Alex Katz: Gathering

Here's what I would do if I were Alex Katz (he's 95, just a year older than Andy would have been had he survived this long):  I'd get a wheelchair and take an elevator to the top of the Guggenheim Museum.

And then I'd roll down the spiraled gallery, taking in my life's work (it's hung chronologically with his earliest work at the bottom) and screaming "Wheeeeee!"

Tree (2019)

Cornice (1997)

Francesco (1992) & Muna (1990)

Allen Ginsberg (1985)

Alan's Mouth

Hiroshi, 1981

David and John (1977)

Scott and John (1966)

LeRoi Jones (1963)

Blue Flag 4 (1967)

Passing (Self Portrait, 1962-63)

The Black Dress (Ada, 1960)

Double Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg (1959)

Frank O'Hara (1959-60)

Paul Taylor (1959)

Ada Ada (1959)

Track Jacket (Self Portrait, 1956)

Untiled (1951)

And, there at the bottom, would be my best work and the love of my life in her prime. What a joyous ride that would be!

Blue Umbrella 2 (Ada, 1972)

Late Night @ the Guggenheim

I can't remember the last time I visited the Guggenheim.  Frank Lloyd Wright's spiral always astonishes.  It's almost as old as me!

Two shows drew me there.  Basquiat’s “Defacement”: The Untold Story documents the murder of Michael Stewart, a young artist in the early 80s, by police.  Only the East Village Eye took much notice at the time.

Here's some of the work Stewart did as a student at Pratt.   The night of his murder, police arrested him for defacing a subway station with graffiti.

Jean-Michel Basquiat created "Defacement," the centerpiece of the exhibit, on a wall in Keith Haring's studio.

He drew his inspiration from a protest flyer designed by David Wojnarowicz.

The murder outraged the downtown artistic community.  Another Basquiat work exhibited is "Irony of Negro Plcemn."  Black and Blue, a new thriller, explores that same irony.

Keith Haring commemorated Stewart's murder with a huge canvas.

He also wrote about it in his journal.

Andy Warhol alluded to the lack of media coverage in a silkscreen of a Daily News page.

Robert Mapplethorpe was active around the same time.  Patti never looked better

Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now revisits his influence on contemporary artists like Lyle Ashton Davis and Catherine Opie.

But it was Glenn Ligon's deconstruction of the Black Book that really got me thinking, not unlike "Slave Play," now on Broadway.  If nothing else, Mapplethorpe's aesthetic focus on black male beauty provoked some fierce reactions.

Even among the men who posed for him, like Ken Moody.

In my downward spiral, I passed more than a few additional masterpieces.  The two Louises, Bourgeois and Nevelson.

A camera angle combined two of Ruth Asawa's works.

Joseph Beuys.  Love how he's depicted in "Never Look Away," my favorite film ever about art (don't tell Gerhard Richter).

Alan Shields (detail).

Cecilia Vicuna.

Simone Leigh seems to be everywhere.  I first saw her work at the New Museum's gender show and more recently at the Whitney's Biennial.  But her curatorial recognition didn't help when New York City commissioned her to sculpt a new monument on Fifth Avenue. 

Wassily Kandinsky.

 

And Constantin Brâncuși.