Francis Bacon @ the Met

The first major exhibition in New York in twenty years devoted to one of the most compelling painters of the twentieth century, Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective features some 130 works--sixty-five paintings and as many archival items from public and private collections from around the world--that span the entirety of the artist’s full and celebrated career. Marking the centenary of the artist’s birth in Dublin in 1909, the exhibition brings together the most significant works from each period of Bacon’s career, focusing on the key subjects and themes that run through his extraordinary creative output. The presentation affords the most comprehensive examination to date of Bacon’s sources and working processes, offering a reevaluation of the artist’s work in light of a range of new interpretations and archival materials that have emerged since his death in 1992.

Michelle Obama @ the Met

Joe Polifrone on C-Monster.net

joe polifrone on sweet-station

it’s a difficult time for models

Fashion & Style
Actresses Are Edging Out Models on Magazine Covers
By SUZY MENKES
Published: May 5, 2009
Hollywood celebrities rather than supermodels are now more likely to appear on the glossy covers of fashion magazines.

familial feud

A century after Charles Dickens wrote his 1859 novel about the French Revolution, The Tampa Tribune's Leland Hawes began an eight-part series, "A Tale of Two Cities," devoted to exploring the contentious relationship between Tampa and St. Petersburg.

Today, an eerie civility exists between the two great cities on opposite sides of Tampa Bay. It was not always so. Since the founding of the twin cities on Tampa Bay in the 19th century, Tampa and St. Petersburg have fought for urban, economic, and journalistic supremacy.

As the twigs were bent

By the 1880 and 1890s, the collective destinies of Tampa and St. Petersburg seemed set. And the quarreling began.

nytimes: affordable art 4 sale?

May 3, 2009
Art
$80 Million? Try a Tenth of That. Art’s New Numbers.
By CAROL VOGEL

TWO Madoff victims and a hedge fund manager are among the sellers at this spring’s important auctions of Impressionist, modern and contemporary art.

You could say a faint whiff of desperation is in the air: the catalogs are a shadow of what they were six months ago, as are the values and — for the most part — quality of the paintings, drawings and sculptures on offer...

met gala cont'd

viscountess of vogue


a fashion shoot for the magazine right before the ball, during which the photographer Arthur Elgort will snap models graciously leaping through the museum like gazelles, expensive fabric billowing behind them.