New York: Dives of the artists

Fernand Léger’s old studio now has squatters living on the doorstep. They’re an unusual sight in the new New York, especially around Bowery. These ones, at no. 222, are African and live in a huge cardboard box decorated with industrial plastic. As a pioneering modernist, Léger would have appreciated their geometry — and poverty. He’d have been less sure about the building opposite: the New Museum of Contemporary Art. It’s covered in silvery mesh, and looks like a giant speaker with a fishing boat dangling off the top. How, he might wonder, had art become so extravagant and obscure?

Poor Léger, he needn’t worry. Styles may have changed, but the world’s artists are still drifting to New York, and it’s still the capital of modern art. It’s not just about great concrete hangars stuffed with novelty and genius (The Whitney,-Guggenheim and MoMA). No other city is so brilliant, so spontaneous and so cheerfully manic.