Cindy Sherman. (Adriel Reboh/Patrick McMullan)

“Look who it is: it’s Edwina, the Edwina,” Isaac Mizrahi exclaimed to The Observer this past Saturday, as he approached Edwina von Gal, the designer who, Ross Bleckner told us, “did the landscaping at my house in Sagaponack.”

We were at Cindy Sherman’s new East Hampton home at a benefit for the Azuero Earth Project, the Panama-based ecological nonprofit of which Ms. von Gal is president. It was a cozy beginning-of-the-end to the Hamptons summer season. Guests sat on benches under a white tent to eat empanadas and watch performances by Suzanne Vega, Rufus Wainwright, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed. Children climbed into pendulous bamboo cocoons, stuffed with pillows, that swayed from the trees.

“I live just up the road,” Ms. Vega, who had been asked at the last minute to replace Rubén Blades, told us. “I originally came as a guest of Laurie’s, and I thought I was going to see Rubén Blades!” Wearing a top hat—a “tip of the hat to Marlene Dietrich”—Ms. Vega performed “Marlene on the Wall” and “Gypsy,” written when she was a “folk-singing and disco-dancing counselor” at a summer camp in the Adirondacks. She had M.C. Bob Balaban serve as an impromptu music stand, holding a handwritten lyric sheet for a new Dylan-inspired number about the tarot’s Queen of Pentacles.

“I probably shouldn’t have kissed her,” Mr. Balaban confided to us afterward. “It’s rude to kiss somebody you’ve just met.” Mr. Balaban told us about his upcoming appearance as Lena Dunham’s psychiatrist on Girls, and recommended we visit Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner’s former home down the road. “It’s just a little hut,” he explained. “They didn’t have any money.” (We read that Ms. Sherman paid $4.65 million for her estate, though we weren’t invited inside.)

Gorgeous in two shades of blue mufti (a baby blue wrap over a navy dress), the chameleonic Ms. Sherman told us that though she had just moved in a month ago, “There’s just a few little things that need to be tweaked, but I’m pretty settled.” Was this party a little housewarming, then? “A big housewarming,” she corrected us. Ms. Sherman also talked about transplanting her career retrospective from New York’s Museum of Modern Art to San Francisco’s MOMA, where it’s currently on view. “The space is different; it was hard to edit out some of the work.”

We watched Gina Gershon and Martha Stewart, both in pre-Labor Day white, run around taking pictures, and stood by as Mr. Mizrahi introduced Mr. Bleckner to his husband, Arnold Germer.

“We’re married, you know,” said Mr. Mizrahi.

“I didn’t know!” Mr. Bleckner replied

“Now we’re moving in together,” Mr. Germer went on.

“That’s exactly what married people do!” Mr. Bleckner pointed out. “Usually it’s the step before, but I guess you’re playing it safe.”

Messrs. Germer and Mizrahi (whose bandana matched that of Bruce Weber, also in attendance) weren’t the only couple at the party to have taken advantage of New York’s new same-sex marriage laws. David Maupin and Stefano Tonchi brought their twin girls, Maura and Isabella.

We asked Mr. Tonchi about changes at The New York Times’s T Magazine, which he left two years ago to edit W, specifically about the recent departure of his successor, Sally Singer. “Oh, please. Old news,” Mr. Tonchi answered summarily.

Mr. Wainwright brought his husband, Jörn Weisbrodt, whom he had married the week prior. He opened his performance with what he called a “really Hamptons-y song about a bored housewife ... which I have become. Love it!” Later, he sang about his own Hamptons domesticity in “Montauk”: “This next song is about my daughter, Viva Katherine Wainwright Cohen, and also my incredible new husband, Jörn Weis-” he caught himself and laughed. “Jörn Wainwright. Or Rufus Weisbrodt, however you do it. In fact, his name is Weisbrodt, which means ‘white bread’ in German, and what is it, there’s something about a honeymoon? In Dutch, a honeymoon is called a ‘white bread,’ white bread weeks. You can get fat, basically, now that you’re married.”

Lou Reed, married for four years but with his wife for a decade prior, came off a little less enchanted. “Are you done? Jesus. And we’re related,” Mr. Reed muttered jokingly, as Laurie Anderson plugged in her violin next to him, generating a loud electronic buzz.

“I would cut my legs and tits off/When I think of Boris Karloff,” Mr. Reed sang, in a song from last year’s much-maligned Metallica collaboration Lulu. He next performed a monologue in the voice of his mentor Andy Warhol: “Lou Reed got married and didn’t invite me ... you know I hate Lou, I really do.”

Ms. Anderson performed a monologue of her own, about observing the Amish in Western Pennsylvania—“Gee, I wonder what it’s like to live that way,” she mused—which nearly cleared the tent, though her political criticism drew some laughs. “Ever since hearing Clint Eastwood talk about optimism the other night at the Republican Convention,” Ms. Anderson narrated, her voice electronically shifted several octaves down, accompanied by slow synth chords, “I actually became extremely pessimistic about the future. I mean, look at the odds for a second. You have more chance of getting hit and killed in a car crash than dying in a plane crash.” (Here, she lost us again.)

As the wind off of Accabanac Harbor picked up (“I’m getting the best hairdo of my life thanks to this body of water,” Mr. Wainwright joked), guests began to wrap their shoulders in complimentary green picnic blankets.

Patrizia Pinzon, visiting from Panama, bemoaned the absence of Mr. Blades, the one Panamanian who had been scheduled to perform. “Everybody’s here, but they don’t know what it’s about.”

Julie Macklowe. (Patrick McMullan)

“Pretty much every gay man in fashion is here,” a guest remarked at the AIDS Community Research Initiative of America’s “Cocktails at Sunset” benefit on Saturday evening.

And so it seemed. The air was heavily perfumed, and well-fitting white jeans abounded in the backyard of Ross Bleckner’s Sagaponack residence. Despite some wild weather earlier in the week—a smothering heat wave followed by a severe summer storm—the sky had cleared and the beach breeze was cool.

Photographer Stewart Shining expressed his relief at this, telling The Observer that, as the vice president of ACRIA, he’d been running around all day getting things ready and having nightmares about the rain. And with good reason—Kelly Klein told us that she’d attended the annual kickoff at the Bridgehampton Polo Club earlier that day, only for it to be canceled because of Friday’s harsh weather. “But everybody still showed up, so it was a bunch of people with nowhere to go,” she explained, a little exasperated.

But the grass was dry as Jeffrey Bilhuber, Tomas Maier and David Kleinberg milled around the tented lawn, sipping champagne and taking in the silent auction featuring Robert Mapplethorpe’s Fang (1987) and a Robert Longo portrait of Cindy Sherman, which sold for $9,000 and $11,000, respectively.

Mr. Shining assured us he was starting to relax, but his party-organizing duties were not yet over. “People keep texting last-minute, you know, ‘Where’s the party?’” he laughed.

Not long after Mr. Shining’s arrival, Mr. Bleckner strode out his back door and down the lawn, accompanied by his dogs. “My evening’s just beginning,” he told us. “I will say that my dogs seem to be having a good time, though,” he said, gesturing to his three dachshunds.

Stefano Tonchi, the editor of W, was lamenting the summer crowds (“even in my spinning class,” he moaned), when something behind us caught his eye. “Oh my god, you are bright!” he exclaimed. “Wow ... wow!”

A neon-clad Peggy Siegal had just appeared on Mr. Bleckner’s doorstep, where she posed proudly for photographers. “I’m wearing Nanette Lepore,” she informed a throng of admirers, gesturing to her vibrant papaya-colored skirt and revealing a leg through an Angelina Jolie-inspired slit.

“Did you know that neon doesn’t photograph?” Mr. Shining asked his companions. “I keep doing covers for Seventeen magazine—they love neon—and I shoot it, and then it comes up on the monitor and I go, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll make it painted,’” he laughed bemusedly.

Jill Stuart arrived with her daughter, Chloe Curtis. Patrick McMullan rushed up to her. “You’re here with your babies!” he exclaimed. “I’ll make you look beautiful.”

Ms. Stewart told us that her daughter, who recently graduated from Cornell, would be moving to London in a few weeks to study at Sotheby’s in the fall and, in the meantime, catch the Olympics. “Chloe and Sophie,” Ms. Stewart said, referring to the youngest of her three daughters. “They’re going to go to the finals of gymnastics,” she added, which she told us was one of her own favorite sports to watch.

We ran into Julie Macklowe, who eagerly gave us a sample of vbeauté—her recently launched specialty skin care line—anti-wrinkle serum. “It’s the best thing you could ever use,” Ms. Maclowe’s companion, Oliva Oluck, informed us enthusiastically. “You will be impressed.”

Yet Ms. Macklowe revealed that vbeauté might not be the entire secret to her own youthful complexion. “This morning I ran eight miles barefoot!” she reported excitedly, referring to her jogging footwear of choice as “condom shoes.”

“I feel like I have some aches and pains going on,” Ms. Macklowe admitted.

“Last night we went to Papa John’s Café for dinner, and I introduced my daughter, much to the chagrin of my husband, to deep-fried mozzarella sticks!” she elaborated.  “Of course, I proceeded to eat half of them. Needless to say, that’s how the eight miles came about.”

Ms. Macklowe was not the only one taking advantage of the weekend to catch up on exercise. The belle of the evening, the young art director Sofia Sanchez Barrenechea, told us she’d been paddleboarding all morning, demonstrating the required motion with her arms. We asked about her plans for the rest of the weekend. “More paddleboarding,” she told us definitively. “And I’ll probably be doing a lot of eating,” she added, unprompted.

We wandered over to speak with Shelly and Vincent Fremont, who came with their daughter, Casey Fremont Crowe, and spent much of the evening conversing with Bob Colacello. “I have a new grandson who’s five months old, so that’s all I really care about,” Ms. Fremont told us. “We took him to the beach today, which was really fun. He just loved it! It was great.”

Bruce Weber told us he’d been busy working most of the weekend, but he’d be taking time later in the summer to head up to the Adirondacks. “So I’ll be swimming in a lake,” he said, explaining why it was preferable to the beach. “I swim, but I swim now with six dogs,” he explained with a crinkly grin. “They try to keep up and I have to carry them.”

Francisco Costa, the Women’s Creative Director of Calvin Klein, had just returned from a trip to Santa Barbara and was eager to tell us about a new hobby he’d discovered. “For the first time, I did—what do you call it, arch?” He mimed shooting a bow and arrow. “And I hit the bull’s-eye every time!” he exclaimed. “It was so beautiful.”

Mr. Costa told us he’d been spending time barbecuing at his house in Bellport but explained this was his last weekend of the summer. “Summer’s over!” he exclaimed. “This is it for me. I’ll be at home all week and then all the way until the end of August I’ll be in the office, working every single weekend,” he explained, alluding to fall’s looming fashion weeks.

We asked how he’d been dealing with the hot weather. “I love it,” he told us earnestly. “I’m Brazilian, so I keep telling people to just enjoy it.”

eschwiegershausen@observer.com

The new Parrish Art Museum under construction

Earlier this month, the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton raised $675,000 at its glitzy annual fund-raising gala—the last to take place in its present building. Meanwhile, a few miles away, in Water Mill, the skeleton of the Parrish’s new home, an elegant, barnlike building designed by Swiss starchitects Herzog & de Meuron that’s as long as a city block, has begun to rise by the side of Montauk Highway, next to Duck Walk Vineyards. Days before the Parrish’s gala, the village of Southampton presented to the public for the first time its future plans for an arts center in the Parrish’s present, soon to be former, building on Jobs Lane.

On the afternoon of the gala, Parrish director Terrie Sultan took The Observer on a tour of the museum’s vault, where its collection of over 2,600 artworks is housed. She rolled back floor-to-ceiling racks to reveal paintings by William Merritt Chase, Willem de Kooning and realist Fairfield Porter, of whom she says the museum has the largest collection in the country. (When Porter died in 1975, his widow donated the contents of his studio to the Parrish.) In the new building, set to open next summer, 7,500 of the 12,300 square feet of exhibition space will be dedicated to shows from this permanent collection.

While it’s been scaled back from the Parrish’s original ambitions—an $80 million project by Herzog & de Meuron that would have mimicked the look of artist residences—the new building, a financially more manageable project that was conceived during the recession in 2009, is widely admired. (It’s still nearly double the size of the current building, and its $26.2 million price is 80 percent paid for, with construction proceeding on schedule.) With its capacity for showcasing the permanent collection, it is also meant to inspire growth in the collection: “It’s very hard to solicit works from collectors if you can’t demonstrate that they will be on view,” Ms. Sultan said, adding that “there’s a wish list.” And so far, it seems to be working. In the vault, Ms. Sultan pointed to a recent acquisition—one of Ross Bleckner’s “Architecture of the Sky” paintings still in the bubble wrap in which it was shipped. It’s the first of that series to enter a public institution (Mr. Bleckner had been saving the piece for himself, but changed his mind). Nearby were some Porter paintings that came as gifts. Ms. Sultan also mentioned a recent gift of a Keith Sonnier sculpture.

Museum supporters are eager to see that permanent collection go on regular view. A recent addition to the board of trustees—he joined in December 2009—Manhattan-based lawyer Peter Haveles characterizes himself as “a modest collector”; his children benefited from summer art-education programs at the Parrish. He said he’s excited to see the museum “operate on all of its cylinders” by doing temporary exhibitions and permanent collection shows at the same time; up to now, it’s been either/or. He described his recent visit to the vault with Ms. Sultan as being “like a 6-year-old in a candy store,” and says the typical patron of the Parrish will be excited about seeing the rotating exhibition of Fairfield Porters.

But it’s not just the permanent collection that will be on view once the new building is completed.

“If you’re asking, are we going to be organizing and presenting world-class exhibitions that people will come from all over the world to see, the answer is yes,” Ms. Sultan told The Observer, standing in the museum’s current exhibition of work by Dorothea Rockburne. She added that the museum will be “engaging in an international dialogue on all levels.” She said it’s too early to release information about the opening exhibition, but hinted that it will be of a contemporary artist who has a connection to the East End, and that it will be “the kind of thing where people say, ‘Of course! And why didn’t we think of that?’”

Last September, the museum added a trustee—one of six new board members to join since December 2009—who seemed particularly interested in world-class exhibitions and international dialogue. Adam Sender, who runs the hedge fund Exis Capital Management, has been summering in Sag Harbor, with his family, for the past 15 years. Two weeks before the Parrish gala, he hosted a cocktail party for the museum at his home. Ms. Sultan and Art in America magazine editor Lindsay Pollock, as well as local artists like Michael Halsband and Matthew Satz, toured the spacious house and landscaped grounds, gazing at works by international avant-garde stars, the kinds of pieces you are likely to come across at Art Basel or the Venice Biennale. Mr. Sender is anything but a modest collector. A large white abstract Sol Lewitt sculpture sat on the manicured lawn; a huge Urs Fischer sculpture of a cigarette lighter dominated the living room; across from it hung a giant Damien Hirst butterfly painting; an entire gallery space devoted to pieces made from panty hose and cigarettes by Sarah Lucas was next to the stairwell; light-box photographs by Jeff Wall lit up the dining room; a bright yellow Bruce Nauman neon light tube piece that spells out “Run from fear fun from rear” illuminated an upstairs hallway; there were works by up-and-coming talents like Brendan Fowler, Elad Lassry and Matt Chambers. Mr. Sender employs a personal curator and regularly loans his artworks for exhibitions around the world.

In other words: Fairfield Porter this was not. Alice Aycock, an artist who is known for her earthwork-style sculptures, and who will have a major exhibition of her drawings at the Parrish in 2013, was among the guests at Mr. Sender’s party. “My jaw dropped,” Ms. Aycock told The Observer a week later, describing her reaction to the house, grounds and collection. “I live within walking distance and I had no idea this was there.”

She added, “If people like Adam Sender will get behind the Parrish, then the museum will be cooking with gas.”

“With a building like that, they have the opportunity to do some exciting shows,” said Mr. Sender, referring to the new Herzog & de Meuron structure. He put aside plans to open a private exhibition space for his collection in a disused church in Sag Harbor, joining the Parrish board instead. “Exciting to me means contemporary.”

Mr. Haveles characterized the Parrish’s board, a mixture of full- and part-time residents, as diverse and engaged, but not meddlesome. On the board level, he said, the museum is discussed not as one with aspirations to be a global or national institution, but rather as an important regional one, one that reflects the art of the region and serves the region’s needs, and that will be attractive to people visiting from other parts of the East End, and also to visitors from Manhattan.

Ms. Sultan put the emphasis on the artistic legacy of the East End—ranging from Childe Hassam to Jackson Pollock to Roy Lichtenstein to Chuck Close.  “We are very proud to be a museum in this region,” she said. “It’s one of the only regions like this in the country where the level of contribution from the artists who have an association with this area is as high as it is.”

If the word “regional” comes up often in discussions of the new Parrish, “local” and “pedestrian-oriented” are more likely to be used in descriptions of the village’s plans for its own $20 million project: a hybrid arts complex at the site the Parrish is leaving.

On July 7, the village of Southampton held the first public presentation of plans—four different ones were presented—for the Southampton Center for the Arts. Siamak Samii, chair of the village’s planning commission, told The Observer that part of a master plan for the center of the village is the creation of an arts district, of which the old Parrish site will serve as anchor. It will incorporate visual and performing arts as well as education, and parts of it will be accessible around the clock; the center will be aimed at both summer and year-round residents. (The village’s full time population is 3,000-4,000; in summer it spikes to around 12,000.)

One object of the project, Mr. Samii said, is to “bring residential living into the heart of the village.” In neighboring villages like East Hampton, he said, “commerce and retail” have been the engines of growth. “We want culture to be the engine of growth.”

The arts complex will be fueled by partnerships with cultural institutions, such as museums and theater groups, and educational institutions outside the village that will use the facility as an extension. He said the village has so far reached out to 15 institutions, including the Lincoln Center Film Festival, and responses have been positive.

The Parrish’s lease is up in summer 2012; it plans to have next summer’s gala in its completed building, in Water Mill. Between now and that time, Mr. Samii said, the village will set up boards, bring in a director and fund-raise, with the aim of breaking ground in the next two to three years. Manhattan-based arts consultancy Webb Management Services has put the three-year project, which will create 40,000 square feet of facilities at around $20 million, once the operational costs are factored in.

The village does not see its arts complex competing with the Parrish, but rather complementing it—an “amicable relationship” that, as Mr. Samii described it, could even include the Parrish’s doing loan shows there.

“One of the main elements is to engage some of the local artists even more,” said Mr. Samii. “Local artists who don’t feel they are on the radar of the Parrish. And there are a lot of them.” He added that the facility would ideally be a place “where there would be more interaction between the community and its artists.” It is envisioned as “a place of gathering, a piazza for the center of the village.”

The Parrish, as he put it, “is extending itself to a more international high-profile, high-energy art scene. But we think that should not be at the expense of ignoring the local community.”

sdouglas@observer.com

According to an invite, illustrated with an Obama portrait and bearing a "Carpooling Encouraged," reminder, co-hosts in alphabetical order include Alec Baldwin, Christy Turlington Burns & Ed Burns, Barbara Lee Diamonstein-Spielvogel and Carl Spielvogel, Laura Durning, Jason Epstein, Katie Lee and Billy Joel, Ellen Chesler & Matt Malow, Obama veteran donors Jay Johnson and Brian Mathis, Isaac Mizrahi, Gwyneth Paltrow, Rosie Perez, Jane Rosenthal, Russell Simmons, and Robert Zimmerman, among others.

The price is the usual $2,300 for admission, but Obama's appeal to the youth vote has hit the Hamptons too, and "specially priced" $1,000 tickets will be available for supporters between the ages of 16 and 25.

Mark di Suvero has done it. With his exhibition of sculpture at the West 24th Street location of Gagosian Gallery, he has taken the Chelsea paradigm-you know, "My gallery's bigger than your gallery"-and brought it down to size. Or rather, Mr. di Suvero has brought it up to his size, endowing Mr. Gagosian's hangar-like space with an aesthetic rationale that it has previously (and conspicuously) lacked. Richard Serra, another sculptor who works on a monumental scale, attempted something similar in the same gallery a few years back, but whereas Mr. Serra's use of scale is invariably overweening and intimidating, Mr. di Suvero's sizable sculptures are as inevitable, organic and grandly impersonal as, oh, a mountain.

The two pieces on display, Evviva Amore and Ulula (both 2001), were, I am told, preexisting works tailored to their current venue. Tailored, it should be reiterated, and not compromised. If anything, Mr. di Suvero looks like he had a ball adapting his pieces to the space, tacitly acknowledging its physical parameters while not-so-tacitly razzing the notion that anything so mundane as an art gallery should rein him in. As if to underscore that bigness is, for this artist, a necessity and not an option, the gallery has included Rudder (2000), a sculpture that's more ostentatious than its table-top dimensions might let on. Mr. di Suvero flexes considerably less ego the more monumental he works, proving, in the end, that monumental is where his heart is. Mark di Suvero is at Gagosian Gallery, 555 West 24th Street, until June 16.

Clearly, Ross Bleckner Was Never an Understudy

"What's my motivation?" is the question actors presumably ask themselves before taking on a role. As a practical query, it's not an inappropriate one for artists to ask of themselves. Not all artists, of course-no one ever lost sleep worrying whether Fra Angelico was lacking in motivation. Just the typical artist, which is to say the bad, the humdrum and the nonentity. Matters of motivation were brought to mind while I was visiting the exhibition of paintings by Ross Bleckner at the Chelsea branch of Mary Boone Gallery. Mr. Bleckner has, one would guess, never given much thought to his motivation, but given his recent pictures, he should.

Have there ever been works of art as desultory as these? A loaded question, I know, but even Mr. Bleckner's devotees must be furrowing their brows and scratching their scalps when faced with the artist's latest. Each canvas is an all-over accumulation of blob-like circles punctuated by that distinctive-i.e., cold and brittle-Blecknerian highlight. Failing to multiply as form, neither do the circles thrive as color or hold as compositions, and why the pictures are as big as they are is a mystery. The only virtue the paintings offer, as far as I can see, is that their surfaces appear to be scrubbable.

Mr. Bleckner is, from the errant evidence on view, an artist who puts brush to canvas not because he has to, but because he can-and that is never enough. Ross Bleckner is at Mary Boone Gallery, 541 West 24th Street, until June 23.

Kelly Calibrates To the Point of Conceit

Reading the press release for Ellsworth Kelly: Relief Paintings, 1954-2001, an exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery, one notes that Mr. Kelly's color sense is "perfectly calibrated." But one wants to chime in that every particular of Mr. Kelly's art is equally-that is to say, flawlessly-calibrated. This has long been Mr. Kelly's M.O., and he's good at it, maybe too good.

Each of the relief paintings is constructed from two monochromatic canvases, one placed on top of the other; these either snuggle, shift or jut, sometimes barely, at other times by a matter of feet. The pieces are weighted-and laudably so-but the effect of the exhibition as a whole is firmly, if politely, dismissive. Mr. Kelly has rendered the environs of Mr. Marks' gallery so forbiddingly pristine that we're inhibited from exhaling, lest we dare befoul the excellences on display. Best seen at a distance where they can be read pictorially, the relief paintings, viewed up close as three-dimensional objects, are flatly, indeed shockingly, unconsidered.

"Relief," as it turns out, is merely a conceit for Mr. Kelly, so the works fail to keep up the bargain-or at least half of the bargain-implicit in their medium. The pieces, it turns out, aren't so perfect after all-as works of art, anyway. As elaborately scaled objets d'art, however, they're perfect enough, if only because they don't ask much from us in the first place. Ellsworth Kelly: Relief Paintings, 1954-2001 is at the Matthew Marks Gallery, 523 West 22nd Street, until June 29.

A 40-Year Reunion Of Four Painters

When the art critic Jules Langsner organized the seminal exhibition Four Abstract Classicists, seen at the Los Angeles County Museum in 1959, he contrasted the "articulated," "orderly" and "organizational" paintings of John McLaughlin, Frederick Hammersley, Lorser Feitelson and Karl Benjamin against the "helter-skelter of raw existence," "the buzz of confusion" that is "day-to-day life." One couldn't ask for a better updated example of this contrast than that which greets viewers as they enter the new location of Gary Snyder Fine Art. After strolling along a, shall we say, picturesque stretch of 11th Avenue, gallery-goers encounter the crisp colors and clean geometry of Mr. Hammersley's Couple #7 (1961) in the gallery's front window. The contrast between the rawness of the former and the articulation of the latter isn't only abrupt, but it makes for the kind of experience-odd and extreme, unexpected and delightful-that only this city can afford.

Couple #7 serves as the introduction to the exhibition Four Abstract Classicists: Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley and John McLaughlin, which is less a re-creation of the original show than an homage to it. A truncated homage, that is, and if the Snyder show is frustrating in its brevity-none of the painters is seen in any depth-it is, nonetheless, offbeat enough to pique our interest.

Clarity and flexibility, rather than purity and certitude, are the hallmarks of these four individual, not to say eccentric, painters. Feitelson offers up a slo-mo sensuality, McLaughlin an austerity keyed to the wispiest of baby blues, and Benjamin a fractured mix of Auguste Herbin, Indian Space Painting and the proverbial explosion in the tile factory. Mr. Hammersley is, in his own stark way, the most compelling of the bunch, and a painter whose work is a kissing cousin to that of Mr. Kelly. It would appear, in fact, that Mr. Hammersley's art kisses better, largely because its inside-out dynamism encourages an open dialogue and not the last word. Four Abstract Classicists: Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley and John McLaughlin is at Gary Snyder Fine Art, 601 West 29th Street, until Aug. 25.

They weren't kidding.

"You were warned!" said the hostess. "We had to give yours away, but we can accommodate you by the bar."

I followed the spider along the hallway and around the corner. Her sandals clicked against the polished concrete floor. Like a teacher delivering a tardy child to the classroom, she sat me down next to a wooden grid that stretched up to the ceiling, separating the bar area from the dining room. Through it, you could see that half the tables were empty.

"They're all booked." she said. In less than half an hour, every table was indeed full.

Fressen is the latest restaurant to spring up in this revitalized neighborhood, way over by the West Side Highway in the heart of the meat district, a couple of blocks below Chelsea Market and two doors down from a bar called Hogs & Heifers. It seems just yesterday that this area was as deserted as SoHo in the 60's (except for the bistro Florent, and the Hell Fire Club, where people who like that sort of thing still go to be whipped and tied up). Now the old warehouses and market buildings are being renovated and turned into apartments (Keith McNally is slated to open a hotel there), shops and restaurants are springing up and, on summer nights, crowds spill out in the cobbled streets from gallery openings, clutching plastic glasses of white wine.

The restaurant, in one of the former warehouses, is enormous and loud (but the music is actually terrific), and the sound bounces off the concrete walls. The space is cleverly and attractively broken up by the grids, Japanese screens and walls that are painted a shiny brown that looks like lacquer. There's a disk jockey by the bar with two turntables who means business. The lively crowd ranges from museum directors and ad critics, models and writers, to Sandra Bernhard, seated at a banquette with a girlfriend and six identical-looking hunks, a testimony to their gyms, who kissed each other all through dinner.

It is no accident that Fressen (in Yiddish and German it means "to eat well") is so deeply hip. Chef and co-owner Lynn McNeely cooked for four years for the artist Ross Bleckner and then worked at Balthazar Bakery. So the bread, obviously, is excellent, a basket of sliced brown and white sourdough loaves with thick crusts, served with olive oil for dipping. The menu changes every day, and it reads like the sort of thing a chef who knows his business can compile on the spur of the moment after an enthusiastic early morning run to the market.

One evening, there was octopus–not just the tentacles, but the belly of the beast, grilled and as tender a piece as you could wish for. A soft-shell crab, looking like a creature out of Jules Verne, was encased in a light tempura batter; inside, a scallion had been enfolded so that it looked like a long tendril. The batter was light, the crab juicy, and it was nicely complemented by a plum wine Chinese dipping sauce. The squid did not present such an alarming sight; it was cut in small, tender chunks and mixed with a salad of pea shoots and briny sea beans. Airy fritters made with bacalao came with aioli that could have done with an extra jolt of garlic.

Much of the produce served at Fressen is organic and the vegetable dishes are first-rate, very fresh and well seasoned. The mixed antipasto one day may consist of baby marinated artichokes, fresh anchovies and tiny roasted beets, another day it is roasted cipollini onions, grilled baby eggplant, rock shrimp and bruschetta topped with fava bean purée. Caesar salad (served "downtown style," as a friend put it) is not chopped up but made with hearts of romaine tossed in a dressing with freshly grated Parmesan and big, crunchy croutons.

Two of my favorite dishes are the grilled treviso topped with Old Chatham Sheepherding cheese (which is from upstate and like a melted brie) and the lentil tart, which sounds like some punishment devised for vegetarians but was wonderful, in light, crumbly pastry crust with a balsamic vinegar dressing.

One night there was grilled whole black bass on the menu, perfectly cooked, but I would have liked to have seen more of the artichokes barigoule that came with it. Seared sea scallops were sweet and juicy, a good foil for pickled cucumber, a mixed-grain salad flavored with lots of mint, and a yellow tomato vinaigrette. Mr. McNeely also turns out a fine pepper-crusted dry-aged rib eye, which comes with enormous onion rings.

Desserts include a warm gianduja cake, rich and gooey, with hazelnut espresso ice cream and chocolate sauce and cherry clafoutis. The panna cotta, a quivering ivory dome in a mango and ginger lime syrup, was delicious, a better choice than the peach tarte Tatin, which was on the chewy side.

The chocolate and caramel fondue, straight from the 50's (too bad Mom sold her set in her last tag sale), is served with fruit and madeleines. It also comes with, of all things, house-made marshmallows. Those, for me at least, are a first.

Fressen

* 1/2

421 West 13th Street, at Washington Street

645-7775

Dress: Tank tops, tattoos

Noise level: High

Wine list: Reasonably priced, well chosen

Credit cards: All major

Price range: Main courses $12 to $26

Hours: Monday to Saturday 6 P.M. to midnight, bar to 2 A.M.

* Good

* * Very Good

* * * Excellent

* * * * Outstanding

No Star: Poor