Cave Man
Almost a decade ago, Roberta and I were walking through Grand Central Terminal in New York when we heard exuberant, vaguely African dance music. We followed the sound and came upon a group of dancers wearing elaborate horse costumes and executing precisely...
Both Sides Now
My first job in the art world was working for Ira Spanierman, who used to run an advertisement with a large headline proclaiming, “We Will Pay Over One Million Dollars for Highly Important Paintings by . . .” followed by a laundry list of famous American...
The Last Laugh
Roberta and I were in Western New York a few days ago and took the opportunity to view the Alfred Ceramic Art Museum at Alfred University, a school which a friend who is a ceramic artist calls, “the established Mount Olympus in ceramic education in America.” ...
Tchotchkes
Tchotchke: (Yiddish, of Slavic origin) a small object that is decorative rather than strictly functional; a trinket The kind of artworld story that the public loves popped up in the general press three weeks ago: a 22-year-old college student, browsing through his...
Andy, Again
I once interviewed the artist Philip Pearlstein, who is well-known for his paintings of nudes. As a child growing up in Pittsburgh, Pearlstein was encouraged in his artistic leanings by his parents, who sent him to Saturday morning classes at the Carnegie Museum...
Framed
One of the upsides to being friends with artists is that sometimes they give you works of art. One of the downsides to being friends with artists is that those works are often unframed. You’re glad to receive a work, but, if it’s unframed, you can’t hang...
Journal of the Plague Years
In March, 2020, I sent out a letter to clients and colleagues instead of posting my usual monthly blog. Covid was beginning to make itself felt on a serious scale. The country was entering uncharted territory, at least for non-centenarians. In my...
Amphetamines and a Limo, Please!
More years ago than I care to remember, a professor in a course I was taking on Baroque architecture told us how you could tell who had power in Italian cities during the 16th and 17th centuries. Buildings were normally erected to front the streets on which they...
Your Money or the Dumpster
Many years ago, my wife and I were having supper at the home of friends. After supper, Tim said he wanted to show me something. I followed him outside to be met by a two-foot-high stack of unstretched canvases that Tim had pulled out of the garage. ...
What the Heck?
Magazzino Italian Art, a terrific small museum that opened in Cold Spring, NY a few years ago, currently has on view an exhibition of works by Costantino Nivola (1911-1988). Nivola was born in Sardinia, the son of a mason, and attended art school near...
