A NYC Day-trip.

Thanksgiving break flew by, as I expected it might- given the fact that I dedicated much of it to what amounted to a "day trip" to NYC. As I had planned, I spent my nights at my father's house- a mere hour and forty-five minutes from Manhattan. It was a novelty to have many channels of television to browse through, but most of it is truly crap. I caught a fair portion of Snakes On a Plane, and it was about as mind-numbing as I thought it would be. I also caught a few glimpses of the cartoon Lil' Bush. When I initially saw the title, a few thoughts rushed through my mind in quick succession. I wondered whether it really was what it appeared to be. I marveled that we have reached a point when a sitting president is so truly ludicrous that he is disrespected with an animated lampoon of his foibles on national television. Finally, I realized that this president (or any reasonable facsimile) is only funny in three minute bursts, and then merely pathetic.

Saturday morning we were able to get off to a reasonably early start. My father was willing to drive me into the city, despite his reservations about potential holiday-weekend-traffic snarls. Fortified with four shots of espresso, I was ready to contend with whatever we experienced. It was refreshing to be entering the city with almost no agenda whatsoever. This was my third trip in a little over a year, and the previous two visits were regulated by a set of activities I had planned for weeks in advance. When my Dad suggested that we could drive up to Chelsea and see some of the galleries, I easily assented. For sheer availability of contemporary art, this neighborhood of former industrial buildings really can't be beat.

It seemed like many of the shows were closing when we visited. I really wanted to get inside the Jonathan Levine Gallery, but they were in the midst of an installation- so I was out of luck. But there were enough places that were open to make the browsing worthwhile. I maintained a consistently loose and informal attitude, and so I didn't document anything I saw. I simply took my time and skipped through to whatever intrigued me, without taking any notes. Suffice it to say that we got to see a lot that was to my tastes, and another large portion of work that I considered to be pretentious crap. This time around I skipped all of the boutique-ish salon galleries that specialize in stocking and exhibiting the prints of well-established legends of the Twentieth Century. I stopped for a few group shows (one in particular featured paintings by a group of Europeans influenced by German Expressionism and Surrealism), but mainly stuck to places featuring an exhibition of a single artist. There was nothing that stuck out so prominently that I would remember a name to mention here.

Actually... I take that back. I was surprised (and pleased) to walk into the Charles Cowles Gallery and discover the gigantic photographic prints of Edward Burtynsky. This was a bit of a coincidence, as I had recently wish-listed a documentary featuring his work over at Amazon. Burtynsky took shots of mammoth stone quarries with a large format camera. The results show the full extent of ecological devastation that such industry has caused. But at the same time the vast scale of his shots allows them to assume a troublesome beauty. The brain-twisting enormity of the project sites he depicts allows Burtynsky to play with viewer perception. Only when one notices the (seemingly) tiny presence of people and machinery can he/she appreciate the ramifications of the imagery. It is a truly sobering show.

I couldn't resist an inspiration to take out my own camera as I walked admidst the galleries. There's something about the quantity and quality of work, all packed into a rather limited geographical area, that compels me to engage in the process of manufacturing art. Of the vast amount of sensory data offered by NYC, there is much worthy of partition and apprehension. For an extended period of time, I felt I found my zone. It was a nice warm-up for my talk at the Agni Gallery. It's too easy to forget how invigorating creation can be, when you are involved with trying to represent and sell your work. I had a good time among the few who showed up to hear us pontificate on the process and value of our art. Attendance was modest, but the people who showed up seemed to be interested in what John and I had to say. After we were done, we didn't linger. Our day in the city was happily concluded.

Once again, the "Value of Art".

I thought that tonight I'd write about the value of art. But it occurred to me that this subject had already been extensively examined on this blog. To verify that this was the case, I did a search on my front page for "value of art". This is what I came up with. So, yeah... I've already said a lot about this topic. But being in a reasonably inebriated state, I'm going to forge ahead as if I was covering novel ground. Please forgive me for redundancy, syntax and typing errors, and whatever rambling tone I set in this post.

Once again I spent my Friday evening at a gallery opening. This was actually the grand opening of a new space on Hatfield Street in Lawrenceville (the Zombo Gallery). The inaugural event ("Squaresville") featured a middle-aged local illustrator named "Wayno". This artist has been prolific, and I knew his work from local media and from a comic called Beer Nutz that he created years and years ago. He's actually had work in The New Yorker, Entertainment Weekly, and The New York Times. Here's a guy who has found commercial success in creating images and lives in the suburbs (Mt. Lebanon). And he's selling his paintings in the $200-500 range.

I'm considering these prices in the context of having just made a trip to the galleries in Chelsea. Granted that this section of NYC is pretty much the pinnacle of the international arts acene, but (after all) the shows I saw were mostly of "emerging" artists. Yet you'd be hard-pressed to find an original painting there for under $1000. From the perspective of someone that's spent any amount of time in the Pittsburgh arts scene, those prices seem exorbitant. But who's to say that the art market in the 'Burgh is more representative of the "true" value of art? Certainly from what I've heard, the local market is extremely depressed. I recently bought a painting (here, in Pittsburgh) from an artist who is selling his work in Chelsea for four times as much as I paid. What is the intrinsic value of that object?

Just like with real estate, all types of factors affect the cost of art. But unlike property, artwork can't provide you with shelter. You can't eat it. It doesn't help you get to work any faster. It's value is determined (mostly) by what someone is willing to pay for it. Why would some people pay $1000 for a print (with an edition run of 500) of a work created by an "art star"? Does it represent the time it took to make it, or the quality of the materials? Does it depend upon the past and/or the prospect of future work by the artist. Is it based on the quality of the piece- and who even determines that factor? Ask an expert. Consult a ledger of previous sales. Consider where it is being shown, and who represents the sale. Throw it all in a blender and pour that mess into an objective assessment.

It's too easy to get caught up in the mind-frame of the investor. You start out buying artwork because you love the way it looks. You want to have it... to put it in your living space. You want to call it yours. Then you become a collector, and you start considering the relative value of different works. Does it seem like a "good" deal? Maybe you eventually find yourself purchasing a piece that you don't even really like- just because you think its creator is "going places"... and it will surely appreciate in value. But what is it worth if the economy collapses, or after a nuclear war, or when the oceans rise a few feet? It' merely an object with some medium of color applied to some material- often wood or canvas. What's the price of that material per pound?

I find these questions compelling. I even play with the answers in my own work. For Christ's sake, I draw on phone book pages. What? That's last year's directory? Throw the damn thing away! It's not archival anyway. But I make scans of the work on quality photo-paper with archival ink. Surely the intrinsic value of the print is worth more than the original? Hmmm... it's awfully fun to turn a convention on its head. What if I make 1000 copies? Then what happens to the value? Hahaha.

NY Trip: Red Hook and Chelsea.

When I woke up this morning I only had one more must-see on my checklist. So we drove down to Red Hook- a little Brooklyn neighborhood on the banks of the Long Island Sound. I had read that the waterfront in the area was one of the last few uncongested and industrial places in NYC. I though I could get some shots of a community that was lost in time. JM had never actually been there, so we had to improvise our route. We ended up finding it fairly easily.

As advertised, Red Hook was indeed a unique area. Although being flanked by what used to be some pretty rough housing projects, it really did have the feeling of a traditional, non-gentrified neighborhood. There were a few examples of post-apocalyptic, degraded buildings at its very edge. A couple of these physical plants were still being used for some ostensible workmanlike function. I took several representative photos of the graffiti and debris of the wastelands. There was also a rusting old subway car along a promenade in the back of a fancy grocery store that made for a compelling (and maybe symbolic) image. I suppose we could have lingered there and sought out more odd sights, but I was aware that JM wanted to make a trip to the Chelsea galleries, and I was looking forward to joining him. I'm glad I got to see Red Hook before the inevitable change that is coming to transform it into the next condo-enclave or "big box" store supercenter.

Before our trip into Manhattan via subway, we needed to find a secure place to stash the car. JM thought that maybe Park Slope would be a good idea, but we ended up on an extended search for parking that finally ended on 3rd Avenue, by 62nd Street in Brooklyn. A pleasant subway ride landed us on 23rd Street, and a walk across the City brought us to the central repository for art in the United States. If you've never been to Chelsea before, you should know that you could never visit all the galleries in a single day. It's easy after an hour or two to start taking the work for granted. We saw a lot of great stuff. A few highlights among many worth mentioning:

-Humberto Duque, "Revenge of the Lawn" @ Galeria Ramis Barquet - A magical world of colorful drawings, vibrant clay sculpture, paper cut=outs and sculptures. Certainly playful, but not without a bit of gristle.

-"A House is Not a Home" @ Carin Golden Fine Art (curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody) - Just an excellent example of curatorial excellence applied to a fairly broad theme. Photos by Kevin Cooley were a particular standout.

-Souther Salazar, @ Jonathan Levine Gallery - I ran all the way down to 20th Street to catch this fifteen minutes before the close of the gallery. It was totally worth it. I knew his comics work and expected to be pleased, yet this solo exceeded my expectations. Miniature worlds of self-contained dreams. More candy for the eyes. Sure... they had Shepard Fairey there too. So what?!

-Marnie Weber "Variations on a Western Song", @ Fredericks & Freiser - Wow. First you see the collages in the front room. Eerie... a bit disturbing maybe... carnivalesque certainly. There's humor there, but the imagery is transcendently transfixing. But you need to go through the curtain in the back of the gallery and watch her 25-minute video meditation on spiritualism, the feminine voice and the mythos of the American frontier. A truly great work that I'll never be able to purchase on DVD to show all you good people... though you definitely deserve it.


Of course there's plenty more to tell you about. But I have to admit that I am now truly overstimulated by this trip. I'm actually seriously considering driving home tomorrow- a day earlier than I expected. I have packed such an inordinately huge dose of activity and information into a relatively small window of time, and I am reeling from it. Maybe I'll feel like I cheated myself later, but I don't think I can process anymore without a break of quiet reflection. Unless the oceans rise a few feet, NYC will be there some distant day, awaiting my return. And I'll be refreshed with a brand new itinerary in hand.