Check Point Charlie
August 20, 2026D – So what have I learned after all this time? After all those sleepless nights. Lying to friends, lovers, myself. Playing this crooked game in this crooked town filled with backstabbers and four-faced liars. I’ll tell you what I’ve found. One thing and one thing only. I Fucking Love Berlin!…L – Are you going to lie to the very end?D – Truth and Lies. People like us don’t know the difference.L – No. We know the difference, David. We choose to ignore it. Isn’t that right Comrade Satchel?D – So that’s how you’ll make it work.L – It’s a…
Bill Comes Due
“There was an unequivocal intention behind all of this, however. In part it was a turning away from the model of Pablo Picasso, which since the 1930s had overshadowed the work of de Kooning’s generation—and de Kooning’s own work perhaps…
Summer Camp
from my notebook I find myself to be absurd. For the summer, I’ve taken a studio in Brooklyn to try to make some paintings. Most days, I take the L train out, then walk a few blocks through a working-class…
Homage à deux
Ross Bleckner @ Petzel Photography still holds and guides us; even after nearly 200 years, it is an incredible painting tool. So, when I read that Bleckner was using Cy Twombly’s photographs of flowers as source material for his new…
Sex and Power
Picasso and Dunham facing the inevitable I have great respect for Picasso’s late works. They are ambitious and controversial paintings that challenge our expectations. In his last decade, he transformed the history of cubism through expressionism, infusing it with his…
Abstract Painting
A thought or two… I talked with my friend Mike Zahn a few days ago, and we discussed Twombly and the fate of abstract painting in the 90s. Twombly was always there if you know what I mean. But a full slate…
il gentiluomo
It took me a long time to come to Twombly. I thought there might be something going on in his work that I couldn’t see, but I could not get there. It wasn’t until I saw the show at Gago’s…
Walking through the Past
Chelsea Galleries I went to see the Morandi show at Zwirner’s this past weekend. I was immediately impressed by how upscale these very wealthy private galleries have become. This show is platformed like a museum exhibition, complete with guards in…
X-ed
2/3/2025After a “possible” Nazi Salute by Elon Musk and this weekend’s corruption and overtaking of the Treasury Department’s information systems, I have deactivated the Henri account on X. For more information on the extreme dangers to us all caused by…
The Monster
Jeff Koons – Made in Heaven “ i’ll bet you monsters lead interesting lives i said to my girlfriend just the other day gee i’ll bet monsters are interesting i said the places you must go and the things you must see my stars and…
Unspoiled Monsters
Paul Corio @ McKenzie Fine Art Hustlers. They will find a way to break through your expectations and change your mind. “The point is, the theme moving through your work, as nearly as I can locate it, is of people achieving…
