cityArts May 31, 2012

EYE ON AUCTIONS

By Caroline Birenbaum

Edited by Armond White

New York’s Review of Culture • CityArtsNYC.com

The New York School’s Preschool

Bonhams heads to Greenwich, Conn., June 3 for Concours d’Elegance, a sale of Automobilia, including printed matter and mascots, followed by Collectors’ Motorcars dating from the first to the ninth decade of the 20th century.

In New York, their June 12 auction of 20thCentury Decorative Arts includes a wealth of glass, from splendid Tiffany lamps to vessels by Chihuly.

Bonhams, June 3 at 9:30 a.m. & 12:30 p.m.

Previews June 2. June 12 at 10 a.m. Previews June 9-11. www.bonhams.com.

When america meT modernism

By John Goodrich

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f the New York School marked the ascendancy of some uniquely American traits—a physical frankness, a zeal for open spaces and untamed possibilities, a practicality of expression—what, then, characterized the preceding decades of American art? The 40 paintings, sculptures, photographs and works on paper in Gerald Peters Gallery’s Defining Modern provide some intriguing clues.

Dating mostly to the first four decades of the 20th century, they reflect a broad mix of cutting-edge European trends and home-brewed realism.

A number of works show a keen enthusiasm for the French School. Max Weber’s cubist figure painting from 1912 suggests a lyrical, gentler version of Picasso, while the open, broad contours of his two watercolor landscapes (1911 and ca. 1912) recall Cézanne. Gaston Lachaise’s bronze portrait of Alfred Stieglitz from 1928 shows a ragged naturalism, but two sculptures of nudes (1919 and 1924) by the Paris-trained sculptor ebb and swell with expressionistic energy.

Sounding the opening notes of abstract expressionism, Arshile Gorky’s monochromatic painting from 1945 plumbs Picasso’s urgent side, catching fragments of a horse and figures with whiplash lines.

Wary of modernism, other artists devote themselves to faithful recordings of the American heartland. Regionalist painter Grant Wood imparts a rich, moody light to rolling hills in a charcoal and pastel drawing from 1934. Though urban in

There’s much to engage the discerning eye at upcoming auction previews.

Swann’s sale of Maps, Atlases, Natural History and Historical Prints June 7 features desirable American maps, including the first printed sea chart of New England and the New Netherlands, Florence, 1647, and a miniature ivory globe that opens to a sundial.

Highlights of American Art on the morning of June 14 include an oil painting of Provincetown by Blanche Lazell, best known for white-line woodcuts, and “Carome,” an abstract oil painting by Mavis Pusey. The afternoon session of Contemporary Art offers works on paper by well-known American and international artists, plus surprises such as two recent paintings by Harland Miller.

Swann, June 7, 1:30 p.m. Previews June 2, June 4-6. June 14, 10:30 a.m. & 1:30 p.m.

Previews June 9, June 11-13. www.swanngalleries.com.

Christie’s sale of 20th-Century Decorative Art on June 14 opens with seven magnificent Tiffany lamps that adorned the San Francisco bars operated by Norman Jay Hobday, aka Henry Africa. A large fossil marble table by Isamu Noguchi, commissioned in 1948 for a Chappaqua home, is the star item among a strong selection of furniture, sculpture and jewelry.

Christie’s, June 14 at 10 a.m. Previews June 9-13. www.christies.com.

Preston Dickinson, “The Absinthe Drinker,” ca. 1921. Watercolor and graphite on paper, 10.5 x 11.5 in.

temperament, Reginald Marsh’s slightly overcharged rendering of a striptease from 1938 feels closer to American traditions of caricature than to contemporary European painting trends; his large fresco of a steam engine (1934) captures pistons, wheels and boiler with meticulous precision.

Among several photographs, two by Stieglitz of nude torsos (dated 1918 and 1918-19) possess a straightforward sensuality transcending time and place; they could have been produced yesterday. One of the exhibition’s surprises is the work produced by his model for these photographs, Georgia O’Keeffe, whose tiny monotype of a woman painting (ca. 190708) stands out for its exquisitely colorful atmosphere. Dated ca. 1925, a small, early painting by Thomas Hart Benton startles,

too, for its vitality of color, almost fauvist in intensity and clarity.

Works by Marin, Hartley, Archipenko and Demuth round out this elegant show. But the biggest revelation may be Marguerite Zorach’s sparkling watercolor from 1913.

In motif and style, it somewhat resembles Matisse’s iconic “Joy of Life,” painted just a few years before. Zorach, however, suffuses her arcadian scene with an original and slightly mystical air. Accompanied by delicate, stylized butterflies and a lone dragonfly, her figures lounge through a deftly layered space, as airy and sensuously flat as a Persian miniature.

Defining Modern Through June 8, Gerald Peters Gallery, 24 E. 78th St., 212-628-9760, gpgallery.com.

Phillips de Pury showcases furniture, lighting and pottery dating from the 1930s to the present in a Design sale on June 15 that features a glamorous bedroom suite of amboyna veneer and other materials by Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann, circa 1925, and a bronze “London Papardelle” chair by Ron Arad, circa 1992.

Phillips de Pury, June 15 at 11 a.m. Previews June 6-14. www.phillipsdepury.com.

Out of Town In addition to works by French, American and Italian designers such as Perriand, Prouvé, Nakashima and Ponti, Wright’s June 7 auction of Important Design includes a section of Brazilian designs, concluding with an early piece of green architecture, the Demountable House, José Zanine Caldas’s circa 1980 pre-fab structure built of reclaimed and salvaged ipe wood. The June 9 sale consists of the gorgeous Frank Toskan Collection of Important Italian Glass.

Wright, Chicago, June 7 at 1 p.m. Previews May 31-June 6. June 9 at 1 p.m. Previews May 31-June 8. www.wright20.com.

CITYARTS CLASSICAL

At the Crossroads The musical language of the Balkans

By Judy Gelman Myers

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ince the ’90s, horrendous images of war have dominated our perception of the Balkan Peninsula. To lay these images to rest, two European foundations engaged the universal healing power of music in “The Balkans—Crossroads of Civilizations,” an extravaganza of suites, sonatas and songs curated to underscore the cultural similarities throughout the Balkan nations. Her Royal Highness the princess of Bulgaria, as well as U.N. ambassadors and consuls general from Albania, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Macedonia, Greece, Cyprus and Turkey attended the event at Carnegie Hall on May 21.

Though spoken languages abound on the peninsula, the Balkan nations share a common musical language, characterized

by Oriental sonorities, irregular rhythms like 7/8 or 5/16 and the rich harmonies brought to America by Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. At the same time, similari-

ties are also found in the coexistence of various musical trends, so that Balkan classical music halls comfortably offer atonal violin suites side by side with folk tunes.

In that spirit, “Crossroads of Civilizations” proffered a broad swath of styles, from the 12-tone Petite Suite No. 2 for Violin and Piano by Greek composer Nikos Skalkottas to an Albanian love song achingly drawn by cellist Rubin Kodheli, himself a composer of film music (Precious). The most emblematic work of the region—and the best received—were two excerpts from Petko Staynov’s Thracian Dances.

In 1933, Staynov co-founded the Union of Bulgarian Composers, whose aim was to encourage composers to recreate traditional music in artistic forms.

With its halting 7/8 rhythm and buoyant melodies, Thracian Dances epitomizes the classical reiteration of folk material.

Expanding on that idea, Turkish composer Fazil Say, a Balkan Satie, composed Sonata, Op. 7, whose unearthly harmonies launch us into space only to be grounded by the thumping of a prepared piano suggesting the timbre of traditional instruments.

Fazil Say

CLASSICAL CITYARTS

Personality Plus Pianists pires and zacharias play concertos in pairs

By Jay Nordlinger

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wo orchestras came to town, each bringing a pianist. The first orchestra to appear was from just down the road, Philadelphia. They played in Carnegie Hall with their chief conductor, Charles Dutoit. And their pianist was Maria João Pires, from Portugal.

She is very well-known from recordings, but not so well-known from personal appearances, at least here in New York. She has a big reputation for Chopin, and, in fact, played Chopin’s Concerto No. 2 in F minor.

In the first movement, she was competent—but also stiff, workmanlike. The music lacked its fluid nature. The closing rondo was much the same—competent, acceptable, but without flair. A wet noodle.

So, how did Pires acquire her big reputation? She gave the answer in the middle movement, Larghetto, which was a thing of beauty: graceful, sensitive and altogether musical. Chopin himself would have smiled.

Three nights later, an orchestra from

Bavaria, the Bamberg Symphony, played in Avery Fisher Hall. They were led by their longtime chief, Jonathan Nott, an Englishman. And their pianist was Christian Zacharias, a German. He is a pianist who is capable of perfection, no less. Other nights, he is commendable all the same.

This was one of those nights. Zacharias played Beethoven’s Concerto No. 4 in G major. Its opening chord is hard to get right: You have to play all the notes together, with the top note, B, having prominence. Zacharias got it exactly right.

In the first movement at large, he had a few slips, but nothing major. His playing tended to be dry. Sometimes a bigger, fatter sound was desirable. But Zacharias obviously understood the logic of the music, and he was no-nonsense without being cold.

He is a conductor too, and, at the keyboard, he could not quite resist the urge to conduct the orchestra. He was champing at the bit to do so. Did this bother the actual conductor, on the podium? Ask Nott.

The second movement, that sublime creation, was matter-of-fact—very much so. Zacharias could have been a little freer.

And the rondo could have been sprightlier and more graceful. But, again, you will want

Maria João Pires

to hear Zacharias on any night, no matter what.

Incidentally, his concert clothes are

those austere black pajamas, the modern uniform. It seems to suit the clinical side of his personality.

CITYARTS Galleries

Happy Lives, Steel Lifes Alice Neel’s rich dimension

ing and close. Their bodies, side by side, flow into each other. Their wrinkles and tousled hair hint at a private world from which they look out at us.

By Kate Prengel “Sherry Speeth” is a totally different character. Nervous and taut, he sits lice Neel’s subjects stare calmly on the edge of his chair, bursting with out from the canvas. They’re in energy. Neel takes the best of him, makthe middle of a conversation ing a little man in a little chair into a or they’re in the middle of just dynamo. Her colors do a lot of the work being themselves—whatever it is, Neel’s here; red accents at his ears and hands late paintings, on exhibit now at the David mark him for action. And, as so often, Zwirner gallery, are richly intimate. Even the still lifes here show signs of an inner life, Neel uses gentle caricature—elongated fingers, sharp knees, oversized glasses—as shorthand to express personality.

“Kevin and Andy,” a fatherand-baby portrait, may be one of the oddest pieces in this show. Kevin and Andy look incredibly awkward and unfinished.

The baby’s teeth are ludicrous, taking over half his face; his father’s arm, holding him, hangs out over empty space, and the chair they sit in is just a few dark lines on the plain white canvas. But then, these two people are unmistakably happy—and isn’t this what having a baby does, makes the whole world look unfinished and new?

Neel’s still lifes also bristle with personality, especially “Roses.” The Alice Neel, “Sherry Speeth,” 1964. Oil on canvas, 42 x 28 inches. flowers’ strong, © The Estate of Alice Neel sinewy stems, their bright simple faces and their tangle and the people, awkward smiles and all, are of green leaves are all full of life. They sit warm and real. in a lopsided vase on a messy, misshapen I spent a long time looking at “Geoftable. Everything in the painting is flat; frey Hendricks and Brian,” a portrait of it’s the awkwardness, the loose lines, that a couple, one of the first pieces in the gives it all a little dimension. The same exhibit. The subjects are on record as could be said for all the rest of Neel’s grumbling about Neel’s manners—apparpaintings. ently she hardly said a word to them over the long posing sessions. Still, they almost Alice Neel: Late Portraits and Still Lifes glow on the canvas. Their skin is blotchy, Through June 23, David Zwirner, 533 W. their bodies are lumpy and their clothes 19th St., 212-727-2070, davidzwirner.com. are frumpy, but they look patient and lov-

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INTERVIEW CITYARTS

The CityArts Interview Bill Bragin

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ill Bragin, “curator/presenter” of Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing and Lincoln Center Out of Doors, clued into music’s transcendental effects early on. As a teen on Long Island, friends gathered after school in his record-strewn bedroom to hear his latest vinyl discoveries. Before one track had even finished, Bragin would be setting up the next—“Now you need to listen to this!”

Not much has changed, really, except the size of his playing field—today it’s Lincoln Center-sized audiences that he directs to the world’s most visionary performing artists, often billed together in audacious mash-ups. His commanding musical instincts have only refined and expanded.

That precocious missionary zeal for opening ears and expanding minds is now enabled by his position and wide-ranging contacts gathered over decades of developing and showcasing talent. It began with his very first day of college, when the young music junkie joined the campus radio station and the alternative concert series.

He interned the following summer for Carla Bley and Michael Mattler’s New Music Distribution Services and, while still getting his B.A. in sociology, worked for George Wein’s Festival Productions.

After graduation, a life-changing gig setting up concerts for Summerstage connected him to knowledgeable niche music advisors such as Afropop’s Sean Barlow. Then, Bragin dived into the opportunity provided by the Public Theater at Joe’s Pub, where his artist development and programming of approximately 3,000 shows turned the club into the crossroads for the scattered affiliates of New York City’s most adventurous music scenes. [Elena Oumano] How do you bring in people who normally wouldn’t go to a Joe’s Pub or a Lincoln Center?

It starts with going to people where they are. In college, I’d find a great article about the artist, turn it into a flyer and paste it on the back of every bathroom stall on campus. In the performing arts we call this artist contextualization, preparing the audience for the show, a grassroots form of audience development and social marketing. Now you just send an article to Facebook or post it on a website to let people know, “Here’s an artist whose name you don’t know but

I think you’ll be curious about—come because it’s free. Either you’ll like it or you won’t, but at least you’ll be taking a chance.”

These cross-cultural, cross-genre bookings are interesting because they can fall flat on their faces or be really illuminating.

I’m fundamentally a generalist with very broad tastes, so the context I work in is not necessarily about being the definitive presenter in any one style. A lot of the focus is on understanding the different niches of different dynamics. It’s about how and where you communicate to them in terms of the protocol and audience expectations—is it an audience that will want to

Bill Bragin

dance or come on stage and give money to the performer or sit and be very quiet? Does this relate to anything happening out in the world politically?

It’s important to me that the audiences have a base of those who are familiar with the artist and recognize his or her cultural importance as well as audience members who are encountering not just the artist but that style of music or dance for the first time. There’s that immediate moment of discovery, when your mind is blown because you’ve never heard or seen something like that and there’s interaction between all of the audience—that process of cultural sharing, a sort of pride and eye-opening.

That’s why I wanted to be at Summerstage and why I came to Lincoln Center—those points of intersection are key.

I look at the work I do both from an aesthetic standpoint and also as communitybuilding and how the work will resonate within society. Festivals like Midsummer Night Swing and Lincoln Center Out of Doors have a huge social mission that works in tandem with the artistic mission.

Schedules for Midsummer Night Swing and Lincoln Center Out of Doors can be found at lincolncenter.org.

CITYARTS FILM

Zombie Mantra Solondz abhors irony in Dark Horse

from the inside, as a confession of ethnic commonplaces and familial discontent that have become his specialty. Abe is as much an archetype as Gopnik in the Coen Brothers’ A Serious Man, only Abe’s unhapBy Armond White piness leads to loathing of self, not of his circumstances. n an answer to contemporary culture’s Abe’s first line, “I don’t dance,” is such manic competition for fame, Todd a self-abnegating thesis statement that if Solondz offers Dark Horse, a film about Dark Horse was indeed produced on stage Abe (Jordan Gelber), a 35-year-old rather than as an independent film, it Jewish man—overweight, living with his would probably receive enormous acclaim, parents, employed in his father’s real estate like Mike Nichols’ current rehash of Death business yet still playing with toys, desperof a Salesman or shows like Other Desert ate to begin his life and enjoy the culture’s Cities and The Lyons. But Solondz’s film empty cheer. does what those plays don’t; he dramaAbe’s not a frontrunner, the sports tizes the spectacle of Abe’s lack of self-consciousness, the moral perspective that contemporary culture drowns out.

Solondz’s subtext elevates Abe’s private condition into a larger social matter. His suffering tribe Jordan Gelber and Donna Murphy in Dark Horse.

(Walken overstresses the father’s misery, while Mia Farrow’s metaphor used by his father (Christopher supplicating mother does not—or maybe Walken). His dim prospects reflect Everyit’s just their bad wigs) is contrasted with man pessimism through a lower middlethe empty cheer of American Idol-type pop class experience that’s more authentic than music that has become our national, anesDeath of a Salesman, yet rarely acknowlthetizing soundtrack. edged. Solondz, almost alone among Gelber’s Abe is an uncanny figure of Jewish-American filmmakers, presents pampered Jewish miserabilism, and Murethnic uniqueness frankly, with unsmiling phy’s Marie is one of those definitive Solondz mockery. His tough, deadpan compassion is more humane than fashionable cynicism. performances: a phantom life ranging from repression to sexual spite (her sullen strut Solondz abhors irony, the sarcastic sympathetically corrects the predatory Mrs. cultural disposition that oppresses all of his Robinson). Their obvious contrast recalls characters. When Abe proposes to suicidal, stage drama rather than cinema, but it’s still withdrawn Miranda (Selma Blair), she asks, piercing.

“You’re not being ironic—like performance Solondz uses an even better, ultra-cineart or something?” matic device when Abe sits alone in a movie Dark Horse continues the narrative experitheater, waiting for a film to begin, and ment of Solondz’s previous film, the almost idly mouths the answers to an on-screen masterly Life During Wartime, where depuzzle: “George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, pressed characters phase in and out of psyBrad Pitt.” This zombie mantra is a daring, chic dream/nightmare states. Abe’s visions brilliant summation, calling out the stars about his father’s sympathetic secretary, of our culture’s contemporary anomie. And Marie (Donna Murphy), suggest a yearning it casually lays waste to Woody Allen’s The so deep and unwittingly compassionate it is Purple Rose of Cairo. almost, Solondz suggests, telepathic.

These episodes play out in a nearly Follow Armond White on Twitter at theatrical flatness, as if Solondz were 3xchair indeed rewriting Death of a Salesman—but

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