By Doug MacCash via NOLA.com

[Excerpt, for full article click here]

Deborah Kass, JOY, 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 71 x 67 inches

Art for Arts’ Sake 2014

What: A one-night festival of gallery openings to kick off the art season.

Where: Scores of art exhibits can be found along Magazine Street, in the French Quarter and, especially, in the arts district centered on the intersection of Camp and Julia Streets. The Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp St., and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, 925 Camp St., present exhibits and entertainment.

When: Saturday (Oct. 4) from 6 to 9 p.m.

Admission: Art galleries are free. Both the CAC and Ogden Museum are free for Art For Arts Sake.

More information: Visit the Contemporary Arts Center website, the Magazine Street Merchants Association website and the New Orleans Arts District website. Call the CAC at 504.528.3805.

Lesley Dill, Gown of Blueprint, 2014, Hand-painted metal with oil paint on metal armature,
78 x 58 x 58 inches (closed), 78 x 67 x 69 inches (open)

From the heights of Magazine Street to the French Quarter, the Art For Arts’ Sake fall art festival will lure art lovers into galleries, museums and shops starting at 6 p.m. on Saturday (Oct. 4). The big party began 34 years ago as a fundraiser for a then-revolutionary warehouse art space on the Crescent City’s skid row.

Deborah Kass, Daddy, 2013, Acrylic on canvas, 46 x 46 inches

Wordy works from New York art stars Lesley Dill and Deborah Kass at Arthur Roger Gallery, 432 and 434 Julia St.

Lesley Dill, Copper Bird Little, 2014, Copper, wire and organza on metal armature, 47 x 54 x 34 inches

We are a costume-loving town and over the years Leslie Dill has gifted us with gorgeous exhibits of her sculptural gowns patterned with the introspective musing of Emily Dickinson and the spiritual outpouring of Sister Gertrude Morgan. In her current exhibit “Ball Gowns of Lightness and Dark,” she explores New Orleans’ social dance tradition through abstract frocks.

Lesley Dill, Ecstasy Gown, 2014, Painted metal, wire and thread on metal armature, 68 x 55 x 27 inches

At the gallery next door, Deborah Kass’ exhibit “Feel Good Paintings For Feel Bad Times” takes us in a more subversive direction. Kass samples revered styles from recent art history and slyly reworks them to match her somewhat critical worldview.  In her hands, a spiral of rainbow-colored neon a la Bruce Nauman becomes a comment on the art world’s apparent glass ceiling. The lettering in the neon is a quote by Louise Bourgeois (the sculptor who created the huge spider in the Besthoff Sculpture Garden): “A woman has no place in the art world unless she proves over and over again she won’t be eliminated.”

Deborah Kass, After Louise Bourgeois, 2010, Neon and transformers on powder-coated aluminum panel, 66 x 68 x 5 inches