The blue-chip artist is over museums, galleries and pretty much everything else.
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Chunks of stone are missing from the floor.
On another column across the room, someone had crudely spray-painted a penis.
I could live here, he says.
Wool is there finalizing the installation for the shows March 14 opening.
Even if his market has cooled a bit since then, Wool could have his pick of galleries.
But instead hes doing it himself, here.
I just wanted to do it the way I wanted to do it, he says.
His gallery of 38 years, Luhring Augustine, is fine with it, he says.
Its not their project.
At 68 years old, Wool is over museums, over the white cubes.
Ive probably done more museum shows than most artists my age.
It lost its appeal.
What does excite him is a patch of peeling plaster he spots near a floorboard.
He kneels to marvel at the exposed wires and piping below: See all this history?
If youre familiar with Wools art, its not hard to see what he likes about the place.
We were lucky, Wool says.
(According tothe buildings website, this is one of seven full floors for lease.)
Wool grew up in Chicago and had settled in Manhattan for a while in a Chinatown loft by 1976.
Artists took advantage of this cheap real estate to live and work and put on shows.
Wool put away his stencils decades ago, and none of those works appear in the new show.
They were meant to be seen in terms of, I hate to say it, but easel painting.
But ask him about it and he gets a bit cranky.
Weve gotten to a place where the art market is the art world.
Its a little unfortunate, he says.
I think it says something about the whole art world in general that that question comes up.
It kind of surprises me, he says.
Doing a show the way you want to do it that just seems normal to me.
He doesnt seem especially old, but he is keenly aware of aging.
I like quiet in my studio, he says at one point.
I think its age.
He also complains about how much the world has changed, and not to his liking.
Everybody read theTimeson Friday andThe Village Voiceon Wednesdays or Thursdays.
Everybody wanted to know what Roberta Smith was writing about and what Gary Indiana or Peter Schjeldahl was writing.
Now, he says, I stopped reading any of those.
Then he changes the subject to the Super Bowl, which he had watched the night before my visit.
I dont recognize our culture, he says.
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