Greetings, friends! ,I have sad and happy news for you. The sad news is that I will be closing down this website sometime in the next few weeks, as an art critic on a walker is an oxymoron. My legs -- at the excrutiating age of 88 -- will no longer allow me to do what I consider an art critic's prime responsibillty: of eyeballing art in galleries and museums, and passing along my takes on it.
Also, I am moving -- most likely from New York to New Jersey --- and this will make it even more difficult for me to get to the art. Possibly sometime I may find other ways to express myself in print but at this moment I am tied up in the logistics of my move.
Just let me say that it has been a wonderful 26 years -- from issue #1, in 1996 to Issue #136, in 2022 and I have more times than I can count been grateful for the wonderful work that my readers and so many others have given me the opportunity of viewing and responding to. Truly, the art I have seen will last far longer than my attempts to celebrate it. Art at its best is truly eternal.
As testimony to which, the beat goes on, even in our own little Greenbergian corner of the Art World. As testimony to this I offer you news of a huge celebration of that corner begining on May 13, 2023, at KINOSAITO, the gallery/residency/educational facillty that Kikuo Saito and his wife Mikiko Ino purchased as a studio for Kikuo's studio before he died in 2016 at the age of 84.
The building is an old brick catholic school, located in the shade of the Indian Point nuclear plant.
The address is 115 7th Street, PO Box 653, Verplanck NY 10596.
The show opening on May 13 (and running through December 17) is "KIKUO SAITO AND FRIENDS: NEW YORK CITY DOWNTOWN AND BEYOND, 1970S AND 1980S." Participating artists listed in the announcement are: Willard Boepple, Anthony Caro, Dan Christensen, Paula DeLuccia, Friedel Dzubas, Helen Frankenthaler, John Griefen, Darryl Hughto, Ronnie Landfield, John McLean, Kenneth Noland, Larry Poons, Peter Reginato, Susan Roth, Francine Tint, Ann Walsh, James Walsh, Michael L. Williams, Robert Wilson, Larry Zox. This show, which has been curated by Karen Wilkin, is not absolutely everybody creating admirable art in New York "and beyond" in the 70s and 80s but it's a pretty staggering array of talent..
The best time to get there (at least for the first visit) will be at the opening reception, which will be on May 13 from 4 to 7 pm. In addition to the usual offerings at openings there will be music, performances and knows God what else.
PS.....And, for those unable to get up the Hudson, Leslie Feely is displaying not only the Saito illustrated above but also work by Friedel Dzubas, Helen Frankenthaler, Jules Olitski, Robert Motherwell & Cleve Gray in "Chromatic Dialogues" at Tower 49, 12 East 49th Street, Manhattan....through March 2004.