KAREN WILKIN
At the Galleries
In
Paris, not long ago, before greedy landlords drove them elsewhere, a
group of the most serious painters and sculptors working near the Bastille
used to hold an annual studio exhibition call ed "Le Genie de la Bastille."
During the run of the show, the neighborhood was transformed. Visitors
clutching maps provided by the exhibitors wandered in and out of the
alleys and courtyards of the old furniture-making workshops that the
artists had colonized, searching for
Jond du
COllY,
escalier
17,
4e hage.
Curators, collectors, art dealers, artists, afficionados, and the merely curious
strode along the Faubourg St. Antoine and the Rue de Charonne, trying
to cover as much territory as possible. [n Le Genie's last years, when mem–
bership in the exhibiting artists' association was at its peak and the open
studios extended across the entire quartier, the event was known as
Ie
jo<~;zing de la Bas/ille.
r
think of this whenever [ go to Chelsea these days. When the newly
"hot" district's galleries are open, those wide, windswept,
long
crosstown
blocks are populated by determined-looking art lovers armed with
Callery
Gil ide,
moving as purposefully as the Bastille "joggers" and, often, looking
as perplexed as anyone seeking
Jond du
COllY,
escalier 17.
It's debatable
whether their consternation is due to the difficul ty of finding widely dis–
persed galleries among auto body shops, windshield repair emporia, and
steel-shuttered vacant buildings ripe for conversion, or if it is a reaction to
the raw newness of the area. (The overpowering reek of what I think was
fresh concrete and even fresher paint recently made me leave Max
Protech's splendid 22nd Street space sooner than an extremely interesting
exhibition of the Japanese architect Tadeo Ando's drawings warranted.)
The puzzled looks may also be provoked by the sheer magnificence
and amplitude of the Chelsea galleries. Art often seems subordinate to styl–
ish design in these vast, pristine, elegant, and-I am sorry to
say-sometimes pretentious spaces, a problem compounded by the current
taste for sparse installation. The other side of the coin is pretentiousness on
the artist's part-over-blown , over-scaled work clearly made in response to
the heady prospect of thirty foot walls-but [ suppose it is both irresistible
and a necessary precaution, given the number bf visitors [ have watched
enter one of the new gal leries, admire the ceiling and the light fixtures,
glance at the art, and go on to the next spectacle.
