Red Dot art fair

Tonight we attended the opening reception of the Red Dot art fair, at the Park South Hotel, where we were most charmed by the proprietors of the Repetti gallery. Later, at Pongal, almost every table was occupied by dealers and visitors from the fair.

P.S.1: Best in show

P.S.1 is quickly becoming my favorite museum in New York. I started this blog a year ago with a trip to P.S.1, so it's hard to understand why it has taken me so long to go back. On Monday, wandering around the quiet hallways of the former school on a frigid holiday, under the watch of sometimes very young guards who might giggle when they see your eyes widen, I began to look at the densely packed museum as a possible standard against which to judge other contemporary art museums.

Standouts on this trip were the photographs of Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, who has used sugar, dirt, dust, chocolate sauce, and perhaps most memorably, peanut butter and jam to create two likenesses of the Mona Lisa. Also the cool black-and-white images of Norwegian photographer Tom Sandberg (above).

On Saturday, we saw "Every Day Above Ground," based on Michael Ondaatje's novel "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid," at P.S. 122. Later, dinner at Mercadito.

Armando Reverón

This retrospective exhibition of Venezuelan artist Armando Reverón, at The Museum of Modern Art, made me wonder how many other treasures have been ignored by Western museums.

Ehon: Japanese picture books

Yesterday I happened to be in the vicinity of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, and just barely managed to catch the exhibition Ehon: The Artist and the Book in Japan, which closes on February 4. That's where I encountered Kyoto-based Kamisaka Sekka (1866–1942) and his remarkably spare "Spring Rice Fields,” above, from Flowers of a Hundred Worlds, 1910. Then it was off to Turks & Frogs to celebrate Pinky's new job! (And then the Brooklyn Brewery for a surprise birthday party!)