By JRS
Sunday marked the closing of another successful Armory Week in New York. Following the trend of Art Basel in Miami, the aisles were teeming with enthusiasts, artists, collectors, and dealers who seemed not to be aware in the least about our turbulent economic climate. Damien Hirst prints had five and six stickers next to them, denoting sales. It truly was a collector’s fair.
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By JRS
In 1985, when billionaire Greek industrialist Dakis Joannou bought the first piece of his now world-renowned contemporary art collection—a basketball signed by Dr. Jay submerged in a tank of water and simply titled “Equilibrium”—it started two chain reactions. One, Mr. Koons would never have to worry about people buying his work again, as Jonnau has been very successful in buying up most of it for his monolithic museum in Athens. Secondly, Joannou would be very adept in helping to solidify emerging artists and future greats (Terrence Koh, Cindy Sherman, Takashi Murakami), as well as helping to shape the very nature of collecting.
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By JRS
Documentarian George Gittoes painting in his Berlin studio
“What irritates me a bit about the fine art world,” director George Gittoes told me this week, “Is if I make a sixty-minute film about Iraq, which I do, I see my sixty-minute program as art, and I don’t the art world has caught up with Andy Warhol and other people like him. They still feel something has to go through a museum before it becomes art.”
So began our epic interview in his publicist’s sprawling West Village conference room. George is unlike most documentarians you’ve seen before, in a great many ways. For one thing, he’d rather be interacting with his subjects, for better or worse, whether it puts him in harm’s way or not. He has been shot at, arrested, and sentenced to death—on more than one occasion. He views news as a form of art, and therefore, warfare falls into this category. But not without lasting affects. “People talk about the psychological damage war does to people, but it also has a damaging spiritual affect. I don’t know how many times, in all the years I’ve been covering war, I’ve been with a bunch of soldiers and there’s one who keeps saying “I want to pop my cherry,” meaning he wants to kill someone. He wants to have contact. They think that once you’ve fought in combat and you’ve killed an enemy, you become a man like it’s a right of passage. I’ve always told them that they don’t want to do that, because it’s stupid. I don’t know how many times that same night, that same soldier has spent the whole night weeping on my chest, my clothes wet with his tears. As soon as you kill someone, you discover that you’ve killed part of your own soul. It’s just a fact.”
By Michelle Cheung
The only table in the house, Cesar Ramirez's chef table in the Brooklyn Fare's kitchen
Chef Cesar Ramirez of Brooklyn Fare, gourmet food market by day and fine dining destination by night, is not your famed media-hungry celebrity chef. So the fact that reservations for his nightly dinners are booked through June is very telling. In Ramirez’s 10-seater stainless steel kitchen table, craftsmanship stays alive with culinary artisans at work every night serving more than 15 courses of salacious dishes featuring impeccable quality and creativity.
By JRS
A piece by Indian-born artist, Raghava KK
On Friday, February 26, 2010, life as Raghava KK knew it, changed forever. It was 12pm and we were meeting for coffee, a mere two hours after his much-hyped TED talk went live on the web. Earlier in the month, KK had given a talk to a group of self-proclaimed “nerds” in the ongoing series of interactive talks presented by TED. His talk is now considered one of the most engaging and engrossing in the organization’s history. He speech touches on living and painting in his native India, becoming a gallery sensation at a very young age, and having it all ripped away as the government’s draconian censorship slipped between him and his collectors. Slipping in the art community and inching closer to being flat broke, KK stopped painting for himself and started pandering to his audience. “They called me a sellout, and no one bought my art,” he told me, reflecting on a very dark time. “I don’t have to censor my art now that I’m in the US.”
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By JRS
"Aurel Schmidt," shot by Juro Schneider
Though only slightly more than half of the artists showing at the Whitney’s 75th annual Biennial are women, it’s already been dubbed “the Women’s Biennial,” thanks to cyberspace’s fervid bloggers and social networkers. The split highlights the blase gender blindness that the art community has boasted for years, and if people can actually buy into it, it may prove to be a very effective measure taken by chief curator, Francesco Bonami.
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By JRS
Mr. Brainwash, aka Thierry Guetta, holding court over his maze on West 13th Street
“If you do something you love, you become an icon, because you do it so well that in one moment, everybody appreciates it,” says Thierry Guetta, leaning back in a paint-splattered Eames lounge chair in the middle of his newest exhibition, Icons. The street artist-turned gallery sensation went on to talk about his time spent decorating the walls and sidewalks of New York: “The street is just a large gallery to me. Even the people that don’t like it are obligated to see it. There are no rules on the street, there is just freedom. Thousands of people can see it.”
By Michelle Cheung
Derrick Cruz of Black Sheep and Prodigal Sons
“Like paradoxical black sheep and prodigal son” wrote Anatole Broyard in his autobiographical tale, “Kafka Was the Rage,” as he described the outcasts and rejects, who lived in Greenwich village after the Second World War. When Derrick Cruz read these words more than five years ago, he knew right away that it would help name and shape the story for his accessories brand. Broyard’s words captured Cruz’s repatriation to New York as an adult. “Like paradoxical black sheep and prodigal sons,” he said, “we all come here [to New York] kind of outcasts, being rejected, seeking something new, seeking redemption of some sort. When I saw that line, I knew that was going to be the name and, aesthetically, it became more about archetypes that, in my head, were both wise and stubborn at the same time.”
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By JRS
Phantogram playing in New York City, Summer 2009 photo by Alexander B. Stein
“Oh my god, you know Phantogram?!”
“Honey, I knew them back when they were Charlie Everywhere.”
Such was the mood Thursday night at Brooklyn’s Union Hall, the site for Phantogram’s—formerly Charlie Everywhere’s—most recent venue domination. A smattering of loyal followers fell in line with recently enlightened gormandizers (in the tradition of Hilly Krystal’s CBGB) and swayed to the haute electronic waves of music that spewed forth from the stage of Josh Carter and Sarah Barthel, the Saratoga Springs duo dubbed Sub-Bombin’ Record’s “First big success.”
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"Alexander McQueen" by David LaChapelle
Fashion visionary Lee McQueen, creative director and founder of the Alexander McQueen label, was found dead in his home in London Thursday morning. The former creative director of the famous House of Givenchy and Gucci was mourned in the Lincoln Center Tents during the first day of Spring 2010’s Fashion Week.
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