Chelsea and West Village Walking: Specific Observations

The spectacular weather of this Labor Day weekend in New York seems to have prolonged the increasingly mandatory event called BRUNCH. New Yorkers and visitors have so ensconced themselves in their outdoor seats that I imagine many will find a way to stay through dinner. Everyone should make brunch reservations.

A friend suggested a visit on Friday to the josée bienvenu gallery in Chelsea to see the exhibit microwave, five. The exhibit demonstrates the skills of artists willing to patiently create obviously obsessive objects of beauty, thusly separating themselves as artists from the general population. I made the mosaic-like drawing of my dog as the Lion of St. Mark (the one in a previous post) over the course of a couple of months (maybe a year!), and while I like it, the process was so tedious I won't do it again.

Aside from this exhibit, Chelsea is sleepy, so it's not a great time to visit. Some shut down completely in August. Most are gearing up for openings in the next couple of weeks.

Many New Yorkers slack off work in the summer. In the art community, some quit their current jobs and leave for what they perceive as more prestigious and glamorous jobs. By May of next year, when their expectations have turned to dust, they will quit their current posts for another job they view as prestigious and glamorous, thus making way for all the incoming M.A.s and M.F.A.s from the Ivy League and Bard and Williams who want a glamorous job in THE ARTS.

After visiting the bienvenu gallery, we walked to the Frank Gehry IAC building and into the lobby. My friends sat on the long Gehry wooden bench. Here's the official website of the building. Be prepared for an assault of logos! IAC Building

I wish all the Chelsea galleries could move into smaller places with some trees and a built-in café, a bookstore, and a garden. With a cat. Or, preferably, build a new place to sell or show art. I am tired of gigantic art gallery warehouses with 100 foot ceilings and the whole warehouse art district phenomenon in general. The place where biscuits and cookies were once made by underpaid exploited immigrant workers is not intrinsically the greatest venue for contemporary art. This is my opinion. I have so much more to say on the ambiance of galleries that you are well-warned to expect this as a leitmotif of my upcoming posts. When I was growing up, warehouses meant this.