Piers 92 and 94

My and everyone's goodness!, the Art Show on the  piers! this was pier 92 and pier 94, and enormous in every way! So I went with Michele Cone, friend from always, also went to Bryn Mawr, also writes on art, but she is a réal art historian, and I a happy interloper
occasionally
..
So there on the piers, was everyone you ever knew in the world of art,  and Michele knows -- in her élégant way-- just about everyone, what a joy to attend something so IMMENSE with someone you love,  and you can just wander from place to place... I loved most the group from St. Ives, with a lovely John Wells (many years ago, when I was there in St. Ives with our beloved friends Ann Aslan and Clive Blackmore, I had exactly enough to purchase, for my NY ait, a small and lovely John Wells, .horizontally-shaped, like this one at Pier 92.

 I had not seen his picture until today, in a major catalogue of the gallery exhibition him, and ah, of course, exactly the kind of face I would have  -- why say "would have," let's just say, did -- fall in love with. Red Grooms, who lives with his gorgeons wife, the daugher of a totally staggeringly beautiful  woman I met, of course,  with Raymond Mason so many years ago , friends of Yves Bonnefoy, in Paris or London or somewhere -- anyway, Red loved also this piece of art, and we talked about Arthur Dove: I HAVE SELDOM HAD A CHANCE TO TALK WITH ANYONE ABOUT ARTHUR DOVE! --  and also, to the left of the John Wells, was a Ben Nicholson, instnatly recognizable among millions of simple , well, "simple" works.

If I were starting all over, indeed I might, if I could have the over the years developed expertise, write on American art and pietro. But you would have to do it well, and not just from enthusiasm, the way I write and I guess live... I loved teaching, and yes, it was always about poetic-type students, like Maggie Nelson, who OF COURSE won a MacArthur award, and that kind of excited poetic reaching-after intellect, like a récent friend-student, JoJo Karlin, like that...

and Red Grooms and Michele like that also -- many years ago, in the Tate, I think, I found a sort of reproduction of a Nicholson which instantly  purchased, and have hanging, and regard with affection. And then , a centuries-old hand, which I found in Bangkok, there with my husband Boyce, and have in the not much daylight, on a table by the window, in case any light makes its way in, which it does from, say, 12:35 to about 3:15 in the winter months.. .

let me end this, then, with affection, for our friends and the works of art we care about, not for the commercial aspect, but for the réal thing, apologies and actually, hommage to Tom Stoppard also,

How fortunate I  have been!

being

goodness, how remarkable it is to be, to be ABLE to lament privately and publicly, about anything, about how the world has changed since November, not just here but everywhere
today, which happens to be Dec. 23 in the wee hours, I remember a full yesterday, spent trying to doctor my SimplyWoolf text, which, says Charley who runs this bizarre ebook only series -- I accept everything I have never done, so I said suddenly YES to Woolf, having said YES to Proust (I would always say YES to anything Proust of course) but someone else said previously yes, I did our beloved everyone's football heroine Woolf, and now have to do it WHAT? chronologically! imagine writing a biography chronologically, not just thematically, anyway I started that -- then went to MOMA to meet my from so long ago friend Michele Cone, and we saw the Russian Revolution, amazing, large, VERY large, had lunch to celebrate her anniversary with Terry, also from North Carolina, like me , and I had clam tagliolini because at Marea the other night to celebrate Carol Richards' birthday (she saved me for a year at the Getty in 1998 I think it was because I had no car and only a bike (a year in LA with no car, because I don't drive, and she was stupendously great, like Marjorie Perloff, whom I would celebrate any time I could, and where is
THIS BLOG GOING?)
ah, so I had seen that the superdirector Peter Richards, whose Anna Christie we ventured out to see in the freezingest night I remember for ages and it was wonderful, anyway, so Peter was having tagliolini and I envied it SO I HAD IT FOR LUNCH at the MODERN and it was really grand

then we saw the Russian exhibition, wow, very wow, and then I went back up to Picabia, for which Michele had written, then photography because I ran into, well, walked into Richard Kramer who had just seen it, then an Italian film something like Venice, the Moon and so on, then supper with Boyce at a new place, Radicchio because of black linguini with seafood and now back to the SimplyWoolf, and yes I would write about her any time I was asked to also
AND Matthew and Emily will have a baby boy and so Christmas is here, since they are here from Cambridge in the old country as it were
so goodnight