Contemporary Art World -101

We all still need art. This week everyone who is anyone – who is not me – is off to Miami this week for Art Basel.  And therefore Chelsea is empty,  making it the perfect time to look at art.  Among the many wonderful exhibitions to see this month are Joan Mitchell at Cheim and Read, Tomma Abts at David Zwirner Gallery, Robert Moskowitz at D’amelio Terras, and especially Tom Duncan at Edlin Gallery.  One might note that most of these recommendations are for painting exhibitions.

I’ve been thinking about the effect the economy will have on the art being shown in Chelsea and am hopful  that we’ll see a lot more painting than we have in the past.    Perhaps the large fabricated sculpture that  has been so prevalent recently, will prove to be too expensive to fabricate,  and huge installations will be unsaleable and that artists will go back to intimacy of the brush and canvas.  By the same token, back in the 70’s -  another time when noone was buying art – the lack of a market led artists to explore ideas instead of objects  and was one of the prime factors in the rise of conceptual art.  Today one can see the anti-market artists at work in the exhibition theanyspacewhatever currently at the Guggenheim in which artists have not created objects,  but are using the museum space for performances, social interactions and other ephemeral time based incidents.  This is all about art meant to be experienced in the round, not looked at on the wall.  And there is nothing there to sell.