Francis Alÿs, Fabiola (detail) . Divorce in Art First multiple Santas in the last Artopia posting and now multiple Fabiolas! But multiplicity wasn't invented yesterday, nor by Andy Warhol when he multiplied his Campbell's soup cans, Marilyns, and Jackies. Think instead of the myriad figures in a Tibetan tanka. Or those dying genres, photo-booth samples and sheets of postage stamps. Admittedly the photo-booth samples are usually images of many different grimacing customers or one-off strips … [Read more...]

Santa Babies One Saturday before Christmas after my merry rounds uptown, searching here and there in galleries for art rather than looking at art, I was on my way back to my East Village lair, when.... I was treated to the spectacle of multiple Santas. They were hanging out on historic St. Mark's Place. This uncomely but vital boulevard, once the home of the Dom and Andy Warhol's Plastic Floating Inevitable, is now a battleground between bustling tattoo parlors (Whatever Tattoo, Dots NY, et … [Read more...]

As Far As The Mind Can See While sauntering through the fourth floor of the Whitney ("Lawrence Weiner: AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE," 945 Madison Avenue, through February 10), I was jotting down words in my notebook. The person I was with said: I can tell which ones you like by where you stop and write down the titles. You like the early pieces that involve something physical. Right. My favorite: A 36" x 36" removal to the lathing of support wall or plaster or wallboard from a wall (1968); closely … [Read more...]

Right of Spring Drawing on a wide range of source material for movement and gestures -- from the BBC's dramatization Riot at the Rite, to Sarah Bernhardt, Robin Williams, Groucho Marx, and Yvonne Rainer -- this dance attempts to invoke the passion and furor that accompanied the premiere of the original at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris, May 29, 1913. -- 'RoS Indexical' program notes Yvonne Rainer's new dance piece, RoS Indexical --- RoS is short for Rite of Spring --- was at the Hudson … [Read more...]

..............REVIEWS OF MARTIN PURYEAR, ALAN SHIELDS, MORIKO MORI, AND ALAN SARET..... Martin Puryear, Old Mole, 1985. Lumber Art The Martin Puryear retrospective at MoMA (11 West 53rd St., to Jan. 14, 2008) presents a panoply of engaging sculptures. The large-scale pieces in the second-floor atrium conquer that unfriendly, gigantic-broom-closet space. If you look up, you normally feel you need to avoid bird-droppings; if you look down from the sixth-floor walkway, you want to jump. … [Read more...]

Will there be a rebirth of the experimental film? Or will historical avant-garde devices merely continue to be assimilated toward narrative ends? In any case, we need some history. Most film writing is limited to promoting the latest blockbusters; most works about underground films are out of print; film-hip fans are over the hill or work as clerks in video stores. But while we await free downloads of the universal movie library, here come the DVDs. You are the projectionist. The film is a book. … [Read more...]

Richard Prince, Untitled (Cowboy), 1989. One of two Ektacolor prints. Sold for $1,248,000.00 at a Christie's auction in 2005. Someday My Prints Will Come Sometimes the best work of even a very good artist needs to be underlined, leaving the uninspired trials and repetitions off to one side. Many careers would profit from pruning. But by whom? We like to think that artists know best, but this has not always proven to be the case. Just listen to what artists say about other artists, whom they … [Read more...]

Zhang Huan,12 Square Meters, 1994. Bubble Gum Artopia pays no attention to the Chinese art bubble, nor to the bigger art bubble in general. Bubbles come and go. The Bigger Bubble is tied to the stock market. The stock market drops and the art market follows one year later. It has happened twice on my watch. Now it is real estate, everywhere but in New York City high-income zip codes, that is plummeting. Will art follow? Some say that the economy is now worldwide and that money piling up in the … [Read more...]

Hannah Wilke, Untitled, 1974. Photos and chewing gum. (not in exhibition) Death Isn't Fun Sometimes art takes time. Time is distance. Some art is best seen later, in the past tense. Or if not exactly in the past tense, since all objects and images are technically present-tense, then "once removed." Hannah Wilke (1940-93) made that kind of art. Ironically, at first glance, her art was all about herself, all about her body, and was open to the charge of narcissism. Now it seems likely she was … [Read more...]

Richard Pousette-Dart (1916-1992) Lost in the Beginnings of Infinity, 1991. Acrylic on linen, diameter 72 inches. Private collection, Vienna © Richard Pousette-Dart by ARS, New York, 2007 The Final Cut Editing as authoring -- one of my themes today -- is not a rehash of Roland Barthes' death-of-the-author. The author may have been misplaced, but he or she is still alive and not just a mask for a group of anonymous meddlers or the imperatives of cultural context. Excuse me for being … [Read more...]