Archives for December 2004

Artopia on holiday until Monday, January 3, 2005. … [Read more...]

                     Jeff Koons, Lifeboat, 1985     Whatever Happened to the East Village? 1960-62 I don't just mean the neighborhood, although I first lived there on Avenue D and 8th Street when it was still called the Lower East Side (or as someone tried to re-christen it, the Loser East Side or the Looser East Side), when there were jazz bars like Slug's and you could rent a … [Read more...]

The Other Martha ... Martha Rosler, as opposed to Martha Stewart. The link is the home. For one Martha, the home -- and now perhaps the jailhouse -- is the theater of sales; for the other Martha, the home itself is a sign in the battleground of signs. A new survey of Rosler's telling photomontages at Gorney Bravin + Lee (534 West 26th St., to Jan. 8) presents generous samples of two of her classic sequences: one called "Beauty Knows No Pain or Body Beautiful" (1965-04) and the other "Bringing … [Read more...]

The Death of James Lee Byars If you were to design your own memorial, what would it be? It is not clear if James Lee Byars (1932-1997) meant The Death of James Lee Byars as a memorial, but it now functions as one, the way the Ana Mendieta silhoueta of lit candles placed at the end point of her Whitney exhibition earlier this year did. The Death and a few other Byars works are now at the Whitney (945 Madison Ave. at 75th St., to March 5). For those interested in the Dada/Fluxus wing of art or … [Read more...]