OCT. 13-OCT. 26, 2010 Volume 2, Issue 16
IN THIS ISSUE Julia Stiles in Persephone at BAM. Lang Lang and Vienna Philharmonic start the season. Goya drawings lure us into Spanish territory.
PLUS:
A closer look at the offerings during Gallery Night on 57th Street.
Louise Nevelson prints and three-dimensional multiples on view through Oct. 23 at Pace Primitive. Courtesy of Pace Primitive
An American Craftsman Galleries Presents
InthisIssue
7 Gallery Focus Uptown exhibits open for Gallery Night on 57th Street.
8 Museums LANCE ESPLUND is seduced by the Spanish Manner at The Frick.
10 C lassical
16
Music
Lang Lang, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Philharmonic get things going at Carnegie, according to JAY NORDLINGER.
12 At the Galleries Reviews: Austin Thomas at Storefront; Works on Paper: From Cézanne to Freud at Acquavella Galleries; Deborah Kass at Paul Kasmin Gallery; Consider the Oyster at James Graham & Sons; Plank Road at Salomon Contemporary; Geometric Progressions at Edward Thorp Gallery; Gita Lenz at Gitterman Gallery.
15 Jazz Mouquin
16 Theater
JAvits CeNter NoveMber 19 • 20 • 21
The Ridge Theater’s Persephone is a multimedia titan.
18 Arts Agenda
two shows oNe ADMissioN ColleCtor’s Preview Friday November 19
12pm - 3pm
oPeN to the PubliC Friday November 19 saturday November 20 sunday November 21
3pm - 7pm 10am - 7pm 10am - 4pm
Galleries, Art Events, Museums, Classical Music, Opera, Theater, Out of Town.
23 Paint the Town by Amanda Gordon EDITOR Jerry Portwood jportwood@manhattanmedia.com MANAGING EDITOR Adam Rathe arathe@ manhattanmedia.com
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2
HOWARD MANDEL wonders how grants have shaped jazz production.
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InBrief Board To Death Churches across the country have had
to get creative in communicating their messages to an ever-receding religious flock, and are often times turning to billboards to do so. The humor of their efforts, intentional or not, is not lost on artist Rob Pruitt, whose exhibition Holy Crap is currently on street view at Sotheby’s York Avenue headquarters. Let the irony ensue. A compilation of images Pruitt has snapped of church-board messages transferred onto three-meter vinyl decals applied to the East 71st Street and York Avenue corner windows of Sotheby’s, Holy Crap is an installation that exposes New Yorkers to an oft-comedic mode of communication reserved for more rural areas of the country—the quick (or sometimes dim) wit of the congregation members assigned to create messages for their church boards. Holy Crap, up until Oct. 19, was commissioned by Sotheby’s in collaboration with the non-profit organization Art Production Fund and Pruitt to run in conjunction with its latest exhibition, Divine Comedy, an installation of humorous religious art through the ages that offers renditions of hell, purgatory and paradise
even Dante could find comedic, which opened Sept. 30. “[Pruitt’s] an enthusiast, embracing pop culture and accepting the shortcomings or kind of humor in our current conditions, in a way, our pop-culture condition,” says Art Production Fund co-founder Doreen Remen. “It’s all a kind of documentation of our landscape. The documentation is the comment. It doesn’t need another layer of comment. That’s what’s interesting.” [Jordan Galloway]
Medium Meditation Six years after he last presented a work
at BAM—which was the conclusion of his imposing and thought-provoking Geography Trilogy—Ralph Lemon returns to the Brooklyn stage Oct. 13-16 with How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? While the trilogy, which occupied him for nearly a decade, grew out of an extensive process of travel, research, meticulous investigation and exploration, this latest work is more personal and internal in focus. Drawing on significant encounters with loss and mortality in recent years, and working with performers who were part of the trilogy’s investigations, Lemon incorporates live performance, film and visual art to explore themes of human
Pruitt with his work at Sotheby’s.
connection, loss and the elusive but evercompelling possibility of grace. Before he disbanded his dance company in 1995 to embark on more multidisciplinary ventures, Lemon was known for his formalist yet sensual, rigorously focused choreography. His work has expanded in many directions—for the Trilogy, he kept journals, made drawings, took photos and shot video, and collected his materials into accompanying books—but dance
remains essential to what he does. “Among the things I seem to be resourcing in my creative process, dance—for better or worse—has certainly been primary. It’s still what I do—if differently. It’s a pretty major part of this new work. But it’s not more important than all the other things I’m experimenting with. It’s still an important aspect of how I think about making work and being creative,” he says recently by phone from San Francisco, where How Can
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October 13, 2010 | City Arts
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InBrief
ART BOOKS The Flesh and The Spirit By Sally Mann
Named “America’s Best Photographer” by Time magazine in 2001, Sally Mann’s latest book of photography penetrates the mysterious and ephemeral nature of the human body. Beautifully reproduced in this 200-page hardback is a collection of black-and-white self-portraits, wispy landscapes, still-lifes, stark studies of decaying bodies and candid nude portraits of her husband, which premiered at the Gagosian Gallery last year. The book also highlights the artist’s lesser-known cibachrome print series, Family Color, which parallels the controversial blackand-white nude portraits of her children in her collection Immediate Family. With an introduction by the curator of modern and contemporary art at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, John B. Ravenal, and essays by David Levi Strauss and Anne Wilkes Tucker, The Flesh and The Spirit accompanies Mann’s upcoming exhibit at the VMFA. Haunting and visceral, The Flesh and The Spirit affords a personal view into the photographer’s interior world, as much as it unveils the nature of our mortality with painstaking honesty. Naked: The Nude in America
Ralph Lemon
By Bram Dijkstra
Walter Carter is featured in Ralph Lemon’s current work.
You Stay… was being performed and an accompanying exhibition of his visual art was opening. Moving on to this project, following the Trilogy “definitely feels like the end and the beginning of something,” Lemon said. An important link with that earlier project was his ongoing association with Walter Carter, a former sharecropper from the Mississippi Delta, born in 1908, whom Lemon first met while researching Come Home, Charley Patton. In that work, he confronted his own personal connections to the south and aspects of its history. Carter and his wife appear in some of the new work’s film segments, and Lemon refers to additional, more privately seen projects on which they have collaborated since they met eight years ago. In addition to the three sections of the work performed at BAM’s Harvey Theater, How Can You Stay… includes a fourth segment, Meditation, a film installation that will be on view Oct. 17 at The Kitchen. It reiterates the themes
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City Arts | www.cityarts.info
from the stage portions through projection, light and shadow, creating an immersive environment. [Susan Reiter]
Hanging From theSethFrame Indigo Carnes’ latest project, Lobby Series #18: iheart variation 003, showcases a deep focus on the nuance of symbols and context. Located in the lobby of the Roger Smith Hotel—with its plush red carpets and stately concierge desk—Carnes reveals the hotel’s hip, artsy, social-media-savvy side with his graphic 8-inches-by-8-inches prints of a splatter spot, pill, surveillance camera, heart symbol and the words “iheart” (reinterpreted from Milton Glaser’s iconic 1970s marketing campaign for the city). Arranged in three rows, the 15 individually framed prints read as sentences written by Carnes with the intention that viewers supply the interpretation. “On first glance, it’s sort of a very
pop art feel,” explains Danika Druttman, communications manager for Roger Smith Arts. “You look at it and say, ‘Gosh that’s fun, but is there more?’” The most enticing aspect of the series is tracing the evolution of the symbols. In addition to Carnes’ prints, the lobby series includes works by Molly Dilworth, Ditte Gantriis, Changha Hwang and Douglas Rushkoff that reinterpret the five symbols and give them new meaning. In the hands of Hwang, for example, a droplet from Carnes’ splatter spot takes on different colors to represent ink, blood, water and Fanta soda. For Gantriis, the splatter spot and droplet morph into a papercut. In a post-modern twist, Carnes then reinterprets variations from his fellow artists to create entirely new prints: In one variation, he’s taken Gantriis’ papercut and super-imposed it on a black heart to evoke even further metaphors. On top of this mixing and remixing, Carnes invites the public to rearrange his 15 prints BRIEFS on page 6
Bram Dijkstra’s exploration of the history of nudity in American art is a bit of a two-forone deal: a hybrid of controversial coffee table book and in-depth social and political treatise on American culture. Dijkstra, professor emeritus of comparative literature and cultural history at UC San Diego, is not a traditional art historian, nor does the work read like an art history book. Highlighting over 400 pieces depicting both male and female nudes, this eyecatching collection will quickly turn on any reader anticipating a quick flip-through. Dijkstra’s observations are deeply absorbing and unabashedly critical of the zipped-up Puritanism that has forced so many such works of art into the bottom rungs of the fine arts world. The author respectfully declares his subjectivity outright, and the resulting discussion proves irresistibly engaging. The selected works are organized by conversation topic, illustrating Dijkstra’s ideas and freeing the reader from any tiresome imposition of chronology. In a discussion on the notion of the “predatory woman,” Frank Cho’s “Ape & Babe,” a cartoon-ish watercolor and ink portrayal of a blue gorilla smoking a cigarette and carrying a naked, rose-crowned blond on its back, appears opposite James Allen St. John’s “Ave Pan,” an oil painting of two classically-inspired grape-bunch-wielding nudes making an offering to an idol. Other talking points range from pinup girls to pubic hair, but the book never strays from its well-informed and refreshingly readable focus on America’s tumultuous relationship with the human body.
ArtsNews permanent regulation… The Art Show, the country’s longest-running national art fair, will open Mar. 2, 2011. Now in its 23rd year, The Art Show brings together exhibitions of museum-quality pieces from the 19th and 20th centuries. Organized by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA) to benefit Henry Street Settlement, this year’s fair will include work from Mitchell-Innes & Nash, Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery, Marian Goodman Gallery and Tibor de Nagy Gallery, among many others.
Discover China Through Marco Polo’s Eyes The World of Khubilai Khan Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty
Insertion date: SEPT 29, 2010
Through January 2
7.341 X 8.5, 4C
honors Lois and Roland W. Betts and artist Elizabeth Catlett… An agreement between Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Paterson to create a $100 million fund for the Performing Arts Center at the World Trade Center site was formally announced Oct. 6. The fund is part of the Master Plan for the Redevelopment of the World Trade Center and is focused on the revitalization of the Lower Manhattan community. “Federal funds will also be used for Lower Manhattan utility infrastructure upgrades and economic development, transportation, cultural and community projects,” a release explained... Chelsea dance mecca The Joyce Theater was selected to be a prime tenant in the Performing Arts Center in 2004. Since then, The Joyce Theater has worked with the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the City of New York and the Port Authority, among others, to create a design for a Performing Arts Center that is versatile enough to support a diverse range of performing arts. The design must also, “fit seamlessly into the complicated confines of the WTC site.”… On Sept. 14, the New York State Board of Regents voted to let the regulations against
government interfering with decisions about which art should go and which should stay. Meanwhile, many smaller organizations— who are more financially at risk in an unstable economy—worry that a board will pressure them to sell artworks to pay their bills and feel that official laws against such sales would protect their collections. Tisch denies the notion that the Regents’ vote places the interest of larger institutions above smaller ones. The Board of Regents said in a recent statement that it still intends to work on a
Publication: City Arts
The Joyce Theater.
deaccessioning, which is when a museum gets rid of, sells or trades objects from its collection, expire. The vote surprised many museum executives, legislators and public officials, who thought that the regulations would last. Explaining its decision, Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch told The New York Times that there were too many conflicting viewpoints on the issue and that the board needed more time to examine it. Large museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for instance, don’t want the
LaPlacaCohen 212-675-4106
The sixth annual Fashion District Arts Festival will take place Oct. 14 through 16 from 9 a.m. to 10 daily, and will feature nearly 100 gallery exhibits, open studios, workshops, concerts, performances and more… It was announced that in September 2011, Frick Collection Director Anne L. Poulet will retire. In a statement, Poulet said, “The coming year, my last at the Frick, promises to be richly satisfying, as we present a wonderful calendar of exhibitions and programs while fulfilling further initiatives to care for our collections and building.” A successor has yet to be named… On Nov. 2, MoMA will present the 2010 Jazz Interlude, an evening hosted by The Friends of Education, a Museum affiliate group devoted to encouraging greater appreciation of art made by African Americans and the participation of African Americans at MoMA. This year’s event
metmuseum.org The exhibition is made possible by
The exhibition is also made possible by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Dillon Fund, The Henry Luce Foundation, Wilson and Eliot Nolen, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Foundation, the Oceanic Heritage Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Florence and Herbert Irving, and Jane Carroll.
MET-0042-KhubilaiKhan_CityArts_7.341x8.5(1.16)_Sept29_v1.indd 1
It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Khubilai Khan (1215–1294) as the First Yuan Emperor, Shizu, National Palace Museum, Taipei.
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October 13, 2010 | City Arts
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Alexandre CityArts 10-2010
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InBrief
Gregory Amenoff AT ALL HOURS: NEW PAINTINGS
Trine, 2010, oil on panel, 32 1/4 x 34 1/2 inches
Reception for the artist Thursday, October 14, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm
A l e x a n d r e Ga l l e r y Fuller Building 41 East 57th 212.755.2828 www.alexandregallery.com
GALLERY NIGHT ON 57TH STREET Thursday October 14, 2010 from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m.
47 galleries between Lexington Avenue and 8th Avenue will be open. Nailya Alexander Gallery
Marlborough Gallery
Alexandre Gallery
Marlborough Graphics
Amador Gallery
A. Jain Marunouchi Gallery
Arnot Gallery/Herbert Arnot, Inc.
The Merrin Gallery
Art Finance Partners
Jason McCoy
The Art Students League of New York
Mika Gallery
Babcock Galleries
Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art
Bernarducci . Meisel Gallery
Francis M. Naumann Fine Art
Bonni Benrubi Gallery Maxwell Davidson Gallery DC Moore Gallery Tibor de Nagy Gallery Theodore B. Donson Ltd. David Findlay Jr Fine Art Wally Findlay Galleries Galerie St. Etienne Gering & López Gallery
The Pace Gallery Pace/MacGill Gallery Pace Prints Pace Primitive Franklin Parrasch Gallery Scholten Japanese Art Frederico Sève Gallery/Latincollector John Szoke Editions Throckmorton Fine Art
James Goodman Gallery
TK Asian Antiquities
Marian Goodman Gallery
Ana Tzarev Gallery
Howard Greenberg Gallery Nohra Haime Gallery Bill Hodges Gallery Edwynn Houk Gallery
Washburn Gallery Wendt Gallery D. Wigmore Fine Art Zabriskie Gallery
Leonard Hutton Galleries FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL 212-888-3550 or email gallerynighton57street@gmail.com
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
iheart variation 003.
BRIEFS from page 4 (every Tuesday, as well as the second and fourth Sundays of the month at 6 p.m.), to participate in the artwork. The variations are video recorded and shared online. In this way, iheart variation 003 is not a finished product but a constantly developing one that means a little more to everyone involved. [Pauline Tran]
Sublime Scriabin Why is it that when great figures in the
performing arts work together, the results are so rarely like those produced by the pairing of Stravinsky and Nijinksy at the Ballets Russe and so often like the meeting of director Michael Mayer and Green Day for the musical American Idiot? Perhaps part of the problem is that the producers, intent on throwing “talent” together like spaghetti at a wall and seeing what sticks, don’t first ask a simple question: What can each of the parties attached to the project contribute that’s relevant and useful? A contrast with this “let’s mix and match and see if something great happens” approach will be seen Oct. 25 and 26 when the Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC) presents a special performance titled “Spectral Scriabin,” that matches up the talents of a heralded Georgian pianist, Broadway’s best-regarded lighting designer and the music of one of the greatest late Romantic composers. The composer whose music is being performed—in conjunction with a spectacular light show—is Alexander Scriabin. If the name isn’t familiar to you, that’s a shame. For while Scriabin died young in a mysterious episode of blood poisoning, the music that this Russian pianist-composer, world traveler and supreme egomaniac left is among the most grand, grandiose and beautiful ever written. It’s a fascinating mix of the subjective styles of Chopin, Liszt and Wagner. He’s always been a favorite of Romantic conductors and pianists, and with
good cause: Intent on writing music that would be exceptionally melodic, intensely emotional and towering in scale, Scriabin never produced anything ordinary. Brought up as a small, sickly child in a household of women, Scriabin developed an intense sense—or need to believe—in his own supremacy. He also learned on his own to build and sell pianos, and, in spite of having tiny hands, he gained fame as a concert pianist. And after reading Nietzsche and various Indian philosophers, he came to the idea of producing a universal art form of his own creation. All of the Himalayas, he suggested, would someday be used to create a multi-colored light show to accompany his music. Each key would represent a color, and the music would become transformative. Then, he claimed, a new world would begin.
“Spectral Scriabin.”
Likely that won’t happen after the BAC performance. But BAC demonstrates a rare mix of culture and smarts in its pairing of lighting designer Jennifer Tipton and pianist Eteri Andjaparidze in a performance of Scriabin’s music. Tipton is a MacArthur “Genius” and Tony Awardwinning lighting designer whose novel and effective ideas about lighting have turned countless Broadway shows, ballets and operas that seemed dead on arrival into hits. Andjaparidze is an acclaimed pianist with extensive knowledge of Scriabin’s repertoire. Yes, here is an attempt to combine gifted folk with the right skills to realize a specific artistic vision—a literal vision. The result is apt to be something better than American Idiot. It might even be something unforgettable. [Jonathan Leaf]
Galleries
Block By Block Re-discover the 57th Street galleries for a night BY VALERIE GLADSTONE While much of the attention of collectors and art voyeurs is focused on Chelsea, the galleries on East 57th Street rank among the most elegant in the world. But finding time to view the uptown riches—from contemporary paintings, sculpture and photography, to exquisite antique furniture and museum-quality works by Old Masters—can prove difficult for art lovers unable to break away from typical routines. After several years of witnessing the success of the Fuller Building’s annual evening openings—which officially ended last year—Nohra Haime decided to expand the concept to 57th Street, and managed to get nearly 50 galleries to join in. “It’s fun to look at art after hours,” Haime says. Her distinguished eponymous gallery, now at 730 Fifth Ave., has graced 57th Street for almost 30 years. “For most people, it’s much more engaging, when they have nothing else on their minds and can focus on the works.” Many galleries have arranged exhibit schedules so that they will open their major fall shows the evening of Oct. 14. At this year’s gallery walk, visitors will be able to get the expected wine and cheese with their art viewings, and a few galleries are planning a little more; A. Jain Marunouchi Gallery will even present a live jazz concert. Haime plans to celebrate groundbreaking artist Adam Straus’ 20th anniversary, with the provocative show Air and Water or: Everything’s Fine Until It’s Not, the title inspired by the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. His 21 recent
paintings make up a moving statement about man’s relationship to the natural world. The David Findlay Gallery organized a tribute to the Abstract Expressionist painter Jon Schuler, titled The Castelli Years, 19551959, because of his affiliation with the legendary art dealer Leo Castelli during that period. “I’m so glad we’re doing this event,” Louis Newman, the gallery’s director, says. “It’s always seemed to me that we’ve had it backwards anyway. We really should be open evenings and weekends all the time. I hope this turns into a monthly affair.” Visitors will find a treasure trove of photographs in the show Looking Forward, Looking Back: An Exhibition to Honor 50 Years at The Pace Gallery, at, of course, the Pace/MacGill Gallery. Robert Frank, Paul Graham, Irving Penn, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand and Edward Weston are only a few of the great photographers featured. “Last year,” says Lauren Panzo, the director, “we had many people coming in who had never been here before. But it’s not only a good idea because we’re widening our audience through the special evening; it’s terrific that all the galleries are joining forces and doing something together.” Nearby at Pace Primitive and Pace Prints, the exhibit is dedicated to Louise Nevelson’s explorations in etching, lithography, aquatint, lead intaglio relief, cast paper pulp and threedimensional multiples. Spencer Throckmorton III, owner of Throckmorton Fine Art, decided to interest more than one kind of art lover. So he chose to have on view both the arresting India:
Erik Benson’s “Small Works” (above) at Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art; Jon Schueler’s “The First Snow Cloud (58-3)” (right) at David Findlay Jr. Fine Art; Louise Nevelson’s works (below left) on view at Pace Primitive.
A Pilgrimage, a collection 35 black-andwhite silver gelatin prints by photographer Marilyn Bridges that document her journey along sacred Indian rivers, and, simultaneously, at least three remarkable pieces of ancient Chinese art, among them a 14th-century statue of the goddess of mercy, a lacquer coffer from the Ming period and a 3rd-century limestone Buddha head. China is well represented by the Ana Tzarev Gallery, which will be opening its show, Legends of Asia, while the Marlborough Gallery (40 W. 57th St.) is exhibiting Threading Orbs, recent Jacquard tapestries and works on paper by Thierry W. Despont. He is best known for luminous paintings on wood-panel or on copper mounted on wood-panel that depict nebulas, celestial bodies and planets. Those who enjoy meeting artists will have the opportunity at Edward Tyler Nahem Fine Art, where young, Brooklynbased painter Erik Benson will be available to talk about his work: stunning paintings inspired by the urban landscape. “I’m excited to introduce Erik’s work to a new crowd of fresh faces,” director Kristin Chiacchia says. “He can explain his
process, which involves painting acrylic on glass, cutting it out into strips and shapes, peeling it off the glass and then collaging it onto the canvas. So each of the bricks, leaves and branches that you see in a painting have been individually cut out and applied to the canvas. I think relating to artists humanizes the art.” Haime more than agrees. “The open evening also humanizes the gallery experience. It’s as if we’re opening our homes,” Haime says. “We want everyone to relax, stroll around, ask questions, and share in what gives our lives meaning.” < Oct. 14, 212-888-3550; 5-8 p.m. October 13, 2010 | City Arts
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MUSEUMS
On Spanish Soil
The Frick dedicates a show to the broad tradition of Spanish draftsmanship
N OW O N V I E W
Meet the Morgenthaus, a family who embraced the promise of America. Learn how, over three generations, they changed the course of world events, American politics, and Jewish history. Explore an interactive family history at: WWW.MJHNYC.ORG/MORGENTHAUS Edmond J. Safra Plaza 36 Battery Place in Lower Manhattan 646.437.4202
Closed Saturdays and Jewish holidays
This exhibition is made possible through generous funding from The Isenberg Family Charitable Trust, Marina and Stephen E. Kaufman, Lois and Martin Whitman, Jack Rudin, and New York State Senator Eric T. Schneiderman. MEDIA SP ONSORSHIP G E N E RO U S LY P ROV I D E D BY
PHOTO: Henry Morgenthau, Sr., shown with Henry Morgenthau, Jr., and his children Joan, Henry III, and Robert.
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
By Lance Esplund Violence and ecstasy go hand-inhand in Spanish art, where altar, gibbet, crucifixion, bedroom and bullfight scenes— all fraught with religious urgency—seem interchangeable. A gritty mixture of spirit, blood and earth—what might be called the “Spanish manner”—moves through Spanish painting, cementing it through romanticism into form. Descend the winding staircase into the Frick Collection’s lower depths (its Special Exhibition Galleries), where 54 Spanish drawings—quirky, visionary, dark and brutal—await you in The Spanish Manner: Drawings from Ribera to Goya, and enter a world where mysticism and naturalism, martyrdom and myth, religious belief and cold hard fact come head to head. On terracotta-colored walls (a hue at times reminiscent of dried blood), subjects shift here among the tortuous, erotic, revelatory and comical. Included here in chalk, ink and wash are depictions, some of them masterpieces, of King David, Christ and the Virgin; a whore, a nun, a bat and a satyr; beggars and saints, prisoners and peasants, acrobats, asses and angels. In recent years we’ve seen a number of spectacular museum and gallery exhibitions in New York devoted to Spanish art and architecture, including the Guggenheim’s Spanish Painting from El Greco to Picasso: Time, Truth, History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudí to Dalí. In 2006, the Frick mounted a haunting show devoted to the late work of Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (17461828). And in 2008, the Peter Blum Gallery exhibited the complete suite of 85 etchings from Goya’s “Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War)” (181020), which chronicled and satirized the violence and horrors of the Spanish War of Independence, as well as its decade-long postwar repercussions in Spain. But The Spanish Manner, which spans the early 17th to the early 19th century (and is organized by Jonathan Brown, Lisa A. Banner and the Frick’s Susan Grace Galassi), marks the first time in New York that a museum show has been devoted to the broad tradition of Spanish draftsmanship. Since the 16th century, Spanish artists have traveled to Italy and, later, France to absorb the latest innovations. El Greco was inspired by Michelangelo, Titian and Tintoretto; the naturalism of Caravaggio influenced Velázquez; Goya traveled to Italy and lived in France; Picasso (as French as he is Spanish), lived in Paris. Yet, according to Brown, “without the intellectual substratum of humanism in which these [classical Italian] ideals were founded, [Spanish artists] often
took a more independent course, making use of classicism as one option among other representational modes. They developed original and idiosyncratic techniques, delved into a wide range of emotional experience, and freely departed from conventions of representing the human figure—all components of this ‘Spanish manner.’” In the Frick’s exhibition, the hardscrabble and the fantastical find equal footing on artistic ground that, though fertilized by French, Italian and Northern sources, remains peculiarly Spanish. The first of The Spanish Manner’s two galleries is devoted to drawings created by Spanish Golden-Age masters Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-82), alongside key examples by their contemporaries. Twentythree drawings by Goya, an artist rarely seen in the context of his predecessors, occupy the entire second gallery. Ribera is represented by a handful of drawings, including the tightly woven red chalk “Studies of a Head in Profile” (c. 1662), in which four views, two of a man’s ear, one of his lower face and one of his eye and the bridge of his nose, all jerk and shift the head, suggesting the same face either weirdly composited or in cinematic progression. Also by Ribera is “Head of a Satyr” (c. 1625-30), whose horns, hair and pointed ears flicker like fire; and the bust-length “Head of a Man with Little Figures on His Head” (c. 1630), in which the hillock-like hat of an inquisitive man, or grotesque, is ascended, as if in a game of king of the hill, by four tiny tumbling nude acrobats. Francisco de Herrera the Elder’s brush and gray wash over black chalk “Apostle with Staff, Half-Figure” (c. 1640) is fluid and pious. Yet his son Francisco de Herrera the Younger outshines his father with “Design for a Processional Sculpture of The Vision of Saint John on Patmos, with Five Variant Plans” (1660-71), an ecstatic, spiraling flurry of ink and washes that evokes Bernini and prefigures Giacometti. Antonio del Castillo y Saavedra’s pen and ink “Four Heads of Men” (c. 1660) has quicksilver bravado; and his red chalk study “Saint Jerome Reading in the Desert” (c. 1665) intelligently dislocates the seated saint’s upper torso from his hips and legs, thrusting Jerome back in space and creating a sense of spiritual seclusion. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo is represented here by six sheets, including a Tiepoloesque “Virgin of the Immaculate Conception” and a wonderfully wrenched “Christ on the Cross” (both c. 1665-70). Not everything in The Spanish Manner is of equal value (sometimes diversity of
Oct 14
AT AUCTION 19th & 20th Century Literature, Art, Press & Illustrated Books Specialist: Christine von der Linn, ext 20 cvonderlinn@swanngalleries.com Illustrated Catalogue: $35
Oct 19
Fine Photographs & Select Photobooks Specialist: Daile Kaplan, ext 21 dkaplan@swanngalleries.com Illustrated Catalogue: $35
Oct 27 Oct 28
Whistler and his Influence Rare & Important Old Master Prints Old Master through Modern Prints Specialist: Todd Weyman, ext 32 tweyman@swanngalleries.com Illustrated Catalogue (3 vol): $40 U.S./$50 elsewhere
Nov 4
Special Event October 26, 6:30 pm: Robert H. Getscher, author of The Stamp of Whistler, discusses Whistler and the Etching Revival. Admission is free but space is limited. RSVP hbrody@swanngalleries.com
Autographs Specialist: Marco Tomaschett, ext 12 mtomaschett@swanngalleries.com Illustrated Catalogue: $35
James A.M. Whistler, Count Robert de Montesquiou, lithograph, 1894. Estimate $20,000 to $30,000.
Nov 9
Early Printed, Medical, Scientific, & Occult Books Specialist: Tobias Abeloff, ext 18 tabeloff@swanngalleries.com Illustrated Catalogue: $35
Catalogue Orders and General Inquiries: 212 254 4710, ext 0 104 East 25th Street • New York, NY 10010 View catalogues and bid online at www.swanngalleries.com
Goya’s “A Nude Woman Seated Beside a Brook.” subject, artist or style appears to have won out over quality). And notably absent are works by El Greco, Velázquez and Zurbarán (artists who drew directly on the canvas and left behind few drawings). The show really ignites, however, in the gallery of Goyas. And before you spend time here, you might want to explore a few of the Frick’s own great Spanish paintings upstairs— Velázquez’s “King Philip IV of Spain” (1664), Goya’s portrait “Don Pedro, Duque de Osuna” (c. 1790-1800) and Goya’s “The Forge” (c. 1815-20), for which there is a vigorous study, “Three Men Digging” (c. 1812-20) in this exhibition. Goya’s drawings include allegories, sketches, satirical treatments, fantastical narratives and slices of life—scenes of men drinking, fighting, fishing, praying, begging, looking up women’s skirts or being tortured. The gallery opens with a beautiful and regal self-portrait in red chalk (c. 1798) and moves fluidly through a range of human experience. In “Repentance” (c. 1812-20), a man, seated on a rock in prayer, looks as if he is howling like a dog at a shadowy cross, which looms forward, as if ready to attack. In another drawing, a beggar drags his shadow behind him like a human stain; and in another, of masquerading asses, donkeys are dressed as dandies. Goya’s handwritten
text reads: “They are pleased because of their clothing they are taken for grandees.” Goya’s ghoul in “A Nun Frightened by a Ghost” prefigures that in Edvard Munch’s “Scream,” and the gorgeous and dark “A Nude Woman Seated Beside a Brook” (both c. 1812-20), in which a voyeur espies a bather, reinvents Bathsheba and foretells the “Luncheon” of Manet. One of the most striking drawings in The Spanish Manner is Goya’s black crayon “He Appeared Like This, Mutilated, in Zaragoza, Early in 1700” (1824-28). Here, a tortured man in a cloth bag, heavy as a sack of potatoes, hangs from a point—perhaps his arms dislodged from their sockets and wrenched upward—high above the middle of his back. His lifeless legs and head dangle free. Yet Goya, transforming dead weight into weightlessness, draws the murdered man’s body in the shape of a rising, flickering flame. In each of these drawings, Goya gives grit to life; fire—soul—to body. Despite The Spanish Manner’s range of themes, approaches, periods and levels of talent, the show lowers us deep into the Spanish soil. The drawings remain genuine and of a kind—bound together by kindred spirits. < Through Jan. 9, 2011, The Frick Collection, 1 E. 70th St., 212-288-0700. October 13, 2010 | City Arts
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ClassicalMUSIC
Carnegie’s Curtain-Raiser
Lang Lang, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Philharmonic get things going
C
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By Jay Nordlinger arnegie Hall opened its season with a granddaddy of an orchestra: the Vienna Philharmonic. This elegant, venerable bunch gave four concerts, practically taking up residence in our number-one hall. I must say that the hall looked beautiful on opening night. A great hall—a cultural temple—ought to look beautiful. It ought to start out beautiful and be kept in a state of beauty. Carnegie Hall’s current stewards, apparently, understand this. Just as important, or more important: The hall’s acoustics never fail. Every opening night, I’m reminded that this is true. I leave Carnegie Hall at the end of a season, in late May or early June. In the summer months, I am in such halls as Avery Fisher, at Lincoln Center, and the Grosses Festspielhaus, in Salzburg. These halls are perfectly adequate, but they can’t hold a candle to Carnegie. Then I return in late September or early October, and marvel once more at the Carnegie effect. Especially marvelous is the combination of the Vienna Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall. The Vienna group is renowned for its sound: the beauty, warmth, depth and richness of that sound. To combine it with Carnegie’s acoustics is almost a decadent act. The concertgoing public is invited to gorge on hot-fudge sundaes. The opening program was allBeethoven, seldom a bad idea. First came a piano concerto, in which the soloist was Lang Lang, the Chinese sensation, still not 30 years old. (He is now 28.) He is a greatly unpredictable pianist: Sometimes he is brilliant, an immortal-in-the-making. At other times he is vulgar, dull or merely dense. I always say that Lang Lang never plays badly. It’s just that he sometimes thinks badly. His fingers can always do exactly what his brain tells them to do. On the podium was Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the aristocratic Austrian who was born in 1929, almost a decade before the Anschluss. Think of that. For most of his career, he was known as an early-music specialist. Indeed, he was an early-music specialist before it was cool. In recent years, however, he has conducted music of all sorts. His latest recording is of Porgy and Bess—Harnoncourt has come a long way, baby. In some outings, he touches a high musical peak; in others, he is more earthbound, so to speak. But he is always respectable: a solid, serious musician. That Beethoven concerto was the Piano
Concerto No. 1 in C major, Op. 15. Two seasons ago, Lang Lang played this with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Christoph Eschenbach. The young man was at his best: a little eccentric, certainly unconventional, but brilliant, convincing and always musical. I believe—and wrote— that Beethoven would have loved it. At Carnegie Hall, Lang Lang emerged from the wings for another go at the concerto. He has for sure the cockiest walk in all of music: a rock-star walk. Harnoncourt conducted the opening of the concerto with care, command and peculiarity. Was he honoring the peculiarity of his soloist? The music had an odd, or at least an unaccustomed, shape. In any case, Harnoncourt conducted this opening superbly. The pianist, on entering, could only mess things up. He sort of did, and sort of didn’t. On the positive side of the ledger, he made beautiful, sometimes pearly sounds. He can be counted on for this. And his technique was, of course, infallible, or nearly so. He has the loosest arms and hands in creation. Tightness never creeps into them. This helps him play nimbly, smoothly, inventively, accurately—and as fast as he wants. His cadenza was extraordinary. It was spontaneous, improvisatory, as though the pianist was making it up on the spot. (Was he, parts of it?) And here comes the negative side of the ledger: Lang Lang did some blunt and coarse playing. Also some prissy, affected playing, just for variety. Some accents were grossly misjudged. Some rubato, or license with tempo, was screwy. The first movement did not quite have its structure. The Vienna Philharmonic could hardly be faulted. These players did everything that Harnoncourt asked of them. In addition to their royal sound, they have a remarkable ability to speak to you: to make the music talk. I noticed this quite a bit this summer in Salzburg, where they are the resident orchestra. This was particularly true when they were in the opera pit. From Lang Lang, Beethoven’s second movement, Largo, was rather too relaxed and soupy—more like a Chopin nocturne than a Beethoven slow movement. (Although, in truth, one should not even play a Chopin nocturne that way.) Lang Lang made a nifty, immediate transition into the closing Rondo—but he played the opening figures heavily and clumsily. Throughout this movement he was prone to sloppiness and muddiness. And his
American Brass Quintet
Photo: Michael DiVito
Juilliard
Saidenberg Faculty Recitals Fall 2010 Chamber Music Reunion
American Brass Quintet
50TH ANNIVERSARY CONCERT Raymond Mase and Kevin Cobb, Trumpets David Wakefield, Horn Michael Powell, Trombone John D. Rojak, Bass Trombone JOAN TOWER Copperwave In Gabrieli’s Day A suite of five works by Italian Renaissance Masters ed. Raymond Mase TREVOR GURECKIS Fixated Nights (NY Premiere) THOMAS STOLTZER Three Fantasias in Church Modes ed. Arnold Fromme DAVID SAMPSON Chants & Flourishes (NY Premiere) GIOVANNI GABRIELI Sonata XX ed. Raymond Mase Juilliard’s esteemed resident brass ensemble since 1987 FREE tickets at the Juilliard Box Office
eccentricities got the better of him. The music never caught fire, the way it did two seasons ago with the Philharmonic and Eschenbach. In fact, it was a bit monotonous—dull. After a Lang Lang performance, Chinese women and girls can be expected to go to the front of the stage to offer bouquets of flowers. And so they did. As usual, Lang Lang leaned over and kissed their hands. Then he wandered into the orchestra, looking for women to present the bouquets to. Precious few of those in the Vienna Phil.! Lang Lang wound up giving one of them to a man. And I couldn’t help wondering how the little girls felt: Their idol had given away their bouquets so quickly, and right in front of them. He played an encore: the blazing, quirky final movement of Prokofiev’s Sonata No. 7, marked Precipitato. I don’t believe I had ever heard the Precipitato so fast (except maybe from Yefim Bronfman). It was accurate, too, for the most part. And thrilling. Lang Lang put more than the usual amount of jazz into the music— playing it like an American, really. And I will give you an extraneous detail: Lang Lang hardly ever looked at the keyboard as
Juilliard String Quartet
Bonnie Hampton and Faculty Friends Bonnie Hampton, Cello Robert Mann and Earl Carlyss, Violins Nicholas Mann, Viola Seymour Lipkin, Piano SCHUMANN Piano Trio in F Major, Op. 80 BEETHOVEN Cello Sonata No. 4, Op. 102, No. 1 DVORˇ ÁK Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. 81 Extraordinary music-making by friends and Juilliard colleagues FREE tickets at Juilliard Box Office
Friday, October 15 at 8 • Alice Tully Hall
Lang Lang performed with the Vienna Philharmonic to open Carnegie Hall’s season.
Thursday, December 2 at 8 Alice Tully Hall
Photo: Richard Termine
Photo: Peter Schaaf
Wednesday, October 13 at 8 • Paul Hall
Nick Eanet and Ronald Copes, Violins Samuel Rhodes, Viola Joel Krosnick, Cello Program TBA The ground-breaking American quartet formed at Juilliard in 1945 FREE tickets available 11/18 at the Juilliard Box Office
FREE concerts JANET AND LEONARD KRAMER BOX OFFICE at Juilliard, 155 West 65th Street, Monday – Friday, 11AM – 6PM, (212) 769-7406 www.juilliard.edu
C O M I N G I N S P R I N G 2 0 1 1 • FREE Faculty Concerts • for details visit www.juilliard.edu Kenneth Weiss, Harpsichord • Monday, January 31 at 8 • Paul Hall Solo recital by the world-renowned harpsichordist New York Woodwind Quintet • Tuesday, February 8 at 8 • Paul Hall Preeminent woodwind quintet in residence at Juilliard since 1988 Joel Krosnick, Cello • Thursday, February 10 at 8 • Paul Hall Admired member of the Juilliard String Quartet in solo recital Juilliard String Quartet • Monday, February 21 at 8 • Alice Tully Hall Setting the standard for quartet performance for more than 60 years
he played; he looked about, as if thinking about the music, wondering what would happen. Was the encore showy? Oh, yes. But it was more than that: a feat of pianism, dazzling, musical and fitting. At the end, I could not keep off my feet. After intermission, Harnoncourt led the orchestra in Beethoven’s Symphony No. 7, that miracle in A major. The conductor put forth a particular view of the work. The music was often punchy instead of elegant. And there were pauses that were too pregnant for their own good. I believe they interrupted Beethoven’s flow and momentum. The finale is a whirling dervish, as you know. What did Wagner say? “The apotheosis of the dance.” From Harnoncourt and his forces, I would have asked for something a little more whirling. For me, the performance of the symphony as a whole was somewhat boxy—square— rather than fluid. Yet a serious musical mind was behind this conducting. And Harnoncourt’s sheer love of music—along with knowledge about it, and commitment to it—goes a long, long way. Plus, anyone who knows that Porgy and Bess is great can be trusted. < October 13, 2010 | City Arts
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AttheGALLERIES arranged with hot dogs impaled on a spit (a little hostility toward males, maybe?) with the Sacred Heart thrown in, you might cotton to this. David Dupuis’ untitled entry is eerily affecting. Worked in graphite and colored pencil on paper, the near monochrome oyster shell breaks into a slight smile, meticulously collaged onto the shell. It earns a place among the disjointed dream images of early Surrealist collage. Joe Fyfe’s “Mercredi,” a standing assemblage of found wood and colored cloths, shows just how little it takes to turn nondescript things into something with a visual presence. One of the most engaging works here is a collage by Billy Copley. His “Bag #12” is an enviable riot of transparency and geometry. Vivid swatches of ruled horizontal and vertical lines create a plaid patterning overlaid and interspersed with strata of torn rice papers. Not sure what it has to do with oysters but it is delightful. A well-chosen piece, this one relinquishes the cartoon references that tether his larger series of bag drawings to pop culture. It is jubilant testimony to the magic of color and line in sensitive hands. [Maureen Mullarkey] Through Oct. 30, James Graham & Sons, 32 E. 67th St., 212-535-5767.
Austin Thomas: Drawing On The Utopic / New Collage and Text
“What’s Past and What’s to Come II 2010,” by James Benjamin Franklin.
Consider the Oyster
The pleasure of a theme show lies in seeing how individual artists interpret the theme and in weighing one interpretation against another. Conceived and curated by Ingrid Dinter, this group exhibition is based on M.F.K. Fisher’s 1941 cookbook Consider the Oyster. Of the 50-plus works in the show, the best—with few exceptions—are those that make an effort to curtsy to the theme. Those artists who have an affinity with Fisher’s whimsy or sense of poetry are the most rewarding. The exhibition opens with Dan McCleary’s straightforward portrait, “Man with a Pearl Earring.” It moves on rapidly to more emblematic images. In Nancy Lorenz’s pearlescent “Moongold Water,”
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swirling rivulets of mother of pearl wind down a panel covered with moon gold leaf, a luminous blend of gold, palladium and silver. That lustrous suggestion of water creates a mood that accords with the theme even though it remains implicit. Julia Condon brings to her motifs great sensitivity to the pictorial possibilities of opaline surfaces. Her “Mandala of Luminescent Transformation” is beautiful, its frosted iridescence conveying the spatial depth of a view through the Hubble telescope. Lance de Los Reyes offers a freestanding assemblage that more or less nods to the oyster as a bivalve organism. One glass jug is upended atop another, hourglass-like; motor oil fills the bottom jug. Eva Faye has three petite portraits of
half a shell from three Duxbury oysters. Each is subtly differentiated from the other, in contour and nucleus. Viewed together, they form an essay on visual variety within apparent uniformity. Betty Tompkins and Kathy Rudin want you to know they have their hands in their pants. The title of Tompkins’ “Cunt Grid” series says it all. Images of female genitalia emerge from multiple impressions made with tiny rubber stamps and colored stamp inks. Great refinement of touch is wasted in the service of an indelicate sensibility. Rudin’s “Pearls of Wisdom,” a series of small digital prints, escapes delicacy altogether. If you want a shot of cheap underpants on a street stall and a sign advising “Eat More Pussy,” suggestively
It’s surprising to learn that Austin Thomas, whose works-on-paper are the subject of an exhibition at Storefront, takes inspiration from Joseph Beuys. What could a temperament as convivial and light as Thomas’ glean from the tedious pedantry of the Teutonic Andy Warhol? The notion of “social sculpture,” apparently “a Gigantic project,” in Beuys’s estimation, “in which the principle of production and consumption takes on a form of quality.” If that much allowed Thomas the leeway to festoon the gallery with her elegantly unkempt collages, then more power to her. Be thankful she didn’t take to heart Beuys’ dour pretensions. She couldn’t, really. Her work— conversational, diaristic, susceptible to precious distractions and buoyed by off-thecuff esprit—has more in common with, say, Virginia Woolf: Stream-of-consciousness powers Thomas’s musings on the everyday, the systematic and the vagaries of memory. The mind wanders and material attempts to catch up with it. That’s the conundrum and the charm. Cutting and cobbling together graph paper, sketch book abstractions, old ledgers, a Ridgewood High School letterhead and the stationary of one Vera Loebner residing at Karl-Marx-Alle in Berlin, Thomas reconfigures them into deceivingly ramshackle constructions. Imagine the precocious love child of Joseph Cornell and
Sol Lewitt making origami in math class and you’ll get some idea of Thomas’ flighty, contradictory art. The Storefront show is divided into four sections, respectively: travel diaries, “studio wall,” sketches and text-based pieces, the last of which transcribe overheard snippets of talk (“A head butt to the nose can really ruin your whole day”) to marginally clever effect. But it’s in the approximation of Thomas’ workspace wherein her scattershot delicacies take root, thrive and, ultimately, win us over. [Mario Naves] Through Oct. 17, Storefront, 16 Wilson Ave., Brooklyn, 646-361-8512.
Works on Paper: From Cézanne to Freud
More than most categories of art, “works on paper” suggests the intimate: artworks smallish in scale, delicate in technique. Acquavella Galleries, however, has put the category to expansive use, employing it as the common thread of a broad range of master drawings, prints and watercolors spanning the last 120-odd years. The result—a brief and uncritical overview of art trends since the beginnings of modernism— exhilarates with the quality of much of the work, and sometimes bewilders with its juxtapositions. French masters preside in the gallery’s front space. Cézanne weighs in with a single watercolor of a still life, in which pears cluster and a goblet soars with almost Romanesque gravity. Three sketches by Matisse affirm his unsurpassed genius for melding the serene and the rigorous. While Picasso’s indulgent revisitations of the historic can be tiresome, his drawings provide the greatest revelation here. Despite its compact dimensions, the thrusting diagonals and textures of his colored-pencil drawing “Courtesan and Warrior” recall much of the forcefulness and variety of the monumental “Guernica.” His “Homme Assis,” too, stands out; unusually for Picasso, his line yields contentedly to the force of color in this watercolor and ink drawing of a man contemplating an antique bust.
“Looking down on Wollman Rink, Central Park,” by Gita Lenz.
In Acquavella’s larger gallery, a Braque collage humorously but convincingly locates a fragmented guitar behind a corrugated-cardboard bottle. Evocative landscapes by Degas and Redon hang next to three especially fine portraits by Lucien Freud. These etchings show Freud at his best, conveying character through plastic invention; one face sags powerfully, inevitably to the print’s lower margin; another lifts as an angling pillar of intensity. On to the New York School: the lively, biomorphic shapes of Arshile Gorky’s inkand-wash drawing pave the way for pure abstraction—Jack Tworkov’s proclamatory square of dense charcoal marks and Philip Guston’s field of pulsating ink blotches. For postmodernists weary of all such compositional investigations, other works focus on the very process of cognition. Against a field of blue dry pigment, Ed Ruscha places two words on stilts: “Quality,” and then below, in smaller letters, “Other.” (Refreshingly up-front, this dangling intimation about perceptions of value might be resolved, one suspects, only over a beer with the artist.) Andy Warhol’s silkscreen print, based on a photograph of the violent 1963 Birmingham riots, evokes the modern media’s propensity for making real-life traumas generic. Looking rather lonely alongside, a small Diebenkorn gouache from 1956 earnestly captures the likeness of a seated figure in a striped dress. Among such extremes of sincerity and disengagement, Jasper Johns’ ink and watercolor depiction of an arm stretching among stenciled names of colors feels like a hybrid. It vaguely probes Braque’s plastic vitality, while tinkering with Ruscha’s free-form mental flight. His work points to the dilemma of this rewarding installation, and indeed, any brief overview of modern art: What kind of conversation might exist between Degas’ tradition-wise landscape and Warhol’s tradition-indifferent print? [John Goodrich] Through Oct. 29, Acquavella Galleries, 18 E. 79th St., 212-734-6300.
Gita Lenz
While the names of Aaron Siskind, Harry Callahan, László Moholy-Nagy and Walker Evans are well known to photography lovers, Gita Lenz, whose pictures matched theirs in elegance and expressiveness, has never received the same attention. However, from the 1940s to the early ’60s, she produced a remarkable collection of images, abstract and humanistic, which won her entry into the Edward Steichen-curated exhibition Abstraction in Photography in 1951 at MoMA, and inclusion a year later in a three-person show at the Brooklyn Museum. In 1955, Steichen included her photographs in MoMA’s famed exhibition, The Family of Man. Now 100 years old, Lenz lived at a
“After Louise Bourgeois,” by Deborah Kass.
time when few women artists received recognition, and probably would not be known now but for the efforts of her neighbor, Timothy Bartling, and photographer Gordon Stettinius, who archived her work. In fact, Stettinius recently established Candela Books to publish a book of her photographs, which was brought out to coincide with the exhibition. The Gitterman Gallery does her and us a great favor with this show, an absolute must-see for anyone interested in great photographers of the 20th century. As a result of Lenz’s eye for detail and compositional brilliance, each of her images takes on powerful life well beyond its particular focus. For instance, in the beautiful “Looking Down on Wollman Rink, Central Park,” which shows people watching ice skaters, the sun streaming through the buildings gives the scene a mystical glow. The light falling on the rocky outcrop where the individuals stand reminds us of the city’s ancient foundation. And the onlookers resemble witnesses at a ritual or religious ceremony, though of course, they are simply watching iceskating. Again, in “Street Scene, Carmine St. and 7th Avenue,” she makes an ordinary scene resonate with mystery. Seen from on high, the pavement looks like a stained canvas, with a dark curve broken by a lone figure. A white Texaco gasoline sign stands on the photo’s edge, like a signpost in an empty land. Her joy in people shines through in the delightful “Boys, 1950s,” where a group of city kids sits crowded together, clumsy, disheveled, with baseball bats at their feet. We know them—they are ourselves or our
brothers or our own kids—and she captured them, always young, always plotting their next move. Because of the emotion underlying even her purest abstractions, it would be hard to imagine anyone walking away from this show unmoved. [Valerie Gladstone] Through Nov. 20, Gitterman Gallery, 170 E. 75th St., 212-734-0868.
Deborah Kass: MORE feel good paintings for feel bad times A joke could be made that great 10thcentury painters never die, they just get appropriated. Deborah Kass’s MORE feel good paintings for feel bad times constructs her identity from post-war Modernism and musicals. Here, the bright exuberance of 2007’s feel good paintings for feel bad times is toned down to primary colors; assertive statements like “Still Here” are replaced by the vaguely pleading, “Save the Country” and “C’mon Get Happy.” Kass appropriates imagery and motifs from male painters who were making their marks when she was coming of age, and combines them with lyrics from musicals. Frank Stella, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol serve as her medium as well as inspiration. In “Frank’s Dilemma,” a Warholian multicolored camouflage is laid over Stella’s “Sunset Beach,” superimposing the words “Daddy I would love to dance.” The quote is from A Chorus Line. Kass’ nostalgia for the optimism of post-war Americana is apparent in her appropriation of the grand musicals of Stephen Sondheim. The text in her work is October 13, 2010 | City Arts
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AttheGALLERIES taken from musical numbers like “Send in the Clowns” and “Get Happy.” The only piece of text that is not from a musical is in “After Louise Bourgeois,” a Bruce Naumanesque neon spiral of Bourgeois’ famous quote, “A woman has no place in the art world unless she proves over and over again she won’t be eliminated.” Through nostalgia for optimism (and second-wave feminism), Kass weaves an intellectual genealogy of herself as a Jewish lesbian coming of age during art’s 1970s growing pains. If 2007’s edition of feel good paintings felt like the beginning of the end for the “bad times” of the Bush administration, it’s tempting to think that the impatience and repetition in MORE… is a political statement about our progress since then. But it’s hard to feel that cynical when viewing Kass’ enthusiastic use of color and large, friendly letters. [Nicholas Wells] Through Oct. 30, Paul Kasmin Gallery, 293 10th Ave., 212-563-4474. Geometric Progressions, a group show of abstract painting at Edward Thorp Gallery, would be nowhere near as diverting—as exciting, really—were it more consistent. The exhibition prospers to the degree in which it frustrates. For every questionable inclusion among the 11 painters, there are half-a-dozen or so names that come to mind whose presence would make the show more cohesive. But sometimes an overriding sense of possibility forgives curatorial laxity. So it is at Thorp. Don’t let the title fool you into believing the exhibition is dominated by straight lines, primary colors, flat surfaces, Utopian longings and inflexible aesthetics. Geometry is a jumping-off point, not a dogma. Eccentricity is the rule. How could it not be? Having long become historical fact, abstraction is unburdened of its revolutionary role. What’s left is a medium as open-ended, if not necessarily as welcoming, as any you could name. Abstraction doesn’t matter anymore; that’s why it’s so free. The notion of these paintings being progressive, then, is a misnomer: Rupture and ambiguity is more like it. The certainty that geometric structures promote is tweaked, questioned and thrown out the window. Impurity abounds: associations are plentiful; colors veer from vibrant to murky to sonorous; compositions skew, float and shatter; and surfaces are various, maybe too various at times. Even Andrew Spence’s distilled pictographs, the closest Geometric Progressions approaches High Modernism, resist codification by their reliance on mundane inspirations and surfaces marked by contingency. Otherwise, the artists (not only Spence, but Patrick Brennan, Rosanna Bruno, El Hauser, Jenifer Kobylarz, Stephen Mueller, Paul Pagk, Jered Sprecher, Natasha Sweeten
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Adam Reich
Geometric Progressions
“Untitled,” by Chick Bills.
and Lynne Woods Turner) generate enough collective frisson to make you think abstraction just might well be the liveliest art right about now. [MN] Through Nov. 6, Edward Thorp Gallery, 210 11th Ave., 212-691-6565.
Plank Road
Five years ago, James Salomon stepped down as director of Mary Boone Gallery to found his own shop, Salomon Contemporary Warehouse, on Plank Road in East Hampton. The business expanded to Chelsea in early 2010. Plank Road, celebrating the gallery’s fifth anniversary, offers a sampler of works from the initial stable. The exhibition is a delicatessen of stock contemporiana punctuated by a few big-ticket names (Donald Sultan, Eric Fischl, Alice Aycock) and one delightful find (Chick Bills). The rest tend toward that variety of postmodern production that leans on Duchamp and evades judgment on aesthetic grounds. Leo Castelli once boasted: “Mary [Boone] and I, we can make an artist charismatic.” James Salomon has learned the sport from the best. Fischl, previously packaged by Castelli
and Boone as a Bad Boy, is represented by a well-behaved wash of a female nude. Salomon’s current Bad Boy is Michael Bilsborough. “Heart of Glass” presents a cartoony sex-a-thon drawn in a crude, uninflected pen line. A dogged gaggle of skinny guys and gals look as if their postures are not worth the nudity. Epicures of erotica should stick to shunga prints. Billy Sullivan is represented by 10 paired photos of the Facebook kind, livened with a bit of peep show: a middle-aged man cavorts with his pants down; a youngster pees on the side of a road. Sultan’s two photographs of smoke rings evoke elegant stills from a hookah video. Technically lovely, they bear comparison with the “scientific” photos of Bernice Abbott and Naomi Savage’s essays in movement. Aycock dominates the room with “Murmuration,” an imposing 5-foot square pencil and qouache variation of her earlier series, “Wars on a Starry Night.” Bills is a talented inventor of impossible firearms. His gun case holds two beautifully crafted hand guns that will never shoot. The improvisation makes us mindful of what handsome machines revolvers can be. There is hi-tech archery going on in Pia
Dehne’s “Hunter in Corn Field (Snow).” Dehne clearly disapproves of hunting. Michael Combs does, too. Five wooden swan necks, carved and painted white, hang in a curvaceous cluster. Alice Hope wastes good buckshot by covering a portion of wall with it. Margaret Evangeline’s expressive tool is a shotgun, useful for putting holes in aluminum panels. Jameson Ellis is into guns, too, but it is hard to know why. Arwa Abouon, born in Libya, was raised in a Muslim household in Canada. Her video showcases a succession of different women in street dress. Each one gradually appears in a pink hijab, chewing gum and blowing bubbles. A warning against creeping sharia or shallow identity politics? Lucky Abouon does not have to choose between the burka and bubble gum. Sebastián Errázuriz’s “Twin Towers or Double Trouble” combines two toysized United Airlines fuselages sharing one wingspan. A sort of biplane, it hangs on the wall in a nosedive. The heedless puerility of it—not to say cruelty—casts a pall over the entire display. In an exhausted culture, even self-expression runs on empty. [MM] Through Oct. 30, Salomon Contemporary, 526 W. 26th St., 212-727-0607.
JAZZ
Genius Among Us
Jason Moran has what it takes to be a MacArthur fellow By Howard Mandel It’s been a great month for 35-year-old jazz pianist/composer/ensemble leader Jason Moran, during a grand year that concludes an amazing decade. On September 28, Moran was named a fellow by the MacArthur Foundation, and was the recipient of $500,000 to be distributed over five years, no-stringsattached—except for the excessive publicity and expectations in its wake. Moran then started a six-night engagement at the Village Vanguard Oct. 6 with his trio Bandwagon. Moran’s eighth album, Ten, was released this past June, and is a celebration of the decade-long collaboration he’s enjoyed with Bandwagon bassist Taurus Mateen and drummer Nasheet Waits. It’s increased his already considerable critical reputation and the group’s college-age following. Furthermore: Bandwagon played the Harlem day of the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in August, then Moran went on the road in the quartet of saxophonist Charles Lloyd. In My Mind, a film from the Center for Documentary Studies of Duke University about Moran’s re-envisioning of Thelonious Monk’s 1959 Town Hall concert, debuted
at the New York Library for the Performing Arts last April. On Nov. 4, pianist Donald Sosin will play Moran’s score for video artist Glenn Ligon’s “The Death of Tom” at the Museum of Modern Art. Moran can’t be there: Bandwagon will be in the first leg of a five-week European tour. Such prodigious productivity is typical of Moran, who has been recognized with Ireland’s Guinness Rising Star Award, the first Playboy Jazz Artists of the Year Award, numerous high standings in Down Beat and Jazz Journalists Association polls, and commissions (in 2006 alone) from Minneapolis’ Walker Art Center, the Dia Art Foundation and Jazz at Lincoln Center. Besides writing and gigging, he’s been on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music, from which he graduated in 1997, and has lectured all over. This level of activity is rare, but not unique. After receiving recent MacArthurs, the jazz “geniuses”—including violinist Regina Carter (’06), saxophonist-composer John Zorn (’06), saxophonist Miguel Zenon (’08) and trombonist-computer music innovator-educator-author George E. Lewis (’02), all ramped up already multi-pronged careers rather than rest on the cushion of the
Jason Moran.
grant’s funds. Lewis is director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University, a consultant to several arts agencies and is justly hailed for his monumental “collective biography,” A Power Greater Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music. What that book, which documents the 40-year-history of the Chicago and New York-based Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, demonstrates, though, is how much things have changed for “creative musicians” since funders (including the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation) started bestowing monies on jazz modernists.
Ornette Coleman, the first jazz-related recipient of a Guggenheim in 1967, has by now been given the Pulitzer Prize, the Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and the Japanese Praemum Imperiale, among other honors. He and Taylor and Muhal Richard Abrams, who co-founded the AACM in 1965, are also all NEA Jazz Masters, a program begun in 1982. But back before that, jazz musicians struggled. They were freelancers. A few copped teaching positions. Most just hustled. There’s something invigorating about having to test one’s art on the open market, especially when you’re trying to stay true to a tradition combining vernacular and specialized aesthetics. Has the cash and credibility of honors like the MacArthur changed the sound of jazz—or its culture? That’s the question. There’s no sure answer. Jason Moran is an uncompromising, forward-thinking musician, personally steeped in jazz traditions. So were Billie Holiday, Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker and others who advanced jazz from far less-secure positions. Billie, Monk and Bird faced much adversity; Moran has the luxury of support. Will he dig deep for his music? Will it capture our ears, our hearts and endure? Stay tuned—but pull for him. Legend says it’s tough to keep sight of art’s essence when being showered with gold. One solution: Stay busy.
October 13, 2010 | City Arts
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
Laurie Olinder
PHOTOS BY KEN BROWAR
By Nick Curley
A joyride down the river Styx has arrived at the BAM Harvey Theater. Persephone, a gorgeously surreal staging of the titular Greek goddess’ abduction by Hades, opens Oct. 26 as a crown jewel of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s annual Next Wave Festival. This voyage is the fourth BAM concoction from the Ridge Theater company. Like most Ridge ventures, Persephone is a fusion of founder Bob McGrath’s direction, films by collagist Bill Morrison, projections from Morrison’s collaborator and wife Laurie Olinder and set design from Jim Findlay. Starlet and longtime Ridge actress Julia Stiles smolders in the lead role, making an action as simple as holding a pomegranate look like alchemy. Persephone emerged five years ago, after a night of cabaret music by composers Ben Neill and Mimi Goese (who also plays grieving mom Demeter) prompted BAM Executive Producer Joseph Melillo to unite the duo with McGrath’s team. The pathos onstage carries a second realm of theatrics: a playhouse within a playhouse, the myth produced before us by a technologically savvy 19th-century theater troupe. “Until now, Ridge has never really turned the lens onto itself,” notes Morrison. “We see what’s backstage: a melodrama of this turn-of-the-century company’s inner machinations and politics.” Art Nouveau, William Morris’ intricate textiles, German Expressionists and proto-Modernism all proved inspiring landmarks for Persephone. “It’s not far from the beginning of film,” says Morrison, “a period I’ve been interested in for a long time.” Morrison, one of today’s most acclaimed experimental filmmakers, meshes reels of decaying film footage into indelible montages. His found materials are “copyright free, each with weird permutations, each film pockmarked in some way,” often coming from vault managers’ shabbiest reels. “For example, we shot Julia Stiles reciting a poem,” says Morrison, “then spliced it with a silent film actress whose face is corroded and composited together with Julia’s.” Persephone’s media-infused set design further embraces saturated color, uniting decadence with decrepit theater spaces. Findlay and McGrath saw the players onstage as primeval multimedia iconoclasts that no one knows about, but who everyone will steal from for decades to come. “How would they solve their problems?” asks Findlay. “I liked that they’d be bringing
Julia Stiles in ‘Persephone.’
things into the theater that weren’t supposed to be there, like some [avant-garde theater director] Robert Wilson of 1895.” Olinder, too, relished tools and mechanisms of the day, particularly Magic Lanterns: pre-movie projectors improved by the late 1800s invention of electric lamps. “I looked at how they changed from one image to the next, and the primitive ways they had an image move,” explains Olinder. “I kept my transitions very simple.” Amidst these shifts, a raucous orchestra of romantic 19th-century-born instruments swells and deflates. “We hear large symphonic sounds,” adds McGrath. “It’s heavy on bass and drums, with definite triphop and rock elements as well.” Yet even this prodigious music proved malleable. “In other opera or song-based projects,” says Findlay, “there’s an existing score and script near the beginning of the process. Here we had a conceptual framework: this fantasia that’s on stage now.” Ben Neill has dubbed Persephone “an antidote to irony,” and perhaps some modern attention deficits can be squashed by the rawness of myth. “We all seem to be getting back to basics,” says Findlay, “finding what feels true, living with our economy in a period of extreme frugalness. Yet it’s still not cool to really believe in something.” McGrath is more succinct: “We’re tired of everybody putting air quotes around their existence,” he says. If not an antidote, great theater remains strong medicine: a mob together in the dark, pursuing catharsis. Works like Persephone have pungency in this way, traveling southbound until we reach the lower depths. Persephone Oct. 26-30, BAM Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St. (at Rockwell Pl.), Brooklyn, 718-636-4100; 7:30, $25 and up.
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James Lipton Interviews
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Romeo and Juliet – The Acting Company, TONY Award-Winner for Excellence in Theatre October 22-24 only! Merry Wives of Windsor – Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London Cast! Two weeks only, Oct. 28 - Nov. 7 Venice* – Theatre for a New Audience, starring Academy Award-Winner. F. Merchant of Venice Murray Abraham, Feb. 27 – Mar. 13 *Performed as part of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Complete Works Festival The Comedy of Errors – The Acting Company, New York Premiere Apr. 5 – 17, 2011
For Information and Tickets call 1-866-811-4111 or visit www.Pace.edu/culture Michael Schimmel Center, 3 Spruce Street, across from City Hall, Lower Manhattan
Dimitrios Kambouris photo
Tues. October 26 at 7:00 p.m.
ArtsAGENDA Gallery Openings
Gallery listings courtesy of
92YTribeca: “Off the Clock.” Opens Oct. 14, 200
Hudson St., 212-601-1000.
Black & White Gallery: Alicia Ross: “Hot Mess.”
Opens Oct. 22, 483 Driggs Ave., Brooklyn, 718-599-8775. Bold Hype Gallery: Jason Limon: “Blood/Nectar.” Opens Oct. 14, 547 W. 27th St., 5th Fl., 212868-2322. Causey Contemporary: Kevin Bourgeois: “SYS™: New Drawings.” Opens Oct. 21, 92 Wythe Ave., Brooklyn, 718-218-8939. Christopher Henry Gallery: Johnny Rozsa. Opens Oct. 22, 127 Elizabeth St., 212-244-6004. Gallery 151: John Platt: “Downtown 2010.” Opens Oct. 15, 350 Bowery, 646-220-5223. Gasser Grunert Gallery: “The Exquisite Corpse Project.” Opens Oct. 12, 524 W. 19th St., 646944-6197. Jim Kempner Fine Art: Charlie Hewitt. Opens Oct. 16, 501 W. 23rd St., 212-206-6872. Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts: “Black Mondays.” Opens Oct. 18, 526 W. 26th St., #605, 212-463-8500. Milton J. Weill Art Gallery: Robert Zuckerman: “Time Machine.” Opens Oct. 13, 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave., 212-415-5500. Open Source Gallery: Nobuko: “Wa.” Opens Oct. 16, 255 17th St., Brooklyn, 718-877-5712. Openhouse Gallery: “The SCAR Project.” Opens Oct. 14, 201 Mulberry St., 212-334-0288. The Pace Gallery: Thomas Nozkowski. Opens Oct. 15, 510 W. 25th St., 212-255-4044. Reaves Gallery: Joshua Hagler & George Pfau: “Nearly Approaching Never To Pass.” Opens Oct. 14, 526 W. 26th St., Ste. 706, 415-250-3201. Rooster Gallery: “Geography of Affection: Six Portuguese Artists in New York.” Opens Oct. 21, 190 Orchard St., 212-230-1370. SVA Gallery: “Optic Nerve.” Opens Oct. 20, 209 E. 23rd St., no phone. Swiss Institute: “Under Deconstruction.” Opens Oct. 15, 495 Broadway, 3rd Fl., 212925-2035. Thomas Erben Gallery: Rose Wylie. Opens Oct. 14, 526 W. 26th St., 4th Fl., 212-645-8701. Von Lintel Gallery: Marco Breuer: “Nature of the Pencil.” Opens Oct. 14, 520 W. 23rd St., 212242-0599. Westside Gallery: “Parallel Threads.” Opens Oct. 23, 133/141 W. 21st St., 212-592-2145. Wild Project: Rob Roth: “Back to the Future.” Opens Oct. 13, 195 E. 3rd St., 212-228-1195.
Gallery Closings Allan Nederpelt: “Fit.” Ends Oct. 17, 60 Freeman
St., Brooklyn, 917-676-2945.
Allegra LaViola Gallery: Brian Montuori: “Cold
Sweat.” Ends Oct. 15, 179 E. Broadway, 917463-3901. Americas Society: “Art & Myth in Ancient Peru: The History of the Jequetepeque Valley.” Ends Oct. 23, 680 Park Ave., 212-249-8950. Andrew Edlin Gallery: Henry Darger. Ends Oct. 23, 134 10th Ave., 212-206-9723. Armand Bartos Fine Art: Sol LeWitt & Allan McCollum: “Seriality.” Ends Oct. 22, 25 E. 73rd St., 212-288-6705. Bruce Silverstein Gallery: “Beyond Color: Color in American Photography, 1950-1970.” Ends Oct. 23, 535 W. 24th St., 212-627-3930. Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery: Airan Kang: “Light Reading.” Ends Oct. 16, 505 W. 24th St., 212243-8830. Central Booking: “Chemical Reactions.” Ends
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
“Mundo Moderno #2” by Carlos Roque, at Rooster Gallery. Oct. 24, 111 Front St., Gallery 210, Brooklyn, 347-731-6559. David Zwirner: Al Taylor: “Rim Jobs & Sideffects.” Ends Oct. 23. John McCracken: “New Works in Bronze & Steel.” Ends Oct. 23, 519 W. 19th St., 212-517-8677. Denise Bibro Fine Art: Carter Hodgkin: “Unforeseen Behavior.” Ends Oct. 16, 529 W. 20th St., #4W, 212-647-7030. Flomenhaft Gallery: Joan Barber: “Exhibiting
Woman.” Ends Oct. 23, 547 W. 27th St., Ste. 200, 212-268-4952. Franklin 54 Gallery & Projects: Elisa Pritzker: “Zipped.” Ends Oct. 16, 526 W. 26th St., Rm. 403, 917-821-0753. Friedman Benda: Gottfried Helnwein: “I Was A Child.” Ends Oct. 23, 515 W. 26th St., 212239-8700. Gagosian Gallery: Dan Colen: “Poetry.” Ends Oct. 16, 555 W. 24th St., 212-741-1111.
Gagosian Gallery: Marc Newson: “Transport.”
Ends Oct. 16, 522 W. 21st St., 212-741-1717.
Gallery at Harlem PoP: “LOVE: The Good, The
Bad, The Abstract.” Ends Oct. 24, 2037 5th Ave., 347-370-9815. Google Inc.: “Digital Art @ Google: We Write This to You From the Distant Future.” Ends Oct. 22, 75 9th Ave., no phone. Hazel & Robert Siegel Gallery: “Le Corbusier: “Miracle Boxes.” Ends Oct. 15, Higgins Hall,
61 St. James Pl., Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, 718636-3600. Hendershot Gallery: “Digression.” Ends Oct. 17, 547 W. 27th St., Ste. 632, 212-239-3085. International Print Center New York: “Emerging Images: The Creative Process in Prints.” Ends Oct. 17, 508 W. 26th St., Rm. 5A, 212989-5090. Kim Foster Gallery: Jim Toia: “Islands.” Ends Oct. 16, 529 W. 20th St., 1st Fl., 212-229-0044. Lehmann Maupin: Jennifer Steinkamp: “Premature.” Ends Oct. 23, 540 W. 26th St., 212-255-2923. Lesley Heller Workspace: Judith Page: “Night Walk.” Ends Oct. 24. “Cambre & Prior: Hypothesis of Psychodelia.” Ends Oct. 24, 54 Orchard St., 212-410-6120. Lisa Cooley: Alex Olson: “As a Verb, As a Noun, In Peach & Silver.” Ends Oct. 17, 34 Orchard St., 347-351-8075. LMAKprojects: Silvia Russel: “In Between Time.” Ends Oct. 17, 139 Eldridge St., 212-255-9707. Margaret Thatcher Projects: Fran Siegel: “Transient Borders.” Ends Oct. 16, 539 W. 23rd St., Ground Floor, 212-675-0222. Marlborough Gallery: Dale Chihuly. Ends Oct. 16, 545 W. 25th St., 212-463-8634. McCaffrey Fine Art: Hitoshi Nomura: “Marking Time.” Ends Oct. 23, 23 E. 67th St., 212988-2200. Nabi Gallery: “James Britton.” Ends Oct. 23, 137 W. 25th St., 212-929-6063. Nancy Margolis Gallery: Christian Brown: “Recent Work.” Ends Oct. 16, 523 W. 25th St., 212-242-3013. Nohra Haime Gallery: Adam Straus: “Air & Water or: Everything’s Fine Until It’s Not.” Ends Oct. 23. Michael Heizer: “Markings.” Ends Oct. 23, 730 5th Ave., Ste. 701, 212-888-3550. The Pace Gallery: “50 Years at Pace.” Ends Oct. 23, 32 E. 57th St., 534 W. 25th St. & 545 W. 22nd St., 212-421-3292. Priska C. Juschka Fine Art: Dana Melamed: “Black Tide.” Ends Oct. 23, 547 W. 27th St., 2nd Fl., 212-244-4320. Real Fine Arts: Tyler Dobson: “A Luxury Is Difficult To Do Without.” Ends Oct. 17, 673 Meeker Ave., Brooklyn, no phone. Robert Mann Gallery: Julie Blackmon: “Line-up.” Ends Oct. 23, 210 11th Ave., 212-989-7600. Salmagundi Club: Bill Creevy: “Paintings & Pastels.” Ends Oct. 22, 47 5th Ave., 212-2557740. Salomon Arts Gallery: “Delugians.” Ends Oct. 16, 83 Leonard St., 4th Fl., 212-966-1997. Spanierman Modern: Frank Bowling. Ends Oct. 16, 53 E. 58th St., 212-832-1400. Stephen Haller Gallery: Johnnie Winona Ross. Ends Oct. 16, 542 W. 26th St., 212-741-7777. Stux Gallery: James Busby: “White & Black.” Ends Oct. 23, 530 W. 25th St., 212-352-1600. Susan Eley Fine Art: Jacques Chuilon & Kim Luttrell: “Divas, Divos & Deities.” Ends Oct. 17, 46 W. 90th St., 2nd Fl., 917-952-7641. Susan Inglett Gallery: Eric Fertman. Ends Oct. 16, 522 W. 24th St., 212-647-9111. SVA Gallery: “The Book Show.” Ends Oct. 13, 209 E. 23rd St., no phone. Talwar Gallery: Alia Syed: “Wallpaper.” Ends Oct. 15, 108 E. 16th St., 212-673-3096. Team Gallery: Santiago Sierra: “Los Penetrados.” Ends Oct. 23, 83 Grand St., 212-279-9219. Tibor de Nagy Gallery: David Kapp: “Recent Paintings.” Ends Oct. 16. Tom Burckhardt: “157 Elements of a Painting.” Ends Oct. 16, 724 5th Ave., 212-262-5050. Westbeth Gallery: Joyve Rezendes: “50 Years.” Ends Oct. 24, 57 Bethune St., 212-989-4650. Westside Gallery: “Prime Time.” Ends Oct. 16,
White Box Gallery: “Minimal Differences.” Ends
Mixed Media
Museums
October 19th-30th, 2010
American Folk Art Museum: “Quilts: Masterworks
Andrea Shapiro Brigitte Schlachter Regina Lerman
133/141 W. 21st St., 212-592-2145.
Oct. 23, 329 Broome St., 212-714-2347.
from the American Folk Art Museum.” Ends Apr. 24. “Perspectives: Forming the Figure.” Ends Aug. 2011, 45 W. 53rd St., 212-265-1040. American Museum of Natural History: “Race to the End of the Earth.” Ends Jan. 2, Central Park West at West 79th Street, 212-769-5100. Brooklyn Historical Society: “It Happened in Brooklyn.” Ongoing, 128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, 718-222-4111. Brooklyn Museum: “Work of Art: The Winner.” Ends Oct. 17. “Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanity Fair of 1864.” Ends Oct. 17, 200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, 718-638-5000. Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum: “National Design Triennial: Why Design Now?.” Ends Jan. 9, 2 E. 91st St., 212-849-8400. Discovery Times Square Exposition: “King Tut NYC: Return of the King.” Ends Jan. 2, 226 W. 44th St., no phone. The Drawing Center: Gerhard Richter: “Lines Which Do Not Exist.” Ends Nov. 18. Claudia Wieser: “Poems of the Right Angle.” Ends Nov. 18, 35 Wooster St., 212-219-2166. Frick Collection: “The King at War: Velazquez’s Portrait of Philip IV.” Oct. 26-Jan. 23. “The Spanish Manner: Drawings from Ribera to Goya.” Ends Jan. 9, 1 E. 70th St., 212-288-0700. International Center of Photography: “The Mexican Suitcase: Cuba in Revolution.” Ends Jan. 9, 1133 6th Ave., 212-857-0000. Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum: “27 Seconds.” Ends Nov. 21, Pier 86, West 46th Street & 12th Avenue, 212-245-0072. Japan Society: “The Sound of One Hand: Paintings & Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin.” Ends Jan. 9. Max Gimblett & Lewis Hyde: “oxherding.” Ends Jan. 16, 333 E. 47th St., 212832-1155. Jewish Museum: “Fish Forms: Lamps by Frank Gehry.” Ends Oct. 31. “Shifting the Gaze: Painting & Feminism.” Ends Jan. 30, 1109 5th Ave., 212-423-3200. Merchant’s House Museum: “Post-Mortem Photography.” Ends Nov. 29, 29 E. 4th St., 212-777-1089. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Hipsters, Hustlers & Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950-1980.” Ends Oct. 17. “Katrin Sigurdardottir at the Met.” Opens Oct. 19. “The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs.” Opens Oct. 19. “John Baldessari: Pure Beauty.” Opens Oct. 20. Doug & Mike Starn on the Roof: “Big Bambu.” Ends Oct. 31. “Vienna Circa 1780: An Imperial Silver Service Rediscovered.” Ends Nov. 7. “The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty.” Ends Jan. 2. Joan Miró: “Miró: The Dutch Interiors.” Ends Jan. 17. “Man, Myth & Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance.” Ends Jan. 17. “The Roman Mosaic from Lod, Israel.” Ends Apr. 3, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710. MoMA PS1: “Greater New York.” Ends Oct. 18, 22-25 Jackson Ave., Queens, 718-784-2084. The Morgan Library & Museum: “Anne Morgan’s War: Rebuilding Devastated France, 1917-1924.” Ends Nov. 21. “Mark Twain: A Skeptic’s Progress.” Ends Jan. 2. “Roy Lichtenstein: The Blackand-White Drawings.” Ends Jan. 2. “Degas: Drawings & Sketchbooks.” Ends Jan. 23, 225 Madison Ave., 212-685-0008. El Museo del Barrio: “Voces y Visiones.” Ends Dec.
Opening Reception Thursday, October 21st, 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
New Century Artists, INC. 530 West 25th Street, Suite 406, 4th floor Tuesday - Saturday 11 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
September 15 - October 24, 2010 Gallery 1:
Judith Page, “Night Walk” Gallery 2:
“Cambre and Prior: Hypothesis of Psychodelia” Juan José Cambre and Alfredo Prior Gallery Hours: wed-sat 11am-6pm, sun 12-6pm
Judith Page, June 26 (Boom Box and Beaver), Tar Gel, mixed media, 13 X 24 x 11 in., 2010
54 Orchard Street NY, NY 10002 212 410 6120 lesleyheller.com
Sallie Benton SHadoWS october 5 - 30 Highline open Studios october 14 - 17
FirSt Street Gallery 526 West 26th Street Studio 915 646.336.8053 firststreetgallery.net October 13, 2010 | City Arts
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ArtsAGENDA 12. “Nueva York (1613-1945).” Ends Jan. 9, 1230 5th Ave., 212-831-7272. Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology: “Eco-Fashion: Going Green.” Ends Nov. 13, Seventh Avenue at West 27th Street, 212217-4558. Museum of Arts & Design: “Dead or Alive.” Ends Oct. 24, 2 Columbus Cir., 212-299-7777. Museum of Jewish Heritage: “Fire in My Heart: The Story of Hannah Senesh.” Opens Oct. 13. “The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service.” Ends Dec. 2010, 36 Battery Pl., 646-437-4200. Museum of Modern Art: “Small Scale, Big Change: New Architectures of Social Engagement.” Ends Jan. 3. “New Photography 2010.” Ends Jan. 10. “Underground Gallery: London Transport Posters, 1920s-1940s.” Ends Feb. 28, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400. New Museum: “Free.” Opens Oct. 20. “The Last Newspaper.” Ends Jan. 9, 235 Bowery, 212219-1222. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: “On Stage in Fashion: Design for Theater, Opera & Dance.” Opens Oct. 14. “Talking Pictures.” Ends Nov. 27, 40 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-870-1630. Noguchi Museum: “California Scenario: The Courage of Imagination.” Ends Oct. 24. “Noguchi ReINstalled.” Ends Oct. 24, 33rd Road at Vernon Boulevard, Queens, 718-721-2308. Rubin Museum of Art: “Embodying the Holy: Icons in Eastern Orthodox Christianity & Tibetan Buddhism.” Ends Mar. 7. “The Nepalese Legacy in Tibetan Painting.” Ends May 23. “Tibetan Shrine Room.” Ongoing. 150 W. 17th St., 212-620-5000. Skyscraper Museum: “The Rise of Wall Street.” Ends Nov. 28, 39 Battery Pl., 212-968-1961. Society of Illustrators: “Blow Up.” Ends Oct. 16,
www.javitscenter.com.
128 E. 63rd St., 212-838-2560.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: “Broken Forms:
European Modernism from the Guggenheim Collection.” Ends Jan. 5. “Vox Populi: Posters of the Interwar Years.” Ends Jan. 9. “Kandinsky at the Bauhaus, 1922-1933.” Ongoing. “Thannhauser Collection.” Ongoing, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500. South Street Seaport: “Tigers the Exhibition.” Ends Jan. 15, Pier 17 at South Street Seaport, 800-7453000. Studio Museum: Zwelethu Mthethwa: “Inner Views.” Ends Oct. 24. “Usable Pasts.” Ends Oct. 24. “Inside the Collection: Interiors from the Studio Museum.” Ends Oct. 24. “Hi-Res: Expanding the Walls 2010.” Ends Oct. 24. “Harlem Postcards.” Ends Oct. 24. “StudioSound: Dj/rupture’s Radio GooGoo.” Ends Oct. 24, 144 W. 125th St., 212-864-4500. Whitney Museum of American Art: “Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield.” Ends Oct. 17. “Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork.” Nov. 18-Feb. 13. “Lee Friedlander: America by Car.” Ends Nov. 28. “Sara VanDerBeek.” Ends Dec. 5, 945 Madison Ave., 212-570-3600.
Art Events American Craft Show NYC & Contemporary Art Fair NYC: These simultaneous events bring 200
juried American Craft Artists to show & sell ceramic, fiber, glass, furniture, wearable art & jewelry works, as well as presentations by 100 independent contemporary artists specializing in painting, photography, sculpture & mixed media. Nov. 19-21, Jacob K. Javits Convention Center of New York, 655 W. 34th St., 212-216-2000,
BAM 2010 Next Wave Festival: The Brooklyn
Academy of Music hosts its annual festival. Now in its 28th year, Next Wave comprises 16 music, dance, theater & opera performances, in addition to artist talks, art exhibitions & more. Ends Dec. 19, BAM, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, 718-6364129, www.bam.org. Gallery Night on 57th Street: Forty-seven galleries between Lexington & Eighth Avenues will open their doors. Oct. 14, 57th Street between Lexington & Eighth Avenues, 212-888-3550; 5-8, free. High Line Open Studios: Chelsea artists open their studio doors for three days of public tours. Oct. 14-17, West 14th to West 30th Streets, 917-689-7521, www.highlineopenstudios.org; 12-6, free. Hip-Hop Theater Festival: The 10th annual HHTF celebrates hip-hop culture with theater, dance, public art & more. Ends Oct. 16, 718-497-4282, www.hhtf.org. International Sculpture Center Anniversary: The ISC celebrates its 50th anniversary with a cocktail reception, entertainment & an art sale. Oct. 22, Metropolitan Pavilion, The Metropolitan Suite, 2nd Fl., 123 W. 18th St., www.sculpture.org; 6, $350+. Midtown Gallery Tour: Come to a guided tour of the week’s top seven contemporary gallery exhibits in the city’s business district. Oct. 23, 41 E. 57th St., 212-946-1548; 1, $20. New York Musical Theatre Festival: Catch 27 musical productions, a developmental reading series and special events at the seventh annual festival. Ends Oct. 17, various locations, www. nymf.org. Selebrasyon!: Affirmation Arts & Haiti Cultural
Exchange invite the community to experience & celebrate the rich cultural heritage of Haiti in this free, all-day festival. Oct. 16, Affirmation Arts, 523 W. 37th St., www.affirmationarts.com; 12, free.
Auctions Christie’s: Important Silver Including the Stuart
Collection of Magnificent Regency Silver. Oct. 19, 10 a.m. Jewels: The New York Sale. Oct. 20, 10 a.m. & 2:30. 500 Years: Decorative Arts Europe, Including Oriental Carpets. Oct. 21, 10 a.m. & 2 p.m., & Oct. 22, 10 a.m., 20 Rockefeller Plz., 212-636-2000. Doyle New York: Doyle at Home, Including Decorative Asian Art. Oct. 13, 10 a.m., 175 E. 87th St., 212-427-2730. ROGALLERY.com: Fine art buyers & sellers in online live art auctions. 800-888-1063, www.rogallery.com. Salmagundi: Fall Auctions. Oct. 15, 8, Oct. 24, 2, & Oct. 29, 8, 47 5th Ave., 212-255-7740. Swann Auction Galleries: 19th & 20th Century Literature: Art, Press & Illustrated Books. Oct. 14, 1:30. Fine Photographs & Select Photobooks. Oct. 19, 2, 104 E. 25th St., 212-254-4710.
Music & Opera 92YTribeca: Jeffrey Ernstoff leads audiences in a total
Gershwin immersion, with recordings, anecdotes & live performances of Gershwin classics. Oct. 19, 200 Hudson St., 212-601-1000; 12, $16. Brooklyn Academy of Music: Evan Ziporyn’s crosscultural opera, A House in Bali, has its New York debut. The two-hour multimedia show unites the 16-piece Balinese Gamelan Salukat & New York’s electric chamber ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars. Oct. 14-16, Howard Gilman
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Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave., 718-636-4100; 7:30, $20+. Connelly Theatre: Amore Opera opens its season with Puccini’s Tosca. Oct. 15-31, 220 E. 4th St., 212-982-3995; times vary, $40. David Rubenstein Atrium: As part of Target Free Thursdays, Metropolitan Klezmer performs an eclectic mix of Yiddish music. Oct. 14, Lincoln Center, Broadway betw. West 62nd & 63rd Streets, 212-875-5000; 8:30, free. Elebash Recital Hall: The Dorian Wind Quintet performs works of J.S. Bach, Mordechai Rechtman & Antonin Reicha. Oct. 21, CUNY Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave., 212-868-4444; 1, $8. Frick Collection: The Gilded Age Evening in New York features Lydia Artymiw on piano, Yehonatan Berick on violin, Yehuda Hanani on cello and special guest Richard Chamberlain. Oct. 12, 1 E. 70th St., 212-547-0696; 7:30, $50. Laurie Beechman Theatre: Broadway stars perform songs that end the first act of favorite musicals, as part of the third annual Living For Today concert series. Oct. 24, 407 W. 42nd St., 212-695-6909; 9:30, $10+ Metropolitan Opera: Frank Zeffirelli’s classic production of Puccini’s La Bohème returns. Opens Oct. 16, West 62nd Street, betw. Columbus & Amsterdam Aves., 212-362-6000; times vary, $30+. Miller Theatre: The Free Lunchtime Concerts series presents the music of Aaron Copland. Oct. 1820, 2960 Broadway, 212-854-7799; 12:30, free. Skirball Center: In 13 Most Beautiful... Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, musicians Dean & Britta perform a live soundtrack in this multimedia performance featuring a selection of Andy Warhol’s otherwise silent portraits of
some of the artist’s closest friends & artistic collaborators. Oct. 22, New York University, 566 LaGuardia Pl., 212-352-3101; 8, $20+. Skirball Center: Qi Shu Fang Peking Opera Company presents the 10th annual Peking Opera Festival. Oct. 24, New York University, 566 LaGuardia Pl., 212-352-3101; 7, $38. Stern Auditorium: The Philadelphia Orchestra, led by conductor Charles Dutoit, performs a program of Dutilleux’s Timbres, espace, mouvement, selections from Prokofiev’s Romeo & Juliet, & Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with pianist Jeremy Denk. Oct. 12, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212247-7800; 8, $20.50+. Trinity Church: The Trinity Choir presents Handel’s Israel in Egypt. Oct. 14, Trinity Church, Broadway at Wall Street, 212-602-0800; 7:30, $10+. Weill Recital Hall: Baroque orchestra The English Concert performs works by Handel, Vivaldi, Monteverdi & John Dowland, featuring mezzosoprano Alice Coote. Oct. 13, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 7:30, $48+. Zankel Hall: American Composers Orchestra presents Orchestra Underground: Mystics & Magic. Oct. 15, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 7:30, $40+.
Jazz The Allen Room: Jazz pianist Chuco Valdes & The
Afro-Cuban Messengers perform. Oct. 22 & 23, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Time Warner Center, Broadway at W. 60th St., 212-721-6500; times vary, $63+. Blue Note: The Sean Smith Quartet performs, featuring saxophonist John Ellis, guitarist John Hart, bassist Sean Smith & drummer Russell
Meissner. Oct. 18, 131 W. 3rd St., 212-475-8592; times vary, $10+. Cornelia Street Cafe: Loren Stillman & Bad Touch. Oct. 12. Becca Stevens presents: Alan Hampton’s Parts & Pieces. Oct. 13. Ghosts in the Ocean: Songs to Celebrate the End of the World. Oct. 14. John O’Gallagher Trio featuring Ben Monder & Dan Weiss. Oct. 14. Juergen Friedrich, John Hebert, Tony Moreno & Ben Monder. Oct. 15. Jane Ira Bloom Trio. Oct. 17. Blue Tuesdays: Amanda Baisinger. Oct. 19. Ribs & Brisket Revue. Oct. 20. Mark Helias Trio. Oct. 21. Ben Waltzer Quartet. Oct. 22 & 23. Jacob Garchik Trio. Oct. 24. 21st Century Schizoid Music presents: The Batteries Duo. Oct. 25, 29 Cornelia St., 212-989-9319; times vary, $10. Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola: Italian Jazz Days with Joe Lovano, Antonio Ciacca, Flavio Boltro, Joseph Lepore & Luca Santaniello. Oct. 12. Kenny Barron Quartet with David Sanchez. Oct. 13-17. Tamir Hendelman Trio with Marco Panascia & Lewis Nash. Oct. 18. George Wein & Newport All Stars celebrate Wein’s 85th birthday with special guests. Oct. 19-24. Manhattan School of Music with the Afro Cuban Jazz Orchestra, conducted by Bobby Sanabria. Oct. 25, 33 W. 60th St., 212-258-9595; times vary, $10+. Jalopy: Jalopy hosts its third annual Djangology Festival, featuring the hot rhythms of gypsy jazz. Oct. 15 & 16, 315 Columbia St., 718-395-3214; 8, $20. Jazz Standard: Apex: Rudresh Mahanthappa & Bunky Green. Oct. 14-17. Mingus Big Band. Oct. 18. Tia Fuller Quartet. Oct. 19 & 20. Alvin Queen Sextet. Oct. 21-24. Mingus Orchestra. Oct. 25, 116 E. 27th St., 212-576-2232; times vary, $20+. Rose Theater: Wynton Marsalis celebrates Mario
Bauza, Machito, Chano Pozo & Cachao, the godfathers & early innovators of Afro-Cuban music, who first taught the great jazz musicians like Dizzy Gillespie & Charlie Parker how to play Cuban polyrhythms. Oct. 21-23, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at West 60th Street, 212721-6500; 8, $30+. Zankel Hall: Carnegie Hall’s The Shape of Jazz series begins with violinist Regina Carter in a program that merges contemporary American jazz with traditional African folk melodies. Oct. 20, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 9, $38+.
Dance Alain Buffard: The internationally acclaimed French
choreographer, along with two other dancers, presents Les Inconsoles, a work inspired by Goethe’s romantic ballad, The Erl-King. Oct. 2123, Dance Theater Workshop, 219 W. 19th St., 212-924-0077; 7:30, $20. Armitage Gone! Dance: Karole Armitage, the “punk ballerina,” and her company present the program Think Punk. Oct. 17 & 18, Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand St., 212598-0400; times vary, free+. Ballet Concierto: Iñaki Urlezaga’s company brings its Argentinean expression to New York City for the first time with a program of tango & classical dance. Oct. 15-17, BMCC Tribeca PAC, 199 Chambers St., 212-220-1460; times vary, $35+. Dance Gallery Festival: The fourth annual festival brings New York audiences the latest original works from 17 of today’s modern dance choreographers. Oct. 15 & 16, Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W. 55th St., 212-868-4444; 7:30, $15+. Dance New Amsterdam: Honi Harlow & Victoria
October 13, 2010 | City Arts
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ArtsAGENDA Libertore host Late Nite @ DNA GRRRlesque, with singing, dancing, twisting & twirling female performers. Oct. 22 & 23, 280 Broadway, 2nd Fl., 212-625-8369; 9:30, $5+. Les Ballets C de la B: Out of Context - For Pina is an intimate work for eight dancers that narrows the divide between the performers & the audience. Oct. 19-24, The Joyce, 175 8th Ave., 212-2420800; times vary, $10+. Les SlovaKs Dance Collective: Five Slovak dancers residing in Brussels create an exuberant & contagious union of folk-inspired music & imaginative movement. Oct. 19 & 20, Jerome Robbins Theater, Baryshnikov Arts Center, 450 W. 37th St., 212-868-4444; 8, $20. Matthew Bourne: Bourne’s Swan Lake returns to New York with a blend of dance, humor & spectacle. Oct. 13-Nov. 7, New York City
Center, 131 W. 55th St., 212-581-1212; times vary, $25+. New York City Ballet: The company performs The Magic Flute, the comedic tale for all ages, set to a score by Riccardo Drigo. Feb. 2, 4, 6 & 8, David H. Koch Theater, 20 Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500; times vary, $20+. Passage to India: Preeti Vasudevan’s dance company, Thresh, Malini Srinivasan & Shobana Ram perform their works of India’s Bharatanatyam-style dance, combining mime, footwork, hand gestures & sculptural poses. Oct. 15, 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave., 212415-5500; 12, free. Ralph Lemon: BAM presents the New York premiere of Lemon’s How Can You Stay in the House All Day & Not Go Anywhere?, a multimedia dance piece. Oct. 13-16, BAM
St., 212-239-6200.
Harvey Theater, 651 Fulton St., 718-636-4100; 7:30, $20+. Sankai Juku: Ushio Amagatsu directs the troupe in his most recent work, Tobari - As if in an Inexhaustible Flux. Ends Oct. 17, The Joyce, 175 8th Ave., 212-242-0800; times vary, $10+.
Bong Bong Bong Against the Walls, Ting Ting Ting in Our Heads: Italy’s Dario D’Ambrosi presents his
Theater A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Aquila Theatre
Company performs its interpretation of Shakespeare’s comedy. Oct. 17, Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts, 2900 Campus Rd., Brooklyn, 718-951-4500. Billy Elliot: This Tony-winning adaptation of the 2000 film chronicles a young British boy’s desire to dance ballet in a poverty-choked coal-mining town. Open run, Imperial Theatre, 249 W. 45th
Out of Town EVENTS & ATTRACTIONS
New Jersey Newark Museum: Gustav Stickley & the
American Arts & Crafts Movement is the first nationally touring exhibition to offer a comprehensive examination of the work of one of the leading figures of the American Arts & Crafts Movement, Gustav Stickley. Through Jan. 2. Newark Museum, 49 Washington St., Newark, NJ, 973-596-6550, www. newarkmuseum.org.
Montclair Art Museum: Living for Art: The
Dorothy & Herbert Vogel Collection exhibition features works produced by 27 American artists from 1967 to 2000. Through Jan. 2. Montclair Art Museum, 3 South Mountain Ave., Montclair, NJ, 973-746-5555, www.montclair-art.com.
Dutchess County NYS Sheep & Wool Festival: The Dutchess
County sheep & wool growers association. livestock exhibitors, childrens activities, cooking demonstrations, book signing & lectures, fleece sale & much more. Oct. 16 & 17. Dutchess County Fairgrounds, 6550 Spring Brook Ave., Rhinebeck, NY, www. sheepandwool.com.
SULLIVAN COUNTY Museum at Bethel Woods: Collecting Woodstock
features photographs, objects, and ephemera from the 1969 Woodstock festival. Included in the exhibit are 30 new Woodstock festival images from five photographers; festival artifacts that have never been previously displayed; and a video compilation of rare Woodstock footage, interviews, home video of the festival and live music audio from the festival. 200 Hurd Road, Bethel, NY; www.bethelwoodscenter.org
Ulster County Eleventh Annual Oktoberfest: The German-
American Club of the Northern Catskills in conjunction with Belleayre Mountain Ski Center hosts its 11th annual Oktoberfest. The spread includes bratwurst, leberkas, frankfurter platters, homemade soups & salads, imported Spaten beer & German wines, plus special desserts at reasonable prices. Enjoy music by the Schwarzenegger Connection, Bavarian dance demonstrations, European linens & gifts, amber jewelry, portraits, wood carvings, raffle prizes & much more. Oct. 16. Belleayre Mountain Ski Center, 181 Galli Curci Rd., Highmount, NY, 800-342-5826, www. belleayre.com.
Woodstock Woodstock School of Art: Originally intended
to put troubled youth of the Great Depression back on track, the Woodstock School of Art (WSA) has blossomed into so much more. This school that once taught practical skills,
such as wood & metal working, to youth as part of FDR’s New Deal, now offers classes & workshops in more artistic areas such as oil & watercolor painting. All instructors are professional artists & utilize their fully equipped studios to teach their eager students. Through Oct. 2, be sure to check out the WSA’s outdoor sculpture exhibit featuring Czech sculpture Alex Kveton, a unique exhibit by late painter Louise Kamp, as well as works of students, instructors & historic artists in the on-site gallery. WSA, Rte. 212, Woodstock, NY, 845-679-2388, www. woodstockschoolofart.org.
newest play about the genius & love in children living in mental institutions, featuring life-sized puppets. Oct. 14-31, La MaMa’s First Floor Theater, 74A E. 4th St., 212-475-7710. Brief Encounter: Roundabout Theatre Company presents Noel Coward’s screenplay, adapted and directed by Emma Rice. Ends Dec. 5, Studio 54, 254 W. 54th St., 212-719-1300. Chicago: The long-running revival of Kander & Ebb’s musical about sex, murder & celebrity continues to razzle-dazzle. Open run, Ambassador Theatre, 219 W. 49th St., 212-239-6200. Danny & Sylvia - The Danny Kaye Musical: This musical love story depicts the relationship between Danny Kaye & his wife & creative partner, Sylvia Fine, who wrote many of Kaye’s most famous songs. Open run, St. Luke’s Theatre, 308 W. 46th St., 212-239-6200. Dietrich & Chevalier: Marlene Dietrich & Maurice Chevalier were the top film stars at Paramount Pictures in the 1930s. Marries to others, they fell in love & remained friends for life. Jerry Mayer’s musical stars Robert Cuccioli, Jodi Stevens & Donald Corren. Open run, St. Luke’s Theatre, 308 W. 46th St., 212-239-6200. FELA!: The story of legendary Nigerian musican Fela Kuti, whose soulful Afrobeat rhythms ignited a generation, is told through music & dance. Featuring Patti LaBelle. Ends Jan. 2, The Eugene O’Neil Theatre, 230 W. 49th St., 212-239-6200. Fuerza Bruta - Look Up: A visual dance-rave, technoride, Latino walking-on-the-ceiling fiesta from Buenos Aires. Open run, Daryl Roth Theatre, 101 E. 15th St., 212-239-2600. In the Heights: This heartfelt & high-spirited love letter to Washington Heights features a salsa & hip-hop flavored score by Lin-Manuel Miranda. Open run, Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St., 212-221-1211. Memphis - A New Musical: Set in the titular city during the segregated 1950s, this musical charts the romance between a white DJ & a black singer as rock-and-roll begins to emerge. Open run, Shubert Theatre, 225 W. 44th St., 212239-6200. Next to Normal: A woman & her family struggle to cope with her bipolar disorder in this emotional, Tony-winning musical. Open run, Booth Theatre, 222 W. 45th St., 212-239-6200. The Phantom of the Opera: Prep yourself for the forthcoming sequel by seeing (or re-seeing) Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Gothic musical romance. Open run, Majestic Theatre, 245 W. 44th St., 212-239-6200.
BOBBY SHORT & JEAN BACH by Sigrid Estrada
also featured:
PAT BUCKELY
MARTHA STEWART
SANFORD WEILL
DOMINICK DUNNE
by George Lange
by Sigrid Estrada
by George Lange
by Josh Lehrer
FOR DETAILS & TO PURCHASE: www.AVENUEmagazine.com/iconic-newyorkers
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
PainttheTOWN
By Amanda Gordon
Under a ‘Spel’ “I love all Spelman women,” said the Apollo Theater’s chief, Jonelle Procope, a Howard graduate. “They’re the total package: smart and accomplished.” And that explains how they pulled off a major fundraiser at The Plaza that drew people from around the country (including Magic Johnson’s wife Cookie Johnson and investment star and Good Morning America contributor Mellody Hobson). The mission: to raise scholarship funds for students at the all-women college in Atlanta, considered the Harvard of historically black colleges. As Kim Davis, class of 1981, and head of JPMorgan Chase’s foundation, put it, “Our stage is broader.” Yet currently Spelman only meets about 25 percent of students’ financial need. “We need Spelman and Morehouse just as we need a Yeshiva or a Notre Dame or a Brigham Young,” Spike Lee said. He noted his major debt to the Spelman women in his life: “My mother put my ass through Morehouse and NYU film school. Also, my first girlfriend went to Spelman.” Samuel L. Jackson married a Spelman graduate, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who co-chaired the gala. The actor served as emcee, wishing everyone a cheerful “Bon appetit” before dinner. Later, more of his on-screen personality came out when he quieted the room during the live auction, in that very forceful, booming voice. “Hey, my wife is talking. Shut up!” It worked.
Clockwise, from top: Jonelle Procope, president and CEO of the Apollo Theater in Harlem, with her husband Frederick O. Terrell; Elaine Hancock, Spike Lee and honoree Kathryn Chenault; Kimberly Davis, alum and trustee of Spelman and president of the JPMorgan Chase Foundation; Samuel L. Jackson, emcee and husband of Spelman alum LaTanya Richardson Jackson; Honoree Marian Wright Edelman, Spelman class of 1960 and founder of the Children’s Defense Fund, gets a hug from Johnnetta B. Cole, Spelman’s first female president, now director of the National Museum of African Art.
Dreams of Dance
a gala in the galleries There’s a lot to see in the galleries of the Rubin Museum—a current highlight is a show of contemporary Tibetan artists with intricate images formed by pinholes in soda cans and psychedelic collages composed of children’s stickers. So it was frustrating to hear from many guests at the museum’s gala (which raised $610,000 for a new education center) that they had never visited the galleries. However, the museum did its part to remedy this. Dinner, a collaboration between chefs Eric Ripert and Vikas Khanna, was served in the galleries and included apple-tarmarind chutney, Bhutanese red rice, Tandoori-spiced seared yellowtail hamachi and roasted apricots with black sesame panna cotta. It was a feast for the senses, with a performance by Bombay-born singer Falu.
Photos by Amanda Gordon
Clockwise: Alyce Cleese, Ginny Akhoury, Susan Gammel, and one half of the namesake of the Rubin Museum, Shelley Rubin; Navjot Kaur with her mom Anjeet Kaur; Cheim & Read artist Ghada Amer
Sarah Jessica Parker attends her first board meeting as a trustee of the New York City Ballet this week. At the ballet’s fall gala, she talked with CityArts about her love of dance and her new philanthropic role. On her dreams: “I love being around dancers. I used to be with ABT as a student and I still dream at night that I’m dancing, in a leotard and tights. I’ve worn a lot of tutus in my life but not for dance. I never got that far.” Sarah Jessica Parker and On what she hopes to accomplish Candace Bushnell on the board of NYCB: “What it does is, it gives me some marching orders. I want to cultivate a new audience here. I think if people came to see them just one time, it would be hard for them not to come back. They’d be gobsmacked. They’d be very impressed by the athleticism of the dancers.” On why she likes attending the ballet: “It transports you. In Benjamin’s piece tonight [“Plainspoken” choreographed by Benjamin Milliepied], now I want to ask him, ‘Please tell me about the world you created. It’s very specific.’ With a play the story is there and you digest it. Dance uses another part of your brain.” On being a ballet mom: My son is not interested in studying ballet, but he’s been to performances here and he’s enjoyed them. If my daughters want to study, I’d be thrilled. They love running around the room. For more party coverage, visit www.cityarts.info. To contact the author or purchase photos, email Amanda.Gordon@rocketmail.com; bit.ly/agphotos. October 13, 2010 | City Arts
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