Bernie Madoff once rode the gilded elevator to the 17th floor, from which he and a mere handful of employees built one of the biggest pyramid schemes in history. In the last couple of years, while Mr. Madoff's empire of false hopes has been publicly dismantled, the Lipstick Building has suffered nearly that same fate. It was revealed yesterday that the building has filed for bankruptcy protection. 

Under the plan proposed in the court papers, lender Royal Bank of Canada's $210 million secured claim will be reduced to $130 million. In exchange, the lender will receive full ownership of the building, now in the hands of an entity known as Metropolitan Real Estate Investors. The building owners are seeking to complete the reorganization by the year's end, according to a press release. 

Metropolitan fought to hold onto the Philip Johson-designed 1980s tower, which it bought at the top of the market for $607 million. The owner narrowly averted disaster in 2008, but that was simply a reprieve. Mr. Madoff isn't the only one who's left the building, which is now only two-thirds full. "The recent violent downturn in the building and real estate markets have had a significant impact on the debtor's operations," the company said in court documents. "Vacancy rates have increased making it more challenging to service the debt on the property. Renewal lease rates have also been lower than anticipated."

In June, its biggest lender, Royal Bank of Canada, moved to foreclose because the owners had defaulted on the loan. 

The Times once dubbed 885 Third Avenue (or at least the 17th floor of it), the place "where wealth went to vanish." Sadly, it may be easier to auction off the Ponzi schemer's personal items to satisfy his creditors than it will be to bring life back to his former throne. 

lkusisto@observer.com 

Mr. Sánchez’s landscape paintings have been likened to the work of Caspar David Friedrich as well as the American painters of the Hudson River School. This is itself very high praise, but not any higher than the work deserves. Like Friedrich and the Hudson River painters, Mr. Sánchez brings an epic vision to the depiction of landscape—a vision that combines the most meticulous depiction of nature with a metaphysical comprehension of its spiritual implications.

From the clouds in the sky to the majestic waterfalls that flow into the leafy, rocky terrain of a virgin wilderness, Mr. Sánchez is a master of everything he surveys, and he never hesitates to pack his paintings with a surfeit of detail that affords every rock, tree and sunlit vista its share of pictorial brilliance.

Who, then, is this remarkable painter? Born in the village of Aguada de Pasajeros in central Cuba, Mr. Sánchez studied for two years at the San Alejandro School of Plastic Arts in Havana in the mid-1960’s and later at the National School of Art. He won the Joan Miró Prize (awarded by the Miró Foundation in Barcelona) in 1980; in 1984, he won the Amelia Peláez Award for painting at Havana’s first biennial. His first retrospective exhibition was at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana in 1985. Four years later, he left Cuba for Mexico, and afterwards moved to southern Florida. He now divides his time between Miami and his home in Costa Rica.

Surely we would have heard of Mr. Sánchez long ago had it not been for the troubled political relations that have obtained for so many years between Cuba and the United States. But now that we’ve been given the opportunity to see his extraordinary paintings, it’s safe to assume that he’ll enjoy a good deal of attention in this country.

Tomás Sánchez: Buscador de Pai-sajes, New Paintings and Drawings remains on view at the Marlborough Gallery, 40 West 57th Street, through Dec. 30.

Mr. Sánchez’s landscape paintings have been likened to the work of Caspar David Friedrich as well as the American painters of the Hudson River School. This is itself very high praise, but not any higher than the work deserves. Like Friedrich and the Hudson River painters, Mr. Sánchez brings an epic vision to the depiction of landscape—a vision that combines the most meticulous depiction of nature with a metaphysical comprehension of its spiritual implications.

From the clouds in the sky to the majestic waterfalls that flow into the leafy, rocky terrain of a virgin wilderness, Mr. Sánchez is a master of everything he surveys, and he never hesitates to pack his paintings with a surfeit of detail that affords every rock, tree and sunlit vista its share of pictorial brilliance.

Who, then, is this remarkable painter? Born in the village of Aguada de Pasajeros in central Cuba, Mr. Sánchez studied for two years at the San Alejandro School of Plastic Arts in Havana in the mid-1960’s and later at the National School of Art. He won the Joan Miró Prize (awarded by the Miró Foundation in Barcelona) in 1980; in 1984, he won the Amelia Peláez Award for painting at Havana’s first biennial. His first retrospective exhibition was at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana in 1985. Four years later, he left Cuba for Mexico, and afterwards moved to southern Florida. He now divides his time between Miami and his home in Costa Rica.

Surely we would have heard of Mr. Sánchez long ago had it not been for the troubled political relations that have obtained for so many years between Cuba and the United States. But now that we’ve been given the opportunity to see his extraordinary paintings, it’s safe to assume that he’ll enjoy a good deal of attention in this country.

Tomás Sánchez: Buscador de Pai-sajes, New Paintings and Drawings remains on view at the Marlborough Gallery, 40 West 57th Street, through Dec. 30.

He was born in Germany, where he was trained as an architect, and it was as an architect that he initially established himself in New York. In 1904, he designed the Bronx Borough Courthouse, but this remained his only major completed work in architecture, which he then abandoned in favor of painting.

In 1910, Bluemner met Stieglitz, whose 291 Gallery was already an established haven for the American avant-garde. Bluemner’s first solo exhibition at 291 came in 1915—a series of eight landscape paintings—and this further confirmed his commitment to painting. So, too, did his contributions to the prestigious Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters.

Yet a variety of vexations continued to make both art and life extremely difficult for Bluemner. Money had always been a problem for him, and it was a problem that became more acute over the course of his career. When he could no longer afford to live in New York, he settled in the New Jersey countryside; and when he could no longer afford the materials he needed for his oil paintings, he turned to watercolor as an alternative. Yet his slide into penury proved irreversible.

Then, too, there was the problem of Bluemner’s German identity. This became especially acute in 1917, when the United States declared war against Germany, which inevitably provoked a terrific wave of anti-German sentiment. This added considerably to Bluemner’s woes. In every respect but one—his painting—he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And even as a painter, he was in some respects ahead of his time. Had he come of age as an artist in the era of color-oriented abstraction, he would very likely have been acclaimed an avant-garde master. The series of paintings called “Suns and Moons,” which Bluemner created in 1926-27, are virtual prototypes for a kind of color abstraction that later became commonplace in American abstract painting.

The show that Barbara Haskell has organized in Oscar Bluemner: A Passion for Color thus has an interest for us that extends well beyond Bluemner’s personal misfortunes. It’s an exhibition that anyone curious about American modernism will want to see. And Ms. Haskell is to be congratulated, also, for the accompanying catalog. She has triumphantly succeeded in rescuing an ill-fated painter from the tragedies of his life in a way that will allow posterity to appreciate his accomplishments.

Oscar Bluemner: A Passion for Color remains on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art through Feb. 12, 2006.

He was born in Germany, where he was trained as an architect, and it was as an architect that he initially established himself in New York. In 1904, he designed the Bronx Borough Courthouse, but this remained his only major completed work in architecture, which he then abandoned in favor of painting.

In 1910, Bluemner met Stieglitz, whose 291 Gallery was already an established haven for the American avant-garde. Bluemner’s first solo exhibition at 291 came in 1915—a series of eight landscape paintings—and this further confirmed his commitment to painting. So, too, did his contributions to the prestigious Forum Exhibition of Modern American Painters.

Yet a variety of vexations continued to make both art and life extremely difficult for Bluemner. Money had always been a problem for him, and it was a problem that became more acute over the course of his career. When he could no longer afford to live in New York, he settled in the New Jersey countryside; and when he could no longer afford the materials he needed for his oil paintings, he turned to watercolor as an alternative. Yet his slide into penury proved irreversible.

Then, too, there was the problem of Bluemner’s German identity. This became especially acute in 1917, when the United States declared war against Germany, which inevitably provoked a terrific wave of anti-German sentiment. This added considerably to Bluemner’s woes. In every respect but one—his painting—he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And even as a painter, he was in some respects ahead of his time. Had he come of age as an artist in the era of color-oriented abstraction, he would very likely have been acclaimed an avant-garde master. The series of paintings called “Suns and Moons,” which Bluemner created in 1926-27, are virtual prototypes for a kind of color abstraction that later became commonplace in American abstract painting.

The show that Barbara Haskell has organized in Oscar Bluemner: A Passion for Color thus has an interest for us that extends well beyond Bluemner’s personal misfortunes. It’s an exhibition that anyone curious about American modernism will want to see. And Ms. Haskell is to be congratulated, also, for the accompanying catalog. She has triumphantly succeeded in rescuing an ill-fated painter from the tragedies of his life in a way that will allow posterity to appreciate his accomplishments.

Oscar Bluemner: A Passion for Color remains on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art through Feb. 12, 2006.

Exactly what impelled Burchfield to focus his art so intently on the macabre and the grotesque remains something of a mystery. It’s been suggested that he was influenced by the short stories of Sherwood Anderson, and while that influence may account for the feeling of isolation and abandonment in Burchfield’s work, it doesn’t really shed much light on his penchant for depicting both nature and the manmade world in such stark and threatening terms. It’s certain, anyway, that he had a deeply introspective turn of mind.

At times, writing interested him almost as much as painting, and he’s known to have written voluminous journals. He’s also known to have created a series of cryptic symbols, representing extreme states of mind, and it may be assumed that some of these—drooping trees and black rain, among them—are elaborated in his paintings. As a youngster, Burchfield is said to have taken a keen interest in nature, collecting specimens, etc., yet in his maturity his paintings and drawings tended to transform the natural world into a phantasmagoria.

It’s this powerful affinity for the fantastic that separates Burchfield from Edward Hopper, the only other American painter with whom he’s commonly compared. It was never an apt comparison, but in the period when Burchfield and Hopper were the best-selling painters on the American scene, it was naturally assumed that they had something in common. As it turned out, what they had in common was only their distance from the kind of radical modernism that was beginning to command more and more attention.

In fact, Hopper’s paintings are devoid of Burchfield’s brand of imagination. Hopper’s forte was in his psychological depiction of the relationships between the characters he portrayed. Hopper was indeed a far subtler painter than Burchfield. In many ways, Hopper was closer in spirit to a writer like Hemingway than to any other painter.

Burchfield was in some important respects the greater craftsman. In the very first watercolor we encounter in the show at DC Moore Gallery— Sunshine and Rain (1946- 47)—the luminosity of the sunlight in dismal contrast to the rain is so brilliantly handled that we immediately recognize the hand of a master. In his depiction of light, he used watercolor as if it were oil paint, applying layers of the same color until he got the density of light he was looking for.

The test of every exhibition is whether the viewer leaves the show wishing to see more of the artist’s work. By that standard, the current Burchfield exhibition gets a perfect score from this viewer. He’s an artist I thought I knew pretty well until I saw this exhibition; what I’d like to see now is a full-scale retrospective.

Meanwhile, Charles Burchfield: Paintings 1915-1964 remains on exhibition at the DC Moore Gallery, 724 Fifth Avenue, through Dec. 23.

Exactly what impelled Burchfield to focus his art so intently on the macabre and the grotesque remains something of a mystery. It’s been suggested that he was influenced by the short stories of Sherwood Anderson, and while that influence may account for the feeling of isolation and abandonment in Burchfield’s work, it doesn’t really shed much light on his penchant for depicting both nature and the manmade world in such stark and threatening terms. It’s certain, anyway, that he had a deeply introspective turn of mind.

At times, writing interested him almost as much as painting, and he’s known to have written voluminous journals. He’s also known to have created a series of cryptic symbols, representing extreme states of mind, and it may be assumed that some of these—drooping trees and black rain, among them—are elaborated in his paintings. As a youngster, Burchfield is said to have taken a keen interest in nature, collecting specimens, etc., yet in his maturity his paintings and drawings tended to transform the natural world into a phantasmagoria.

It’s this powerful affinity for the fantastic that separates Burchfield from Edward Hopper, the only other American painter with whom he’s commonly compared. It was never an apt comparison, but in the period when Burchfield and Hopper were the best-selling painters on the American scene, it was naturally assumed that they had something in common. As it turned out, what they had in common was only their distance from the kind of radical modernism that was beginning to command more and more attention.

In fact, Hopper’s paintings are devoid of Burchfield’s brand of imagination. Hopper’s forte was in his psychological depiction of the relationships between the characters he portrayed. Hopper was indeed a far subtler painter than Burchfield. In many ways, Hopper was closer in spirit to a writer like Hemingway than to any other painter.

Burchfield was in some important respects the greater craftsman. In the very first watercolor we encounter in the show at DC Moore Gallery—Sunshine and Rain (1946- 47)—the luminosity of the sunlight in dismal contrast to the rain is so brilliantly handled that we immediately recognize the hand of a master. In his depiction of light, he used watercolor as if it were oil paint, applying layers of the same color until he got the density of light he was looking for.

The test of every exhibition is whether the viewer leaves the show wishing to see more of the artist’s work. By that standard, the current Burchfield exhibition gets a perfect score from this viewer. He’s an artist I thought I knew pretty well until I saw this exhibition; what I’d like to see now is a full-scale retrospective.

Meanwhile, Charles Burchfield: Paintings 1915-1964 remains on exhibition at the DC Moore Gallery, 724 Fifth Avenue, through Dec. 23.

He belongs to a generation that had to work its way through the challenges of Abstract Expressionism before it could return to figuration with a renewed perspective. In that endeavor, Mr. Carone’s greatest asset was always his draftsmanship: drawing that’s classical in spirit, yet radically modernist in the expressive liberties it brings to his depiction of the most classical subject of all, the nude female figure.

Foremost among those liberties is the pictorial dynamism that characterizes every one of his works on paper. There’s nothing posed or static in Mr. Carone’s drawings and paintings of the figure. Every touch and gesture is charged with an expressive intensity, whether the image is focused on a single figure or on a group of figures.

Among the drawings and paintings in the show at Lohin Geduld, a few were especially notable for the Ingres-esque line that insinuates itself into the composition. This is not, I think, a direct appropriation of Ingres, but is derived rather from de Kooning’s references to Ingres. There’s quite a lot of Ingres—a fractured Ingres, so to speak—in certain phases of de Kooning’s work, and quite a lot of de Kooning in Mr. Carone’s work.

What all of this recalls for us is the centrality of the Abstract Expressionist aesthetic, even for artists who return to representation in their work. Where the decision has been made to abandon abstraction in favor of representation, certain pictorial issues often remain unresolved.

A further complication in Mr. Carone’s drawings and paintings is the artist’s fondness for Cubist structures even in work that’s primarily figurative. The Abstract Expressionists never resolved their relation to Cubism and could never fully abandon Cubism either, and Mr. Carone’s art still shows traces of that dilemma.

However problematic his work may sometimes be, with its divided loyalties to tradition and innovation, Mr. Carone’s principal strength as an artist remains his great command of drawing. With virtuosic draftsmanship of this quality, he can be forgiven the sometimes-confused references to the traditions that have nurtured his art.

Nicolas Carone: A Selection of Works on Paper was on view at the Lohin Geduld Gallery, 531 West 25th Street, from Oct. 15 to Nov. 19.

He belongs to a generation that had to work its way through the challenges of Abstract Expressionism before it could return to figuration with a renewed perspective. In that endeavor, Mr. Carone’s greatest asset was always his draftsmanship: drawing that’s classical in spirit, yet radically modernist in the expressive liberties it brings to his depiction of the most classical subject of all, the nude female figure.

Foremost among those liberties is the pictorial dynamism that characterizes every one of his works on paper. There’s nothing posed or static in Mr. Carone’s drawings and paintings of the figure. Every touch and gesture is charged with an expressive intensity, whether the image is focused on a single figure or on a group of figures.

Among the drawings and paintings in the show at Lohin Geduld, a few were especially notable for the Ingres-esque line that insinuates itself into the composition. This is not, I think, a direct appropriation of Ingres, but is derived rather from de Kooning’s references to Ingres. There’s quite a lot of Ingres—a fractured Ingres, so to speak—in certain phases of de Kooning’s work, and quite a lot of de Kooning in Mr. Carone’s work.

What all of this recalls for us is the centrality of the Abstract Expressionist aesthetic, even for artists who return to representation in their work. Where the decision has been made to abandon abstraction in favor of representation, certain pictorial issues often remain unresolved.

A further complication in Mr. Carone’s drawings and paintings is the artist’s fondness for Cubist structures even in work that’s primarily figurative. The Abstract Expressionists never resolved their relation to Cubism and could never fully abandon Cubism either, and Mr. Carone’s art still shows traces of that dilemma.

However problematic his work may sometimes be, with its divided loyalties to tradition and innovation, Mr. Carone’s principal strength as an artist remains his great command of drawing. With virtuosic draftsmanship of this quality, he can be forgiven the sometimes-confused references to the traditions that have nurtured his art.

Nicolas Carone: A Selection of Works on Paper was on view at the Lohin Geduld Gallery, 531 West 25th Street, from Oct. 15 to Nov. 19.

For one thing, he was never any sort of Expressionist. The bravura gestural style that we associate with Pollock, de Kooning et al. was entirely alien to Pousette-Dart’s sensibility; so was the hard-drinking bohemian lifestyle of the painters who made the Cedar Tavern a favorite destination of art-world groupies. Pousette-Dart’s interest in the social life of the fashionable art world was practically nil. By temperament and conviction he was a family man, and his was a family of artists: His father was a painter and art writer; his mother a writer; and his children, too, have pursued careers in art and music.

What principally sets Pousette-Dart apart from his contemporaries in the New York School, however, is something else: his mystical outlook on life. This is also the key to understanding his art, which is deeply introspective. It’s in the nature of mysticism to erase all boundaries between the seen and the unseen, and in the particular mode of abstraction that Pousette-Dart created in these late paintings, there are no divisions separating foreground and background space. Conventional pictorial space is abandoned in favor of myriad points of color that expand as we observe them into mural-scale fields of light.

The result isn’t exactly pointillism as we usually encounter it, but rather a shimmer of unbounded optical sensation that, owing to the huge dimensions of the canvas—Field of Blue (1986-88), for example, is 80 inches wide and 40 inches tall—summons the eye to dwell in an alternative world.

Pousette-Dart preferred to think of these paintings as “presences” rather than abstractions, and he also characterized them as “implosions” of color. “Implosion” strikes me as too violent a term to describe the contemplative character of his paintings, which gently radiate their chromatic magic on a preternatural scale. However we describe these paintings, they must surely be regarded as one of the most original and ambitious achievements in the history of abstract painting.

In intent, if not in style, they also recall us to Vasily Kandinsky’s celebrated treatise, “On the Spiritual in Art.” But whereas Kandinsky focused on geometric form as a symbol of the spiritual in art, Pousette-Dart beckoned the more capacious resources of unbounded light and color, thus uniting the metaphysical realm of spirit and the earthbound realm of physical observation.

Pousette-Dart was a more highly accomplished artist than he’s usually given credit for. It may be that his mystical temperament acted as a break on the kind of self-promotion that so many other painters of his generation cultivated so successfully. Whatever the reason for underestimating his achievements in the past, the current exhibition at Knoedler & Company once again establishes his claim to the front ranks in the history of abstract art.

Presences: The Imploding of Color remains on view at Knoedler & Company, 19 East 70th Street, through Jan. 7, 2006. It’s accompanied by a beautifully produced catalog, with each of the paintings in the show reproduced in color in a large format.