Dalí would certainly have been pleased, had he been with us on the sidewalk outside the Chelsea Hotel this afternoon.
Author: jameswagner
hot afternoon in Greenpoint and Williamsburg
Eliezer Sonnenschein
Eliezar Sonnenschein Landscape and jerusalem 2007 acrylic on wood 96″ x 48″
Three years ago I did a post which included an image of a painting by Eliezar Sonnenschein, who shows with Tel Aviv’s Sommer Gallery. Yesterday I came across his flickr page, where he shows a number of works, including the large-scale painting above, which is apparently very new.
His profile led me to this beautiful animation, “self portrait”, on YouTube, constructed from another of his paintings:
Pimientos de Padrón at the Mayflower in Getaria
It’s a very simple thing, but I think our most exciting gustatory discovery while in Spain was a traditional (Galician) pepper dish, Pimientos de Padrón, and I’m willing to go to great lengths to find the right pepper in order to reproduce the dish at home.
This picture shows us on the terrace outside the Mayflower restaurant in Getaria finishing a magnificent, elegant but extraordinarily-minimal appetizer of house-cured anchovies, in a terrific local olive oil combined with chopped garlic, just after the peppers were brought to the table and before the wood-grilled monkfish entrée (cola de rape a la plancha) had arrived directly from the fires burning ten feet behind Barry’s chair.
The wine in that beautiful thin [cider] tumbler was an excellent Txakoli from the Basque country.
Getaria fishing fleet
untitled (yellow cap) 2007
Getaria open boats
untitled (blue boat) 2007
Spanish doors
I fell in love with many of the older doors (and their portals) in Spain, both for their beauty and for the physical scars which mark their survival. In some of the more ancient examples the wood had been replaced at some point and the original hardware re-installed.
The first three images were taken in Madrid, and the last was in the wall of one of the structures which surrounds the monastery/palace El Escorial.
William Powhida at Schroeder Romero
William Powhida The Rules 2007 graphite and gouache on panel 24″ x 18″ [large detail of installation]
William Powhida Pricing Guide 2007 graphite and gouache on panel 14″ x 11″ [large detail of installation]
We missed all the fun of the opening while we were traveling, but this past Saturday Barry and I slipped into Schroeder Romero, to see William Powhida‘s awesome first solo show at the gallery, “This Is A Work Of Fiction……”. It didn’t disappoint our highest expectations, and I’m very happy to say it also didn’t hurt one bit: We’re both included in one of the pieces, with a sketch, a blurb and a footnote, but the work is “The New York Allies List”, one of two large drawings illustrating people who occupy the artist’s world. The other, “The New York Enemies List”, is pretty scary, and not just because it includes Trump and Giuliani.
I loved Powhida’s rich gouache representations of his fantasy world as a hugely-successful art star, but his texts, whether accompanying the figures or standing alone as memos, are even more intense.
Disclosure: William was asked by the NURTUREart people to introduce us at their June 4 benefit, and we couldn’t be more excited about their choice.
The gallery introduces the artist’s letter/press proclamation with this admission:
Schroeder Romero is terrified to present This Is A Work Of Fiction…… a solo exhibition by William Powhida, under professional obligation and personal duress.
And here is an excerpt of what follows, from the artist himself:
BUT, all that doesn’t really matter. The work isn’t that important. I could, say, pack my shit into a can, take nude photos of my beautiful friends at parties, or make BIG EXPRESSIONISTIC paintings of monsters, but it wouldn’t really matter. WHAT matters is that someone says “Did you see that shit on 27th Street?! He called Dash a jerk-off’.” It’s REALLY important that Shamim and Roberta drop by. I mean, otherwise what’s the point? I can’t keep sitting around my studio getting drunk and yelling at my assistants forever, can I? I need some affirmation of my BRILLIANCE like a Times review or a Biennial nod. While I have probably just doomed myself to insignificance by ASKING for those things, aren’t they the very indicators of success?
I would like to ask you to participate in myimpossibleendeavor to scale the walls of my insignificant existence as an emerging (it’s so pathetic sounding) artist. I know that WE (_Richard, you bastard_) don’t make art to be rich and famous, but my hair is turning gray, I am getting OLD, and time is running out for me to experience GREATNESS. I mean, I’m not twenty-five anymore! I can feel the studio walls closing in around me, my assistants are giving me dirty looks, and collectors are trying to GUESS MY AGE!!! (I take no comfort in the fact that I too will eventually be recognized as a GENIUS. I mean we ALL will someday when we are dead)
The artist’s real or mock fears, expressed at the end of his letter, about no one ever letting him do this again have almost certainly been dispelled by a success both artistic and monetary: One week into the show almost all of the work had been sold.
fishing boats in the harbor of Getaria
untitled (floats) 2007
Getaria is an extraordinarily beautiful small Basque town on the Bay of Biscay where we enjoyed a wonderful leisurely lunch on a stone terrace high above the harbor, at a restaurant bearing the improbable name, May Flower [sic].
whither Guantanamo?
Where is the outrage over Guantanamo, seven months after the election? Why hasn’t our political “detainment” camp in Cuba, our festering national disgrace, been shut down yet?
And while I’m on the subject, where is my right to habeas corpus? Where is my right to protection from coercion or torture? Where is my right to privacy? Where is my right to assemble and speak? Where is my country?
Why don’t these absolutely fundamental issues even appear to be on the agenda of a newly-ascendant Democratic Congressional caucus?
I’m afraid I may already know the answers to these questions: Its leaders are actually quite content, even happy, with the way things have been arranged by the current regime, since they can now look forward to enjoying the spoils themselves when the Presidency passes to their team twenty months from now.
In 2009 it will become their oil, their war, their empire, their lobby money, their regime, and we may well find that we have only traded one king for another.
If this is a democracy, we’re all tyrants – and beasts.
I will probably be repeating this post regularly, since I don’t expect things to change soon, if ever.
[image, otherwise unattributed, via salvationinc]