NOVEMBER 1 - 13
Saturday, November 1
A meeting this morning in the All Star Studio set up for a New York architect to explain to a group of Cape Town artists his concept for introducing some art projects into a chain of local department stores � if it comes off, it could be interesting. Lunch today is at the Twelve Apostles restaurant, on the mountainside just past Camps Bay, the first time I have been here. A long table has been placed end on to the window, with a fresh breeze blowing in from the ocean below. A glorious setting. The lunch is being hosted by the charming Tollman sisters to honour the joint recipients of their first annual R100 000 award to be given to an outstanding emerging artist, this year, Wim Botha and Churchill Madikida. The guests include gallerist Michael Stevenson, editor Sophie Perryer, critic Tracy Murinik, SANG director Marilyn Martin, and the director of the Irma Stern Museum, Christopher Peter. The excellent chardonnay is from the Tollman family vineyards, and the lunch goes on well into the afternoon.
Tonight, on my way to cartoonist Jonathan Shapiro and photographer Karina Turok's birthday party, I call in at the Red Bull Music Academy set up by the Trinity Session's Kathryn Smith, Stephen Hobbs and Marcus Neustetter. A derelict three storey building has been entirely painted white inside, and hung with art by local artists. Copies of Drum Magazine from the fifties, insured for several thousand rand each, open to pages about the vibrant music scene at the time are displayed in a glass topped table made from an old packing case. The ambience is great. The academy will run for six weeks, bringing musicians and dj's from all over the world for workshops and performances.
Monday, November 3
This evening is the opening of Paul Edmunds' new show, 'Cloud', at Joao Ferreira. Paul is one of those artists who will work for months on a single piece, using a simple material and building up his piece by repeating a small design element thousands of times to achieve his concept.There are two main pieces on this show - a cloud like shape constructed from a coarse white plastic mesh interwoven and cable-tied into a solid form, and a sort of corner shaped piece of thousands of spirals of wire, formed around a broomstick and twisted into each other to make a kind of industrial chainmail. My description does not do justice to the pieces - the picture should help.
Tuesday, November 4
Had fully intended to go to Wim Botha's opening at Michael Stevenson tonight, but I leave for New York tomorrow and there's just too much stuff to get through.
Thursday, November 6
The reason I am in New York is mainly to meet my second grandson - Wylie Williamson Scarbrough, born last July. He's apple cheeked and round, a little Buddha. Completely adorable. Of course.
Friday, November 7
Gallery hopping in Chelsea, the essential New York experience. British film artist Isaac Julien, last seen in South Africa on the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale, is having his first New York gallery show at Metro Pictures. Baltimore is a three screen projection, in which two characters, Melvin van Peebles, known as the key director of the blaxploitation films of the seventies, and a young black woman start a walk in a working class area of Baltimore. Playing on the conventions of the genre, they pose and saunter through three city museums, one with the somewhat extraordinary title of Great Blacks in Wax, in which van Peebles confronts himself, along with such other characters as Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. Stylish and enjoyable.
Tonight my friends Jo and Annie Bacal have some people over drinks in their beautiful upper West Side apartment, with its wraparound balcony and views of the Hudson River. Laurie Farrell comes, bearing advance copies of the catalogue of the new show at the Museum for African Art, 'Looking Both Ways'. For the catalogue to be out two weeks before the opening is impressive - so often copies are rushed to openings direct from the printers. Kendell Geers, in town to instal his piece for the show and his wife Sendrine arrive, and Danielle Tilkin, who curated the 'Dis/Locations' show for Espana Fotofest 2000.
Saturday, November 8
Sonnabend is one of the largest and most important Chelsea galleries, and tonight is packed and bursting at the seams for Jeff Koons' 'Popeye' show. There is a mingling of worlds here, an A-list crowd of gallerists, critics and collectors plus celebrities. Behind me, Julian Schnabel is talking to Lauren Hutton. Francesco Clemente is across the room. Son in law artist William Scarbrough is photographed with Pamela Anderson. A quick hello to Jeff, ten deep in admirers, and looking exhilarated but exhausted. Apparently he has been working almost 24 hours a day for weeks, catching the odd hour of sleep at the studio. During the opening, yet another sculpture is brought in, unwrapped and hung in place from red chains hanging from the ceiling. The action becomes performance.
The paintings continue the themes Jeff set up in his 'Easyfun' show, but introduce cartoon characters. The paintings are a brilliant collage of cartoon images, landscape, the vinyl blow ups toys which are the main elements of the sculptures. One, entitled Olive Oyl, draws on Jeff's Cape Town trip with a scene from the Mother City behind an enormous figure of Superman.
The sculptures combine immaculately fabricated outsized toys with readymades - an inflatable caterpillar pushed through the rungs of a ladder. It's hard to believe the caterpillar is not vinyl and fingers are hovering everywhere, longing to poke, but a look at the meeting point of caterpillar and ladder highlights the illusion.
Sunday, November 9
Tea with writer and critic Rose Lee Goldberg and Dakota Jackson in their lower East Side house filled with elegant furniture designed by Dakota. Two other artists are there, and the discussion centres around their recent performance work. Rose Lee has ordered one of Zwelethu Mthethwa's prints from Editions for ArtThrob, so I am able to deliver this.
Thursday, November 13
I am typing this with baby Wylie on my lap. He can't quite reach the laptop keyboard, but I am counting on him to point out my spelling mistakes.
'Looking Both Ways' opened at the Museum for African Art in its temporary home in Long Island City last night. It's a great industrial space, the top floor of a building which houses the Noguchi museum, with views across the East River to Manhattan.
The opening is from 7 to 11 p.m., and the first person I see when I enter is the unmistakable Steven Cohen, in full regalia. It's a freezing night with a gale force wind blowing, but Steven is in a transparent dress with images of Mandela's face stitched on, and little AIDS beadwork images down one arm. Later, Bill is to say he felt worried about Steven when he spotted him without a coat on the street, trying to hail a cab in what is quite a rough part of town.
Most of the artists have come for the opening of the show, which focuses on African artists no longer living in Africa - the diaspora. Fernando Alvim is in Angola, but Zineb Sedira, Ghada Amer, Yinka Shonibare, Hassan Musa, Kendell Geers, and Ingrid Mwangi, are all here. Moshekwa Langa is in fine form, rolling his eyes and chuckling deeply. Much of the work has been commissioned by Laurie Farell especially for the show by the MAFA, and Moshekwa has new drawings up which I find far more interesting and complex than the ones we saw in Venice. A pink scarfed Okwui Enwezor admires baby Wylie who has come with Amanda, Bill and I to the opening. It's good to see artist Frances Goodman, here from Belgium for the event, and here too is art historian John Peffer. He apologises for needling ArtThrob in the feedback section, but I tell him apologies are unnecessary. Comments, good or bad, are always welcome.
Overall the show looks great, a real achievement for the museum, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary, but a proper review will have to wait for the next issue.
