On a cold and rainy Friday evening in late February, dozens of people crowded into the back room of Chelsea’s Martos Gallery during its opening reception for Aura Rosenberg’s new show. They stood around a large rectangle of black velvet, waiting for a performance organized by the artist to start. Eventually a man and woman walked in. They were young and lithe and naked.

“Oh no,” someone groaned. People began shooting photos and videos.
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The New York Observer‘s Fall Arts Preview issue hit newsstands this week. Assembled by Observer staff and contributors, the magazine offers a guide to culture in New York this season, from visual art to books to opera. Its contents are below, which include Dan Duray on the 100th anniversary of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Arms and Armor collection, Michael H. Miller on Marco Roth and Daniel D’Addario on the upcoming films on American presidents. Read More

It appears that the food at Frieze New York is going to be absolutely superb. Among the restaurants on offer are the Upper East Side mainstay Sant Ambroeus, Orchard Street’s fast-rising Fat Radish and omnipresent Bushwick pizza purveyors Roberta’s. But if you’re going to make the trip to Randall’s Island, why not also dine at Read More

As William H. Gass’s own writing often has something of a confessional bent, it would not be inappropriate to begin a review of the eighth collection of essays by the great novelist, philosopher and critic, Life Sentences: Literary Judgments and Accounts (Knopf, 350 pages, $28.95), with a confession. At 19, being underfunded, we lifted a copy of his pointillist 1976 classic On Being Blue from a bookstore. His listy, lush, jazzy, staccato, masterful riff on the epistemological variants, meanings and hues of the gloomiest color makes a powerful palliative in moments of blueness. That book was a dose of what he’s called his “metaphysical hot todd[ies],” elixirs we would recommend to any melancholic. Read More

The West Chelsea art district is rarely quieter than it is late on Sunday nights. The employees of the neighborhood’s galleries, which operate Tuesday through Saturday, are in the middle of their weekends, and even most of the local clubs settle down a bit. However, this past Sunday, The Transom found West 26th Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues, abuzz with activity. Luxury cars—Cadillac Escalades, Mercedes-Benzes, a coveted Maybach—lined the street, and rap was spilling out of the second-floor Tony Shafrazi Gallery. Read More