High Tea

Juan Gris, Breakfast, 1914. Cut-and-pasted paper, crayon, and oil on canvas; 31 7/8 x 23 1/2 inches. MoMA, New York.

No better way to start an amorously grey Sunday than Tea with Juan Gris.

His 1914 cubist collage Breakfast is currently among my favorite paintings.

Must not forget to mention another personal favorite, or series of favorites -- Futurist Giacomo Balla's

dynamic paintings of swallows in flight, one of which, also, hangs at the Museum of Modern Art. I could rhapsodize about this too, into eternity, but will spare you all for another day.

Giacomo Balla, Swifts: Patterns of Movement + Dynamic Sequences, 1913. oil on canvas; 38 1/8 x 47 1/4 inches. MoMA, New York.

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Reigning Queen of Art and Fashion

“Now I’m very interested in the power of brands, of celebrity, in the absurdity and scandals of that world, because I realise that I can play on many levels, for if culture isn’t appealing, it has no impact. When it’s too high-faluting and fails to communicate with young and ordinary people, it’s equivalent to not speaking at all.”

-- MP

a suggestive nailbiter, woman after my own heart: The regal Miuccia Prada

Thus spoke fashion visionary and noncomformist Miuccia Prada, in an article for The Art Newspaper. Read it here.

One of fall's biggest trends? Women with integrity.

Not to be overlooked in this category, Miuccia Prada looms as practically and inspirationally as the designs executed in signature fabrics by her namesake fashion house. It seems she has always had an eye for art. Many have criticized -- and lauded -- the Milanese creative director as "cerebral." I'm of the mind to agree -- interlaced in many of her collections are allusions to the illustrious old masters of Italy and elsewhere in Europe (see the article I wrote on the F/W '08 line). No wonder then, that Signora Prada should turn her attentions to the foundation and operation of an eclectic art initiative fit for her name.

The Fondazione Prada is just that organization -- a real hybrid headed by Prada and husband Patrizio Bertelli (the other half of the Prada empire) -- which funds such contemporary artists such as Carsten Holler and Natalie Djurberg to execute installation works, while also operating as a platform for Prada & Bertelli to exhibit their own collection of modern and contemporary art (the two made it onto ARTnews magazine's August list of the 200 top art collectors worldwide). Currently, the husband-and-wife team have had to halt plans to complete a new Headquarters and museum venue designed by architect Rem Koolhaas, attributed in whispers to the substantial losses incurred in the last few quarters by the fashion house. The tentative unveiling of the new space will be 2013-2015.

Like any queen, Prada maintains a court of artists that includes Francesco Vezzoli and John Baldessari.

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Cucina Aperta

the two main ingredients of my improvised dinner

Dinner in a pinch

The Dilemma: Last night I came home to a (predominately) empty kitchen.

The scarcity stirred my imagination, and I looked around to see what kitchen elements

could lend themselves to an improvisational composition. I suddenly found the two main ingredients for what was to come. My concoction would somehow involve two overripe yellow farmstand tomatoes and a lonely tube of Black Olive Paste consigned to obscurity in a dark corner of the refrigerator.

The result? Find my recipe below, tweaked to perfection.

Sugo allo Zafferano (Natalie's Saffron Tomato Sauce)

serves 4 - 6

Ingredients:

4 heart-sized yellow tomatoes, coarsely chopped

2 1/2 tsps. black olive paste (or more to suite your palate)

4 cloves garlic, grated on a microplane

1/2 lb 32-36 count medium shrimp, tails removed and coarsely chopped (optional)

a pinch of saffron

(optional, but best to heighten the dramatic composition of the dish)

fresh parsely, chopped (for garnish)

crushed red chili flakes

salt + pepper to taste

1/2 cup good E.V.O.O (I use Citarella's)

1 lb linguini fini, linguini, or other long, flat noodle

For the sauce:

Add the chopped tomatoes to a food processor in batches of two.

Pulse food processor a few times, stopping to pour in enough olive to emulsify the mixture and build a silken texture, with the occasional chunk of tomato. Add the olive paste in segments as well, until the sauce is "speckled", but not overpowered. Repeat with last two tomatoes.

In a medium-sized skillet over medium heat, heat 4 tblsps. olive oil, adding the garlic and crushed red chili flakes for a hint of spice. Saute garlic until golden, just before it starts to brown.

Add the fresh tomato sauce to the pan generously, blending the garlic evenly throughout. If using saffron, add it now and stir throughout. let simmer.

Put a large pot of water to boil, adding salt. Add Linguini fini to boiling water and cook till al dente, 5-7 minutes. reserve a quarter cup of pasta water.

If using shrimp, add it now to the skillet and cook on low heat. Let shrimp turn opaque, about two minutes. Combine pasta with the sauce in the skillet, coating each strand and using pasta water to thin the sauce, if necessary. Add salt + pepper to suite your palate, and garnish with fresh parsley.

Buon Appetito!

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Itinerary: August 17 - 23, 2009

Folklore, Omnivore, Blood + Gore

appetizer at No. 7, Fort Greene, BK

A Week in New York City: Weathering Dust, Doldrums, Delerium, Desideratum

As is to be expected of New York City in the dead of summer, my week really begins on Thursday, after I discard the dust and doldrums of my compartmental office existence along with my crumpled work-appropriate garb. While I find myself not fleeing to the Hamptons or Sands Point, my operative summer retreats around this time of year, the week is shaping up to be nothing short of spectacular from my current vantage. Let me spell it out for you --

Thursday, August 20th

Will I Get Lucky? Looks from the Vena Cava Spring/Summer '09 collection

8:00 am, Barney's Warehouse Sale -- That's right, early to rise. I will join the insanity downtown with my dear friends Anna, of Un Sphinx Incompris, and Kelly, plus a friend of Anna's here on holiday. We will fill ourselves beforehand with a delicious breakfast of fresh berries, granola, tea, and yogurt; and don our armor with the rest of the city's fellow fashionista-masochists, to file relentlessly down endless aisles in search of God and Galliano.

After the deluge, I suggest a stroll to the gallery district to view some more beautiful objets.

I've got my mind made up to see the current exhibition at Cheim & Read, The Female Gaze: Women Look at Women, featuring Marina Abramovic, Vanessa Beecroft, and Alice Neel, among others.

not your average artist's artist: Marina Abramovic's 1975 ART MUST BE BEAUTIFUL, ARTIST MUST BE BEAUTIFUL

8:00 pm, Juana Molina at the Music Hall of Williamsburg -- I will descend to Brooklyn with my good friend and fellow troubadour Idgy Dean to see the brilliant Argentinian soap star cum sylphine singer/songwriter Juana Molina at the Music Hall of Williamsburg -- not, however, before catching our reservation for a light dinner at No. 7, a highly lauded restaurant in the Fort Greene neighborhood. The roast chicken with israeli couscous and hazelnuts sounds out of this world.

Juana Molina

Friday, August 21

6:45 pm, Film Screening of Come and See, Anthology Film Archives -- I join my close friend Anthony Friday night for a screening of the Russian Come and See (IDI I SMOTRI), a "savage and lyrical fever dream of death, rage, and terror" set in WWII-era Russia, and, as my discriminating friend Anthony has told me, perhaps the best film of the 20th century. We might stop for dinner afterward at an exotic restaurant (TBA) that Anthony says has the best terrace in the city. A good way to build the intrigue...

Idi I Smotri

Saturday, August 22

12:00 pm, Neue Galerie exhibition, Oskar Kokoschka -- I'm leaving the rest of the weekend open to what may come, but I would very much like to go uptown to see the Neue Galerie's focus exhibition on Oskar Kokoschka, a Polish-born artist branded by Hitler and the culture-eschewing Nazis as a "degenerate artist" in the years immediately preceding the war.

Oskar Kokoschka, Martha Hirsch (Dreaming Woman), 1909

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Chess with Marcel

Marcel Duchamp and Eve Babitz, 1963. Duchamp's artwork in the background.

"I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists."

--Marcel Duchamp

As I currently wade through The Guermantes Way, the third volume of Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu, my mind deviates and meanders -- knowingly -- to rest on the opus and hidden world of another Gallic Marcel, perhaps not too distant in age and genre from the eccentric writer of social pastiche and illuminated prose. I am, of course, referring to Marcel Duchamp, the original avant-gardeist, art-world aristocrat and reigning aesthete/provocateur of the first half of the 20th-century.

Photographs of Duchamp playing chess, such as the one above, further clarify the parallel between the artist's oeuvre and the strategic game he so adored. Each is predicated by the moment -- a discourse that begins, in the case of the art, after confrontation with the work in its museum setting, and in the case of the game, when two players sit down at the chess board. Wordplay and eroticism ensue.

An opening exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art focuses on the last great work of the artist, perhaps his quiet pièce de résistance -- Étant donnés, an installation piece started in 1946 and installed at the PMA in 1969. The exhibition celebrates the 40th anniversary of the work's installation in the museum, in addition to paying tribute to the memory of the PMA's well-loved Director and CEO, Anne D'Harnoncourt, a leading Duchamp scholar and overseer of the original museum installation of Étant donnés.

The work consists of a wooden door, through which various peepholes have been punched. The viewer/voyeur must look through these peepholes, which open up to a lurid photograph of a nude female body posed on a natural setting. Duchamp originally installed the work in a secret space adjacent to the bathroom of his fifth-floor Manhattan walk-up apartment, which he also operated as his studio.

ceci n' est pas une porte: Duchamp's Étant donnés

Personally, I find that confrontation with Duchamp's legacy is always a pleasure. His combination of wit, intellect,and humor, much in the same vein as Proust's writing, instills a sense of curiosity, and wondering, to my life. I'd like to stage an imaginary liaison between the two Marcels, whose smirking visages illuminate an ongoing, immensely-gratifying dinner party alongside other art-world deities in my mind.

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