Franz west rules windows#

Co-ops have made it to Dumbo and Williamsburg, but few galleries there have had staying power.

Franz west rules windows#

New York's Chelsea has grown denser than a mall, but the names on gallery windows still look familiar from Soho and 57th Street. The loss of the World Trade Center only magnifies Modernism's lasting imprint on the Manhattan skyline, and the future is up for grabs. London does make the American scene seem like business as usual. It goes with my postcard of the number 8 bus, running all the way from East London to New Bond Street, past the sedate confines of Cork Street galleries. Let me offer a taste of one critic week in a big city not his own. Do they know it all, though-and do they see it in light of the same modernist traditions? What is it about British art, and is it really all that different? New Yorkers know well that extravagant, frightening mix of art, real estate, and high finance. One can see it in the real-estate signs boasting of sales all over the East End. One can see it in 'the Gherkin,' Norman Foster's Swiss Re tower of green glass, like a warhead set to launch over Whitechapel High Street and perhaps East London's oldest gallery. One can see it in the light reflecting off the dome of City Hall and Millennium Bridge, as if leading the way to Tate Modern and the Saatchi Collection.

One can see it in the cranes towering over the South Bank, already helping to sweep the Docklands studios and distant galleries into the fabric of urban life. How did five years in postmodern art get to seem so long? I had not seen London in five years, but even a first-time visitor would perceive change, literally, in the air. In New York City Gallery-Going: London in Fall 2003