The New York Times’s new approach to the art world—replacing the Inside Art column with a weekly photo-and-interview feature, Show Us Your Walls—has a lot of merit when you consider the growing importance of art and images in our global culture, on one hand, and the increasing importance of cultural objects, on the other.

All new columns need time to find their voice and build into a rhythm. How that will work with different interviewers asking the questions each week remains a question.

This week’s offering is the perennial New York fixture, Isaac Mizrahi:

We settled on one behind him in his cozy den, handsomely dominated by a majestic abstract painting by Mr. Dodge, a California artist. “It should be in someone’s loft, right?” he said. “I’ve made it into this almost decorative painting. It’s so not decorative. I have no idea what it’s called. It was my favorite one at the show, and I had to, like, fight to get it because he’s such a star, and I got it.” (The oil, according to the dealer, is “Horrid Torrid Times” from 2011.)

It makes up for the Jean-Michel Basquiat that got away. “Who had $2,000 when they were 20?” he asked, still agonizing.

Isaac Mizrahi, on Collecting Art in Search of the Me Factor  (The New York Times)