A Trip to the West Side

My friend Debbie Harris who I met at W magazine now works for the Armory Art Show and she invited TD and I to attend the opening night party this week. We hoofed it up to Pier 92 at the end of West 54th Street on the Hudson River.

Quelle scene! I had no idea that this was such a big event. Mobs of people. Chic too. We crossed the West Side Highway with groups of impossibly tall girls in black teetering in impossibly tall high heels.

The Armory Show is named after the famous 1913 New York art exhibition that introduced modern European art -- Cezanne, Matisse, Picasso -- to astonished Americans. The annual New York Armory Show started again in 1994 and now it's an important contemporary art exhibition. The 2009 edition covers Pier 92, where 70 dealers offer modern masters, and Pier 94 which includes 154 international galleries showing newer art.

We started on Pier 92. The show was huge. The art was excellent, and it just went on and on. It was hard to take it all in. We ran into some friends and got a glass of beer. I think you really would need a day to see everything. Admission: $30.

Here is The Divers, the famous iconic photograph by George Hoyningen-Huene. For sale for $14,000, I think.


A gorgeous happy painting by English artist Howard Hodgkins. I love the joyful, glowing jewel-tone colors of Howard Hodgkins. I believe that he and Tina Brown dated back in the day.


Big, beautiful, serene painting by Alex Katz. This looks to me like the beach in Guilford, Connecticut, where my parents live.


Pier 94 was below, and we had to wait in line to go down the stairs because the stairs were "fragile." Ok! Pier 94 was filled with newer art and packed with younger people. A total scene. Beautiful people plus art is sexy because it means presumably that the beautiful people are smart too and that's a cool combination. I've lived in New York City for many years but it still staggers me to see the energy and excitement and style of the city right before my very eyes. It's almost like New York City itself becomes a character. We walked and walked looking at things until we could walk no more.

Towards the end the chic mobs swelled out of the piers in waves back across the West Side Highway, and everyone hustled to find a cab. We finally commandeered one and made it home where we had some left over roast chicken.