Artists Studio: Charlemagne Palestine

ABOUT THE ARTISTS STUDIO “Sitting in a chair in the Veterans Room and slowly panning side to side and up and down (which you will do when you go there), you encounter a kind of visual music: the energy in that design and those colors, the shades of brown and blue and black and pale yellow, alive and roaring at you.”

— The New York Times When the Veterans Room reopened in 2016 after an extensive revitalization, it was lauded as “a riot of color, visual rhythm and contrasting details,” and “if walls could speak, these would alternately whisper of refinement and roar with audacity” (Wall Street Journal). Designed by Louis C. Tiffany & Co., Associated Artists, the room is a monument to the American Aesthetic Movement and represents the innovation of exceptional young artisans approaching the decorative arts with a bold new vision. This season, the series adds to the exuberance of the space with interventions by some of today’s most creative voices who have a distinct relationship to sound with a visual aesthetic that blurs the boundaries between installation and performance. These interventions utilize the newly restored space as visual material, while allowing these imaginative innovators to explore exciting new directions in their practice.

The series is curated by jazz pianist, composer, and MacArthur fellow Jason Moran.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

JULIANA HUXTABLE October 10

“Juliana’s voice is integral in this time, because she truly is a beacon of hope. She exists at the crux of almost every type of intersectionality, but still thrives” —VICE The artist and DJ Juliana Huxtable will create a new work combining video, sound, spoken word, and performance in her ongoing exploration of what it means to be human and to resist the caging of people within fixed selves, private bodies, and prescribed identities. Huxtable straddles the worlds of art, fashion, and night life, exploring the intersections of race, gender, queerness, and sexuality through a mix of media including self-portraiture, text-based prints, club music and parties, poetry, and social media.

2018 ARTISTS STUDIO

IN THE NEWLY RESTORED VETERANS ROOM

Friday, September 14 at 7:00pm and 9:00pm Veterans Room, Thompson Arts Center at Park Avenue Armory

fffaaavvrriiilllee sstrrrruuummmmmiiingggssss forrrrrr tiffanyyyyyy Charlemagne Palestine, piano This performance is approximately 60 minutes with no intermission.

SEASON SPONSORS

SERIES SPONSORS

The Artists Studio is supported in part by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the city council, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Support for Park Avenue Armory’s artistic season has been generously provided by the Charina Endowment Fund, the Altman Foundation, The Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, the Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Shubert Foundation, The Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Foundation, the Marc Haas Foundation, The Kaplen Brothers Fund, the Juliet Lea Hillman Simonds Foundation, the Leon Levy Foundation, the May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, the Richenthal Foundation, and the Isak and Rose Weinman Foundation.

ABOUT THE WORK Sstrrrruuummmmmiiinggg is an aural sonic form that i invented in 1973 for a Bösendorfer Imperial piano,,,,,but its source came from my years of playing every weekday from 1963 to 1970 the 21 bell carillon of Saint Thomas Church next to MOMA on 53rd Street and 5th Ave where i invented a unique approach to bell ringing that then influenced my approach to creating piano sonorities,,,,,,,,since 1973 I have created hundreds of Sstrrrruuummmmmiiingggsss for different pianos,,,,harpsichords ,,,,harps ,,,, and string ensembles,,,,sometimes purely acoustic,,,,,and sometimes amplified depending on the architecture of the space,,,, the temperament of the instrument,,,,,,,and its relationship to the listeners,,,,,tonight’’’’’s versions are directly influenced by the Tiffany Room of the Armory and its form and style ,,,,,its acoustics,,,,,,and that relationship to you,,,,,the listeners,,,,,,but also i try to create a magical visual sculptural dialogue environment with the instrument and the room,,,,theatre,,,,concert hall,,,,that i am playing in so you will experience Sstrrrruuummmmmiiinggg in a kind of “”total art work”” a “”Gggesssammttkkunnssttwwerrkkk””

The films shown in the Library are: Body Music I 1973-74, 12:54 min, b&w, sound Produced by Art/Tapes/22 Ritual in the Emptiness 2001, 12:04 min, color, sound Produced by Centre International de Creation Video, Pierre Schaeffer Montbeliard, Belfort, France Special thanks to Corinne Lapp and Aude Stoclet Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York.

Production Acknowledgements: Sascha von Oertzen, Sound Designer John Chrils, Audio Technician Steinway & Sons

ABOUT THE ARTIST Charlemagne Palestine was born in Brooklyn Nyc in 1947,,,,, He attended the High School of Music and Art,,,The New School for Social Research,,,,Pratt Institute,,,,New York University,,,,Mannes College of Music,,, and The California Institute of the Arts. Since the late sixties Charlemagne has been presenting works in sound, video, film, performance, multimedia installation, drawing, painting and sculpture!!,,,,,He has been presented at MOMA , The Whitney Museum, and the Sonnabend Gallery,, Nyc ,,,The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,,,,,,Centre Pompidou and The Louvre,,,Paris,,The Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam,,, Documenta 8 Kassel,,,The Biennale of Venice,,The Castello di Rivoli, Torino,,Royal Festival Hall,, The Barbican Center and The Serpentine,,, London,,,The Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels,The Kunsthalle Vienna,,,The Museu Serralves,,Porto,,,among many other museums,,,,and art institutions,,,and festivals world-wide!! He now lives and works in Brussels Belgium

ABOUT THE VETERANS ROOM “...the Armory, a once-crumbling landmark, has transformed itself into one of the world’s most sought-after venues for performance, music, and supersized art projects. And in a sense, the Veterans Room, of all the Armory’s opulent reception rooms, has the deepest spiritual kinship with a work of contemporary art, the feel of an installation by a young collective whose members were reacting to one another and making it all up as they went along.”

— The New York Times The Veterans Room is among the most significant surviving interiors of the American Aesthetic Movement, and the most significant remaining intact interior in the world by Louis C. Tiffany and Co., Associated Artists. This newly formed collective led by Tiffany included some of the most significant American designers of the 19th century at early stages of their very distinguished careers: Stanford White, Samuel Colman, and Candace Wheeler among them. The design of the room by these artisans was exotic, eclectic, and full of experimentation, as noted by Decorator and Furnisher in 1885 that “the prepondering styles appear to be the Greek, Moresque and Celtic, with a dash of Egyptian, the Persian and the Japanese in the appropriate places.”

A monument of late 19th-century decorative arts, the Veterans Room is the fourth period room at the Armory completed (out of 18). The revitalization of the room responds to the original exuberant vision for the room’s design, bringing into dialogue some of the most talented designers of the 19th and 21st centuries – Associated Artists with Herzog & de Meuron, Platt Byard Dovell White Architects, and a team of world-renowned artisans and experts in Tiffany glass, fine woodworking, and decorative arts.

The revitalization of the Veterans Room follows Herzog & de Meuron’s design approach for the Armory building, which seeks to highlight the distinct qualities and existing character of each individual room while interweaving contemporary elements to improve its function. Even more so than in other rooms at the Armory, Herzog & de Meuron’s approach to the Veterans Room is to amplify the beauty of the room’s original vision through adding contemporary reconstructions of lost historic material and subtle additions with the same ethos and creative passion as the original artisans to infuse a modern energy into a harmonious, holistic design.

The room’s restoration is part of an ongoing $215-million transformation, which is guided by the understanding that the Armory’s rich history and the patina of time are essential to its character, with a design process for the period rooms that emphasizes close collaboration between architect and artisan.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________ The restoration and renovation of the Veterans Room was made possible by The Thompson Family Foundation, Inc., Susan and Elihu Rose, Charina Endowment Fund, Lisa and Sanford B. Ehrenkranz, Almudena and Pablo Legorreta, Assemblymember Dan Quart and the New York State Assembly, Liz and Emanuel Stern, Adam R. Flatto, Olivia Tournay Flatto, Kenneth S. Kuchin, R. Mark and Wendy Adams, American Express, Rebecca Robertson and Byron Knief, Amy and Jeffrey Silverman, the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Fund of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Anonymous (2).

Cover photo: courtesy of the artist