Last week I spent the day in the wilds of Manhattan to check out art with my old studio mate Sorgatz. Well, first we stuffed our faces at Joe’s Shanghai on 56th St, home of some of the best damn soup dumplings in New York (that I’ve yet found) and THEN we did the art thing. Gotta fuel up first. Very important.
So after lunch we trucked up to the Acquavella Galleries on East 79th St. They represent Wayne Thiebaud, he of the creamy delicious frosting school of painting. Saw some good stuff there (Thiebaud’s still kicking booty, just shy of his 94th birthday) and the stoniest, scariest security guard I’ve ever seen in a gallery or museum, ever. EVER. Looked like a Stasi agent, or the bodyguard of a Russian mobster. Completely weird and unnerving at a place as light, airy, refined and calm as Acquavella. Very out of whack. Wish I had a picture but he probably would have slowly and deliberately taken my phone from my hand and without breaking my gaze, squeezed it into dust. Then killed me.
Anyway, Thiebaud. Here are some goodies:
Next we ambled up Fifth Ave. to the Met, where we took the stealth entrance on the lower level and made for the Leonard Lauder Cubism exhibit. Those Lauders, they buy some art, Jack. Leonard bought dozens of pieces by the big four (Picasso, Braque, Léger and Gris) over his long lifetime, and they’re all going to the Met when he dies. And how much money is there in the cosmetic industry again? Answer: a metric shit-ton. Be sure to check out the Ronald Lauder collection at the Neue Galerie sometime if you don’t believe me. Wow.
Anyway, the cubists! I like ’em. Especially Braque and Gris. They must’ve been a hell of a bunch. All those paintings from bars and cafés. They were Great Good Places guys! Here are a few choice cuts:
Then, after we cubed out, I happily discovered that my favorite mural in NYC had been installed in the Met. They built a special room, exactly to scale, to display the killer pre-war time capsule America Today by Thomas Hart Benton. The thing was commission by the New School in the ’20s, pulled down, stuck into a cavernous glass lobby on Sixth Ave. in the ’80s (where I first saw it around 2008), then taken down during renovation a couple years ago. It landed happily at the Met (a gift of the AXA company), where it and to an extent Benton himself are getting their props.
It’s a hell of a piece about America at the time — all the regions, all the industry, all the people. The Depression hit just as he was finishing it. Jackson Pollack, a student of Benton’s at the Art Students League, posed for some of the figures. So did other friends of his like artist Reginald Marsh and editor of The Masses Max Eastman. In my favorite scene, Eastman stares “dreamily” at a strikingly fine flapper girl standing in front of him on the subway. Peggy Reynolds, a well-known burlesque dancer of the time and all-round outstanding babe, posed for the dame. More here from the New York Times.
From there I split with Sorgatz and headed to the Old Town Bar on East 18th to meet folks for drinks and dinner. And my friend, if you’ve never been there, GO. One of the true Great Good Places of Manhattan, if not the world, and I’m going to draw it as part of my Great Good Places of New York series, so let’s consider the visit research, shall we? Go there. Get a drink and a booth and talk to your friends. Then eat. Then drink and talk some more. The place is like a museum piece that you can have fun with — no scary security guards with death-ray eyes, no nasty little-Hitlers telling you to step away from the art, sir. You get to sit in, breathe in and drink in a beautiful, functioning bit of American History. Teddy Roosevelt’s bedroom looked out over this very rooftop. So there.
THEN… then… after dinner our friend Martin took us over to his office in the Decker Building, just a block away on Union Square, to show us… where Andy Warhol’s factory was! Okay, to me this is a big deal. I got into silkscreening because of Warhol. And Martin’s company Photoshelter is right there at 33 Union Square West. He showed us around and took us up to the 6th floor where Andy held his circus from 1968 to 1973. Lots went down here. This is where Andy did some of his best work. And was shot. Whew.
All in all, a mighty fine art day. What will top it? We’ll find out soon….