GREETINGS FROM NEW YORK

Lawrence Weiner greets Gerhard Richter at the opening of Gerhard Richter Abstract Paintings 2009 at Marian Goodman Gallery, West 57th Street, NY

Despite the rise in unemployment, New Yorkers are adopting a stiff upper lip, working like mad to keep the city feeling economically buoyant. Global art world players are here in numbers for the modern and contemporary auctions this week while museums and galleries unveil some spectacular new shows: Urs Fischer’s marvelous Marguerite de Ponty at The New Museum www.newmuseum.org; Gerhard Richter’s lusciously beautiful Abstract Paintings 2009 at Marian Goodman Gallery www.mariangoodman.com;
Tracey Emin’s Only God Knows I’m Good at Lehmann Maupin’s Lower Eastside space with a sumptuous after-dinner party hosted by Chef Kurt Gutenbrunner at Wallsee www.lehmannmaupin.com; RxArt presented Yayoi Kusama’s Self-Portrait puzzle at a benefit party at Industria in the West Village www.RxArt.net; and the unstoppable Roselee Goldberg raised the curtain on her Performa 09, a three-week festival celebrating performance/film/theatre/dance at venues all over the city. To get the ball rolling, Performa 09 hosted the first demonstration of the Abramovic Experiment, a performance by Marina Abramovic and Chef Dominique Ansel of Restaurant Daniel ritualizing the act of eating cake. And what’s not better to follow on from dessert…SEX. Performa’s The Lust Weekend spread like a wild fire all over Manhattan with the exhibition Performance, Art, Politics & Eroticism: Valentine de Saint-Point opening at the Italian Cultural Institute on Park Avenue; Tracey Emin gave an entertaining reading from her autobiography Strangeland at University Settlement off The Bowery where she found herself blushing at certain passages and refused to continue with the chapter chronicling nights of debauchery a decade ago in New York. But in the lust department Kalup Linzy took the cake performing newly arranged cabaret songs and cover ballads as his alter ego Taiwan at Taxter & Spengemann Gallery in the East Village. Taiwan opened the set with a revised musical version of the classic Otis Reading tune appropriating the music to his own tale of lost lust singing sitting on the edge of my couch waitin’ for trade. www.performa-art.org