JUNE 15-JULY 12, 2011 Volume 3, Issue 11
IN THIS ISSUE: Summer 100: A guide to the not-to-miss cultural events
PLUS: Jay Nordlinger on the embattled City Opera Experience Jacob’s Pillow John Tuturro’s Passione
InthisIssue 7 SUMMER 100 (PART 1) our guide to the outdoor art, music and theater, film and dance that you won’t want to miss this season.
8 DANCE Jacob’s Pillow remains ahead of the dance curve.
12 AT THE GALLERIES reviews: soutine/Bacon at Helly Nahmad Gallery; ZAP: Masters of Psychedelic Art 1965-1974 at Andrew Edlin Gallery; Lloyd Martin at Stephen Haller Gallery; david salle at Mary Boone Gallery; John Chamberlain at The Pace Gallery; Reverie at Zürcher Studio.
15 CLASSICAL JAY nordLinger on the pianist Cyprien Katsaris; plus thoughts on the embattled City opera.
16 FILM A series at Anthology Film Archives shows how the movie musical transformed in the 1970s.
16 DANCE JoeL LoBentHAL defends Lady of the Camellias from gender politics.
18 ARTS AGENDA galleries, Art events, Museums, Classical Music, opera, theater, out of town.
21 WINE the other side of the southern rhone has been showing up in wine stores.
23 PAINT THE TOWN By AMANDA GORDON on tHe Cover: Mark di suvero’s sculpture “rust Angel” (1995), photographed by Jerry L. thompson on governors island.
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ArtsNews David Bromley’s Kaleidoscopic Nudes... The Museum of Arts and Design announces a new jewelry exhibition to open Sept. 20. Picasso to Koons: Artist as Jeweler features wearable works by 135 well-known artists like Anthony Caro, Max Ernst and Yoko Ono… The New Museum announced its second triennial, Generational, covering emerging artists born in the mid-1970s and beyond. A new addition to the triennial is the inclusion of artist residencies—including Wu Tsang, Shaina Anand and Ashok Sukumaran—and special public programming, to support production of new artistic works...
The Parrish Art Museum will hold its 2011 Midsummer Party, honoring its founding partners, July 9. The gala event—featuring a viewing of Dorothea Rochburne’s exhibition In My Mind’s Eye —will be held in the museum’s Southhampton arboretum… The Brooklyn Academy of Music has announced its 2011 Next Wave Festival, which runs from Sept. 18 through Dec. 18. Celebrating BAM’s 150th anniversary, the festival includes 17 separate performances of music, dance and theater, with artists including the Kronos Quartet and Merce Cunningham Dance Company... The
Governors Ball Music Festival has announced the artists whose work will be exhibited during this year’s event, to be held June 18. Highlights include inflatable suits and sculpture from Jimmy Kuehnle, a floating balloon sculpture from Airspace, and interactive sculptures from Joshua Knoblick... Lincoln Center has announced a partial lineup for this year’s White Light Festival, which will run from Oct. 20 through Nov. 19. The London Symphony Orchestra will open the festival—which features music, dance and theater works—with Beethoven’s “Missa Solemnis.”
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The Museum of Modern Art and MoMA P.S. 1 have announced a twoyear, multi-million-dollar partnership with Volkswagen, which will support the museum’s exhibition and educational programs. Volkswagen will also donate two works by Francis Alÿs to MoMA’s permanent collection... MoMA also announces the acquisition of two significant conceptual art collections: The Daled Collection of American and European Conceptual Art, and Conceptual Art from Seth Siegelaub and the Stichting Egress Foundation.... The Metropolitan Museum of Art has announced a change in its recommended admission fees. Beginning July 1, admission will rise from $20 to $25 for adults, from $15 to $17 for seniors, and from $10 to $12 for students. This price increase is the first in five years… City College and its Department of Theatre and Speech announce the launch of a new professional theater company, the New Haarlem Arts Theatre. In residence at Aaron Davis Hall, the company aims to bring bold, culturally and historically representative American theater works to Harlem. Its first production, Blues for Mister Charlie, opens June 23... Dance/ NYC, which provides services to dance professionals, has received a $100,000 Charles E. Culpeper Arts & Culture Grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Among other things, the grant will support the development of a new strategic plan, to be managed by Emma Dunch and Andrea Sholler of Dunch Arts LLC, which helps organizations in transition... The National Endowment for the Arts has announced two grants—for a total gift of $98,000—to the Young People’s Chorus of New York City. A $60,000 grant will go toward the second phase of YPC’s Radio Radiance partnership with American Public Media, and $38,000 will support its Partner Schools program... The Arts & Business Council of New York, a division of Americans for the Arts, which recognizes outstanding work in areas where arts and business meet, held its 46th Annual Encore Awards May 24 at The Riverside Theatre in Harlem. This year’s winners included Chase, Bronx Council on the Arts, Linda L. D’Onofrio of Day Pitney LLP (for her work with Roundabout Theatre Company), Patricia Cruz of Harlem Stages, and New York Live Arts… On May 10, London-based Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery opened its first New York location, RHG NYC, at 262 Mott St. in NoLita, with a solo exhibition by Peter Clark entitled Hot Dog. Currently on view at the gallery is
Alexander McQueen, Ensemble, Plato’s Atlantis, spring/summer 2010. Photograph © Sølve Sundsbø / Art + Commerce.
The exhibition is made possible by Additional support is provided in partnership with MET-0075-McQueen_CityArts_7.341x8.5_Jun15_v3.indd 1
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Timothy Atticus
InBrief
Philip Cramer (left) and Katie Pearl installing How to Build a Forest at The Kitchen.
The Built Environment Manmade nature is nothing new to
Chelsea, what with the second section of the High Line having just opened this month. But now a team of artists is trying to make New Yorkers aware of the absurdity of creating a fabricated environment. From June 17–26, a group of artists will spend eight hours assembling and dismantling a “forest”—using fabric, wire, steel and other miscellaneous objects—at The Kitchen. Part-installation, partperformance, How to Build a Forest is entirely choreographed: PearlDamour, the artistic team made up of Katie Pearl and Lisa D’Amour, along with visual artist Shawn Hall, will build these hypothetical trees and plants to create a trippy landscape. Audience members are invited to walk onto the stage, through the forest and even out onto the nearby High Line as the artists build. “We get sort of tricked into only seeing finished products in our own lives,” Pearl says. “We didn’t want to just show the finished product. We wanted to invite
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people into the evolution of the installation.” The deconstruction of the installation is also an important part of the show. About six hours into the performance, the forest will be completed; a half hour later, the artists will begin to take it down. “It’s a pretty parallel relationship,” Pearl explains. “It takes a mountaintop millions of years to form, and it takes an afternoon to cut the top off for coal mining. It’s just so astonishing how quickly it goes.” In creating and destroying a “forest,” the artists hope to open the audience’s eyes to the incredible effects that humans can have on their environments. They especially want to reach out to urban dwellers, who tend to feel less connected to the earth; a “field guide” will be provided to identify each piece of material in the forest and trace it back to its origin. The project was inspired by Hurricane Katrina, which tore down about 100 trees on D’Amour’s family farm and made her consider the fragility of nature. “These huge, 100-year-old pine trees were all uprooted and snapped and cracked,” D’Amour says. “I was talking about being haunted by
those trees. And Katie said, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could just rebuild them?’” That’s the inherent paradox of the project: The artists are building nature in order to show that nature can’t be built. “Ultimately, that’s what the piece says,” said Pearl. “You can’t control nature.” [Kimberly Lightbody]
Summertime Storytelling
Just because Broadway openings slow to barely a trickle during the summer doesn’t mean there isn’t theater happening all over the rest of the city. As usual, this summer will play host to an endless parade of festivals. But in addition to the usual suspects like the Fringe Fest and Midtown International Theatre Festival, this June will also see Banners & Cranks: A Cantastoria Festival, running from June 19 through 26 at HERE. A revival of the ancient practice of “picture story recitation,” Banners & Cranks celebrates the cantastoria style, in which
performers tell or sing a story in front of a painting or illustration. Curated by artists Dave Buchen and Clare Dolan, Banners & Cranks is in its second year, though this will be its first run in New York. Buchen and Dolan first collaborated on Banners & Cranks last year in Chicago, where Buchen was an artistic associate at Links Hall. “And it was so much fun we decided to do it again,” Dolan says with a laugh. Dolan, a 12-year puppeteer with the Bread and Puppet Company, first became fascinated by the ancient storytelling tradition while working for Bread and Puppet. “In its oldest form, it’s a performance based around a narrative image involving singing that narrative while indicating the image,” Dolan says. “It began as a religious storytelling practice in India, and the practice spread west and become more of a secular practice, like a National Enquirer show about disasters and gory murders. And the street performer would point to the picture and sing about whatever happened.” This fest sounds light on gory murders,
but does encompass everything from puppetry world premieres to an adults-only late show titled Phobia & Fetish, featuring music by the Whiskey Spitters. “In Banners & Cranks, you’ll see all kinds of wild variations on the basic format,” Dolan promises. We can’t wait. [Mark Peikert]
Hidden Sounds
A radio plays while an artist stands, chisel in hand, striking away at the melodious air. Visualizing what a “sound sculptor” might do feels a bit frivolous, but what Bill Fontana has done in his 40-year career is anything but. Influenced by Marcel Duchamp’s ideas, as well as found objects, Fontana believes that, in the right context, the ambient world is continuously producing music. In 1984, he buried speakers playing a live feed of a train station beneath ruins, sounds of life reanimating the past; more recently, he made the River Thames sound as if it ran through the Somerset House. For “Silent Echoes,” his latest piece, he aims to transplant the experience of listening to Japanese temple bells to a gallery at the Rubin Museum. Prayer mats line the floor and votive candles run down the aisles. As the sound starts up, an image of a bell is projected, and the two go on for 30 minutes and then fade, with a new sound and a new bell replacing it. The entire experience lasts three hours (and plays on various dates from June 15 through Aug. 14), with five separate bells. The catch? None of the bells actually rings. “For many years I’ve been interested in how physical materials react to sounds in the air,” Fontana says. “How physical materials have resonate properties that can be excited by the ambient sound conditions.” Using eight super powerful microphones, Fontana recorded the previously inaudible sound of a giant bell not ringing. So although the sound sculpture captures a direct experience, it’s unclear whose: someone with supersonic hearing, a microphone’s? “This is especially interesting in the context of Buddhist culture,” Fontana explains. “Buddhists have an exercise in which they meditate on a ringing bell and try to make it ring forever. But now we know the truth. It never stops.” Tim McHenry, director of programming at the Rubin, was also interested in the piece’s religious implications, since most of the permanent collection focuses on Himalayan art and, beginning July 1, a three-month exhibit opens that’s focused on faith and pilgrimages. “If you go on a pilgrimage the proper way, you don’t take any physical baggage,” McHenry says. “Your emotional baggage is enough. You don’t take your passport or a visa. It’s a new world and similarly so are the bells. When you go inside, you will hear yourself ring.” [John Blahnik]
Neapolitan Sounds The city of Naples has always considered itself a cultural center. Jammed between two volcanic areas, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, the city’s artistic life continues to hold on to its deep roots, with a mixture of homespun naturalism and flights of fancy. John Turturro brings this dichotomy to life in his film Passione, opening at Film Forum June 22. Ostensibly a documentary about the musical history of Naples, it eschews familiar conventions of the form in favor of a prevailing mood that captures the feeling of
the vibrant performers. Turturro does this by not presenting too many interviews, letting the music speak for itself. The film mixes contemporary and traditional sounds, from operatic ballads to rhythm-heavy pop, performed by a wide range of Neapolitan artists. Each song is staged, some locally, some in a studio, to match the performance in tone and style. One of the more raucous sections of the film finds the actor Max Casella (The Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire) performing with Peppe Barra and M’Barka Ben Taleb on a rendition of “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” an unusual choice which Turturro seems to make work in this context. The
film tells us that in Naples, folk songs were used to ward off bad luck, so it’s no surprise this immediately follows “Passione,” performed with stunning clarity by James Senese and his group, which is cut to archival footage of bombs being dropped during World War II. The short bursts of newsreel footage—which appear from time to time throughout—give the audience a respite from the slick barrage of music coming from the screen, as well as an interesting formal technique to realign the musical and the historical. Each performer gets to speak, albeit briefly, about the songs they sing, their background and meanings (but
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InBrief
ART BOOKS Ars Sacra: Christian Art and Architecture of the Western World, by Rolf Tolman (editor), Achim Bednorz (photographer)
A scene from John Tuturro’s Passione, which opens at Film Forum June 22.
not enough). It’s hard to find fault in a film that is having this much blissful fun. Turturro allows himself to be a little goofy, appearing here and there as tour guide for the audience, dancing around the frame and offering bon mots like a television host. During a performance of “Caravan Petrol,” the director and his buddy Casella take part in a comedic sketch that lets them have a dance-off in the desert with a number of attractive women (it comes off as odd as it sounds). These detours don’t take away from the stunning visuals, photographed by Marco Pontecorvo, which move from the hardscrabble streets to the volcanic landscapes. Passione is at its most moving when the camera is able to drift from the music, the sounds still floating in the air, toward the faces of the people in the streets; a vibrant mosaic of tradition, history and life before our eyes. Or as Turturro tells the audience late in the film, “a city painted with sound.” [Craig Hubert]
More Jazz on LES There’s a new sound coming out of the
Lower East Side, specifically on Stanton Street between Clinton and Attorney streets, where former Fat Cat manager Charles Brown has opened his first jazz club. Sure, the area is more associated with juvenile debauchery staged to blaring rock music than musical connoisseurship, but Brown has gone so far as to name his club Moldy Fig, the name for a group of jazz votaries who were such purists they called Duke Ellington decadent. What gives? “Nowadays, I think anyone who doesn’t listen to Top 40 is a moldy fig,” says Brown.
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
“Our culture has moved on to rock and pop, and I’m not saying that’s necessarily bad. But I want to run a place that’s just about jazz and nothing else.” Moldy Fig isn’t devoted to games like Fat Cat, which features ping-pong, pool and foosball tables. Patrons are not encouraged to sit on eclectic furniture and play board games. The couches, tables and chairs it does have are, if not expensive, elegant, and positioned in one direction: towards the stage. “The Lower East Side used to be such a great place for jazz. I’m talking about years and years and years ago,” says Brown. “All those places left. I want to bring back some of their divey feel while at the same time appealing to a more upscale clientele.” The club’s authenticity and opulence play off each other well. Outside a small sign with cheap neon lighting suggests a cramped room with haphazard acoustics, but inside the club is tall and long, its sound quality resounding and excellent. A blackboard advertises $3 Pabst Blue Ribbons, but most beers are pricey hefeweizens and IPAs. And while the skylight is wide and grimy, right next to it a twin fan rotates around a brass fixture with Brancusi-like simplicity, its metallic sheen industrial and ornate. The club’s official opening will be over July 4 weekend, but until then Brown is hosting a series of concerts and welcoming in curious jazz fans on a nightly basis. So far, “business is good but slow,” says Brown. “We’re still figuring out were we belong on the Lower East Side, what our market is. It’s like jazz, we’re improvising.” [John Blahnik]
This 23-pound doorstop could crush your coffee table if you’re not careful—but it’s worth the risk. In fact, you could cancel your plane tickets to Europe: Everything you need to know about Christian art and architecture, “from the very beginning up until today,” seems to be contained in this amazingly thorough and overwhelmingly gorgeous book. Organized into the main periods— beginning with early Christianity, flowing into the Romanesque and Gothic periods and ending with Art Noveu and Modernism—the handy layout allows the viewer to be his or her own tour guide. The large format (49.5 x 36.8 x 13.3 cm) pages contain 1,000 sharp photographs so seemingly real it’s unreal, captured by Bednorz in 100 separate expeditions spanning over 93,000 miles. The useful, museum-quality blurbs on the work describe and emphasize changes in style over time. One of the most astounding (and satisfying) features are the fold-out triptychs, making the reading and viewing a threedimensional experience. Especially intriguing are the earth-toned and primary-colored mosaics that pour over double pages. While the publishers hope it’s “the new standard work all in one: fascinating tome, comprehensive compendium, and substantial textbook,” it may prove cumbersome for most and will take up a lot of space in an individual library. But it’ll be a conversation piece for years to come. Richard Serra Drawing, edited by Gary Garrels, Bernice Rose and Michelle White
Admirers of sculptor Richard Serra must also check out this look at his drawings, which not only inform his sculpture with their depth and attention
to shape, but represent an important phase in the history of modern drawing—that in which drawing was first taken seriously as a medium unto itself. “My drawings deal with weight and edge in relation to context in relation to movement in relation to redefining how you understand a space,” Serra explains in the tome. His use of black paintstick to create thick, opaque swaths, lends a greater dimensionality to the otherwise onedimensional. Conversely, with graphite and charcoal, he creates neat, defined lines. The text, released to coincide with the current exhibit at The Metropolitan Museum, includes interviews with Serra, his own notes about his work and theoretical discussions from curators and art historians. Capital of the World: A Portrait of New York City in the Roaring Twenties, by David Wallace
David Wallace, known for his examinations of Los Angeles during Hollywood’s golden age, now takes on New York in the 1920s, detailing the rise of the Mafia, the dawn of Prohibition, the first gossip journalism, women’s suffrage and the heyday of the Round Table wits, to name a few. A comprehensive look at this decade of beginnings, Capital of the World is organized by profiles of the individuals who define each movement, from Lucky Luciano to Dorothy Parker.
TheSuMMEr100(Part 1)
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very year, around this time, we are assaulted with a barrage of summer options when it comes to free and fun cultural activities, so here’s our guide to some of the best things we think you shouldn’t miss. There are so many that we even had to split it into two parts! Look out next month for the second half of our seasonal picks of what to do.
Midsummer Night Swing Think of it as Swing thing if you must, but don’t forget that this Lincoln Center tradition comes with some of the best tango, cumbia, salsa, samba and um... keyboard renditions of ’80s music out there. Enter by lottery at midsummernightswing.org for free admission to the opening night, or check out the Soul Train tribute June 28. Throughout the festival, food and cocktail offerings (under $10) will match the regions of the music. June 27–July 16, midsummernightswing.org; $90 six-night pass, $160 full season, individual tickets $17. Summer on the Hudson Riverside Park and West Harlem Piers Park are home to the 11th year of New York’s largest free festival, this year offering over 75 blocks of free summer events, including films, live performances, an openair dance party & more. Ends Nov. 11. Visit nycgovparks.org for schedule & information. Mark di Suvero at Governors Island Storm King Art Center presents about a dozen of the artist’s works, all around the island, in the largest outdoor display of di Suvero’s work since the ’70s. The massive, industrial-inspired sculptures are supplemented by an evolving indoor installation with photographs and videos of di Suvero’s work and his artistic process, and visitors can download a special tour app or take a Guide by Cell tour of the exhibition. Ends Sept. 25, Governors Island, stormking.org/ exhibitions/governors-island. Bang On A Can Marathon The free 13-hour marathon with over 150 performers and composers—including performances from Yoko Ono, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Glenn Branca Ensemble, Philip Glass and many others—spans a variety of genres, favoring boundless innovation over stylistic consistency. June 19, 11 a.m.-midnight, World Financial Center, Winter Garden, bangonacan.org. Inuksuit Earlier this year, this piece made a stir when performed indoors at the Park Avenue
Stephanie Berger
Outdoor Music & Art
The Bang on a Can Marathon takes place June 19. Armory. But this performance is the “openair premiere” of John Luther Adams’ (the other composer named John Adams) work for “nine to 99 percussionists.” Presented free in Morningside Park by Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, this is sure to be an unforgettable musical experience. In conjunction, the premiere of Leonard Kamerling’s film Strange and Sacred Noise, a documentary about a performance on the arctic tundra of Adams’ music, takes place the day before (Monday, June 20 at 7 p.m.). June 21, 7 p.m., betw. W. 113th St., Morningside Drive, W. 116th St. and Manhattan Ave., free, www.millertheatre.com. Madison Square Music: Oval Lawn Series Once a week, skip happy hour and head over to the park to hear a variety of nationally-touring bluegrass, folk, jazz and soul acts—perhaps while you wait for your turn in line at Shake Shack. Lionel Loueke Trio, Edmar Castenada Trio and special guest Andrea Tierra perform July 6. Wednesdays through the summer. Check out madisonsquarepark.org/music for more details. Make Music New York Spend the longest day of the year taking in the sights of public spaces throughout the five boroughs, and the sounds of this massive, eclectic 11-hour music-fest. Highlights include sing-it-yourself performances of great choral works, a performance of John Luther Adams’ large-scale percussion work, Inuksuit, and 88 pianos rolled into the street for public use. June 21, 11 a.m.–10 p.m., makemusicny.org. Washington Square Music Festival Tuesdays in July and August, visit New York’s second longest-running free outdoor
classical music series, founded in 1953. This year’s program includes music by Mozart, Schubert, Astor Piazzolla and more, with performances from The Charles Mingus Orchestra, Stanley Drucker, Anton Arensky String Quartet and others. Tuesdays, July 12– Aug. 2, washingtonsquaremusicfestival.org. Target Free Thursdays Lincoln Center presents free music and comedy performances on Thursday evenings all summer. On June 16, check out feminist comedy troupe Guerrilla Girls On Tour. Or, on the 23rd, catch Mighty Third Rail as they fuse hip-hop, poetry, beatboxing and classical instruments. On the 30th, singer/songwriter Julie Gold performs old favorites and music from her new CD. Thursdays, David Rubinstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, Broadway betw. W. 62nd & W. 63rd Sts., lincolncenter.org/atrium; 8:30, free. Summer Soirée The Staten Island Museum honors Staten Island’s African American Social Entrepreneurs and celebrates its new Portraits of Leadership exhibition with a musical reception to benefit the It’s Your Museum initiative. Musical offerings include live jazz with Jeannine Otis and a special guest performance by Broadway’s Vinie Burrows. June 26, Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Gardens, statenislandmuseum.org; 4-7, $75. Pop-Up Pianos As part of Make Music New York, Sing For Hope places 88 pianos—60 uprights and 28 grands, decorated by artists and designers like Isaac Mizrahi and Diane von Furstenberg—at random indoor and outdoor locations throughout the five boroughs, so passers-by can torture tourists with
awkward renditions of “Heart and Soul” or delight listeners with Debussy. June 18–July 2, www.pianos.singforhope.org. Elastic City Artists and designers lead more than 20 conceptual walks around the city, giving participants a new perspective on these urban environments. Examine shadows in Coney Island, form a new relationship with the sun in Downtown Manhattan, timetravel through Tin Pan Alley or make small talk with strangers in Brooklyn. Select dates all summer, elastic-city.com/walks; $20.
Music Events Mostly Mozart Mozart takes the spotlight as always, but Stravinsky, Beethoven, Handel, Hadyn and Schubert get some time to shine as well. This year’s festival features performances from Joshua Bell, Takács Quartet, Emerson String Quartet, Budapest Festival Orchestra, Mark Morris Dance Group and others. Aug. 2-27, Lincoln Center, mostlymozart.org. Peking Opera Festival Qi Shu Fang Peking Opera Company presents Peking Opera classic scenes “The Monkey and the Princess Iron Fan,” “The Young Monk in Love,” “Stealing the Official Seal” and “The King Bids Farewell to His Concubine,” as part of the World Stage Series. June 25, Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, 566 LaGuardia Pl., skirballcenter.nyu.edu; 7:30, $38. Salon Series Joe’s Pub and The Annie O. Music Series CONTINUED on page 9 June 15, 2011 | City Arts
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TheSummer100(Part 1)
Seasonal Support Jacob’s Pillow is often ahead of the city’s dance curve By SuSan ReiteR ant to escape the sweltering city but still have a chance to see A-list and cutting-edge dance performances? Head for the Berkshires, where the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival gets underway June 18, and things continue at an intensive pace right through Aug. 28. The dizzying schedule includes not only performances at the two main theaters, where new troupes take the stage each week, but 200 free events ranging from informative PillowTalks to an array of performances on the Festival’s newly renovated outdoor stage, stunningly situated in a wooded grove. Exhibits, performances by students from the bustling School at Jacob’s Pillow, and much more make this venue in Becket, Mass., a truly festive destination. The location has been a dance mecca since the early 1930s when Ted Shawn, one of the pioneering American modern dance choreographers, bought the rugged property and installed his newly formed Men Dancers there to live, rehearse and renovate the facilities. The earliest Pillow audiences came to observe the group’s open rehearsals, but from 1940 on, the Festival has consistently presented varied dance groups and soloists, representing all styles and traditions. Ella Baff, the executive and artistic director since 1998, has her finger on the pulse of everything from the international scene to the downtown lofts of New York City. Her programming is often ahead of the New York curve—introducing companies and artists who later make a New York debut—and also highly supportive of those whose work she wants to encourage. This season’s programs include names familiar to New York audiences—Trisha Brown,
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Mark Morris, Lar Lubovitch, Jane Comfort, Big Dance Theater, David Dorfman—but also feature an impressive range of troupes from abroad, often not seen before in this country. Speaking by phone from the Berkshires, Baff said that this season “is very international: we have companies from Cuba, Argentina, South Korea, France, Norway, Switzerland, Germany—and that doesn’t even count the artists performing on the outdoor stage.” Baff says she’s particularly thrilled about Carte Blanche from Norway. “The artistic director is Belgian, the company has a French name and they’re performing works by Israeli choreographers,” Baff explains. “One is Sharon Eyal, who has been Batsheva’s in-house choreographer, and I think she’s one of the most talented choreographers working today.” Carte Blanche will perform in the 700-seat Ted Shawn Theater (the Festival’s larger house), June 29–July 2, marking their full company’s U.S. debut. Baff also waxes enthusiastic about LDP (Laboratory Dance Project) from South Korea, appearing July 27–31 in the Shawn Theater. “There’s so much going on in South Korean contemporary dance right now, and I think this group is particularly interesting. The program builds towards this almost ritualistic, very rigorous piece at the end. When I saw it, the audience went wild; it’s very rousing.” Also of note is 3e Étage (Aug. 3–7), a contemporary ensemble of Paris Opera Ballet dancers, founded by Samuel Murez. During downtime from the POB, these adventurous leading company members perform more eclectic fare by Murez and others. And to show that New York’s recent “¡Si!Cuba” Festival didn’t bring us everything that nation has to offer,
Guro Nagelhus Schia of Carte Blanche in Killer Pig. Baff went to Havana recently to watch 30 companies perform in five days, and discovered DanzAbierta. That company makes its U.S. debut at the Pillow, performing Mal Son July 13–17. “The visual elements in the piece are very bold and are very important to the work,” Baff says. “The action on stage makes sense with the landscape that you see. The choreography is very contemporary and different, and has a soulfulness to it.” A day at the Pillow can be many things. Without spending a dime, you can stroll through informative exhibits—this year’s include one of Annie Leibovitz’s dance photos as well as one honoring the 40th anniversary of Trisha Brown’s company, including her own drawings and highlights from past
works—and settle into the intimate Blake’s Barn for a late-afternoon PillowTalk, and enjoy work by an up-and-coming choreographer or a showcase for the students at a 6:30 Inside/Out performance. Or you can fit in a weekend double-header, catching the programs at both the Shawn and the more intimate Doris Duke Theater. The Pillow’s audiences regularly include many New Yorkers, but people come from all over the world. The lure of the verdant Berkshires and the high-caliber dance events make for a distinctive mix. Whether you want to experience the latest works by Jane Comfort and Big Dance Theater before they reach New York, or sample the latest in South Korean and European dance developments, you’ll find it all at The Pillow.
June 14, 2011–January 8, 2012 / 75 arTISTS @ 7 VenueS / www.elmuSeo.org
Janelle Iglesias, bridge and tunnel kids have more fun, 2011 (detail)
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1230 Fifth Avenue at 104th St. New York, NY 10029
CONTINUED from page 7 co-host this varied music and cabaret series, featuring performances from Weimar New York (July 13), Sxip Shirey and Raya Brass Band (Aug. 3), Martha Wainwright (Aug. 22) and Francisca Valenzuela (Sept. 20), as Joe’s Pub undergoes renovations throughout the summer. The Cooper Square Hotel, 25 Cooper Sq., 21st Fl., joespub.com; $15+.
Museum Shows (re)collection at Parsons The New School for Design Newly acquired work and works rarely seen from The New School’s collection are showcased in this exhibition, which traces the history of the institution’s commitment to social change and artistic innovation. June 16–Sept. 17, The Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, 66 5th Ave., newsschool.edu. The Frick In a New Light: Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert presents findings from an unprec-
edented 2010 technical examination by a team of specialists, led by Paintings Conservator Charlotte Hale at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which are presented as an in-depth dossier exhibition, providing insight into Bellini’s methods and motivations. Ends Aug. 28. “Turkish Taste at the Court of Marie-Antoinette” explores the French court’s fascination with all things Turkish and Turk-inspired toward the end of the 18th century. Ends Sept. 11, 1 E. 70th St., frick.org. International Center of Photography Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best traces the career of the artist, known for his iconic photographs of famous faces like Marilyn Monroe, Jackie Kennedy and Che Guevara. Ends Aug. 28. In Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945, formerly classified images commissioned by President Truman to survey the damage caused by the atomic bomb paint haunting images of the devastation. Ends Aug. 28. The photographs and prints in Ruth Gruber, Photojournalist include some of the earliest color images of the Alaskan frontier, and document her work with Jewish refugees in the 1940s. Ends Aug. 28, 1133 6th Ave., icp.org. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Celebrating the life and work of the late designer, the slightly eerie Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty is sure to be mobbed pretty much all summer. The Met advises going in the morning or on a weekday, if you’re lucky enough to have the luxury. Ends Aug. 7. If you need another reason not to touch the artwork, the modernist steel sculptures in Anthony Caro on the Roof will probably burn your skin. Look, but don’t
touch, and enjoy a gorgeous summer day atop the Met. Ends Oct. 30, 1000 5th Ave., metmuseum.org. El Museo del Barrio The museum’s sixth biennial exhibit, The (S) Files 2011, showcases the work of 75 emerging Latino, Caribbean and Latin-American artists in different spaces throughout the city. Examining the interplay between street and mainstream culture, and the boundaries of public and private in urban space, artists address daily life and social and economic issues. Ends Jan. 8, 2012, elmuseo.org. Museum of Arts and Design Otherworldy: Optical Delusions & Small Realities presents small-scale, hand-made
renderings—dioramas, snow globes, installations and more—of artificial environments and “alternative realities,” crafted with extreme attention to detail in this exhibition centered on the artists’ engagement with the physical process of art-making. Ends Sept. 18, 2 Columbus Cir., madmuseum.org.
MAY 25 – JuNe 25, 2011 Gallery 1: Grace Knowlton Gallery 2: Four Sculptors 1968-80, curated by Ann Landi Lynda Benglis, Rosemarie Castoro, Ursula Von Rydingsvard, Jackie Winsor 54 Orchard Street NY, NY 10002 212 410 6120 lesleyheller.com gallery hours: wed-sat 11am-6pm, Sun 12-6pm
Grace Knowlton, Multiple Hands 33-34-36, 2011 Archival print on hanhnemuhle photo rag paper, 36 x 22 inches
On view
May 18–July 31, 2011
Whitney Museum of American Art In Xavier Cha’s Body Drama, an actor moves about while suited up with a bodymounted camera. In between live performances, footage from the camera is projected on the wall, so you can experience the disorienting piece in two ways. Not for seasick types. Opens June 30, 945 Madison Ave., whitney.org. Jewish Museum In Israeli artist Maya Zack’s large-scale installation Living Room—a re-creation of a 1930s Jewish family’s apartment in Berlin— visitors wear 3D glasses to explore the environment, as they hear the voice of Manfred Nomberg—a German Jew who fled Berlin in 1938—share stories and memories of the lives lived in these rooms. July 31–Oct. 23, 1109 5th Ave., thejewishmuseum.org. Hell’s Kitchen Artist Studio Tour For three nights this June, Hell’s Kitchen-based artists and performers—running the gamut of styles and mediums— open their homes, studios and galleries to the public for self-guided tours, parties and after-parties in what’s described as an Art Bacchanalia. This is not your grandmother’s art gallery tour; prepare for a real bonding experience. June 24–26, artistsinthekitchen. org; noon-6, Free.
Film French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF) For those wishing to imagine they’d spent the summer in Paris, this June,
Knoll Textiles, 1945–2010 Gallery Hours Tuesday through Sunday from 11 am–5 pm Thursday from 11 am–8 pm Admission $7 general, $5 seniors and students. Admission is free Thursday after 5 pm.
For information about tours for adult and school groups, call (212) 501-3013 or e-mail tours@bgc.bard.edu. To learn about the Bard Graduate Center and its upcoming exhibitions, visit bgc.bard.edu.
June 15, 2011 | City Arts
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TheSummer100 Cinema Tuesdays presents The Magic of Jean Gremillion. Little Lise is the story of a convict who returns home to discover his daughter has become a prostitute. Stormy Waters tells the tale of a boat captain stranded with another man’s wife while his own wife waits for him at home with an illness of which he’s unaware. Dark, twisted, melodramatic and gorgeous. All films are in French, with English subtitles. June 21 & 28, fiaf.org. BAM Cinema Fest Now in its third year, this independentfocused film festival is an excellent excuse to find yourself in Fort Greene this summer. For 10 days starting June 16, films from up-and-coming and established artists will be screened alongside special repertory screenings accompanied by live music and filmmaker Q&As. Opening night, check out Weekend, a Sundance Selects Release that is garnering comparisons to Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, followed by a free party. The Fest presents 25 new feature films, as well as shorts and an outdoor screening of The Catechism Cataclysm in a partnership with Rooftop Films. June 16–26, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, bam.org. Celebrate Brooklyn!’s Music & Movies Series Every summer, over 250,000 people
gather at Prospect Park for one of the city’s most anticipated outdoor summer series. Whether you wind up with an actual seat or a spot on the lawn, it’s worth risking the grass stains to sing along to Stephen Sondheim’s lyrics at a screening of West Side Story on the city’s largest outdoor screen July 21. And make sure to come back Aug. 4 for a showing of Fritz Lang’s silent film Metropolis, with accompaniment by Alloy Orchestra, featuring an opening set by New York cellist Marika Hughes. June 10–Aug. 11, Prospect Park Bandshell, enter park at 9th St. & Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, briconline.org. Film Society at Lincoln Center Lincoln Center houses the most lauded film series in the city—and will soon have a whole new cinema—and this summer’s selections are especially enticing. June opens with an homage to Italian film, as it’s the 150th anniversary celebration of the movement responsible for Italy’s modern configuration the Risorgimento. Open Roads: New Italian Cinema explores films such as Mario Martone’s We Believed, inspired by the elements that led to Italian independence. Open Roads also marks the American premiere of Giulio Manfredonia’s political satire Whatsoeverly, and director Dianni Di Gregorio’s new film The Salt of Life. 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, filmlinc.com.
C H A U T A U Q U A I N S T I T U T I O N 2011 Season: June 25 – August 28
T H E AT E R
OPERA SYM PH ONY
DANCE www.ciweb.org 800.836.ARTS Chautauqua, NY
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VISUAL ARTS
Museum of Modern Art MoMA kickstarts its summer film series with an exhibition of Academy Awardwinning director Kathryn Bigelow’s works. Crafting Genre: Kathryn Bigelow includes films written, directed and produced by Bigelow, from early films like Near Dark, thrillers like Point Break and films covering contemporary issues like The Hurt Locker, for which she won an Oscar. And stick around the museum this summer to enjoy a vicarious vacation to Ireland with Revisiting The Quiet Man: Ireland on Film (through June 3), soaps on film with Drama Queen: The Soap Opera in Experimental Cinema
(June 4–19) or some fun for the whole family with Pixar Revisted, a film series and exhibition celebrating 20 years of Pixar’s animated works (June 25–July 9). 11 W. 53rd St., moma.org. New York Asian Film Festival NYAFF is one of the city’s most prestigious film festivals, and brings the best, strangest and most entertaining films of East Asia to the Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center every summer. The festival is celebrating its 10th anniversary with films about motorcycle-riding, karatefighting robots, Robo Zaborgar; a four-hour epic by Japanese director Takahisa Zeze, Heaven’s Story; and a slew of other films from Hong Kong, Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Taiwan. Highlights include an appearance by director Ryoo Seungwan, who’ll present his film The Unjust, and Japanese stuntman Tak Sakaguchi, as well as a return visit from legendary Hong Kong director Tsui Hark, whose first major retrospective was featured in the inaugural NYAFF in 2001. Hark will headline the Wu Xia: Hong Kong’s Flying Swordsmen programming section. July 1–14, 70 Lincoln Center Plaza, subwaycinema.com. Museum of the Moving Image There’s this funny little borough connected to Brooklyn, but you can’t remember what it’s called... Something with a Q? Oh right. Astoria’s newly transformed and outright gorgeous film museum is always showing something worth the N train trip, but a few summer exhibitions and screenings are exceptionally noteworthy. Jim Henson’s Fantastic World opens July 16, and showcases a comprehensive collection of original puppets and other materials from Henson’s work, as well as screenings, educational programs and more. Through July 3, those less interested in re-connecting with their inner children can check out the museum’s Great Adaptations series, with recent-ish films based on literary works. 36-01 35 Avenue, Queens, movingimage.us.
Kutztown Folk Festival The oldest folklife festival in the U.S. celebrates the culture and traditions of the Pennsylvania dutch with nine days of cooking, crafts, historical demonstrations and more, with a special emphasis child-friendliness and creating lasting family memories. July 2–10, Kutztown, Penn., kutztownfestival.com.
Theater & Dance River to River Festival’s Henry V This epic, unconventional production of Henry V takes the audience from Battery Park, across the New York Harbor to Governors Island. The various locations on this “semi-maritime” journey stand in for England, the English Channel and France, in this Panoramic Theatre production that literally transports viewers. Select dates July 6–24, rivertorivernyc.com. 64 Paintings, 64 Plays In 2010, Timothy Braun met Brooklyn artist Jennilie Brewster, who had just completed a series of 64 paintings using photographs from the New York Times as starting points. Inspired by her The Newspaper Series, Braun has written 64 Paintings, 64 Plays, a one-page play for each painting. On June 11, 18 and 21, Surf Reality will present 36 of those plays, prior to the full 64-play premier this fall. Braun’s dreamy theatricality is just what this already-hot summer calls for. Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery, bowerypoetry.com. Axis Theater Company’s Hospital Each year, this episodic documentation of the inner thoughts and experiences of a coma patient focuses on a different individual who falls into a coma in a different way. This installment traces the imagination, memories and dreams of an epileptic grade-school teacher who falls from a rooftop. The four performances can be viewed individually, or as a series. Select dates July 8–Aug. 20. Visit axiscompany.org for more information. Tickets are $12, or $6 for student and seniors. Ice Factory Festival Soho Think Tank’s 18th annual festival features six New York premieres over six weeks, with aesthetically and culturally diverse theater works from established and emerging companies. Protagonists range from an aging Nixon secretary, to a nomadic syphilis-spreader, to a vampire undergoing a live theramin-accompanied midlife crisis. June 22–July 30, 3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Greenwich St., sohothinktank.org. Shakespeare in the Park The Public Theater returns with two of
Shakespeare in the Park(ing) Lot The Drilling Company steals some thunder from Shakespeare in the Park with its annual series, performing The Comedy of Errors for its 20th anniversary. The whole thing takes place in a municipal parking lot at Ludlow and Broome streets. July 7–23, shakespeareintheparkinglot.com; Thurs.–Sat. 8 p.m., Free. THE FringeBENEFITS SERIES The end of summer is when we decide to torture ourselves with the New York International Fringe Festival. But since it’s celebrating 15 years, we’ve decided to treat ourselves to the best of the Fringe early. The series started May 5 and continues through Aug. 11. We can’t wait for the next go-round of The Complete Lost Works Of Samuel
Theater & Spoken Word at SummerStage 2011 Look out for Sangre, an adaptation by Mando Alvardo of Lorca’s Blood Wedding, which travels from parks in the Bronx and Queens to end up at Central Park Aug. 17. The Faux Real Theatre presents classics— Oedipus Rex and Seven Against Thebes—in East River Park at the end of August. And the reliable Classical Theatre of Harlem presents a version of Henry V. June 7–Sept. 2, summerstage.org; Free. Vignettes For The Apocalypse V EndTimes Productions presents New York’s oldest and largest sci-fi/horrorthemed theater festival, which offers 34 plays, a concert and a movie presented in nine evening-length programs, curated by Russell Dobular. If it all seems too terrifying to decide between the options, we recommend you at least check out the horror anthology series The Blood Brothers Present… Freaks From the Morgue. June 9–July 3. The Kraine Theater, 85 E. 4th St., endtimesproductions.org; $20.
which we originally saw and loved in 2006. The comedy, from members of The NeoFuturists and Theater Oobleck, is set for July 21. The Laurie Beechman Theater, 407 W. 42nd St., fringenyc.org; $20–$30 plus $15 food/drink min.
Celebrity Autobiography: Gay Pride Edition Even if you’re not waving a freak flag or have put your LUG days long behind you, the lineup for this Celebrity Autobiography edition will satisfy anyone looking for a taste of personal stories from the pros. Those slated to read so far include: Mario Cantone, Rachel Dratch, Gina Gershon, Sharon Gless, Kristen Johnston, Eugene Pack and Dayle Reyfel. June 25, The Gramercy Theater, 127 E. 23rd St., spincyclenyc.com; 7:30, $25–$40.
Showboat Goodspeed Musicals presents an updated version of the timeless yet controversial American musical, with David Aron Damane starring as Joe. Following the boat’s occupants along the Mississippi, the heartwrenching story spans three generations and four decades in two acts. July 1–Sept. 11, Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main Street, East Haddam, Conn., goodspeed.org; $28+.
Game Play 2011 Without Brooklyn’s The Brick hosting the Too Soon Festival this year, give its Game Play series a shot. In its third year, Game Play includes four performances—including a World of Warcraft-set “Romeoo and Julietet”—of plays sure to interest gamers and theatergoers alike. July 7–31, The Brick, 575 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, bricktheater.com.
Planet Connections Theatre Festivity Yep, summer is the season for festivals, so to stand apart from the others, Planet Connections Theatre Festivity hails itself as “New York’s premier eco-friendly theater festival.” Boasting over 50 full productions (including one autobiographical piece by Elizabeth Taylor) and several staged readings throughout June, this fest lacks the brand recognition of the increasingly bloated NYC Fringe, which makes it all the more deserving of your time. June 1–26, various locations, planetconnectionsfestivity.com.
National Dance Week Shake it like a Polaroid picture at the seventh annual rendition modestly named festival—it’s well over a a week long—that offers over 100 free dance, fitness and wellness classes in Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn. The festivities kick off June 15 with a flash mob in Union Square. On June 26, a special presentation will feature performances from the American Tap Dance Foundation, Ballet Noir, Flamenco con Magdalena and others. June 15–26, ndw-nyc.org.
Beckett As Found In An Envelope (partially burned) In A Dustbin In Paris Labeled “Never to be performed. Never. Ever. EVER! Or I’ll Sue! I’LL SUE FROM THE GRAVE!,”),
JACOB’S PILLOW D A N C E FESTIVAL 2011 June 18 – August 28
“ Two-plus months, more than 300
total dance-related events, companies traveling from all over the globe:
Collage Dance Collective; photo Christopher Duggan
the Bard’s works, Measure for Measure and All’s Well That Ends Well. Where the former is one of Shakespeare’s darkest works, exploring the consequences of unchecked power, the latter is a sophisticated fairytale. And don’t forget: It’s maybe the best of the summer impress-a-date ideas when you can score tickets. June 6–July 30, The Delacorte Theater, Central Park, enter park at W. 81st St. & Central Park West, publictheater.org; 8, Free.
the Pillow isn’t messing around.“ – The New York Times
Becket, MA, 2 hours from Boston • see full schedule online
413.243.0745 • jacobspillow.org June 15, 2011 | City Arts
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AttheGALLERIES
“Portrait Of Henrietta Moraes,” by Francis Bacon.
Soutine/Bacon
In case you didn’t know, the painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) had a thing about meat. His early break-through painting in MoMA’s collection—the one with the great sides of beef hanging symmetrically like a crucifixion—became a lifelong blueprint for mixing architectural elegance and grisly fleshiness. Years later, he revisited the event by commissioning photographs of himself, posing bare-chested between slabs of meat. Did such compulsions originate in his experience, nearly 20 years before, of Soutine’s monumental canvases of splayed carcasses? For the first time, the two artists’ paintings have been paired in a single show: Helly Nahmad’s remarkable exhibition of more than 30 canvases drawn from museums, private collections and galleries. Besides the fleshy, frenzied style, the two share an enthusiasm for reinterpreting the masters and a disdain for preparatory drawing. But even though Soutine (18931943) was born only 16 years earlier, his paintings here date to several decades before those of the longer-living Bacon— and their attitudes seem generations apart. While Soutine tortures traditions of
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modeling, he uses these traditions to extract individualized—and often penetrating— versions of his world; Bacon, on the other hand, skillfully repurposes traditions, combining disparate instances of the natural and the symbolic to fashion striking tableaus. (Tellingly, the critic Lawrence Alloway, who coined the term “Pop Art,” claimed the movement began with Bacon.) Unfortunately, the exhibition doesn’t include Bacon’s most powerful works, such as MoMA’s 1946 painting and “Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion.” But his potent, planar color and agile—if sometimes peremptory— drawing are evident throughout. Larger paintings pitilessly expose the tormented in stark, phosphorescent environments; in one, a hapless plucked chicken hangs before a fiery background red, which presses urgently upon the gray-greens of a strange plinth. In a small 1966 triptych, the likeness of Henrietta Moraes sporadically emerges among swirling strokes that seem at once to caress and blight. The luminous, expansive color in “Lying Figure” contrasts impressively with its morbid subject— though, as with many of Bacon’s later works, its horror seems as much a product of design as instinct, replaying a formula of
architectural targeting, writhing modeling and snarls and sores. Soutine benefits from the inclusion of several of his greatest paintings, including “Woman in Red,” in which the subject’s black hat meanders wildly but momentously above the tectonic shifts of her form. Soutine’s color is as potent as Bacon’s, and his drawing often more complex. Moreover, he seems enthralled by each subject’s particulars, rather than its utility; a sense of interval poignantly locates each observation. In “Old Actress,” a complete individual stares out from an upheaval of shoulders and arms that drape, convincingly, about a chair. If the artist has a strategy, it’s to proceed from an initial, encompassing spasm that carries characterizing detail in its wake. The gambit generally works: when road, wall and tree join as a great “S” coursing through “Cagnes, Landscape with Tree,” they distribute with uncanny authority the distances between streets and sky. And then there’s “Flayed Beef,” the show’s centerpiece, which was inspired by Rembrandt’s “The Slaughtered Ox.” Soutine’s canvas surges with slashes of paint and glistenings of color. But this isn’t mere self-indulgence; as with Rembrandt, its rhythmic momentum viscerally conveys trussing, binding and splaying. What did Bacon glean from Soutine? The exhibition suggests he took what he had use for. Bacon certainly had a notion of grand art, of striking images built of masterful flourishes. He had little use for another, arguably more interesting, aspect of Soutine, who looked closely and forged particulars rather than crafting auras. What would the minutely personal and personalizing attack of Brueghel look like, expanded by the advent of Darwin and Freud, and ravaged by Hiroshima and the Holocaust? This we have yet to see, though Soutine—who didn’t live to see all these traumas—comes as close as anyone. [John Goodrich] Through June 18, Helly Nahmad Gallery, 975 Madison Ave., 212-8792075.
Lloyd Martin
Lloyd Martin lives and works in Rhode Island. His achievement embodies Robert Hughes’ observation—made some 20 years ago—that Manhattan is no longer a creative center. A marketing center, certainly, but vital for the development of a painter’s talent? Not any more. Martin has been exhibiting annually with Stephen Haller Gallery for a full decade. Given the diagrammatic, linear rigor of work that grants no quarter to expressive accidents, it is an impressive production schedule. And a welcome one. He continues to renew his signature format with each exhibition. This latest is his handsomest show to date. It is also his liveliest, rambunctious in its aggressive
use of high-keyed color and the stacking of his characteristic ribbons of paint into dominant rectangles The fascination of Martin’s painting lies in its pitch-perfect balance between the constraints of a formal grid and the rhythmic movement of horizontal bands within it. The tactile materiality of the paint, contained within strict, incised margins, contrasts with the immateriality of the image. Color is arranged antiphonally, occurring in alternating patterns of call-andresponse. An orange band across the bottom of a canvas echoes a vertical of the same heated color set across a span of neutrals. A single red bar draws the eye to the center of “Dissever” in terse rejoinder to the red plane that commands the upper left corner. One inventive alignment follows another. The lessons of Mondrian are evident throughout, most vividly in Martin’s attention to intervals between forms, the lacings of black bars and control of repetitions of hue. “Red Breach” is an eloquent testament to fecund tension between a self-imposed stasis—the fixity of forms—and the fluid movement of paint within and between the forms. Decades ago, Fairfield Porter said out loud something that artists know but tend to leave unspoken: To a certain extent, every artist addresses himself to other artists. Recognizing that, it is safe to say that a good number of painters will leave this show feeling much like the narrator of Cynthia Ozick’s “Usurpation.” The narrator of the story is a writer who attends a manuscript reading at the 92nd Street Y. It is a marvelous manuscript; the very thing the narrator had wanted to write but never did. She is convinced the author “usurped” her intentions and wrote the thing before she had the chance to. She covets it. On view is work that other painters, like Ozick’s desirous narrator, could easily wish to have made. The pleasure of it derives from a pictorial intelligence that has no quality of mimicry or glibness about it. Each arrangement results from manifold and complex decisions that aspire to beauty— nothing more and absolutely nothing less. [Maureen Mullarkey] Through June 25, Stephen Haller Gallery, 524 W. 26th St., 212-7417777.
David Salle: New Paintings
David Salle’s new paintings are like short stories, featuring women and their changing relationships with boats and water. Since the 1980s, Salle has juxtaposed random images, and the technique works just as well now as it did then to heighten his paintings’ emotionally disturbing expressiveness. Taking as his inspiration 19th-century river scenes by George Caleb Bingham, he poses many of his subjects in sexually provocative, sculptural postures, legs spread, buttocks in the air and their
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Mark di Suvero at GOVERNORS ISLAND presented by STORM KING ART CENTER
through September 25, 2011 A special exhibition of large-scale works by the iconic American sculptor, sited across the 172-acre expanse of Governors Island. Experience these dynamic steel works against sweeping views of New York City’s harbor and skyline.
“Lake District,” by David Salle.
faces covered or hidden. Though scenes appear superficially rural, they have an incongruous air of sophistication that gives them an intriguing decadence. Shadows define the robotic women wearing only bras and underwear in the gray-toned “Time Is a Frame,” the same necklaces around their necks. One wears a hood, calling to mind recent scenes of torture. In between them are two, small colorful paintings, one of a red boat in a lake and the other of a piece of meat. Salle provides us with narrative details; then it’s up to us to make up a story. “The Mennonite Button Problem” is a series of panels, one depicting two Adirondack-style chairs on a beach, framing a pale blue lake, and below it are three smaller panels, with women in three different positions. One faces down, pulling a shirt over her head, another throws her legs in the air and the other lies on her side, arm pushing against the bed. This is the same iconic woman of his ’80s paintings, back as the heroine of these gothic tales, as resonant as the film Psycho, and as seductive as ever. [Valerie Gladstone] Through June 25, Mary Boone Gallery, 541 W. 24th St., 212-752-2929.
Chamberlain at Pace
America’s greatest living sculptor, John Chamberlain never stops rewarding viewers with vital and engrossing work. A cross between an Abstract Expressionist and a Pop artist, and of course, entirely his own man, he creates complex, polychromatic collages out of stainless steel, scrap metal, cans, foam, paper bags, car bumpers and assorted other materials, bending and twisting them in such a way that they seem to have been destined to come together. It’s easy to forget that before he came along, sculpture was usually only cast or carved and monochromatic.
Seeing these pieces from 1982 to 2008, all in one gallery, gives the strong impression of walking into another universe, populated with strange, shiny creatures. Light glistens off the steel, creating shadows within the spaces and imbuing them with life. The many shapes of “All That Is Lovely in Man” mingle and overlap, as elaborately as memories, some sharp loose ends poking out of the sides, like tangents that didn’t quite fit into the whole, the colors as bright as Crayola crayons. A series of metal circles within metal circles, “Smndtyrqurd” curves round and round, the metal jagged and crinkled. Chamberlain pays homage to one of his gods in the rambunctious “Memo to Shubert” (listening to Shubert and seeing Van Gogh’s paintings converted him to a life in art). Part caterpillar, part rooster, part tangled chaos, it is sharp and wiggly, and seemingly shooting flames—and so beautiful. And funny. His works would be irresistible to little kids, not only because of the underlying delight you imagine he must get in smashing things up, but because they pulse with life. He jokes about humanity, while honoring it. [VG] Through July 1, The Pace Gallery, 545 W. 22nd St., 212-989-4258.
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ODEL TO
ONUMENT Program
Public Sculpture Installation in Riverside Park South Elizabeth Allison, John Balsamo, Allston Chapman, Akihiro Ito, Selva Sanjines, Noa Shay, and Matthew White
Reverie
Is it just me or is there something a bit untoward about a curator who includes his own work in an exhibition he’s put together? Critic and painter Stephen Westfall isn’t the first person to do so, and God knows there are bigger self-promoters in the art world. But, in fact, Westfall’s untitled 2011 canvas fits snugly within the organizing principle informing Reverie, a group show of eight abstract painters at Zürcher Studio. “When I am struck by someone else’s paintings,” Westfall writes, “I experience a temporary and pleasurable sense of appropriation, for a moment I feel I made
TheArt StudentsLeague of NewYork
Public Opening June 24, 11:00 am 212-247-4510 info@artstudentsleague.org For more information: www.theartstudentsleague.org
June 15, 2011 | City Arts
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AttheGALLERIES
Karin Batten Spectrum of Brightness New Paintings
23 June–29 July 2011
JUNE KELLY GALLERY 166 Mercer Street, New York, NY 10012/212-226-1660
ARTWORKS STUDIO Summer Adult Classes at the West Side YMCA Pottery, Stained Glass, and Drawing 6-Week Sessions: July & August
ZAP: Masters of Psychedelic Art 1965-1974
Air-Conditioned Studios All Levels Welcomed
Register Now! For more information contact Kate Missett. (212) 912-2638 wsyartsinfo@ymcanyc.org or go online: www.tinyurl.com/wsyarts
5 West 63rd Street New York, N.Y. 10023
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that painting.” Perhaps this is rationale enough for orchestrating a tête-à-tête with one’s peers. Peers, not betters. What’s notable about Reverie is its evenness. The exhibition features painters of greater and lesser interest and import—besides Westfall, there is Andrea Belag, Shirley Jaffe, Alix Le Méléder, Sylvan Lionni, Julia Rommel, Patricia Treib and Stanley Whitney—but not necessarily merit, at least not here. As a fan of the inestimable Jaffe, the near-octogenarian New Jerseyite who’s made Paris her home since 1949, I was delighted to encounter two of her signature accumulations of clean, quick and flat shapes. I was also stymied by how seamlessly they were tucked in amongst sensibilities markedly less bumptious and quirky. You’d think a painting like “X, Encore” would fairly leap off the wall, particularly when juxtaposed with Rommel’s dour Minimalist tropes and Belag’s blurry runs of soft light and prismatic color. But it doesn’t. Jaffe’s picture is, as seen at Zürcher, a team player. Credit Coach Westfall with that unlikely curatorial feat. Aiming to create “a coherent offering, a nostrum, a visual poem” from “differences” in sensibility, Westfall has mounted an exhibition that operates on the same lines as his paintings—that is to say, he’s achieved a laconic equilibrium molded from elements that might otherwise collapse upon themselves. Studiousness, then, informs Reverie, as does an underplayed wit. Optimism, too. “Painting is dead,” the veteran painter dutifully reiterates, “but the holly and ivy are twining from out of the ground where it was buried. It’s spring, after all.” Within its gently astringent parameters, Reverie is an exhibition about continuity and hope. [Mario Naves] Through July 3, Zürcher Studio, 33 Bleecker St., 212-777-0790. This exhibition at Andrew Edlin Gallery is reminiscent of nothing so much as Wild Things: The Art of Maurice Sendak, a show mounted by The Jewish Museum in 2005. What do the author and illustrator of venerable children’s books like Where The Wild Things Are and In The Night Kitchen have in common with the scatological fantasies of the men who invented underground “comix”? Visionary integrity and stylistic surety; maybe even clarity of purpose. But mostly they were creating images intended for reproduction. S. Clay Wilson no less than Sendak (or, for that matter, Norman Rockwell) expressly geared their pictures for mass consumption. The original drawings are, in a pivotal way, beside the point. Fans of the genre will appreciate seeing, in the flesh, the meticulous craft that went into, say, Robert Williams’ “Masterpiece On The Shithouse Wall.” But doing so doesn’t improve upon
“Neato Keeno Time!,” by Robert Crumb.
reading it in Zap Comics #6. Given Williams’ tendency to overload each panel with textures and patterns, it is, in fact, a relief to encounter the cartoon in print. Williams’ all but impenetrable drawings are difficult enough to parse without having to take in the myriad corrections done on the original. Stylistically, the majority of ZAP artists—Williams, in particular, but also Wilson, Spain Rodriguez, Victor Moscoso and the late Rick Griffin—favored excess over clarity, energetic clutter over legibility. In terms of line, shape and form, the work can be hard to decipher. Rodriguez’s muscular riffs on superhero comics and Wilson’s folkloric cornucopias of dismemberment and base sex gain crude vigor from pictorial overabundance. Moscoso and Griffin—the former studied with Josef Albers—erred on the side of meticulous, migraine-inducing elegance. Notwithstanding the all-inclusive exhibition title, Moscoso and Griffin are the only true psychedelic artists on view. As for Gilbert Shelton and R. Crumb: they are, in their reliance on comic strip norms, the most conservative artists of the bunch. (American Greetings hired the young Robert Crumb because his rubbery, cutesy-pie style fit their corporate aesthetic.) As such, they offer the clearest ties to vintage comics like Krazy Kat and Thimble Theater, to Harvey Kurtzman’s MAD Magazine, drag-racing cartoons, sight gags and character continuity. Here the comics underground lovingly poached upon mainstream convention. Of course, any underground phenomena over the course of time becomes mainstream, becomes the litmus test and not the experiment. And so it is with the ZAP crew. The Chelsea-fication of Crumb & Company points as much to our culture’s ability to absorb the outré as it does to their inescapable contribution to the art of the comic strip. [MN] Through June 25, Andrew Edlin Gallery, 134 10th Ave., 212-206-9723.
ClassicalMUSIC&Opera
A Liszt-Style Wizard
Carole Bellaïche
JAY NORDLINGER on the pianist Cyprien Katsaris, plus some thoughts on the embattled City Opera
Cyprien Katsaris performed a recital last month at the Yamaha Piano Salon.
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e are in the middle of a “Liszt year,” meaning a Liszt anniversary year: The composer-pianist was born in 1811. In February, Jean-Yves Thibaudet played an all-Liszt recital in Carnegie Hall; in March, Evgeny Kissin played another one in the same venue. The two recitals were very different, because the pianists are very different—but both recitals were stupendous. We had another Liszt recital—though not an all-Liszt recital—in New York last month. The pianist was Cyprien Katsaris, a veteran virtuoso from France. He is a wizardly fellow, the kind who likes to explore music off the beaten track. For example, he’ll play Beethoven’s ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, in the composer’s own arrangement. Katsaris recalls another era even in his appearance. He has long hair, pianist’s hair. Do you know this Irving Berlin lyric? “When Paderewski comes this way, I’m so delighted if I’m invited to hear that longhaired genius play.” Katsaris also shows up in white tie and concert tails, skipping the present-day Mao suit. He began his New York recital with a
piece of late Liszt—“visionary” Liszt—the Funeral Prelude and Funeral March. He played with authority and solemnity, mixing in several colors, causing the piece to build. It was hypnotic and demonic—two prime Liszt qualities. Also, Katsaris knows how to make a big old sound without pounding. Next he treated us to some improvisation. He first explained that this is a dying art, left to jazzmen and organists. We still have a classical pianist or two who will improvise, however. Gabriela Montero is a famous improviser, taking requests from the audience. (They name the tune, she improvises.) Katsaris gave us a smorgasbord, playing with snatches of opera: “Di Provenza il mar,” “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix” etc. When he is a showman, he’s not merely a showman: He is musical too. He closed out the first half of his recital with a variety of Liszt pieces, maintaining that spirit of improvisation. He displayed much strength and agility. His playing was not impeccable. But I like to say, “Life is not a studio recording” (thank heaven). After intermission, Katsaris turned to Chopin, last year’s bicentennial boy (born
beloved of audiences. But they aren’t coming to more traditional fare either. I find last season’s A Quiet Place a particular puzzle. This is a Bernstein opera, and New York is supposed to be a Bernsteinmad town. Time was, you could place the name “Bernstein” on virtually anything, and New Yorkers would flock to it. City Opera had an excellent production of A Quiet Place, with an excellent cast. Should have been a smash hit. Apparently, it was not. In times of crisis, you go to fundamentals: What is City Opera’s raison d’être? For years, the company has been known as “the people’s opera.” I think this is a conceit. Besides, what does it mean? Does it mean that you can dress worse than at the Met? You can dress plenty badly there, believe me (I do, sometimes). Does it mean that the tickets are cheaper? Not necessarily. Plus, the Met has movie-theater broadcasts now, very popular. I will dispense some free advice, which might be worth what it costs. Put
in 1810). He played a concerto—Chopin’s F-minor concerto, in the composer’s own arrangement for solo piano. Katsaris had the score at the ready, in case he needed it. He warned that he might call on a page-turner. “Girls only,” he added (true to his playboy image). Because the pianist is doing double duty in this version of the concerto—playing both the piano part and the orchestra part— the temptation is to overplay. To storm the heavens, or overstorm them. Katsaris resisted the temptation, keeping things pianistic all through. He played an encore, and it was an American one: The Banjo, by Louis Moreau Gottschalk. This piece is hard and flashy enough in the original. But Katsaris soups it up, enjoyably. His recital took place in a small venue: the City Opera got to perform in Yamaha Piano Salon, on David H. Koch Theater for about the third floor of a Fifth Avenue building. It took two seconds. I think of an aria place in front of a small audience, too: maybe from Barber’s Vanessa: “Must 30 people, at least half the winter come so soon?” I of whom were pianists themselves. That was high also think of a Kenny Rogers praise, for the recitalist. song: “You picked a fine time to And every professional knows that whether the leave me, Lucille.” audience is five or 5,000, you give them your best. on a variety of first-rate operas—at least good and interesting ones—from the veryone has an opinion on New York Baroque period to the present. Have your City Opera, and I will give a few of my productions be imaginative, but nonown. The company is having to revamp, screwy. Cast the best singers you can get: scale down, rethink. It is leaving Lincoln Americans, foreigners, up-and-comers, Center, for parts unknown. This is a shame, veterans, what have you. Keep the budget because its theater, the David H. Koch lean and mean. I know excellent singers Theater, is essentially new. By that I mean, who are just dying to sing, for peanuts. it was just renovated, and it is wonderful. Stand up to the unions, to the extent you City Opera got to perform in it for about can. Make them ask themselves, “Do we two seconds. really want to sink the ship?” I think of an aria from Barber’s Vanessa: Eschew faddishness. Don’t try to be “Must the winter come so soon?” I also cool, or hip or “downtown.” Let artistic think of a Kenny Rogers song: “You picked integrity be the North Star. Stay away from a fine time to leave me, Lucille.” hype and drop all gimmicks—such as One question bouncing around town “Boys’ Night at L’Etoile” (L’Etoile being a is, “Can New York support two opera Chabrier operetta). City Opera had a drag companies?” (meaning the Met and a queen at intermission. Come on, people: second company). I think so, yes. But the Every night is “boys’ night” at the opera. market will give us the actual answer, as it Be the best opera company you can be, always does, when allowed to operate. from an artistic point of view, and let this Glibness and smugness should be artistic striving be accompanied by shrewd, avoided when it comes to City Opera, tough-minded, unsentimental management. because there are no clear reasons for See what happens. I have a feeling that the the company’s woes. I am speaking of market would respond positively. And if the dearth of fannies in the seats. At not—you have given it your best shot, done least those reasons aren’t clear to me. something to be proud of. People aren’t coming to the avant-garde Has City Opera already done the best it fare, yes—the kind of fare beloved of can? If so, then I, along with everyone else, administrators and critics, but not so must really shut up. <
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Film
The Day the Musical Didn’t Die A series of movie musicals from the 1970s proves that the genre could survive rock ‘n’ roll By Craig Hubert any insist the Hollywood movie musical died in the 1950s with the collapse of the studio system and the petering out of Arthur Freed’s legendary productions at MGM. But musicals never truly went away, they just got stale in the leering shadow of rock ‘n’ roll. Limping into the 1970s, the genre got a swift kick by a ragged bunch of young punks, influenced in equal measure by Hollywood and Europe (commercial and independent models). Now the musical was tangled up with rock, its forms and traditions splintered and reassembled. This amorphous rejuvenation is on full display in Hollywood Musicals of the 1970s & ’80s, Part 1: The 1970s at Anthology Film Archives, running June 17–26, focusing on the best the decade has to offer. The series opens with Frank Zappa’s truly bizarre 1971 200 Motels (June 17). A long-form joke stretched to its limits, the film is a spinning wheel of teenage humor, absurd comic sketches and performances by the Mothers of Invention, all layered with unhealthy doses of primitive video effects. The whole thing is loose and
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barely contained, a little indulgent and narcissistic—maybe the first real rock musical. At first, All That Jazz (June 19), made at the opposite end of the decade, doesn’t seem very rock-n-roll. Director Bob Fosse’s stylized and self-reflexive account of the life and death of a musical director—a thinly-veiled therapy session—is overly ambitious and reckless. But it’s also deeply moving and funny as hell, taking more risks than it has any right to. While some directors used the musical form for autobiography, others backpedaled, retreating inside old traditions and tired ideas. Stanley Donen’s quirky fable The Little Prince (June 18), with songs and script by Lerner and Lowe, is more of a curiosity than anything else, occasionally assisted by an interesting visuals and campy cameos (Fosse and Gene Wilder). Fans of the source material, a famous children’s book published in 1943 by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, will get a kick out of the adaptation, but not much else. The same goes for The Wiz (June 19), an AfricanAmerican casted rethink of The Wizard of Oz, transplanted from the stage to the
screen. Director Sidney Lumet does his best to work something interesting out of this overblown experiment, which manages to stay afloat due to a few good songs and its mesmerizing set design. Other directors looked forward, or at least all around them. Rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay, so there was no point in avoiding the subject any longer. Brian De Palma took a step to the side of his usual Hitchcock-obsessed thrillers to helm Phantom of the Paradise (June 17), which embraces nostalgia-drenched pop and rock to pump new life into The Phantom of the Opera. Filled with gags, wall to wall music, sex, violence and eye-popping visuals, it’s a travesty this hasn’t achieved midnight movie status: It almost begs for audience participation, with the sights and sounds jumping off the screen. Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (June 19) moves on the same currents of energy, but at a much smaller scale. Like Phantom, the Ramones-centered teensploitation is self-aware, a joke we’re all in on. Produced by Roger Corman, it’s the film in the series that looks and feels the way it sounds: cheap, funny and crude,
moving along in a quick blast like a great punk song. It wasn’t necessary for every musical of the decade to wear its rebelliousness on its sleeve. In New York, New York (June 18), Martin Scorsese erects an art deco monument around a dark, painful relationship drama about a saxophone player and a nightclub singer. Peter Bogdanovich does something similar in his long forgotten At Long Last Love (June 18), an ensemble piece with a similar classical design scheme that disavows prerecorded tracks in favor of live on-set recordings, which lack the polish and professionalism familiar to the musical. A fitting end to the series, Pennies from Heaven (June 20) is the Depression-set musical written by Dennis Potter from his own BBC series and starring Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters. The use of lip-synching to old recordings manages to distance the audience, so that you listen to the songs, look at the images and notice the contradictions. It’s escapist entertainment about the dangers of escapist entertainment. The panorama of references and old styles has a built-in self critique which seems obvious for any genre on the verge of exhaustion. It also indicates new approaches for the coming decade and beyond, how to deal with the past while pointing toward the future. <
DANCE
Specifically Gender
If we start applying sexual politics to ballet, we might not be left with much to enjoy By Joel Lobenthal he misogyny here is beyond textbook,” Claudia La Rocco claimed earlier this month in the New York Times about John Neumeier’s 1978 Lady of the Camellias, then being performed by American Ballet Theatre during its current season at the Metropolitan Opera. La Rocco echoed sentiments expressed by Alastair Macaulay in the Times a year ago about the same ballet when ABT first took it into its repertory. Both critics’ objections inevitably refer back to larger questions of whether the art form of ballet is innately discriminatory and archaic, and by extension beyond redemption or relevance. But specifically applied to this particular ballet as well as to the larger assumptions on which ballet is based, their arguments raised more questions than they answered. La Rocco didn’t like the way that in Neumeier’s ballet, the 19th-century courtesan heroine Marguerite Gauthier imagines a parallel between her fate— renouncing her bourgeois lover on his father’s insistence and dying young of tuberculosis—and that of 18th-century fictional heroine Manon Lescaut, whose rise and fall via sexual commodification
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Marguerite sees performed in a theatrical entertainment. But the idea that Neumeier’s inclusion of these two “kept women” in his ballet indicates misogyny on his or the ballet’s part is quite a stretch. La Rocco’s remarks seemed to me an example of the common extrapolative and evaluative fallacy whereby any artistic representation that does not show women—or members of other “minority” or oppressed groups—in a state of victoriously self-actualized agency is automatically an endorsement of repressive societal structures to which women are or have been subjected. Lady of the Camellias is based on an 1848 novel by Alexandre Dumas fils that he later dramatized (and is the basis of Verdi’s opera La Traviata), which conformed to the perhaps overriding subject of 19th-century Western literature: Women’s attempt to cope, accommodate and rebel against a rigid official morality that divided them into good or bad. Fictional and theatrical representations often found these women destroyed by their attempts to defy convention. But authors, no more than choreographer Neumeier himself, were certainly not necessarily saying that the way it often was
is the way it should be or must be. Both Times writers objected to the profusion of very complicated lifts in Neumier’s Camellias. Macaulay suggested that the act of balletic lifting was innately reactionary because it reinforces traditional sex-differentiation, meaning the woman’s lightness and the man’s strength. Here I had a mixed response. Yes, Neumeier’s lifts are very convoluted and look precarious, perhaps gratuitously so, although they are undoubtedly spectacular flights of kinetic rhetoric (very well performed by Julie Kent and Roberto Bolle at the Camellias I saw last week). Yes, it might be nice to see less emphasis on lifts in contemporary ballet, where they actually tend to be more violently disjointed than anything in Neumeier’s ballet. Maybe women then wouldn’t have to be so thin and men’s backs and knees wouldn’t get blown out so quickly. But there is too much interdependency in the act of ballet lifting to support a clear-cut reading of its semiotics or sexual politics. The woman actually supplies as much aerobic heft as the man. Indeed, there are many ways that ballet celebrates a reciprocal exchange of attributes between
the sexes. In ballet, both men and women often magnetize toward an ambiguous space at the center of the continuum. For ballet to work, a man’s manner must be to some degree soft and graceful, while women must utilize and, again to some degree, overtly exhibit core strength and muscular capacity. In case you find yourself losing sleep about these things—and just as much if you don’t—it would be advisable to see the Royal Danish Ballet, which makes its first Manhattan visit June 14 since 1988. Over the past decade I’ve been seeing and enjoying them in small touring detachments in Newark and Jacob’s Pillow, and in a preview the company gave of its New York repertory at the Guggenheim Museum last March. They are doing some new work here, but RDB’s canonical repertory remains the 19th-century ballets of August Bournonville. Lifts were a lot simpler back then: Bournonville’s ballets don’t emphasize supported partnering work. We don’t see women perched on men’s shoulders or held head above their heads. Men and woman dance alongside each other, in tandem or in mirrored echoing. The technique of partnering is just one of many ways that ballet in Denmark is different than anywhere else, and why it’s always so interesting to see the Danes perform. < Read more by Joel Lobenthal at Lobenthal.com.
ArtsAGENDA Exhibition Openings AC Institute: Sebastian Mahaluf: “Gravity,
inversion of the matter.” Opens June 30, 547 W. 27th St., #610, artcurrents.org. Atlantic Gallery: “Concealment & Disclosure.” Opens June 21, 135 W. 29th St., Ste. 601, atlanticgallery.org. Blue Mountain Gallery: “Zones of Contact, The Public Art of Joan Marie Kelly.” Opens July 12, 530 W. 25th St., bluemountain.com. Cristin Tierny: “By the Sea.” Opens June 23, 546 W. 29th St., cristintierny.com. David Nolan Gallery: Ciprian Murean. Opens July 7, 527 W. 29th St., davidnolangallery.com. First Street Gallery: “2011 National Juried Exhibition.” Opens June 22, 526 W. 26th St., Ste. 209, firststreetgallery.net. High Line Art: Julianne Swartz: “Digital Empathy.” Opens July 11. Sarah Sze: “Behavior & Its Evidence.” Opens July 11, thehighline.org. Jadite Galleries: Stephen Cimini: “1984: Remembering the Early Days of AIDS.” Opens June 20, 528 W. 47th St., stephencimini. com/1984. The Leslie/Lohman Basement Annex: Fernando Carpaneda: “Queer.Punk.” Opens June 25, 127-B Prince St., leslielohman.org. Lesley Heller Workspace: “A Desert in the Ocean - The View from Cill Rialaig.” Opens June 30, 54 Orchard St., lesleyheller.com. Lyons Wier Gallery: “24/7.” Opens June 16, 542 W. 24th St., lyonswiergallery.com. Madeline Weinrib/ABC Carpet & Home: Mark Wilson: “The Color of Sacred.” Opens June 21, 888 Broadway, 6th Fl., madelineweinrib.com. McKenzie Fine Art: “Sound & Vision.” Opens June 23, 511 W. 25th St., mckenziefineart.com. Minus Space: “Between This Light & That & Space.” Opens June 25, 98 4th St., Rm. 204, Brooklyn, minusspace.com. Noho Gallery: “Black Dog.” Opens July 5, 530 W. 25th St., nohogallery.com. RHV Fine Art: Henry Chung. Opens June 16, 683 6th Ave., rhvfineart.com. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation: “Robert Rauschenberg: Photographs 1949-1965.” Opens June 24, 455 W. 19th St., rr-foundation.org. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts: “Taking Shape.” Opens June 25, 31 Mercer St., feldmangallery.com. SVA Gallery: “AuthentiCity.” Opens July 8, 209 E. 23rd St., sva.edu. TNC Gallery: “Queer From Zero to a Hundred.” Opens June 21, 155 1st. Ave., tncgallery.com. Westside Gallery: “Hidden in Plain Sight.” Opens June 25, 133/141 W. 21st St., sva.edu. Visual Arts Gallery: “Things Fall Apart.” Opens July 5, 601 W. 26th St., 15th Fl., sva.edu.
Exhibition Closings A.I.R. Gallery: Stephanie Bernheim: “Palm Project.”
Ends June 18, 111 Front St., #228, Brooklyn, airgallery.org. AG Gallery: “Artronomy.” Ends June 26, 107-A North 3rd St., Brooklyn, aboutglamour.net. Alexander & Bonin: Fernando Bryce: “El Mundo en Llamas.” Ends June 18, 132 10th Ave., alexanderandbonin.com. Amador Gallery: “Japan Today.” Ends June 30, 41 E. 57th St., amadorgallery.com. Ameringer McEnery Yohe: Wolf Kahn: “Color & Consequence.” Ends July 16, 525 W. 22nd St., amy-nyc.com. Aperture Gallery: Sanna Kannisto: “Fieldwork.” Ends June 23, 547 W. 27th St., 4th Fl., aperture.org.
Benrimon Contemporary: “Red Country
Pictures.” Ends June 18, 514 W. 24th St., bcontemporary.org. Blue Mountain Gallery: Rosemary Dunbar: “By Hand: Postcards from China & The Calligrapher’s Dreams.” Ends June 18, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., bluemountaingallery.org. Callahan Center Gallery: Mary K. Connelly & Ella Yang: “Being There.” Ends June 29, St. Francis College, 180 Remsen St., Brooklyn, stfranciscollege.edu. Camel Art Space: “Get on the Block.” Ends June 19, 722 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn, camelartspace.com. Carolina Nitsch Project Room: Richard Dupont. Ends June 25, 534 W. 22nd St., carolinanitsch.com. CultureFix Gallery: Eric Finzi: “Murmurs.” Ends June 19, 9 Clinton St., culturefixny.com. Dean Project Gallery: Nicholas Kashian: “Oh Henry!” Ends June 25, 511 W. 25th St., 2nd Fl., deanproject.com. Denise Bibro Fine Art: Don Kimes: “Exquisite Interruption.” Ends July 9, 529 W. 20th St., 4W, denisebibrofineart.com. Dorian Grey Gallery: “NO RULES, East 9th Street Revisited, 1951–2011.” Ends June 19, 437 E. 9th St, doriangreygallery.com. Edwynn Houk Gallery: Herb Ritts. Ends June 25, 745 5th Ave., houkgallery.com. Eleanor Ettinger Gallery: Michael De Brito: “Larger Than Life.” Ends July 2, 511 W. 25th St., eegallery.com. ET Modern Gallery: Shulamith Koenig: “Exhibition of Sculptures.” Ends July 13, 547 W. 20th St., 212-206-0300. First Street Gallery: Teresa Dunn: “but the winds come anyway...” Ends June 19, 526 W. 26th St., Ste. 209, firststreetgallery.net. Flomenhaft Gallery: John Henry: “Poetic Builder.” Ends June 18, 547 W. 27th St., Ste. 200, flomenhaftgallery.com. Forum Gallery: Megan Rye: “I Will Follow You Into the Dark.” Ends July 15, 730 5th Ave., forumgallery.com. Frederico Sève Gallery: Gego: “Paintings & Drawings: 1963–1991.” Ends July 7, 37 W. 57th St., 4th Fl., fredericosevegallery.com. Gagosian Gallery Madison Avenue: Joel Morrison. Ends June 25. Arshile Gorky. Ends July 1. 980 Madison Ave., gagosian.com. Gagosian Gallery West 24th St: John Chamberlain: “New Sculpture.” Ends July 8, 555 W. 24th St., gagosian.com. Gagosian Gallery West 21st St: “Picasso & MarieThérèse: L’amour fou.” Ends June 25, 522 W. 21st St., gagosian.com. Gasser/Grunert: Michael Alan: “Collapsible Anatomy.” Ends June 18, 524 W. 19th St., gassergrunert.net. Grace Institute: “Two California Artists Celebrating their 90’s in NYC: June Felter & Marge Chapman.” Ends June 16, 1233 2nd Ave., graceinstitute.org. Half Gallery: Duncan Hannah: “Country Life & Other Collages.” Ends June 21, 208 Forsyth St., halfgallery.com. Hionas Gallery: Loretta Mae Hirsch: “Infinite Desire.” Ends July 8, 89 Franklin St., hionasgallery.com. Hous Projects: Gina LeVay: “Bull Fight.” Ends June 25, 31 Howard St., 2nd Fl., housprojects. com. Howard Scott Gallery: Barry Goldberg: “Echolocation.” Ends June 18, 529 W. 20th St., 7th Fl., howardscottgallery.com. Jadite Galleries: Stephen Cimini: “1984: Remembering the Early Days of AIDS.”
Ends July 2, 528 W. 47th St., stephencimini. com/1984. James Graham & Sons: Kimber Smith: “Paintings & Works on Paper.” Ends June 30, 32 E. 67th St., jamesgrahamandsons.com. Jonathan Levine Gallery: Gaia: “Succession.” Ends June 25. Mario Martinez (Mars-1): “Afterglow.” Ends June 25. Miss Van: “Bailarinas.” Ends June 25, 529 W. 20th St., 9th Fl., jonathanlevinegallery.com. June Kelly Gallery: James Little: “Ex Pluribus Unum.” Ends June 21, 591 Broadway, junekellygallery.com. Lehmann Maupin Gallery: Ashley Bickerton: “Nocturnes.” Ends June 25, 540 W. 26th St., lehmannmaupin.com. Leslie Feely Fine Art: “Atget & Contemporary Photography.” Ends July 8, 33 E. 68th St., 212-988-0040. Lesley Heller Workspace: Grace Knowlton: “New Sculpture & Photographs.” Ends June 25. “Four Sculptors 1968–1980.” Ends June 25, 54 Orchard St., lesleyheller.com. The Leslie/Lohman Basement Annex: Fernando Carpaneda: “Queer.Punk.” Ends July 2, 127-B Prince St., leslielohman.org. Lombard Freid Projects: Cao Fei: “Play Time.” Ends June 25, 518 W. 19th St., lombard-freid.com. LTMH Gallery: Shahram Karimi: “The Rose Garden of Remembrance.” Ends June 18, 39 E. 78th St., ltmhgallery.com. Margaret Thatcher Projects: Frank Badur: “Mostly Red + works on paper.” Ends June 25, 539 W. 23rd St., Grnd. Fl., thatcherprojects.com. Marlborough Chelsea: “Living in Havana.” Ends June 18, 40 W. 57th St., marlboroughgallery.com. McCaffrey Fine Art: Jiro Takamatsu. Ends July 1, 23 E. 67th St., 212-988-2200. Merton D. Simpson Gallery: Merton D. Simpson: “Encore!” Ends June 30, 38 W. 28th St., 5th Fl., mertonsimpson.com. Michael Mut Gallery: George Towne: “The Company of Men.” Ends July 9, 97 Ave. C, michaelmutgallery.com. Mitchell-Innes & Nash: Leon Kossoff. Ends June 18, 534 W. 26th St., miandn.com. Morgan Lehman Gallery: Andrew Schoultz: “Unrest.” Ends July 1, 535 W. 22nd St., morganlehmangallery.com. Naito Studio: Penny Kaplan: “100 Portraits.” Ends July 1, 177 Duane St., 2nd Fl., 917-324-4962. Noho Gallery: Romain Schaller: “Dawn of a New Age.” Ends July 2, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., nohogallery.net. NY Studio Gallery: Al Wadzinski: “False Idols.” Ends June 25, 154 Stanton St., nystudiogallery.com. P.J.S. Exhibitions: Ray Fiero: “Deadly Voodoo Sex Romp.” Ends June 19, 238 W. 14th St., pjsexhibitions.com. The Pace Gallery: Li Songsong. Ends July 9, 534 W. 25th St., thepacegallery.com. Paul Kasmin Gallery: Jan Frank: “Seven Months.” Ends June 18. Nir Hod: “Genius.” Ends June 18, 511 W. 27th St., paulkasmingallery.com. Phoenix Gallery: Allan Gorman: “sTRUCKtures.” Ends June 18, 210 11th Ave., phoenix-gallery. com. Postmasters Gallery: Kenneth Tin-Kin Hung: “The Travelogue of Dr. Brain Damages.” Ends July 2. Sally Smart: “Flaubert’s Puppets.” Ends July 2. Natalie Jeremijenko: “xClinic Farmacy.” Ends July 2, 459 W. 19th St., postmastersart.com. Purumé Gallery: “Summer in the City.” Ends June 24, 11 E. 13th St., purumegallery.com. Rachel Uffner Gallery: Hilary Harnischfeger. Ends
June 19, 47 Orchard St., racheluffnergallery. com. Rick Wester Fine Art: Jeff Mermelstein: “Work Oevre Opera: A Photographer’s Journey Through the Worlds of Style.” Ends June 25, 511 W. 25th St., rickwesterfineart.com. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation: “Robert Rauschenberg: Photographs 1949-1965.” Ends July 11, 455 W. 19th St., rr-foundation.org. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts: Told Siler: “Split << Second.” Ends June 18, 31 Mercer St., feldmangallery.com. Salmagundi Club: “Wiggins, Wiggins, & Wiggins.” Ends July 1, 47 5th Ave., salmagundi.org. Shepherd & Derom Galleries: “New Acquisitions.” Ends July 1, 58 W. 79th St., shepherdgallery.com. Sloan Fine Art: Aaron Smith: “Coterie of the Wooly-Woofter.” Ends June 26. Anthony Iacono: “Victor Victoria.” Ends June 26, 128 Rivington St., sloanfineart.com. Starbucks: John Lloyd & Jane Talcott: “Brooklyn Town & Country.” Ends June 29, 166 7th Ave., Brooklyn, janejohnstudio.com. Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects: Bill Rice: “Paintings & Works On Paper.” Ends July 1, 24 E. 73rd St., #2F, shfap.com. Sue Scott Gallery: David Shapiro: “Money Is No Object.” Ends June 19, 1 Rivington St., suescottgallery.com. SVA Gallery: “Social Realms.” Ends June 30, 209 E. 23rd St., sva.edu. Untitled: David Adamo. Ends June 19, 30 Orchard St., nyuntitled.com. Visual Arts Gallery: MFA Photography, Video & Related Media Department Thesis Exhibition.” Ends June 25, 601 W. 26th St., 15th Fl., sva.edu. Vogt Gallery: “The Fitting Room.” Ends June 25, 508-526 W. 26th St., #911, vogtgallery.com. Wally Findlay Galleries: Hugo Grenville: “From the Artist’s Studio.” Ends June 15, 124 E. 57th St., wallyfindlay.com. Walter Wickiser Gallery: “The Re-Visions of Robert M. Cicione.” Ends June 21, 210 11th Ave., Ste. 303, walterwickisergallery.com. Westside Gallery: “Open.” Ends June 18, 133/141 W. 21st St., sva.edu.
Museums American Folk Art Museum: “Perspectives:
Forming the Figure.” Ends Aug. 21. Eugene Von Bruenchenhein. Ends Oct. 9. “Quilts: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum.” Ends Oct. 16, 45 W. 53rd St., folkartmuseum.org. American Museum of Natural History: “Body & Spirit: Tibetan Medical Paintings.” Ends July 17. “Brain: The Inside Story.” Ends Aug. 15. “Highway of An Empire: The Great Inca Road.” Ends Sept. 2011. “The World’s Largest Dinosaurs.” Ends Jan 2, 2012. “Frogs: A Chorus of Colors.” Ends Jan. 8, 2012, Central Park West at W. 79th St., amnh.org. Asia Society & Museum: “Out Of This World.” Ends June 26. “Inspired by Yoshitomo Nara: Works by New York City Students.” Ends Aug. 14. “A Longing for Luxury.” Ends Sept. 11, 725 Park Ave., asiasociety.org. Austrian Cultural Forum: “Fünf Räume.” Ends Sept. 5, 11 E. 52nd St., acfny.org. Brooklyn Historical Society: “Painting Brooklyn: Stories of Immigration & Survival.” Ends Aug. 14. “It Happened in Brooklyn.” Ongoing, 128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, brooklynhistory.org. Brooklyn Museum: “Split Second: Indian Paintings.” July 13–Jan. 12, 2012. “Four
June 15, 2011 | City Arts
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ArtsAGENDA Out of Town EVENTS & ATTRACTIONS BARD SUMMERSCAPE: The 7-week long festival
features opera, dance, theater, cabaret, film & more. July 7–Aug. 21, Richard B. Fischer Center for the Performing Arts, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., fishercenter. bard.edu. BETHEL WOODS CENTER FOR THE ARTS: Bethel Woods’ summer line-up includes artists ranging from the New York Philharmonic & The Boston Pops, to Janet Jackson, Selena Gomez, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Styx & Sublime. July 3–Aug. 28, 200 Hurd Rd., Bethel, N.Y., bethelwoodscenter.org. BRUCE MUSEUM: “iCreate! Teen Art.” Ends June 26. “Human Connections: Figural Art from the Bruce Museum Collection.” Ends June 5. “Three Sisters & Corn Maidens: Native American Maize Cultivation & Customs.” Ends July 3. “Power Incarnate: Allan Stone’s Collection of Sculpture from the Congo.” Ends Sept. 4. 1 Museum Dr., Greenwich, Conn., brucemuseum.org. CARAMOOR INTERNATIONAL MUSIC FESTIVAL: The nearly 7-week long, genre-bridging summer music festival brings together folk, world, classical music & more, plus 4th of July fireworks & a host of other special events. June 25–Aug. 10, 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, N.Y., caramoor.org. CLARK ART INSTITUTE: “Romantic Nature: British and French Landscapes.” Ends Sept. 30, 225 South Street, Williamstown, Mass., clarkart. edu/museum. GOODSPEED OPERA HOUSE: “Cutman: A Boxing Musical” is the dramatic story of a young Jewish boxer who must choose between achieving his lifelong dream and defying his faith. Ends June 5. In “My One And Only: A Tap Dance Extravaganza!” the glamorous 1920s come roaring back to life when a barnstorming aviator falls for a bathing beauty. Ends June 25, Goodspeed Opera House, 6 Main Street East, Haddam, Conn., goodspeed.org. HUDSON VALLEY SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL: Now in its 25th year, the festival this season features performances of “Hamlet,” “The Comedy of Errors” and Mark Brown’s adaptation of Jules Bathers by Degas & Bonnard.” Ends Aug. 14. Sam Taylor-Wood: “Ghosts.” Ends Aug. 14. “Lorna Simpson: Gathered.” Ends Aug. 21. “Skylar Fein: Black Lincoln for Dooky Chase.” Ends Aug. 28. “Vishnu: Hinduism’ Blue-Skinned Savior.” Ends Oct. 2. “Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments & Amulets.” Ends Nov. 27. “reOrder: An Architectural Environment by Situ Studio.” Ends Jan. 15, 2012, 200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, brooklynmuseum.org. Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum: “Color Moves: Art & Fashion by Sonia Delaunay.” Ends June 19, 2 E. 91st St., cooperhewitt.org. Frick Collection: “In a New Light: Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert.” Ends Aug. 28. “Turkish Taste at the Court of Marie-Antoinette.” Ends Sept. 11, 1 E. 70th St., frick.org. Hirschl & Adler: “Masterworks.” Ends July 1, 730 5th Ave., hirschlandadler.com. International Center of Photography: “Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best.” Ends Aug. 28. “Hiroshima: Ground Zero 1945.” Ends Aug. 28. “Ruth Gruber, Photojournalist.” Ends Aug. 28, 1133 6th Ave., icp.org. The Jewish Museum: “Maya Zack: Living Room.” July 31–Oct. 23. “The Art of Matrimony: Thirty Splendid Marriage Contracts from the Jewish
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
Verne’s “Around the World in 80 Days.” June 14–Sept. 4, 155 Main St., Cold Spring, N.Y., hvshakespeare.org. MAVERICK CONCERTS: The country’s longest-running summer chamber music festival celebrates its 96th consecutive season, commemorating the 20th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s death, the birth of Liszt & the music of Mahler. Ends Sept. 4, Woodstock, N.Y., maverickconcerts.org. MONTCLAIR ART MUSEUM: “Warhol and Cars: American Icons.” Ends June 19. “Robert Mapplethorpe Flowers: Selections from the JPMorgan Chase Art Collection.” Ends July 17, South Mountain Avenue, Montclair, N.J., 973-7465555, montclair-art.com. MUSIC MOUNTAIN FESTIVAL: In its 82nd season, the air-conditioned summer festival spans 4 centuries of chamber music, plus big band, jazz, country & other special events. June 19–Sept. 4, Falls Village, Conn., musicmountain.org. NORFOLK CHAMBER FESTIVAL: Young artists & established musicians alike perform in a summer—and beyond—series of classical music concerts, with many events free and open to the public. June 23–Oct. 20, Ellen Battell Stoeckel Estate at Routes 44 & 272, Norfolk, Conn., music.yale.edu/norfolk. NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM: “Travels with Norman.” Ends June 19, Norman Rockwell Museum, 9 Route 183, Stockbridge, Mass., nrm.org. SNYDERMAN-WORKS GALLERIES: “Goblet Show 2011.” July 1–Aug. 20, 303 Cherry St., Philadelphia, Penn., snyderman-works.com. SOLAR: Jesus Matheus will present “New Work” in paintings, sculptures, and works on paper. Through June 20, 44 Davids Lane, East Hampton, N.Y., artsolar.com. STORM KING ART CENTER: “5+5: New Perspectives.” Ends Nov. 14. “The View From Here: Storm King at Fifty.” Ends Nov. 14, Old Pleasant Hill Rd., Mountainville, N.Y., stormking.org. YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART: “Art in Focus: William III.” Ends July 31, 1080 Chapel Street‚ New Haven‚ Conn., ycba.yale.edu. Theological Seminary Library.” Ends June 26. “Maria Kalman: Various Illuminations (of a Crazy World).” Ends July 31. “The Line & the Circle: Video by Sharone Lifschitz.” Ends Aug. 21. “Collecting Matisse & Modern Masters: The Cone Sisters of Baltimore.” Ends Sept. 25, 1109 5th Ave., thejewishmuseum.org. John Jay College President’s Gallery: “Faith Ringgold: Political Prints.” Ends Oct. 7, 889 10th Ave., 6th Fl., jjay.cuny.edu. Merchant’s House Museum: “New York’s Civil War Soldiers - Photographs of Dr. R.B. Bontecou, Words of Walt Whitman.” Ends Aug. 1, 29 E. 4th St., merchantshouse.com. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Mother India: The Goddess in Indian Painting.” June 29–Nov. 27. “Rugs & Ritual in Tibetan Buddhism.” Ends June 26. “The Washington Haggadah: Medieval Jewish Art in Context.” Ends June 26. “Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century.” Ends July 4. “Haremhab, The General Who Became King.” Ends July 4. “Guitar Heroes: Legendary Craftsmen from Italy to New York.” Ends July 4. “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.” Ends July 31. “Pastel Portraits: Images of 18th-Century Europe.” Ends Aug. 14. “Poetry in Clay: Korean Buncheong Ceramics from
Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art.” Ends Aug. 14. “Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective.” Ends Aug. 28. “Drawings & Prints: Selections from the Permanent Collection.” Ends Sept. 11. “The Andean Tunic, 400 BCE–1800 CE.” Ends Sept. 18. “Night Vision: Photography After Dark.” Ends Sept. 18. “Anthony Caro on the Roof.” Ends Oct. 30. “Historic Images of the Greek Bronze Age: The Reproductions of E. Gilliéron & Son.” Ends Nov. 13. “After the Gold Rush.” Ends Jan. 2, 2012, 1000 5th Ave., metmuseum.org. MoMA PS1: “Ryan Trecartin: Any Ever.” June 19– Sept. 3, 22-25 Jackson Ave., Queens, ps1.org. Montclair Art Museum: “Warhol & Cars: American Icons.” Ends June 19. “Will Barnet: A Centennial Celebration.” Ends July 17. “Robert Mapplethorpe Flowers.” Ends July 17. Will Barnet: A Centennial Celebration.” Ends July 17. “Engaging with Nature: American & Native American Artists (A.D. 1200-2004).” Ends Sept. 25. “What Is Portraiture?” Ends Nov. 4. “Motor Lodge: An Installation by Dan Funderburgh.” Ends Fall 2012, 3 S. Mountain Ave., Montclair, N.J., montclair-art.com. The Morgan Library & Museum: “The Age of Elegance: The Joan Taub Ades Collection.” Ends Aug. 28. “Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France & the Netherlands.” Ends Sept. 4. “Jim Dine: The Gliptotek Drawings.” Ends Sept. 4. “Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, & Other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.” Ends Oct. 2, 225 Madison Ave., themorgan.org. El Museo del Barrio: “The (S) Files 2011.” Ends Jan. 8, 2012, 1230 5th Ave., elmuseo.org. Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology: “Hurly-Burly.” Ends July 12. “Sporting Life.” Ends Nov. 5, 7th Ave. at W. 27th St., fitnyc.edu. Museum of American Finance: “Alexander Hamilton: Lineage & Legacy.” Ends July 12. “Scandal! Financial Crime, Chicanery & Corruption That Rocked America.” Ends Oct. 29, 48 Wall St., moaf.org. Museum of Arts & Design: “Judy Chicago Tapestries: Woven by Audrey Cowan.” Ends June 19. “A Bit of Clay on the Skin: New Ceramic Jewelry.” Ends Sept. 4. “Otherworldly: Optical Delusions & Small Realities.” Ends Sept. 18. “Stephen Burks: Are You A Hybrid?” Ends Oct. 2. “Flora & Fauna, MAD about Nature.” Ends Nov. 6, 2 Columbus Cir., madmuseum.org. Museum of Chinese in America: “Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands & Mind.” Ends Sept. 5. “Unearthing: Works in Clay & Mixed Media by Carole Wong Chesek.” Ends Sept. 19, 215 Centre St., mocanyc.org. Museum of the City of New York: “Moveable Feast: Fresh Produce & the NYC Green Cart Program.” Ends July 10. “Joel Grey: A New York Life.” Ends Aug. 7. “The American Style: Colonial Revival & The Modern Metropolis.” Ends Oct. 30, 1220 5th Ave., mcny.org. Museum of Jewish Heritage: “Last Folio: A Photographic Journey with Yuri Dojc.” Ends late summer. “Fire in My Heart: The Story of Hannah Senesh.” Ends Aug. 7. “The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service.” Ends Sept. 5, 36 Battery Pl., mjhnyc.org. Museum of Modern Art: “Young Architects Program 2011.” June 22–Sept. 19. “194X–9/11: American Architects & The City.” July 1–Jan. 2, 2012. “German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse.” Ends July 11. “Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception.” Ends Aug. 1. “Impressions of South Africa, 1965 to Now.” Ends Aug. 14.
“Boris Mikhailov: Case History.” Ends Sept. 5. “I Am Still Alive: Politics & Everyday Life in Contemporary Drawing.” Ends Sept. 19. “Projects 95: Runa Islam.” Ends Sept. 19. “Crafting Genre: Kathryn Bigelow.” Ends Oct. 3. “Cy Twombly: Sculpture.” Ongoing. “Figure in the Garden.” Ongoing, 11 W. 53rd St., moma.org. Museum of the Moving Image: “Jim Henson’s Fantastic World.” July 16–Jan. 16, 2012. “Two by Ken Jacobs.” Ends July 7. Chiho Aoshima: “City Glow.” Ends July 17. “Trash Mirror.” Ends Aug. 15. “Behind the Screen.” Ongoing, 36-01 35th Ave., Queens, movingimage.us. New Museum: “Ostalgia.” July 14–Sept. “Lynda Benglis.” Ends June 19. “Shirana Shahbazi.” Ends June 19. “After Hours: Murals on the Bowery.” Ends July 2. “Apichatpong Weerasethakul: Primitive.” Ends July 3. “Gustav Metzger: Historic Photographs.” Ends July 3. “Museum as Hub.” Ends July 3. “Isa Genzken: Rose II (2007).” Ends Nov. 13, 235 Bowery, newmuseum.org. The New York Public Library: “Celebrating 100 Years.” Ends December 31, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 5th Ave. at 42nd St., exhibitions.nypl.org/100. Rubin Museum of Art: “Pilgrimage & Faith.” July 1–Oct. 24. “Body Language: The Yogis of India & Nepal.” Ends July 4. “Patterns of Life: The Art of Tibetan Carpets.” Ends Aug. 22. “Quentin Roosevelt’s China.” Ends Sept. 19. “Masterworks: Jewels of the Collection.” Ends Dec. 31, 2012, 150 W. 17th St., rmanyc.org. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: “Lee Ufan: Marking Infinity.” June 24–Sept. 28. “A Year With Children.” Ends June 15. “Hans-Peter Feldman.” Ends Nov. 2. “Kandinsky at the Bauhaus, 1922-1933.” Ongoing, 1071 5th Ave., guggenheim.org. Studio Museum: “Stephen Burks: Man Made.” Ends June 26. “Benjamin Patterson: In the State of FLUX/us: Scores.” Ends June 26. “Sculpted, Etched & Cut: Metal Works from the Permanent Collection.” Ends June 26. “Collected. Vignettes.” Ends June 26. “VideoStudio: Playback.” Ends June 26. “StudioSound: Ojo.” Ends June 26. “Harlem Postcards Spring 2011.” Ends June 26, 144 W. 125th St., studiomuseum.org. Wave Hill: “Bronx Calling: The First AIM Biennial.” June 26–Sept. 5. “Alchemy & Inquiry: Philip Taaffe, Fred Tomaselli, Terry Winters.” Ends June 19. “Claudia Weber.” Ends June 19, W. 249th St. at Independence Ave., Bronx, wavehill.org. Whitney Museum of American Art: “Lionel Feininger: At the Edge of the World.” June 30–Oct. 16. “Xavier Cha: Body Drama.” Opens June 30. “Dianna Molzan: Bologna Meissen.” Ends June 19. “Cory Arcangel: Pro Tools.” Ends Sept. 11. “Breaking Ground: The Whitney’s Founding Collection.” Ends Sept. 18. “Designing the Whitney of the Future.” Ongoing, 945 Madison Ave., whitney.org.
Auctions Bonhams: Fine Jewelry. June 15, 12. Salon Jewelry.
June 15, 2. Fine Watches & Wristwatches. June 16, 1. Fine Books & Manuscripts. June 22, 2. The Golden Age of Illustration Art. June 22, 11. Modern Illustration Art. June 22, 11. Furniture & Decorative Arts. June 23, 1, 580 Madison Ave., bonhams.com. Christie’s: Important Watches. June 15, 10 a.m. & 2:30. Important 20th Century Decorative Art & Design. June 16, 10 a.m. Christie’s Interiors. June 21 & 22. Fine Printed Books &
Manuscripts. June 23, 10 a.m., 20 Rockefeller Plz., christies.com. Doyle New york: Doyle at Home & The Hirschfeld Sale. June 22, 10 a.m. Fine Jewelry. June 23, 10 a.m., 175 E. 87th St., doylenewyork.com iGavel: Online auctions of fine art, antiques & collectibles from a network of independent sources, igavelauctions.com. roGallery.com: Fine art buyers & sellers in online live art auctions, rogallery.com. Sotheby’S: Important 20th Century Design. June 15, 10 a.m. Fine Books & Manuscripts. June 17, 10 a.m., 1334 York Ave., sothebys.com. SwaNN auctioN GallerieS: Discovery Sale. June 23, 10 a.m., 104 E. 25th St., swanngalleries.com.
Art EvEnts americaN craftS feStival: The 35th annual festival
features 400 master artisans displaying & selling an estimated $40 million worth of original creations, plus food, live music & craft-making demonstrations. Ends June 19, Lincoln Center Plaza, craftsatlincoln.org; times vary, free. artiStS-iN-reSiDeNce work & Show feStival: BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center presents dance, music & theater performances by 6 emerging & re-emerging artists with new works developed over the past year as part of PAC’s AIR hallmark program. Ends June 19, 199 Chambers St., tribecapac.org; 7:30, $10+. chelSea art Gallery tour: Enjoy a guided tour of this week’s top 7 gallery exhibits in the world’s center for contemporary art. June 25, 526 W. 26th St., nygallerytours.com; 1, $20. lower eaSt SiDe art Gallery tour: Enjoy a guided tour of this week’s top 7 gallery exhibits in the downtown center for contemporary art. June 18, 196 Bowery, nygallerytours.com; 1, $20. the PlaNet coNNectioNS theatre feStivity: The eco-friendly, socially-conscious theater festival works with non-profits & uses green theater practices to present over 50 productions. Ends June 26, planetconnections.org; times, prices & locations vary. SileNt echoeS: The Rubin Museum presents Bill Fontana’s meditative sound installation capturing the reverberations of five famous Buddhist temples in Kyoto—& ambient noises in the environment—while they’re not ringing, with corresponding high-resolution projections. Ends Aug. 14, rmanyc.org/silentechoes; see website for schedule, $10.
Music & OpErA avery fiSher hall: 300 Musicians perform the
New York premiere of Georgi Andreev’s “A Melancholy Beauty,” a choral-orchestral work commemorating the historic rescue of Bulgaria’s 49,000 Jews from the Holocaust. June 26, 10 Lincoln Center Plz., lincolncenter.org; 3, $50+. barGemuSic: Parthenia & special guests Ryland Angel & Daniel Swenberg perform “A Renaissance Songbook,” with early English art songs for viols, lutes & countertenor. June 26, Fulton Ferry Landing, Brooklyn, bargemusic. org; 3, $35. catheDral of St. JohN the DiviNe/St. JameS chaPel: Southern Italian folk music, dance & theater company I Giullari di Piazza & Brazilian guest percussionist Dende perform in “Honoring the Sea Goddess,” with Neapolitan, Sicilian, AfroBrazilian, Afro-Cuban & Dominican music. June 18, 1047 Amsterdam Ave., stjohndivine. org/seagoddess.html; 8, $25. church of the moSt holy reDeemer: Viol ensemble Sonnambula performs in “Fantasies to the Organ,” with works by Purcell, Ferrabosco II
& others. June 26, 173 E. 3rd St., sonnambula. org; 7, $15. GalaPaGoS art SPace: The Yale Percussion Group performs virtuosic works by David Lang & Steve Reich as part of the Yale in New York series. June 22, 16 Main St., Brooklyn, galapagosartspace.com; 7:30, $15. metroPolitaN oPera: In conjunction with the City Parks Foundation, The Met’s 2011 Summer Recital Series features 6 free performances of arias & duets from different operas, at outdoor locations throughout the city. July 11–28, metopera.org/parks. morNiNGSiDe Park: Miller Theatre at Columbia University School of the Arts presents the openair premiere of John Luther Adam’s “Inuksuit,” a large-scale piece for 99 percussionists, as part of Make Music New York. June 21, Morningside Dr. at 110th St., millertheatre.com; 5, free. mouNt verNoN hotel muSeum & GarDeN: Grace Cloutier performs classic harp songs. Tickets include museum tour & complimentary beverage. July 12, 421 E. 61st St., mvhm.org; 6, $20. New york New church: Martin Halpern presents new one-act operas—“The Lock of Hair” & “The Dwarf Trees”—inspired by Japanese Noh dramas & produced in a Western style. June 23–25, 114 E. 35th St., 718-858-1549; 8, $20. St. GreGory the Great catholic church: Musical Dream presents a charity concert with Jason Hart performing piano works by Schubert, Chopin & Gershwin. June 29, 144 W. 90th St., musicaldream.com; 7, $20 suggested donation. teNri cultural ceNter: The New Spectrum Foundation presents “Hue for Two: Mari Kimura & Stephen Gosling,” with classical & experimental works for violin & piano. June 25, 43A W. 13th St., smarttix.com; 8, $15.
JAzz 55 bar: The Sean Smith Quartet plays music from
their new CD, “Trust.” July 6, 55 Christopher St., 55bar.com; 7, no cover. birDlaND: Samsom Schmitt, Andreas Oberg, Joel Frahm, Anat Cohen & others perform in “Django in June” as part of the Django Reinhardt NY Festival. June 28–July 3, 315 W. 44th St., birdlandjazz.com; 8 & 11, $30+. the JohN birkS GilleSPie theater: Lou Volpe, guitar, performs with Onaje Allan Gumbs, Buddy Williams & others. June 21, NYC Baha’i Center, 53 E. 11th St., bahainyc.org; 8, $15. mileS café: Eliane Amherd performs music from her new CD “Now & From Now On.” June 23, 212 E. 52nd St., 3rd Fl., milescafe.com/ ny; 8:30, $19.99 cover includes free edamame, popcorn & beverages. mouNt verNoN hotel muSeum & GarDeN: Svetlana Shmulyian & Misha Fatkiev perform a free hour of afternoon jazz in the garden, as part of “Make Music New York.” June 21, 421 E. 61st St., mvhm.org; 4:30, free. roSe theater: Jimmie Vaughan, W.C. Clark & Lou Ann Barton perform in the 2nd annual Texas Blues Summit. June 16, Frederick P. Rose Hall, Broadway at W. 60th St., jalc.org; 8, $10+. the towN hall: Vocalist Dee Dee Bridgewater & guest artist Chrisette Michelle perform “To Billie With Love: A Celebration of Lady Day,” a Blue Note Jazz Festival Event. June 24, 123 W. 43rd St., the-townhall-nyc.org. water Street reStauraNt & louNGe: PitchBlak brass band performs their unique, dance-friendly fusion of jazz, funk, rock, hip-hop, reggae & other genres. June 21, 66 Water St., Brooklyn, pitchblakbrass.blogspot.com; 4, free.
Brussels: A Food (and Beer) Capital By Dan Kole Brussels may be for beer lovers—there are as many varieties of beer as there are places to drink them—but all that imbibing (and Belgian fry with mayonnaise-eating) shouldn’t preclude you from engaging with any of Brussels’ equally storied attractions. In fact, you can do both simultaneously—there are no open container laws on the streets. An ideal way to get to Brussels is on American Airlines nonstop Flight 172, which departs from John F. Kennedy International Airport at 6:25 p.m., arriving at Brussels at 7:55 a.m. the following morning. The flight uses a Boeing 757 aircraft with 16 seats in the Business Class Cabin and 166 seats in Coach. Any 20- and 30-year-olds in your party will want to be aware that Belgium is fast becoming the destination in Europe for their set. Generation Xers are flocking to cities like Brussels for stylish, inexpensive hotels, great food and a pulsating nightlife. Why not start by checking out the Atomium, the futuristic tourist attraction left over from the 1958 World’s Fair? There is also a permanent exhibition dedicated to EXPO 58, which is worth a look. From the upper sphere of the Atomium you’ll have a spectacular view of the city, if you wait until evening, it is even more more gorgeous due to the 2,970 lights of the evening light show. Don’t forget to get your picture at the Manneken Pis, the iconic Brussels statue of a little boy “relieving himself.” No one will believe you if you miss it, plus the statue is only a few hundred meters away from the Grand Place, the most visited tourist site in Brussels. And for good reason: It has a rich, thousand-yearplus history and a seemingly endless amount of shops and restaurants, many with outdoor seating. This is a great spot to finally got your hands on some of Brussels’ famous Belgian waffles—try the charming hole-in-the-wall called The Waffle Factory. Of course, no trip to Brussels would be complete without a stop at the Magritte Museum, and so after polishing off some waffles walk the 10 minutes to the museum. Magritte spent the largest portion of his life in Brussels, in the house the museum now calls home. Check out Magritte’s old couches as well as some of the other surrealists the museum has on display: Paul Delvaux, Rachel Baes, et al.
The Atomium
Having worked up an appetite by now, we made our way to the popular Les Brassins, where we indulged in a number of Belgian delicacies before sampling a few of the 50 different types of beer available. Try the Kriek, rabbit stewed in flavored beer; or indulge in stoemp, a popular Belgian stew. The following day, pay a visit to Cathedral St. Michel, the thousand-year-old church best known as the home of the Grenzing Great Organ (it has a total of 4,000 pipes). If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll hear someone actually play it. All of our musical needs were sated, however, by an afternoon spent at Le Theatre de la Monnaie, a still-vibrant reminder of Brussels’ rich operatic past. (In the 1700s, Brussels was second only to Paris as a European opera hub.) As the leading opera house of Belgium, the beautifully designed theater plays host to some of Europe’s finest musicians. Having dutifully consumed our cultural vegetables, we thought it an appropriate time for dessert. Pierre Marcolini proved to be a sort of chocolate Chanel, or Belgium Godiva— name another chocolate destination in the world with seasonal collections made from the cocoa bean. They were expensive, natch, but worth every penny. Plus, the view from Egmont Park, where you can eat your chocolate, was 100 percent free. The government describes Egmont as “an imaginary country or island cut from the urban world.” They’re right. In the final hours of our journey, we gave in to temptation and visited Cantillion—one of the oldest breweries in Brussels. We spent time in each of the brewery’s eight rooms, reflecting on our trip—and making plans for the next one. The aura of Brussels was very much with us then we boarded or return Flight 171on American departing from Brussels at 10 a.m., arriving at JFK at 12:30 p.m. It was all the more enjoyable because we had booked in the 757’s sumptuous Business Class cabin.
June 15, 2011 | City Arts
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WINE
New World Meets Southern Rhone Hearty and sassy grapes result in new take on undiscovered classic
By Josh Perilo The Cline Cellars Viognier 2009 is a uring summertime, it’s easy to wax great introduction to anyone nervous about romantic on the quality (and need) trying something new. The scents from the for sparkling wines. They’re one of glass may remind you that this wine is from the most refreshing ways to deal with hot, an area known for big-bodied Chardonnay, muggy weather. But I also want to take with lots of mango and pineapple. On the some time to talk about an interesting trend palate, however, there are no buttery or that’s really pleased me and hopefully help vanilla-laden notes. It’s all lush tropical fruit it along. with more mango and papaya flavors up For the last couple of decades, the front, and a refreshing grapefruit and green Southern Rhone Valley in France has been herb finish. known in the U.S. for a handful of red Now, for those strange varietals that I wines, most notably the Châteauneuf-dumentioned before that you may not have Pape. This red import is actually a blend heard of: Marsanne and Roussanne. In of many grapes (there are 13 permitted to the blends that hail from the Rhone, these be used, actually), with the major players grapes are the more complex varietals of being Grenache, Syrah and Mourvedre. the bunch. They tend to be used to add In the American marketplace, this wine perfume and floral accents, while the is essentially the mascot for that lush and Viognier delivers most of the fruit. In hilly southeastern French region: big, spicy Australia, this equation has been turned reds with a lot of fruit that are great on their on its head with the John Duval Plexus own, but match well with food. White Marsanne roussanne Viognier More and more, however, I’ve been 2010. The two lesser-known grapes take starting to see the other side of the Southern center stage. The nose starts with powerful Rhone showing up in wine stores. I’m scents of lilac and lavender. The palate, speaking of the underrepresented white while not overly fruity, gives up some wines from the Southern Rhone. Like the reds, these wines are blends as These are not your typical well. The major grapes that are used here are crisp, chill-to-freezerViognier, Marsanne and Roussanne. These are not temperature white wines. These your typical crisp, chill-toare big and bold with lots of freezer-temperature white body and character; wines that wines. These are big and bold with lots of body and could wrestle any Cali Chard to character; wines that could the ground without the help wrestle any Cali Chard to the ground without the of an oak barrel. help of an oak barrel. What I noticed at this tasting, however, wasn’t a proliferation of grapefruit in the middle, but it is the herbal white Rhone wines, but of the white Rhone front-of-palate, and the peppery finish, that varietals being transplanted and grown in are the main event here. New World areas. California and Australia In the U.S., we’ve taken the underdog are starting to churn out their own versions and lifted it up as well. The Zaca Mesa of these hearty and sassy grapes, and the roussanne 2007 shows what this result is a refreshing new take on an old and underappreciated grape can do by itself. undiscovered classic. Scents of orchid, magnolia and papaya leap This week I’ll discuss some of the more out, but the floral notes really jump on the interesting findings in these New World palate. Wildflower bouquet up front gives areas, and hopefully turn you on to these way to notes of endive and mango with a excellent wines, as well. mild, white pepper finish. To start with the most well known of So, when you reach for a bottle of these varietals, Viognier has already begun white to pair with those grilled scallops to stake its claim in the American wine at your summer barbeque this year, try market. Sometimes unfairly thought of as an something other than your typical California alternative to a full-bodied Chardonnay, this Chardonnay. You may be pleasantly grape definitely has an identity of its own. surprised! <
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June 15, 2011 | City Arts
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PainttheTOWN
By Amanda Gordon
AT LEFT: Jon Bon Jovi and Ron Perelman, chairman and CEO of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc. AT RIGHT:Michael Douglas.
New York’s FiNest Ron Perelman slipped on the shiny black jacket, turned around to show off its gold “NYPD” letters on the back, and raised both arms in triumph, to whoops and hollers. The chairman and chief executive officer of MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc. was on the stage of the Waldorf Astoria ballroom June 3 as the honoree of the New York City Police Foundation’s 40th anniversary gala. Backed by firms like JPMorgan Chase (which recently donated $4.6 million for technology modernization), and individuals such as Mark Kingdon, president and founder of Kingdon Capital Management LLC, the foundation supports NYPD initiatives such as Crime Stoppers and the International Liaison Program, which sends officers abroad to share their expertise with other police forces. Perelman, who has supported the foundation for two decades, wore the NYPD jacket for the duration of the event, which he spent mingling at a table covered in dark blue satin and decorated with white hydrangeas in a gold box. Across from him sat Jon Bon Jovi, in a shiny gray suit, sipping tea before his performance with the New York City Police Band. Perelman played the drums alongside Bon Jovi, whom he described as “one of my closest friends in the world.” Other friends of Perelman’s on hand were Michael Douglas, director Penny Marshall, Steve Guttenberg, Kevin Jonas and Chevy Chase, all of whom politely abandoned their chicken and sweet pea risotto to pose for photographs with star-struck guests. Chase had a blanket compliment for all New York City police officers. “I’ve always loved New York cops,” he said standing near the bar at the cocktail reception earlier in the evening. “They have a sense of humor, they’re slovenly, but you know that they can save your life in a second.” Valerie Salembier, chairman of New York City Police The event drew 700 guests and raised almost $2.3 million. Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, was a sponsor. Foundation Inc. and publisher of Town and Country magazine.
theY MeaN BusiNess
Robin Gil and Kaitlyn Axelrod with Andy Dunn, cofounder and CEO, Bonobos.
The phrase “Let’s do it” from a Black Eyed Peas song blared June 8 in the ballroom of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square. It was cheesy yet fitting accompaniment for the “Parade of Finalists” at the New York edition of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition. Thirty-eight hopeful entrepreneurs walked across the stage under bright lights, among them Anthony Scaramucci, managing partner of SkyBridge Capital LLC, Michael Sepso, co-founder of Major League Gaming Inc., and Andy Dunn, co-founder of Bonobos Inc., dressed in a flamboyant pair of the company’s pants, as well as a Bonobos tuxedo jacket (Italian gabardine wool with polka-dot silk lining) and shirt. “We want to look good but we don’t like to shop,” said Dunn in a private moment, explaining why men have gravitated to the Bonobos website to outfit Alastair Ong, co-founder of GreenSoul Shoes, themselves (short shorts in bright colors are the look of summer, he added). and Iris Chau. Some of the winners were announced before the short ribs and cake were served, others after. All got to see themselves memorialized in videos featuring footage of them answering the phone or working at their computer or giving an employee a pat on the back, livened up with snippets of loud dance music. The diversity of the finalists was impressive, reflecting the diversity of New York, said one of the judges, Robert Johnston, chief executive of the Executive Council, which operates the New York Venture Capital Association. Part of the fun of the event was meeting the people behind some clever ideas. Finalist Jeffrey Levy’s company RailWorks Corp. built the system that tells you when the trains are arriving on New York City subway platforms. Finalist Alastair Ong’s GreenSoul Shoes manufactures footwear from recycled materials. Chaim Indig, co-founder of Phreesia, developed a tablet that allows patients to enter their information in the computer system of hospitals and doctor’s offices.
Courtesy of Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News; agordon01@bloomberg.net. Photos by Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg
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