What distinguishes our Art Tours from most of the others you see traipsing through Chelsea and The Lower East Side is that we tend to look at the smaller galleries, the “edgier” art and, often, emerging or not-so well-known-yet artists. We also enlist the artists and the gallery owners and directors in guiding our tours. Who understands the work better than the artist? Only, perhaps, the gallery owner or director who has chosen to show this work. And this is the kind of tour we did on Sunday, June 12th of The Lower East Side, during which we visited ten different galleries. It was a lot to take in and included such things as a very fine group show with a piece by Nicole Eisenmann at Marc Straus, new work by Sadie Benning at Calicoon Fine Arts and older work by Huguette Caland at Nathalie Karg: drawings by Alex Katz at Gavin Brown, films by Jean-Marie Straub and Daniele Huillet at Miguel Abreu, ceramic works by Kirk Mangus at James Cohan, a very political installation by Julieta Aranda from Mexico at James Fuentes, the opening of the Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery (and a meeting with the artist) and a Pop-Up show on Eldridge Street and a group show at Nichelle Beauchene. Tiring, yes, But then there are those bakeries in Chinatown along the way to stop for a bubble tea and some great places for lunch when the tour is over.
And then there is that Other kind of tour. And I was asked to lead one of those and it was a terrific change for me and, I think, a great treat for the participants. We did Big Work by the Big Names in modern and contemporary art at the Big Name Galleries in Chelsea on Saturday, June 11th. We saw paintings by Lee Krasner at Robert Miller and by Sigmar Polke at Zwirner and by Philip Guston at Hauser&Wirth; massive new sculpture and some “smaller” works of Richard Serra at the two Gagosian Gallery spaces, new work by Anish Kapoor at Gladstone Gallery, and Richard Tuttle and James Turell and David Hockney at Pace’s galleries. It was big, it was very big. It was “museum quality” and it was wonderful.
