cityArts July 13, 2010

July 13-AUG. 2, 2010 Volume 2, Issue 12

Plus: The second half of our Summer Short List, Sally Potter’s Orlando returns to the big screen and Roy Lichtenstein: Still Life at Gagosian.

IN THIS ISSUE ART SPIEGLEMAN collaborates with Pilobolus for a new type of dance

John Kane

STORM KING turns 50 Pilobolus presents Hapless Hooligan in ‘Still Moving.’

Bard SummerScape revives The Chocolate Soldier

InthisIssue SHOWS AVENUE defined by quality and design

Antiques & Art at the Armory The Park Avenue Armory 643 Park Avenue | New York City

Save The Date September 29, 2010 | Private VIP Opening September 30-October 3, 2010 Open to the Public

6 The Summer Short List

The second half of our picks of the events and activities you don’t want to miss in New York and beyond.

10 Spiegelman Gets Pilobolized JERRY PORTWOOD speaks with cartoonist Art Spiegelman about his collaboration with Pilobolus.

12 Classical & Opera JAY NORDLINGER on the final weeks of the New York Philharmonic’s season. Plus, JONATHAN LEAF examines the revival of The Chocolate Soldier at Bard SummerScape.

13 Storm King Turns 50 MAUREEN MULLARKEY strolls the outdoor sculpture garden for the Arts Center’s anniversary.

14 At the Galleries Reviews: Roy Lichtenstein: Still Life at Gagosian; New York Moments group show at George Billis Gallery; Fairfield Porter at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery; Default State Network at Morgan Lehman Gallery.

16 Arts Agenda Galleries, Art Events, Out of Town.

For details & show information please visit avenueshows.com or call 646.442.1627

Rocaille Silver-Gilt Marine Salt Cellars by Garrard, detail.

—M.S. Rau Antiques

19 Paint the Town by Amanda Gordon Talking to Creative Time groupies about summer plans; David Remnick at the gala for Seeds of Peace International Camp; and WNET.ORG’s Gala Salute at the Plaza remakes Casablanca.

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InBrief

Tilda Swinton in Sally Potter’s Orlando.

A Different Potter Onscreen

For many reasons, Orlando is director Sally Potter’s best film. An adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s novel by the same name about an immortal man who changes his sex, the film version of Orlando is being re-released theatrically by Sony Pictures Classics later this month. It’s the sharpest expression of Potter’s fascination with role-playing and performing for others, and was a breakout role for the bewitching Tilda Swinton.

Potter’s films are haunted by characters that need to re-appropriate his/her images, and many of them are currently screening at MoMA as part of a two-week retrospective.

Beginning with early short films like “Jerk” (1969) and “Play” (1970), Potter deconstructed methods of seeing dance and performance by intercutting and overlaying still images and film footage of figures in motion and at rest. Potter would later film and direct a production of Bizet’s Carmen for the English National Opera in 2007 shot from multiple camera angles, and presented via a split-screen that breaks up action onstage and off into various different points-of-view that compete simultaneously for the viewer’s attention.

Encouraging the viewer from their traditional role as passive spectators towards active participants is Potter’s constant goal. In her 1997 romantic drama The Tango Lesson, she literally inserts herself into her fictive world by playing Sally, a creatively blocked filmmaker that uses the tango as a means of expressing her frustration. During one of the film’s sweeping tango sequence, the camera whirls about Potter and her partner in such a frenzy that it seems to almost embrace them like a third dancer that’s dying to cut in.

Rage, Potter’s most recent film (and the film the character of Sally is working on in

The Tango Lesson), is her most experimental work, a drama released both in theaters and in serialized installments for cell phones.

A blogger named Michelangelo, who is never seen or heard throughout the movie, interviews various personalities—from Eddie Izzard’s Donald Trump-quoting entrepreneur to Jude Law’s transvestite fashion model—in front of a bluescreen at a fashion show that turns deadly. The camera bobs up and down with a life of its own, hovering as if to prove just how unfettered it is.

While formally intriguing, these confessional scenes just serve to remind viewers that Potter has never quite matched the dazzling promise she showed in Orlando.

That earlier film defied convention at every turn, casting flamboyant English raconteur Quentin Crisp as Queen Elizabeth and daring to lose its viewers by plowing ahead without explaining too much of Orlando’s fickle, timejumping plot. It remains Potter’s most exciting story of performative transformation and the one that best speaks to her consummate willingness to experiment. [Simon Abrams] A retrospective of Sally Potter’s films screens through July 21 at MoMA, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400.

Orlando re-releases July 23 at Lincoln Plaza Cinema.

Careers are Made HERE

When the recession hit, many people started losing their heads and wondering if it was the end of times. Others simply shrugged.

An uncertain future was a familiar concept for many writers, artists and performers—none of whom were hardly ill-equipped to deal with a shaky economic landscape.

That can-do spirit is currently being explored in HERE Arts Center’s new video series, Made HERE. A collection of short films that explore a single topic each, Made HERE features a diverse assortment of NYC performers July 13, 2010 | City Arts

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InBrief from all five boroughs, talking about what their craft requires of them. Every month, a new episode premieres at a screening (which includes a talkback that often continues on at a nearby bar), before being made available online, where further audience interaction is encouraged. And so far, response has been positive.

“We spend a lot of time as a group speaking of challenges artists face,” HERE’s artistic director Kristin Marting says. “I wanted other people to see these things that we were talking about as a community, and so we started talking about how to empower a bigger group to look at these issues.”

Along the way, Marting and her team enlisted documentary filmmakers Tanya Selvaratnam and Chiara Clemente to bring the vision to life. Blessed with a Rockefeller Grant, HERE worked quickly, and, in slightly over a year from the time discussions about the project began, the first season was in the can.

Covering topics Marting, the staff at HERE and other advisors deemed the most important challenges facing artists today— from the sometimes necessary evil of working a paying job to afford their ambitions to the importance of finding a balance between love and work—the series speaks not only to other struggling (and even established) artists, but to their fans. As Marting says, “The general public doesn’t have a sense of how similar the challenges artists face are to their challenges.

And what artists are trading off.”

Of course, New York City isn’t the only city with a thriving arts scene, even if it can feel as if we’re at the center of everything.

Marting, for one, would love to see other cities pick up the Made HERE model and apply it to their own resident performers. The life of a performing artist is hard enough without having a forum to discuss the challenges facing them; at least Made HERE can ensure that their voices are being heard. [Mark Peikert] View the Made HERE series at www.madehereproject.org.

Strung Together

At first glance, Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich and young American composer Gabriela Lena Frank appear to have little in common. Shostakovich’s Soviet-era portraits are a world away from Frank’s depictions of Peruvian indigenous culture. But violinist Shem Guibbory thinks the two are a perfect match.

“Both are looking at what happens to people who are squished by dominating forces,” Guibbory explained, speaking from the stage at Joe’s Pub during a June 27 release concert for his new CD, Voice of the People, which features both composers.

At the event, Guibbory played a 2006 violin made by New York-based luthier Charles Rufino, and presented an amalgam of musicians and art. The musical offerings

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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com

went from the standard—piano preludes

by Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich—to exuberant and folksy Venezuelan and Peruvian songs for combinations of percussion, piano, violin, flute and hammered dulcimer. Guibbory also premiered Douglas Cuomo’s “Slowly She Turned” with percussionist Rex Benincasa.

Throughout the event, Guibbory’s collaborators included jazz guitarist Sean Harkness, flautist Marco Granados and pianist Sonia Rubinsky. Alice Nakhimovsky, a professor of Russian studies at Colgate University, also spoke about two Russian statues, and Peruvian photographs were projected on a screen behind the stage.

The CD was recorded on the MSR classics label and begins with Frank’s “Sueños de Chambi” (2002), pieces for violin and piano based on the work of Peruvian photographer Martin Chambi. Also by Frank, “Cuatro Canciones Andinas” (1999) are songs for voice and piano with Peruvian influence.

The CD concludes with the Shostakovich violin sonata. While many consider the piece an enigma, Guibbory said he views it as a story about Shostakovich and violinist David Oistrakh. “They’re walking together as artists, trying to survive the minefield of politics and arts in the Stalin and post-Stalin years,” Guibbory explained when he was reached later by phone.

In addition to Guibbory, artists on the album include soprano Susanna Eyton-Jones and pianists Elizaveta Kopelman, Craig Ketter and Sonia Rubinsky.

Guibbory, who has been a member of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra since 1978 and was the original violinist of the Steve Reich ensemble, said that the event was representative of his goals as an artist. “My work lies in creating artistic communities, both in a small sense—like bringing together artists on a CD—and a larger sense of something like what you saw at Joe’s Pub,” he said. He is especially interested in multimedia work, and integrating video, photos and the visual arts with music.

The website of his company, Innovative Music Programs, for example, features minidocumentaries about the music on the CD. According to Guibbory, his next project was figuring out how to take events like the Joe’s Pub show to a larger level. “How do you capture this for a larger audience? Do we package it, market it and do it at 10 venues around the country?” he asked rhetorically. But his goals are much larger.

“I think ultimately you can heal some of the suffering that seems to be at the root of the human experience in our world today,” he said.

“I don’t mean this in a namby-pamby way, but in a pragmatic way… Through music and shared experiences, you can gain a greater sense of hope and possibility.” [Corinne Ramey] For more information visit www.innovativemusicprograms.com.

Not-So-Fun City

America’s Mayor: John V. Lindsay and the Reinvention of New York is, ostensibly, a look at a mayor who was chosen to lead the city out of urban decay, only to see it split apart.

But the exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York, accompanied by a book edited by New York Times reporter Sam Roberts and an hour-long PBS documentary, paints a portrait of a changing city that rarely gets explored in this much detail.

The late 1970s is arguably the most romanticized time of modern New York City—especially 1977, the year of the Koch v.

Cuomo mayor’s race, punk rock, disco, Son of Sam, the blackout, arson, the riots and the fiscal mess. Still, the Lindsay era, spanning 1966-1973, has some responsibility for the Koch era, for better or for worse.

“He comes in the midst of a wave in the process of transforming New York,” Sarah Henry, the exhibit’s curator, says of Lindsay.

“There was a sense that a change was going to come.”

Lindsay’s two terms in office coincide neatly with what we think of as “The Sixties,” the 10 years from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s that recalls student protests, Berkeley and hippies.

But in New York City, Lindsay, a liberal Upper East Side Republican who served in Congress before City Hall, had to address the problems that old Democratic politics didn’t solve. The exhibit shows how his policies seemed to inflame and alienate segments of the city, especially white middle-class New Yorkers.

Campaign paraphernalia, tabloid headlines, television reports and photographs illustrate the fever pitch over civil rights policies, labor relations and Lindsay’s social programs that earned him the derisive title “limousine liberal.”

Henry also acknowledges how the Lindsay administration physically changed New York City with zoning rules to create Europeaninfluenced street cafes and pedestrian-friendly blocks. Maps, scale models and pictures of Lindsay studying development plans show his thumbprint on the city, including the Theater District and South Street Seaport.

Before the exhibit opened, historians were skeptical, anticipating a whitewash of Lindsay’s career, which sputtered to an end after lackluster campaigns for president and U.S. Senate. But Henry doesn’t quite let Lindsay get the last word. His claim that New York was still a “fun city,” or his supporters’ insistence that he kept the city’s racial tensions “cool,” never overshadow the curator’s portrayal of New York in the middle of a tumultuous transformation.

“We wanted to use the lens of his mayoralty as a window,” Henry says, “into society, culture and politics.” [Dan Rivoli] Through Oct. 3, Museum of the City of New York, 1220 5th Ave., 212-5341672; $6 to $10.

art books Lives of the Hudson,

by Ian Berry and Tom Lewis The Hudson River, one of our nation’s most famous bodies of water, has been a lifeline to New York and the Northeast since the settlement of our founding fathers. Lives of the Hudson explores the history of the river and how we have come to rely on it over the past 200 years. This 224-page compilation gives a renewed vision of the river by intertwining the literature of Rick Moody, Carolyn Forche, John Stilgoe and others with works by contemporary artists such as Matthew Buckingham, Peter Hutton, Yvonne Jacquette and An-My Lê.

Poster Boy: The War of Art Poster Boy, the street artist known for chopping up and rearranging advertisements in subway stations, might currently be incarcerated, but the release of this book, which features some of his wittiest and most impressive work, will keep his fans on the outside satisfied.

Here the art-world vigilante showcases his notorious subway collage art, which ranges from bathroom humor to anti-consumerism sentiments to critiques of American morals; in one collage, Poster Boy combined pieces of two posters to criticize the government’s handling of 9/11 (the final product reads “Freedom drowned on September 11”). Poster Boy is sometimes juvenile, but this book showcases his most relevant and hard-hitting work.

Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork, edited by Jill Medvedow Formerly a museum guard and art handler, New York-based LeDray’s work will be showcased at The Whitney beginning Nov. 18, but you can get a peek at some of the artist’s best works—he specializes in exceptionally detailed miniatures— now with the release of this book. From his tiny men’s suits to “Milk and Honey,” a collection of 2,000 minuscule glazed vessels, LeDray’s art is astonishingly intricate and is shown here in detail that makes clear how much work goes into each piece. Use this gorgeous book, which is being released to coincide with workworkworkworkwork’s debut at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art, to brush up before the show hits New York. Also included are essays by Adam D. Weinberg, Jen Mergel and James Lingwood.

ArtsNews the famed architect created as part of a design competition, will open on Aug. 29 and run through October…

The Antique Jewelry and Watch Show hits town from July 23 through 26 this year, at The Metropolitan Pavilion.

Admission is $15 for all four days; tickets can be purchased online at www.newyorkantiquejewelryandwatchshow.com…

The 11th Annual Midtown Theater Festival is running through Aug. 1 and will feature 31 plays including The King of Bohemia: The Life and Times of Franz Kafka,

written and produced by Jeff Boles…

The New York Film Festival will open Sept. 24 with David Fincher’s The Social Network, the Aaron Sorkin-penned film, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, about the birth of Facebook…

The 14th New York International Fringe Festival has announced its schedule, which will feature 183 shows from 18 U.S. states and 14 international productions, and will kick off Aug. 13…

Opening July 17, the Brooklyn Water-

front Artists Coalition opens its annual summer exhibit; this year it’s entitled Red Hooked and features local artists in addition to a live acoustic music series, an all-day reception with the artists present and more.

For information, visit www.bwac.org...

The 52nd Street Project presents Now We’re Cookin’!: All the Plays You Can Eat July 23 through July 25 at 3 p.m. at the Project’s new Five Angels Theater, 789 10th Ave., 2nd floor. Admission is free, but reservations should be made in advance by calling 212-642-5052.

An untitled piece by Richard George at the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition Red Hooked exhibit.

The Prince Street Gallery’s celebration of its 40th anniversary might have ended July 10, but the catalog, featuring an introduction by the gallery’s founding president, Israel Hershberg, as well as over 75 pages of images from the gallery’s artists, is still available for only $10…

Lincoln Center has announced a new “Art and Architecture Tour,” an exhibit that boasts paintings, sculpture, limited-edition prints, posters and buildings, stretched across the venue’s 16-acre campus…

An art show benefiting Matty No Times (of Three Kings Tattoo) is scheduled for Sept. 9 at the YES Gallery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. The show will feature works from artists including Ed Hardy, Ethan Morgan and Chad Koeplinger…

The Whitney Museum of American Art has released a fall preview: upcoming exhibits will include Modern Life: Edward Hopper and His Time; Leo Friedlander: America by Car; and Off the Wall— Part 2 by Trisha Brown…

New Yorkers beware: The month of July gets spooky at the Museum of Art and Design when “Zombo Italiano: The Italian Zombie Film Movement” rolls into town from July 8 through 29. The series will showcase films such as Dawn of the Dead, Demons and Let Sleeping Corpses Lie… In a similar move, from Aug. 8 through Sept. 30, BAMCinematek will present a series entitled “Bela Lugosi’s Dead: Vampires Live Forever,” a collection of over 30 vampire films… The Jewish Museum has announced that Fish Forms: Lamps by Frank Gehry, a collection of lamps that July 13, 2010 | City Arts

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lthough you may be pining for the days to cool off, summer isn’t over quite yet.

The second installment in our must-see and must-do selections for the summer includes lots of jazz, a few unexpected dance performances and a whole lot of out-of-town delights. Enjoy!

who unknowingly falls in love with his test-tube daughter. Or choose from one of the three other performances in the third annual Performing Arts Marathon, which showcases new artists and small companies in dance, music and theater. Hard to Believe: July 18; other performances through July 25, IATI Theater, 64 E. 4th St., www.teatroiati.org; $20.

Shakespeare in the Park(ing) Lot What better setting for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar than a public school? And what better place for a production of Julius Caesar set in a public school than in a parking lot? The annual counterprogramming event to the Central Park Shakespeare is a hardscrabble, excellent way to enjoy the Bard (and no tickets or line-waiting necessary). July 29-Aug. 14, Municipal Parking Lot at the corner of Ludlow & Broome Sts., www.shakespeareintheparkinglot.com; Free.

Centrifugal Force: Hip Hop Generations in Front of Alice Tully Hall / Dance at Damrosch Park Bandshell Pick up some new moves at the performance, which combines street dancing with the grandeur of Lincoln Center. Be ready to walk, though: Dancers lead the audience through the fountain plaza to the steps of Alice Tully Hall. Once you get the beat, follow that up by moving over to the Damrosch Park Bandshell for a completely different dance experience: a reconstruction of Dance, with choreography by Lucinda Childs, film by Sol Lewitt and music by Philip Glass.

Aug. 15, Josie Robertson Plaza on Columbus Ave., www.lcoutofdoors.org; 5 & 7 p.m., Free.

Concerts at Columbia Miller Theatre at Columbia University offers two affordable, yet indulgent, concerts, featuring jazz, classical and many other of your favorite styles. Check out Wet Ink, the musical ensemble conducted by Carl Bettendorf, and the American Composers Orchestra, conducted by Gil Rose. July 23 & 24, Miller Theatre at Columbia University, Broadway at W. 116th St., www.millertheatre.com; $7-25.

Hard to Believe at the Performing Arts Marathon 2010 Film noir, Greek tragedy and soap opera combine for a comedy about a forgettable man

Harry Connick, Jr., in Concert on Broadway Have a hankering for some dreamy croonery? The Grammy Award-winner (and Tonynominated) singer shows up for an 11-performance concert engagement at the Neil Simon Theatre. July 15-26, The Neil Simon Theatre, 50 W. 52nd St., 800-745-3000; $50-$250.

Louis Screens at Apollo Theatre This silent film, directed by directed by Dan

Cool Music, Hot Clubs and Vice-Versa

By Howard Mandel t this mid-summer point, it’s pretty clear: We’re hot, jazz venues are ultra-air-conditioned, the music evokes dimensions beyond temperature. And then there are the open-air events. Here are two weeks of recommendations for all over Manhattan.

July 14-18, 9 & 11 p.m.: Jenny Scheinman, a uniquely dry, sly and edgy violinist, hasn’t yet revealed all she can do; Wilco guitarist Nels Cline is in her quartet Mischief & Mayhem. Village Vanguard, 7th Ave. South; $30.

July 15, 12:30 p.m.: Myron Walden, a determined and original multi-saxophonist who released five of his compositions in five contrasting sub-styles last year, leads his mellow—not to say smooth—ensemble In This World, at St. Peter’s Church, Lexington Ave. (at 54th St.); Free.

July 16-17, 8 p.m.: Arch-sensitive pianist Fred Hersch and Italian clarinetist Nico Gori elaborate on compositions to defy category and beg description at Kitano, 88 Park Ave. (at E. 38th St.); $25, $15 drink min.

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July 16, 9 p.m., 10:30 & midnight: Melvin Sparks, soul-guitar picker, brings his usually hard-bopping combo to the Lenox Lounge, 288 Malcolm X Blvd. (at 125th St.); $20.

July 17, 9 & 10:30 p.m.: Drummer Tony Moreno leads a top-flight modernist quintet, every nuance and leap from worthy soloists Ron Horton (trumpet), Marc Moomas (tenor sax) and keyboardist Gary Verace audible in Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia St.; $10.

July 18, 7 p.m.: Alto saxophonist Oliver Lake, bassist Mark Helias and drummer Andrew Cyrille offer abstractions inspired by sculptures and street noise. MoMA, 11 W. 53rd St.; Free.

July 19, 8 & 10 p.m.: Guitarists Doug Wamble and Charlie Hunter with the Les Paul (memorial) Trio. Wamble’s twang and Hunter’s two-part synchronicity provide a study in contrasts. Iridium, 1650 Broadway (at 50th St.), $30.

July 19, 7 p.m.: Chicago flutistcomposer Nicole Mitchell’s Truth or Dare trio among a cavalcade of breakthrough groups at The Local 269, a forthright music bar. 269 E.

Sally Cohn Photography

The Summer Short List: Part 2

Dance, choreographed by Lucinda Childs, is the final night performance of Lincoln Center Out of Doors.

Pritzker and starring Jackie Earle Haley and Shanti Lowry, is an homage to Louis Armstrong, Charlie Chaplin, and the birth of American music. The film will premiere at the historic theater with live music accompaniment by Wynton

Houston St.; $10.

July 20-24, 8:30 & 11 p.m.: The Maria Schneider Orchestra performs its leader’s precisely beautiful compositions during a five-night run at Birdland, 315 W. 44th St.; $30 cover.

July 20, 10 p.m.: Gunter Hampel, the European-born free-jazz dervish on vibes, flute, piano, whatever. Bowery Poets Café, 308 Bowery; $10 cover.

July 21, 8 p.m.: Elder statesman tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath titled his recently published autobiography I Walked With Giants, and gives trumpeter Jeremy Pelt, alto saxist Steve Wilson, trombonist Steve Davis, pianist Bill Charlap and drummer Lewis Nash the chance to walk with him, at the 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave. $20+.

July 22, 1 & 4 p.m.: Guitarist Mary Halvorson, NYC’s least-predictable improviser, takes on works by iconoclast Christian Marclay.

Whitney Museum, 945 Madison Ave.; $18.

July 23-25, 8 & 10 p.m.: Geri Allen, a pianist-composer of mysterious charms, debuts her newly recorded trio Timeline, featuring tap dancer Maurice Chestnut, at Iridium, 1650 Broadway (at 50th St.).

July 25, 8 p.m.: Peter Apfelbaum,

Marsalis and Cecile Licad and a 10-piece all-star jazz ensemble. Licad will play the music of 19thcentury American composer L.M. Gottschalk.

Aug. 30, The Apollo Theater, 253 W. 125th St., www.louisthemovie.com; 8, $38.50-$53.50.

tenor saxophone, in probing duet with pianist Marilyn Crispell. The Stone, Avenue C and 2nd St.; $10.

July 26, 7:30 & 9:30 p.m.: The Mingus Orchestra with Craig Handy and Ku-umba Frank Lacy, largest of three explosive ensembles keeping the bassist’s legacy alive.

The Jazz Standard, 116 E. 27th St.; $25 cover.

July 27, 8:30 & 11 p.m.: Charlie Haden, America’s rootsiest bassist, with his Quartet West featuring tenor saxophonist Ravi Coltrane, at Birdland, 315 W. 44th St. July 29, 8 p.m.: Not the last tango for saxophonist Gato Barbieri. B.B. King’s Blues Club and Grill, 237 W. 42nd St.; $40.

July 30, 12:30 p.m.: Armen Donelian, an elegant pianist with a wide-ranging repertoire at Bryant Park, 42nd St. at 6th Ave.; Free.

July 30, 9 & 10:30 p.m.: Drummer Ziv Ravitz’s rhapsodic international trio Minsarah, with bassist Jeff Denson and pianist Florian Weber. The Jazz Gallery, 290 Hudson St.; $15.

July 30, 8 & 10 p.m.: John Zorn’s Improv Night, where anything can happen, with Creative Music Studio founder Karl Berger among the guests at The Stone, Avenue C and 2nd St.; $20.

BARDSUMMERSCAPE july 8 – august 22, 2010

Bard SummerScape presents seven weeks of opera, dance, music, drama, film, cabaret, and the 21st annual Bard Music Festival, this year exploring the works and world of composer Alban Berg.

SummerScape takes place in the extraordinary Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts and other venues on Bard College’s stunning Mid-Hudson River Valley campus.

Opera

THE DISTANT SOUND (Der ferne Klang) July 30, August 1, 4, 6 Music and Libretto by Franz Schreker American Symphony Orchestra Conducted by Leon Botstein Directed by Thaddeus Strassberger

Schreker’s masterful melding of dramatic devices and cultural forces, along with his remarkable musical creativity, combine to make The Distant Sound one of the seminal works of 20th-century opera.

Theater JUDGMENT DAY July 14 – 25 By Ödön von Horváth Directed by Caitriona McLaughlin Set in a small town in 1930s Nazi Germany, Judgment Day is a riveting drama whose characters are divided by deceit, lust, bloodshed, and injustice. Horváth’s thrilling 1937 play was the runaway hit of London’s fall 2009 season.

Dance

For tickets: 845-758-7900 or fishercenter.bard.edu

Bard Music Festival Twenty-First Season

BERG AND HIS WORLD

August 13–15, 20–22 Two weekends of concerts, panels, and other events bring the musical world of Alban Berg vividly to life.

Operetta THE CHOCOLATE SOLDIER

Annandale-on-Hudson, New York

August 5–15 Music by Oscar Straus Conducted by James Bagwell Directed by Will Pomerantz

Film Festival PABST AND AMERICAN NOIR Thursdays and Sundays July 15 – August 19

Spiegeltent CABARET and FAMILY FARE July 8 – August 22

TRISHA BROWN DANCE COMPANY July 8, 9, 10, 11 Twelve Ton Rose (excerpt), Foray Forêt, You can see us, L’Amour au théâtre Choreography by Trisha Brown

Image © Peter Aaron/Esto

Berg and Vienna

weekend one Friday, August 13

program one

Saturday, August 14

program two program three

Sunday, August 15

program four program five program six

the bard music festival

Berg the European

weekend two Friday, August 20

program seven

Saturday, August 21

program eight program nine program ten

Sunday, August 22

Berg: The Path of Expressive Intensity Chamber works by Berg The Vienna of Berg’s Youth Chamber works by Zemlinsky, Webern, and others Mahler and Beyond American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor Orchestral works by Berg, Mahler, Korngold, and others Eros and Thanatos Chamber works by Berg, Schreker, Mahler, and others Teachers and Apostles Chamber works by Berg, Schoenberg, Wellesz, and others The Orchestra Reimagined Members of the American Symphony Orchestra Leon Botstein, conductor Orchestral works by Berg, Busoni, Hindemith, and others

twenty-first season

program eleven program twelve

“No Critics Allowed”: The Society for Private Performances Chamber works by Berg, Debussy, Reger, and others You Can’t Be Serious! Viennese Operetta and Popular Music Works by Berg, Sullivan, Lehár, Kálmán, and others Composers Select: New Music in the 1920s Chamber works by Berg, Gershwin, Toch, and others Modernism and Its Discontent American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor Orchestral works by Berg and Schmidt Between Accommodation and Inner Emigration: The Composer’s Predicament Works by Berg, Hartmann, Schoeck, and others Crimes and Passions American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, conductor Orchestral works by Berg, Hindemith, and Weill

Alban Berg in the Atelier Madame D’Ora, Wien, 1909. © ÖNB/Wien, 203481-D

BERG

and His World

The Bard Music Festival presents two extraordinary weeks of concerts, panels, and other special events that will explore the musical world of Alban Berg.

Tickets: $20 to $55 845-758-7900 fishercenter.bard.edu Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Summer Short List

New Season at

Living for Art: Works from the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection Features 50 gifts of minimal and conceptual art from the collection of this remarkable couple known more for their passion for art than for material wealth.

Opens September 24

Andy Warhol, Ads: Volkswagen, 1985, Acrylic and silk screen ink on linen, 22 x 22 in.

Warhol and Cars: American Icons Surveys for the first time Warhol’s enduring fascination with cars spanning his career from 1946 to 1985.

Opens February 4, 2011

All Museum programs are made possible, in part, by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Vance Wall Foundation, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and Museum Members. only 30 minutes from Manhattan visit montclairartmuseum.org for directions

Lucy Raven Film Screening at P.S. 1 Get over to Long Island City to take in these filmmakers’ (and many more artists’) recent work during Greater New York, the third quinquennial exhibition by P.S. 1. Tape installation artist Franklin Evans, video artist Kalup Linzy and visual artist Hank Willis Thomas are just a few more to see. While you’re there, check out the Young Architect’s Project installation in the courtyard. July 22: Lucy Raven screening, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, 22 Jackson Ave., www. ps1.org; $5-$10.

Rachel Shukert’s Reading of Everything Is Going to Be Great Laugh with the author herself as Shukert reads from her hilarious memoir, which chronicles her escapades through Europe in her twenties. July 27, McNally Jackson Books, 52 Prince St., www.mcnallyjackson.com; 7, Free.

McCoy Tyner at the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival The jazz pianist shares his improvisational style that has influenced countless artists. Other performers at the two-day festival include jazz saxophonist James Moody and vocalist Catherine Russell. Aug. 28 & 29, Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem and Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side; Free.

3 South Mountain Ave. Montclair, NJ 07042 | 973-746-5555 | montclairartmuseum.org

Final Performance of South Pacific Currently in its first Broadway revival, Bartlett Sher’s production of South Pacific dazzled audiences, wowed critics and won seven 2008 Tonys. If you haven’t seen it yet, you’d better hustle to the box office or order your tickets online before Aug. 22’s final show. Aug. 22, 50 Lincoln Center Plaza, www.lct.org; $75-125.

David LaChapelle at the Paul Kasmin Gallery Observe LaChapelle’s striking photography in American Jesus, an exhibit that allows viewers to observe all steps of his artistic process and execution. Photos will be shown alongside studies of the work, adding another level of depth to the viewing experience. His allegorical photography, filled with poignant and symbolic imagery, is sure to impress. July 13-Sept. 18, Paul Kasmin Gallery, 293 10th Ave., www.paulkasmingallery. com; Free.

See MacChin: The Lamentable Tragedie of Jay Leno at the Fringe Festival Don’t miss the opening of this Shakespearean take on the late-night television wars at the largest multi-arts festival in North America. The New York International Fringe Festival features 1,200 performances and is spread across several Manhattan neighborhoods. Aug. 14-27, Player’s Theatre, 115 MacDougal St., www.fringenyc.org; $18.

Houston Person’s Performance as Part of Jazzmobile Vocal Competition Take in Person’s saxophone performance at

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City Arts | cityartsnyc.com

Grant’s Tomb on July 28, which is sure to leave you hungry for more ragtime tunes. Luckily, New York City’s longest-running major jazz festival has one scheduled nearly every day for the rest of the summer. July 28, Grant’s Tomb, Riverside Drive and W. 122nd St., www.jazzmobile. org; Free.

The Peregrinations & Pettifoggery of W.C. Fields Despite (or perhaps because of) his hatred of women, children and dogs, W.C. Fields has a lot of fans. Take a trip to the Vincent Astor gallery and learn why. The exhibition features film, drawing, radio broadcasts, assorted memorabilia and much more, all aimed at showing you why William Claude Dukenfield was so special; his renowned juggling skills are only part of the reason. Through Aug. 21, New York Public Library, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, www.nypl.org; Free.

Marriage of Convenience Performance at playgroundzero The one-man play offers a glimpse into the mind of a Welsh dramatist on the day Prince Charles married Diana, and helps describe the complex relationship between Wales and England. Marriage of Convenience is one of three distinct, avant-garde theater performances at playgroundzero. July 10, P.S. 122, 150 1st Ave., www.ps122.org; $15-20.

Present Tense: Arts of Contemporary Africa at Newark Museum Hop on the PATH train and check out the country’s first permanent collection of contemporary African art at the Newark Museum in New Jersey. The installation, taken from the museum’s own collection, includes works by nine artists with varied subject matter and mixed media. Ongoing, Newark Museum, 49 Washington St., Newark, N.J., www.newarkmuseum.org; $6-$10 suggested contribution.

Seaport Past & Future Believe it or not, the South Street Seaport is about more than just food and concerts, and August 4 is your last chance to learn its history in an engaging way. Through photos, models and various multi-media tools, come see how the Seaport has changed over time. Through Aug. 4, South Street Seaport, Fulton Street at South Street, www.southstreetseaport.com; Free.

Battery Dance Company’s 29th Annual Downtown Dance Festival Like dance? Like saving money? Attend this free performance and help connect New York to the world. Dozens of local dance companies and international companies from India and Japan are coming together in NYC to entertain and share culture and talent. Aug. 14-20, Battery Park and One New York Plaza, www.batterydance.org; Free.

Grammy-Winning Artist Tiempo Libre’s Free Performance Tiempo Libre, the three-time Grammynominated timba group, teams up with Julito Martinez to produce a fantastic high-energy performance of spicy Cuban sounds that you can enjoy for free! Aug. 4, World Financial Center Winter Garden, 220 Vesey St., www.artsworldfinancialcenter.com; Free.

Summer Stock NYC Attend Summer Stock NYC 2010, and enjoy a free, family-friendly evening of performances of Broadway hits by young singers and famous guest artists, as part of the River-to-River Festival. This nonstop 70-minute show features songs like “New York, New York” and iconic Broadway hits. July 18, Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace University, 3 Spruce St., www.pace.edu/ culture; Free.

Jacoby & Pronk and Dancers Performance at Jacob’s Pillow Jacoby & Pronk and Dancers are performing exclusively for Jacob’s Pillow from July 21-25, and bona fide dance devotees shouldn’t miss out.

Jacob’s Pillow is also hosting an assortment of free events and classes in order to encourage participation in dance. Workshops targeted toward teens and adults of all ages include Pilates, yoga, zumba, swing and Arab-American Fusion, just to name a few. July 21-25, 358 George Carter Rd., Becket, Mass., www.jacobspillow.org.

The Voyage of Garbhglas as part of Dancing New York: Christopher William’s Irish Faerie Lore Bessie Award-winning choreographer Christopher Williams takes the audience through the adventures of 6th- and 7th-century saints, heroes and troubled men adrift on boats with no oars. This unique performance features original music by Gregory Spears. Aug. 2-5, Irish Hunger Memorial in Battery Park, Vesey Street at North End Avenue, www.lmcc.net; Free.

Hipsters, Hustlers and Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs Swing by the Metropolitan Museum to see the renowned shutterbug’s collection. It features around 40 photos depicting a bygone New York era that spanned 30 years, in Levinstein’s own gritty brand of street photography. Ends Oct. 17, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave., www. metmuseum.org; $20 suggested contribution.

Richard Deon: Paradox and Conformity Most of us don’t take pride in our textbook doodling, probably for good reason. Richard Deon, on the other hand, elevated this common pastime to art; you can see for yourself at this exhibition. You’ll have the chance to hear him talk about it, and if you’re so inclined, drop in on one of his workshops for some pointers. Through Sept. 5, Hudson Valley Museum, 511 Warburton Ave., Yonkers, N.Y., www.hrm.org; $3-5.

Warwick Jazz Festival In addition to featuring a bevy of great jazz musicians including Arturo O’Farrill (founder of the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra), Jeff Ciampa, Mark Egan, Bill Evans, Karl Latham and Eliot Zigmund, the upcoming festival gives attendees the opportunity to soak in the folksy atmosphere of Warwick, N.Y. Explore local art galleries, antique shops and restaurants galore, completely free from the orgy of heat, sweat and garbage that is New York City over the summer. Aug. 26-29, Warwick, N.Y., warwickvalleyjazzfest.com.

Listen to the Classics at Neapolitan Opera and Song Festival Get in touch with your classical side this summer as you venture out of the city’s chaos and enjoy the sounds of the 18th century. The Altamura Center for the Arts invites you to celebrate the Chopin anniversary, Italian Opera and popular Neapolitan song. With a funny oneact opera, four teen pianists’ debuts, and pastries and cappuccino on the house, what’s not to love?

Aug. 28 & 29, Altamura Center for the Arts, 404 Winter Clove Rd., Round Top, N.Y., www.altocanto. org; $15-35.

Hollywood on the Hudson Stop by Film Forum tuesdays this summer to view a mix of NYC-made silents and early talkies. Make sure to catch Vitaphone Varieties of 2010, the latest collection of early talkie vaudeville shorts restored by the UCLA Film & Television Archive. With eight films and screenings to choose from, there’s no reason to miss this unique event. July 13-Aug. 10, Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St., www.filmforum.org.

Paul-Andre Fortier: Solo 30X30 Defying the boundaries placed on most modern dance performers, Fortier’s truly innovative summer project of taking dance to the street will entertain the masses. No tickets needed!

Just show up at One New York Plaza at noon, from July 16-Aug. 14, and observe 30 minutes of masterfully choreographed dance. July 16-Aug. 14, One New York Plaza, www.artsworldfinancialcenter. com; Free.

Broadway Danny Rose: Movie Night on The Elevated Acre Spend a summer evening watching Woody Allen’s Oscar-nominated 1984 comedy with your fellow New Yorkers (for free!). Recline on the green lawn and enjoy the view of the East River from more than 30 feet in the air. Short films by Alex Kalman and Josh Safdie precede the screening. July 29, The Elevated Acre at 55 Water St., www.downtownny.com; Free.

See Out of Town suggestions on page 18

be

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“The

Bosto ” . y o rj

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Love & Laughter on view through October 31

© William Steig. All rights reserved.

Brilliant drawings from The New Yorker to Shrek and the artistry of Jeanne Steig.

nrm.org

open daily

9 Route 183, Stockbridge, MA

413-298-41oo

kids & teens free! A gift to families from Country Curtains, Blantyre, and The Red Lion Inn.

4.917x5.541_city_arts:Layout 1 6/21/10 11:34 AM Page 1

PICASSO DEGAS LOOKS AT

June 13–September 12, 2010

“One of the most revelatory exhibitions on American soil this year. What a shame it would be to miss it” Sebastian Smee, Boston Globe

Williamstown, Massachusetts clarkart.edu 413 458 2303 Standing Nude, 1907, by Pablo Picasso. Museo del Novecento, Milan (8750). © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / ARS, New York

July 13, 2010 | City Arts

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Dance

Drawn To Dance

Inside Art Spiegelman and Pilobolus’ sketchy relationship

By Jerry Portwood ittle did Art Spiegelman know he didn’t really have much of a choice when asked to collaborate on a dance: He’d been Pilobolized.

That’s what members of Pilobolus, the nearly 40-year-old modern dance company named for a sort of fungus, called it when they’d barnstorm into a room and try to convince someone to work with them. About a year-anda-half ago, a contingent from Pilobolus showed up at Spiegelman’s Soho studio to win over the world-famous comic book artist, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus graphic novels, to collaborate with them on a new dance.

“It seemed like a reasonable way to try to wake up,” explains the 62-year-old Spiegelman, concerning the visitors. “I don’t really get my day going early, and they seemed so friendly. I met with them and after a while they came back.

And I got used to them. They became a presence rather than a proposition. Then after I saw Dog id, I said yes.”

The group that arrived on Spiegelman’s doorstop included Michael Tracy, a founding artistic director and choreographer, and Pilobolus Executive Director Itamar Kubovy. They had been discussing for years whom to work with as part of their International Collaborators Project. “Art was incredibly fascinating,” explains Kubovy. “He’s someone who thinks about how he works, and in fact works, in a completely different way.”

They’d already worked with children’s book illustrator Maurice Sendak years earlier and later with Israeli choreographic team Inbal Pinto and Avshalom Pollak. The collaboration with puppeteer Basil Twist in 2008 jump-started the idea of incorporating shadows into the work.

Although the group was already receiving attention (and criticism) for its car commercials and 2007 Academy Awards “interpretive” dance, the most untraditional may have been the collaboration with Steve Banks, a head writer on SpongeBob SquarePants, which resulted in Dog id (now re-titled The Transformation).

For many, it was a new direction for a dance company that had become predictable with its particular brand of physical humor and optical illusions. With the death last month of Jonathan Wolken, another founder and artistic director, it also seems to be a pivotal moment for the company’s future.

Spiegelman describes the shadows he saw onstage during Dog id as a “proto-cinematic entertainment experience” that he was interested in exploring. He recalled seeing an opera with the supertitles projected above the singers’ heads, which made him think of a comic strip’s thought bubbles: “I loved the idea of speech balloons

L

Joeseph Mehling

Alina Cojocaru performing in a version of The Sleeping Beauty.

•

•

•

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A scene from Hapless Hooligan in ‘Still Moving.’ above shadow heads.”

During their early encounters, Spiegelman showed the group sketchbooks that McSweeney’s had published, which included a lot of noir comics and movie imagery. “He took us through several meetings to make sure we didn’t want a dancing mouse,” says Tracy.

“When someone approaches me about a collaboration, my radar is up: ‘They want to ruin my book,’” says Spiegelman. The artist says he doesn’t feel Maus should be adapted to another medium since the story is so inextricably tied to the making of comics. He did attempt a musical theater/opera piece based on another idea about 16 years ago, and the experience left a bad taste in his mouth.

Spiegelman’s dark, sarcastic humor and style may not seem like a logical match for a group whose most popular current work involves a sort of makeshift waterslide on stage. This week, however, Pilobolus premieres Hapless Hooligan in ‘Still Moving’ in New York during its annual four-week residency at The Joyce Theater. It’s a pastiche of early 20th-century comic strips inspired by Happy Hooligan and Lulu, utilizing multimedia projections, shadows and, of course, live dancers. It’s not a simple narrative, although it does focus on a male and female character, Hapless Hooligan and Lulu, who find each other, are torn apart and then have a torturous experience until their dying end. Oh, and there will be dancing skeletons.

The world premiere of the work took place last month at Dartmouth College. It caused New York Times critic Alastair Macaulay to remark: “Neither at Pilobolus nor anywhere else have I seen this kind of dizzying overlap of cartoon, film, silhouette theater and live dance.”

It wasn’t easy going, however. When Spiegelman initially showed up at Pilobolus’ Connecticut studio in December 2009, he says he was interested in large projections that the dancers would be behind and in front of. “I had such naive ideas,” he says. “It wasn’t panning out. I was making literal compositions, and I was kind of surprised: They kept moving into the black areas of my drawings and they would get lost.” Often he would try to make the dancers stand still, to make them two-dimensional, so he could move them like a cartoon. But Spiegelman is a heavy smoker, so the dancers would wait until he was out of the room so they could do their own thing. “He spent the winter standing outside our studio having a smoke,” says Tracy.

“And peering in the windows to see how radically we’d changed it while he smoked a cigarette.”

The breakthrough moment occurred after a long, grueling day of trial and error. Spiegelman had been using a Wacom Tablet, a device that is like an elaborate computer mouse that allows you to draw, and he still had it in his hand when the dancers started to improvise and move around. “It was at the end of the day, when the dancers were frustrated because I was making them stand still,”

explains Spiegelman. “They needed to move, so they put on some music. It was really sexy. I started making splashes of color, graffiting with the Wacom pad. I felt like I was a dancer and not trying to make a cartoon. It had a conversational aspect to it.” It was during this improvisational moment—drawings done live—that Spiegelman realized that it wasn’t about the dancers standing still; rather, his cartoons were going to have to “build something,” and the drawings were animated by Dan Abdo and Jason Patterson.

Choreographer Michael Tracy describes it as an almost metaphysical happenstance. “It gave us several layers of meaning and reality that we were able to play with,” he says. “It was as if some scientist had given us the algorithm to open up two more dimensions. It’s as if we were 1-dimensional and now, we were suddenly three dimensions. The other dimensions were explained... We were living in a cartoon.”

Spiegelman says he kept apologizing to the dancers because he was asking for a type of precision, to interact with the animations that he felt was practically inhuman. “It’s like dancing with an idiot dancer. They can’t be off one inch.

When it doesn’t work it’s disappointing, but how amazing when it does work.” <

Pilobolus performs three programs in repertory through Aug. 7. The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212-242-0800; Mon.-Wed., 7:30; Thurs.-Fri., 8; Sat., 2 & 8, $10+.

Summer at Lincoln Center June 29–August 21

June 29–July 17 New York’s Hottest Outdoor Dance Party

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ClassicalMUSIC & OPERA

The Philharmonic Winds Down Lisa Batiashvili, the ‘Missa solemnis’ and lotsa Lindberg

By Jay Nordlinger The final weeks of the New York Philharmonic’s season contained two items of particular interest: a performance by Lisa Batiashvili, the young Georgian-born violinist; and a performance of the Missa solemnis, the oratorio (more or less) by Beethoven. The Missa solemnis is one of the greatest works in all of music. More, it’s one of the greatest works in all of art. Yet chances to hear it are few and far between.

Chances to hear Batiashvili have been many, certainly with the New York Philharmonic. A few seasons ago, she played the Shostakovich Concerto No. 1—and she played it to within an inch of its life.

Seldom has that concerto been played with more understanding, beauty, intensity and nerve. Then, in a later season, she played the Beethoven Concerto, with outstanding humanity and nobility. Still later, we had Prokofiev’s Concerto No. 2. The New York Philharmonic has a good thing going in these Batiashvili appearances.

At the end of this season, she played the Sibelius Concerto, that strange, mighty and wondrous composition. In the first movement, she was her exemplary self. Her sound was superb, and her technique was hardly less so: She handled Sibelius’s passagework with elegant virtuosity; her intonation barely faltered.

Her rhythm was alert and incisive, which is very important here. And she never let the music become soup: She was clean, without being too scrubbed.

Mainly, though, she showed musical judgment—and soul. Those are the priceless qualities that can’t really be learned. She got the most out of every phrase without ever milking any of them. And, as she played a phrase, she

was mindful of its place within the whole.

In the second movement, Adagio di molto, she produced a bold yet lyrical sound: It was rather a fat, mezzo-y sound. And that riveting finale, she began rivetingly. As she continued, however, she became just slightly stiff and effortful. Just slightly. This movement lacked the charge—the electricity—it ought to have.

But one’s standards for Lisa B. are awfully high.

The Sibelius Concerto, though as familiar as “Do-Re-Mi,” never stales. It works its magic year after year, generation after generation.

How upsetting that its composer lost his compositional juice—fell silent during the last decades of his long life.

Not at all silent has been Magnus Lindberg, the Finn who is the Philharmonic’s composer-in-residence. He evidently has an ardent fan in Alan Gilbert, the Philharmonic’s music director. The concert with Batiashvili began with a Lindberg work called Arena.

It was composed in the mid-1990s as a test piece for a conducting competition. Lindberg has said, “You can almost call it a concerto for conductor and orchestra.” You can call it whatever you want, but it’s still a piece like many, many others—by innumerable composers around the world. Arena is that squirmy sci-fi soundtrack that everyone writes.

The music is busy-busy-busy. Lindberg may have provided a good test piece—but is it a good piece piece?

It seems to me that Gilbert and the Philharmonic performed this piece just to say they did—musical merit aside. The performance of new music is supposed to be next to godliness; and it earns you Brownie points from the critical establishment.Is it really and truly worth 15 minutes of Philharmonic time to play something like Arena—when you

Summer Folly Bard SummerScape presents ‘The Chocolate Soldier,’ an operetta based on George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Arms and the Man’

By Jonathan Leaf Here’s something to celebrate: In early August, Bard College is putting up a production of Oscar Straus’ lovely early-20thcentury operetta The Chocolate Soldier. This is the kind of work that ought to be done all the time but almost never is. It’s music audiences have always rightly loved, and the little bonbon is served up with the sweet packaging of a book very loosely based on Bernard Shaw’s witty, cynical and delightful romantic comedy

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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com

about the military, Arms and the Man. Keep the confection cold enough so it doesn’t melt and become overly sticky and sentimental in the summertime heat, and it will provide perfect summer entertainment.

That this is being staged on Bard’s exceptionally beautiful campus overlooking the Hudson River only makes it better. Yet the infrequency with which this operetta is produced nowadays begs some questions.

The Metropolitan Opera staged Schoenberg’s

could be playing the worst ballet excerpts of Franz von Suppé or something? Music is more than cleverly arranged noise.

The concert that featured the Missa solemnis began with yet another Lindberg work—one that proved more than cleverly arranged noise. Called Al largo, it is an orchestral essay, or perhaps a bona fide tone poem. It is lush, colorful—almost cinematic and kaleidoscopic. It is not perfectly clear how the sections relate to one another, but those sections are interesting. The composer has cited the influence of Ravel and Schoenberg in this work; I also thought I detected Sibelius and Richard Strauss. In any event, I would like to hear Al largo again—high praise—and it was wonderfully played and conducted by the Philharmonic and its music director.

I do have a question—a question-criticism: Does the work have to be quite so long? I doubt it, but there are worse ways to spend a halfhour, particularly with contemporary music. For instance, you could hear Arena twice.

Before I get to the heart (if that’s the word) of the Missa solemnis performance, let me touch on the four vocal soloists. The soprano Christine Brewer was strong and surefooted, as usual. The mezzo-soprano Jane Henschel was rich, solid and alive. She suffered a letdown, technically, about two-thirds of the way through the performance—having an attack of the flats, for example. The tenor Anthony Dean Griffey lent his usual combination of vocal heft and vocal beauty. He sometimes covers his sound weirdly, however. Eric Owens, the bassbaritone, was fine.

Let me say, too, that these were big singers upon that stage—big vocally and bodily. How refreshing. I don’t know about you, but I’m kind of tired of soubrettes and starlets. Another Moses und Aron during James Levine’s tenure.

The New York Philharmonic regularly subjects audiences to the most appalling, screeching dreck by composers like Alfred Schnittke, and they just did a full concert version of Gyorgy Ligeti’s Grand Macabre. Back in the 1970s, of course, the Phil even chose to make Pierre Boulez its artistic director.

But many of the loveliest operettas of Johann and Josef Strauss, Offenbach, Oscar Straus and Franz Lehar have been mothballed and are frequently regarded at best with derision and more often treated with total indifference and neglect. Classical music programmers seem to think that an annual end-of-year staging of Die Fledermaus to please audiences and sell tickets is selling out, and that they are being vulgar if they put on light,

CONTINUED on page 17

observation, if I may: For the last 10 years or so, singers have been bringing bottles of water onstage with them. They twist them open and closed, and they suck and chug, throughout a performance. This is gross. It looks terrible.

From time immemorial, singers managed without bottles of water at their feet, and on their lips. Today’s singers should discard this crutch-like and ugly habit.

About Alan Gilbert’s conducting of the Missa solemnis, I will be brief. In his hands, the work was correct, compact, rounded, sensible, measured, unobjectionable—nice. The thing is, the Missa solemnis is not nice. It is flooring.

This account made no impact whatsoever, at least on me. It was deficient in gravity, sublimity, majesty, spirituality, struggle, uplift, transcendence—everything that makes the Missa solemnis the Missa solemnis. It was hardly the Missa at all; it was a Missa-lite.

I hasten to say that I don’t question the sincerity of the conductor, orchestra, chorus et al. They may feel this music very deeply.

It is simply that, in my opinion, this did not come through. And I guess we should be grateful that the Missa was programmed.

At some point, may we have the Choral Fantasy—another underperformed Beethoven masterwork—too?

Let me pick on the Philharmonic a final time (before next season). The orchestra has released a series of recordings called Alan Gilbert: The Inaugural Season. The inaugural season? Like Toscanini has come to town or something? A few years ago, a young pianist— good, but not quite a threat to Rubinstein’s reputation—released an album called The Berlin Concert. Oh, really? The Berlin concert?

What were Furtwängler’s concerts, as compared with this one! <

Costume sketch for the Bard SummerScape 2010 production of the chamber opera, The Chocolate Soldier, August 5-15. Costumes by Carol Bailey.

MUSEUMS

Sinuous Serenity

C

By Maureen Mullarkey ontrary to popular mythology, the ’50s was a decade of great innovation born of postwar confidence and widening prosperity. A fertile time in dance, music and visual arts, it was the perfect moment to commemorate American artistic triumphs. Founded in 1960 by two hardware manufacturers, Storm King Art Center is an exquisite monument to postindustrial America. The original intention of Storm King was to establish a school and museum of Hudson Valley painters, but the founders’ attentions soon shifted toward a sculpture park that would integrate art into the landscape. Storm King celebrates its 50th anniversary this year with 12 temporary installations and an archival exhibit that chronicles the history of the Center that was less a marker for the beginning of the ’60s than the culmination of the ’50s.

The Hudson Highland setting is glorious.

Visitors hike through wooded groves, along mowed or pebbled trails, past islands of alfalfa, oats and buckweed, and over sloping fields covered with native grasses, clovers and wild flowers. At Storm King, nature bends to the needs of art. Some, not all, of the art reciprocates. The answering tone is set by a reclining arabesque that fulfills Henry Moore’s conviction that there are “universal shapes to which everyone is subconsciously conditioned and to which they can respond.”

More than 100 sculptures, by some of the world’s best-known sculptors—Alice Aycock, Anthony Caro, Claes Oldenburg, Louise Nevelson, Richard Serra, Isaac Witkin, Dorothy Dehner, Menashe Kadishman, Lee Tribe—nestle into the hollows of the landscape.

In the midst of this wealth of names stands an anonymous stone reproduction of an Easter Island head. Even a copy sends a frisson of recognition, a reminder of sculpture’s sacral origins. Tucked along a wooded trail, the head overlooks bronzes by Kenneth Capps and Sorel Etrog, Robert Murray’s painted aluminum stabile, and a gathering of pieces that represent the dominant sculptural vocabulary of the 1960s and 1970s.

The landscape is so stunning that first-time visitors are likely to experience the sculpture as a lesser splendor than the Appalachian chain.

There is a chance of leaving the Center more excited by the culture of prairie dropseed and weeping eucalyptus than the museum culture at the heart of things.

I

n 1958, Ralph Ogden, owner of the Star Expansion Company—maker of expansion bolts, drilling devices and masonry fasteners—

bought a 180-acre estate in Mountainville, N.Y. It came with a Normandy-style chateau built on a high tableland overlooking the valley between Schunnemunk and Storm King Mountains.

This was the nucleus of the Center, opened

by Ogden with his partner and son-in-law, H. Peter Stern, in 1960.

In 1967, Ogden went to David Smith’s home in Bolton’s Landing for an auction of the sculptor’s estate. In a blink, he purchased 13 Smith sculptures, the core of Storm King’s collection. Today they cluster at the base of a high earthen rise crafted to Noguchi’s specifications for his granite masterwork “Momo Taro.”

After Ogden’s death in 1974, Stern began acquiring the large-scale sculpture that now dominates the landscape. At present, the Center occupies 500 acres. Once-productive farmland and surrounding parcels have been incrementally annexed, bulldozed and replanted (by landscape architect William Rutherford) into a backdrop for monumental works and site-specific installations.

These are the volumes, arcs, crooks and curls of nature. We attend most deeply to shapes that remind us of primal things—bones, rocks, tree limbs—and the sinuosities of the human form. Artworks in the organic mode are the most successful here. Among them is Ursula Von Rydingsvard’s towering “Luba.”

Made of blocks of cedar, it even smells like the remnant of primeval forest that it evokes. Daniel Petit’s “Kiss” places two monumental blocks of granite leaning toward each other with a tenderness that belies their tonnage.

Several pieces come closer to engineering projects than traditional concepts of sculpture.

Kenneth Snelson’s self-supporting, latticework structure, “Free Ride Home,” is an exercise in tension and compression to delight the ghost of Buckminster Fuller. George Cutts’ “Sea Change” omits mass for a motor-driven duet between two curved stainless steel poles.

It stands in magical contrast to Mark di Suvero’s linear constructions, which are oddly disheartening in this context.

The load-bearing capacity of di Suvero’s I-beams turns the mind’s eye back to the era of manufacturing clout that underwrote Storm King at its beginning. The only force Suvero’s vacant arrangements now support is the weight of a once-exuberant aestheticism that is as past its prime as Little Anthony and the Imperials.

Magdalena Abakanowicz’s four “Sarcophagi in Glass Houses” reinforces a corresponding regret over the loss of hardier times. Old industrial engines are laid out in glass coffins like Snow White. The culture that produced and used them has eaten the

Jerry L. Thompson

As Storm King Art Center turns 50, experience the growth of its collection

Mark di Suvero’s “al di la,” 2008.

poisoned apple. No prince appears to awaken slumbering turbines.

Andy Goldworthy’s “Storm King Wall” snakes in, out and around the trees. But the pretension of it gets the better of its rough beauty. Traditional drywall is an ancient building method fallen into disuse because of the heavy labor of cutting stones to fit securely together without a cement bond. It was precious to import Scottish masons to do the job. Outside the gates of Storm King, along country roads up and down the East Coast, are miles of drywall marking old fields and property lines. The arthood of Goldworthy’s meandering sample is measured by its aimlessness.

Similar ostentation afflicts Maya Lin’s 11-acre “Wavefield,” a tour-de-force of earth-sculpting. Parallel rows of undulating mounds are meant to mimic the rolling swell of waves. What they achieve is a stylized echo of the hills around them. Aerial photos of the project are far more compelling than on-the-ground experience. Viewed on foot (bicycles are also available), the field gives

the impression of a whimsical golf course.

Calder’s “The Arch” (1975), a blackpainted steel structure, looms near the park’s north gate. Fifty-six feet high, it is an imposing, almost fearsome sight, that suggests— unCalderlike—some kind of redoubt, all bulk and surface gloom. By contrast, his slim steel cutouts that dot the slope of Museum Hill are characteristically playful. Seen from a distance, these bright red shapes give the effect of crested cardinals on the grass.

Emilio Greco’s graceful bronze “Large Bather,” an early acquisition, is the single figurative sculpture in sight. It stands near five soaring Ionic columns, remains of the dismantled 19th-century estate that provided the stones for the Center’s chateau. The view from the columns, portal to the panorama beyond, is reason enough to visit. < Storm King’s season continues through Nov. 14 and is open Wed.-Sun., 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m.; $8-$12. Complete travel information available at www.stormking.org.

July 13, 2010 | City Arts

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AttheGALLERIES

“Silvercup I,” by Ephraim Rubenstein.

New York Moments Popular appreciation of landscape hinges on the romance of a good view. By contrast, the scenery of urban infrastructures—the natural setting of urban artists—is more challenging.

Even middling painters can produce attractive pictures of beautiful places. It takes more robust sensibilities to seek order and grace in city sights readily ignored. Easy pleasure is not available. Viewers are on their own to discover the emotional keynote to scenes that have nothing picturesque about them.

New York Moments showcases the urban landscape in a group show that includes many of George Billis Gallery’s best artists and several welcome guests. Here are recent cityscapes by 31 painters whose interests range from iconic New York sites to Manhattan’s side streets and other boroughs’ byways. So much intelligent work is here that there is not enough column space to give it its due.

Let me start with Elizabeth O’Reilly. Her collages, cut from papers washed in watercolor, are deft, graceful and satisfying. The scissored clarity of her view of the 9th Street bridge over the Gowanus demonstrates the discipline that knife edges impose on a painterly imagination.

Both contour and color are pitch-perfect. Equal, if moodier, magic occurs in Tim Saternow’s “Cortlandt Alley, Rain.” He handles the play of light on the wet streets of a narrow tenement corridor—a surviving back alley on the edge of Chinatown—with great skill and an eye for enlivening detail: the lattice of fire escapes, a flash of color where light hits red brick.

Ephraim Rubenstein looks at the city, across the East River, from Long Island City.

“Silvercup I,” graphically striking but elegiac in tone, surveys a subdued Manhattan skyline from a high vantage point behind the old Silvercup Bakery. The letters of the original neon sign, seen from the back and silhouetted against the sky, are a subtle tribute to the beauty of the borough’s defunct industrial buildings. Nicholas Evans-Cato advances on the Manhattan Bridge from an acute angle of

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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com

vision that exaggerates the sweep and span of the structure. It is a majestic view that leaps past the taken-for-granted reality of the bridge to the sheer wonder of a century-old civil engineering landmark.

Where Evans-Cato softens his structure in atmospheric conditions, Roland Kula takes a more clinical approach to the supports for the Jersey PATH train. He records the beams, bolts, bearings, girders and abutments that rise in a crescendo of structural agility. As a visual design, the motif is surprisingly beautiful.

A flush of sunlight heats a stanchion of the Brooklyn Bridge in Stephen Magsig’s adroit depiction of the brickwork and its reflection on the river below.

One lovely surprise is a medley of intimate panels of tree-shaded streets by Reñat Iglesias.

A young Basque, he studied largely abroad—in Bilbao, Pamploma, Barcelona, Mexico and England—before coming to the Art Students League. His work is a delectable tribute to the atelier system that emphasizes sensibility and craft over fashion. Lastly, Santana’s handsome rendering of the Statue of Liberty avoids cliché by emphasizing mass and contour, omitting toofamiliar detail. [Maureen Mullarkey] Through Aug. 14, George Billis Gallery, 555 W. 25th St., 212-645-2621.

Currently on view at Michael Rosenfeld, 15 of Porter’s oil paintings and watercolors hum with his usual heightened color and brushy, deliberate strokes. To some degree these landscapes, still lifes and figure paintings reflect his two most enduring enthusiasms, Vuillard and de Kooning—an unlikely pair, at first glance, but both, like Porter, paced their awkward/elegant compositions with luminous color.

Porter’s paintings, however, are always constrained by his reasoned experience. A reverence for the ordinary animates “Snow on South Main Street,” in which every sensation occupies its necessary role: beyond the soft sheen of a snowy field, denser whites of houses yield to a violet sky thickened with branches.

The group portrait “Chris, Sarah, Felicity” impressively navigates the sunlight falling, complexly, on three children and a dog; one arrives unhurriedly at such details as the squinting eyes. “Portrait of John MacWhinnie” adds something more: a momentum of rhythm, initiated by the tilt of the darkly clad figure, and gathering in angled notes of feet and hands with almost masterful intensity.

Porter’s ever-inquisitive outlook sometimes over-interrogates a situation. “Laurence in Two

Fairfield Porter For American art, the 1940s and ’50s were a time of muscle stretching, both physically— with artists turning to mural-sized canvases— and psychically, as they plunged into free, unmediated gestures. Intellectually, too, it was a muscular era, though here it was not artists but such critics as Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg who did the heaviest lifting.

One independent-minded artist, however, was equally eloquent in paint and words. This was Fairfield Porter, whose paintings, though adhering to traditions of representation, were much admired by de Kooning, and whose wideranging writings on art remain among the most lucidly down-to-earth of the day.

“Chris, Sarah, Felicity,” by Fairfield Porter.

Lights” depicts a young man illuminated by both a window and ambient interior light, but neither light source is rendered palpable by pressures of color. In the 8-foot-tall “July,” the earthy soaring of trees through layers of sunlight and shadow, and their wonderful dance with a pliable cloud, promises something as climactic as Courbet—until, that is, one encounters the figures and chairs in the foreground, whose angles are respectfully pondered but not seized by the same instinctive rhythm. (What would have happened if Porter, less concerned with the figures’ accuracy, had plumbed their possibilities as the trees’ launching point?)

Here, as occasionally elsewhere, the slackening of rhythm suggests an intellect winning out over sensation.

But Porter’s intelligent remarking on the paradoxes of shape and depicted depth always intrigues. An inspiration to many figurative painters today, he remains too little known to the public—a fact traceable to his unwillingness to tow the line when Ab-Ex and Pop held sway. And then, too, it would probably have helped if he’d just refrained from his biting— and cogent—criticisms of fellow reviewers Greenberg and Rosenberg. [John Goodrich] Through Aug. 13, Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, 24 W. 57 St., 212-247-0082.

Roy Lichtenstein: Still Lifes Roy Lichtenstein’s genius encompassed many genres, not least of them still lifes.

Nonetheless, this exhibit marks the first exhibition of his paintings, sculptures and drawings in that style, created from 1972 through the early 1980s. As striking and technically brilliant as his better-known works, they share with them a robust sensuality and brilliance of color. Their engrossing tension largely derives from the way his bold asymmetrical lines, which vary in color and thickness, crisscross the surfaces; Lichtenstein’s apples, bananas and grapefruit look particularly voluptuous. He found inspiration in newspaper and print advertisements, closely following the originals, and while drawing and painting traditional subjects like fruit, flowers and vases, he also used items from his studio and motifs of famous painters like Leger and Gris.

Lichtenstein favored vivid hues of red, green and yellow, contrasting them with black and white and his characteristic dotted surfaces. In bright yellow “Still Life with Cow’s Skull,” he takes off on Western Americana themes, though the cow’s dead, empty eyes and roped neck give it a strange and atypical poignancy. In his depiction of ordinary objects, like “Still Life with Candle,” which shows a candle next to an open book, an apple precariously balanced on a page, he invests the scene with drama by abstaining from any superfluous detail. Every still life engages the viewer directly, in a surprisingly emotional manner for subject matter usually considered relatively devoid of feeling. This is especially true of “Still Life with Clock and Roses,” the fractured clock and incongruously placed roses suggesting an intriguing narrative.

Wandering among these moving still lifes

© Estate of Roy Lichtenstein. Courtesy Gagosian Gallery. Private Collection

Simon Gaon small portraits Through August 19 “Still life with Cow’s Skull,” by Roy Lichtenstein.

should be a high point of gallery-going this summer. [Valerie Gladstone] Through July 30, Gagosian Gallery, 555 W. 24th St., 212-741-1111.

Default State Network

What is consciousness? Religion, philosophy, even science can’t give us an exact definition. Yet this is the question posed by curator Ryan Wallace in his group show Default State Network, now on at the Morgan Lehman Gallery.

Wallace chose work from 12 artists (including himself) that offer a visual interpretation of consciousness. Drawing inspiration from science, spirituality and philosophy, the pieces range from coffin photos by Glen Baldridge to Alex Dodge’s sculpted self-portrait as an android, from geometric symbols by Elise Ferguson to Hilary Pecis’ status symbols.

Chris Duncan’s figurative sculpture and painted mirror placed near the center of the gallery set the tone of the exhibition.

The sculpture features a colorful, beadcovered male head with a gentle expression.

The head is set on an abstracted metal torso that sits on a pedestal. The man is staring into a wall mirror spray-painted with a blurry, multi-colored shape that only roughly corresponds to his figure; this work illustrates the underlying mysteries and ambiguous outcomes that define our search for consciousness.

Wallace chose the title Default State Network because it refers to the regions of the brain focused on daydreams, speculation and contemplation of the past. Perhaps this is where our sense of self is generated and stored. It’s also an area scientists think is activated during creative thought.

Though I thought the gallery was too large and too bright for the scale of the art,

and several pieces suffered from a lack of originality, when the show was considered as a whole collection rather than as individual pieces, the exhibit became more interesting and made an important point. Due to the breakdown of recognizable art movements, contemporary curators and collectors alike are now required to take charge and give disparate art an overarching connection or purpose.

Just as film directors cast actors in order to shape the story they want to tell, curators and collectors can now cast works of art to shape and reflect their own creative agendas. In his search for consciousness, Wallace acts as that curator/director, and this show highlights what can be accomplished when one consciously uses collecting as a medium and a tool for selfdiscovery. [Julia Morton]

AFP Galleries at The Fuller Building 41 East 57th Street, Seventh Floor

Opening Days: Monday - Thursday 10 am-5 pm and by appointment

212-230-1003

Through Aug. 13, Morgan Lehman Gallery, 535 W. 22nd St., 212-268-6699.

“Chris, Sarah, Felicity,” by Fairfield Porter.

July 13, 2010 | City Arts

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ArtsAGENDA

“I Wish Your Wish,” by Rivane Neuenschwander at The New Museum.

Gallery openings

Gallery listings courtesy of

The Bowery Gallery: Jane Culp: “Rugged California

Wilderness - Recent Paintings & Drawings.”

Opens July 13, 530 W. 25th St., 646-230-6655.

Noho Gallery in Chelsea: “Twelve.” Opens July 20, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 212-367-7063

Gallery Shows Ameringer McEnery Yohe: Gene Davis. Ends July 17,

525 W. 22nd St., 212-445-0051.

Armand Bartos Fine Art: David Kramer: “Seems Like We’ve Been Down This Road Before.”

Ends July 30, 25 E. 73rd St., 212-288-6705.

BravinLee Programs: Chris Astley: “Geronimo.”

Ends July 16, 526 W. 26th St. #211, 212-4624404.

Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery: “The New Grand Tour.”

Ends July 17, 505 W. 24th Street, 212-243-8830.

Denise Bibro Fine Art: David Herman: “People/Places.” Ends July 17. Jeremy Comins: “Climbers.”

Ends July 17, 529 W. 20th St., 4W, 212-6477030.

EFA Project Space: “Word-Less.” Ends July 17, 323 W. 39th St., 2nd Fl., 212-563-5855, ext. 151.

Figureworks: “Influences.” Ends Aug. 1, 168 N. 6th

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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com

St., Brooklyn, 718-486-7021.

George Billis Gallery: “New York Moments.” Ends

Aug. 14, 555 West 25th Street, 2nd Fl., 212-6452621.

June Kelly Gallery: “Ming Smith Photographs: 1978-2010.” Ends July 30, 591 Broadway, 212226-1660.

Katharina Rich Perlow Gallery: “Changing Summer Group Exhibition.” Ends Aug. 2010, The Fuller Building, 41 E. 57th St., 13th Fl., 212-644-7171.

Lombard-Freid Projects: “Heat Wave.” Ends July 30, 531 W. 26th St., 212-967-8040.

Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery: “Shape Language.” Ends July 31, 526 W. 26th St., No. 213, 212-243-3335.

Noho Gallery in Chelsea: Allison CS Lewis: “CutThroat Escape.” Ends July 17, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 212-367-7063.

OK Harris Works of Art: “Summeryview Group Exhibition.” Ends July 17, 383 W. Broadway, 212-431-3600.

Rick Wester Fine Art: “Big Girls: Large Format Photographs by Women Photographers.” Ends July 30, 511 W. 25th St., Ste. 205, 212-255-5560.

Sloan Fine Art: “Nice to Meet You.” Ends July 31.

“Amuse Bouche.” Ends July 31, 128 Rivingston St., 212-477-1140.

Soho Photo Gallery: “Winners of Soho Photo’s 15th Annual National Photography Competition.”

Ends Aug. 7, 15 White St., 212-226-8571.

Spanierman Gallery: Gershon Benjamin: “Works

On Paper.” Ends July 17, 45 E. 58th St., 212832-0208.

Team Gallery: “Forced Exposure.” Ends July 30, 83 Grand St., 212-279-9219.

Westside Gallery: “Keep Your Eye on the Ball.”

Ends July 24, 133/141 W. 21st St., 212-592-2145.

Woodward Gallery: “The Great Outdoors.” Ends July 24, 133 Eldridge St., 212-966-3411

Art Events New York Antique Jewelry & Watch Show: More than

100 prestigious antique jewelry and watch dealers gather for this annual show. July 23 through 26, Metropolitan Pavillion, 123 W. 18th St., www. newyorkantiquejewelryandwatchshow.com.

Museums Abrons Art Center: “AIRspace 2010.” Ends July 31,

466 Grand St., 212-598-0400.

American Museum of Natural History: “Traveling

the Silk Road: Ancient Pathway to the Modern World.” Ends Aug. 15. “Lizards & Snakes: Alive!” Ends Sept. 2. “Race to the End of the Earth.” Ends Jan. 2, Central Park West at West

79th Street, 212-769-5100.

Austrian Cultural Forum: “NineteenEightyFour.”

Ends Sept. 5, 11 E. 52nd St., 212-319-5300.

Brooklyn Historical Society: “Tivoli: A Place We

Call Home.” Ends Aug. 29. “It Happened in Brooklyn.” Ongoing, 128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, 718-222-4111.

Brooklyn Museum: “American High Style: Fashioning a National Collection.” Ends Aug. 1. “Kiki Smith: Sojourn.” Ends Sept. 12. “Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanity Fair of 1864.” Ends Oct. 17. “Andy Warhol: The Last Decade.” Ends Sept. 12, 200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, 718-638-5000.

Chelsea Art Museum: “A Part of No-Part: Parallelisms Between Then and Now.” Ends July 14, 556 W. 22nd St., 212-255-0719.

Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum: “National Design Triennial: Why Design Now?.” Ends Jan. 9, 2 E. 91st St., 212-849-8400.

Discovery Times Square Exposition: “King Tut NYC: Return of the King.” Ends Jan. 2, 226 W. 44th St., no phone.

The Drawing Center: Dorothea Tanning: “Early Designs for the Stage.” Ends July 23. Leon Golub: “Live & Die Like a Lion?” Ends July 23, 35 Wooster St., 212-219-2166.

The Frick Collection: “From Mansion to Museum:

The Frick Collection Celebrates Seventy-Five Years.” Ends Sept. 5, 1 E. 70th St., 212-288-0700.

International Center of Photography: “For All the World to See: Visual Culture & the Struggle for Civil Rights.” Ends Sept. 12. “Perspectives 2010.” Ends Sept. 12, 1133 6th Ave., 212-8570000.

Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum: “27 Seconds.”

Ends Nov. 21, Pier 86, West 46th Street & 12th Avenue, 212-245-0072.

Jewish Museum: “Curious George Saves the Day: The Art of Margret & H.A. Rey.” Ends Aug. 1.

“Modern Art, Sacred Space: Motherwell, Ferber & Gottlieb.” Ends Aug. 1. “The Monayer Family: Three Videos by Dor Guez.” Ends Sept. 7.

“South African Photographs: David Goldblatt.”

Ends Sept. 19, 1109 5th Ave., 212-423-3200.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Picasso in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” Ends Aug. 1.

“American Woman: Fashioning A National Identity.” Ends Aug. 15. “Side by Side: Oberlin’s Masterworks at the Met.” Ends Aug. 29. “Tutankhamun’s Funeral.” Ends Sept. 6. “Hipsters, Hustlers & Handball Players: Leon Levinstein’s New York Photographs, 1950-1980.” Ends Oct. 17. Doug & Mike Starn on the Roof: “Big Bambu.” Ends Oct. 31. “Vienna Circa 1780: An Imperial Silver Service Rediscovered.” Ends Nov. 7, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710.

MoMA PS1: “Greater New York.” Ends Oct. 18, 22-25 Jackson Ave., Queens, 718-784-2084.

The Morgan Library & Museum: “Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art & Landscape Design.” Ends Aug. 29, 225 Madison Ave., 212-685-0008.

El Museo del Barrio: “Retro/Active: The Work of Rafael Ferrer.” Ends Aug. 22, 1230 5th Ave., 212-831-7272.

Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology: “Eco-Fashion: Going Green.” Ends Nov. 13, Seventh Avenue at West 27th Street, 212-2174558.

Museum of Arts & Design: “Bespoke: The Handbuilt Bicycle.” Ends Aug. 2010. “Portable Treasuries: Silver Jewelry From the Nadler Collection.”

Ends Aug. 8. “Dead or Alive.” Ends Oct. 24, 2 Columbus Cir., 212-299-7777.

Museum of Jewish Heritage: “Traces of Memory.”

Ends Aug. 15. “The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service.” Ends Dec. 2010, 36 Battery Pl., 646437-4200.

Museum of Modern Art: “Mind & Matter: Alterna-

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tive Abstractions, 1940s to Now.” Ends Aug. 16.

“Lee Bontecou: All Freedom in Every Sense.”

Ends Aug. 30. “Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography.” Ends Aug. 30.

“Picasso: Themes & Variations.” Ends Sept. 6.

“The Modern Myth: Drawing Mythologies in Modern Times.” Ends Sept. 6, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400.

National Museum of the American Indian: “HIDE: Skin as Material & Metaphor (Part I).” Ends Aug. 1, 1 Bowling Green, 212-514-3700.

New Museum: Rivane Neuenschwander: “A Day Like Any Other.” Ends Sept. 19. “Museum as Hub: In & Out of Context REDUX.” Ends July 25, 235 Bowery, 212-219-1222.

” !

E L B YA es ENJOYork Tim

DtleLyY, The New R U S “AB Bran n

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: “Staten Island & Displaced Europeans

After World War II: The Role of Our Ports & Hospitals.” Ends July 31. “The Peregrinations & Pettifoggery of W.C. Fields.” Ends Aug. 21.

“Harlem Nocturnal: Photographs by Kenneth Nelson.” Ends Aug. 31, 40 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-870-1630.

Noguchi Museum: “California Scenario: The Courage of Imagination.” Ends Oct. 24. “Noguchi ReINstalled.” Ends Oct. 24, 33rd Road at Vernon Boulevard, Queens, 718-721-2308.

Rubin Museum of Art: “In the Shadow of Everest: Photographs by Tom Wool.” Ends July 26.

“Remember That You Will Die: Death Across Cultures.” Ends Aug. 9. “Bardo: The Tibetan Art of the Afterlife.” Ends Sept. 6, 150 W. 17th St., 212-620-5000.

Skyscraper Museum: “The Rise of Wall Street.”

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

Society of Illustrators: “EARTH: Fragile Planet.

Ends July 31. “Pirates, Petticoats & Puffy Sleeves.”

Ends July 31, 128 E. 63rd St., 212-838-2560.

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: “Hilla Rebay: Art Educator.” Ends Aug. 22. “Julie Mehretu: Grey Area.” Ends Oct. 6, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500.

South Street Seaport: “Tigers the Exhibition.” Ends Jan. 15, Pier 17 at South Street Seaport, 800-7453000.

Whitney Museum of American Art: “Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield.”

Ends Oct. 17. “Jill Magid: A Reasonable Man in a Box.” Ends Sept. 12. “Christian Marclay: Festival.” Ends Sept. 26. “Off the Wall Part 1: Thirty Performative Actions.” Ends Sept. 19, 945 Madison Ave., 212-570-3600.

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CONTINUED from page 12 elegant charmers like The Gypsy Baron, La Perichole and The Land of Smiles.

In the classical music world, everything is backwards. The most painful, inept and hideous modern music—even John Cage!—is performed and written about, while great music that’s unabashedly melodic and romantic is ignored and sneered at. The ugly stepchild is treated as the pretty girl with the charm, and the belle becomes the wallflower.

Bard College has done much to reawaken interest in important, but neglected, late-romantic composers such as Alexander von Zemlinsky, and it is performing a special service by staging this Straus operetta. While audiences may think that they can acquaint themselves with the piece by watching a DVD of the 1941 MGM movie The Chocolate Soldier (starring Nelson Eddy and Risë Stevens), it’s actually quite difficult to obtain due to a mixture of copyright and film studio weirdness.

The Chocolate Soldier, like Arms and the Man, is an engaging boulevard farce, which

mocks the cult of military heroism and is set in the Balkans in the years before the First World War. The operetta’s book, however, doesn’t use a single actual line by Shaw since librettist Leopold Jacobson—who worked on the script with his partner Rudolf Bernauer—only obtained the rights to do an operetta by promising not to use any of the Shaw characters’ actual names or the original lines. One of the greatest, if most unreliable, music critics, Shaw hated The Chocolate Soldier and resented its worldwide popularity.

This is why he refused to let Pygmalion be made into a musical, and it was only turned into Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady through actions of his estate after his death.

Straus was probably the best of Lehar’s rivals, and that’s saying something. With two wars and sweltering weather, could there be a better time for the show? < Aug. 5-15, Fisher Center Theater, Annandaleon-Hudson, 845-758-7900, www.fishercenter. bard.edu; $40.

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July 13, 2010 | City Arts

17

Summer Short List: Out of Town Spiegeltent Evening Cabaret at Bard SummerScape Witness Tony-nominee Justin Bond in Weimar New York, July 30 and 31, along with a live band and dancing from Pixie Harlots. And catch actress, singer and comedian Jackie Hoffman performing her unique brand of music and comedy Aug.13. Through Aug. 21, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, 845-758-7900; Fri. & Sat. 8:30, $25. www.fishercenter.bard.edu.

Picasso Looks at Degas at The Clark This is the only North American venue for this revelatory exhibit, which explores the Spanish Picasso’s lifelong obsession with the French Degas—his dancers, laundresses, bathers as well as his persona—while shedding light on the emergence of 20th-century Modernism. Get cocktails with the two artists at a behind-thescenes gallery experience, and witness the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Through Sept. 12, The Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass., 413-4580524; visit www.clarkart.edu.

Litchfield Jazz Festival It’s the 15th anniversary of the popular festival and the lineup includes legends as well as up-and-comers. Check out Dave Brubeck and Denise Thimes Friday night. Saturday includes the Gerald Clayton Trio as well as Arturo O’Farrill Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra. Sunday caps it all off with the Anat Cohen Quartet and Bela

Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer. Aug. 6-8, Kent, Conn., 860-361-6285; $29-$83 single tickets/$150-$350 passes, litchfieldjazzfest.com.

William Steig’s illustrations on view at Norman Rockwell Museum.

Neapolitan Opera & Song Festival Instead of traveling to Europe during August, you only have to head to Round Top to get your Euro fix. On Saturday afternoon Pergolesi’s charming one-act opera “La Serva Padrona” is presented, as is “The Art of the Prima Donna,” a celebration of the 200th anniversary of Chopin’s birth with a performance of rare art songs.

Sunday includes four teen pianists debuting with Derwyn Holder’s two-piano, eight-hand arrangement of Bernstein’s West Side Story.

That will be followed by a program of Neapolitan songs presented by the Bloomfield Mandolin Orchestra. Aug. 28 & 29, Altamura Center for the Arts, 404 Winter Clove Road, Round Top, N.Y., 518-622-0070; 2 p.m., $15-$35.

William Steig: Love and Laughter at Norman Rockwell Museum The exhibition focus on several stages of William Steig’s artistic career, from his time at The New Yorker until later works as an author and illustrator of children’s books and novels.

The focus of the exhibit lies in examining recurrent themes from his inspiration of Picasso, mythology and classic literature. Through Oct. 31. Norman Rockwell Museum, Stockbridge, Mass., 413-298-4100 x 221, www.nrm.org; $10-$15.

Leonard Nimoy: Secret Selves at MASS MoCA The artist and actor, best known as Spock on the popular Star Trek television series, is also an artist and will exhibit his recent photographic series exploring the lost or hidden self, inspired largely by Aristophanes’ theory of double-sided creatures. Accompanying each photo is a video documenting the artist’s conversations with his subjects in addition to vivid personal responses.

Opens July 31, MASS MoCA, 87 Marshall St., North Adams, Mass., 413-662-2111, $5-$15, www. massmoca.org.

Marlboro Music Festival Attend the culminating performance of the Marlboro Music Festival’s 60th season. The festival helps musical leaders hone their skills by allowing up-and-coming artists to play alongside masters.

Aug. 15, Persons Auditorium at Marlboro College, Marlboro, Vt.; $5-35. www.marlboromusic.org

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Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival Grab your tent and get yourself to the Grey Fox Bluegrass Festival, where you can camp and hear the pros (like Crooked Still, who performs at the festival July 15 and 16) pick at banjos. July 15-18, Walsh Farm, Oak Hill, N.Y.; $175 (entire weekend). www.greyfoxbluegrass.com Ivey Hardy’s Photographs at Vermont Festival of the Arts Take a peek at Ivey Hardy’s black-and-white photographs during the Vermont Festival of the Arts in Mad River Valley, Vt. Hardy’s studio isn’t the only attraction, as there are countless performance, visual and culinary art exhibits to enjoy.

Aug. 1-Sept. 5, Mad River Valley, Vt; individual event price varies. www.vermontartfest.com.

Maria di Rohan at Caramoor This may be Donizetti’s most modern opera and is an astonishing product of his last years.

Soprano Takesha Kizart returns in the title role. July 24, Caramoor, 149 Girdle Ridge Road, Katonah, N.Y., 914-232-1252, $20-$85. www. caramoor.org David Daniels at Glimmerglass Opera The internationally renowned countertenor will sing a benefit concert for Glimmerglass Opera. The tickets are 100 percent tax-deductible, with all proceeds going to the Opera. July 30, Alice Busch Opera Theater, 7300 State Highway 80, Cooperstown, N.Y., 607-547-2255; 3:30, $50-$100. www.glimmerglass.org.

Richard Deon Exhibit at Hudson River Museum The exhibition, Richard Deon: Paradox and Conformity, includes over 30 paintings with mediums ranging from giant banners to easel-sized canvasses, employing the visual style of textbook illustrators of the 1950s. Through Sept. 5, Hudson River Museum, 511 Warburton Avenue, Yonkers, N.Y., 914-963-4550; $3-$5 www.hrm.org.

Bill T. Jones/ Arnie Zane Dance Company at Jacob’s Pillow Bill T. Jones has had a great year with his production of Fela! on Broadway. But he gets back to the work he’s best known for with Serenade/The Proposition, a piece he created in celebration of the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. July 21-25, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, 358 George Carter Rd., Becket, Mass., 413-243-0745; Wed.-Sat., 8; Sat.-Sun., 2.

PainttheTOWN

By Amanda Gordon

Summer ‘Time’

SW

Eda Aksoy, Jocelyn Spaar (who hacks video games for artist Cory Arcangel) and Yasemin Ozuye.

On the rooftop of The Delancey, Creative Time groupies shared their summer vacation plans. “I’m going to an island in Maine called Grog,” said the experimental public art organization’s chairman, Amanda Weil. “I’m going to Little Cranberry!” (another island in Maine) chimed Cynthia Pringle, Creative Time’s director of operations.

I was then informed there’s no running water and no electricity on Little Cranberry Island, while Grog has both. But Little Cranberry has Martha Stewart (Pringle has seen her at the dock). Sounds exotic. Other guests said they planned to stay in New York and work. “Everyone leaves town so you can really focus,” said artist Dana Schutz, who is preparing for a fall show in Berlin. Eda Askoy is working on a dictionary of Russian artists who lived in France. Yasemin Ozuye plans to “sleep on rooftops and Nicole Green with her uncle Robert Green, a New Orleans drink on boats.” As for summer reading, the top selection was the book resident who worked on Paul Chan’s project there. the party celebrated: Waiting for Godot in New Orleans: A Field Guide, a document of Paul Chan’s 2007 community-based stagings, in the Ninth Ward and Gentilly, of Samuel Beckett’s play.

(From left to right): P.S. 1’s chief Klaus Biesenbach holding Paul Chan’s book, Creative Time’s chief Anne Pasternak and Dana Farouki of Guggenheim Abu Dhabi; Vardit Gross and Amanda Weil; artists Ryan Johnson and Dana Schutz.

Feeling Campy

Photos by Amanda Gordon

Janet Wallach and film director Barry Sonnenfield.

New Yorker editor David Remnick gave the keynote at the gala for Seeds of Peace International Camp, which his son Noah attended last summer. The camp in Maine brings together youth from the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Cyprus, the Balkans and the United States to develop campers’ conflict resolution skills.

Remnick told of his own experience at Camp Mordechai Runamok. “Multiculturalism at said camp meant you’d have color war with Jewish kids playing for a team called the People’s Republic of China, eating a form of mystery meats called—I swear to God—The Taste of Vienna. And then, at night, we would retire, in a cabin called Bunk Iroquois,” he said.

Sesds of Peace former campers had different kinds of memories. “It gets you into your enemies’ shoes and changes how you see the world,” said Tamer Shabeneh. Rashna Kharas added, “It’s a platform of opportunities.”

Noah, who is studying at Columbia University this summer, said he had started camp with a “good historic understanding of the Middle East; this gave me a much more personal understanding.”

David Remnick and his son Alex.

Hana Al-Henaid, Noah Remnick and Caitlin Wachsberger.

Jon Meacham and Alison Stewart.

Rebecca Messner and Robbie Whelan.

Caught in the NET A gala is just a gala, but not WNET.ORG’s Gala Salute at the Plaza, which had a remake of Casablanca featuring the president of WNET. ORG, Neal Shapiro, looking Bogart-esque in a fedora and trench coat. Shapiro casts himself in classic films regularly on TV, promoting Channel 13’s movie night, “Reel 13.” This time his mission was to tell Rick Blaine, Ilsa Lund and Victor Laszlo about the latest developments on New York public television, such as a new daily magazine called MetroFocus, to be broadcast from the new studio at Lincoln Center; an upcoming doc from Ken Burns on baseball; and plans to bring “the next generation of great plays back to television.”

Manning the polished, oval anchor/emcee desk at the gala were Jon Meacham, editor of Newsweek and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of American Lion, a book about Andrew Jackson, and Alison Stewart, a broadcast journalist who helped bring serious reporting to MTV. How did they land the gig of delivering dinner chitchat? They’re the co-hosts of the new Fridaynight public affairs program Need to Know, which debuted in May and replaces Bill Moyer’s Journal.

They said they’re aiming to make their program different. One example: comedian Andy Borowitz is delivering a regular segment Jody Arnhold and her son Paul Arnhold. called “Next Week’s News.”

For more party coverage, visit www.cityarts.info. To contact the author or purchase photos, email Amanda.Gordon@rocketmail.com; bit.ly/agphotos.

July 13, 2010 | City Arts

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