cityArts January 27, 2010

JANUARY 26, 2010 Volume 2, Issue 2

Keep

Courtesy of Film Society of Lincoln Center

Dancing The annual Dance on Camera film festival celebrates the bodies and the brains of dancers—young and old

A scene from Anne Bass’ ‘Dancing Across Borders.’ The film has its New York City premiere as part of the Dance on Camera Festival.

BY SUSAN REITER hatever your idea of a dance film might be, you can find an example of it at the 38th annual Dance on Camera Festival. From feature-length documentaries to four-minute animated shorts, it’s all there during the five days of extensive and varied programming. If the idea of sitting in a dark theater with athletic bodies hurling themselves through the air intimidates you, then maybe watching it onscreen can be a start. The festival begins Jan. 29, at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, with the U.S. premiere of Jeff McKay’s history of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Forty Years of One Night Stands, and ends Feb. 2 with the world premiere of Michael Backwood’s New York Dance.

The documentaries are a particularly strong selection. Two of them profile distinctive innovators who are more than deserving of the insightful, thorough examination these films give them. Ruedi

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Gerber’s Breath Made Visible profiles Anna Halprin, who turns 90 this year and has been a free-spirited, profoundly influential West Coast dance figure.

The film’s title refers to her definition of dance, and the film illustrates her affinity for dancing in natural settings. It also reveals her amazingly age-defying presence: She is shown performing, with great wit and agility, at 82, and in the recent interview footage her youthful spirit makes the idea of age irrelevant. She speaks perceptively about her Jewish roots, and how they influenced the adventurous, inquisitive directions in which her dance explorations ventured. She recalls her beloved grandfather, for whom dancing and prayer were linked. Since he fit her vision of what God must be like, “I thought God was a dancer.”

Meredith Monk: Inner Voice, by Dutch filmmaker Babeth M. Vanloo, offers insights into Monk’s category-defying work. It’s fascinating to hear her use words to explain exactly why she prefers to make art without words,

and the glimpses into her life, work habits and surroundings are fascinating.

The festival devotes Jan. 30 to celebrating Alwin Nikolais, on the occasion of his centenary. Christian Blackwood’s 1986 documentary Nik and Murray, about the innovative multi-media wizard and his partner/fellow choreographer, will be followed by examples of his work for television and a program charting his artistic lineage through the works of two company members. The day will also include panel discussions and Q&As with scholars, critics and former Nikolais dancers.

The festival offers an advance look at Dancing Across Borders, Anne Bass’ documentary, to be released theatrically later this March. The film follows the unlikely saga of Cambodian dancer Sokvannara Sar, whom Bass discovered performing traditional dances at Angkor Wat. She saw him as a potential ballet dancer, and made it possible for him to audition for the School of American Ballet. Initially rejected—he

was already 16, tremendously late to begin serious ballet training—his life story took many intriguing turns, and Sar is now a member of Pacific Northwest Ballet. The film’s Cambodian footage—which includes striking landscapes, Sar’s family members and the students at the Khmer dance school where it all began for him—is particularly beautiful and moving.

While Bass’ film movingly charts the inception of a dance career, Keep Dancing celebrates two charmingly eloquent and eternally graceful 90-year-old veterans who have seen and done it all. Marge Champion, best known for her film and television work, and Donald Saddler, whose career encompassed the early years of Ballet Theater and Broadway musicals in the golden era (he won a Tony Award for choreography), were memorably paired in the 2001 revival of Sondheim’s Follies. Since then, they have met twice weekly to dance and choreograph in a New York City studio.

KEEP DANCING on page 6

ArtNews

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YC & Company has named Symphony Space its Culture Spot for February. In celebration, the Upper West Side institution will offer $5 off general admission to select performances and two-for-one tickets to its Sunday film presentations throughout February… The Pearl Theatre Company has moved its administrative offices, costume shop and rehearsal studio to 307 W. 38th St., a building that already houses the headquarters of Primary Stages and LAByrinth Theater Company… The American Composer’s Orchestra has announced the appointment of conductor George Manahan as music director beginning with the 2010-11 season… X Initiative, the yearlong gallery project, will host its final show, Bring Your Own Art, for 24 hours between Feb. 3 and Feb. 4. Art lovers are welcome to come and hang their own work, and X Initiative will make available a simple stage and basic PA system for music…

Cristin Tierney Fine Art Advisory Services will be hosting a 10-week seminar on “Specific Objects,” including day trips to both Storm King and Dia: Beacon... Beginning Feb. 4, Lincoln Center will host The Unsound Festival, Poland’s famed new music festival. Opening night will feature collaborations and solo performances from electronic musician Vladislav Delay, video artist Lillevan, German producer Sebastian Meissner and avant-garde Polish quartet Kwartludium...

The Museum at Eldridge Street has commissioned artist Kiki Smith and architect Deborah Gans to create a new east window to be installed late spring 2010….The 52nd Street Project officially opens its theater and permanent home Feb. 8 on 10th Avenue between West 52nd and 53rd Streets. Longtime supporters Edie Falco, Lewis Black and others will be in attendance at the ribbon cutting... The winner of P.S.1’s Young Architects Program is Brooklyn-based firm Solid Objectives — Idenburg Liu. The project, “Pole Dance,” will be installed in the P.S.1 courtyard in June for the annual Warm Up music series...

The Watermill Center will host its first event of the season Jan. 30, with a public presentation of artist-in-residence Judah Mahay’s fairy tale, The Watermill Grimoire, including a tour of the Watermill Collection artifacts upon which it is based… The Annie O. Concert Series, a new monthly music event, will debut Jan. 29 in the penthouse of the Cooper Square Hotel with Tibetan artist Yungchen Lhamo… Nearby at the Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Gallery at The Cooper Union, the School of Architecture presents The Great White Whale Is Black, an exhibition of work by the painter and architect Tony Candido that spans five decades. The intense octogenarian studied under Mies Van der Rohe, worked with I.M. Pei, originated the “Urban Farm” design concept and has inspired countless young designers...

To celebrate Film Forum’s 40th anniversary and the role its director Karen Cooper has played, MoMA’s Department of Film invited her to curate an exhibition of nonfiction films that premiered at Film Forum. The 22 programs include some of the cinema’s all-time biggest hits and kicks off Feb. 3. with Cooper introducing Peter Robinson’s Asylum… We hear that Harry Benson: Photographs, released in December by powerHouse Books, has already sold out its first printing… Check out the second annual Upper East Side Music Festival Feb. 3, a month-long celebration of up-and-coming local music that will kick off at Bar East on First Avenue… The following day, Feb. 4, Granta magazine celebrates the release of its new issue with National Book Award winner Colum McCann at Soho’s McNally Jackson bookstore…

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Special Focus on Education

InBrief Ways of Seeing For Amy Herman, looking at art isn’t just material for cocktail party conversation—it can be a matter of life and death. Since 2004, the art historian has used the simple process of looking at paintings and sculpture to teach observation skills to those who need them most. Open only to specialized professionals, Herman’s class “The Art of Perception” trains medical students, the police and even the FBI to look closely and talk about art.

“Art is a vehicle to teach people to see and to communicate how they see,” says Herman, who is also the director of educational development at WNET channel 13.

In Herman’s classes, her students, drilled in law enforcement but not Leonardo, walk through museums such as The Met or The Frick and answer simple questions: “What do we see here?” or “How would you describe this person?” Describing the works simply and directly, Herman hopes, can help communication in urgent and dangerous situations.

“Everyone sees something in a work of art,” says Herman. “And looking teaches you observation, inference and perception.”

Herman teaches a select group, but she is far from alone in using the city’s art as a jumping board for learning. Museums around the city often run lecture series to complement current exhibitions. This spring, check out lectures on Michelangelo and Ingres at The Frick, or a conversation about Egyptian burial practices at the Brooklyn Museum.

MoMA is offering short courses on “German Expressionist Prints” and “Critical Themes in Contemporary Art.” Since learning about art is more than just rattling off a few facts, to gain a fuller appreciation of New York collections, it might be helpful to take some art history. NYU’s School of Professional and Continuing Education, for example, offers classes ranging from Cézanne to Continental Pottery.

Many of these classes offer a good deal of theory and dates, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be fun as well. The courses almost always use the city’s museums and galleries— where else can you see Koons and de Kooning just blocks away from each other?—in addi-

tion to lecture slides, and at times, even as a base for the lectures themselves.

At the New School, “The Art of Viewing Art” allows students to stay abreast of current happenings in the art world while deepening their knowledge of history and theory. “Each week I assign students to see a show at a gallery or museum,” explains John Zinsser, a lecturer at the New School who is also an accomplished artist. “I then lecture about it and put the work into an art historical context.”

The course brings in guest lecturers, artists and curators, to give multiple perspectives on the work.

“The painter Matvey Levinstein lectured after we saw a Vermeer show,” says Marion Miller, who enjoys Zinsser’s class so much she refuses to graduate from it. “I have been taking this class for over five years,” she admits.

“I bring my friends to lectures sometimes, and then they enroll, too.”

New York is also one of the centers of the international art world, so appreciating the city’s art means learning about its business as well. Sotheby’s auction house offers classes throughout the year on the art market, art law and bidding at auction. “Our classes are perfect for people who are interested in looking at art through the lens of business,” says Jan

Rothschild. In “Magnificent Jewels: Beauty and Brilliance,” a three-day course starting April 19, students will visit a jeweler to learn about his craft. They will even go to auction accompanied by their teacher. “We call it object-based education,” explains Rothschild.

“There aren’t many courses that teach you how to recognize a fake.”

Such classes can jump-start a career, according to Rothschild. In London, where the courses originated, it is not uncommon for students to enroll in a Sotheby’s masters program after such an introduction.

And taken for fun, art appreciation courses can enhance the experience of living in a city full of art. According to Miller, taking classes at The New School has enriched her experiences in New York’s galleries and museums. “I like looking at art in an intelligent way,” she says.

“And classes like these are the most wonderful things in New York.” (Madeleine Schwartz)

Going Deeper at Swing University We’re all told that the more we learn about something, the more we’ll appreciate it. But for some reason, most people don’t apply that

truism to music, thinking they already know everything simply by hearing it. One sure way to dispel that misconception would be to sign up for Jazz at Lincoln Center’s truly jazzy Swing University.

Established by JALC founder Wynton Marsalis to explain jazz, its development and how to listen more effectively, the series runs year round with distinguished jazz historian and longtime WKCR personality Phil Schapp at the helm. “We offer a guide to listening for new enthusiasts and experienced musicians,” Schapp says. “We teach why something sounds a certain way, how the musicians create that sound and why. We teach the history and follow jazz’s timelines, going through all the styles up to the present. We go very deep into the music.”

In his history classes, Schaap conveys all the enthusiasm and passion for the music that characterize his radio broadcasts. But the best part of the classes is that students can actually interact with him. Learning from him firsthand why King Oliver invented the jazz solo, finding out the role of pianist Bill Evans in Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue,” hearing stories about the bebop revolution and how Duke Ellington made the orchestra his instrument are matchless experiences. All the while, he plays examples of what he is talking about so that right then and there, the students hear the difference in their appreciation of the music.

Classes are also taught by performing musicians. Drummer Lewis Nash courses on the workings of the rhythm section and the blendings that go into making of that section.

Just so you know what he means, he’ll turn on music by Art Blakey, Papa Jo Jones and Max Roach. This spring, pianist Bill Charlap teaches a course in Gershwin and jazz, and ragtime, blues and jazz performer Terry Waldo will be investigating early jazz piano, including ragtime, stride and New Orleans.

Jazz usually fosters a warm atmosphere, and Swing University is no different. “It sounds really corny,” says Schaap, “but we really do create a warm and fuzzy environment.

There’s lots of interaction between staff and students just like there is among musicians on the bandstand.”

But just so nobody doubts that serious

January 26, 2010 | City Arts

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Special Focus on Education

InBrief knowledge is being imparted, JALC offers a certificate to all who pass Jazz 301 successfully. It reads in part, “We feel that Jazz 301 is the most comprehensive study of jazz from a non-performance perspective available. It covers the entire history and cultural history of the art form and demands of the student the ability to accurately identify by ear: style, form and identity.”

Furthermore, it continues, the student who completes 301 should be “given whatever academic credit, position or pay increase he may be applying for, if whatever benefit he is requesting requires a high level of academic success in the study of jazz.” And finally, his or her name goes on file at JALC as an accredited jazz scholar who could be called upon to weigh in on the content of its Jazz Hall of Fame. In other words, you can take all the knowledge that you gain at Swing University to the bank—as well as to the jazz club.

(Valerie Gladstone)

Take a Shot

With the ubiquity of inexpensive digital cameras, everyone thinks she’s a photographer. Things may be simpler, but after a while that slightly-out-of-focus portrait becomes embarrassing. Rather than faking it, one way

City Arts | www.cityarts.info

to advance is at The School at ICP (International Center of Photography).

With a teaching staff that boasts top photographers from all over the world and a selection of more than 400 classes and workshops that range from one-day intensives to yearlong certificate programs and a lecture series, it ranks as one of most comprehensive photography resources in the country. Few other schools offer a state-of-the-art facility with black-and-white and color labs, digital labs (including resources for multimedia and digital video) and a professional shooting studio.

Plus, the ICP museum is located across the street (at West 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue), with more than 100,000 photographs—everything from daguerreotypes to gelatin silver and digital chromogenic prints.

The school offers all types of photography: landscape, portraiture, social documentary and fashion, as well as classes in Photoshop, printmaking, lighting and developing. But perhaps most importantly, it helps budding artists find a voice. “You may be somebody who likes taking pictures and feel pretty confident,” says Suzanne Nicholas, associate director of education, “ but you still may not be sure what you want to photograph. In the 10-week course, we show you the way to discover that. Every week, we send you out to shoot something dif-

ferent. It’s how you discover your strengths.”

Instructors offer structure and feedback and also teach how to edit work and put together a portfolio. In the last month, the focus is on one idea or subject, meaning you walk out with a collection of cohesive images.

“You can’t imagine how many people buy these [digital] cameras and have no idea how to use them,” photographer Maynard Switzer says. Switzer was a former assistant to Richard Avedon and specializes in documentary, portraiture, travel and landscape for both advertising and editorial. He now teaches the popular “How to Use Your Digital SRL,” among several other courses. “I begin from the very beginning and give assignments from the start to see if my instructions are taking,” Switzer explains. “If they aren’t, we go over the fundamentals again. They walk out knowing what they are doing.”

But it isn’t only the classes that keep people and teachers returning. Photographer Karen Marshall, who documents American social issues, began teaching there in 1993. “One of the best things about continuing education at ICP is that it attracts people from all walks of life,” Marshall says. “This real mix of folks means a wide range of experience. Naturally they bring what goes on in their lives into the school, different perspectives that influence us

all. It’s an enriching and supportive community.” (VG)

The Business of Art

It’s one thing to be a creative artist. It’s another thing to figure out how to make a living doing it. The School of Visual Arts understands that the two must be balanced for many people. Responding to feedback from last semester’s recession-era student body, the school offers several new practical courses beginning this week in a sea of more vibrant and creative options. Among the seven new courses offered are “Professional Development: Art and Industry,” “Law School for Visual Artists: Know Your Rights and How to Protect Yourself” and “Career Workshop for Photographers.”

“Essentially [the new courses] stem from the understanding that the economy was experiencing a downturn, and many of our students, faculty and alumni were concerned about their fiscal situation and wanted to take a hard look at what they have to offer,” says Joseph Cipri, executive director of the Division of Continuing Education. According to him, it’s exponentially more difficult to find representation while agencies and studios across the country downsize and lay off staff.

“Everyone’s rethinking how to make a living.”

He finds some alumni coming back and enrolling both in art and business of art courses, trying to find a new source of income.

Cipri received a bachelor’s degree in illustration from SVA and a master’s in administration at Baruch College. Like his new coursework, he is a mix of art and industry: He works the kind of 9-to-5 desk job that artists typically abhor, but he has his own bohemian roots (and wavy locks to prove it).

The professors promise that they’re cutting their coursework in the art business jargon down to the bare Bauhaus necessities.

Jonathan Melber, an attorney who will teach several law courses and Ten Things Every Artist Should Know, explained his pedagogical philosophy: “I don’t think it’s something that artists should have to spend any more time on than necessary.”

Malcolm Lightner, professional photographer and instructor of the photography career course, agreed with Melber, but he emphasized the necessity of funding artistic pursuits, saying, “I would not want to spend every waking moment focused on the practical, but I do realize that it is an essential component to one’s success.” (Michael Martin) <

No Franks at the Wright ‘Modern American’ menu meets site-specific sculpture at Guggenheim eatery

By Charlotte Eichna

T

he Guggenheim has long been one of the few iconic museums without a destination dining spot. The museum has now transformed a somewhat generic, cafeteria-style café space into The Wright (as in a certain well-known architect).

The restaurant offers lunch, Sunday brunch and bar options as well as dinner seatings on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays. David Bouley’s protégé Rodolfo Contreras created a “modern American” menu for the restaurant based on seasonal, local and sustainable ingredients.

Adding a jolt of color to the sleek, white space is a site-specific sculpture by British artist Liam Gillick. Nancy Spector, the museum’s deputy director and chief curator, spoke with us about the unconventional interior decisions since Gillick’s focus on architecture made him a great fit for the commission.

CityArts: Could you talk about how you selected Liam Gillick and what he envisioned

The Wright includes Liam Gillick’s sculpture. for this space?

Nancy Spector: We already have had a longstanding relationship with him, in that he’s represented in the collection and he’s

been in a number of our exhibitions. He, in his work, is very interested in architecture,

Guggenheim on page 9

AT AUCTION Feb 4

Vintage Posters Specialist: Nicholas Lowry, ext 53 nlowry@swanngalleries.com lllustrated Catalogue: $35

Feb 11 Abraham Lincoln, carte-de-visite by Gardner, signed as President. From the Shochet Collection.

Estimate $40,000 to $60,000. At auction Feb 11.

Signed Historical Photographs from the Jerome Shochet Collection Specialist: Marco Tomaschett, ext 12 mtomaschett@swanngalleries.com lllustrated Catalogue: $35

Feb 23

African-American Fine Art Specialist: Nigel Freeman, ext 33 nfreeman@swanngalleries.com lllustrated Catalogue: $35

Feb 25

Betty Blayton, Reaching for Center, oil and collage on canvas, 1970.

Estimate $30,000 to $50,000. At auction Feb 23.

Printed & Manuscript African Americana Specialist: Wyatt H. Day, ext 300 wday@swanngalleries.com lllustrated 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

January 26, 2010 | City Arts

DANCE

Baby Talk At The Ballet

BY JOEL LOBENTHAL Recent performances at New York City Ballet confirmed that only now, 27 years after George Balanchine’s death, do we see the full ramifications of his infatuation with very young dancers. Traditionally, a ballet company’s highest-ranked dancers were so ranked because they had mastered principal roles. But decades before he died in 1983, Balanchine began taking the youngest dancers and assigning them principal roles in repertory, as well as making new roles to suit their particular gifts. Balanchine’s policies generally worked for him, but it would now seem that on-the-job training has hardened into dogma, spreading globally—and not to the benefit of the art form.

At NYCB’s season-opening gala last November, it invited the Paris Opera Ballet’s Aurélie Dupont and Matthias Heymann to dance the pas de deux from Balanchine’s Rubies. Dupont turned 37 this month, while Heymann is 22. The ballerina gave a performance that was exemplary and instructive as well as entertaining. The shape and proportions of her body, its articulation and technique, are so finely drawn that she could forego the excessive buffoonery that makes Rubies sometimes seem like a lost ballet. She delivered a refreshingly shtick-free performance, applying her gifts instead to pitchperfect soundings of the temptress/vaudevillian/girl jockey—let’s be French and call it “gamine”—oddities in the choreography itself.

In terms of synergy, however, her duet with Heymann fell flat. I wondered if by pairing them, the city of Colette and her Chéri wanted us to experience a frisson of mature ballerina and wet-behind-the-ears danseur. If so, that ploy fell short because, first of all, they seemed the same indeter-

minate age—each of their faces and bodies seemed comparably youthful. And between them there was some friendly accord but no sexual chemistry. He is also too short for her. But most jarring was the way their age disparity translated into artistic asymmetry: He just seemed bland. While Heymann certainly has all the makings of a potentially fine leading dancer, the fact that he has already catapulted to the POB’s highest echelon of etoile seems rash indeed.

At NYCB earlier this month, I saw Balanchine’s Who Cares?, performed by three dancers newly promoted to principal, the highest rank in this company: Sterling Hyltin, Robert Fairchild and Tiler Peck. All are in their early twenties and have been with the company just a few years. They’d made their debuts in these roles a week earlier and this was their third performance. They are talented and deserving, but while the three may now be titled principal dancers, artistically they remain what Heymann appears to be: apprentice-principals.

Set to music by the Gershwins, 1970’s Who Cares? shows us Balanchine looking over his shoulder at his immersion in nightclub and musical comedy dance of the 1920s and ’30s. Peck and Hyltin were joined in the third woman’s lead by young soloist Ana Sophia Scheller. All three women had their noteworthy moments. But they appeared nervous or, rather, their muscles did; they couldn’t always do what the dancers’ artistic consciousness told them they needed to do.

Fairchild’s performance seemed more relaxed than the women’s—despite the fact that he and Hyltin had danced Martins’ full-length Romeo and Juliet the night before. Fairchild had a measure of suavity as well as charm.

Technically he was assured enough to take

Paul Kolnik

Rather than hasty promotions, the dance world should remain prudent

Sterling Hyttin and Robert Fairchild in ‘Who Cares?’ some risks. He performed the most balletic steps with precision, and he did the soft shoe with the right throwaway nonchalance. And he didn’t oversell. Also the ensemble was very good: five couples, each of whom is foregrounded at different times.

One of the real attractions of youth is

Douglas Turnbaugh and Gregory Vanden Veer’s elegant gem of a film encapsulates past and present, letting these two offer perceptive insights about the passage of time. It’s a message everyone can take to heart. Not to mention the pleasure it offers of watching them continue doing what the film’s title says: keep dancing.

“Dancing for Disney” (Jan. 31 at 3:15 p.m.) is a one-time program that promises to be a festival highlight. Noted dance critic and author Mindy Aloff, whose recent book Hippo in a Tutu offers penetrating insights into the dancing within Disney’s beloved animation classics, will screen examples and discuss them. This will be followed by six imaginative examples of contemporary dance-oriented

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

Courtesy of Film Society of Lincoln Center

KEEP DANCING from page 1

‘Forty Years of One Night Stands’ (left) and ‘Waterproof.’

the surprise factor it supplies. No dancer is absolutely like any other, so there is always the possibility and hope of revitalization and even revelation. But a golden mean of prudence and sanity needs to be adhered to.

Facing tough times, the ballet world should keep this in mind. < animated shorts.

Michael Blackwood’s New York Dance: States of Performance focuses on seven top choreographers in rehearsal and conversation, as they explore new ideas in dance in the 21st century. Blackwood has had his finger on the pulse of significant voices and trends in contemporary choreography since 1980, when Making Dances focused on the groundbreaking generation of post-modernists. The film features our local celebs: Christopher Wheeldon, Jennifer Monson, Sara Michelson, John Jasperse, Ralph Lemon, Beth Gill and Ann Liv Young, who express their ideas and dance aesthetic in rehearsal and performance. < Dance on Camera Festival Jan. 29 through Feb. 2, Walter Reade Theater, 165 W. 65th St., 212-721-6500.

JAZZ

Center of the Jazz Universe?

The NEA Jazz Masters are from New York—for now

By Howard Mandel A cadre of estimable musical elders convened Jan. 12 at Rose Theater of Jazz at Lincoln Center for the National Endowment of the Arts’ 2010 Jazz Masters ceremony and concert. And a majority of them were New Yorkers. Will that always be so? Is this city the place to be for jazz to come?

Of this year’s inductees, pianist-composers Muhal Richard Abrams, Kenny Barron, Cedar Walton, singer Annie Ross and record producer George Avakian are locals. Plus, vibist Bobby Hutcherson and reeds player Yusef Lateef put in serious Big Apple time.

Only Bill Holman is indelibly of elsewhere, a leading West Coast arranger whose band has never even played New York. Besides them, previously inducted masters from nearby— including Toshiko Akiyoshi, Candido Camero, Jimmy Cobb, Paquito D’Rivera, Frank Foster, Jimmy Heath, Chico Hamilton, Lee Konitz, Dan Morgenstern, Cecil Taylor, George Wein, Frank Wess, Randy Weston and Joe Wilder—made appearances. And let’s not forget that Buddy DeFranco, James Moody, Gunther Schuller and Dr. Billy

Taylor, who made appearances, have lived in and out of town (as well as Chicagoan Ramsey Lewis and Gerald Wilson, an Angelino). In long-due acknowledgement, the widows of late masters Tommy Flanagan, Andrew Hill, Milt Jackson, Luther Henderson and Ray Barretto—all of this area—were introduced at the Rose Theater show. That NEA chairman Rocco Landesman (most recently the coowner of Broadway’s Jujamcyn Theaters) emceed the evening with Wynton Marsalis, a trumpeter in the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, reinforced the NEA’s New York jazz bias. That’s all good, but is it justified?

And, more importantly, can it last?

Looking at the NEA’s entire list of 114 Masters, so-designated since the title’s invention in 1981, some artists have come from far away—such as pianist Jay McShann from Kansas City, guitarist Danny Barker from New Orleans and Sun Ra from…Saturn. They, too, validated our claim as Jazz Capital of the World by having been here at decisive turns or for significant stretches of their careers. New York City is where they made their names.

The jazz masters to date, however, all

got started before 1960. They’re masters because they created, learned and survived all market forces they faced, thriving by dint of determination, discipline and energy without much reference to popular culture norms.

They organized their careers around where they could work best—typically in New York.

That’s hardly necessary anymore.

Musicians today need only to live near an international airport. They don’t come to New York to meet each other—they do that online—or to record, which is easily accomplished using a laptop computer.

They might like to play in the big league to peerlessly sophisticated audiences, or they might prefer to tour like a jam band, playing colleges and indie fests, posting MP3s and digital videos, skirting urban centers as no more relevant than record labels.

Of course, the number of places live jazz is played in New York is not what it was.

Gunther Schuller has talked about how in the early 1950s—when he worked with ensembles including Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool band—he and his wife would walk Uptown after work from 42nd to 57th Street, stopping

for 10-cent beers at music clubs all the way. That strip at those prices is gone. The number of fair-to-good-to-great jazz venues in Manhattan still tops the number in any other city on earth, but each joint here should be cherished and understood to be as vulnerable to shifts in global economics, regional real estate and flighty entertainment preferences as the number of Starbucks on a busy corner.

Rents may have stabilized, but housing costs in NYC take a bigger bite of most aspiring artists’ monthly incomes than was the case when the John Zorn generation (now 50somethings) staked out its place Downtown.

Tuli Kupferberg of The Fugs, now 87 years old, has lived on Seventh Avenue South forever and asserts that cheap rents are the sine qua non of the avant-garde (jazz in all its forms is so marginal as to be “financially avantgarde”). The enrollment in the New School Jazz and Contemporary Music program, NYU’s jazz department, the Juilliard School’s jazz courses and other civic conservatories has steadily increased, but can the students find

JAZZ on page 8

Yale School of Music · Robert Blocker, Dean Yale in New York · David Shifrin, Artistic Director JACK VIERTEL, ARTISTIC DIRECTOR ROB BERMAN, MUSIC DIRECTOR

FANNY A MUSICAL PLAY BY

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January 26, 2010 | City Arts

ClassicalMUSIC

The Art of the Song Three masters, two teaching, one singing

By Jay Nordlinger into the music business. Levine asked an ou know who Marilyn Horne is: the accompanist to lower the lid on the piano. As American mezzo-soprano, born in the student was about to do so, a stagehand 1934, who is one of the best singers we rushed to do it for him. Levine grinned at the have ever known. Do you know what student, “Not union.” the Marilyn Horne Foundation is? The singer set it up in the mid-1990s, as her performing he following night, also in Zankel Hall, career was nearing an end. The foundation we had a recital by one of the finest song has a thumbnail description of its purpose: singers in the world: Christine Schäfer, “To encourage, support and preserve the art the German soprano. This was not part of the vocal recital through the presentation of of the Horne events; it just happened to fall vocal recitals and related educational activities during Horne Week, so to speak. Schäfer in communities across the United States.” is a master of the lied—the German art In some ways, the classical-music business song—and of music at large. Eight years ago, is booming. In other ways, it is busting. For in Alice Tully Hall, she sang Apparition, a some years, recitals of all types have been on spooky, exotic work by the American George the decline. And the Horne Foundation is Crumb. (He turned 80 last year, incidentally.) a point of light, as the first President Bush Schäfer’s performance was hard to forget. might say.

She sang Apparition again, at Zankel Every January, the foundation stages a Hall, along with Crumb’s Three Early Songs. series of events in New York, and that series The only other composer on the program was includes some master classes. A master class, Purcell, the great 17th-century Englishman.

Christine Schäfer as you remember, is a session in which a So, the German soprano sang an all-Englishsenior musician, or master, teaches or coaches language program. Does she have an accent?

Carnegie building.) Like James Levine, she some students, usually before an audience.

Oh yes, a marked one. It was often hard to is a wonderful talker about music, and a The instruction is as much for the audience as understand her. But it can be flattering when a wonderful teacher. She tends to be a stickler: it is for the individual students (ideally). foreign singer engages in your language. And for diction, for rhythm, for the basics. In her The foundation’s first master class this think what native English-speakers do to lieder! master classes, she has long reminded me of year was held in Zankel Hall, the woodSchäfer is a neat, tidy, tasteful musician. one of (Robert) Conquest’s Laws: “Everyone paneled venue downstairs at Carnegie Hall.

I sometimes think, “She sings like an is a conservative in his own field of expertise.”

And the master was James Levine, music instrumentalist.” She is a smart cookie, and And she is funny as hell, as she teaches— director of the Metropolitan Opera, and of the she interpreted her Purcell and Crumb with as well as personable, wise, a little earthy.

Boston Symphony Orchestra.

She is essentially as compelling in Introducing him, Marilyn her master classes as she was in her Schäfer is a neat, tidy, tasteful Horne said, “What can you performances. say about James Levine? He’s In Weill Hall, she did everything musician. I sometimes think, “She the greatest conductor in the she knew to get the students to sing sings like an instrumentalist.” world, and all the rest of it: better. Sometimes they responded, pianist, voice pedagogue and sometimes they didn’t. Horne was on and on.” character. It is somewhat painful to note that patient, saying, “The hardest damn thing Levine is not only a great musician, he Schäfer is no longer a kid: The voice sounds in the world is to sing.” Though she is not is one of the great talkers about music—and older—how could it not?—and the technique a pianist, as Levine is, she did not neglect music is an extremely difficult thing to talk is maybe not as wondrous as it was. Some the accompanists. One of them introduced a about. Debussy said, “Music begins where glitches and impurities slip in. Nonetheless, Spanish song in a rather vanilla way. She said, human speech leaves off.” But Levine is Schäfer is hard to beat on a recital stage. imploringly, “Adam, sexier.” unusually adept at human speech. He is When it came time for encores, she gave And one of the best things about a Horne able to communicate, through words, what us—lieder. Three of them. And suddenly, he knows musically. And for two hours, I could understand every word she sang, JAZZ from page 7 coaching a half dozen students, he issued very clearly. She was perfectly at home. Still, many pearls. her English-language program had been and/or afford places in which to crash and He talked about the relationship between interesting, welcome and excellent. rehearse within a short throw from regular the singer and the pianist (the accompanist).

By the way, do you remember that, for gigs? Can they experiment with outlandish He talked about diction, and the difference her British audiences, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf sounds and unusual concepts, build an it makes, musically. He talked about colors, used to sing “Danny Boy”? No one ever sang audience, have a life? It’s tricky. both in voices and from a piano. He talked it more poignantly—and the German accent, I In my Brooklyn neighborhood—which about a great range of things. Let me relate believe, helped. shall remain nameless, but it’s not a cool just one little pearl, offered to a singer about he next night, Marilyn Horne was in one—thirtyish jazz players have arrived from a particular passage: “It gives the impression Weill Recital Hall, conducting the final Toronto, California, Rome and elsewhere for the large, affordable apartments with of having been too thought over.” Perfect. master class in her foundation’s series. appliances. They drive to gigs but ride the And let me give you a little aside, a peek (Weill, as you know, is upstairs in the

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master class is that she demonstrates—a lot. She sings as she coaches, and it is a thrill to hear her, in any condition and under any circumstances.

Her musicality is practically limitless. She coached a native Spanish speaker in that Spanish song, and a young black woman in a spiritual. It was fascinating to watch her try to bring out the styles, which she feels so instinctively. The girl from Bradford, Pa., is a universalist.

What Horne has—that sheer musicality, that inborn musical intelligence—you really can’t teach. But such as Horne and Levine can teach a lot.

This January series is titled “The Song Continues…” And, in that spirit, let me mention a couple of recitals occurring in February: On the 25th, at Carnegie Hall, the great mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina will sing a recital of Russian songs. And on the 28th, at Alice Tully, the British baritone Simon Keenlyside will sing a program of lieder. Song recitals will wax and wane. But songs, we will always have with us.<

subway for daytime commutes and most errands. They play where and when they can, often out of town, have friendly parties, have started raising kids. Maybe they’re here for the long haul—or maybe New York should figure out how to nurture and hold them. Otherwise the NEA might find jazz masters spread across the country: Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C., Chicago, New Orleans, Austin, Alaska or Hawaii.

Mustn’t be smug about our place in the jazz universe.

Working in Concert A number of commercial music shops offer free events to attract a sophisticated clientele

BY CORINNE RAMEY he Stradivarius violin was made in 1692, and Leo Adamov charmed the small audience with his performance of Prokofiev, Leclair and de Beriot duos. But the $2.6 million instrument did not belong to the violinist. He was merely borrowing it from Gradoux-Matt Rare Violins for a stirring lunchtime concert.

The violin shop located in the Flatiron district holds about 80 concerts a year in WMP Concert Hall, the name of GradouxMatt’s recital space located in the rear of the shop. Adamov was the latest to participate in the space’s “Strad for Lunch” series, along with violinist Eliot Lawson, which allows the musicians to play valuable instruments for a 45-minute, lunchtime concert.

The practice of holding concerts in commercial music shops is one of those peculiarly symbiotic New York relationships, where both parties get something they want.

Normally, no money changes hands. The performers are happy for the opportunity to perform and storeowners bring new faces—and potential clients—into their shops.

At least two string shops and a handful of piano stores on “Piano Row” on 58th Street regularly hold concerts in their stores.

“We have an understanding of the importance of the arts,” says Gabor Reisinger, co-owner of Klavierhaus, a piano store on West 58th Street. “The concerts are free, and it’s a public offering.” Klavierhaus is currently expanding its concert space to accommodate more seating, and next year’s concert series will feature piano greats like Garrick Ohlsson and Richard Goode.

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GUGGENHEIM from page 5 particularly the legacy of 20th-century Modernism and how politics and economic and social systems and social value systems are embedded in constructed space. He’s examined that in all his works, so we thought that because he was so interested in architecture, he would be able to respond and work in an architectural environment and collaborate with the architect.

CA: The sculpture, “The horizon produced by a factory once it had stopped producing views,” is part of a longer narrative of Gillick’s about future post-capitalist society. It’s somewhat ironic that it’s in a restaurant, which is a commercial space. Is he aware of that?

NS: I think Liam’s always aware of every possible reading. But he is interested in his work and social interaction, so the fact that his

“We especially try to touch the a run-through,” says cellist Yoed Nir, who neighborhood,” says Annabelle Avenier, vice has performed at Singer several times. “It’s a president of Gradoux-Matt Rare Violins. “And really nice, warm place with a nice piano, and it’s a performance opportunity for musicians to it’s a magical thing to see all the instruments perform in New York.” hanging up on the walls.”

Not everyone agrees, however. One For string players who perform at the piano store employee, who wanted to remain “Strad for Lunch” series, it also offers the rare anonymous, claims that it isn’t a perfect opportunity to play a high-quality, valuable system, since about 80 percent of any audience instrument. Adamov says that playing on the are repeat concertgoers and most will never Stradivarius violin, an instrument notorious purchase a piano. “Most of the time, it’s grassroots “It’s basically a beast that has so marketing,” he says.

“It’s good for cultivating much potential,” Leo Adamov relationships and keeping explains. “Usually I control my your brand name in the violin, but today it controlled me.” minds of your customers.

The point of doing this sort of thing in any business is to sell the product you’re selling.” for its temperamental nature, was a once-in-aWhatever the financial incentive, musicians lifetime opportunity. “It’s basically a beast that say they are grateful for the performance has so much potential,” he explains. “Usually I opportunity. Most end up playing in the stores control my violin, but today it controlled me.” because of a prior relationship—maybe they Business models for the concert series purchased a violin case, or have been a client differ. At Gradoux-Matt and Klavierhaus, the for a number of years—but some have stopped space is rented to some musicians for private in or made cold calls in hopes of a chance for a or student recitals. The fee is generally fairly free recital. minimal and differs depending on the time of “We really needed a place to play, and in day and the client. “Maybe they can’t afford New York that’s hard to find,” explains Sage Weill Recital Hall for $5,000, but they can Cole, a violinist with the New York Cityafford WMP for $500,” says Paolo Alberghini, based Hudson String Quartet, which played a artistic director of the “Strad for Lunch” series. recital at Gregory Singer Fine Violins on the At Singer, the musicians are sometimes charged Upper West Side. a small fee, which is used to provide wine and For others, the stores offer a place to cheese after the performance. test-drive a recital program before playing Gradoux-Matt Rare Violins bills its at a larger venue. “I had a recital here in concerts under the name WMP Concert Hall, the city and he offered me a place to play or Workshop for Music Performance, which

is set up as a nonprofit separate from the store and therefore allows for tax-deductible donations. “It encourages corporations to get involved,” explains Alberghini. “There is not another venue in the Flatiron district, and we think we have corporate neighbors who would want to give.”

Gregory Singer, owner of Gregory Singer Fine Violins, said the concerts in his store have never been a moneymaker. “It’s not a moneymaking venture. The people who come to the concerts are not musicians, and they’re not buying instruments,” he says. The store can accommodate an audience of about 40 people, and most of the concertgoers are elderly people, neighborhood locals and real personalities, including one gentleman who writes a limerick or haiku to recite after each concert.

The concerts may not be sustainable, however. “Times are lean,” says Singer. “I’m not sure we can keep this up.”

At the recent WMP lunchtime concert, the audience members were thankful for an affordable concert, but didn’t appear to be future patrons of the violin shop. “It’s great,” said Robert Kurilla, 51, who works in educational publishing. “It’s so small and intimate.” Kurilla, who works in the neighborhood, first saw the concerts advertised on a sandwich board outside and now attends the concerts almost every Monday during his lunch hour. Shellie Balkin, 63, who is retired, first heard about the concerts from the Web site Club Free Time, and is a regular attendee as well. “The performers are really high quality,” she said. “It’s 10 minutes from my house and I love it.”<

work would be situated in a social environment, it’s actually very fitting. It’s perfect.

He’s more focused on the fact that it’s a social environment where people would be coming together over a meal, versus that it’s a commercial space.

It’s not commercial, because the museum’s not for profit. I think he sees his sculptures as catalysts for conversation and debate, so in a social environment, that’s even more achievable, in a sense, because people are invited to sit and think and talk and hopefully reflect upon the artwork.

a dual dining experience, whereas before we had only had the café. So now there’s a seated restaurant and a much more informal café nearer to the galleries. We were trying to maximize our services and provide different experiences for our visitors.

CA: If you were trying to explain Gillick’s piece to a non-artsy crowd, like a group of second graders, what would you tell them?

NS: That’s tricky, isn’t it? Well, I think that foremost, you can read it as an abstract sculpture. But its resonance is that in its form, in its power, in its surreality, it re-references

certain architectural and sculptural landmarks of the 20th century. And I think I would talk to second graders about how buildings can encourage people to think a certain way when they’re inside them, like a courthouse versus a shopping mall, and Liam’s very in tune to that.

It’s sculptural but it’s also architectural, and I think that fine line between the two is very important, and I think a child would be able to grasp it, certainly.

CA: There’s been quite a museum dining boom in New York City. Was this something you guys thought about when you opened The Wright, or did it coincidentally happen at the same time?

NS: I honestly don’t know. You know, we’ve also opened a café, CAFÉ 3, on the third level, which is a very informal sandwichespresso bar situation. I know that our own thinking was that we really wanted to create

CA: Have you seen what the restaurant means to the museum? Are people staying longer? Are you drawing new crowds?

NS: I know just from talking to my colleagues that it’s been extremely well attended. We’ve had three or four turnovers at brunch on the weekends, so there seems to be a lot of interest and it seems to be popular. I don’t know if it’s shifting our attendance patterns. It may be a little bit too early to tell. < The Wright, 1071 5th Ave. (at 88th Street), 212-427-5690.

January 26, 2010 | City Arts

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AttheGALLERIES at Lohin Geduld shows the artist in top form.

Kresch’s motif of small horizontal landscapes, divided almost equally between earth and sky, would seem to be simplicity itself, offered up with seductive scumblings of vivid hues: brilliant yellows and orange-reds, often, against darker, deeper blues and greens. But as with the artist’s career, deeper rewards emerge slowly but surely. Subtle plastic rhythms—traceable to his early years as an abstract painter just out of the Hans Hofmann School— charge his hues, which tug and lean against each other with poignant rigor. Stare a while at “Four Corners–Tower Road,” and the ground plane takes on the aspect of a luminous, unfurling tablecloth, settling weightily, front to back. Across the tensile ground planes of his landscapes, pressures of color provoke eruptions of form elsewhere. Tiers of dark foliage separate bright fields in “Blue and Gold,” not in passive spatial recession, but as tensed incidents; slight diagonals converge behind the ball of a central tree, nailing its location and the fullness of the air beneath ultramarine and cerulean notes of sky. In “September Landscape,” trees enter from the right as a procession of furry disks, gathering in height at the canvas’ center; they preside with quiet authority over distant fields and a foreground house. New, in my experience, are the small figures in several canvases that rest, work or cavort in mute dances with the landscape.

Not every composition resonates as powerfully as these, and a more spacious hanging might have shown the understated vigor of these paintings to better effect. But the intensity of these intimate, selfcontained images—borne, it seems, of a euphoric communion with nature—lingers in one’s memory.

(John Goodrich) Through Feb. 13. Lohin Geduld Gallery, 531 W. 25th St., 212-675-2656.

Every Man, Every Woman: The Figures of Viola Frey

“Crazy Horse Among Falling Stars” by Tony Fitzpatrick.

Drawings for Crazy Horse I have long been a fan of Tony Fitzpatrick’s eccentric and obsessive etchings. In the past he has turned his attention and finely-tuned hand to obsess on birds, bugs, hobo alphabets and the poetry of cities. In recent years he has moved increasingly into a new visual and conceptual universe, using collage to channel his obsessions into the visible world.

Fitzpatrick’s most recent show, at Pierogi Gallery in Williamsburg, is an interesting musing on the life of Crazy Horse. A cacophony of collaged images, many of which seem more autobiographical than biographical, crowd into the small drawings. The largest is roughly 10-by-7 inches, yet all are bursting with narrative, color and image. They are remarkable, the combination of size and density of color and image drawing the viewer into Fitzpatrick’s universe.

The use of collaged materials has changed the artist’s palette. Though the work is both beautiful and seductive, I have to confess a longing for a greater presence of his “hand.” One of the best things about Fitzpatrick’s earlier prints were his extraordinary bold, funny and desperate hand-drawn lines.

Fitzpatrick is an artist who never sits still, and

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though I did not swoon over this body of work as I have in the past, the collages are thoughtful, worthy and wonderfully nuts. It is very telling that in the press release for this show Fitzpatrick readily acknowledges little knowledge of American Indian history or life and proclaims little kinship with the subject. But what fascinates the artist about Crazy Horse reveals much about Fitzpatrick; it is Crazy Horse’s unease in the world. Fitzpatrick describes him as a “seeker,” a man of both courage and “otherworldliness,” both an American iconoclast and an enigma. A portrait of the artist as a young Indian? (Melissa Stern) Through Feb. 7. Pierogi, 177 N. 9th St. (betw. Bedford & Driggs Aves.), Brooklyn, 718-599-2144.

Albert Kresch: Landscapes, Landshapes In certain circles, “The Al Kresch Effect” has become shorthand for a rare phenomenon in the art world. While the trajectories of artistic careers tend to gel early on, Albert Kresch leapt into public view in his late seventies—having toiled for decades in relative obscurity—with fine shows at Salander-O’Reilly Galleries and the Center for Figurative Painting.

Salander-O’Reilly is now defunct, of course, but not Kresch. His current exhibition of nearly 30 landscapes

Viola Frey combined the exuberance of Calder with the colors of Matisse and the social consciousness of Walker Evans. A ground-breaking artist, who became best known for her monumental figurative sculptures in clay, she first made her mark in the 1960s with wild-looking ceramic assemblages based on found objects, in the next decade moving on to large-scale figures, all the more affecting for their depiction of men and women who seemed vulnerable and touchingly human. With these, she showed the full possibilities of ceramics as an art form. But though they served as her hallmarks, she also produced smaller figurines, dynamic paintings and evocative works on paper and experimented with photography, bronze casting and glass sculpting. If viewers don’t get enough of her in this captivating show, they can look forward to a fullscale retrospective of her work at the Museum of Arts and Design, starting Jan. 27.

Two powerful figures dominate the gallery, the first, the “Stubborn Woman,” who rests on the floor naked, looking more perplexed than stubborn, most of her skin mottled pinkish and rough except for her yellow nose, orange hands and black hair. Unlike most sculpture of this size, it is approachable.

She is an imperfect creature, one imagines, with imperfect preoccupations. The 127-inches tall “Standing White Majestic Man,” is in fact, not so majestic. An ordinary sort, he holds out his hand as if beckoning to someone. While looking at them, it takes a moment to realize how difficult it had to have been to make them.

The works on paper hold their own with the big figures. In “Large Foot Man,” she uses a warm palette of flesh tones, yellows and pinks to paint a naked couple lying on the ground, the man’s head in the woman’s lap, while a large foot dangles over their heads. It’s funny and not so funny. Is it going to crush them? Is it a figment of their imaginations?

She did many paintings of couples, as if she were

preoccupied by relationships. In “Man and Woman Turning” what first appears to be a dance (so fluid are the shapes), on closer inspection, is probably a fight. The man’s hand is raised as the woman turns her head. The fierce brushstrokes underline the violence of the scene. More tender is “Thinking Woman II,” where her lone, naked woman curls up comfortably, and smaller figures—perhaps in her thoughts—appear in the background. She obviously loved the figures and embodied each one with personality. The lovely and defiant “Standing Pink and Green Nude” looks out, challenging anyone to get in her way, tiny figures in the background scattering before her certainty. (Valerie Gladstone) Through Feb. 20. Nancy Hoffman Gallery, 520 W. 27th St., 212-966-6676.

Never Can Say Goodbye If you’re strolling past the corner of East Fourth Street and Broadway, site of the old Tower Records store, you’re likely to hear an unlikely sound coming from the building: music. Through Feb. 13, a scrappy and wonderful new not-for-profit group called No Longer Empty has commandeered the building and filled it with site-specific artwork— part of a show called Never Can Say Goodbye—that is all informed by that wonderful old-media phenomenon, the record store.

Walking into the space, you’re immediately greeted by Ryan Brennan’s “Bling Box Orchestra,” eight customized, 1980s-style boom boxes blasting the synchronized history of hip-hop music. It’s big, has lights flashing, and is really, really cool.

Ted Riederur has set up a fake record company called Never Records, and as you paw through the records bins you notice that each album cover is black except for a single word. Putting the words together, each bin spells a snippet of poetry. Like a surrealist parlor game, the results are both amusing and touching.

Paul Villinski has contributed another poetic and beautiful piece. “Diaspora” starts on the floor, a pile of old LPs, topped by a vintage record player. On the turntable a vinyl record has spun into the shape of a bird about to take flight. The entire wall above is covered with LP birds and the music soars into flight.

Deep in the back of the store, appropriately nestled into the former classical music section, is one of the most stunning video pieces I have ever seen.

Joe Diebes has filmed a cellist playing a scherzo (the piece is not identified) with 10 cameras. The original piece is played very fast. He then deconstructed the film clips and reconstructed them in slightly “off” sequences into a new piece of film and audio that is thrilling in both image and sound. (MS) Through Feb. 13. East 4th Street and Broadway, www.nolongermepty.org.

“Stubborn Woman” by Viola Frey.

“Gaza” by Irving Petlin.

Irving Petlin: Major Paintings Political grandstanding in the arts is nothing new. Art tethered to the purposes of social policy or political postures is solidly entrenched in contemporary culture. Much of today’s art mimics the intellectual fray of the 1960s, itself an imitation of contests begun in the ’10s and ’20s.

It is against this backdrop that Irving Petlin has acquired near-iconic status. In the ’60s, he embraced the assertion of Leonid Ilychev, Kruschev’s spokesman for the arts, that “Art belongs to the sphere of ideology.” In the decades since, he has combined art and activism, ending with poster designs for Barack Obama and a one-dimensional disavowal of “the murderous Israeli siege of Gaza.”

Along the way, he cemented friendships with Leon Golub and R.B. Kitaj. Their triumvirate established what is still the template for socially engaged— defined as left-leaning—painting.

Happily, Petlin is a subtler artist than he is an ideologue. With pieces dating back to 1977, this exhibition is a fine introduction to his oeuvre for new audiences and a welcome revisit for others.

There is no denying the seductiveness of the work on view. The tug of politics resides mainly in loaded titles. Petlin’s gift on canvas was for the enigmas of representation. Absent the titles (e.g.

“Hebron;” “Gaza/Guernica”), the paintings remain illusive, elegiac traces of the sorrow implicit in every historical moment Petlin paints—possibly in spite of himself—not events at all but rather the emotive residue of them.

Here is the condition of man who suffers his times, haunted by danger and melancholy. The pastel “Trestle Bridge/The Next Village” is a compelling illustration of the way Petlin transmutes mimesis into suggestion, facilitated by a trembling, nearpointillist touch. As your eye moves across the bridge, the supporting girders gradually take on the shape of bones, emphasizing the spectral quality of the semi-abstract figure huddled in one corner.

A village burns in the distance. The where and why of it are left to the viewers’ projections. Mood is the single reality: a poetic evocation of mortal evanescence, loss and pain. (Maureen Mullarkey) Through Mar. 27. Kent Gallery, 541 W. 25th St., 212-627-3680.

William Hawkins: Architectural Paintings Count the self-taught American painter William Hawkins, the subject of a striking exhibition at Ricco Maresca Gallery, as being among the handful of artists whose work blurs the distinction between Fine and Folk Art.

Hawkins’ iconographic pictures—with their slathered runs of enamel paint, blunt blocks of pattern, garish colors and furtive oddments of collage—have a few painters of acquaintance wondering if they aren’t a put-on. We expect idiosyncrasy and intensity from outsider artists, sure, but not necessarily compositional sophistication or visionary self-awareness. But “William Hawkins Born July 27, 1895”—the name and date run boldly across the margins of each image—wasn’t a faux naïf with an MFA, but a Kentucky-born farm boy with a genuine gift for pictorial invention.

The current exhibition focuses on Hawkins’ paintings of architecture. A log cabin, Mount Vernon, the Ohio Statehouse, the Neptune Pool at Hearst Castle and “Parliamentary Buildings With Three Girls,” a menacing parade of minarets towering over clueless fashion models cut-andpasted from a magazine advertisement—each is fitted inside the confines of the rectangle with uncanny surety. Their structural integrity owes much to the geometry inherent in the subject matter, but Hawkins’ arrangements of shape make for stark and sometimes zooming arrays of incident.

The “wrapping” of each image inside a painted frame increases the sense of compression.

Pegging Hawkins as a backwoods formalist may seem a stretch (or an imposition), but the pictures connect more for pictorial rigor than for what they evoke—no otherworldly hallucinations or spiritual epiphanies here. “I don’t copy what I see. I make it better.” Such a credo doesn’t obviate thematic depth or associative complexity, but it does point to the work’s over-riding, declamatory force.

(Mario Naves)

Through Mar. 13. Forum Gallery, 745 5th Ave., 212-355-4545.

Iannis Xenakis: Composer, Architect, Visionary Greek avant-garde composer Iannis Xenakis was one of the most revolutionary and difficult artists of the 20th century. He helped develop electronic music and pioneered in the field of computer-assisted composition. Trained as a civil engineer and architect, as well as a musician, he studied with Olivier Messiaen in Paris and brought an especially unusual collection of talents to everything he did.

Highly influenced by working with Le Corbusier, he thought architecturally about music and drawing, making of his notations fascinating chronicles of a searching mind. In the first exhibit of his visual work in the United States, The Drawing Center puts on view 60 rarely seen architectural plans, preparatory mathematical renderings and precompositional sketches created between 1953 and 1984. Looking at them is like getting to peak into his dazzling brain.

The drawings are like mindscapes, numbers and lines, sometimes done with colored pencils, other times with ink, which have a beauty quite aside from their original intention as maps of his music.

Through Feb. 20. Ricco Maresca Gallery, 529 W. 20th St., 212-627-4819.

Bernardo Siciliano Has success spoiled Bernardo Siciliano?

Admirers of his assertive, elegantly designed cityscapes must wonder.

Son of celebrated Italian writer Enzo Siciliano, Bernardo arrived preselected for mythic status. Poet and critic Attilio Bertolucci introduced his 1976 debut in Rome. He was just 17, cosseted by all the right literary, cinematic and theatrical circles. Before he was 30, he was being packaged as a legend with a bio stocked with ingredients similar to those of the young Balthus, from family connections to the designing of high-profile opera sets. Now 40 and a New Yorker, Siciliano looks less like a prodigy than a talent coarsened by premature celebrity.

Parallels with Balthus hover like Poe’s raven over this current show at Forum. A characteristic

“Bloody Gloves” by Bernardo Siciliano.

Courtesy of Gagosian Gallery

architectural composition, “Chinatown” provides counterpoint to five monumental female nudes. It is hard to reconcile the sensibility at work in the single urban view with the 90-inch-high girlie pictures that trick out the display. The roofscape’s compelling geometric complexity and cool tonalities have nothing in common with the figures except an underlying dependence on the camera.

It has been done before, this oversized naked format. William Beckman, an older Forum durable, was the doyen, for two decades, of eight-foot figures in the buff. But he never smirked. You greeted his confessional nudes with the surprise you might feel if you opened your neighbors’ door without knocking and caught them undressed. By contrast, Siciliano’s gals have been waiting for you, artfully posed until you get there. All have that paid-by-thehour grimace of bored extras in a skin flick. Jackie and Nicole leave their boots on, just in case. Janelle spreads her legs for a centerfold crotch shot.

Ms. “Bloody Gloves” shaves her pubis and sports an ambiguous mark on her right side. A burlesque of the ecce homo motif or just a blond finger-painting in the raw? What matters here is the collapse of true ability into photographic mimicry and full frontal banality. Compare Balthus’ echo of an ecce homo in “The Room” and no more words are needed. (MM)

“Stromboli” by Philip Taaffe.

Delicately drawn, many of them on yellowed graph paper, they trace the movement of the music, with lines that rise and fall like the tides, as sensuous as waves. Though mathematically drawn, they share some of the calligraphic delights of Cy Twombly’s paintings.

In his “Study for Metastaeis,” he uses ink to outline his composition, giving character to the notes that literally swoop across the page. They look like the strings inside a piano and almost seem to vibrate.

“Study for Terretektorh” could be an imagining of the solar system, with mysterious, spinning spheres.

(It was, in fact, a piece for 88 musicians scattered throughout the audience). In all of them, you see the curving, organic sensuality of Le Corbusier’s influence, like the luminous “Study for Polytope de Montreal (light score),”where he colors just enough of the lines to make them glow on the page. You can almost hear what they sound like. (VG) Through Apr. 8. The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster St., 212-219-2166.

Philip Taaffe: Works-On-Paper The artist Philip Taaffe gained notoriety less as an abstract painter than as a commentator on abstract painting. His early canvases quoted specific historical precedents—the Op Art of Brigid Riley, say, or Barnett Newman’s proto-Minimalist “zip” paintings— with all but indiscernible cynicism: They functioned as dead-end emblems of style. Po-Mo affectation would lessen, if not be altogether abandoned, in Taaffe’s subsequent elaborations on surface, color and decoration. Appropriating ornamental motifs from the world over, Islam and Asia especially, and utilizing discreet parcels of collage, Taaffe’s encompassing pattern paintings made for elegant eye-candy good for a momentary buzz.

Gagosian Gallery’s West 24th Street branch has mounted the first exhibition dedicated exclusively to Taaffe’s works-on-paper and there are a lot of them. Really, there’s no end to the things: The small to mid-sized mixed-media pieces—Rorshach-blot abstractions rendered in a muddied rainbow palette and executed with exquisite detachment—follow one upon another, in what ultimately devolves into a generic blur of showroom exotica. It’s a truism that unembarrassed capital is this gallery’s aesthetic yardstick. The artist is happy to oblige: Taaffe’s real but un-ingratiating talent is put in the service of fabricating pictures as fetching as they are rote.

Andy Warhol would’ve cast an appreciative eye at Taaffe’s brand-name, high-end product.

Embedded within Taaffe’s smeared and blotted textures are fleeting images—most notably a death’s head. Admirers discern a Symbolist current and claim Taaffe as heir to William Blake, Odilon Redon and the 15th-century alchemist Paraclesus. But the floating skulls, hazy ambiance and tie-dyed runs of color bring to mind nothing so much as the halcyon days of Haight-Ashbury, the Grateful Dead and black light posters. Transforming Gagosian into a blue-chip head shop—or, at least, a corporate version thereof—is some kind of accomplishment. (MN) Through Feb. 20. Gagosian Gallery, 555 W. 24th St., 212-741-1111.

January 26, 2010 | City Arts

11

ArtsAGENDA Gallery openings

Gallery listings courtesy of

AC Institute: Jonathan Keates: “Strange Skies,”

Ardan Ozmenoglu: “1Bird2Birds3Birds,” Elise Rasmussen: “Salzburg Bough.” Opens Feb. 4, 547 W. 27th St., 5th Fl., no phone.

Atlantic Gallery: Josie Merck: “Weeds, Rocks, and Rails.” Opens Feb. 2, 135 W. 29th St., 212-2193183.

Blue Mountain: “7 New Artists.” Opens Feb. 2, 530 W. 25th St., 646-486-4730.

Bowery Gallery: Linda Caspe. Opens Feb. 2, 530 W. 25th St., 646-230-6655.

First Street Gallery: Suzi Evalenko: “What Mattered Most: A Life in Art and Letters.” Opens Feb. 2, 526 W. 26th St., 646-336-8053.

Fischbach Gallery: Brad Marshall: “Outlook.”

Denise Mikilowski: “Mostly Red.” Open Feb. 4, 210 11th Ave., 212-759-2345.

Lyons Wier Gallery: “February Art Bazaar.” Opens Feb. 6, 175 7th Ave., 212-242-6220.

NoHo Gallery: Erma Martin Yost: “Felted Flightscapes.” Opens Feb. 2, 530 W. 25th St., 212367-7063.

Ogilvy Gallery: “Re-Creation.” Opens Jan. 28, 636 11th Ave., 212-237-5090.

PaceWildenstein: Sterling Ruby: “2TRAPS.” Opens Feb. 4, 545 W. 22nd St., 212-254-4710.

Prince Street Gallery: Diana Freedman-Shea, Lynne Friedman, Ellie Wyeth. Opens Feb. 2, 530 W. 25th St., 212-230-0246.

Susan Berko-Conde Gallery: Carlos Ginzburg: “Fractalizations and Other Works.” Opens Jan. 28, 521 W. 23rd St. 2nd Fl., 212-367-9799.

Tria Gallery: Holly Sears & Wendy Rolfe: “Dream Awake.” Opens Jan. 28, 531 W. 25th St., 212695-0021.

Galleries 401 Project: James Nachtwey: “Struggle to Live.”

Through Mar. 25, 401 West St. 212-633-6202.

Alaska House: “Dry Ice: Alaska Native Artists and

the Landscape.” Through Mar. 31, 109 Mercer St., 212-431-1580.

Alex Zachary: Ken Okiishi: “(Goodbye to) Manhattan.” Through Feb. 21, 16 E. 77th St., 212-6280189.

Ana Cristea Gallery: Alexander Tinei: “All About Me.” Through Feb. 20, 521 W. 26th St., 212904-1100.

Andre Zarre Gallery: Bruce Checefsky: “Curiouser and Curiouser.” Through Jan. 30, 529 W, 20th St., 7th Fl., 212-255-0202. apexart: “The Incidental Person,” curated by Antony Hudek. Through Feb. 20, 291 Church St., 212-431-5270.

Arario Gallery: “The Promise of Loss: A Contem-

porary Index of Iran.” Through Feb. 27, 521 W. 25th St., 212-206-2760.

Art in General: “Double-bill,” curated by Redmond Entwistle. Prow: “Anti-Prow,” Through Mar. 20, 79 Walker St., 212-219-0473.

Art Since The Summer Of ‘69: Charles Irvin: “Wuv is the Waw.” Through Feb. 21, 195 Chrystie St., 3rd Fl., 646-918-7667.

Babcock Galleries: “African Americans: Seeing and Seen, 1766–1916.” Through Apr. 2, 724 5th Ave., 212-767-1852.

Betty Cuningham Gallery: “Pearlstein/Held: Five Decades.” Through Feb. 13, 541 W. 25th St., 212-242-2772. bitforms gallery: “X by Y.” Through Mar. 20, 529 W. 20th St., 2nd Fl., 212-366-6939.

Blackstone: Frank Webster: “In the Landscape of Extinction…” Through Feb. 28, 29C Ludlow St., 212-695-8201.

Cavin-Morris Gallery: Curators’ Choice featuring Japanese Art Brut. Through Mar. 27, 210 11th Ave. 212-226-6768.

Chelsea Art Museum: “In/Sight 2010.” Through Feb. 13, 556 W. 22nd St., 212-255-0719.

CRG Gallery: “The Language of Flowers.” Through Feb. 13, 535 W. 22nd St., 3rd Fl., 212-229-2766.

Cuchifritos: Yumi Janairo Roth: “F.O.B.” Through Feb. 27, 120 Essex St., 212-420-9202.

Cynthia-Reeves: Anne Lindberg and Johnny Swing.

Through Feb. 13, 535 W. 24th St., 2nd Fl., 212714-0044.

Dam Stuhltrager Gallery: Amy Greenfield: “Untitled Nude.” Through Feb. 12, 38 Marcy Ave., Brooklyn, 718-569-0903.

Daniel Reich Gallery: Christian Holstad: “The World’s Gone Beautiful.” Through Mar. 6, 537 W. 23rd St., 212-924-4949.

David Zwirner: “Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960–1970.” Through Feb. 6, 519 W. 19th St., 212-727-2070.

DCKT Contemporary: Zoe Crosher: “The Unraveling of Michelle duBois.” Through Feb. 14, 195 Bowery, 212-741-9955.

Dean Project: Parallel States. Through Feb. 14, 4543 21st St., Queens, 718-706-1462.

Denise Bibro Fine Art: “Chautauqua: A Continuum of Creativity.” Through Feb. 13, 529 W. 20th St., 4th Fl., 212-647-7030.

Dispatch: Tom Holmes: “Silly Rabbit—A Gravestone and An Urn.” Through Feb. 14, 127 Henry St., 212-227-2783.

Dumbo Arts Center: “Pixelville: An Urban Concept in Real Time.” Through Feb. 21, 30 Washington St., Brooklyn, 718-694-0831.

Eyelevel BQE: “Sports Illustrated/Brief Moments of Action.” Through Feb. 14, 364 Leonard St.,

LYNDA CASPE

“Homo Fractalus II A” by Carlos Ginzburg at Susan Berko-Conde Gallery.

Brooklyn, 917-660-4650.

Work of Robert Blanchon.” Through Feb. 26, 70 Washington Sq. South, 3rd Fl., 212-998-2596.

FigureWorks: Meridith McNeal: “In the Footsteps of the Starry Messenger.” Through Feb. 21, 168 N. 6th St., Brooklyn, 718-486-7021.

Forum Gallery: Bernardo Siciliano. Through Mar. 13, 745 5th Ave., 212-355-4545.

FOUR 11 Gallery: “La La La: Brooklyn.” Through Feb. 19, 411 3rd Ave., Brooklyn, 212-533-7224.

Foxy Production: Simone Gilges. Through Feb. 13, 623 W. 27th St., 212-239-2758.

Frederieke Taylor Gallery: Kirsten Nelson: “assembly required.” [dNASAb]: “dataclysmic.”

Through Feb. 20, 535 W. 22nd St., 6th Fl., 646-230-0992.

Front Room Gallery: Sasha Bezzubov: “Wildfire.”

Through Feb. 14, 147 Roebling St., Brooklyn, 718-782-2556.

Glowlab: Glowlounge: Winter 2010 Edition.

Through Feb. 28, 30 Grand St., Brooklyn, 718-388-5911.

Harris Lieberman Gallery: “And so on, and so on, and so on...” Through Feb. 27, 89 Vandam St., 212-206-1290.

Haunch of Venison: Brian Alfred: “It’s Already The End Of The World.” Through Feb. 20, 1230 6th Ave., 212-259-0000.

Hauser & Wirth: Ida Applebroog: “Monalisa.”

Through Mar. 6, 32 E. 69th St., 212-794-4970.

Opening February 4, 5-8 pm “Biblical Reliefs and other Sculpture”

Bowery Gallery 530 w. 25 St. 4th Fl. NyC 646-230-6655 Tuesday-Saturday 11-6

City Arts | www.cityarts.info

Feb. 27, 547 W. 27th St., 212-239-3085.

Heskin Contemporary: Erick Johnson: “Parallelo-

gram Paintings.” Through Feb. 13, 443 W. 37th St., 212-967-4972.

Hogar Collection: Lee Ranaldo: “A random collection of cells.” Through Feb. 22, 362 Grand St., Brooklyn, 718-388-5022.

Horticultural Society of New York: Hiroshi Sunairi: “Leur Existence—Tree Project.” Through Feb. 12, 148 W. 37th St., 13th Fl., 212-757-0915.

Hous Projects: “versus.” Through Mar. 8, 31 Howard St., 212-941-5801.

Invisible-Exports: Yorgo Alexopoulos, Stephen Gill and Burton Machen: “The New Old.” Through Feb. 15, 14A Orchard St., 212-226-5447.

International Studio and Curatorial Program: “Terra Infirma.” Through Feb. 14, 1040 Metropolitian Ave., Brooklyn, 718-387-2900.

Jason McCoy Inc.: Kenneth Blom. Through Mar. 6, 41 E. 57 St., 212-319-1996.

Jeff Bailey Gallery: Martin McMurray: “Reenactments.” Feb. 13, 511 W. 25th St., Suite 207, 212-989-0156.

Jen Bekman Gallery: Clare Grill: “What You’re Told.” Through Feb. 27, 6 Spring St., 212-2190166.

John Connelly Presents: Justin Samson and Haejin Yoon. Through Feb. 13, 625 W. 27th St., 212337-9563.

Dedicated to Women in the Arts Since 1894

February 2-27, 2010

12

21, 143 Madison Ave., 212-253-0451.

Hendershot Gallery: “Trying Them On.” Through

The Pen & Brush, Inc.

www.lyndacaspe.com

“ City and Country Paintings and Drawings”

Heist Gallery: “Quick While Still.” Through Feb.

Fales Library and Special Collections Elmer Holmes Library: “You Make Me Feel [Mighty Real]: The

All Art.

Join our International Community in Supporting Diversity and Equal Opportunities for Women in the Visual, Literary, and Performing Arts

All Women.

Call To Artists: Transitions, a virtual event open to all art forms curated by Bina Sarkar Ellias, of International Gallerie Magazine

Join Us!

Please visit our website for details on upcoming event and Member Benefits

www.penandbrush.org | 16 East 10th Street, NYC | (212) 475-3669

Through Feb. 27, 83 Vandam St., 212-352-9700.

Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery: Ian Pedigo.

Through Feb. 14, 438 Union Ave., Brooklyn, 718-383-7309.

Klompching Gallery: Doug Keyes. Through Feb. 26, 111 Front St., Suite 206, Brooklyn, 212-7962070.

Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.: Roy Dowell: “Collages.”

Through Feb. 13, 514 W. 25th St., 212-941-0012.

Leo Koenig, Inc.: Les Rogers: “Last House.” Through Feb. 20, 545 W. 23rd St., 212-334-9255.

Lesley Heller Workspace: “The Wells Street Gallery Revisited: Then and Now.” Through Feb. 28, 54 Orchard St., 212-410-6120.

Lesley Heller Workspace: Catherine Howe.

Through Feb. 28, 54 Orchard St., 212-410-6120.

Like the Spice: Bennett Morris: “Climate Untamed.”

Through Feb. 14, 224 Roebling St., Brooklyn, 718-388-5388.

Lisa Cooley: Josh Faught: “While the Light Lasts.”

Through Feb. 14, 34 Orchard St., 347-351-8075.

LMAKprojects: Federico Solmi: “From Uterus to Grave with No Happy Ending.” Through Feb. 14, 139 Eldridge St., 212-255-9707.

Lombard-Freid Projects: Dan Perjovschi: “Postcards from the World.” Through Feb. 20, 531 W. 26th St., 212-967-8040.

Marianne Boesky Gallery: “Stripped, Tied and Raw.” Through Feb. 13, 509 W. 24th St., 212680-9889.

Marvelli Gallery: Skyler Brickley: “Wall-to-Wall.”

Through Feb. 13, 526 W. 26th St., 2nd Fl., 212627-3363.

Mike Weiss Gallery: Stefanie Gutheil: “Kopftheater.”

Through Feb. 20, 520 W. 24th St., 212-6916899.

Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Gallery: Thomas Roma: “Pictures for Books.” Through Mar. 27, 1190 Amsterdam Ave., 212-854-7288.

Mitchell-Innes & Nash: Jack Tworkov: “True and False.” Through Feb. 20, 534 W. 26th St., 212744-7400.

Miyako Yoshinaga Art Prospects: Sarah Kueng and Lovis Caputo: “Five Star Cardboard.” 547 W. 27th St., 2nd Fl., 212-268-7132.

New York Academy of Art: “private(dis)play.”

Through Feb. 28, 111 Franklin St., 212-9660300.

Nicelle Beauchene: Afruz Amighi: “Cages.” Through Feb. 28, 21 Orchard St., 212-375-8043.

Observatory: “Vision Quest: A Group Show of Neo-Shamanic Art.” Through Feb. 21, 543 Union St., Brooklyn, www.observatoryroom.org.

On Stellar Rays: “Alpha &.” Through Feb. 21, 133 Orchard St., 212-598-3012.

Pablo’s Birthday: Carla Gannis: “What Not On My Mind.” Through Feb. 27, 528 Canal St.,

212-462-2411.

Parker’s Box: “Getaway.” Through Feb. 14, 193

Grand St., Brooklyn, 718-388-2882.

Participant Inc.: Robin Graubard, “The Hold Up.”

Through Feb. 14, 253 E. Houston St., 212-2544334.

Peter Blum: David Reed: “Works on Paper.”

Through Mar. 6, 99 Wooster St., 212-343-0441.

Phoenix Gallery: Hee Hyoun Chung: “Through Music All Around.” Through Jan. 30, 210 11th Ave., Suite 902, 212-226-8711.

Postmasters Gallery: “Omer Fast.” Through Feb. 13, 459 W. 19th St., 212-727-3323.

Priska C. Juschka Fine Art: Ryan Schneider: “Send Me Through.” Through Feb. 20, 547 W. 27th St., 2nd Fl., 212-244-4320.

Raandesk Gallery of Art: “Behind the Curtain.”

Through Mar. 12, 16 W. 23rd St., 4th Fl., 212696-7432.

Rachel Uffner Gallery: Sam Moyer. Through Feb. 14, 47 Orchard St., 212-274-0064.

Recess: Bruce High Quality Foundation. Through Mar. 20, 41 Grand St., 646-836-3765.

Robert Mann Gallery: Michael Kenna: “Venezia.”

Through Mar. 13, 210 11th Ave., 212-989-7600.

Ronald Feldman Fine Arts: Simone Jones, Brian Knep, Max Dean and others: “One Part Human.” Through Feb. 13, 31 Mercer St., 212-2263232.

Rose Burlingham / Living Room Gallery: Sinead Ni Mhaonaigh. Through Feb. 13, 15 Park Row, Suite 16E, 646-229-0998.

Scaramouche: Michael Dean: “Tolerance.” Through Mar. 7, 53 Stanton St., 212-228-2229.

Sloan Fine Art: Nathan Skiles & Heather Sherman.

Through Feb. 20, 128 Rivington St., 212-4771140.

Spattered Columns: MICA/New York Alumni Exhibition. Through Feb. 16, 491 Broadway, Suite 500, 646-546-5334.

Stephan Stoyanov Gallery: Cliff Evans: “Citizen.”

Through Feb. 21, 29 Orchard St., 212-343-4240.

Sue Scott Gallery: Elisabeth Subrin: “Her Compulsion to Repeat.” Through Feb. 26, 1 Rivington St., 212-358-8767.

Sylvia Wald and Po Kim Art Gallery: Faces and Facts: “Contemporary Korean Art in New York (Into the Life).” Through Feb. 19, 417 Lafayette St., 4th Fl., 212-598-1155.

Taller Boricua: Keith O. Anderson, Melissa A. Calderon, William Coronado & Chanika Svetvilas. Through Mar. 6, 1680 Lexington Ave., 212-831-4333.

Talwar Gallery: Ranjani Shettar. Through Jan. 30, 108 E. 16th St., 212-673-3096.

The Harlem School of the Arts’ Gathering Space: “Ascension: The Journey of John Coltrane.” Through Mar. 2, 645 St. Nicholas Ave., 212-926-4100.

Erma Martin Yost Erma Martin Yost presents hand-felted stitched constructions capturing the world of birds in pictorial and poetic metaphors.

Pop Girl, 2009, acrylic on white cedar shims with wire brads, 44” x 19”

Kate Werble Gallery: Gareth Long: “Section Man.”

Rick Klauber New PaiNtiNgs: acRylic ON white cedaR shims 28 January - 27 February 2010 Reception for the artist:

thursday, 28 January, 6-8 P.m.

Howard Scott Gallery

529 West 20th Street | Tues-Sat 10:30-6 646 486 7004 | howardscottgallery.com

Josie Merck Weeds, Rocks, and Rails February 2nd – 27th

Felted Flightscapes February 2-27, 2010

530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl. (betw 10 & 11th Aves.) 212-367-7063 www.nohogallery.com Gallery Hours Tuesday-Saturday, 11-6

530 West 25 Street New York, NY 10001 tel: 646.486.4730 info@bluemountaingallery.com www.bluemountain gallery gallery hours 11-6 Tues-Sat

January 26, 2010 | City Arts

13

ArtsAGENDA The Invisible Dog: “The Ant.” Through Mar. 31, 51

Bergen St., Brooklyn, 646-270-2550.

The Lay-Up: “Liminal Space.” Through Feb. 18, 84 S. 6th St., Brooklyn, 917-797-1239.

Thierry Goldberg Projects: “Blood of a Poet.”

Through Feb. 14, 5 Rivington St., 212-967-2260.

Thomas Erben Gallery: New Art from Pakistan.

Through Feb. 20, 526 W. 26th St., 4th Fl., 212645-8701.

Travel Valley: “Temporary Travel Agency.”

Through Feb. 12, 357 Graham Ave., Brooklyn, 713-560-2899.

Tyler Rollins Fine Art: Jimmy Ong: “Sitayana.”

Through Feb. 27, 529 W. 20th St., 212-2299100.

Von Lintel Gallery: David Maisel: “Library of Dust.” Through Feb. 27, 520 W. 23rd St., 212242-0599.

Winkleman Gallery: Ulrich Gebert: “This Much Is Certain.” Through Feb. 13, 621 W. 27th St., 212-643-3152.

Zurcher Studio: Esther Tielemans and Eun Jin Kim. Through Feb. 14, 33 Bleecker St., 212-777-0790.

Auctions Christies: Old Master & 19th-Century Paintings,

Drawings, & Watercolors, Jan. 27, 10 a.m., 20 Rockefeller Plz., 212-636-2000.

Doyle New York: Important English and Continental Furniture and Decorations, Jan. 27, 10 a.m.; Fine Jewelry, Feb. 9, 10 a.m. 175 E. 87th St., 212-427-2730.

RoGallery.com: Fine art buyers and sellers in online live art auctions. 800-888-1063, www.rogallery. com.

Swann Auction Galleries: Vintage Posters, Feb. 4, 1:30, 104 E. 25th St., 212-254-4710.

Art Events Art on Screen: MUSE Film and Television’s fourth

annual New York presentation of selections from the 27th annual Montreal International Festival of Films on Art. Events are held at the New York Public Library Mid-Manhattan branch each Sunday in February, at The Morgan Library and Museum Feb. 17, 19 and 20, and at The Center for Architecture Feb. 26 & 27. For more information, visit www.musefilm.org/events.

Museums American Museum of Natural History: “Traveling

the Silk Road: Ancient Pathway to the Modern World.” Ends August 2010. The Butterfly Conservatory. Ends May 2010, Central Park West at West 79th Street, 212-769-5100.

Asia Society and Museum: “Devotion in South India:

Chola Bronzes.” Ends Feb. 7. “Yoshihiro Suda: In Focus.” Ends Feb. 7, 725 Park Ave., 212-2886400.

Brooklyn Museum: “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present.”

Ends Jan. 31. “Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanity Fair of 1864.” Opens Jan. 29, 200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, 718-638-5000.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum: “Design USA: Contemporary Innovation.” Through April 4. “Quicktake: Rodarte.” Opens Feb. 11, 2 E. 91st St., 212-849-8400.

The Drawing Center: Iannis Xenakis: “Composer, Architect, Visionary.” Ends Apr. 8, 35 Wooster St., 212-219-2166.

Jewish Museum: “Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention.” Ends March 2010, 1109 5th Ave., 212-423-3200.

The Kitchen: Amy Granat: “The Sheltering Sky.” Opens Jan. 29, 512 W. 19th St., 212-255-5793.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: “North Italian Drawings, 1410-1550: Selections from the Robert Lehman Collection and the Department of Drawings and Prints.” Ends Jan. 31. “Velásquez Rediscovered.” Ends Feb. 7. “Playing with Pictures: The Art of Victorian Photocollage.” Opens Feb. 2, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710.

The Morgan Library & Museum: “Rome After Raphael.” Opens Jan. 22. “A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy.” Ends Mar. 14, 225 Madison Ave., 212-685-0008.

El Museo del Barrio: “Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis.” Ends Feb. 28, 1230 5th Ave., 212-831-7272.

Museum of American Finance: “Women of Wall Street.” Ends March 2010, 48 Wall St., 212-9084110.

Museum of Arts and Design: “Slash: Paper Under the Knife.” Ends Apr. 4, 2 Columbus Cir., 212-2997777.

Museum of Jewish Heritage: “Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges.” Ends Feb. 21, 36 Battery Pl., 646437-4200.

Museum of Modern Art: “Gabriel Orozco.” Ends Mar. 1. “Tim Burton.” Ends Apr. 26, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400.

National Museum of the American Indian: “Identity

by Design: Tradition, Change and Celebration in Native Women’s Dresses.” Ends Feb. 7, 1 Bowling Green, 212-514-3700.

New Museum: “Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty.”

Ends Feb. 7. “Nikhil Chopra: Yog Raj Chitrakar: Memory Drawing IX.” Ends Feb. 14, 235 Bowery, 212-219-1222.

New-York Historical Society: “Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School at

the New-York Historical Society.” Ends Mar. 25. “Lincoln and New York.” Ends Mar. 25, 170 Central Park West, 212-873-3400.

New York Public Library: “Candide at 250: Scandal and Success.” Ends April 2010. “Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-2009.” Ends June 26, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, West 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, 917-275-6975.

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: “Revolutionary Voices: Performing Arts in Central & Eastern Europe in the 1980s.” Ends Mar. 20, 40 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-870-1630.

Noguchi Museum: “Noguchi ReINstalled.” Ends Oct. 24, 33rd Road at Vernon Boulevard, Queens, 718-721-2308.

Rubin Museum of Art: “The Red Book of C.G. Jung.”

Ends Feb. 15, 150 W. 17th St., 212-620-5000.

Skyscraper Museum: “China Prophecy: Shanghai.”

Ends March 2010, 39 Battery Pl., 212-968-1961.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: “Anish Kapoor: Memory.” Ends Mar. 28. “Tino Sehgal.” Opens Jan. 29, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500.

Spazio522: Bonnie Edelman: “Sermo Per Equus.”

Ends Feb. 15, 526 W. 26th St., Suite 522, 212929-1981.

Studio Museum of Harlem: “Wardell Milan: Drawings of Harlem.” Ends Mar. 14. “30 Seconds Off an Inch.” Ends Mar. 14, 144 W. 125th St., 212-864-4500.

Music & Opera The Allen Room: Hal Willner’s I Gotta Right to Sing

the Blues? Music and Readings from A Fine Romance: Jewish Songwriters, American Songs with Rufus Wainwright, Bill Frisell and Van Dyke Parks. Jan. 27. Suzanne Vega, Jan. 28. St. Vincent. Jan. 29. Michael Friedman: Adventures in Reality featuring de”Adre Aziza, Michael Esper, Caitlin Miller, Sherie Rene Scott and Benjamin Walker. Jan. 30, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at West 60th Street, 212-258-9958.

Alice Tully Hall: Beethoven Cycles: Cello Sonatas featuring David Finckel, cello and Wu Han, piano. Jan. 31, 1941 Broadway, 212-671-4050.

Avery Fisher Hall: American Symphony Orchestra directed by Leon Botstein. Jan. 29. Voz Latina highlights the music of Salsa & Merengue featuring performances by India, Millie Quezada and Tito Rojas. Jan. 30, 10 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-875-5030.

Carnegie Hall: Yo-Yo Ma, cello, and Emanuel Ax, piano, celebrating the music of Chopin and Schumann. Jan. 29. Pianist Radu Lupu performs works by Beethoven and Schubert. Feb. 2, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800.

Manhattan School of Music: Daniel Grabois directs Tactus, concertos performed by the Contempo-

rary Performance Concerto Competition winners.

Feb. 9, John C. Borden Auditorium, 120 Claremont Ave., 917-493-4429.

Metropolitan Opera: Turandot: A tragic tale of love, loss and loyalty unfolds in Giacomo Puccini’s opera staring Maria Guleghina. Jan. 28. 8, $20+. Ariadne auf Naxos: Nina Stemme makes a rare appearance in Richard Strauss’s operatic juxtaposition between groundbreaking modernity and classical elegance. Opens Feb. 4, West 62nd Street between Columbus & Amsterdam Avenues, 212-362-6000.

Peter Jay Sharp Theatre: Falstaff: Verdi pays tribute to one of Shakespeare’s most famous fool in this comedic opera. Jan. 31. Leon Botstein and the American Symphony Orchestra perform Beethoven’s Symphony No. 3 as part of the Classics Declassified: Beethoven Symphony series.

Feb. 7, Peter Jay Sharp Theater, 2537 Broadway, 212-864-5400.

Town Hall: The Met Mastersingers presents Renée Fleming at Town Hall. Feb. 3, 123 W. 43rd St., 212-840-2824.

Jazz Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola: Wess “Warmdaddy” Ander-

son Quartet with Marc Cary, Neal Caine and Jeff “Tain” Watts. Feb. 2–7, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at West 60th Street, 212-258-9595.

Frederick P. Rose Hall: Jazz Jam: Jazz and Art features the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis performing music inspired by 20th-century visual artists. Feb. 4–6, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Broadway at West 60th Street, 212-258-9595.

Jazz Gallery: Claudia Acuna Quartet. Jan. 29–30.

Ben van Gelder Trio. Feb. 4. Fred Hersch & Ralph Alessi Duo. Feb. 5. Marcus Strickland Ballad Quartet. Feb. 6, 290 Hudson St., 212242-1063.

Jazz Standard: Somi. Jan. 26. Jeremy Pelt Quintet.

Jan. 28–31. Afinidad. Feb. 2-3. Emilio Solla & The Tango Jazz Conspiracy. Feb. 9, 116 E. 27th St., 212-576-2232.

Symphony Space: Acclaimed pianist and composer Adegoke Steve Colson treats an audience to a night of jazz with Reggie Workman, bass, Andrew Cyrille, percussion, and Iqua Colson, vocals. Feb. 6, 2537 Broadway, 212-864-5400.

To submit a gallery listing, please visit www.artcat.com/submission. For any other type of submission, please email all relevant information to cityarts@manhattanmedia.com at least three weeks prior to the event. Listings run on a space-available basis and cannot be guaranteed to appear.

MINIATURES

Nohra Barros, Roisin Bateman, Kathy Buist, Simon Gaon, Ann Marie Heal, Elsie Taliaferro Hill, Younghee Choi Martin, Robert Pillsbury, N.H. Stubbing, Susan Sugar, Lewis Zacks

Robert Pillsbury “Danube Reflection #2,” 2008, graphite on paper, 2 x 5 3⁄₈ inches

NABI GALLERY 137 W 25, NYC 10001 212-929-6063 WWW.NABIGALLERY.COM

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City Arts | www.cityarts.info

PainttheTOWN

By Amanda Gordon

hitting the high notes Angela Lansbury and Zoe Caldwell had just planted big kisses on each other at a reception in the home of Robert Sirota, the president of Manhattan School of Music. It seemed as good a moment as any to ask them for their advice to the students.

“Begin. Just point yourself in the direction you want to go,” Lansbury offered.

“Begin,” mused Caldwell in her deep, mischievous voice. “It’s very good advice for practically anything. Peace negotiations, for instance.”

The evening had started with a performance of “Beautiful Girls,” a Stephen Sondheim revue of songs for women, featuring Broadway stars Caldwell, Jenn Colella, Marin Mazzie and Donna McKechnie, as well as Manhattan School of Music student Margaret Peterson. The show, directed by Lonny Price, begins with “girl meets boy” and takes it from there. (For instance, to quote a line Caldwell delivered: “From girl meets boy to girl having doubts about his ability to love at all.”)

The school’s Chamber Sinfonia was on stage, and the finale brought out the school’s chorus. And then the stars and patrons gathered at the president’s home. “We like to call it the Sharp flat,” Sirota said, noting that the Peter Jay Sharp Foundation helped build it (and the student dorm underneath).

Robert Sirota The entire experience was available for $1,000 a ticket to help raise money to further develop the musical theater program at Manhattan School of Music. Musical director Paul Gemignani shared one idea. “We want to bring composers here with the kids and let them develop a first act,” he said. “Until you sit and do it you don’t know how to do it.”

Eddie Jimenez, a trumpet player in the Chamber Sinfonia, said working with Gemignani on “Beautiful Girls” was very helpful. “What I took from him is that in today’s economy you have to be able to do everything: Latin trumpet, jazz trumpet, whatever comes your way.”

(Clockwise, from top left: Zoe Caldwell and Angela Lansbury; student chorus members Jose Cuartas, Gloria Gonzalez and Christopher Lilley; Lonny Price and Donna McKechnie; Chloe May with master’s students Margaret Peterson and Shaun Trubiano; Jenn Colella.

Know Your ABTs The old man—or as he calls himself, the “good old dancer”—taught his students well. On a recent night at the Guggenheim Museum, Frederic Franklin, 95, watched from the sidelines as dancers from American Ballet Theater’s ABT II and its school performed works he taught them—ones that he had performed himself, some 50 years ago. The students beamed in “The Blue Bird Pas de Deux” from The Sleeping Beauty and excerpts from Giselle and Raymonda.

Said Franklin: “They are so beautifully young.

Generally they don’t do much character work, and they loved it.” The students agreed.

“It’s incredible to be working with a legend,” said Meaghan Hinkis.

“He knows what he wants, but he’s also very sweet.” A former student, Virginia Johnson, now the artistic director of Dance Theatre of Harlem, summed up Franklin’s gift: “When he gets up in front of you, he becomes the role.”

All who were gathered at the Works & Process event saw Franklin’s big smile and (Clockwise, from top) Dancers Colby Parsons, Shu Kinouchi, Calvin Royal III, felt his positive take on life.

Alberto Velázquez, Irlan Silva and Meaghan Hinkis; Dance Theater of Harlem “I just want them to be able Artistic Director Virginia Johnson and dancer and teacher Frederic Franklin; to enjoy it and weather the dancers Brittany DeGrofft, Katie Boren and Skylar Brandt. storms,” he said.

The event in the Works & Process series—part of its 25th anniversary season—drew New York City Ballet dancer Tom Gold, NYCB alums Heather Watts and Damian Woetzel, as well as the chairman of New York City Opera, Susan Baker, and its general manager, George Steel—both good friends of Works & Process founder Mary Sharp Cronson.

Amy Fine Collins

seeing stars Gotham Chamber Opera’s production of Joseph Haydn’s “Il Mondo Della Luna” made the most of its setting at the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History.

Dancers wielded glow-in-the-dark hula-hoops. Costume designer Anka Lupes outfitted the cast The director Diane Paulus with with Barnes & Noble book lights her sister-in-law Laura Paulus. as ornament and spot lighting.

And there were the stars and the moon and other trippy stuff up above. “I am particularly impressed with the extent to which the staging tapped into our entire cosmic portfolio,” said the director of the Planetarium, Neil deGrasse Tyson, at the reception following the opening night performance (indeed, all the dome projections came from the museum’s collection). As for the audience, well, it felt good to go to the moon.

“I’m feeling lunatic,” said one guest after the show.

Spotted: Adam Lindemann, Michael Mailer and Sasha Lazard, and Blair and Cheryl Effron, to name but a The show’s associate director Andrew Eggert, costume designer Anka Lupes few of the stars in New York’s firmament. and video and production designer Philip Bussmann.

For more party coverage, visit www.cityarts.info.

To contact the author or purchase photos, email Amanda.Gordon@rocketmail.com; bit.ly/agphotos January 26, 2010 | City Arts

15

presents

Steve J. Sherman

James Levine

CHICAGO SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

Monday, February 1 at 8 PM

Saturday, January 30 at 8 PM

James Levine, Music Director and Conductor Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piano Steven Ansell, Viola

Pierre Boulez, Conductor Emeritus Mathieu Dufour, Flute Michelle DeYoung, Mezzo-Soprano Falk Struckmann, Bass-Baritone

Steve J. Sherman

RAVEL Le Tombeau de Couperin MARC-ANDRÉ DALBAVIE Flute Concerto BARTÓK Bluebeard’s Castle Pre-concert talk at 7 PM: Ara Guzelimian, Provost and Dean, The Juilliard School.

Tickets start at $22.

Pierre Boulez

Sunday, January 31 at 8 PM Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Piano Tamara Stefanovich, Piano PIERRE BOULEZ Livre pour cordes BARTÓK Concerto for Two Pianos, Percussion, and Orchestra STRAVINSKY The Firebird (complete) Tickets start at $22.

BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA

ELLIOTT CARTER Dialogues for Piano and Orchestra BERLIOZ Harold in Italy RAVEL Piano Concerto for the Left Hand; Daphnis et Chloé Suite No. 2 Sponsored by KPMG LLP

Tickets start at $24.50.

Tuesday, February 2 at 8 PM

RADU LUPU, Piano JANÁČEK In the Mists BEETHOVEN Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57, “Appassionata” SCHUBERT Sonata in B-flat Major, D. 960 Tickets start at $19.50.

Buy at carnegiehall.org or 212-247-7800.

Mary Robert / Decca

Programs and artists subject to change. © 2010 CHC.

Radu Lupu

Proud Season Sponsor