Milestones........

2009

On Sunday, January 5, 2014 I received a phone call informing me that my aunt, Margarita Estenger (1937-2014) aka "Cucucha" to family and friends, had passed away in California just six days shy of her 77th birthday.  Since she was my only aunt, and I have no uncles (and only two first cousins--her children) we were a small but close family. She led a very colorful life that ended with a brutal and thankfully short battle with Alzheimer's.  

She was the life of every party-- reminding me of the Maureen Stapleton character in Woody Allen's Interiors (1978)--with her raucous sense of humor and her virtuoso piano playing at family gatherings. Like many of her generation she left Cuba in 1961, as the promise of revolution turned into the Gulag under the sun. Her first husband fought at the Bay of Pigs invasion and was a captured prisoner. She spent months anxiously awaiting his fate until an agreement was reached between the Kennedy Administration and the Cuban government to free the prisoners. Like my own parents, she moved to Los Angeles after a brief stint in Miami. 

Living in Southern California, she loved going to tv game shows and even made a quick deal with Monty Hall in the early 70s which netted her $50 on Let's Make A Deal (she happened to have  a lemon in her bag). But her biggest TV moment was undoubtedly on June 16, 1975 when she struck gold. On that day, on the CBS Televsion Network Johnny Olsen told her to come on down (butchered her last name actually, it was her second husband's name). She was the big showcase winner on The Price is Right. She won a lot of stuff including a huge camper trailer, a pinball machine and a trip to Jamaica for two. She jumped up and down and nearly trampled her fave Bob Barker. Unfortunately, this was pre-VCR and so all we have is an audio recording though strangely there are full You Tube episodes of The Price is Right from that season and seasons prior and after, so perhaps one day it will surface. She took her daughter to Jamaica and sold everything else.

As stated earlier, she was an extremely gifted piano player as her mom (my grandmother) was a piano teacher but my aunt lacked the desire to pursue it as far as her talents may have warranted. Her unluck in romance (three husbands, three divorces) was made up for by a large and devoted group of friends and the love of her family. She is survived by her brother, my father Guillermo, her two children Henry and Maria and six grandchildren including Jessica whom she raised as her own. Because of the nature of her illness we have missed her for some time, but now will miss her even more. Rest in peace. Services will be held January 17-18. 

Happy New Year 2014!

As the rest of the country braces for the cold to come, my friend musician and graphic designer Mike Horton took his majestic dog Marlowe out for a stroll on January 1, in Lincoln Park in Los Angeles.

Judd at Mnuchin

The Mnuchin Gallery on East 78th Street has an exhibition of Donald Judd "Stacks" that runs until December 7.  There are 10 sculptures in all,  some better than others but any single one of them is a commanding presence. But the most interesting aspect of this exhibition is the space itself and the installation. At a time when the de rigueur  look of the commerical art gallery has been an industrial space with concrete floors and fluoresent lighting (the Chelsea chop shop makeover) there is something majestic about modernist art in a grand 19th Century townhouse.

In this show, each stack is given lots of space and the contrast between the warm, immaculate dark wood floors and Judd's shiny metal sculptures is invigorating. They know how to handle art at Mnuchin. They also know how to make even the announcement card special--the ones for this show were the thickest  exhibition cards you will ever see. They probably cost a dollar each to print.  Equally noteworthy is the catalogue which features essays from a few past associates of Judd along with excellent archival photos of the stacks. 

With all of this precision and care it was funny to see the 80 year-old gallery owner Robert Mnuchin conducting business from the sidewalk handing his staff notes through the ground floor window into the gallery offices. 

Lou Reed 1942-2013

The banner headline came first on Huff Post and then his legion of followers started weighing in on social media, finally the New York Times sent out its breaking news message  for its phone followers. (Monday's print edition had a front-page obit).  Something big happened. One of the giants of American culture of the past 50 years, Lou Reed died. If all we had was Lou's solo work he would be in among the first rank of rock artists. But then there's the Velvet Underground. They were a gamechanger.  Anything great since the mid 70s in Rock bore their distinct imprimatur--from Joy Division to Sonic Youth to Galexie 500 to Radiohead.  Besides the music, I don't think you could say this about anyone else in his generation; Lou Reed was never not cool.  Ever. One other thing about the Velvets and Lou's solo work that always struck me was how personal the music was. It was always to an audience of one.  Lou never wrote an anthem.

One of Lou's most devoted fans is the art critic Charlie Finch whose old WBAI radio program featured the Velvet's "We're Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together" as the show's theme song.  Charlie penned a lovely tribute to Lou and I asked him if I could post it. Here it is: 

THE THIN REED OF LIFE  Goodbye Lou/ Rock and Roll Heart/ You gave all us New York bohemians our start/ Vicious walkers on the dirty boulevard/ Softhearted inside, but always acting hard/ You taught us, Lou, to thrive and survive/ That our worst impulses were what made us ALIVE/ Now you are gone/ But you always were "gone"/ Sensitive to the blur that is living/ The necessity of creatively giving/ Even when you're hated and hurting inside/  Always up for another stiff glide/ I always waited for you, my man/ My back to the wall, I never ran/ "Ocean" was playing when my brother Will died/ And "Heroin" in my wild, stoned rides/ I teased David Bowie that he stole all from you/ An Upper East Side Wasp devoted to a Long Island Jew/ I finally met you through Chicago Fat Tony/ For creatively, Lou, you were my one and only/ So give Andy and Candy a kiss in the sky/ Through all tomorrow's parties/ I'll still be your guy GOODBYE LOU REED, CF

Well said Mr. Finch.  Thank you Lou. Thank you for being fearless.  You made history and changed the world. Ask Havel.

George Jones is Dead

George Jones died last week in Nashville.  His astonishing career lasted over 60 years. He died universally acclaimed as the greatest singer in the history of Country music and his recorded output and influence rivals Hank Williams and Johnny Cash.  Many of us were first introduced to George Jones through Elvis Costello's Almost Blue which gave him the cool imprimatur that his more obvious contemporaries already had--Haggard, Cash and Willie and Waylon.  But the range of his singinging and the feeling his imbued every lyric stand alone in pop music.  There will never be another like him again.  

NY Art Fair Roundup

Patrick Tschudi at Galleria Lucia de La Puente   Lima, Peru

Kehinde Wiley

Craig Kaufman

Jules Olitski at Hackett Mill

Simon Linke at Mireille Mosler

Morris Louis at ADA

Kiki Smith ADA Show

Wayne Thiebaud ADA Show

Patrick Wilson at Suzanne Vielmetter

This year's Armory Show at Piers 92 and 94 was once again divided among Modern and Contemporary.  There was more good stuff in the Modern section but this year both piers seemed less crowded and hectic than in year's past.  I saw some great pieces by Craig Kaufman, Tadaaki Kuwayama, and the recently deceased Jules Olitski.  The Olitski was a big, beautiful spray painting from 1965 at  San Francisco's  Hackett Mill gallery booth.  The gallery had a lot of museum quality work from the Bay Area school and is planning a fall exhibition of Olitski's Spray paintings.  These paintings represent a high point for late Modernism--and along with Louis' Unfurleds and Stripes and Noland's Circle Paintings and Chevrons--Olitski's Spray Paintings prove that Greenberg was not all wrong about his own Post-Pollock/Newman canon.  The Spray Paintings are among the most original abstract paintings ever painted.  The fact that they are ravishing has always been held against them.

The Olitski was selling for $280,000 which is chump change in today's art world of hedge fund robber barons. A comparable Louis at the ADA  was selling for $950,000 thus illustrating Olitski's fallen stock in the art world.  I'm pretty certain that the vicissitudes of fashion will fall favorably on Olistki's reputation and he will command millions for the Spray Paintings in the next 10 years.

It was wonderful to see Simon Linke's brilliant paintings of  Artforum ads from the 1980s.  These have always intrigued me for both the subject matter and how they are painted.  There were more recent small ones that private dealer Mosher was featuring in her booth. 

A Peruvian artist named Patrick Tschudi had some interesting animations of contemporary life and stills from same in the Gallery Lucia De La Puente from Lima.  These representations featured a world inhabited solely by black people and were fascinating to look at.  Patrick Wilson's abstract paintings from California were selling out at Suzanne Vielmetter's booth.  I first saw his work several years ago on a trip to California and he is doing some wonderful things with surface. They are a study in virtuosity.  The formats recall classic and contemporary abstraction from Diebenkorn to Halley but they way they are painted are quite unique. They seem manufactured in an auto body shop but instead of high gloss they have a magical matte finish.  They are good paintings and far better than almost anything else I saw all weekend, but I'm not yet convinced they are major works.

For the first time in years, I ventured to the American Art Dealers (ADA) Show at the 67th Street Armory.  Now I remember why I stopped going.  Nothing too inspiring besides spotting a spry 80 year-old Yoko Ono.  Mary Corse, Wayne Theibaud looked great but Kiki Smith's awful and embarrassing dog and butterfly wall bronzes at Pace made more than one dealer wince.  Everyone hated them.  With these works, Kiki Smith sets a new low for HORRIBLE and WRETCHED art.

Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall

East Village, Tomkins Square Park, Dec. 2012

Westside, facing 42nd St., April 2012

Los Cabos, Baja Sur Mexico 2012

Riverside Park, 119th St. NYC Nov. 2012
ALL PHOTOS BY MAX ESTENGER