David LaChapelle's "Pictures for Italian Vogue 2001 - 2005" at Staley Wise, 560 Broadway and Prince
-- Richard Tuttle at the Whitney, 945 Madison and 75th
-- Fra Angelico at the Met, 1000 5th Ave and 82nd
-- Klimt at the Neue Galerie, 1048 5th Ave and 86th Str
(Oh, and speaking of Art--do I have the most fantastic surprise for Polina on her birthday this coming Friday evening...!! Can hardly wait myself, but of course, I wouldn't think to spoil the mystery here just yet. Never fear, tireless Readers, a full report will come first thing Saturday morning...)
