Daily Loaf

Yasmina Reza’s Art has two subjects, one of them serious and worthy of attention, the other slightly embarrassing and perhaps even philistine. The better theme – and the one that gets most of the stage time – is male friendship and the unspoken agreements that sustain it.

The three men in this case are Marc, Serge and Yvan, whose comradeship is threatened by a disagreement over a painting, and who eventually discover what awkward and never-admitted assumptions have bound them together for over a decade. The painting they disagree about – an all-white canvas by a celebrated modernist named Antrios – is the occasion for the second theme: the imaginative bankruptcy of modern art and the pretentiousness of those who claim to admire it.

From the moment that Serge admits he paid 200,000 francs for the monochromatic rectangle, Reza implicitly makes the case that today’s art world is a den of con men and women supported by suckers who wouldn’t know a masterpiece from a mud puddle. This argument is ridiculous. Read the rest of this entry »

Aqua Wynwood 2007: Rusted wheelbarrows cut with lace-like patterns by Cal Lane at New York’s Foley Gallery. Photo by Megan Voeller.

Since reports (like this one) surfaced that collectors were actually buying earlier this summer at Art Basel in Switzerland, the international art fair circuit has managed at least partially to shake its recent image as a victim of the economy.

In December, when Art Basel Miami Beach arrives in Florida, St. Petersburg’s C. Emerson Fine Arts will take part in Aqua Art Miami, one of the popular satellite fairs that orbit around the larger showcase. Aqua, which plans to ditch its original venue (the Aqua Hotel on Miami Beach) and set up shop only in the Wynwood gallery district, has a reputation as one of the stronger satellites. It typically includes galleries from around the US along with a smattering of international participants.

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Tes One’s spray-paint-on-wood painting measures 10-ft. by 11-ft.

You know what they say: when the going gets tough, the tough get…bigger?

Despite the ongoing economic malaise—which seems to find Florida in a particularly compromising position—St. Petersburg artist and art party impresario John Vitale isn’t giving up. Though the muralist and owner of Vitale Studio recently downsized out of a company warehouse that doubled as an art gallery, his response to tough times is simply to take the show on the road.

All the way downtown to Nova 535, that is.

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