By Alan Behr NEW YORK, 1 OCTOBER 2016 — The spiraling rotunda of The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum was closed recently, the floor filled with great crates in natural wood and fluorescent green that some took for readymade art. They were not, but the big draw had just been installed: a sculpture by the contemporary Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. One-part art theoretician, many more parts provocateur, in 2011, the artist mounted, at this very museum, the site-specific exhibition that was intended as his valediction: nearly all his major works were hung on wires stretching from the ceiling to the floor of the rotunda—a monsoon of art. Cattelan thereupon retired, quite young, but like Frank Sinatra, it was all premature. Five years on, he has returned to pick up where he left off, at the Guggenheim. Much of Modern and contemporary representational art has rejected the primary mission of most prior styles that originated with Western

By Alan Behr NEW YORK, 7 MAY 2010 — Whether Nude, Green Leaves and Bust, the Picasso painting that a few days ago sold for a record-breaking $106.5 million, is a work of artistic genius or an example of the painter beginning to relax into stylistic gimmickry is open to debate. What is inarguable is that it is iconic Picasso, and as such, will hold its value as a commodity. Equally inarguable is that at the nucleus of the concentric circles of events that led to this week’s sale is the man who can be credited (or blamed) for having single-handedly created the art-as-commodity phenomenon that bolstered the careers of many of the 20th century’s brand name artists: Leo Castelli. The question that serves as the through line of Leo & His Circle: The Life of Leo Castelli by Annie Cohen-Solal (Alfred A. Knopf, 525 pages) is this: How did

By Alan Behr NEW YORK, 8 DECEMBER 2015 — One of the mysteries that Italy presents to the world is how style seems to come so naturally and happen so easily in the nation’s disparate regions and within all walks of life. It is as if elegant design in clothing, shoes, accessories (and just about everything else) grows naturally in the surroundings, like grapes in a trusted vineyard. Italian clothes are like California wines: world-class but once relatively unknown internationally until the occurrence of a singular event.  For the wines of California, the moment came in Paris, at a blind tasting on 24 May 1976 (known to oenophiles as (the “Judgment of Paris”) during which New World wines beat their French counterparts in every category. The moment of clarity came for Italian fashion when the Florentine buying agent Giovanni Battista Giorgini invited the forces of international fashion to attend a group show

By Alan Behr NEW YORK, 7 JUNE 2010  — Although time has vindicated those who include photography among the fine arts, current trends have made artistic credibility rather difficult to retain for those fine-art photographers working in the documentary tradition. Do a poor or even competent job and you will be called a mere maker of snapshots; do brilliant work and you get labeled a journalist. Perhaps because more variables are controlled when photographers stage an image than when they click a shutter in order to freeze a frame from real life, one can be lulled into thinking that there is more art involved when the subject matter and circumstances are carefully composed. Some of those tableaux vivants can be quite good, such as Cindy Sherman’s Complete Untitled Film Stills (1977–1980) — a series of sixty-nine imaginary movie publicity shots in which the photographer played an actress playing her roles. The problem with most staged photography, however,

By Alan Behr NEW YORK, 18 JULY 2013 — If Susan Sontag was right that photography flourishes in warrior cultures, Britain should have contributed to photography in parallel to its remarkable contributions to world literature. That it has not yet done so, and that the art of Britain still emerges most profoundly from the QWERTY keyboard, rather than the lens, remains a question of culture rather than aesthetics. The British have the English language, one that, with a pool of about a quarter million words, can express every nuance of the human experience — even if it means, on occasion, reaching for a loan word such as nuance. When you live on an island, you learn to be particularly aware of the presence of others and to avoid wearing your heart on your sleeve. A result, that famous British reserve, is why it is hard to take an interesting picture