Jeff Koons Puppy on the Greenwich Estate of Stephanie Seymour and Peter Brant, Greenwich, CT, April 7, 2011

Spring arrived just in time for the annual Danspace Project Gala on April 26 with an evening of performances honoring Marina Abramovic.   Executive Director Judy Hussie-Taylor opened the gardens of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery to toast the artist whose recent MOMA exhibition The Artist is Present pulled down record-breaking numbers for the Museum with attendance for her three-month endurance challenge totaling 561,471.  Rob Storr introduced the artist who quickly turned the stage over to performers including Trisha Brown Dance Company, Stephen Petronio Dance Company with accompaniment by Rufus Wainwright, Jr. and a spellbinding musical performance by Laurie Anderson.  www.danspaceproject.org

A few nights later at the Stephan Weiss Studio in the West Village Anne Barlow, Executive Director of Art in General greeted guests who immediately high-tailed to the rear of the studio to view DoubleBlind  a unique auction where 10 nominators: Peter Eleey, Yasmil Raymond, Joel Meyer, Jens Hoffmann, Janice Guy, Sean Kelly, Alan Cumming, Dan Cameron, Tanya Bonakdar and Spencer Sweeney selected 10 artists: Jeremy Deller, Shannon Ebner, Scott Foley, Tim Lee, Matt Mullican, Shirin Neshat, David Remfry, Ted Riederer, Thomas Scheibitz and Andrew W.K.  who each photographed a single roll of film that remains undeveloped and unseen.  Like a time capsule, the images will ultimately represent the artist’s singular perspective, one that can only be shared with the single patron who won the bid.  The suspense of it all caused swarms of people to place bids.  The evening was an instant success. www.artingeneral.org

Spring just wouldn’t be spring in New York without the fabulosity Anna Wintour generates for the Met’s Costume Institute Gala, this year paying tribute to the late Alexander McQueen with a retrospective of his work Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty curated by Andrew Boulton.  Harold Koda, Chief of the Costume Institute expressed how “his work fits so easily within the discourse of art,” noting “the retrospective paralleled the aesthetic of its subject more closely than any recent gala—necessitating little, if any, reinterpreting.”  In true McQueen fashion, the event knocked down all museum records raising $10.4 million.  www.metmuseum.org

The David Zwirner Gallery transformed an annex of their West19th Street chain of galleries into a monastic dining room replete with cathedral ceiling for a dinner party to celebrate the preview of Minus Space reductive art, an exhibition of works by Donald Judd drawn from the artist’s seminal 1989 exhibition held at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany.  The exhibition brings together works that comprise one of Judd’s few explorations of color on a large scale using anodized aluminum.  The pieces, mostly borrowed from international public and private collections, reflect the artist’s intended clarity and rigor in its installation.  The serenity was interrupted during cocktails when the bar was stocked with colorful tequila drinks in the spirit of Cinco de Mayo.  Rainer Judd performed a traditional family toast, tossing a drink over her shoulder and a party kicked in. http://www.davidzwirner.com/

The perfect spring afternoon ushered in Josh Smith: The American Dream at the Brant Foundation Art Study Center on the polo grounds of Stephanie Seymour and Peter Brant’s Greenwich estate.  An eclectic mix of hipsters, historians, and established and emerging artists huddled under a tent where a Moroccan-inspired buffet of lamb, cous-cous and grilled vegetables was served.  Nearby in a converted barn dating from 1902, home of the BFASC, Smith installed riotous colorful paintings in a succession of rooms over two floors, in some instances from floor to ceiling.  The exhibition thrills with pure artistic energy. http://www.brantfoundation.org/

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Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy performing at The Andy Warhol Museum Auditorium, Saturday, August 21, 2010, Pittsburgh, PA

Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy with a fan post concert at The Andy Warhol Museum, August 21, 2010, Pittsburgh, PAIn northeast it was a beat of a different drummer.  On a breezy late afternoon day, an intimate crowd reclined on velvety navy blue beach towels on the lawn at the Watermill Center in Watermill, New York for the 2010 fundraising concert ‘Last Song of Summer.’  The Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright, (the offspring of celebrated folk singers Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright the Third), headlined the event.  After an astounding 45-minute set of original songs and cover music, Wainwright welcomed to the stage his special guest, the Australian pop icon Kylie Minogue.  The unlikely pair performed duets like Hoagie Carmichael’s ‘Stardust’ and a pumped-up version of Elton John’s ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’ that brought the audience to their feet.  Kylie took center stage and performed ‘All the Lovers’ a single from her recently released album ‘Kylie Aphrodite.’  But it was her 2001 disco-pop hit ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ that blew the crowd away.  The event raised $200,000 for the Watermill Center.  www.watermillcenter.org

Kylie Minogue leaving the stage, Watermill 2010 Concert ‘Last Song of Summer,’ August 28, 2010, Watermill, New York

Rainer Judd wearing a black column dress by award-winning fashion designer, Yeohlee Teng aside ‘Untitled,’ 1978 a classic Donald Judd stack piece. 101 Spring Street, New York City, June 3, 2010.The ground floor of the building was transformed into a summer picnic area complete with Judd-designed tables and benches made from unfinished modest pine with a buffet of rare steak, fries, arugula, and prosciutto served by Giorgio Deluca, one of the founders of the pioneering SoHo gourmet food emporium Dean & Deluca.  Rainer Judd took center stage and kicked off the campaign with a tribute to her parents: “101 Spring Street has been called the ‘jewel of SoHo’ because it glows at night with a Dan Flavin sculpture made especially for the 5th floor, and because an artist named Don Judd and his wife Julie took a stand, along with a small renegade community of artists, against Robert Moses’ plans to raze the entire neighborhood to build the Broome Street Expressway – and won!  If there’s any surviving building in SoHo that captures the vision of a single artist, the spirit of loft-living, and the art of a generation, it is 101 Spring Street.”  It would be undeniably worthy if the new guard of SoHo, major brands like Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Chanel, J Crew, etc., stepped up to the plate and contributed to the restoration of this visionary building where one artist had the brilliant idea to merge art, architecture and life and in so doing rescued what is now the world-famous cobbled grid SOuth of Houston, SoHo.  Donate to the Judd Foundation at: http://www.juddfoundation.org/donate.htm

http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/people/barone/barone9-10-04.asp

‘This is the way the fucking world ends! Look at this fucking shit we're in man! Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting…’ the Photojournalist portrayed by Dennis Hopper in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 war film epic Apocalypse Now.

Like so many hardcore lines uttered in Francis Ford Coppola’s legendary Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now (translated in over 30 languages), the purely visual terms of war paintings by Otto Dix (1891-1969), namely his lost epic painting Schützengraben ‘Trench,’ cast forth in honest detail ‘the horror’ from the front line of war where Dix, a youthful budding artist, went in search of meaning.  No artist is as strongly linked to the historical events of twentieth-century World War I Germany as Dix.  Driven out of his position by the Nazis, he was able to live and paint long enough to see his work hailed again for its unique power. http://www.neuegalerie.org/exhibitions/otto-dix

In his 125-page biography Otto Dix, The Art of Life, the German art historian Philipp Gutbrod concisely examines the artist through the lens of this long lost masterpiece Schützengraben ‘Trench,’ and in so doing provides the reader vast insights into Dix’s creative impulse. Beginning with his childhood and youth in Thuringia, on to art school in Dresden and, soon after in 1915 at the French front in the Champagne region fighting as a machine gunner, Gutbrod eloquently recounts the artist’s fearless creative path.  He writes that in1963, while reflecting on World War I, Dix explained his lengthy participation in the war: ‘I had to see it for myself.  I am a realist to such a degree that I had to see it with my own eyes to be able to confirm that it is how it is.’

Philipp Gutbrod at the Andrea Rosen Gallery, Chelsea, NYC, May 12, 2010, with work by George Condo.

Otto Dix, The Art of Life by Philipp Gutbrod published by Hatje Cantz Verlag is available on May 31, 2010 online at http://www.artbook.com/9783775725811.html
and at the Neue Galerie bookstore http://www.neuegalerie.org/shops/Book%20Store

Chef Gutenbrunner test-driving his Nürnberg Bratwurst at a Taste of Tribeca preview, April 28, 2010

On the Eve of the 16th annual Taste of Tribeca a celebration of over 60 restaurants and chefs in lower Manhattan, my mouth watered reviewing some of the dishes to be served up like Nürnberg Bratwurst, a mini bratwurst with sauerkraut, potatoes, horseradish and watercress carefully developed by the wildly talented Kurt Gutenbrunner of Blaue Gans, a Tribeca outpost favored by art world cognoscenti. Other menu highlights include a braised lamb neck and carrot ravioli with koppert cress pea shoots, the invention of chef Marc Forgione of two-year old restaurant Marc Forgione and Nobu chef Ricky Estrellado’s chicken karaage with green mango and jicama slaw.

Taste of Tribeca invites food lovers to the annual school fundraiser on Saturday, May 15 from 11:30 am to 3pm on Duane Street (between Greenwich and Hudson). The fabulous outdoor event, centered along Greenwich Street, completely supports arts programs like music and dancing as well as science classes at Tribeca’s PS 234 and 150 public schools. Tickets are $40 in advance and $45 on the day of which buys six generously portioned tastes. It’s a recession special like no other and with a forecast for sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s it’s bound to be the toast of downtown. Tickets can be purchased at www.tasteoftribeca.org

Molissa Fenley performs ‘Variation II’ from “Dreaming Awake,” 2006 a work she choreographed with music by Philip Glass performed by Pedja Muzijevic, at Danspace Project 2010 Gala honoring Philip Glass, NYC, April 27, 2010.

On an unseasonable chilly spring evening, the dance world came out in full force to celebrate Philip Glass, one of the greatest American composers of the late 20^th century. On April 27, Glass received the highest honors given by Danspace Project for his significant contributions to American dance and his major impact on international art and culture.   Born in 1937 in Baltimore, Maryland he studied at the University of Chicago, the Julliard School and in Aspen with Darius Milhaud but gained his musical footing in Europe under the tutelage of the legendary pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger  (who also taught Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and Quincy Jones) and from his work with sitar virtuoso and composer Ravi Shankar.  In 1967 Glass returned to New York and formed the Philip Glass Ensemble and the rest is (art) history.

Fellow music pioneer Laurie Anderson and the painter Chuck Close each gave personal accounts of their respective creative collaborations with Glass.  Chuck Close reminisced the early years of his friendship with the composer at the moment in the late 60s ‘before Soho was Soho, when it was just industrial New York [and] so much was shared then, so much was in the air.’  He made the point that ‘it wasn’t direct influence but a kind of back and forth.  There were painters and composers – not just Phil but Steve Reich – and dancers like Trisha Brown.  And we all showed up for each other.  All Phil’s early performances were in museums and art galleries, for example.  The music world was way not understanding.'

Now in it’s 35^th season, Danspace Project continues to support a diverse range of choreographers in developing their work.  Danspace Project’s Commissioning Initiative has commissioned over 360 new works since its inception in 1994.  Support Danspance Project at:  http://www.danspaceproject.org/support/gala.html