New York fixture Sherman Drexler (973-578-8552) was the second half of Molly Barnes' one-two punch this week, showing off not only his work of primitively drawn figures on rocks he finds and similarly dreamlike nudes wrestling on canvas (usually male vs female in the battle of the sexes, which has always fascinated him) but a droll talent for storytelling as intriguing and resonant as his art, which in one famous case he showed us is a sequence drawn from a horrid scene Sherman witnessed, a man who had missed his daily medication stood naked on a fire escape only ten feet up waving a fluorescent light tube at the police until a lieutenant got impatient and said "Taser him!", whereupon the electroshocked man toppled head first onto the sidewalk and soon died, and the lieutenant was so excoriated by all including his department that he afterwards shot himself.

Sherman was exercised today by the writings of Maria Abromavich the Serbian performance artist, the woman who had sat for weeks at the MOMA staring back silently at whoever wanted to sit opposite her. She was, Molly interjected, the highest paid artist of all at the moment. "That's temporary!" said Sherman and quoted her sayings to show how much things had declined since his and his colleagues ruled in this city, quotes to the effect that "An artist should avoid falling in love with another artrist!" (Sherman's wife Rosalyn is a well known Pop artist whose day jobs included briefly in 1951 professional wrestling as ""Rosa Carlo, the Mexican Spitfire", memorialized in a silkscreening by Andy Warhol), or "An artist should stare at exploding violence..." or "An artist should have only nine possessions, one of them a prayer mat...an artist should have more and more of less and less." Also, "artists have to be aware of their own mortality", to which Sherman responded, "Actually we are not aware of our own mortality, which is why we continue to work, and don't quit, lest others get a shot at the work." On the same theme of his native skepticism of art commentators he quoted a review of a show just ending where the current art scene was described by the critic as a den of "vanity, mendacity and gullibility" to which Sherman replied "vanity, mendacity and gullibility - exactly what keeps us all going!"

Sherman studied film as well as art exhaustively at libraries and museums in his teens, he said, viewing every movie in the collections he had access to as well as all the art in the National Gallery. (Given his early interest in cinema perhaps it wasn't surprising to hear that one of Sherman's greatest successes came later in directing one of his wife's plays, a directing accomplishment which a critic called "brilliant.") But he didn't fix on a life as a working artist until he was 19 and achieved a copy of a Da Vinci portrait of a bearded man which satisfied him. Developing an interest in painting on found objects of stone and other material he spent his twenties in Manhattan then finally turned to the academy, studying art at Berkeley before returning to New York in the mid fifties, where the handful of leading artists he was introduced to by Elaine de Kooning were small enough to fit into the Cedar Tavern nightly. All that camaraderie and close contact - where each would pick up on one another's recommendations for movies, say, and actually go to see them - is lost today "where there are ten million artists and it is difficult to know who is who and what's what".

He got a Guggenheim grant and also taught junior high school, which was an onerous gig in that it demanded catching a train, a bus and then a ferry to get to the school. The timing was merciless and one day he rushed to catch the ferry in the nick of time, panting through the terminal and with a desperate leap landing on the boat already separated by a four foot chasm from the dock. As he gathered himself he heard laughter and finally realized that the ferry had been coming in, not going out.

Next time he really did leap to catch it going out and fearing he would be detained for taking the risk, he borrowed a scarf and removed his hat so he could avoid being seen leaving after it docked. A similar embarrassment threatened during a visit to the ancient caves in France where he spotted a rock on the floor of the cave of artistic interest to himself which was far from the cave paintings, pocketed it and then had to try to explain to his guide at great length in broken French supported by his equally language challenged group that it was not a historical artifact. The tension finally broke when the smiling guide told him in perfect English (having understood all along) that there was no problem at all.

So were his female figures, sketchy but still appealing nudes, modeled by his wife, someone asked. "No they live inside my brain, " Sherman said, "But they could be my wife, yes." He went on to tell of an official of a country town who was deciding whether his art was acceptable, and told him "You have pubic hair showing. We will have to burn it!" but who luckily turned out to be just bluffing.

"Sherman, You still have every ounce of boyish charm. You are a perennial!" enthused pretty artist Donna Marxer (966-5212 donnamarxer@nyc.rr.com http://www.donnamarxer.com 579 Broadway7 4A NY 10012) afterwards. One of the small circle who formed the Manhattan coterie of top artists who at that time was small enough to fit into the Cedar Tavern nightly, as Sherman had noted, though Donna said she tended to avoid it as too full of female groupies. Other distinguished colleagues and onlookers included Molly's dynamic daughter Gabriella, wielding an iPhone and briefly visiting from a hectic life mothering two tots and finding people jobs in Human Resources. Also present was painter, pianist, poet, sculptor John Fischer, pretty artist Irene Christensen (East Chelsea Studio, 6 West 28 St NYC NY 10001, 679-0205 cell 201 615 0605 http://www.marlow.neoimages.net ireneart@earthlink.net East Chelsea Studio Nord, Schaeffersgt.5, 0558 Oslo, Norway) with her artist husband Charles Meyers (cmeyers.neoimages.net 677 7945 39 Bond Street NY 10012), installation and performance artist Arnold Wechler (463 West St #703 NY 10014 924 8814 arnoldw@earthlink.net http://www.home.earthlink.net/~arnoldw) whose paintings, prints and drawings exhibition from Burning Man will open September 15 2011 5-7pm at gallery 307 3(307 7th Avenue Suite 1401 27th-28th Streets 646 400 5254 and 879 7400 carterburdencenter.org/gallery-307); Danika Druttman (Danika Druttman@theLABGallery 339 2092) the administrator of the LAB Gallery http://www.theLABgallery.com) in the Roger Smith on the corner of 47th St and Lexington Ave (NE cnr).