top 20 things i saw in new york:

1. alex hank the ten deaths of summer (galeria hamis, chelsea) a large collection of photos, found objects, and epistles reworked as bronze plaques, a large and elaborate studio hanging, with clusters of meaning, like a radically inclusive extension of tillman's work--the photos were often moving, the found peices discurive, and the notes had a meloncholy, byronic eroticism. (it also seems to me a parody, of the ryan mcginley crack at the ephemeral school, and as a latino from mexico city, the eurocentric grand tour narratives that are still present in art history)
   
2. danielle julian-norton (reeves-contempary) a keep like maze out of neutrgena bars, the smell of hygenine became almost overwhelming when walking b/w the two 20 foot walls, if you could ignore the ordour, the geometrical/architecntural rigour of the rectangle blocks made into curves, and the lovely amber hue of light thru semi-transparent material, had a physicality, a honey hued last days of summer heft.
   
3. Polly Apfelbaum, Lovers LEap 13 (JMG) because they are wood block prints that looke so bright and plastic, that they become a refutation on the material cult of the object) (plus promeint use of pink)
   
4. Joel Sternfield Oxbow Archive (Luhring Augustine)They are bigger then i think i would want, and the prints are a little too crisp, the light a little too obvious in places--i like my tree prints like the 8x10 black and whites of Robert Adams Cotton Woods, these are huge, digital, c prints, 6 feet by 7 feet, or more, with the pristine, almost surely corrected colour that we expect, but i like the season motif, and northhampton mass is gorgeous, and there are sections of these that are masterfully composed---the reflection of grass on swamp water in The East Meadow, in April 20, 2007, or the line that is created by melting snow in The East Meadows on March 4th, or the lower right quadrant of Nov. 29th, that matches Fredrich in depciting the gothic drama of bare trees. We often talk about photos being painterly, but these have the exactitude of etchings or drawings.
   
5. Alison Schulink (Mike Weiss) Clowns as Evil is a trope that can no longer be done well, and i was prepared to hate this, but three paintings, one of a white tiger, one of a monkey, and one of niagra falls, with thick paint, expressionist violence, and a sort of auberbach earthiness, deflate the kitsch of the rest of the work--sort of an east village in the 80s throw back, but i still shockingly loved this.
   
6. a v. early draft of a joke painting, scrawled with sharpie, horziontally, on a 9x12 peice of loose leaf (van lintel)
   
7. mike coopers colour taxonomies 9 orange things and 9 yellow things, in white shadow boxes, exactly what you expect
   
8. Hans Haake's archival work in the 70s, with an approtionist edge, shown at Kent
   
9. Neil Campbell, the vancouver post minimalists two wall paintings, one of a circle painting in neon yellow, and one in dark grey in the corner of the back room--the corner peice decentralised the viewer, and reminded me of a black hole.
10. two barnett newmans (one bright orange, one blue), a blue on black reinhardt, a plum on ebony 5 foot truitt tower a guston shoes, the 1954 vogue that used pollock as background for the party dress shoot, done by beaton, and an amazing, late 50s sea and mountain stain painting, by frankenthaler, at the jewish musem abstraction/action show (plus realizing that banceou used canvas, and work by someone new to me, peter saul) (could have talked more, been more scandlous and more brave) (i want to write an article, about how the sexual realtionship b/w greenberg and frankenthaler was done at the expense of her career)
    
11. hooking up at mary boone, with a dirty, messy cy twombly sculpture (one smaller pillar on top of a larger one, both looked at the same time of the tennament laundry room and the neo classical temple), al taylors wall peice of ten hangers as a sphere, keith sonner's neon peices, and a fabric/floor peice called tangle.
    
12. Raphael Dallaporta's photos of landmines, which were conflicting for me. done as studio peices, the photos themselves were so luscious that they could be accused of making glamorous that which is evil. but the brief paragraphs above each device, with a dry and ironic style, discussed the history, politics and use function of these works---it became a really dark, profoundly ambigious notation on what it means to be a witness, what the photographers moral responibilty was as a documentarian. did not like them until pat told me what to look for.
13. a v. queer, v. sexy episcopal portrait by sargenet, with swishy scarlet robes covering the flesh of a dark eyed handsome man, could be a society portrait, in the chancellary of the church of heavenly rest, fifth ave at 90th
14. a koons lithograph of a boquet of flowers, done in the middle of his transition from sentimental fool to bad boy, at the same gallery, a bright blue, not angst ridden borgeious (!), two woodcutty murakami's, a great screen print of news both epic and banal, by Rauschenberg, and some nice late closes
15. the friends meeting house in flushing
    

top eleven works at the Met:

1. Courbet's large hunting portrait, with the lower left of the large canvas filled to the brim with dead prey, including foxes, deer, pheasents, rabbits and others.
   
2. Whistler's brace of grey ladies
   
3. Sargent's Madame X (in the words of pat, the sexiest 19th century women, witll with her clothes on) and his Wyndham sisters
   
4. Tang Dynasty Camels
5. the 25-30 small hindu devotional bronzes from Java
   
6. one of those Barnard landscapes of his interior courtyard, where oil looks like pastel
   
7. stuart davis's jazz still life
   
8. The pine branches of a screen by Zishon
   
9. Song Dynasty Celadon Pottery
   
10. a 1972 Ryman
11. Ingres Lady of the Host
12. one of Warhol's skull paintings
    
13. a excellent, syrian peice of Kufic pottery
14. Koons hi-tech chicanery, bleeding kitsch and devotion into something resembling earnest spectacle, with his own cocktails
15. small, over all patterned, klee watercolours
    
16. two 1920s stuart davis jazz still lives
    
17. Clodion's terra cotta study for the Balloon
    
18. Three odelisques by Matisse, and one of his wood carvings
    
19. ancient near eastern drinking vessels in the shape of donkey, ram, deer, and cattle heads
20. lingas from 15th Century cambodia
    

Top Ten from the Frick

1. Tiepolo Perseus and Andromeda--amazing he managed to get this much visual information and bombast into a work so small, even as it was a study (easel sized)
2. Hans Melming, Portrait of a Man, 1440---for the tight, and elegant landscape in monochromatic grey and black that provides a horizontal landscape, and deepens the perspective of a simple portrait.
   
3. Hans Holbein the Younger--Sir Thomas More (its holbein, and its ecclastical, of course i am going to love it)
4. Sir Joshua Reynolds--Selina, Lady Skipworth--because it is the beginning of impressionistic, emotionally relavent project, because i have a thing for the equistiley bored, because the grey on grey tones, with the dress, and the silver hair and the sallow skin, all of these are formal, i kept looking at it, and it shocked me how much it stayed with me.
   
5. two harpies bestriding a grotesque fish, anon, 16th century italian (its really ugly, and really violently so, and i am amused by ugly impolite things in polished, polite places)
6. Van Dycks Frans Snyder, for how his billowly black sleever interacts with his black doublet
   
7. Chardin's Plums--so tight, so minimal, so well composed, and the colour, i cannot describe how much this affects me, but it always decimates me
   
8. Polish Rider, by Rembrandt and his later self portrait, for the compare and contrast, and for this line from o hara: "at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world/except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick/which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time." and how it was the first painting, in my first volume of art history for children, that taught me how to physically look at a painting, and because it is so vigiourous and handsome
   
9. Whistlers, The Ocean, for this line of perfect not quite seafoam, greyish green on the very top, that contextualised the rest of the paintings greys and blues
   
10. Constables Cloud Studies (Bob Ross' Puffy Clouds!)_