Orsay...

The other day, I had the good fortune to be included in a tasting over at the restaurant that was Crush, and will be Orsay. Because it was an informal tasting menu with the chefs requesting feedback, I won’t comment on any of the dishes except to say that I am excited to say that this new effort will be an elegant reflection of what Crush once was.

The premise is to be one of a modern French-style bistro. I will say this about one dish though, the crème brulee was some of the best I’ve ever eaten. In fact, it was so good, I ate the entire ramekin; there was the perfect balance of bruleed sugar over creamy, custardy goodness without a hint of the egginess that can ruin the experience.

*The above picture is of Jon Insetta (he of Chew, and majority owner), Brian Siebenschuh (who along with his wife, Crystal Vessels are part owners as well) and Sam standing where the former (back) building stood just 48 hours ago. It is where the new lounge, patio and private dining room will be located.

Projected opening? June.

the show you love to hate

An NYC aesthetic that relies on tired tropes of industrialism, found objects, and half-assed workmanship filtered through an unfocused lens of social commentary that might have been fresh 10-15 years ago pervades the images I’ve seen from this year’s Whitney Bienniale.

Alhough noted critic Peter Schjedlahl over at the New Yorker does wax philosophic over the show, “This year’s Whitney Biennial, the most poetic I can remember, feels mildly unhappy and restlessly alert […] Its strongest suit is certain types of sculpture that have flourished lately—the same assembled, shaggy varieties that dominate “Unmonumental,” the inaugural, solid show of the New Museum […] It is full of busy ingenuities that smack of art school—but of art-school studios, not seminars. Two decades of academic postmodernizing have trailed off into embarrassed silence.”

And even I must admit that the curators’ invocation of Samuel Beckett’s notion of “Lessness” (not less is more, less is all) to characterize the Zeitgeist has a lovely sort of longing about it. But the images of the work don’t seem to bear up under the weight of the comparison. Of course, the fact that I am ridiculous enough to even deign to write about art I haven’t seen in person smacks of the worst sort of bravado and hubris. Although I will say it is not without precedent: in 2003, Blake Gopnik, the critic for the Washington Post admitted in print that he didn’t even visit Seward Johnson’s Corcoran show before panning it, nor did he intend to (incidentally, the Cummer hosted a similar show by the same artist in 2005, and I panned it–but I did go to see it).

In the limited images I saw, there were a few pieces that struck me: Charles Long’s sculptures; Javier Tellez’s “Letter on the Blind, for Those Who See; William Cordova’s “The House that Frank Lloyd Wright Built 4 Fred Hampton and Mark Clark” installation; Carol Bove’s “Night Sky Over New York;” and Coco Fusco’s “Operation Atropos.”

Though many members of the media seem quite taken with Mika Rottenberg’s “Cheese” installation, it seems to a be a kind of off-brand, dumbed-down Matthew Barney homage. There’s a rather wonderfully bizarre folksy back-story to the piece, but in depicting a narrative event, it seems that Rottenberg chose to obfuscate the work’s impetus in an attempt to add depth. In reality, the story would have been just fine on its own.

The idea of a Bienniale that culls just about half of its artists from NYC (out of 80, 43 were from/in/based out of NYC and 29 were from California), begs the very question of a prescient look into the “art world.” Instead it offers an incestuous look into the NYC scene. The rest of us might take a few notes, but its worth remembering how fractured the art world is, and though NYC might still be the center of that world, it is not the only game in “town.”

*the embedded video is from the coolhunting site. I especially like it because instead of speaking with one of the glossy-maned curators, they chose to speak with one of the blue collar (its all relative) workers. In this case, Mark Steigelman, the exhibition designer. Then I like it even more when he mentions that he (of course) has opinions about the work, but leaves the decision-making to the curators...it is the kind of open-ended statement that leaves one wondering about the politics involved behind the scene in this type of show.

**also, click on the title to go to the NY Times walk-through of the event and specific pieces, narrated by Holland Cotter.

Be Mine

For the past two years, my sweetie and I have had a very low-key Valentine's Day. This year wasn't too different, only instead of joining the hordes crowding out the city's most popular restaurants (not that we don't love you Bistro Aix...) we decided to spend it with friends.

Cafe Nola, inside of MOCA Jacksonville, is one of Downtown's favorite lunch spots (the shrimp salad wrap, with hints of lemon is worth the extra-long lunch hour alone). But many people don't know that chef Kathy Collins has started opening three nights a week (Weds, Thurs, & Fri).

This posting might seem out-of-place on a blog where I regularly rail against/wax poetic-ish about works of art, but the thing that really garners my respect about Nola is Collins's enthusiasm and dedication. She strives to work within a framework of accessible food, while maintaining a commitment to contemporary cuisine.

She took over cheffing and managing the restaurant from the former company that was handling it, Chives, about a year ago. Since then she's had an uphill battle; though the lunch crowd is strong and supportive, there are things she wants to accomplish as a chef, that are in many ways best for the evening meal. Whether it's pairing wines, or creating coursed dishes, there are simply limitations to the lunchtime aesthetic. Especially considering her primary diners are Downtown business people and art-community types--people who don't often have time for a three course lunch, paired with wine flights.

I've been in for dinner several times, but this was far and away the best. The prix fix menu ($39 per person, including a bottle of champagne to split), had two courses per person and a shared dessert. It's been a long time since I was equal parts satisfied and surprised with my meal: I started with the shrimp; it was poached in champagne and served chilled over a bed of greens with a blood orange vinaigrette that'd been laced with chunks of sea salt. Here there was a play of flavors and textures, the citrus bite of the vinaigrette set off the cool creaminess of the shrimp, while the sea salt provided added crunch and just a hint of the sea.

For an entree, the lure of fresh truffled papardelle pasta with portabella mushrooms and fresh thyme proved too strong to resist. I slowed down to eat this dish. It is so rare to find good Italian food in Jacksonville, that I savored the experience. The scent of the truffles filled my mouth while the fresh pasta was both comforting and refined--finished against the fresh greeness of the thyme, it was a dish of classic flavors, carefully balanced against one another.

For dessert we split the chocolate pyramid with the creme anglais heart, coconut truffles, and chocolate sauce. Though chocolate can be overwhelming, Collins transformed the dessert into manageable bites, each varied enough to tickle the palate.

Overall, it was a wonderful, quiet meal spent among friends (it'd be disingenuous of me to pretend that I don't count the chef and the front-of-the-house-manger among my peeps). The only drawback, the kitchen seemed to be a little understaffed and it took a while for our first course to appear.

But if one can't overlook small things on a day no-one likes to work (Valentine's is famous for bringing out amateurs), then perhaps staying at home is advisable (one caveat, Matthew's in San Marco is where fine dining has died--the last time we were there we got to witness a Sopranos-esque character throw wads of cash around, have his date serenaded by a barbershop quartet, and then listen to a keyboardist play weak renditions of Yanni's greatest hits).

Anyway, enough of where not to dine. Check out Nola for dinner...added bonus? Viewing the new Duval Carrie sculptures the museum just acquired, they're right there in the lobby.

*What's that in the picture? Meat and Potatoes Redux: a medium-rare petite filet with a sliver of fois gras, roasted baby carrots and a gruyere and potato gratin served with a cabernet sauce. There really is a reason the French are consistently at the top of the food pyramid.

Maxhouse

Just a few brief words on the Peter Max madhouse this weekend at R. Roberts Gallery: Incidentally, the above two pictures were shot while the cops weren’t looking, and right afterwards I was told, “no pictures please.”

But moving on, for my day job, I write at a local arts magazine, and this time around, one of my assignments was to interview Peter Max. He is, I am happy to say, one of the nicest men it’s even been my pleasure to speak with. The impact of his work aside (which one may or may not like), he truly believes in the tenant of compassion, living and working within a framework of belief that calls for him to honor his own body and contribute to the community as a whole.

So it was with curiosity and a little bit of trepidation that I headed up to the gallery on Sunday (even at the museum opening I overheard people talking about Peter Max). The place was packed; there was a line out the door for people who wanted to get things signed, and there was another line of people who’d just purchased things and were getting them signed, along with a photo of the artist (I guess that’s why there was a “no pictures” policy…silly and a little capitalist, but perhaps necessary to control the crowd…draw your own conclusions).

It was an interesting intersection of fine art and commerce, of celebrity and artist, and the approapriatness of it all. Yet perhaps this is just the organic outcome of a lifetime spent hanging out with celebrities and celebrity artists (one imagines Warhol would embrace it as the natural order), and of a culture that seeks to validuate itself through contact with these notables, even if it is only fleeting and peripheral. The only time I’ve seen something similar was when Frank Stella came to town. People mobbed him and asked him to pose for pictures too.

As to the aesthetic value of Max's work, unarguably it evokes a specific time and mindset, which, although I can’t relate to, seemed certainly to heighten the spirits of a certain generation…I can honestly say I don’t think I’ve ever been to an opening where more people were smiling.

At that point, whether or not one bitter scribe aesthetically agrees with the work at hand becomes a moot point. Time to relax and be happy for everyone else.

Optimism Shines

I love hip hop music, one of the things I love most about it though, is that like jazz, it can be stretched in so many directions.

This summer, I met and had the good fortune to hear the band Zullo. Recently, the collective (and that they truly are, there's like ten people up on stage), released their first EP, (appropriately) entitled Bricolage.

Though clearly a fledgling band, Zullo has wed their talent to funk, jazz, soul and blues with a little post-Tribe-esque hip hop thrown in to round it all out. The result? A sound whose roots are clearly traceable, yet unique: a little deconstructed jam band, mixed with a little Wu Tang that makes heads bob and bottoms shake (and hippies do whatever it is they do).

Perhaps the best part though, is their youthful unjaded approach to the material, clearly, the band loves the music just as much as the audience does. That in and of itself is a nice break from the “uber cool” techno/pop/electronica crowding out airspace and clubs in recent years.

Check them out at: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=98494912

Back in the saddle?

Andrehn-Schiptjenko 2006

I keep saying that I’m going to get back on the blogging horse and I seem to keep avoiding it like the plague. There are lots of reasons for this I’m sure, but I won’t bore you with a list of my laziness-inducing neuroses here. Instead, I’ll offer up this list of things overheard at last year’s (read ’07) Art Basel Miami…which I did not attend.

But I enjoyed this list as a snapshot of the fair nonetheless.

From the blog www.artworldsalon.com:

Miami v(o)ice: Overheard at the fair…
Tuesday December 11, 2007 | 00:25 by The Transom in Miami Beach
This just in from Pablo Helguera, who had his anthropologist’s notebook with him over the past few days in Miami:

My threshold is $25,000.
This year the fair is better… the gallerinas are hotter this time.
Tom Krens said that I was his son.
In Dollars, Euros, or Pounds?
The AC in Scope broke down.
How is it possible that they don’t have black tea?
I tried to sit by the pool at the Delano, but you have to buy a $400 bottle.
Too bad that you came with your girlfriend.
The painting with the circles in White Cube was $200,000, but there are six hundred more in the series, my dear.
I can’t get rid of this Korean dealer.
I have socialized enough in my life to have to sweat in a corner with a watered-down drink and having my eardrums shattered.
Twenty-two fairs? Really?
This work of yours is identical to this other artist’s work I saw at Pulse, but I don’t mean it in a bad way.
They gave the keys of the city to Sam Keller.
I don’t feel like hanging out with the Boston crowd.
She arrived totally drunk demanding her painting.
The party of the Russians at the Raleigh is awesome.
I can’t talk now because this collector is going to walk away.
So the elevator door opens and everyone sees my bra sticking out.
So, did you decide if you are getting the metal junk piece?
That artist is young but bad.
You know that you don’t need an invitation.
I prefer that you invite me.
I am standing here in front of an installation with pinkish balls, and you?
Please don’t introduce him to me.
I would have sworn that it was a real baby!
They haven’t even let me go to the bathroom in three days.
I don’t care- he is so good-looking that I want to do an exhibition with him.
Knight Landisman knows everybody.
One would think with so many millionaires here the food would be half-decent.
I don’t have any business cards left.
I bought it because I think that every work that takes Joseph Beuys as a subject is important.
I don’t price works by the square foot.
I haven’t been able to move from this corner in two hours.
The U.S. government can’t do anything about the housing bubble.
I love those colors: white and black.
Hi, have you met Hans Ulrich Obrist?
You get all this sand into your shoes.
When I told her that I was an artist she turned away.
I loved it but I didn’t understand anything.
According to her, they sold everything.
You can do this fair in five minutes.
If the director of the Brooklyn museum says so, it must be true.
How is it possible that Julio Galan’s works haven’t gone up?
Supposedly I am working.
Now that I saw the work again I didn’t like it so much.
There’s Joan Jonas. I missed her talk.
I had a blast spending their money.
I drove them around all over Miami for hours, but they never found a hotel room.
He is a mediocre millionaire loser artist who has impregnated all the women in Paris.
What are we doing in this party?
I can’t afford Sam Taylor Wood.
Next time I won’t even tell my family that I came.
Cab rides are more expensive here than in New York.
And now we have to pack to take everything back.
Let’s go to Marlborough to see the Boteros.
I sat with her for two hours and in the end she didn’t buy anything.
They didn’t deliver the works until Saturday and they didn’t even apologize.
I am so sick of Facebook.
It’s Russell Simmons!
I am looking for the next El Lissitsky.
It’s impossible to get a reservation at this restaurant.
Aqua is more relaxed, but the work is less good.
They don’t know how to make good mojitos here.
This year they didn’t bring anything political.
There aren’t any good moderators anywhere.
She makes them in three different sizes.
I had no idea that you were the same artist!
You are better off going to Gagosian and buying a Nan Goldin.
It was a one-by-one inch gouache, and it was four thousand dollars.
I am sleeping on the floor of my dealer’s hotel room, but please don’t tell anybody.
It works when you make a VIP face.
To say that he gained weight is an understatement.
When is your art convention going to be over?

Sadness Like Water

Sitting here, listening to Elvis Presley croon “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” I am forced to think about the nature of sadness and of memory. Which leads, it seems, to thinking about the work of artist Zhang Huan.

Huan is perhaps most famous for his performance piece, “12 Square Meters” (1994) where the artist, then living next to a garbage dump in Beijing, covered himself in fish oil and honey and sat in a public latrine for an hour as flies crawled over him, into his nose, the corners of his eyes, and into his ears.

I remember seeing an image of the work, shortly after it was made public (ArtForum I think) and it struck me then, and strikes me now. Not least because the image is beautiful in its own way, but also because of the thick thatch of pubic hair visible, lends itself to the disquieting understanding that the flies probably found their way into that most intimate space.

Since then, Huan has steadily been increasing his global presence. And though some of his works have been accused of pandering to a Western audience’s ideas of the East, there is enough mystery to keep collectors and critics looking.

Most recently, the artist has garnered press (if not accolades) for a recent series that at first glance examines Buddhism. But a more prolonged meditation of the work ideologically links it to China’s history as a conquering nation, as well as it’s (more recent) Maoist past, and the ways in which the country is emerging in the 21st Century.

The works are large disembodied heads made of the ash from incense sticks burned at Buddhist monasteries that the artist sweeps up. The heads, with elongated earlobes (traditionally sign of spiritual development and superior status) are not beautiful, often sprouting hairy warts that look rather masticated, and reference, like the welded hands he creates, the broken Buddhist figures he found in Tibet. Tibet, which has its share of China-generated woes.

Simple and direct the sculptures communicate sadness, loss, and displacement in different layers and with varying intensity. Feelings that are surely not the sole provenance of a Chinese artist. They are also profound comments on impermanence...the inevitable decline into decay and then nothingness.

*Of interest: the NY Times reports that Huan recently joined PaceWildenstein’s blue-chip stable.

Luxury at the Times

Luxury goods and the arts are not dissimilar. Both are ostensibly one-of-a-kind, or limited run objects catering to an exclusive clientele, or one (at least) with refined tastes, and distilled ideologies. So, I found this NY Times article on the demise of luxury goods/industry quite interesting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/21/books/21kaku.html?em&ex=1187928000&en=790d67d55c3b21d6&ei=5087%0A

That being said, though they're pretty ostentatious symbols of consumerism, given half a chance I'd rock a knock-off Birkin bag almost as hard as an original. The difference? I'd probably want to be cremated with the original...leave the knock-off to the kids...I jest, but it's true.