The New York Times reports on a contretemps taking place at the Four Seasons restaurant where Aby Rosen wants to remove this 1919 Picasso stage set originally made for Diaghilev to make way for Contemporary art works:
But the real peril is the coming rescue effort, says Peg Breen, president of the conservancy.
“One of RFR’s own movers told us that no matter how cautious they are, the work is so brittle and fragile that it could, as one of them put it, ‘crack like a potato chip,’ ” she said.
On the surface, the dispute is about grout and tiles, but it is also a collision of values and taste. Ms. Breen said she suspected that one of the founders of RFR was just not a fan of “Le Tricorne” — a person who heard him discussing the work said he dismissed it as “a schmatte,” Yiddish for rag — and was using the damaged-wall argument as a pretense to ditch it for good.
The executive in question is no one’s idea of a philistine. He is Aby Rosen, among the city’s most prominent collectors and chairman of the New York State Council on the Arts. His own tastes run to contemporary artists, like Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, and he has told people that he wants to showcase highlights of his vast trove in the space now occupied by “Le Tricorne.”
At Four Seasons, Picasso Tapestry Hangs on the Edge of Eviction (NYTimes)
