Springtime in SoHo

On Saturdays in SoHo a cheery little trattoria called Mezzogiorno becomes the crossroads of New York's art world

No. Sorry! A bum steer. This place looks bright, and kind of cheerful, not like the set in a film noir. That food, too. It's being dished up quickly by waiters who look like waiters, not as if they wish they were in Shakespeare in the Park. So this can't be a fancy Manhattan hot spot, right? Wrong. This is Mezzogiorno on Spring Street, SoHo, the hummingest "art lunch" place in town. "It's a simple kind of joint," observes Leo Castelli, the immaculate doyen of art dealers. Sounding a bit less like William Powell, he adds, "But you don't hesitate to take even the most important person there." The joint's regulars include dealers such as Castelli himself, Ileana Sonnabend (his former wife), Charles Cowles, Roland Augustine, and husband and wife Brooke and Carolyn Alexander, who can often be observed fielding separate teams at dueling tables.

The most visible of the "important persons" who float in with the dealers are, of course, the indispensable purveyors of the goods, and such many-retrospectived figures as Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist, and John Baldessari might be seen here, along with artists whose retrospectives lie well ahead of them, like Ellen Phelan, Donald Baechler, and Sophie Calle. And, it goes without saying, where you find artists and dealers, you will also find such discreet eminences as collectors—well, most of them are discreet—and curators. "Sometimes there's a museum trustee at every other table," says dealer Charles Cowles. Just who is with whom at Mezzogiorno makes the art world's ears and mouths flutter like fans.

There are healthy indications that Mezzogiomo will escape the high hot-spot fatality rate. It got off, for one thing, to a slow start, having been opened five years ago by Vittorio Ansuini, who is from Florence, and Aldo Bozzi, who has Florentine connections. It was done up by a Florentine artist, focuses on Florentine food, and was supported from the start by what the esteemed picture restorer Marco Grassi jokingly refers to as the "Florentine mafia."

Florentines like their victuals. Art-worlders likewise. Castelli (who comes not from Florence but from Trieste) and Sonnabend were already in Mezzogiomo in the hectic 80s, when the rest of SoHo was in 150 Wooster. Then, by the way, there's Mezzogiorno-by-night, when such locally based actors as Robert De Niro, Matt Dillon, and Timothy Hutton may drift in. But that's a whole other dish of pasta.

ANTHONY HADEN-GUEST