The Whitney Museum’s Biennial is still on display, sort of. It “offers a space for contemplating the shifting currents of art in the United States, asking not only what is being made but also what it means to name something “American” at all.”
The approach to the museum exhorts us to “Free Palestine” while eating Halal food:
Once inside, there is some awesome non-political art:
Sign for the above:
New Yorkers who don’t get enough of the “river to the sea liberation” message from their mayor and the assorted public gatherings can sit for 32 minutes and contemplate the displacement of Arabs who call themselves “Palestinian” (I didn’t stay for the whole 32 minutes, but I have a feeling that the Arab rejection of the United Nations partition of the British territory and subsequent Arab declaration of war on the Jews wasn’t mentioned as a possible explanation for displacement; we are reminded that the Arabs who invaded the Levant during the Muslim Conquests are “indigenous”):
I’m not sure that the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”) would approve of the restroom signage:
If the restroom sign is haram, the mask compliance of visitors was halal:
The staff also wore masks:
Returning to the question of signage, what if an Ivy League graduate artist went around NYC removing (“stealing”, haters might say) signs that had been fabricated and mounted, at tremendous union labor expense, by office building owners? (Could the Whitney be prosecuted for receiving stolen property?) David L. Johnson says that the signs are overly restrictive, e.g., “no defecating”, but what if someone tried to do that in his living room or studio?
The smartest artist was able to get into the exhibition by applying a square of black tape to the wall:
Another way to get into the exhibit was to put a bunny suit on a doll:
If you had always been curious about “parallels between the discrimination of Okinawans and Black Americans”…
Who can infer the gas price? Is it less than $1 per gallon in this 1986 photo?
Speaking of combusting gasoline into CO2, the exhibit allows us to learn about “environmental collapse”:
(If the artist doesn’t want to be in a filthy degraded environment why does she choose to live in Philadelphia?)
If you’re behind on your rereading of Malcolm X:
And then it was time for coffee… 2SLGBTQQIA+ welcome, but no Canine-Americans:
The Recognition of Art by Women: In Retrospect show at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach closes on September 27 so there is still time to plan a somewhat unfashionably-early-in-the-season trip to Palm Beach County (via DJT!).
Recognition of Art by Women series began at the Norton in 2011 in an effort to recognize and promote living women artists through solo exhibitions, addressing the persistent inequity in exhibiting and acquiring art by women.
I can’t figure out how this is legal under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which purportedly guarantees “equal protection” to women vs. artists of other gender IDs. The Norton Museum is heavily funded by taxpayers, sometimes directly from local, state, and federal government and sometimes indirectly via tax deductions taken by donors (such as Ken Griffin, a refugee from the collapse of public order in Chicago/Illinois). Given that about half of the money is coming from taxpayers, could they host an art show limited to white male cisgender heterosexual artists, for example? If not, how are they allowed to host a show in which art can be selected only from artists identifying as “women”?
How bad has the historical discrimination been against women that the museum needs to redress the imbalance with this limited-to-one-gender-ID program? “Of the Norton’s 10 directors, nearly half have been women.” The first director was named “Mary”. The “women-only” series was initiated, 15 years ago, by a director named “Hope”.
The most recently featured artist, Danielle McKinney, paints pictures of Black women not working, which the curators say is “radical”.
(There is some support for this in BLS data; Black women are more likely to work than white women, while the reverse is true for Black men. Non-Black men are more likely to work than any of the foregoing.)
One of the radical acts:
A previously featured artist, María Berrío, does some interesting work:
The sculpture garden features a work by Louise Nevelson, who objected to being pigeonholed (“I’m not a feminist. I’m an artist who happens to be a woman”).
Also an interior Nevelson (I love her work so much! Maybe this one would be easier to steal):
How about some kid art? Here’s a painting by a local public school kid:
And one from the private school for nerds started by Jeff Greene, a billionaire refugee from NYC:
Here are some folks who probably should have used Kodachrome. Check out the color fading on these Polaroids:
(Imagine a camera technology so that even Walker Evans seems incompetent.)
Exit through the gift shop… (these photos were taken in June, admittedly)
Stop at Costco on the way home for some low-priced steak:
If you’re in Maine (and, this time of year, why wouldn’t you be?), head up to Bangor for a 7 pm La Traviata put on by Opera Acadia. I was there last night and everything about it was great:
orchestra (sounded liked they’ve played together all year and did not overpower the singers)
singing (entire cast, but Sarah Joyce Cooper was amazing as Violetta)
acoustics (hall isn’t cavernous; seats about 500?)
comfort (lots of legroom, width for, um, today’s Americans, and luxurious padding)
supertitles (unobtrusive)
I do miss the Franco Zeffirelli sets, as seen in the 1982 movie and also at the Metropolitan Opera until they trashed them (thus beginning the financial/audience decline that was accelerated by coronapanic?). Here’s the program:
If you can’t make it to Maine, stream the movie! (Maybe it has to be pirated? Supposedly, it isn’t available on any of the usual platforms due to the licensing hassles combined with the minimal revenue potential.) Here’s an alternative that might be worthy:
Trigger warning for recent college graduates: It’s sad and somebody dies.
(I’m irrational so am posting this while in transit back to the summer heat and humidity of Jupiter, Florida. Can’t stay away from the kids (back in skool) and the pup for too long!)
Newer and less famous than its Miami Beach cousin, Art Basel, Art Palm Beach 2026 happened at the end of January and your fearless host braved Climate Change and fallen iguanas (down to freezing overnight!) to bring you the story. It’s the same concept at Art Basel and Art Miami: art galleries from around the world set up booths within a big open space and those interest in art roam the aisles, with a ratio of 1000 ticket-buyers to every collector.
First, hats off to the HVAC engineers who set up the Palm Beach County Convention Center back in 2004. Except for the bathrooms at the edges, the cavernous structure was warm and comfortable despite what was likely a temperature seen only about once in every 5,000 days.
I valet-parked the Honda Odyssey because it was too much trouble to park in the adjacent $2/hour structure and walk for 5 minutes:
(Grok: That’s a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III convertible (also known as a Drophead Coupé), likely from the 1963–1966 production run. The model was the last iteration of the Silver Cloud series, featuring a 6.2L V8 engine, updated quad headlights, and bodywork often customized by coachbuilders like H.J. Mulliner or Mulliner Park Ward.)
Tickets were $40/person and easy to buy at the door. Kids are welcome, but each must have a full-price ticket (unusual for Florida, where kids are typically free or heavily discounted).
If you show up without a service dog, you’re doing it wrong.
Unlike Art Basel Miami Beach, this show seemed to be geared to active shoppers. Gallerists sought to engage and were approachable. Nearly every work was labeled with a price as well as a description. Prices were often reasonable, e.g., $3,500 for a small Hockney print, $15,000-30,000 for an original work by a not-so-famous artist, and hundreds of thousands of dollars at the top of the labeled range.
Adam Greener’s $14,500 works to inspire young scholars:
Perfect for the kitchen if you’re fully stocked with Ozempic (Rogerio Piexoto, “Be Butterfly” 2024, $188,000):
I can’t figure out who would pay $17,000 for this 48×60″ David Drebin C print (standard photo paper for printing from a color negative or digital file). Would a woman want a photo of naked women being showered with $100 bills? If not, how would a man get approval from Senior Management to bring this work into this house? Maybe a man who was single and wanted to remain single would be the customer? Someone who appears in the Justice Department’s 3.5 million pages of Emmanuel Goldsteinism and who tells visitors “I took this photo at Jeffrey Epstein’s place in Manhattan”?
Doug Powell made this 54×54″ Monopoly mosaic from “upcycled” keys:
A couple of New York gallerists wearing masks to protect themselves from the Science-deniers of South Florida (I hardly ever meet anyone here who is sick; by contrast, a tremendous number of friends in Cambridge reported recent or current respiratory illnesses when I was there in January):
An $85,000 Warhol Mao for your elite progressive friend:
A $10,000 3′-square Sarah Fishbein glass mosaic that would be perfect for our righteous brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters in Minneapolis if the characters were redesigned to make it clear that it was a native-born Kamala voter promising “I’d set the world on fire for you” to an undocumented migrant:
Here’s an entire wall of Obama-era Hope from Robert Indiana at $50,000 in today’s fascist dollars (edition of 125 since the rest of us 350 million must live without hope?):
The cafe in the middle is remarkably good and not insanely priced considering the captive audience. Here’s a $26 poke bowl with which I fortified myself before a Swiss friend’s Raclette dinner (complete with the special ovens):
A 6.5′-square $27,000 reminder to limit the population to 1 inch of fish per gallon of water, from Eric Alfaro:
Here’s an $18,500 Porsche 911 painting by Conrad Leach. How tough would it be for an AI+Optimus robot to design and paint this?
(The gallerist noted my interest and said, helpfully, that they had a wide range of car models on canvas from the same artist. I replied, “We have a Honda Odyssey.”)
Here’s a clever $12,000 work by Caroline Dechamby (Dutch-born; now in Switzerland?) highlighting the ease with which Optimus might recreate a Mondrian:
A medium-sized Calder that I would love to own ($165,000):
If you want a gift for an older person, here’s a $14,000 mid-sized painting by Scottish-Italian Leon Morocco in his 83rd year. (“Marocco” was the original family name, but it got corrupted to “Morocco”.)
Any friend who is a member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community might enjoy this $125,000 30×36″ John Whorf painting of Provincetown, Massachusetts:
If you need a gift for Zohran Mamdani, a couple of paintings of IDF soldiers by Natan Elkanovich (#FreePalestine #FromTheRiverToTheSea):
Speaking of Israel, Tali Almog’s encaustic-on-cork works seemed like great choices for public spaces:
If the public space is a Rolls-Royce dealer, maybe this 6′-square $362,000 print of Ormond Gigli’s Girls in the Windows (1960) photo? Wouldn’t this be easy to update with Photoshop or ChatGPT? My version would have a Honda Odyssey on the sidewalk. All of the humans would be nonbinary. There would be a range of golden retrievers, Samoyeds, and Sheep-a-doodles sticking their paws and heads out the windows underneath the humans. It would be called “Hes/shes/zes/theys in the Windows”.
A photo of the valet area on my way out. Check the range of vehicle size between the Bronco in front and the Ferrari 296 GTS Spider ($400,000) in the background. An alien might conclude that these vehicles were built for different-sized species. (If the Bronco back up and rolled over the Ferrari, would the driver even notice?)
Summary: It’s a great event that is less snooty and more kid-friendly than Art Basel Miami Beach. It’s a better place to learn about art and artists because the gallerists are more open to conversation and the artists themselves are more likely to be there in the booths.
Separately, it’s Tax Day. If you’re mailing in a hardcopy return and check make sure that you put some extra stamps on the envelope. Your money needs to go all the way to Somalia by way of Minnesota.
We took the kids to see Hoppers, the latest Pixar movie. It has some spiritual similarities to The Population Bomb (1968), whose author recently died. Stanford University prof. and Ivy League graduate Paul R. Ehrlich was famously wrong about human population growth leading to famine within his lifetime, but Hoppers shows that his philosophy remains alive.
The movie opens with a noble Japanese-American girl visiting with her grandmother at a single-family house with immediate access to an unspoiled natural area (i.e., something that is impossible for the average person who lives in a heavily populated country). It is access to nature, we’re told, that enables a human to be calm (urban “teens” who can’t access nature, thus, are guaranteed to be violent).
Population pressure and growth, as Prof. Ehrlich described, drive the plot of the movie. The humans are working to take away all of the animals’ habitat, something that they might not have done if the U.S. had stopped growing after reaching 150 million circa 1950.
Was Ehrlich actually wrong? He did say that we might “stretch” and increase food production by trashing the Earth and that is kind of what we’ve done here in the U.S., e.g., heavily fertilizing the Midwest and dumping runoff into the Gulf of America, thus creating dead zones:
The Dead Zone develops, somewhat ironically, as a result of the nutrients that fuel the high productivity in the Gulf’s surface waters. As dead plant material falls from the surface through the water column deeper into the Gulf, bacteria consume it using oxygen. This lack of oxygen creates the Dead Zone in bottom waters on the Texas-Louisiana shelf throughout warm summer months. This occurs when there are fewer storms and strong winds to mix the warm, oxygenated surface waters and the cooler, deeper waters. At other times during the year, winds, weather fronts and storms in the area mix the water, replenishing the oxygen used by the bacteria in the deeper water.
Nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorous, are essential for an abundant food supply, but crops take up on average just 40% of the nitrogen that is applied each season. The excess can run off into waterways, leading to a high nutrient load in the Mississippi River. Many efforts are underway throughout the Corn Belt to improve fertilizer efficiency and increase adoption of practices like cover crops and buffer strips that protect water quality.
See Book that explores the biggest issue of our age for a discussion of the tension between those who think we need six Earths total for the current batch of humans and those who think we can innovate enough to use just one Earth.
How was the movie? The boys (10 and 12) didn’t love it. Maybe because they don’t identify as either female or Black, the only two kinds of humans who are smart enough to be scientists and engineers. There is, of course, one white male character and he occupies the environment-destroying villain role. The movie involves mobile robots that are created by the intelligent female scientists. Said robots have no apparent solar cells and yet never run out of power. Speaking of miracles, the population in the unnamed U.S. city (Pacific Northwest?) is booming, which is why the humans want to take all of the animals’ habitat. The humans come in a rainbow of skin colors, consistent with U.S. population growth being entirely driven by immigration. And yet… nobody in the movie speaks with a foreign accent.
"Humanity is not sustainable. To maintain our lifestyle (yours and mine, basically) for the entire planet, you'd need five more Earths," biologist Paul R. Ehrlich told 60 Minutes in 2023.
Ehrlich, who died Friday at 93, became a doomsday celebrity after his 1968 bestseller,… pic.twitter.com/l1dwFeLPh1
Robert Duvall has died at 95. He played Tom Hagen in The Godfather, Part II, and famously pointed out that “A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns” (worth remembering before considering marriage; no lawyer can sue you for divorce if you aren’t dumb enough to agree to a marriage!)
And, of course, every Robinson R44 pilot who ever thought about applying a “Death From Above” sticker to the nose of the four-seater will remember Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel William “Bill” Kilgore in Apocalypse Now.
I’ll remember Duvall in the lesser-known The Apostle (1997), which he also directed (don’t miss the soundtrack!). 88 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
Robert Duvall, who drew from a seemingly bottomless reservoir of acting craftsmanship to transform himself into a business-focused Mafia lawyer, a faded country singer, a cynical police detective, a bullying Marine pilot, a surfing-obsessed Vietnam commander, a mysterious Southern recluse and scores of other film, stage and television characters, died on Sunday. He was 95.
Throughout his career, Mr. Duvall tried to keep Hollywood at arm’s length. He preferred living elsewhere — for many years on the Northern Virginia ranch with his fourth wife, the former Luciana Pedraza, an Argentine woman 41 years his junior. They met in the 1990s in Buenos Aires, which he visited often after developing a passion for the tango.
He was a Hollywood outlier on another front: politics. He was an ardent conservative, strongly supporting Republican presidential candidates, in a film world dominated by political liberals.
From early on, Mr. Duvall enjoyed the life of a supporting actor. “Somebody once said that the best life in the world is the life of a second leading man,” Mr. Duvall told The Times. “You travel, you get a per diem, and you’ve probably got a better part anyway. And you don’t have the weight of the entire movie on your shoulders.”
Bad Bunny is articulating the surreal and sad feeling of seeing his homeland transformed by internet-supercharged globalization. The U.S. territory’s economy has long relied on tourism, but in recent years, a wave of laptop-toting mainlanders lured by the balmy climate and notoriously loose tax laws has driven rent increases and threatened to wash out the local identity. Bad Bunny’s new album, Bonilla wrote, is a “lament for a Puerto Rico slipping through our fingers: betrayed by its leaders; its neighborhoods displaced for luxury developments; its land sold to outsiders, subdivided by Airbnb and crypto schemes and repackaged as paradise for others.”
(The gringos at The Atlantic characterize Puerto Rico as having “notoriously loose tax laws”, but “How Puerto Rico Became the Newest Tax Haven for the Super Rich” (GQ 2018) and other sources make it clear that Act 20 and Act 22 are, in fact, tightly specified.)
Separately, if you want to enjoy Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance, but don’t understand el idioma de los conquistadores (or the way that Bad Bunny pronounces this language), here’s a recital in the English language:
I have converted the SUPER BOWL song to English for the @nflcommish and the parents
The “We Accept EBT” sign on the set was a nice touch. It wasn’t inclusive, however, for viewers in Minnesota. Why not an additional “Waxaan aqbalnaa EBT” or “Halkan EBT waa laga aqbalaa” sign? (the majority of Somali-headed households are on SNAP)
In other NFL news, our home town of Jupiter, Florida was indirectly featured recently by Bill Belichick’s young associate:
Bill Belichick’s 24 year old girlfriend Jordon Hudson taunts Robert Kraft with ‘Orchids of Asia’ massage shirt. pic.twitter.com/JIU5FxDDmr
As our young football fans clean up the house for tomorrow’s guests and prepare the chip bowls, I wonder if Bad Bunny will sing his big hit “Monaco” tomorrow at the Super Bowl. That should start some conversations at American elementary schools. Sample lyrics:
You don’t know what it’s like to be out at high sea with two hundred hoes To have the flight attendant suck you off in the sky What it’s like to throw five hundred thousand at the strip club That’s why I don’t care about your opinion That’s why you’re 101 in the top 100, and I’m first You’re not rappers anymore, now you’re podcasters My barber charges more than you Fucking and traveling around the world
When I die, I’m gonna leave a hundred plots of land to my grandchildren To all my ladies, the butts and the breast And an F-40 for my haters but without brakes Why? So they crash He, so they kill themselves Red or white, matt black, what you want? Rest in peace, I’m still on the yacht
I light a phillie, the family is in Monaco
ChatGPT:
It’s not meant to be taken literally; he’s not claiming there are exactly 200 women on the yacht. Instead, it’s an exaggerated fantasy of abundance — so rich, so famous, so untouchable that he could fill a boat with models just for fun.
The phrase “I light a Phillie” (sometimes written “light up a Phillie”) comes from slang referring to lighting a Phillie Blunt, which is a cigar brand (“Phillies”) that’s often used to roll and smoke marijuana.
[Regarding the flight attendant line] That lyric describes conduct that would violate multiple aviation rules and laws. Interference with flight crew (14 CFR §91.11): Anything that distracts or interferes with a crewmember’s duties is prohibited. Engaging a flight attendant in sexual activity would clearly qualify. … Consent & power dynamics: Any sexual activity involving a working crewmember raises serious legal issues, including coercion and workplace sexual misconduct. … Sexual acts in public conveyances: Aircraft are considered public spaces under U.S. law. Sexual activity onboard can constitute indecent exposure or lewd conduct, which is prosecutable.
[The AI seems to be confused regarding the fact that a private jet can have, and in some cases require, flight attendant, e.g., when certified for more than 19 passenger seats.]
Why isn’t the Super Bowl always in a tax-free state? (this year it will be the opposite and maybe Bad Bunny will get hit with California taxes? Separately, why does the San Francisco Bay Area want to host a Covid superspreader event such as the Super Bowl? Perhaps 200,000 people will gather for this event if we include hotels, restaurants, bars, etc. See New York Times article, below.)
You’ve read in this space about Art Basel Miami (officially “Art Basel Miami Beach”), which isn’t in Miami. There’s also Art Miami, which is in Miami and, having started in 1991, predates Art Basel Miami (2002). Art Miami happens in a huge waterfront tent and is connected to CONTEXT Miami, which features less-established artists. Art Basel and Art Miami are connected by the Venetian Causeway and also by an every-10-minutes water taxi service organized by the cities (if a city doesn’t spend all of its tax dollars on migrants, those who choose to refrain from work, and migrants who refrain from work, there is plenty left over for public services!).
My companion and I had a late lunch at Motek Miami Beach and then took the water taxi over:
We quickly learned that it is okay to cover your Ferrari in fur, but don’t leave it unattended!
Art Miami seems to have art by bigger names than Art Basel, with less emphasis on what’s newest. Here’s a Yayoi Kusama to go in your $200 million house:
If you’re Christmas shopping for an elderly photographer/engineer, how about this Rolleiflex 35mm camera embedded in Lucite from François Bel?
On the CONTEXT side, a vaguely similar idea (no acrylic, though) from John Peralta ($28,500; unlike at Art Basel most of the pieces at Art Miami and CONTEXT had price tags):
A view from the smoking terrace:
An Israeli gallery showed up with some huge glass works and a few original Yaacov Agams (remarkably, still alive at 97):
Speaking of Israel, here’s a photorealistic work by Yigal Ozeri that would be perfect for the redecoration of Gracie Mansion for incoming Mayor Mamdani. The intifada could easily be globalized if Israeli women loved Ayatollah Mamdani as much as progressive white American women!
Here’s some more work from Israel for Mayor Mamdani, all from Natan Elkanovich (he says that he uses “kitchen and sewing utensils to drizzle and sculpt plastic materials on canvas”):
If you are a peasant with a house worth less than $200 million, Art Miami is probably a better place to shop than Art Basel. If you want to find out what’s exciting to art nerds, Art Basel is perhaps better. But if you’re doing Miami Art Week, both are well worth visiting.
Here’s my report from this year’s Art Basel. All photos from the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
Because paying $1,000 per night for a basic hotel room is just a rounding error for me… I stayed across the bay at the Marriott Biscayne Bay. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it was right next to Art Miami, which I hadn’t heard about and which I’ll cover in a later post, and also because it’s right next to a former Episcopal Church that has converted to Rainbow Flagism, consistent with Santiago de Compostela and End Stage Christianity.
If you don’t want to get stuck in traffic, the Miami Citibike system isn’t a bad way to get around. The bikes don’t seem to be in great shape and they don’t fit a 6′ rider that well, but the terrain isn’t hilly.
In Art Basel Miami Beach (2018) and Art Basel Miami 2021, UBS featured female victimhood and celebrated the handful of women who’d manage to overcome the “imbalance” and “make a difference”. The commitment to social justice seems to have evaporated and now UBS promotes getting richer:
Speaking of rich, the most talked-about installation echoed the UBS theme of rich-meets-art. Busts of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg on robot legs interacted with Andy Warhol, Picasso, and the creator of this work (Mike Winkelmann; a.k.a., “Beeple”). (Given Picasso’s fondness for teenage females, could he have survived today’s moral rectitude?)
Here’s Andy Warhol (the most famous gay person not famous for being gay?):
The Wall Street Journal says that $200 million is the new minimum for a decent house and there were quite a few pieces for sale that would have required a spare thousand square feet or two. Here’s an example from Anne Samat titled “The Unbreakable Love… Family Portrait.” It includes plastic swords, keys, wine corks, etc.
A work by Yinka Shonibare that inspired me to stop complaining for a few minutes:
I looked him up on Wikipedia: “At the age of 18, he contracted transverse myelitis, an inflammation of the spinal cord, which resulted in a long-term physical disability where one side of his body is paralysed.” If someone who is half-paralyzed can make it to Art Basel, what’s wrong with the rest of us?
Feel better about your middle-school dioramas (by Mondongo, a husband-and-wife team in Argentina):
Here’s a technique that I enjoyed, hand cut paper by Ariamna Contino (or maybe by her assistants?):
At the opposite end of the effort spectrum, Erika Rothenberg’s 2018 work America, A Shining Beacon to the World:
Only the Weinstein Gallery (they haven’t changed their name?) was crass enough to put prices on labels. Here’s a modest-sized $3.5 million Leonor Fini work from 1936 (imagine what it would cost to get an original oil painting by an artist that people have actually heard of!):
Some practical advice… pay a little extra for the 11 am entry tickets and go in right at 11 rather than at noon. The venue gets crowded by 1 or 2 pm. A 2:15 pm Friday image:
From 1:22 pm:
You don’t have to spend a lot to bring a souvenir home from the event. For only $5,500, for example, you can get a nice Taschen book of David Hockney pictures (printed in Italy):
Don’t worry about charging for your electric Rolls-Royce:
There are quite a few additional art events in Miami Beach and, covered in a later blog post, across the bay in Miami proper.
