Leon Neyfakh | The New York Observer

The Art World's Prankster

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:00:05 -0400

“I’m sure somebody could easily do a drawing of me as this celebrity-obsessed whore monster,” said William Powhida, the prankish draftsman who has lately captured the New York art world’s attention with his acerbic and angsty caricatures of the city’s most powerful dealers, collectors and art stars. Sitting on Sunday afternoon in a back room at the Winkleman Gallery in Chelsea, Mr. Powhida said he’s not out to embarrass or expose anyone—just stoke their...

Don't Call It An Art Fair!

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 22:48:27 -0500

On the evening of Sunday, Feb. 28, about 60 people gathered at the Soho home of high-end-art adviser Thea Westreich to take in a live performance by the avant-garde cellist and composer Alex Waterman. Most of those present were supporters of Mr. Waterman who had purchased $550 limited-edition boxed sets of his latest work, and Ms. Westreich, the artist’s longtime patron, had cooked for them a dinner of lamb tagine.

“It wasn’t a glittery event—everybody...

New Blood for P.S.1's Board of Directors

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:42:03 -0500

Five months into Klaus Biesenbach’s directorship of the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, the board of directors that will take the Museum of Modern Art’s kunsthalle in Queens into the post–Alanna Heiss era is taking shape. P.S.1 board chair and former MoMA president Agnes Gund told The Observer that newly appointed members of the board include the artists Laurie Anderson and Paul Chan, Diana Picasso (Pablo’s granddaughter), fashion designer Adam Kimmel, and the art collector...

Queen of Pain

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:10:31 -0500

Sitting at a long, glass-covered table in her sunny 17th-story office in midtown Manhattan on Monday, the performance artist Marina Abramović said she was so stressed out by all the things she has to do in the two weeks before the March 14 opening of her career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art that she had sprouted a small pimple on the tip of her nose.

“I’m really ready,” Ms. Abramović said. “I just...

The Many Friends of Jerry Saltz

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:27:08 -0500

Jerry Saltz and Roberta Smith, two of the most powerful art critics in New York, spent Valentine’s Day together seeing a few art shows—nothing out of the ordinary for the couple, married 18 years, who visit dozens of museums and galleries every week in service of their respective columns—hers in The New York Times, his in New York magazine. Among their stops on Sunday afternoon was the Guggenheim, where they spent three hours wandering...

Stepping Up at the Whitney

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:29:08 -0500

For a second there, Gary Carrion-Murayari panicked, thinking that maybe his boss had called him into her office because she was about to tell him he was being laid off. Far from it. Instead of being fired, the young curatorial assistant learned that autumn afternoon in 2008 that he’d been tapped for a potentially career-making job—curating the Whitney’s upcoming Biennial alongside the art world giant Francesco Bonami.

Sitting in his office at the Whitney...

Ceci N'est Pas Performance Art

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 20:06:51 -0500

"Would you hang a Picasso on a stage and have people come and watch it?”

So responded the Guggenheim’s deputy director and chief curator Nancy Spector when asked to engage in a little thought experiment last week involving Tino Sehgal, the kinda-sorta performance artist from Berlin whose much-anticipated solo show at the museum opens on Friday, Jan. 29. The experiment was pretty simple: Would Mr. Sehgal’s work retain any of its power if it...

Tower Tech-Nerds? Late, Lamented Record Store Hosts Punk Nostalgists

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:29:56 -0500

On Friday, Jan. 15, the old Tower Records building on Broadway and Fourth Street was the site of a big, funny party celebrating the opening of a music-themed art show organized by No Longer Empty, a group of curators who mount exhibitions of contemporary art in vacant storefronts around the city.

The centerpiece of the show, on view at 692 Broadway till Feb. 13, is an installation repurposing the space as a cartoonish simulation...

Dear Jeffrey Deitch: Thanks for Never Being Boring!

Tue, 12 Jan 2010 19:36:12 -0500

The art dealer Jeffrey Deitch is leaving New York. The Soho impresario, champion and enabler of young unknowns has taken a job as director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. By June 1, his laboratorial gallery, Deitch Projects, will close its doors after 13 years, leaving his stable of artists-among them rising stars Kehinde Wiley, Tauba Auerbach and Kristin Baker-in need of new representation, and the hipsters who attended his famous...

As Jeffrey Deitch Makes His Move to L.A., Deitch Projects Will Close

Mon, 11 Jan 2010 17:37:37 -0500

SoHo gallery Deitch Projects will close after more than a decade as a result of the appointment of its owner, Jeffrey Deitch, to the directorship of L.A.'s MoCA, according to the museum's board chairs David Johnson and Maria Bell.

In a joint phone interview, Mr. Johnson and Ms. Bell, who co-chaired the search committee that led to today's announcement, said that Deitch Projects would cease operation by June 1, when Mr. Deitch assumes his new...

After Years of Pursuit, Wylie Signs Updike

Tue, 05 Jan 2010 19:30:57 -0500

THERE AREN'T MANY literary agents in New York City who can honestly claim never to have lost a client to Andrew Wylie. The man poaches talent from his competitors regularly and without reservation, and he has said repeatedly that he sees nothing immoral about doing so. His method relies on a mix of flattery, persistence and swagger, and more often than not, he gets what he's after, even if the seduction takes many years...

Arf Wiedersehen! Neue Galerie Director Diversifies with … Doggie Duds?

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:04:09 -0500

The Neue Galerie hosted a party for dogs on Thursday, Dec. 14. “No guts, no glory,” as museum director Renee Price put it when we asked what possessed her. “You have to try things out!”

Ms. Price’s miniature Schnauzer, Milly von Barksky, was the evening’s official host. She was dressed for the occasion in an elaborate little coat modeled after Gustav Klimt’s Adele Bloch-Bauer, the crown jewel of the Neue Galerie’s collection.

The Man Who Made Curating an Art

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:44:28 -0500

Hans Ulrich Obrist enjoys a level of prominence in the art world that would have been unimaginable for a curator of contemporary art 20 years ago. Back then, curators didn't get famous, and though they talked among themselves about their work, no one else cared very much about who they were or how they made their decisions.

People care about Mr. Obrist. At 41, the Swiss-born impresario has spent the past three years as...

The End of Kirkus Provokes Some Sadness, Some Glee, Some Crickets

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:14:37 -0500

Mixed emotions flew around the publishing industry today as word spread that the hard-to-please pre-publication blurb machine known as Kirkus Reviews would be shutting down after 76 years. The biweekly trade pub, which reviewed something like 5,000 books every year and competed directly with Publishers Weekly, was read mainly by booksellers and book review editors who used it as a guide to titles due in stores three to four months out. Kirkus reviewers were...

Hey, Are Those The Real Yogurt Caps?

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:40:21 -0500

Earlier this fall, Ann Temkin, the chief curator at the Museum of Modern Art’s department of painting and sculpture, was working on the checklist for the upcoming Gabriel Orozco retrospective (opening Dec. 13) when it occurred to her that one of the pieces she wanted to include in the exhibition might no longer exist.

The work in question was Yogurt Caps, which Mr. Orozco, the Mexican conceptual artist, had installed at the Marian Goodman...