The nearby Whitney had free admission on Friday night so we stopped in after dinner and had another chance to see their Gaston LaChaise. It was only fitting that we finished our first night here devouring a HenryTaylor book in the hotel bar. The Meatpacking distract is oh so arty now. “B Side,” the catalog from Taylor’s retrospective at MoCA LA was sitting on a shelf behind our table. Taylor is the reason we are in NewYork again, so soon after our last visit. We are here to pick up a print that was in his recent show at Hauser Wirth.
Saturday morning we had breakfast in a nearby diner and walked up the High Line to 18th Street where we began canvassing the galleries in Chelsea. We hit gold immediately with the Georgio Morandi show at Zwirner. It wasn’t that many years ago when we watched John Baldassari complete the purchase of a Morandi here. Morandi is a master. His landscapes, still-lifes and minimal abstractions are all luscious. We are not worthy.
“A De Keyser painting deliciously halts the human impulse to make meaning.” That is from a NYT review of Raoul De Keyser’s show here and I can’t do any better than that. The abstract Belgian painter who loved soccer had us giddy at this show.
We stopped at an Italian place, Don Giovanni’s on 10 Ave. for a beer. It was so comfortable in there I’m making note of the place. The owner said he’s been here 30 years now. It is an oasis. We must have stopped in thirty galleries and found Irving Penn photos on 26th Street, another master. We saturated ourselves with art.
We had dinner at another Spanish place, Salenas, where vegan blood sausage was on the menu. We sat the bar and enjoyed an arugula salad, endives with anchovies and baked cod with spinach. Back in our hotel we watched Atletico beat Valencia 3-0 on my iPad.
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You are the most interesting people ever.