NYC Art

I've told this story before but I'm thinking of it again so I'll tell it again, only shorter this time.

I have this very clear memory from my childhood. I must've been very young, no more than eight years old. Two doors down from me there lived this older boy, Steve. I got it into my head for some reason that I could physically overcome Steve and his friends. I'd decided I could beat them in a fight. I don't know where I got this idea, but it seemed to me that if I could meditate, do a mind-meld, like Spock -- only mind-meld on myself -- then I'd become great fighter.

So I went over to Steve's front yard where he was fooling around with a couple of his friends and I challenged them. They went along with it. I went to the side of Steve's house, performed my self-mind-meld, came out, and promptly found myself on the ground looking up at Steve. He helped me up laughing. I demanded to try again and got flipped onto the lawn again. I asked for one last try and got it -- and landed flat on my back. Of course. Steve was a lot bigger than I was. I was a little kid.

I don't think I was very upset by my defeat, just confused. I'd done the self-mind-meld! What could have gone wrong?

I learned something that day. I learned that wanting something, needing something, no matter how passionately or intensely, isn't enough. You can believe really, really hard -- you can almost sprain your belief muscle -- and whatever you're believing in still won't be true.

Now I have children of my own and I'm not sure if I wish a memory on them like mine. But in many ways it'd probably be good for them. Surely our culture has been trying to teach them an entirely different lesson. There is, for example, Kung Fu Panda. Now, far be it from me to put too much emphasis on a childrens' entertainment. My hope and expectation is that five years from now, ten years from now, almost no one will remember that Kung Fu Panda even existed. It's not a classic, I trust, which will echo down the decades. But it is a fine example, here, of the lessons we're trying, collectively, to teach our children.

The story of Kung Fu Panda is as simple as it is simple-minded. Recent poster child for failing upwards Jack Black voices Po, a large panda who, it turns out, is the Chosen One prophesied to defend the village against some super evil badass. The only trouble is Po is out of shape, incompetent and lazy. Dustin Hoffman's little rat critter tries to teach Po but to little effect. After many more lengthy minutes of pratfalls, spit takes, and topical humor, the super evil badass shows up and Po defeats him, not by outwitting him or out-lazying him or anything, but in a blazing kung fu battle. How does Po do this? By believing in himself. Despite the several well-trained super kung fu good guys in the vicinity, Po the panda is the best, because out of all of them, he has faith in himself.

I'm telling you this: If I were an Asian cartoon duck living in a little Asian village in an Asian-inspired movie (where the main heroes are naturally played by two Jews from California) and some Asian tiger super evil badass were bearing down on me, I certainly wouldn't want to be defended by the untrained fat guy who believes in himself. Give me the platoon with years of practice and experience any time. Likewise, if I ever find myself in a car accident, I hope to hell the firefighters and EMTs who show up have gone to a lot of classes, practiced intently and frequently, been to the sites of many accidents, trained under older, more experienced people, and in short KNOW WHAT THE FUCK THEY'RE DOING. If Jack Black shows up with his unshakable belief in himself and not much more, I'll be converting to Christianity and cranking out the Lord's Prayer mighty quick.

Which brings us, in roundabout, characteristic and I hope endearing fashion, to the topic of today's post, which is Roberta Smith's recent column, "Post-Minimal to the Max". Every other art blogger has weighed in on this and now so must I.

Roberta's call for a change in the art world -- particularly aimed at New York City museum curators -- strikes me as too little too late, among other things. But the bit that bugs me the most is possibly the bit that most people jumped on as the good part: "What’s missing is art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand." Out from the woodwork poured the lice of the blogosphere wheedling in their little squeaky woodlice voices, "That's me! That's me! Intense personal necessity! I create art out of intense personal necessity! That's MEEEEE!"

Allow me to be the first person to tell you, then: Your intense personal necessity means nothing. Absolutely nothing. The universe doesn't care about what you need, no matter how intensely you think you need it. Too big for you? Let's zoom in then: The universe doesn't care, the galaxy doesn't care, the solar system doesn't care, the planet doesn't care. Your continent doesn't give a crap. Your country doesn't have half an old rat's ass for you. Neither cares your state, province, or województwo. Your city cares nought. Your borough couldn't care less. And your block? Well, maybe there's someone on your block who cares. That someone is you.

The fact is, whatever Kung Fu Panda tells you, believing in yourself means nothing whatsoever. Having a vast and firm faith in your ability to kick the super badass' butt will only get your own ass handed to you. Intensely needing to beat up the boys who live down the street from you will get you nowhere but flat on your back in the grass. You can do the self-mind-meld until your ears get pointy and you'll get precisely nowhere.

Unless.

Unless you do the work. Intense personal necessity doesn't mean a damned thing but if you put in the work, you may get somewhere. If you take those kung fu lessons, if you train diligently and hard, you will eventually learn kung fu. You may never be a world champion. You may never be the best. But you'll be better than someone who didn't try, no matter how hard they believe in themselves.

Roberta thinks we'd be better off with more art made from some inner personal necessity. She's right insofar as we'd be better off with that than what we have now, which is a lot of art made for no good reason at all. (Although possibly a lot of it is inspired by self-love and self-aggrandizement and other words beginning with self- that your mother warned you about.) But we'd be a lot better off with art made by people who work at it, who respect the field, who spend their time looking hard and trying their very best to get better and better.

Working hard is no guarantee in art -- as Walter Darby Bannard likes to say, "There is no sweat equity in art. Art is art by its effect, not by anything that accompanies its making." But he'll also add that great art comes, not necessarily from hard work on an individual piece, but from hard work over time. Or, as my beloved music director Professor William F. Ondrick used to tell all his students, "There's no substitute for the work, not even genius."

The art world in general -- and certainly the New York City museum world in particular -- may be missing art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand. But we sure as hell don't need it. What we need is damned good art, made by artists who care, not about their careers or their price tags or their auction results; and not about their own intense personal needs; but about art.

It's a sad thing when someone turns out not to be the kind of person you thought they were. You can't really know everyone very well, I suppose, so what happens in my head -- and maybe in most people's heads -- is I get an impression of someone and sort of tab them with it. I like to think I can modify that if I get to know them better, but until I do, I can only work with what I have. Sometimes, unfortunately, what I thought turns out to be wildly wrong.

Take for example Martin Bromirski. I can't say I know Martin. I'm not even sure we've ever met in person. We might've met once way back in 2006 at an art blogger party at Winkleman. I don't remember. Back then I was just getting into blogging about art and there were a handful of art bloggers to keep up with and Martin was one of them. I do know that, in 2007, when John Morris was putting together the Blogger Show, Martin and I ended up with paintings on the same walls. I handled and helped hang his painting, actually. I don't remember if I met him at the opening or not.

From those meager contacts I pegged Martin as a nice guy. I'd see his comments from time to time on other art blogs. A couple of times he was on my side in arguments; one time he came on my own blog and complimented my work. And so on. But over the years I didn't keep up with his blog; he didn't really write anything that interested me that much. Which is fine. So that's where Martin stayed in my head, filed under "nice guy".

Then a little while ago I started criticizing Art Fag City and Paddy Johnson. After picking on her a few times it occurred to me that I was being somewhat unfair: Wasn't it possible lots of other bloggers were saying dopey things? There were a bunch I'd simply stopped reading. So I went back and added a number of people to my regular reading list: Tom, Carolina, Tyler, Hrag, Brent, Thomas, Joy and company, Barry, Chris, Sharon, and of course Martin.

Most of these writers don't post anything I need to comment on, make fun of, or even note. They're doing their own thing, which isn't my thing, and that's what makes the world go round. No big deal. About three weeks ago, though, Martin posted some photos of his latest paintings. And I thought they looked very good. A completely honest, innocent, sincere desire to let him know this welled up inside me. Because artists make art hoping other people will like it. So I did.

Chris Rywalt said...

These look good. A definite step up from previous paintings I've seen from you, but I haven't seen anything in the past couple of years.

Took a good long look to see those are tears in the canvas in the second one, even with the close-up. I'm not sure these need that extra bit.
2/02/2010 1:57 PM

Martin's reply surprised me.

Martin said...

somebody shoot me.
2/02/2010 4:04 PM

I plaintively asked for an explanation but he never replied. Life went on.

Yesterday there was another post at his blog about which I had something to say. Actually, I really wanted to reply to one of the comments, this one by my fun-filled online friend EAG whose blog had been mentioned by Martin.

EAGEAGEAG said...

Thanks for the link.

"shut up or nut up"

I love Zombieland.

I wrote about a third of an essay on Smith's "Post-Minimal to the Max" but it got deleted after I downloaded a virus. Will post a rewritten version soon.

And yes I agree that Saltz's feminism is a pose more than anything else. One should realize that he converses with college age women on a regular basis. Just saying...
2/21/2010 4:30 AM

I wrote a quick comment on that and also added a little about the main post. When I went back a few minutes later to see if anyone had replied I found my comment was gone. I could imagine any number of reasons for this but the most likely one was that Martin had deleted it. Which would be odd. So I asked outright and also rewrote my previous comment. Meanwhile Martin replied. Here's the whole thread before he deleted it.

Chris Rywalt said...

Martin, did you delete my comment?

2/21/2010 2:46 PM

Martin said...

yes. you are a crank and generally don't have any idea what you are talking about (on art). those kinds of comments negate all the effort i put into making this post, keep others from wanting to comment, and provide an excuse to dismiss everything i said.

i will probably delete both of our comments after i think you've seen this. especially if this comment thread starts to become a rywalt/eag thread.

(eag is a crank but he knows what he is talking about)

2/21/2010 2:57 PM

Chris Rywalt said...

Okay, let's try this again.

EAG, that comment about Jerry Saltz's conversing with college-age women is beneath you. However Jerry picks his subjects -- maybe by his chances for slipping in the word "mojo" -- it's probably not for getting into young women's pants.

As far as Roberta's article goes and her dislike for Dumas, I'd say it's because Dumas sucks, except some of Roberta's replacements for her aren't much better.

But I would second her vote for Chris Ofili, who is simply great.

2/21/2010 2:58 PM

Chris Rywalt said...

You put effort into making this post? That's just sad.

2/21/2010 3:02 PM

Martin said...

please just have a stroke already chris.

2/21/2010 3:07 PM

Chris Rywalt said...

I'm sorry if my making fun of your friends' terrible taste in art upset you so much. I expected better of you, but I can't imagine why.

2/21/2010 3:11 PM

I don't know if Martin replied to that and then eventually deleted it because after that I went out and didn't check back in until after one in the morning. It doesn't really matter if he did, though. Because clearly he isn't the nice guy I thought he was. First we have his deleting my comments, not so much because of their content but merely because he decided -- somewhere since 2007, I guess -- that I'm a crank. Which kind of bothers me a bit, because while I'm perfectly willing to be called cranky, I'd rather not be called a crank. Second, I happen to think that deleting other people's comments simply because you want to maintain some illusion of your blog as happy-happy nice-nice land is a mortal sin. And third, just because we have a disagreement over his friends' taste in art, he told me to have a stroke, then deleted the evidence of his own nastiness. Not very nice at all.

It's a damned shame, really.

I'd like to give you a glimpse of my life: I am a troll. I sit in my darkened room, my bloated, hairy form hunched over the keyboard, stabbing out nasty little missives expressing the only emotions I can truly feel: spite, envy, greed, schadenfreude, anger. The closest I get to happiness -- the nearest my clenched little heart comes to brightening -- is when I'm pouring filth and bile on the good, happy, light-hearted people of the world. I am full to bursting with the wine made from sour grapes; I know nothing of pleasantry. I exist only to make others as miserable as myself. I am the barber's cat. I am the wet blanket. I am the Party Pooper.

With that in mind, then, let me discuss today's topic.

Several art blogs announced with smiles that Super Art Couple James Wagner and Barry Hoggard had secured a domain name under which to display their own fantastic collection of art. This is truly wonderful, because now you can see for yourself that James and Barry -- who have set themselves up as art writers and collectors, people you should presumably listen to -- in fact have no taste in art at all.

Actually, their taste isn't bad; it's worse than bad, it's boring. Judging by what's up there now -- they're still adding pieces -- nothing in their collection gives off even a single erg of joy, happiness, inspiration, excitement, fun, creativity, sublimity, or anything else. The work on display runs the gamut from lame through feeble all the way to incompetent, every one with the same gray sheen of a dead toad. Even when there's color -- which there usually isn't -- it's sickly or diseased. This is the collection for people who order egg whites on flatbread for breakfast, people whose lives have become a meaningless slog of going through the motions.

There are a scant few bright spots, however. As of this writing if you go to the listing of artists in the collection you'll see the name of each artist along with the number of works of theirs in the collection; there you can see that Man Bartlett is listed as having 0 works. Curiously, that's precisely how many works by Man Bartlett I'd want to own. But why list him like that? The obvious answer is that his work was deaccessioned but James and Barry brag very specifically that they've "never sold a work of art from their collection and they do not intend to do so". What a relief! My guess is that it's a database hiccup while they're populating their data -- maybe there's a row for Man Bartlett in the ARTIST table but they haven't gotten around to adding his rows in the ARTWORKS table -- but I'd really rather think that, since Man is a performance artist, when he gave a piece to James and Barry, there was no physical item for them to list. On the other hand, maybe they're just going to list every artist from whom they have zero works of art:

Rembrandt van Rijn 0
Andy Warhol 0
Frank Sinatra 0
Hans Holbein the Younger 0
Gilbert & George 0

And so on.

What makes the debut of the Hoggard Wagner Collection so sad and yet so hilarious to sooty-souled creatures of mirthlessness like myself is that it coincides so closely with their presentation on Saturday, February 27, 2010 at 6pm, presumably at Winkleman, titled -- please don't laugh -- "Collecting with Your Eye, Not Your Ears". Which should have a note added that you might be better off buying with your ears if your eye is only as good as that of a 14-year-old diabetic chihuahua.

It's okay, though, since it's pretty much in line with everything else going on in the #class show -- give me a moment here to mock even the name of the show. Because you can tell the organizers were thinking, hey, we need to prove we're hip, we're contemporary, we're in touch with the zeitgeist and down on the street, we're young and fast and zing! So we need to put in some of that tech stuff, and everyone's on Twitter now, so, like, hey Facebook MySpace bit.ly blog dot com and shit! Everything's changing so fast, man, we can't even put in whole words any more! @winkleman dude, wht a grt nme 4 ur show #class! And Ed was all like @dimwits U RAWK LETS DO IT and

GIVE ME A FUCKING BREAK

Ahem. So Jennifer Dalton and William Powhida, under the aegis of Ed the Visionary, have thrown together a massive collection of self-congratulatory, masturbatory silliness so large I'm guessing they're hoping no one will notice the complete lack of ideas, imagination or quality on display. As Audrey Flack once suggested, if you can't make it good, make it big, and this month-long celebration of inadequate cerebration is certainly that.

In fact the only remotely positive thing about the whole shebang is El Celso's Art Shred, which is just as unimaginative (not to say stupid and pointless) as the rest of the shenanigans but at least, as with Michael Landy's Art Bin, allows me to observe that it's a damned shame we can't run Art Shred (and the rest of #class) through itself.

But no, really, go and have your fun. I'm sure the only reason it all looks so stupid and ugly and pointless is because I'm a cranky troll. Please enjoy your pipe cleaner sculptures and popped balloons. Don't mind me.

In case you heard a loud POOF echoing around the art world recently, that was the sudden deflation and disappearance of the façade of museum curatorial omniscience. In short, someone just admitted they don't know what they're doing.

As reported over at Art Fag City (for once I'm not picking on Paddy!):

The new fifth floor exhibition [at the Whitney Biennial] "Collecting The Biennial" showcases work collected by the museum from the biennials over the years.... [It] provides a good starting point for the biennial discussion, highlighting both good and bad work. "It shows how taste changes," Francesco Bonami explained while gesturing to a gaudy Julian Schnabel painting he says they thought was "forever." "It was not," he concluded succinctly.

Holy crap, I think Frankie just admitted that those clothes the Emperor was wearing a few years back, they might not have been so nice. Now if only he and Gary Carrion-Murayari could generalize this and realize that what they're choosing now is also crap, things might start improving at the Whitney.

Things have been quiet. Too quiet. Maybe it's because they know I'm watching, just waiting for the moment when they write something inane, moronic or just plain stupid, waiting for that moment to pounce! And put them on my blog.

But probably not. More likely it's just been quiet. Very little going on in Dumbbell Land lately, I guess. Still, I noticed a couple of things.

She's not even trying any more, is she? Clearly, when one jabbers out gobbledygook like this, one has given up even making perfunctory stabs at coherence. Like "the deprofessionalization of art as a form of professionalization" -- yes, he nodded, that makes perfect sense. And "the idea that unlike earlier times in which only the upper class had time to produce art and text for millions who have no time to view them, now millions of people are creating work for a select few who have no time to view it" -- now incomprehensible in any human language!

I can only hope Paddy hopelessly failed to understand or grasp anything said by Mr. Groys, but considering the talk was of interest to both her and Tom Moody, I honestly don't have the stomach to attempt to read much more.

Keeping Paddy's attempt at writing justified, alas, is the Village Voice, which has listed her blog with 17 other "obsessive, cantankerous, and unstoppable Gotham blogs worth going ape over". Since the Voice has devolved to basically nothing but cheap newsprint for putting under your overbred apartment-sized idiot dog and online softcore porn with a side of limp art criticism, I suppose it shouldn't be shocking when they can't tell their ass from a badly-written blog, but it's still dispiriting. But the list of ridiculous superlatives is 33% correct: So far Art Fag City and the rest have been unstoppable.

Also, Paddy gave this great quote, which is particularly brilliant when juxtaposed with the preceding item in my list: "What I've been trying to do here is make things clear for people who don't spend every living moment in the art world, and give them a set of tools with which to look at contemporary art and engage with it." Uh huh.

Everyone wants to get on the clearfication of complicatinated artstuff for the masseslikepeople wagon of bandness: Joining the cacophony is Leah Triplett who writes, "Perhaps due to its focus on new media art, Younger Than Jesus, was almost completely devoid in painting of quality. By quality, I mean that which stand the test of time because of their enduring reverberation in one’s mind -- if they are made from ephemeral materials or not."

Perhaps, due to its, overuse of commas, this sentence, fails to get its verbs and nouns, to match up. Children raised by wolves have an easier time putting together working statements than that. What, pray tell, is a "comically chilling small-scale oil [painting]?" Is "comically chilling" like "hilariously deadly" or "politely flatulent"?

Perhaps all art writing on the Web has been outsourced to some indigenous Amazon rainforest tribe whose only contact with English is a promo t-shirt for the I Can Has Cheezburger book.

But no, that's just me making up likely-sounding excuses for them. Fact is, they're just bad writers.

And finally, proof that when the art world gets it right, it still gets it wrong: Michael Landy's latest work of art is a giant, transparent bin in which to throw away works of art. There are a number of problems with this piece, towit:

• Artists are being asked to submit works of art. We shouldn't ask artists, we should just throw out their crap.
• The artists being asked are certainly worthy of being binned -- Hirst, Emin, and a few other disasters. Sadly, they've been asked to contribute work they consider failed -- a tall order. How does one tell a failed Emin from a successful one? How unwashed the sheets are?
• The bin -- with a volume of 600 cubic meters -- is transparent. This is huge mistake, since clearly no one in their right mind wants to see any of this crap again.
• Lastly, the bin cannot be put into itself.

Perhaps it's too much to ask for, but maybe Damien's next work can be vitrines containing the bodies of the Young British Artists, himself included.

After squeezing my way past the adoring throng at Danese's building -- which had completely filled the lobby such that I had to push my way out -- I made for 20th Street and Kathryn Markel to see the last show in my evening's plan, Will o' the Wisp by Julian Jackson. I'm not sure now how I caught on to his work, but I saw it somewhere -- probably in one of the regular e-mail messages the gallery sends out. It looked good and I'd been hoping to see it, so when I heard Julian was having an opening, I put it on my list. Even so I almost skipped it; I wasn't sure I wanted to walk the extra four blocks down and three back on my way home. I'm glad I went for it.

Julian's work is something like what you'd get from Hans Hofmann if he forgot his glasses at home, or from Josef Albers on a squinty day. Gauzy overlapping rectangles hang in hazy space in each of his paintings. Some consist of colors very close in hue, others vary more widely. The paintings are perfectly flat, nearly showing no evidence of brushwork, and slightly matte. Julian's colors are mostly strongly saturated. The hazy edges are effected by a lot of blending back and forth and each painting has something of a direction imparted by these strokes; they don't quite come across as brushy but there's a very subtle hairiness to them.

Not one of the works in this show qualifies as a stunner, but altogether they're meditative, quiet. Mellow. They cast a soothing aura out into the room. Each one invites calm inspection.

I like the paintings more when Julian expands his palette. Some of them are nearly monochrome -- they could fit in a couple of other group shows I saw that night -- but I think he's better when he's more adventurous. Mirage, shown here, has some contrast with the cool blues and warm yellows. It doesn't fade entirely away when you're not concentrating on it. The more narrowly defined palettes are in danger of vanishing into the background unless you focus on them.

I think the dealer managed to find the exact right number of paintings to show: Too many more would be repetitive; too many fewer wouldn't have the same impact. Julian's work is shown in the best possible light here and it looks very good.

Leaving the building the elevator opened on a lower floor where another opening party was going on in Denise Bibro Fine Art. I don't know how welcome I am there any more but since the elevator had stopped I thought I'd take a look around. It turned out I was barely able to get off and once off I couldn't move much and couldn't see any of the art. That's a crowded opening! After trying to wiggle my way through a bit I gave up and spent the next ten minutes trying to get back to the elevator and out. So I'm sorry I didn't see anything there.

See all the reviews from this date or go to the previous review from this date.

On to Danese and their really huge Works on Paper show (until February 6, 2010). One way to make sure your gallery is packed for the opening party is to cram as many artists as you can in the same show. You might, for example, herd 40-odd artists onto the gallery walls, and even stick some more in the little project room off the way. When all the artists' friends, family members, and hangers-on arrive, they'll clog the elevators so badly the line will run out of the microscopic lobby and into the street.

Which is what happened at Danese Thursday night. Not that I really mean to pick on the gallery too much, because the show is really, really good. Anything with 40 artists in it has a shot of having at least of couple of things I might like, but this time I didn't see more than a couple of clunkers and most of the work is excellent.

There's no way I can go through everything on display, especially since the gallery neglected to list all of the work in the main show on the postcard. And never mind the project room, which wasn't listed, either. I didn't bring a pen with me so the best I could do was work my way over to the gallery desk to borrow one to make quick marks next to the artists I liked best. I highly recommend seeing the show for yourself. (If you can't see it you can run through the Website, which I'm pretty sure lists all the works and artists, including the ones missing from the postcard.)

The first thing that caught my eye was Andy Harper's small oil painting on paper. I don't think this was on regular paper, but rather some glossy-coated kind, or maybe even that Yupo stuff. Maybe Andy just gessoed the paper very smooth. I say this because he's taken advantage of the apparent detail you can get just by brushing oil paints on a non-absorbent ground -- the wealth of striations, wibbles, wobbles, and shades of opacity that magically appear from smearing oil around. Looking closely you can see the kind of overgrown garden he's painted here is really an abstraction built up of different brush pressures and twists and turns of the strokes. It's like Bob Ross on steroids. Or maybe LSD. Personally I love the physical qualities of paint and I love to see them played with in this way, so not only did I find the painting striking from a distance -- its contrast of tones and hues makes it explode from the wall -- but also worth looking at up close.

Just to the left of Andy's painting is Sebastiaan Bremer's Game Piece with Glass and Shell. At first glance it looks like a photogram but the media list says it's inks on a print, so I'm guessing we can say Sebastiaan drew on a photo. Something like that. It's a pretty little still life with the velvety blacks really looking nice.

After that I worked my way clockwise around the room. I'm not sure of the exact order except that April Gornik's Forest Light was near the end of my looping trip, and a what a lovely, lyrical way to end the show for me. Her work is a large, subtle, radiant charcoal of sunlight through a stand of trees; despite its simple, everyday subject, the drawing itself is transcendent. Somehow April gets the bare paper to glow between the shadows of the trunks. I am rarely a fan of landscapes or plain nature -- I like a human figure in the vicinity, usually -- but when it's done this well, I can't help but love it.

Nothing else in my walk around the very crowded gallery struck me the way April's or Andy's did, but there are many fine pieces. Sid Garrison has a pretty blue drawing in colored pencil, where he's worked over the pigments to a waxy sheen, almost like encaustics. Robert Lobe has a nice little ink, abstractish but with the sense of something representative underneath -- it sort of looks as if he painted in only the darkest shades of a scene, but I can't quite make out the full image from the parts. It's neat, though. (He seems to have done a series of New Jersey Meadowlands drawings, which I mention since I live right next door to them.) Gerard Mosse's painting -- even though it's on vellum and therefore maybe technically a drawing -- has a luminescence which is quite striking, and some of the same oil-on-a-smooth-surface effect as Andy's painting. And Larry Poons is represented by a decent, small monotype in the project room. It's not spectacular, but it's good.

I'm also partial to Valerie Giles' good-sized drawing. Her swoops and lines, with their calligraphic changes of thickness, and the grace and power of her drawing remind me of...well, of me. Her strong, solid lines are layered over a lighter level of shaded curves and the whole thing almost, but not quite, coheres into something recognizable. Instead it just vibrates there in its jazzy way.

As I wrote above, there's nothing really bad in this show. There were a few pieces I didn't care for, that didn't push my buttons, but overall the quality on display is very high. For a collection of this many artists that's impressive, especially in Chelsea. I'm almost surprised anyone could get together 40 contemporary artists without there being a pile of construction debris or a video with slowed down sound or something. There's hope for us yet.

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Meanwhile across the hall from McKenzie Fine Art is Kips Gallery. I've seen a couple of things there that were okay but I didn't write them up for one reason or another. Mostly I go in because they're directly across the way from Valerie's gallery and if I'm there I might as well. This time, too, I saw that the show involved nudity, so I figured I could stop in.

The show is Alessio Delfino's Metamorphoseis. The gallery verbiage on this is not to be believed -- it's almost a conceptual piece in itself, some kind of dada satire: "The grandeur of Alessio Delfino’s Metamorphoseis -- a synthesis of photography and video in the purest sense -- comes from a perspective on fashion fused with an acute awareness of both fine art and history.... Metamorphoseis is a work of art that deserves serious attention, not only on the level of being a spectacle (which, in a sense, it is), but also on two other irreconcilable issues, namely connoisseurship and representation."

Wowie zowie, sounds just incredible, don't it? The purest synthesis of photography and video? Connoisseurship? Representation? Bow down before my works, ye mighty, and despair!

Or not. What it actually turns out to be is, as usual, an excuse for a photographer to get women out of their clothes. Which is fine as long as one is honest about the enterprise. Alessio talked a number of women into getting naked, being painted gold, and standing in the same pose. Then he took their photos and printed them out all the same size -- nearly life size -- and put them all in a row on the wall. On the other wall he's got a video of the women, also all in a row, all morphing into one another via the very cutting edge of 1991 video technology.

The excitement in the gallery is palpable. Oh, wait, no, I meant boredom. Someone had burned about a metric buttload of incense in the room, too, I guess in an attempt to induce a boudoir atmosphere or something. Plan failed.

Let's quote the verbiage (by Robert C. Morgan) again: "Delfino has done the research. In selecting his 'models,' he decided not to go for professionals but to choose everyday ordinary people. In making his selection, he would converse with each woman in order to understand her character." Funny how, although he supposedly chose ordinary women, all of them ended up being approximately the same size, shape, and ethnicity -- the same approximate size, shape, and ethnicity of anyone on the cover of Vogue or W (or Maxim, for that matter). Why is it whenever a photographer starts going on about the beauty of Woman and the cultural importance of femininity, they always seem to end up with the same kind of models the fashion industry pushes as sex objects?

More verbiage: "He would then try and compare the women with one of the Athenian goddesses. He aspiration [oh god, sic] was less concerned with expressing erotic qualities than in emphasizing the concept of natural beauty over the mediated notion of instantaneous glamour." Natural beauty, right. Which explains why none of the women have body hair and at least two of them have obvious breast implants. Also, apparently Athenian goddesses over 35 need not apply.

The show, in case my tone hasn't made it clear, is a complete waste of time, and that's even though it only takes about eight seconds to take in the whole thing. Investing that eight seconds in almost any other activity -- including staring off into space in the empty hallway -- would be wiser.

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After working my way through Piri's suggestions it was time for my own. I started where I often start, at McKenzie Fine Art, where Valerie McKenzie had put together the group show Mostly Monochrome (until February 6, 2010). Unlike Winter White, this show involves more than one color, but only one color per artwork. Approximately.

It's not the strongest group show Valerie's put together. There are some good pieces here, but some I'd just as soon skip. On the good side there's James Lecce, whose show in 2006 I really liked. I also saw his next show, last year I think it was, and I liked that also, but I guess I forgot to write it up. His piece in this show, Meltaway, may be one of the ones from his last show. He's been using metallic paints, glittery stuff which doesn't reproduce too exactly, but which looks great. I still love his swirls of color and the way they flow across the surface. The varying tones blend optically while never blending physically. And you can't see it in the JPEG but there's a wealth of striations in each seemingly homogeneous layer which give the whole painting a vibrancy only enhanced by the shimmering metal flake. As far as I'm concerned, James can keep doing these forever.

On the bad side, on the wall facing James' painting, is Matthew Deleget's They Don't Love You, Like I Love You, which includes "hit with a hammer" in its list of media (to say nothing of the extraneous comma in the title). That pretty much sums it up: Four wooden panels, painted silver, and smashed with a hammer until barely more than the cradles are left. If he'd gone ahead and finished off those we'd all be happier. Everybody say yeah yeah yeah!

Aside from James, I rather liked Bill Thompson's two pieces, KK2 and KK3. They struck me as kind of Donald Judd-like, although far more playful than Judd would ever be. Which is to say very slightly whimsical. There's not a lot to them but that's part of their charm. I'm taken in by their simplicity and smoothness, how solid they seem to be hanging there on the wall.

I also found myself peering into Karen Gunderson's Churning Sea, A Moment Later. The JPEG here doesn't even come close to reproducing this accurately -- I have a feeling Valerie's photographer (who I've sometimes seen at work in the gallery) had a conniption over this one. The painting is entirely black, the waves being made up of brushstrokes. You can only see them as the light bounces off in different directions. The photo makes it look as if the painting contains shades of gray, which it does not. Is it a bit gimmicky? Yes it is. Does it work? Yes it does.

Honorable Mention for Painting Like Ken Noland goes to Li Trincere for Montauk 1, a shaped canvas, albeit not as aggressively shaped as Noland's, painted with metal flake also, giving it a nice flip-flop character I'm sure Noland also experimented with. The color Li chose for this one is lovely and jewel-like and the rhombus canvas sets it off nicely.

Everything else in the show is better than the "hit with hammer" one but not up to what I've mentioned here. On balance, worth a visit, as usual.

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Piri's final recommendation to me was a group show of new work at Tria Gallery titled Winter White (until January 21, 2010). I hustled up to 25th Street and made it in before Carol Suchman, one of the gallery principals, could close up shop.

I have to admit that the show's genesis puts me on my guard: The gallery verbiage says "Tria challenged eight artists to come up with their own interpretation of the expression 'winter white.'" The artificiality of this bothers me for some reason. On the other hand, sometimes constraints, even artificial ones, can coax better work out of an artist. I don't know any of the artists in the show so I can't say, but I did like the work.

If I absolutely had to choose the best in the show, I might go with Francine Tint's painting. It's a beautiful and subdued Abstract Expressionist piece, all nearly monochrome and warm beige except for a splashy stab of blue. It's mutely eloquent, the way good Abstract Expressionism can be, without being overwhelming. The tight range of values holds the whole thing together and the width is just enough to encompass your field of view and hold you there. It's equal parts restraint and abandon -- close hues slapped on wildly -- and it works.

Another candidate for best would be Serena Bocchino's painting. Alas, I have no image to share with you since the gallery has so far been unable to get a good photo of it. It is, after all, white. You can see from Serena's site the kind of work she does -- a sort of constricted Jackson Pollock drip, more calligraphic, less wild. Her other work looks to me as if it might be in danger of being too twee, but working white on white cuts her back in a good way. Not only is her paint more tightly wound than Pollock's, it's shinier, too, lying on the surface like a piece of polished plastic.

Carol gave me one of Serena's digital cards, a credit card-sized thing with a flip-out USB plug. At home I got to plug it in and watch a short video, music by Pat Metheny, which is basically a slideshow of Serena's work, although the introduction is a clip of her painting, canvas out on the floor, dripping away like old Jack. Only barefoot. This seems to me like a great way to promote artwork. It's extremely groovy.

Close on the heels of those two I'd put Michela Martello. I liked her White, shown here, despite its use of a word. I'm not a big fan of words in paintings. That "WHITE" isn't white at all is kind of funny, though, like one of those perception tests you can take online. The surface of this painting is nicely chunky, very lively, contrasting with the stillness of the subject and the chilliness of the color scheme.

The rest of the work in the show is good, also. The only exception for me is the inkjet print submitted by Andrew Millner. Apparently what Andrew does is work out these digital compositions and then print them. The result looks decidedly computer generated, like fractal-based wireframe landscapes in the early 1990s. About the only thing going for it, in fact, is that it fits in perfectly with the latest trend in art as reported by Joanne Mattera, which is trees.

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