Barry Kostrinsky - Page 2

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.

The Accessible Art Fair Opens at the National Arts Club. Brussels Fair makes NYC Debut. The Vision of Stephanie Manasseh to give access to artists directly to collectors for exposure, connections and sustainability is the fulfillment of a daughters dream for her mother.

Kazu Mori: Photography Beyond and Inline with Skating By Barry Kostrinsky What makes a photographer a photographer? Is it a certain number of shots with a camera, is it a certain quality of the images? What of all those pictures you have taken with your iphone, are they photographs, have you printed them? The definition of photography has been changing over the last 10 years. When Kazu Mori takes his camera in hand with a fixed wide angled lens that seems to have been beaten and battered by some street tricks, is he an inline skater or a photographer?

It was odd watching the pre-memorial segment on 60 minutes a week ago about a soon to die Morley Safe. It felt like a Monty Python sketch and I expected Morley to blurt out, ' I'm not dead yet.'

MoMA's must see exhibit of the year is definitely the Picasso Sculpture show up until February 7th 2016. We all know Picasso as that painter that put some odd eyes on faces, gave us multiple views of a sitting figure at once and the great thief that Giacometti would not let in his studio.

A Vermont getaway, or for that matter, any getaway helps to bring perspective to the daily lives we lead. Everyone becomes myopic in time and so these trips away from ourselves are critical for grounding our views, opinions and feelings about life and art. The MET, MoMA, The Morgan Library and Chelsea are great fun and places to see the best culture has to offer that has not been destroyed by irate terrorists of late. Yet Vermont's rolling hills, cows at every pass, cheese made from goats and maple syrup speak of a quieter, simpler time without monumental statements, paintings or understanding of man. Or is there something in the stillness, the quiet of time that Vermont possesses that we New Yorker's brush off our shoulder as if dandruff when in essence it may be the pixie dust of gods?

Hop on the 4 or the D train and travel north young men and woman to see art in the South Bronx. No, that's not a typo, I did not mean to say go see the Yankees. Like many inner cities including Detroit, the Bronx is best known for high crime, poor health condition and low test scores; However these inner cities are also the breeding ground for countless innovative film makers, music makers, visual artists and thought provoking thinkers. The why and how the tough conditions of these neighborhoods breeds an aesthetic flourishing is perplexing to figure out.

Sometimes art is not about Museum blockbuster exhibits, 50 minute interviews on Charlie Rose and opening night attendence by a who's who list of celebrities from coast to coast. Most times art is about artists making art in isolation and occaisonally communing with a small group of cohorts. At the Clay arts center in Portchester 'Two Vigiles: Bruce Dehnert and Shawn O'Conner ' opened Saturday August 2nd and runs through September 20th. The 2 person show gathered a small grouping of some of the over 50 clay artists that are associated with the center. What was so memorable about this small show and a quiet opening for an exhibit behind the Don Bosco Prep School and adjacent to the Firehouse in Portchester?

Half of 2014 is behind us. What was new and different, exciting and outrageous, unpredictable and surprising in the NY art world? That's right, not much. Like a large yacht the art world turns slowly. As usual, it seems like money is at the helm captaining the course of art history. This is not new; Leo and Peter Paul worked for the moneyed men of the day. In the past this would mean Princes, Kings and Popes. Now, money has let go of it's need for a title ( except for Sir Paul) and huddles around businessmen. Entertainment and luxury good CEO's, corrupt hedge fund a-holes that pay almost $2Billion in fines and drug dealers dress up their persona with art, cocktails parties and world class trips to stay firmly footed as the top dog in the art world.

The art world has its panties in a bunch. George Bush has entered some hallowed halls through a side door. Powerful teams of married art writers are reviewing his painted portraits of world leaders he met while playing president. Lady Gaga and Jay-Z were allowed in at the top of the art world for a day. Her pop fame and costumes and his good looks, money and past rap edge were enough to get them in and after all they were already in the music world: that suburb just down the block from the art world. Zimmerman entered the art world through the prison gates, the only pain less prison backdoor I can imagine. But George W Bush came in through a White house back door quite unlike the one JFK slipped in and out of in his day.

The Art Dealers Association of America- ADAA for acronym lover's, is consistently the classiest and most enjoyable art fair experience every year. Temporarily housed through Sunday in the Park Avenue Armory at 67th street, it is more than the simple things like aisles capable of handling a heard of elephants, good lighting and enough but not too much art and exhibitors that make this a Fun Fair with two capitals.