Sean Avery

Wednesday, June 22

Foxy Ladies

Opera—it’s not just for opera houses anymore! We had enough to keep up with between the Met and the City Opera (O.K., we mainly kept up with the Met), but more and more, we’re hearing of opera performances put on by orchestras (the skill set’s not too different, one supposes …). The New York Philharmonic today begins its run of The Cunning Little Vixen, an opera by the Czech composer Leoš Janáček about the life of that Playmate who almost married Hugh Hefner last week. Not really—it’s based on an old-timey comic strip and tells the adventures of a lady fox out in the woods. It’s all very children’s TV, between a set strewn with giant sunflowers and the Cats-y costumes. And we’ll take those singing mosquitoes over the stinging kind any day.
Avery Fisher Hall, 10 Lincoln Center Plaza, performances daily through June 25, tonight’s curtain at 7:30 p.m.; visit nyphil.org for tickets and information.

Thursday, June 23

Slow Boat to China

Talk about a cultural revolution—Shen Yun Performing Arts, a troupe devoted to preserving traditional Chinese art forms (tagline: “five thousand years in the making”), is coming to Lincoln Center. Donna Karan’s Urban Zen initiative (om) is presenting a private premiere party inside the Koch Theater with the likes of socialite Anne Bass, Velvet Undergrounder Lou Reed and pajama aficionado Julian Schnabel. Now that Anna Wintour’s been to China—trailing Richard Nixon by just a few decades—we feel suddenly trendy indulging a taste for traditional dance and music, while simultaneously sticking it to the commies. Ni hao!

David H. Koch Theater, 20 Lincoln Center Plaza, performance at 7 p.m., reception at 9 p.m.;  private event.

Friday, June 24

Sorority Girls

College! Who doesn’t miss the days when we could alternate fancy little cotillions and nights in the stickiest-floored fraternity houses without any guilt? (These days, sad to say, it’s all cotillions.) A ball in Brooklyn’s Grand Prospect Hall hosted by Alpha Kappa Alpha, the oldest African American Greek sorority around, invites us to go back to school—without those pesky final exams. The gala benefits the Ivy Rose Foundation, which supports Brooklyn schools. These sorority ladies take themes seriously, too: the “Pink and Green Ball”—so preppy!—encourages its guests to don 1920’s-style garb, and guests will enjoy live music and casino games. Grand

Prospect Hall, 263 Prospect Avenue, 8 p.m.; visit pinkandgreenball.org for tickets and information.

Saturday, June 25

Ball Versus Ball

It’s a battle of the blowouts in the Hamptons, as the 15th annual Heart of the Hamptons Ball faces off against the 16th annual Artists Against Abuse Gala (a year more venerable, but who’s counting?). The Heart of the Hamptons Ball benefits the American Heart Association, while Artists Against Abuse helps fund the Retreat, a domestic violence services group. Worthy causes both! Here’s where they diverge—the Heart of the Hamptons Ball is a generic, if lovely, affair, with cocktails and dancing, at the Hayground School. The Artists Against Abuse Gala is at a school as well, the Ross School—but in a feat of group imagination, and nautical decor, the crowd is asked to pretend they’re on a “luxurious yacht.” That would seem to give the edge to Artists Against Abuse, but the Heart of the Hamptons has a trump card: honoree Star Jones. How ever will we choose?!

Heart of the Hamptons Ball, Hayground School, 151 Mitchells Lane (Bridgehampton), 6 p.m., call (631) 734-2804 for tickets and information; Artists Against Abuse Gala, Ross School Lower Campus Field House, 739 Butter Lane (Bridgehampton), 6 p.m.; call (631) 329-4398 for tickets and information.

Sunday, June 26

Animal Husbandry

Today brings the final performance of the New York Classical Theatre’s production of Molière’s comedy of gender relations School for Husbands in Central Park. This isn’t a Shakespeare in the Park–style seated experience, no sir—attendees have to follow the actors on a ramble through paths and over bridges. And we thought keeping up with Molière’s verse was challenging enough! … Meanwhile, the West Village gastropub the Spotted Pig throws a party for gay pride. We’re trying to fit into our swimsuit, so no pork shoulder for us—but we will indulge in a few drinks. The parade ends in the West Village, so it’s a quick stroll over, a distance of about five leather-clad bikers.

New York Classical Theatre, Central Park at West 103rd Street and Central Park West, performance begins at 7 p.m., free and open to the public, visit newyorkclassical.org for information. The Spotted Pig, 314 West 11th Street; visit thespottedpig.com for information.

Monday, June 27

Smooth Like Putter

For those whose work schedules don’t demand complete adherence to fuddy-duddy, old “five-day weeks”—or those who have forsworn work for leisure altogether!—there’s a golf tournament in the Hamptons today that’s really calling your name. It’s the Hamptons Golf Classic! Beachfront impresario Zev Norotsky founded the tournament, which pairs celebrities with the well-heeled and sends them out to tee off on one another! We’re hoping to get placed in a foursome with New York Ranger Sean Avery—though we’d settle for Landry Fields of the Knicks. Why do athletes want to ruin their Hamptons weekends with sports during the off-season? Never mind—it’s just golf!

Hampton Hills Golf and Country Club, County Road 31 (Westhampton), arrivals at 10 a.m., shotgun start at 11 a.m., cocktails upon conclusion at 4:30pm, call (917) 232-2355 for information.

Tuesday, June 28

Rabbit Season

The Sanctuary Hotel’s in a “soft opening” phase—why does everything have to take so long! But in the meantime, Patrick McMullan is throwing a little shindig there, along with kooky South African graffiti artist David Foox, both of whom are contributing work on the theme "The Year of the Rabbit.” And here we thought it was the year of the dirty dog (yes, Rep. Weiner, we’re still talking about you). … By the way, we’re still so embarrassed for Brooke Shields after she compounded a minute-long line flub at the Tonys with an apology that had to be censored for profanity. (That never happened on Suddenly Susan!) Moving forward! The actress is set to take the lead role from Bebe Neuwirth in The Addams Family, that mysteriously unkillable Broadway show. Now that Spider-Man appears to have become a model of safety, Ms. Shields’s star turn is the riskiest, most daring ticket in town!

The Year of the Rabbit reception, Sanctuary Hotel, 132 West 47th Street, 6 p.m., cocktails and hors d’oeuvres served; private event. The Addams Family, Lunt-Fontanne Theatre, 205 West 46th Street, curtain at 7 p.m.; visit theaddamsfamilymusical.com or the box office for tickets and information.

Wednesday, June 29

Summer Loving

This summer, we’re hoping for a fling—a bit of romance to break up the humid, nasty dog days of summer. The uniquely capitalized gallery fordPROJECT allows us to live vicariously with the exhibit Summer Affair, commencing today. The group show features works by the photographer Manuela Paz and light artist Virginia Overton, among others, but the overarching narrative of the show is more striking (or seasonally appropriate) than any of the art. One is meant to imagine oneself in an apartment shared by two collectors who are carrying on an affair—that the whole thing takes place in an actual West Side penthouse is all the better (though we’re not sure how fordPROJECT can verify its claim that the apartment was once owned by real-life “passionate and tragic lovers”—aren’t they all passionate and tragic in this town?).

fordPROJECT, 57 West 57th Street, floors 19 and 20, opens today, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; visit fordproject.com for information.

“You can’t tell which paintings are mine, and which paintings are not? Do you know anything about art?” Mr. Schnabel, standing in the cabana parlor of the West Village mansion, asked The Observer. “That painting, that painting, all the paintings that are in that room, except for the Dan Colen over there and that Ron Gorchav. How old are you? That painting was made before you were born. That painting was made in nineteen-eighty.”

It was Monday night, and the Schnabel matriarch had cajoled her ex-husband and coop-flown children—Stella, Lola, Vito—to reconvene at the old house for a good cause. Julian was respectful enough to arrive in his pajamas. People asked him about the choice of food.

“Oh, the lamb,” Mr. Schnabel said to a woman holding a small platter with a bone-in appetizer, interrupting the conversation. “A little rare for me.”

He turned back at The Observer.

“You need to look. It’s more important what happens to you than what happens here. You don’t want to miss life while you’re reporting.”

Life, in this case, was a fund-raiser for World Bicycle Relief, a charity that purchases bikes for children in Africa. “Jacqueline is gathering her dearest friends with deep pockets …” the press release began. Life included iPhones that with a swiped credit card could facilitate donations. Life included exotic headdresses, Native American dream catchers, steak tartare and endless red and white wine. Life also included Naomi Campbell.

“House,” Ms. Campbell said when we asked her if she liked the apartment. “You mean house. It’s stunning.”

We were standing in the basement, snugly enclosed by a slim corridor that led to the kitchen. The head cook was making workhorses out of four sous-chefs and multiple assistants. There was plentiful lentil and parsley salad.

“I just graduated from culinary school,” said socialite Arden Wohl. The Observer asked if the food here passed muster.

“Are you talking about the chef?” asked designer Madeline Weinrib, who was talking with Ms. Wohl. “He’s amazing!”

Then Ms. Weinrib asked about Ms. Wohl’s boyfriend. He’s feeling under the weather. Stomach flu. It’s going around.

Stella Schnabel walked in with Ms. Wohl and had to make her way upstairs.

“I want to open the door,” Ms. Schnabel said to The Observer in the skintight scrum that was jigsawed together near the entryway. “It’s too hot in here.”

It was her 27th birthday.

In the basement it was perfectly kosher to light cigarettes and so guests did. Butts rested ignobly in discarded oyster shells.

The Observer bummed a light from a couple, Mane and Armand, both in fashion. Their smoke plumed and groped the original Warhol of Elvis Presley on a motorcycle, hanging unnoticed on the wall. They fawned over the wine and fetched The Observer another glass, which he had while smoking another cigarette with Theo Wenner, son of Rolling Stone editor Jann. They spoke of his childhood bonding with the Schnabels. 

“Where we headed?” said Peter Brant Sr., the Interview magazine owner and prolific art collector. He was speaking to Naomi Campbell. “Mr. Chow?”

The supermodel shrugged. A party sheepishly assembled by the back door. The Observer would also soon leave, to catch one of the last and vaunted LCD Soundsystem shows uptown, but before doing so, he spotted that matriarch and welcoming host, Ms. Jacqueline Schnabel. The West 11th abode has been her residence for 18 years. She stood radiant and calm, a mother abreast with her children and their father, none of whom actually claim the house as their home.

“You could adopt me as another son, and I could live upstairs,” The Observer suggested to Jacqueline Schnabel. He was half-kidding. His lease is soon to be up.

Ms. Schnabel smiled.

“Well,” she said, “there’s room now!”

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Palestinian journalist and Schnabel squeeze Rula Jebreal, the film focuses on the title character’s coming of age, her rebellion against her father and her infatuation with dreamy but violent revolutionaries.

For Monday’s screening, the first in the U.S., the Weinstein Company booked the General Assembly Hall, where, in 1947, the state of Israel was signed into existence.

The American Jewish Federation was not pleased with the location, and had fired off a letter urging U.N. officials to block the event.

“Obviously, they’re showing the movie, and the AJF can’t do a damn thing about it!” Mr. Schnabel told The Observer. “I’d love it if they would see it.” He and his producer, Harvey Weinstein, had extended an invitation. “No response,” Mr. Schnabel said.

“I’m used to it,” Mr. Weinstein said of the protests. “Trust me. That’s not the first letter. It’s the first letter to go super-public. And it won’t be the last letter.”

Attendee Josh Brolin was asked what he thought of the controversy. “I don’t know much about it!” he said.

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234

Later the same evening, Mr. Schnabel raised $1 million at the city's New World Symphony with the sale of five huge artworks he had donated to the charity, run by his friend Sean Penn. They were bid on and won by Naomi Campbell, collector Peter Brant and restaurateur Michael Chow, of Mr. Chow's.

Famous as an artist since his breakout 1979 show at Mary Boone Gallery, Mr. Schnabel is known for frenzied, ecstatic, large-scale paintings and portraits, often done on nontraditional surfaces such as maps, velvet or cracked plates. In recent years, he's become equally famous as a director, of Basquiat (1996), Before Night Falls (2001), Lou Reed: Berlin (2007) and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (2007), which was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar.

Mr. Schnabel was in Miami for that auction and talked about two things: his new likely-to-be-controversial movie Miral, opening in 2011, and a two-year partnership with German luxury car manufacturer Maybach, which has commissioned artwork and is bringing it to the Venice Biennale.

How is power different in the art world and in the film world?

There's different kinds of power. Power is something that is very transient, especially in the film world. I thought that John Lesher [ousted president of Paramount Pictures], they had Paramount Vantage, and for the short time he worked there, he made sure some good movies were made. And, all of a sudden, there was no space for that in Paramount. If you look at the landscape now, less and less small and indie films have distribution possibilities. That's one thing that Harvey Weinstein did early on and continues to do, but, at the same time, it's been a difficult road there.

Do you have to compromise more in one field than another?

As a filmmaker, you have to ask yourself: Do you make a work of art to aim at your most uncompromised, deepest conviction, is the integrity preserved, or do you compromise that in order to sell? Is there a way to make a movie that sells a lot of tickets that is at the same time meaningful?

But you don't see movies as that different than art?

[Growing up], the movies [I saw] were as important to me as my own memories.

What's Miral about?

The movie is about a Palestinian girl, and it's a portrait of her growing up in East Jerusalem and living through the conflict. [The lead is played by Freida Pinto of Slumdog Millionaire] and I was particularly impressed with Freida. She became Miral. She had a depth of feeling to touch the issue.

You seem to love actors; you've painted an unusual number of them--Gary Oldham, Dennis Hopper. Christopher Walken, Albert Finney--

[It's a tribute], it's a way of acknowledging their existence.

You painted Brando, and said you thought he was the greatest actor we've ever had.

He seemed to be the most natural, to tap into something inside of himself that seemed to go beyond the script, beyond the film, and bring a kind of humanity to things. He brought the intensity, brought the whole material of beauty into what he would make.

In The Godfather?

I like to think of him in Apocalypse Now talking about that pile of little arms, and you know he probably ad-libbed a lot of that stuff. If somebody, an actor, can do something like that, that's a surprise. Javier [Bardem], Sean, Johnny Depp can do that.

You've had just a couple of screenings of Miral for audiences so far.

I see the response of audiences; they are so moved. The film will be driven by audiences. It's a complicated story. We're screening it at the United Nations General Assembly March 15.

You said that you being a New York Jew is particularly important to this film. Why?

My mother was the president of Hadassah the year of the birth of the state of Israel, and my mother hoped for this utopian state. So it's different [with] me making the film than anyone else.

How important is the New York part to you?

I moved from New York City to Brownsville, Texas, as a teenager, and I had to make a decision if I was going to go back to New York City and be a painter or go to Hawaii and be a surfer like my friends.

You chose art, but still surf, and sometimes paint surfers.

Surfers to me are like gladiators in an arena. How do you compete with that drama? [But] I have always been a painter. I went back to New York in 1973 and felt a kind of liberation and freedom, just being a young person walking down the street with all the possibilities in the world. I knew de Kooning, Andy, Rauschenberg, Clyfford [Still], at Max's [Kansas City.]

What was it like?

A lot of my schooling happened there ... conversations with Richard Serra. I was alive at a very interesting time.

Do you still feel you are alive at an interesting time?

I feel that way; I'm totally free. It's like that Bob Dylan song, My Back Pages--'But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now.' When you're older, you have a clearer perspective. You can be more radical

Your partnership with Maybach seems ... unlikely?

I'm not a particularly corporate person. I walked out of a Chinese restaurant in Paris and I saw the car. I like the shape. I knew the guy who owned it and asked for a ride. It has reclining seats just like an airplane. I didn't feel like I was moving; I felt like I was watching a movie of myself inside the car being driven around. So I made a [short film] about it.

But they're also sponsoring this benefit auction for Sean Penn's charity.

Sean Penn and I have been friends for 25 years, maybe more, and he's been working so hard with a village in Haiti.

You've been successful in two fields. Do you feel successful?

I think the most beautiful thing is when people that you respect [care about] what you do. I got this note from Elvis Costello, and Elvis went to [my current show at] the Art Gallery of Ontario, and he sent me a text message. What he said to me was: 'I walked into your show and it was a beautiful song.'

Do you like Art Basel Miami Beach?

[I figured out] if I go three places a year that are warm, instead of having 30 more summers, I can have 90. It's a good idea. But art fairs are not for artists. ... As an artist, if you're hanging out at an art fair, it seems as if you want something from somebody.

apeers@observer.com

READ MORE ABOUT ART BASEL:

Schnabel Paints the Town: The Artist-Director on Film, Power, Charity and Art

Land of 1,000 Air Kisses: Art Basel Miami Beach, With Regrets

A Frisson of the New: Haden-Guest Prowls the Art Fairs

The Business of Art Basel : What Sold, to Who, and How Much

The Whitney Museum of American Art
Susan Rothenberg
Nov. 3, 7 p.m.
This Wednesday, Adam D. Weinberg, the Whitney's director, sits down with Ms. Rothenberg, an artist featured in the museum's landmark 1978 exhibition "New Image Painting." In the decades since, she has become only better known for her figurative paintings of horses, spinning bodies and fractured forms.
www.whitney.org

New York Studio School
Luc Tuymans
Nov. 4, 6:30 p.m.
Flemish artist Luc Tuymans is known best for understated, languorous, almost out-of-focus paintings that have an ominous air. This lecture takes place only two days before the opening of his solo exhibition "Corporate," at the David Zwirner gallery in Chelsea.
www.nyss.org/lectures

NY Art Book Fair at MoMA P.S.1
Nate Lowman, Paul Chan, Jo Baer
Nov. 5-7
A host of artists will speak (and sign books) at this Long Island City event. On Saturday, Nate Lowman will have a book signing of his Life's a Beach and Then You Die. On Sunday at 1 p.m., American minimalist Jo Baer, in an interview with her son Josh (publisher of The Baer Faxt), will discuss her Broadsides & Belles Lettres: Selected Writings and Interviews, 1965-2010. At 3 p.m., Paul Chan reads from his new book, Phaedrus Pron. It's limited edition in print, but an unlimited e-book, so bring your iPad.
www.nyartbookfair.com/events

The New School
Simon Fujiwara
Nov. 10, 6:30 p.m.
Simon Fujiwara, recent winner of the Cartier Award and Art Baloise Prize, recently showed a piece in London in which he "re-created" an archeological dig for a fictional "lost city." Here, he'll discuss the erotic life of his family.
www.newschool.edu

The New School
Pawel Althamer
Nov. 10, 6:30 p.m.
Polish artist Pawel Althamer, recently featured in the controversial exhibition "Skin Fruit" at the New Museum, is known for his enormous human sculptures and collaborations with socially excluded groups. Here, the artist will present a hybrid performance-lecture.
www.newschool.edu
 
The Museum of Modern Art 
Sharon Lockhart
Nov. 11, 7 p.m.
Artist and filmmaker Sharon Lockhart will introduce her film Double Tide, an intimate portrait of Jen Casad, a woman who endures the monotonous, backbreaking work as a clam digger living in Cove, Maine, the site of a rare natural phenomenon, low tide occurring twice during daylight hours. A Q&A session will follow the screening.
www.moma.org/visit/calendar/

The 92nd Street Y
Julian Schnabel
Nov. 11, 8 p.m.
Julian Schnabel, winner of the Best Director award at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival for The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, will discuss his latest film, which deals with the tension between Israel and Palestine.
www.92y.org

The School of Visual Arts
Rona Pondick
Nov. 16, 7 p.m.
Sculptor Rona Pondick, winner of the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, combines 3-D computer technologies with ancient sculpture methods to create otherworldly stainless-steel sculptures of human-animal and human-tree hybrids. www.schoolofvisualarts.edu

Deitch's posthumous show of Dennis Hopper's photographs and paintings has opened at Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art and it's "hit the ground with more pre-awareness than a teen vampire sequel," writes Artnet, in an early rave.

In a near-record use of the word "star" in a sentence, Tiff Chalmers writes that it's "a star-powered art show by an art-star and star-artist[Hopper], curated by an artist-director [Julian Schnabel], presided over by the new art-star-Svengali of a revivifying art institution [Deitch] whose hip wing is named for a star-maker [David Geffen], in a town full of artists and stars." [George Clooney, et. al.] The show is "visionary and charming," Chalmers concludes.

New Yorkers can take some comfort in the fact that they could have caught Tony Shafrazi's terrific Hopper show last year.

The museum prepares for all the flak that may come it's way from naysayers who would question treating the actor like an artist by smartly titling the show "Double Standard: Dennis Hopper."

The latter is now asking only $12.95 million. And the penthouse, according to a deed filed Friday, just sold for only $10.5 million. That's less than a third of its original tag.

The buyer is William J.B. Brady, the Palo Alto-based Credit Suisse managing director who bought a $15.5 million unit in the building three years ago. He did not return a message.

Palazzo Chupi was once talked about as a hand-built 17-story mecca for Mr. Schnabel and just four hand-picked neighbors. Bono and Richard Gere were both supposed to be living there among the antique Moroccan window dressings, 12-foot doors, seven-foot fireplaces, giant claw-foot tubs, cast-concrete kitchen countertops dyed chromium-oxide green, and a very large swimming pool.

But the singer never bought a place there, and Mr. Gere quickly put his back on the market.

What's worse, as the price of the penthouse triplex and duplex sunk melodramatically, Chupi became an icon for Manhattan's burst bubble. "Those were just the numbers that came about; there wasn't a lot of discussion," Peter McCuen, the listing broker for the triplex and duplex, once said about Mr. Schnabel's asking prices. "There wasn't anything so in-depth about it, really."

mabelson@observer.com

The two longtime friends were there for a book-signing and cocktail party celebrating the forthcoming release of Berlin, a new collection of photographs taken during Mr. Schnabel’s filming of a tour Mr. Reed did in 2007 to revive his classic 1973 album and rock opera of the same name.

One by one, enamored fans approached the duo with copies of the book and other memorabilia—vintage concert posters, black-and-white photographs, Velvet Underground LPs—that they wanted Mr. Reed, dressed in a saggy black sweater and black jeans, and Mr. Schnabel, wearing loose white pajamas, the top half of which were unbuttoned just enough to reveal a thick swath of chest hair, to autograph with shiny silver markers.

At one point, Mr. Reed reached over to fill Mr. Schnabel’s wine glass with a healthy portion of Johnnie Walker Black Label. (Perhaps the director was drowning his sorrows over the roughly $10 million worth of price cuts he’d made earlier that day to the two top-floor units of his pink Palazzo Chupi on West 11th Street.) Shortly thereafter, a friend of Mr. Schnabel’s leaned in to light him up a Parliament, which filled the otherwise sterile white room with the smell of cigarette smoke, but was extinguished rather promptly.

The Transom, to its surprise given the magnitude of both men’s work, didn’t spot many celebrities, save Mr. Reed’s wife, Laurie Anderson, who darted in around 7 p.m., and the actor Willem Dafoe, who had arrived with Mr. Reed’s and Mr. Schnabel’s entourage an hour earlier. Mr. Dafoe declined rather brusquely to chat.

"Creatives" in attendance included photographer Ralph Gibson, artist Stan Gaz, and Bill Powers, the former BlackBook editor, novelist and husband of designer Cynthia Rowley.

There was also some walking art—a slender and attractive model named Reby Sky who was covered head to toe in yellow, blue, green and pink body paint, wearing nothing but nipple rings and a nearly invisible bikini thong. She was out gallery hopping with the Rockland County, N.Y.-based body-painting artist Andy Golub, who had coated her skin.

“I love it. It’s sort of liberation through art,” said Ms. Sky of her virtually naked state before scooting off to get her copy of the book signed. The gentlemen at the party were not complaining either.

Married super-fans Lau Nielsen, 63, and Lis Braendguard, 61, had flown in all the way from Denmark for the event. They said they’d seen Mr. Reed perform dozens of times since the early ’70s, including his first-ever live performances of Berlin at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn in December 2006. (Mr. Schnabel released Lou Reed’s Berlin, a film documenting the concerts, in January of last year.)

“I’m staying in here to have all the looks of him I can get,” said Ms. Nielsen, clutching her newly signed copy of the photographic adaptation of Berlin.

The book (Rizzoli, $45) features a rare transcription of a conversation between Mr. Reed and Mr. Schnabel. Some of its beautifully blurry images are pictures of the set Mr. Schnabel designed for the Berlin tour, and others are stills from the film. Many have passages of Mr. Reed’s verse scrawled over them in white ink, like the following line we read on an enlarged photograph hanging on the gallery’s wall:

“Staring in my picture book she looks like Mary Queen of Scots. She seemed very regal to me. Just goes to show how wrong you can be.”

jpompeo@observer.com

One year ago, when his asking price for the triplex was $32 million and the duplex's tag was $27 million, it would have taken $59 million to buy the two together; by this January, that number had fallen to $41 million. According to the listings Web site StreetEasy, Mr. Schnabel now wants a mere $38 million for the two. (On the bright side, at least he's not auctioning off the 3,713-square-foot triplex penthouse or 3,963-square-foot duplex.)

At his new asking price, Mr. Schnabel is still asking more than $5,000 per square foot, which means the artist-cum-developer may need another price cut or two before Chupi's sprawls sell. Listing broker Peter McCuen—who told The Observer in January that "there wasn’t a lot of discussion" over pricing—did not return an email.