Abramovic has always dealt in shock and endurance, punishing the body, pushing viewers out of their comfort zones and the show at MoMA deals with these full on.  At MoMA she is attempting to go the limit, and also to reproduce literally the metaphysical interchange between artists and viewers. For the 700 hours of the exhibition, Abramovic will sit in the middle of MoMA’s atrium, at a table. You can sit across from her. There you will stare at her while she silently stares back. Viewers cried, ran away, or looked sick.  There’s something powerful and uncanny and pure about an unbroken gaze.

Probably the most talked-about part of the exhibition is a re-creation of a 1977 work in which Ms. Abramovic and her partner then, the German artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen, known as Ulay, faced each other naked within the frame of a gallery doorway, forcing people who wanted to enter to squeeze between them.  I felt it too personal, too much of an invasion of their space to walk between them but almost more interesting was watching how other people reacted and responded. Rather than shock or disgust, though, the overall mood in the galleries tended to be one of great seriousness, occasionally verging on reverence.

The one that moved me close to a trance was a woman perched nude on a bicycle seat high on a gallery wall, bathed in light, in a pose reminiscent of a crucifixion.  Another a nude man lay under a skeleton to make it appear to breathe. In “House With An Ocean View” (2002) she lived in Sean Kelly Gallery in Chelsea for 12 days, confined to three  rooms, together they suggested a triptych elevated above the floor, with the front wall open, allowing visitors to watch her ritualistically nap, shower, dress, drink water and urinate, then do the same all over again was beautifully recreated.

Whether you like this exhibition, laugh at it, or think of it a freak-show, there’s little doubt that Abramovic is opening up MoMA, injecting it with life, altering its course in ways that are excited to imagine for the future.

The Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53 Street
New York, NY 10019-5497
(212) 708-9400

414 East Ninth Street  (212) 228-4873.

After all the snow in the city in February had melted I finally made it to see the show I wanted to see all month,  on the last day, Tino Sehdal’s part theater – dance performance piece “Kiss”. As you enter the Guggenheim rotunda the first thing you see is a sign forbidding the taking of photographs. This is standard Sehgal practice. If you have ever wondered what the museum would look like without any art, this is your chance all the art has been cleared away yet the space isn’t empty. On the rotunda’s ground floor, a man and woman entwine in a changing, slow-motion amorous embrace. It begins when you walk a short way up the rotunda ramp. A child comes over to greet you. My greeter, a boy of 9 or 10, shook my hand and  invited us to follow him and asked if he could ask me a question. “What is progress?” I gave a broad answer, then at his request, a clarifying example. We went further up the ramp. Soon we were joined by a young woman a teenager carefully and accurately our first guide paraphrased for her my response to his question and slipped away. I walked on with her, who commented on my comments on progress, which prompted me to try to refine my initial thoughts. About halfway up the rotunda, a man in his mid-30s and who introduced a new topic. As I had heard from others experiences it seems that we somehow missed a final pass off to someone who would end our journey up the ramp.  Non the less the experience of this conversation would never be the same as those of the other visitors and their guides. The only traces that would remain would be remembered ideas. A similarly material-free version of art was, of course, introduced by 1960s Conceptualism.

At the end, after the guides had disappeared, I felt moved and refreshed in the way I sometimes feel when I’ve seen art in some very bare-bones way. It really is about life and communication with no answers.  I was primed to go back for more but alas it was the last day and 5 pm at that.

“Tino Sehgal” was through March 10 at the Guggenheim Museum

Pace Wildenstein

534 West 25th St., New York, NY 10001

Telephone: 212.929.7000

379 Greenwich St., New York, NY

212-925-3797

The Mary Boone Gallery has opened at its Chelsea location JOSEPH BEUYS: “WE ARE THE REVOLUTION”, a comprehensive exhibition of original works and multiples from the Hall Collection by this influential German artist. The exhibition has been organized and installed by independent curator and art historian Dr. Pamela Kort. This exhibition includes over one hundred and seventy-five of Beuys’ multiples, including such exceptional and sought-after editions as Celtic (1971), as well as the iconic Sled (1969), Felt Suit (1970), and Capri Battery (1985).

The two that stand out for me after seeing the show are the John Dillinger dollar bills (1974) and the “notable plastic” work (sculpture) The Horn (1969). These original works provide a philosophical and iconographical context against which his numerous and well-known multiples unfolded over time.

The making of multiples was integral to Beuys’ life; he used them as a vehicle for disseminating his aesthetic ideas to a wide audience, often utilizing commonplace found objects, materials and images that were familiar, yet loaded with personal significance (blood, fat, and felt chief amongst them). Clearly an influence on such artists as Mathew Barney, Tony Cragg , Martin Kippenberger , Robert Longo , Christian Marclay , and  Julian Schnabel.

Mary Boone Gallery

541 W. 24 Street
New York, NY 10011

East Side Social Club
230 E. 51st St New York, NY
212-355-9442

Some of the most evocative pieces in the exhibition for me were in the room to left with a case containing Mapplethorpe’s black velvet slippers and a large rose colored stone cross both of which were documented in large photographs on the walls.  The installation of an old typewriter with stacks of bound paper backs with a Gregory Corso novel on the top reminded me of an interview I read when Patti Smith was remembering her days when she and Mapplethorpe lived in the Chelsea Hotel “She liked to sit in the lobby smoking Kools and reading detective novels, waiting for Gregory Corso or Allen Ginsberg to cross through—Ginsberg made a pass at her, thinking she was a man—and dashed out to hail cabs for Burroughs on his ascent from El Quixote.”

Small monitors tucked in the corners of each room added to the experience with spoken word floating through the space, Patti Smith singing in addition to pieces from the Steven Sebring movie.  The show described in the Robert Miller press release “Ultimately the exhibition as a whole is an homage to the creative process.” If you have not seen the PBS series P.O.V. premiering Sebring’s film, Patti Smith: Dream of Life try to, it is mesmerizing like the exhibition.

Robert Miller Gallery

524 West 26th Street  NYC

A new Italian restaurant of the Manhattan old school. Breezing in from a cold New York night Casa Lever has that distinct New York vibe.  The hum of the bar, groovy Bassa nova music, somehow reminded me of the movie “nine” in its Italian coolness.  Casa Lever is a deeply likable restaurant and it’s very New York. Original Andy Warhol paintings oversee Milanese dishes including crudos, risottos, pastas, meats, whole grilled fish and an espresso bar.  After a glass of champagne at the bustling bar we were escorted to our table. Through the dinning room past the honeycomb booths to my surprise the best table, over looking the dinning room under Giorgio Armani’s gaze. Staying with champagne we nibbled on beef carpaccio and a delicate lasagna.  With the weather being typical January cold, we both decided on meat courses, for me veal Milanese, pounded wide and fried with excellence and our Itamae Rider in usual fashion the bone-in New York strip a portion beyond generous cooked crusty and rich, as if at Peter Luger. All was excellent. Gherardo Guarducci and Dimitri Pauli, the elegant pair behind Sant Ambroeus ,took over the room and opened Casa Lever in October a welcomed reminder of why we love living in Manhattan.

Casa Lever

390 Park Avenue (212) 888-2700