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West 24th Street. It’s not even a street, or at least it wasn’t till recently. Around 1970, it was an old alleyway, off 11th Avenue, left over from the better violence of 23rd or 14th street. Even 27th had more action, with at least a bar or two for the Irish toughs to bust each other’s heads. But on 24th, nothing. At best it was the place for a drag away crime. In other words the assault occurred on 23rd and the victim was dragged over to a building on 24th for the slow completion of man’s love against man.

Today, that is oh, so different. Now in gallery after gallery, 24th street can, in a proud moment, claim to be a center of the modern art world, such as it is in the depression of 2009. After a few – how many, too many – Martinis this afternoon, I decided that no, a nap was not appropriate, but a slip out the back door of my apartment to the street that girdles my block was better. Just one block, just one stretch, that even with the Gagosian closed for rehanging (of the fabulous, shamed that you missed it, Piero Manzoni, exhibit) still has more, and better, art than all the halls of the Whitney, shame on them. This was how I would spend my afternoon…

Why don’t prefabricated houses seem to work?

Architects from Wright to Gropius, and inventors such as Edison and Fuller couldn’t make them work. Even with all this visionary genius, prefabricated dwellings have been an oddity in the modern world and often historical artifacts.

This is the struggle that this Fall’s big show at the MoMA, “Home Delivery – Fabricating the Modern Dwelling” tries to overcome. While artists of all types continue to be drawn to pre-fab as a design platform, so far nothing seems to have worked.

More on the show and pre fabs as a model for urban experimentation…

Buckminster Fuller had Journals, so do I…

I wrote about the recent revival of interest in Buckminster Fuller stemming in large part from a major show at the Whitney, and about my own small personal discovery about Fuller’s impact on the iconography of our day.

A second, and perhaps more important reflection came as I walked the halls of the Whitney’s fourth floor exhibition space as I spent some time looking at bound volumes of Fuller’s notes.

Have you ever noticed that all representations of the future have no ninety degree angles? From EPCOT to Worlds Fairs oval and acute angles dominate. Why is that? It’s because of Buckminster Fuller.