Barry Kostrinsky

Any grouping of the great teachers and artists that passed through the Arts Students League doors at 215 West 57th street over the last 144 years would rival most Museum exhibitions. The recognizable names that grace the halls of this infamous city institution which to this day reaches over 6000 students a year include Pollack, Rothko, Calder, O'Keeffe, Nevelson, Ai Wei Wei, Judd and Bourgeois as well as many other notable art world Museum favorites. Art is a richly adorned crown, deep and wide and holds more jewels than just the apex the Queen's hat hails. The Art Students League current exhibition 'New York Centric' curated by James Little and on view until May 1st brings together many artists working within the large general classification of abstraction worthy of your time and gaze and expresses the depth and range of the many artists that have walked through, taught or sat classes at New York's and indeed America's most venerated art school.

Much discourse recently has attempted to hone in on who made the first abstract painting. The first major solo show in the US for the Swedish artist, Hilma af Klint at the Guggenheim Museum tries, like any show and her curatorial staff would, to stump for their candidate. Yet, there is something more important to garner from this exhibition of over 170 works from about a century ago that can only be gleamed from seeing the works in the Guggenheim's spiral setting that will be hard to put into words, as all religious experience are.

Somehow we hominoids have a way of demystifying and materializing our roots. Everyday hundreds of millions of ape descendants put on make-up, eye liner, eye shadow and lipstick and take brushes to their faces. These are the major masses of body painters in the world. As with perfume we only think of this as hiding or cloaking a smell, embellishing a surface superficially or a way to pass off as something we are not in our culture. Yet, the root of perfume is transcendence to a higher plain. And yes, body painting too has deep multi-cultural roots that aim to elevate the spirit, connect with that which is more than us and to transform our mundane experience into a spiritual awakening.

You would be pushed to put together anything but a brilliant Giacometti show and the Guggenheim delivers with a show ending soon that I'd say is a must see on every critics list.

Art is a language. Foreign to many and understood by few, her language is subtle, self-referential, sublime and mercurial. Most agree a picture is worth a thousand words but which thousand and does that tell the full story? The Artists Talk on Art (ATOA) panel series is the longest on-going dialogue in the visual arts. Once upon a time it was a unique idea to have artists talk about their art. Today talks occur almost daily in NYC at Museums, galleries and on social media threads. To celebrate the legacy the ATOA has organized 'Going Postal' a postcard style fundraiser to help with costs associated with running the non-profit and the work and cost to deliver over 40 years of historical dialogues to the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art.

If a lessor Leonardo goes for about half a billion dollars what's the Sistine ceiling worth- the Sun, the Moon and a one time planet like Pluto as a throw in? The exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum, Michelangelo: Divine Draftsmen and Designer only fails for the allusion and lust for alliteration. Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarotti Simoni, a contemporary of Leonardo di ser Peiro da Vinci was, like Leonardo a multi talented artist. Whereas Leonardo had his hands in weapons of minor mass destruction, botany, mathematics and dead bodies, Michelangelo worked in the three big fields of the day- painting, sculpture and architecture.

The Thaw collection on view at the Morgan Library and Museum through January 7th is a typical exhibition. Typically great, wide in breadth and yet focused from more than just a Library at a lesser known hidden spot in plain view on Madison avenue and 36th street.

Most suburban drugs dealers know to go to the Bronx for the best grass. Yet, most suburbanites don't know the grass is greener in the Bronx too. The New York Botanical Garden is an oasis of green well-groomed trees, natural pathways and water spots that rivals any art man can hope to create. Dale Chihuly's current exhibit among the lush vibrant 250 acres of this Bronx euphoric setting places many sculptures in the landscape and many in the to-die-for 1889 glass conservatory and other buildings. Can man made art compete with nature's creator?

The art world is large and has many subsets, satellites and stellar moments. Few are brighter than the light from children's art work. You will not read much about kiddie art in the larger art world today that is focused on money, madmen and monstrosities. Even though Kindegarden Klay is all the range in the contemporary ceramics world not much homage is paid to today's micro masters. Many great artists that fill the art world's canons realized the firepower of these young maestros. Often imitated and praised by the likes of Picasso, the German Expressionists and many others, what is that these pre-teens and pre-self conscious mini men and women seem to possess that so many try and unleash in their own work and why?

There is so much wrong with the Whitney Biennial I hardly know where to start. The every two year show of American artists is anything but that. I asked someone if the last biennial was two or three years ago and they quipped back it is a biennial, it was two years ago. Actually it was three years ago. The museum truthfully tells they were not ready for the show in the new building and gave themselves an extra year. lyingly they say it took the curators a long time to visit all the studios across the country. The exhibit is suppose to be of American artists. What is an American artist these days? Indeed a good 30% don't live nor work in the US. I don't find much use for national cheering in exhibitions but if you claim to be American have only American cheese, no matter how inferior it is to Gruyere. And what is the title of the exhibit? There is none. Indeed such a disperse group of artists makes a title hard to stick to many of the members, maybe a good title would  be,' Politically, Financially and Socially correct enough to make it here'.

Why only interview the living? This is an interview with Dan Asher who passed several years before I wrote this. It is an attempt to channel his spirit and to reveal how he would respond and give depth to this great artists complexity while hinting at explanations of who he really was.

Through a series of questions with the founder of Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, a relatively young Catinca sheds some age old wisdom and her vision that governs her gallery in the heart of the LES at 250 Broome street. I learned new things about an old friend that makes me understand better how she has come so far so quickly in the art world and just how impressive she is. Taughted as a gallerist to watch in the past she is now a gallerist to be heard and followed. She relaxes  and answers in a very personal way a few important and a few silly questions about the art world and her practices.

One painting does not make an exhibit.  With the help of 50 other institutions and collectors from around the world  the MET has assembled a host of preparatory drawings, paintings by peers including Paul Signac, an early work by Pablo Picasso and some Honore Daumier's, as well as vintage posters and film footage enriching the allure in an attempt to spell out and reveal  the themes addressed in the Circus Sideshow painted by Georges Seurat from 1887-8 in a unique post-impressionist style. 

Noah Becker has published over 3500 interviews and did hundreds himself with artists, but has the tables turned as I ask this Painter, Founder and Editor-In-Chief at Whitehot magazine questions about his art, writing career and his preferences when compelled to choose between Chinese soups.

Who made the Guggenheim the Guggenheim? Why Rockefeller of course. Remember in My Big Fat Greek Wedding the wise words of the wife- yes...the man has the head but the woman controls the neck and which way the head turns. Solomon Guggenheim's wife, a Rockefeller, introduces Hilla Rebay to her husband and fosters the beginning of a relationship that posts Hilla as the art advisor for Peggy's uncle and the first director of the Museum of Non-Objective Art- yes, the original name of the Guggenheim Museum which could have been called Kandinsky's Painting Depot (KPD) given the deep collection of his artworks.

I remember the Herzog Video at the Whitney Biennial 2 rounds past but forgot the name of the Dutch artist he portrayed. Now the MET has the definitive exhibition of Hercules Segers......Who? Yes, that artist. In the way only the MET can do with the help of the RijksMuseum and a few others you can see a very rare relatively complete moment in history 400 years ahead of itself. Most existent prints are here as well as several paintings and like a comet they will not cross our path in NY or anywhere for that matter for another 100 years.

Marisa Merz at the Metropolitan Museum's still new Breuer location on Madison and 75th reveals itself when elevator doors open on the second floor to sculptures from 1967 as the MET Opera hopes to when the curtain rises at Lincoln Center. This is a bravo moment for the curators and the artist. Marisa now in her 90's is so much more than the wife of Mario Merz and the only female member of the Art Povera clan and is both enigmatic and a deep and powerful artist

Today it is too easy to get down on our frail featherless friends. We are birds of a unique ability to fly. It is easy to dis, but deserves much more that's not to missed from our fellow monkeys who have elevated our canopy to reach closer to our internal gods above and inside. I will celebrate the best of humankind and try to write a pictorial story with no direction in sight. It will be an image game.

Who would have thunk it? The all excepting art world ready to hang shit on a wall or in a can, Piss on paper, have someone wank off under the platform of an exhibit or watch a dog get killed in a gallery has become intolerant. It is a strange sort of funny that shakes my bones when I see the liberal left, the intellectuals of the world and great thinkers show blatant disregard for the principals they preach.

Art has needed it for a long time and of all things, it comes from the political realm. The tipping point has dropped with Donald Trumpeting a New Order unlike Joy Division. The new Don's deal will play out in the arts like a match to gunpowder.