Newly Published Books and a Chelsea Exhibition

• Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas by Eric Fischl

Eric Fischl's memoir  is now available, I'm a good half way through it and enjoying it for its candor and clarity.

Courageously honest about his difficult childhood and the impact it had on his art, Fischl is also clear-eyed and even-handed about his career ups and downs throughout the over-heated art markets of the 1980s. Other art stars of the era such as Julian Schnabel, David Salle and Ross Bleckner – most of whom Fischl locked horns with at various points across the years – contribute passages.

Fischl was picked up and championed by the kingmaker dealer Mary Boone (featured with Fischl below) in 1984 and his work, along with that of Schnabel, Salle and Bleckner, took on trophy like status. Selling out shows before they opened, vetting and screening collectors before she would grant them access to her stable and replacing the discreet red dot with the emblazoned name of the grateful purchaser, Boone revolutionized art marketing tactics in a way that left the art world aghast.

http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Boy-Life-Off-Canvas/dp/0770435572/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369757093&sr=8-1&keywords=eric+fischl+memoir

The Gallerist's writer Andrew Russeth did a nice piece on a conversation with Fischl a few weeks before publication –

http://galleristny.com/2013/05/to-the-bone-in-new-book-eric-fischl-talks-painting-drinking-snorting/2/

– and Phoebe Hoban (author of Basquiat: A Quick Killing in Art) also published an interview in the Wall Street Journal –

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324744104578473224204146336.html

• Scene by Jeannette Montgomery Barron

Jeanette Montgomery Barron's book Scene is now available from powerHouse Books.

Capturing the art world scenes that spawned around such venues as Warhol's Factory and TriBeCa's Odeon restaurant, Montgomery Barron shows us the faces of the fabulous and the famous who swarmed around art stars like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Francesco Clemente, David Salle, Cindy Sherman and Keith Haring.

I'm delighted to report that powerHouse books, a highly-regarded independent book store and publisher in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn, will be hosting a book signing of Art on the Block in September.

http://www.jeannettemontgomerybarron.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=38:scene&Itemid=2

• NYC c. 1985  at ClampArt Gallery

In conjunction with the publication of Scene, Brian Clamp at Chelsea's ClampArt Gallery is including this 'right time, right place' photographer's portraits of the 1980s downtown demi-monde in a show called NYC c. 1985. Works by Larry Clark, Nan Goldin and Diane Arbus's daughter Amy will also be on view.

http://clampart.com/2013/05/new-york-city-c-1985/

• Forty-One False Starts: Essays on Artists and Writers by Janet Malcolm

Also on my bedside table is this new collections of essays by Janet Malcolm. 

In all probability I'll skim this one, picking out the names that interest me but with Artforum's editor Ingrid Sischy, the German photographer Thomas Struth (who generously granted me permission to use one of his stunning black and white studies of 1970s SoHo in Art on the Block) and – yet again – artist David Salle in her table of contents, it should be worth the purchase price.

Art on the Block's chapter "Decade of Decadence" considers the work of all of these artists, the dealers who vied to market their talents and the places they frequented as SoHo became a fusion of art, money, fashion and power.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/26/books/review/forty-one-false-starts-by-janet-malcolm.html