Timeless art

Is there such a thing as timeless beauty? I'm a fan of built-in obsolescence in art, but at the same time many great artistic creations can and have retained all their power and beauty for centuries. Look at Piero della Francesca, say, or Johann Sebastian Bach, or, even further back, the pyramids of Egypt.

When it comes to modern art, there are two very distinct strands, which take very different views of timelessness. The first approach, increasingly popular these days, is to follow the Tate Modern approach, and have exhibitions full of superficially improbable juxtapositions, in an attempt to get people to see new things in familiar pieces. The second approach is that found at Dia:Beacon, a museum and foundation dedicated to permanent exhibitions and the proposition that great art needs no curatorial interference, and should rather be left untouched for posterity.

Personally, while I couldn't live wholly on the high seriousness of Dia, I love going up there and seeing some of the greatest art ever made in its optimal surroundings. Wonderfully, since I was there last the Sol Lewitt area has been improved immeasurably with a second enormous wall drawing, and it's a magnificent sight to behold. And if you need a reason to visit now, as opposed to any time in the next couple of decades, here's a really good one: a temporary Agnes Martin show, with some very rare early works from the late 1950s.

Agnes Martin has always been a bit of a curious fish: the same generation as the Abstract Expressionists, she emerged on the art scene in her late 40s, along with artists a generation younger such as Ellsworth Kelly and Donald Judd. She's similar to both groups, but has never really been a part of either of them, and indeed has lived a semi-mystical life in New Mexico for the past 35 years, painting maybe 12 or 15 trademark square canvases per year, and sending them off to Pace in New York to get sold.

In fact, Martin has a new show up at 57th Street right now, of paintings dated 2002 and 2003 – in other words, entirely since she turned 90. Some of them recall the early works at Dia, with Martin finally jettisoning her lines and grids, and returning to more geometric forms. But all of them are large squares: whether the sides are 60 inches or 70, Martin has found her medium and she is sticking to it.

For all her consistency, however, there's no doubt that Martin was doing her best work in the mid-60s. One of the problems with Dia:Beacon is that it's necessarily weighted towards the most recent work of artists like Martin and Robert Ryman – Martin donated some paintings to the museum, but of course they're not the 60s paintings which she sold long ago.

This exhibition, then, is a very welcome opportunity to see the paintings which Martin is most famous for, in a small show which nevertheless exhibits them to their very best effect. Martin hasn't had a retrospective in over a decade: her paintings are often very fragile, and their owners are loath to lend them out. Here, however, the 1964 masterpieces "The Beach" and "The Peach" are proudly displayed, both now effectively part of the Dia permanent collection. They're shown as the culmination of a few years' worth of experimentation, during which Martin pared down her artistic vocabulary so as to emphasise only the subtlest and most beautiful of lines, colours and grids.

Meanwhile, timeless painting of a very different nature is up at GBE (Modern), Gavin Brown's lovely new space in the West Village. He's got a wonderful Elizabeth Peyton show up now, and everybody should really make their way to Greenwich and Leroy to check it out. Peyton is being shown alongside David Hockney at the Whitney Biennial at the moment, and you can see why: her beautiful paintings of youths recall Hockney's own tenderest work. I can't think of anybody who can paint in such a heartbreaking manner, and I'm quite sure that she's one of the few artists you can guarantee will still be collected centuries from now.

On the other hand, fashions do change, and even the strongest artistic achievements can fall foul of aesthetic winds blowing in the wrong direction. I had the great good fortune to eat at La Caravelle today, just a week before it shutters for good on May 22. I had never been before, and I'm extremely glad I went: I doubt I'll experience another meal like it ever again in North America. The dining room was light and beautifully decorated, without any of the stuffiness of many formal restaurants. The food was of the absolutely highest order: my softshell crab starter simply melted in the mouth, and came with a pile of other flavours. I have no idea what they were, but I could have eaten that dish all day. I'm one of those people who generally says that only the Chinese really know how to cook softshells, but La Caravelle had the best I've ever tasted.

But the fashion in restaurants these days, of course, is more towards trendiness: people care less about the food and more about the crowd, the design, the cocktails. The patrons of La Caravelle were definitely of a certain age: I'd say there were more facelifts than there were people under 40. And it's hard to see how the restaurant could attract a younger crowd without betraying all its finest principles of proper French haute cuisine. So it is destined to close, along with Lutèce and La Côte Basque, evidence of how the very best art can lose its cachet.

In France, at least, such cuisine lives on, and maybe La Tour D'Argent or some other restaurant in Paris will serve as a kind of culinary equivalent of Dia:Beacon – a place where you can always be sure to find the cleanest, purest expression of its own kind of art. Meanwhile, the crowds will flock to Spice Market or Tate Modern, picking and choosing whatever they desire that day. I just hope there's room for both approaches; in painting, food, or any other art form.

Posted by Felix at 4:43 EST