New York 2012

Yes, it was freezing. Yes, there were line ups galore in front of every major art gallery or Museum but, New York is still a great time.

My friend Alan and I started with a coffee.

Yup, even in the sweaty subway people were all bundled up. I drew this sketch while overhearing some heinous teens talking. I think if you grew up in NYC you would be a sleazier more foul version of yourself....just a thought.

At the Guggenheim- the Maurizo Cattelan retrospective, ALL.

You can see the herds of people in line that you are trying to avoid at all costs, it was an amazing thing to take in but at the end of it all, I am no longer sure what I think of the artist- it was a lot of one liners, winks and leg pulling. Not much gravitas when you have a minature Hitler floating by a cord, sizzle si!, but any substantial steak....????

I caught the JFK piece about a year and a half ago at the New Museum in NYC, you went around a corner, its dark, and boom, a dead man in a coffin- and it is JFK! This was not just all denouement seeing it again, it also made you see how things looked silly and just too pop-shebang-fizz (to borrow from Gainsbourg)

The New Museum now? Forget about it! about a 3 hour wait in the -9 told me to move on.

But you can look at the mammoth undertaking it was for the museum to install a slide in the gallery, they cut a hole in the floor:



I stopped at the Sperone Westwater, just down the street in the Bowery. A show of sculptural work, old and new, not much of a focus but it was interesting stuff and the building is a massive structure which has work in the elevator on display. Most apartments could fit in this elevator mind you.

A sort of Gorilla John the Baptist with rubber gloves and disposable cups, all made out of marble, an ironic tour de force I suppose.

By evening fall, it was even colder, I slipped into this bar not far Chinatown, called Home sweet Home. Loud, but warm! I relaxed and drew some of the characters.

This was before it got too packed.


Also, dropped in on Caroline Falby, she is an ex-pat who is working on her Masters at Hunter College in city. Her studio is close to Times Square, it is this massive building which just feels like an old art building.

You can check out some her work here


She is working on some new stuff at the moment- she seems very interested in the War of 1812 and what it means to Canada and the United States. In the meantime, you can see her multi referential work which employs a breezy technique to inject joy and a seemingly carefree element to the work.


I drew this double drawing of the bartender while having a boozey afternoon, at the back of this place called Bread.

I really did leave the canal/chinatown area!

The Neue gallerie had some beautiful Egon Schiele drawings on display, more than you see if you go to the Albertina drawing gallery in Vienna ( but that was based on my trip in the early 90s, might have been one of those things when you go and everything is closed), so that was a treat.

If you go to NYC soon, you have to go to the Neue Gallerie, its focus is Austrian/German work -- amazing stuff. Also, have a coffee in the Cafe Sabarsky, it is a highly regarded dinner spot. I was there on Saturday and the lineups to eat were astounding.

A little sketch I made about a year and half ago while drinking a $6 Viennese coffee, it was good but six dollars? I know, I know, its New York baby.

Bartender at Bread, circa 2012

I have a drawing in my 2010 grouping of a male bartender at the front of this restaurant, this is at the back. We were having some afternoon drinks.

Alan Chan, Jan 14th 2012.

After a late night and a cold walk, we stopped at this place on Prince street cafe for a coffee.

Working at the Studio

I thought I would just include this shot from my phone of the wall opposite where I am painting at the studio, it is a bit of a wall of inspiration, its a bit of an 80s phenom true enough, but hey, Avedon's house was full of walls that had things pinned to it, and if its good enough for Richard Avedon...

So as you look across this mess, you will see your obligatory amount of postcards, there is a beautiful Elizabethan tunic/dress thingy from the V&A, its something to see in real life, really.

There are also a great deal of studies I have done over the years of GIJoe figures, and a C3P0 from a painting I destroyed a few years ago, I could not destroy this figure it looked pretty great. It was a very personal painting, and I was never too happy with it, done at my old shared studio on Niagara St, Jeez the utterly un-fond memories of that place, most of which are foul smell related, those who visited me there will remember my roommate...

Other highlights: a postcard of a Hans Belmer sculpture I saw in France in 2009, Koons' Michael and Bubbles, and a watercolour of Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin from a photo by Helmut Newton. I started the painting and realised it was not watercolour paper but archival computer photo paper, interesting texture actually.

Oh, by the way, I found a link to Richard Avedon's house in NYC, take the tour, the place is amazing. Click here.

Clothing, Despots and really really good Villians are always British

Sure, when you think of Die Hard the late 80s action film opus, you think of the last of the archetype villain who is German, Hans Gruber.




Within a year, Lethal Weapon 2 would be released and the villains were no longer Germans, our post war animosities were put to rest and now it was the South Africans, with Apartheid, who were the baddies, trading Krugerrands on the streets of LA.



Of course what made Die Hard villain so devilish was Alan Rickman's acting, a classic Brit. He is suave, the first wave of Euro trash we see in Hollywood and this suaveness is shown by his talk of clothes, he mentions how Yasser Arafat has 2 shirts from Brooks Brothers himself. Man, is this guy evil, he knows what a former terrorist wears.

Yasser had a far better idea of how to dress than Gaddafi, like Castro, he decided never to stray from his initial fashion success and stayed with the military olive drab by and large. Why did he not call Muammar up and lecture him on his outlandish fashion sense, I'll never know. Anyways, what is done is done, Gaddafi needs to dress like he is a friend of Diane Keaton, making his own dresses for the red carpet on Oscar night.

Here is the Tyrant who brought us the rumble in the Jungle and his fashion sense:

On the other hand, have a look at these jackets, this is Military influenced fashion that is bang on the money

You can tell these styling of these jackets are just perfect. Many come from a now defunct place in NYC called Operations. These paintings are from my series on Jan's Jackets, and at about 12 Watercolour and Ink, that is pretty much the whole run that I will do of them.

The original idea came from some jackets of mine that were destroyed and I worked on repairing them, then from there, I started painting images of them but abandoned the project. The title came to me in a flash at the time, Battle Dress, as my clothing was often military styled or a military jacket and appeared to have gone through the wars, I will not elaborate.

Here is one of those paintings from about 2 years ago, soon I'll post some more as they are completed.

Lastly, as those who know me, you will remember my Lethal Weapon 2 phase last year where I could not stop making references to it, Alma Varda...9 o'clock. Like that.

Anyways, back when we all sat in a car watching LW2 back in 1989 at a drive-in we all laughed at the scene where the evil South African Diplomat shoots Riggs (Mel) and then shouts "Diplomatic Immunity" as a defence.

Well of course, Murtagh was gonna waste him!

But yet again, proving that life is stranger than that thing that Hollywood claims is art, is the recent news that a US diplomat shot and killed 2 men in Pakistan, he may be a CIA operative and the US says that Pakistan has no right to hold him as he has diplomatic immunity!



here is the BBC article

Last NYC post, promise

There is this picture/advert that says so much, so mush about things that are so wrong.



Yes, you are looking at a sandwich comprised of two deep fried pieces of chicken, processed cheese and bacon in the center with, i think, mustard/mayo sauce.

I immediately thought of Patton Oswalt, and his KFC bowl routine. Check it out here. "America has spoken,....we want a failure pile in a sadness bowl"

Left over stuff from NYC

I was looking for something on my phone the other week or more and I found all these pics I shot in NYC that I forgot all about.




OK, this one is really the best but I will start here. This was at the New Museum in the Bowery ( is it safe? is it safe?) Technically, i am in violation of the copy right for this image but I had to take a snap of this sculpture, I thought it was maurizio cattelan but I am tired and confused so whatever for the moment. It was a dark room and there in a coffin, lying in state was JFK as a wax sculpture, hair, a suit the whole 9 yards. It is really shocking to anyone who grew up in that time period or after in the shadow of Camelot.



Oh, this is the performance artist Marina Abramovic siting on her tuchas, in "the artist is present" she sat at this table for like a month or something. The real news is that the MOMA remounted many of her performances with performance artists including 2 nude people in a doorway, they are so close you and you have to pass betwixt them to gain entry into the gallery prompting the Tyler Durden question, who do I give the ass and who the crotch? The guy was my height so I faced him and trudged through, perhaps I was more comfortable being crotch to crotch as it were, passing swords whatever your metaphor. He was so damn close i looked him in the eye and I could not focus on the guy, that is close. I also stepped on the naked lady's feet.





Lastly, I think I saw these at the whitney...I am honestly not sure I know an old man asked me not to turn the handle of these doors. The windows of these french doors had these beautiful motifs on them, with zodiac and other characters, the three graces-simply elegant.



Also there was this, i meant to take more pics of these in the subway. People were putting there NYC 2 cents worth on every surface underground. I do not picture a tagger doing this but rather a 40 something witty nebbish office worker.

Chef again

Sushi chefs....I need better note taking.

Jesus and the Money Lenders in the temple

This sketch looks like I was looking at the El Greco painting, perhaps in the Frick collection in New York. It is an amazing gallery, around the corner from Central Park, the Neue Gallerie, the Guggenheim, all that good stuff.

This is just a detail, I like the way the painting is essentially done monochromatically then the reds yellows, etc are added in washes.

I always wanted to see this piece of St. Francis receiving the Stigmata

Of course, it was not on display.

YOu can plan your trip to the Frick HERE

Cafe Sabarsky....?

I have no idea where this is drawn, may even be the shitty Irish bar.

I must have hated this place

I wrote "Shitty Irish Bar in NYC"....yikes.

Bartender at Bread

Not sure what possessed me to make this naff drawing of the bartender.

Bread restaurant NYC

This place is great, food is good and the people watching is fantastic albeit dimly lit and difficult for drawing.

You can check out this place when you are next in the Nolita area of NYC, here is a review with terrible pictures from the New York Magazine

Gormley on Madison Square Park

Meanwhile, walking past Madison Square near the Hotel Chelsea, you notice this
And to be honest, either this picture was taken the day it was 'revealed' or these people are all tourists. New Yorkers did not seem to care that this famous British sculptor had decided to go global with flashing/exposing/exhibitionism.

On the whole, the sculptures that you could see at a distance on rooftops seemed the most profound, within the context of a city, they seem like non-passive potential jumpers and I guess that was a complaint of people here, as it brought out memories of Sept 11.

Long Time No Post

OK OK, I have been meaning to make about 10 million posts but where does the time go I ask you in the most rhetorical fashion?

A few weeks ago, I went to NYC via the Megabus, and frankly, meh is my pronouncement on this cheap way to get down there. But when it comes to New York City, unlike much of life, it is not the journey but the destination that matters so don't worry about the crappy bus ride, devoid of the much promised free Wi-Fi and electricity.

No, its more about going to the Neue Galerie on the edge of Central Park, the German art centre which has Klimt, Schiele and Kokoschka paintings and a traveling Otto Dix show which will be in Montreal soon.



Otto Dix's series of prints made from his harrowing experiences in WW1 are as terrifying as they are hilarious and sad.

This is where the paintings purchased from the Bloch-Bauer heirs now live. The Adele Bloch-Bauer portrait and some of Klimt's last paintings are here.

check out the Gallery here



This a little sketch from an Egon Schiele painting that was so simple and utter perfect in it's sense of contour.



I sat in the cafe Sabarsky, named after the Klimt art expert who curated a Klimt show I saw 1991 in Florence, it kinda blew me away- you know all about the finished paintings, but it was the sketches that were so simple and stunning. The show was in the massive Fortezza della Basso, which is sort of on the edge of the city.

It is also on a ring road where tranny hookers ply their trade. As students, we had to walk past here every day to get to school, which was fine in the day as we could navigate the insane "Italian Job" Style driving, dog shit and used hypodermic needles which were part of the everyday (Florence, in the early 1990s was apparently the Heroin capital of Western Europe). At Night, however, Fiat Puntos would slow to a crawl, looking for just the right combo of white fur coat, black wig and shiny fuck me boots that made that irresistible Tranny. We would walk past it all in amazement.

More of the city that never sleeps

Yup, its true-New York is a pretty amazing city. Just walking around we saw some pretty amazing things and got taken in by the various vibes of neighborhoods. Luckily for us, it was very sunny the whole time we were there so we could spend our days walking around eating and drinking prosecco.

Of course, we could have made a special trip itinerary of all the places we went to that have been featured in movies. These two kids on the steps were at St. Patrick's cathedral, where Soylent Green (its made of people!!!!!!) and Beneath the Planet of the Apes was filmed.

Luckily there was no intercontinental ballistic missile there.

We walked to the Neue Museum, which means we crossed the Diamond district but Marathon Man "Is it Safe?" did not occur to me until afterward.

I like New York in October