It's always good to get home - even though I love to travel - there's nothing like not having to deal with other folks trying to make you comfortable. Hotels, apartments, airlines, bad air, bad water, toilets that have survived 2 centuries of extensive use - it all begins to wear one down. Jet lagged and arted out (ok its another use of a noun as a verb, which I hate, but seems appropriate) I made my way up to Chelsea today to see some of the "new" work which seems to be right where we left off - in 1969. I counted 6 installations of found materials (ie garbage arranged and piled in meaningful ways) and 3 installations of sculpture, 4 of photos (Larry Clark still hanging with teenagers in trouble), 1 painting show and lots of collage - handmade or photoshop. Surrealism is everywhere. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the homemade Kinkos thing at Mary Boone's.

And all of that seems appropriate when I'm still out of longitudinal sorts. Its like time stands still for a couple of days until finally the lost hours pour over me like a waterfall - suddenly drenching me in the moment and everything is fine again. Still I've seen loads and I'll be blogging about it shortly. I would have done more while away in Venice but internets and wifis are not easy to come by - unless you've got a hipper hotel or hours to spend in creepy internet cafes (why the term cafe - they're more like bowling alleys where you slip on a pair of rented shoes- ewww can anyone say plantar wart?) Laptop culture doesn't seem to be the way of it.

Venice, once again, was the brilliant city of painters - I decided to spend a few moments getting to know the second stringers - those mannerists working around the biggies (Titian, Tintoretto and Veronese) and discovered that I enjoyed the work of Palma il Giovane - who was everywhere. He must have been the go-to guy if you couldn't get the other three. His paintings are not as thrilling as the big three but good solid work. He could always find a nice ground between Tinti's compositional thrill rides and Titians deep colors and somber blacks. But more on that later.

Hopefully the promised changes will be happening shortly and we are busy trying to expand our investigations into art - particularly painting - that is going on behind closed doors. Stay tuned.