WALKING AROUND LOOKING AT ART WHILE WAITING TO HEAR ABOUT A BIOPSY

ONE OF THOSE DAYS--- as is often said--- and this is one of those days, and by the end of it the doctor never called  so it will go on..until

                                          FIVE

  I was at Betty Cuningham and having seen the Picabia show at MOMA  I was struck by how the shade of that painter--- from the time of the 1940s when he was in the south of France ignoring World War Two:  

had insinuated itself into the eye and talent of Philip Pearlstein, something I had suspected back in February and found confirmed in an article in Brooklyn Rail by Pearlstein himself...

                SEVEN

  And nearby in the ANDREW EDLIN GALLERY---- a sort of successor of Phyllis Kind---  how one misses her gallery and the pleasure of writing about Martin Ramirez and  Howard Finster and Michael Madore, all of whom had shows at her gallery in New York..and I was pleased to realize that the one painter she could not talk with was Howard as he was totally unlike all her other artists in that he really did believe and lived in a world so remote from her own...though she respected his art as she did all the artists she showed.  I will leave for another time my delicious argument with her about my long piece about Martin Rameriz whch appeared in ARTS MAGAZINE and was one of the first in a major art magazine about his work...

Michael Madore sent me to look at the work of Dommenico Zindato...  echoing Ramirez in a way, but unique detailed repetitive obsessiveness...

TEN  

the real world is ever present

 this is a very common obvious vulgar editorial aside

EIGHT


ALWAYS I STOP AT SPERONE WESTWATER, THE BEST ART GALLERY IN NEW YORK or possibly the most sophisticated both in its choice of painters and in the actual physical space...  it stands near the truly awful and useless NEW MUSEUM which is the perfect example of why Gertrude Stein once said that two words that should never be joined  together are : new and museum... but Sperone Westwater always  presents and even the current show of ALI BANISADR is of interest but is a rare show that is probably pre-mature since the Iranian painter is still too young and too obvious in being  taken over by the shades of Francis Bacon and Hieronymus and even the special pleading of the catalogue copy  telling the reader of Banisadr being a young boy had to live in a bunker during the Iran-Iraq war, which might be interesting in getting him into SVA... but reveals nothing and does note excuse his not outgrowing his influences...

But I did like very much this detail and think I would have preferred a wall of such details:

                 TWENTY

And at the corner of Second Avenue and First Street....  it can be said that art sometimes really lurches into memory and photographs alone:

Time does take away but for a moment we can yank something out of the past: one of those Picabia paintings from the 1940s-- a way to distract from the irritation of that present moment and this present moment:

AND ANOTHER ITEM RESCUED:

from JOURNAL OF SMALL THINGS by Helen Mackay
Another Winter, Thursday, October 7th
Deaths
IT is quite simple.
If it can be that the priest comes, it is very well. All that the priest does is beautiful.
The feet and hands, the eyes, the lips have
sinned, and the touch of forgiveness upon them
is exquisite. It is exquisite, that last entering
in of the Divine Body to the body that is dying.
But if for any reason no priest comes, if no one
cares or troubles to ask for him, or if there is no
time, God is most surely there and understands.
And one is comforted to find that there
is no need to fear for them, as they die. They die so quietly. I am glad to know how
quiet a thing it is to die. There was only one who was not quiet.
They bound ice about his head, and then he
did not shriek and fling himself about any more,
but lay quite quietly until he died.