Florine Stettheimer’s Cathedrals, a series of Depression-era paintings depicting the excesses of New York social, political and economic life, on view in the American Modern section of the Met are perfectly suited to our times. Three of the Cathedrals are on view, each serving as a portrait of excess and consumption. These three large, chaotic, Art Deco inspired canvases, (and the fourth, the unfinished, Cathedrals of Art, 1942-44) each contain a self portrait of the artist herself, perhaps with a family member and always in costume as if to proclaim everyone’s participation in the world depicted. The scenes are examined and portrayed with humor and wit, yet point to the darker side of life.

The Cathedrals of Wall Street, 1939, depicts a central pediment comprised of the titans of early 20th century Wall Street and Washington in decadent golden paint, above a parade of patriotic American flags and a marching band trumpeting the success of the banks and financial institutions. The red, white and blue composition, laden with the imagery of America and of Wall Street, was painted to commemorate the 150th anniversary of George Washington’s inauguration. It seems to act as a reminder today, in light of our recent inauguration, that the worlds of finance and politics have been intertwined. And lest we forget the less fortunate, Stettheimer placed a group of Salvation Army workers on the left foreground, raised off the ground on a red platform, sing God Bless America.

The Cathedrals of Broadway is a glittering, explosion of color which illustrates the escape New Yorkers turned to during the Great Depression- Broadway theater and sporting events. Banners proclaim the names of theaters, a sports announcer holds a baseball as if ready for the start of a game and patrons line up at the ticket booth in this scene of all-over entertainment. Painted in 1929, it is impossible to view this scene of pleasure and happiness without the veil of the political and social reality of the day – especially as the date itself appears on a large red banner on the left side of the canvas. Seeing this glittering side of New York in spite of economic turmoil resonates today to be sure.

The Cathedrals of Fifth Avenue, 1931-32, proclaims the extreme excess of New York in a swirl of luxury store names, a fine car with a dollar sign across its grill and champagne on ice – all hovering around a wedding party at the center of the picture. Above the wedding couple and their guests, two religious figure seem to bless the raucous activity all around them.

Excess, escapism and economic turmoil – what an interesting time to see these paintings.

Click here to see the images for yourself.

Whether you are in a buying or a browsing mood, high-end art and antiques fairs are a great way to spend an afternoon learning about innumerable treasures. Here are the details of a few upcoming fairs:

January 15-18
Palm Beach 3 (Contemporary Art)
Palm Beach Convention Center, West Palm Beach, Florida

January 23 – February 1
55th Annual Winter Antiques Show
Park Avenue Armory, New York City

January 30 – February 8
Palm Beach, America’s International Fine Art & Antique Fair
Palm Beach Convention Center, West Palm Beach, Florida

February 13-17
Palm Beach Jewelry, Art & Antiques Show
Palm Beach Convention Center, West Palm Beach, Florida

February 19-23
The Art Show (ADAA)
Park Avenue Armory, New York

March 4-8
SCOPE New York (Contemporary Art)
Scope Pavillion, Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park

March 5-8
The Armory Show (Contemporary Art)
Pier 94, New York

March 5-8
Pulse (Contemporary Art)
Pier 40, New York

March 5-8
Volta (Contemporary Art)
7 West 34th Street, New York

I visited the Museum of Arts & Design (MAD) today and loved the current exhibition, Second Lives: Remixing the Ordinary. This long-running exhibition, on view through April 19, 2009, takes everyday objects like cutlery, coins, grooming products, books and personal accessories and transforms them into sculptures which delight and amaze their audiences. Some of the works are composite pictures, if you will, an overall image which, when examined closely, is actually a clever arrangement of small objects such as hair combs, spools of thread or apparel labels. Other works are more sculptures than pictures, such as Johnny Swing’s recliner seemingly made of quarters or Tara Donovan’s Bluffs, stalagmite-like towers made of clear buttons glued together into a formation of peaks. Other pieces of note are Jill Townsley’s spoon tower, Donald Lipski’s Spilt Milk, a circus wheel-like sculpture with white, substance-filled bottles on the ends, Yuken Teruya’s shopping bags and Paul Villinki’s record collection/butterfly sculpture. There is a lot of fun to be had, and it is actually one of the few exhibitions I enjoy seeing with a crowd as it is such fun of listening to other visitors exclaim about a piece they have just seen or grab their companions by the sleeve to point out something new they have discovered.

The Museum of Arts & Design, 2 Columbus Circle, New York, NY 10019

Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton will be on view at the New Museum on the Bowery in NYC for only one more week, through January 11, 2009, before heading to Minneapolis, London and Maastricht. A decade and a half of the artist’s production is housed on two floors of the museum’s space with Peyton’s most arresting portraits spread around the corners of the exhibition’s spaces and occasionally tucked into a dead end passage. I began with Kurt Cobain and some historical figures like Napoleon before coming to a self portrait, images of Georgia O’Keeffe and some pets. Then there is the head-on, grisaille image of Frida Kahlo which is an almost newspaper-esque reportage rendering of her as the painting were instead a black and white photograph. The rockers, the rulers and the personal friends of the artist all seem to co-exist in the intensity of their piercing gazes or, alternatively, the suspense of their faces when hidden by shocks of their hair. The works are highly personal, close-up views of their protagonists, as if the viewers were sitting beside them in the next chair or in the same intimate space. Often the sitters are involved in quotidien activities such as sketching, reading, sleeping or walking, while others are such maginfied views that we see only the sitters’ faces, their heads angled in the midst of some unknown activity, capturing a moment in time. What I found most arresting about the works was that, perhaps due to their primarily small scale and often ragged edges, they seem as if they are pages torn from popular magazines or picture postcards collected on vacation, or even Polaroids stuck haphazardly inside a book or photo album. Peyton uses glamorous textures and surfaces and intense color to saturate the viewer with her pictures’ characters. The subject itself could alternatively be the character or the painting process itself, and the combination of the two in such intimately scaled works is fascinating.

New Museum, 235 Bowery, New York, NY 10002

Now at the Met through February 1, 2009 is a celebration of thirty years of Philippe de Montebello’s stewardship at the museum before his departure next year. The exhibition, entitled The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions, displays almost 300 works from 17 curatorial departments at the Metropolitan Museum which were acquired by the museum with de Montebllo as Director, and a few while he was a curator in the 1960s. Each work of art was selected by its departmental curator for the impact it had on the collection and the importance of the object itself from a social, historical or art historical perspective. The rooms are organized according to the years in which the objects entered the museum’s collection, allowing for an interesting mix of cultures and genres in each space.

The first time through the exhibition, armed with my headset to hear anecdotes from the Director and curators about how the objects in question wound up in the collection, I found it rich and wondrous, yet hard to take in all at once as I was trying to learn about each object, absorb it in context with the objects around it and to learn about the manner in which the museum acquired the object (through donation or purchase). The second time through, however, I found a rhythm to the “highlights” type of exhibition and began to appreciate the juxtapositions created by objects, such as a Mexican jadeite sculpture of a face beside Vermeer’s arresting painting of a young woman whose own face beckons from her canvas.

When you go, take the time to absorb this exhibition and to enjoy all the incredible costumes, paintings, sculptures, furniture and decorative arts, photography and drawings. If you leave unable to recall the details of any work, the entire body of artwork is available on-line at the Met’s website.