Perfect Kiss.

New post at Creative Time. Alex Katz on the side of a building. Beautiful.

Season In Swing

Latest post at Fallonandrosof on my gallery-hopping last Saturday. Here's some pics from the day.

Roy Lichtenstein

Ann Agee

Adam Cvijanovic

When To Be An Artist.

I've been meaning to direct viewers to Roberta Fallon's inspiring piece about Vic Muniz's recent visit to Philadelphia. Man, this is how to get it done.

And while we're at it, here's some excellent iris prints that Muniz did for Pace.

Fire.

I received a postcard from The Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia for the Teresita Fernandez show, set to open on October 7. This is an image from her show at Lehmann Maupin, and the piece is being reconstructed for the FWM. This should be good. Go.

And I should admit that a small part of why I like this piece is that the color scheme reminds me of KISS's Destroyer album cover. But that's my problem. Not yours.

Three New Posts at CREATIVETIME.

Tribute in Light
Gary Hume
Art Parade

Light.

All this On against all that Off. Still.

Happy Heart As Arena.

I'm thrilled as a drunken monkey to announce that I'll be blogging for Creative Time. Any of you who know me know how much I love this wonderful public arts organization, so you also know what a kick it is for me to be able to do this.

My posts on their site will be about all things Creative Time. Nothing will change here at Heart As Arena. I'll continue to gush freely about the art I see. What am I supposed to do? It's my heart, and—damnit—it's an arena.

Black. Metal. Monsters.

So, Snorre Ruch takes the F Train to Bergen Street. No wonder he's so filled with hate.


On a related note. Some excellent news tonight from my man, Jason, at Chrome Peeler Records. They'll be releasing a dvd of the Banks Violette piece at the Whitney for which Snorre did the soundtrack. It will rule. Hell. It already does.

Mud Puppies*

Roberta at Fallon and Rosof has been posting some essential reads that consider both the human and the cultural toll of the hurricane.



One of the items that saddened me greatly was this story about The Ohr-O'Keefe Museum in Biloxi. George Ohr, The Mad Potter of Biloxi, was a revelation to me in my understanding of beauty. Here's to all the mud puppies.

*Mud puppies is the term of affection that Ohr used to refer to both his ceramics and his children.

Falling in Love Again

One of my favorite art experiences this year was travelling with Creative Time, as part of their Creative Council, to see the Jim Hodges' piece as it was being completed at a foundry upstate. The sculpture, Look and See, was right inside the foundry door and I immediately fell in love with it. Huge, shiny, beautiful. Overwhelming. The stainless steel had been polished only in the places that would remain so. All else was a swirl of rough metal scrubbing, a camoflauge jigsaw of surfaces waiting for paint. It looked so great that we all joked that Hodges should just leave as it was. Thankfully, he had other plans.

I first saw the finished work at the opening in early May. It was still a fine and beautiful thing, but to be quite frank, I did not swoon. And you all know how I much love the swoon. Maybe the experience of having seen it in such a rarefied setting with the unfinished Stella's, Koons's, and Kapoor's colored my memory of it. Although the foundry's space was cavernous, it couldn't possibly compete with the perspective that the open sky would eventually give the work. When I saw it in Battery Park City the sculpture felt smaller than I had remembered, less overwhelming.

I'm an idiot. Or, perhaps, human. Whatever. Looking back I see that my first experience with the completed work was impaired by memory, shifting perspective, and the usual social distractions of an opening. Last night after work I had to run an errand on Pine Street, and on a whim I walked over to see the sculpture again. Well . . .

Swooning was just the beginning. What followed was an absolutely transcendent experience. I allowed myself to become lost in all the hard weight and the soft angles of the steel, all the colors between black and white that can be seen in the reflective and open spaces on the sculpture's surface. Moving around the piece I was reminded of the blacks and whites that we hold so tightly because—for better or worse—they are part of us, but I was also reminded of our ability to see all the colors and hues in between if we so choose. I was reminded of how astonishing we are in our ability to do so. All we have to do is look and see.

Autumn is approaching, and I'm in love again.

Now click to enlarge the pics like you've never clicked to enlarge the pics before . . .










And lastly, I guess this is one way to navigate the art world.


Look and See is on the plaza at the Ritz-Carlton in Battery Park City through October 30.