The Pool Art Fair’s next incarnation, Art Attack, will be held at the Hotel Chelsea September 27-29. Given the concerns about what’s going to happen with the hotel under its new management, this sounds like a good thing for the hotel and art.

If you’re walking by the Zach Feuer window on Tenth Avenue (between 25th and 26th Streets) in Chelsea, and want to learn more about the artist being shown, visit his website. He is Matthew Northridge, with a site hosted by ArtCat.

I see that at least two galleries, both of whom have a significant number of artists with street art or illustration backgrounds, think taking photos in their galleries is a bad thing. What are they afraid of? Do they think any of us is going to go home and upload images to CafePress to sell t-shirts?

James and I encountered a rather hostile reception at Capla Kesting after he took some photos of Travis Lindquist‘s exhibition, and were told to never return. Didn’t they found the Fountain Art Fair, and invite us to attend as press?

Jonathan LeVine Gallery — who shows Shepard Fairey for heaven’s sake! — now has a policy of no photos too. I learned that from Heart as Arena.

Today’s New York Times has an article about Lisa Dennison, who after a three decade career at the Guggenheim, has moved to the action house Sotheby’s. I was pretty shocked to see this quote:

Actually, the whitewashed walls of the Upper East Side apartment she shares with her husband, Roderick Waywell, who used to own the East Side Tennis Club but segued into philanthropy to help run an arts education program championed by the crooner Tony Bennett, are devoid of artwork.

Her rationale: “I didn’t want to live with second-rate art, so I decided that if I couldn’t have Kandinsky or Mondrian, I’d rather live with nothing.” Well, not quite nothing. Francesco Clemente painted her in odalisque form after she organized a Guggenheim retrospective of his work, and as a further favor, lent her the eight-foot painting.

Doesn’t this seem like an odd thing to say when your job involves trying to convince people to buy and sell contemporary art via Sotheby’s? Perhaps not, since the auction houses are making it more expensive to sell lower-priced works.

Alice Neel
Self-Portrait, Skull, 1958
Ink on paper
11 1/2 × 8 1/2 inches

I know of at least two shows dealing with skulls or skeletons opening in the next week, and the invitation image for the Sherry Levine show at NYEHAUS is a skull too. What’s up with that?

• Cheim & Read, I Am As You Will Be
• Dinter Fine Art, Death & Love in Modern Times
• NYEHAUSE, Sherry Levine

I saw the show at Dinter Fine Art in the process of being installed today and it looks awesome.

[image above is from the Cheim & Read website]