cityArts October 20, 2009

OCT. 20-NOV. 2, 2009 Volume 1, Issue 8 Jay Nordlinger praises opera singer Joyce DiDonato Mamet still rules with Oleanna

A Modern Book of the Dead In C. G. Jung’s The Red Book, the pioneer of psychoanalysis saves his soul n the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, a manuscript that accompanied each person to his grave—and detailed the judgment, journey, rebirth and afterlife of his soul—are the seeds of many mythologies. Gods of the sun, air, earth and sky; those of wisdom, abundance and death; that of the desert, storms, darkness and chaos are all instrumental in the soul’s successful passage from this world to the next.

The Book of the Dead, which is also referred to as that of Coming Forth by Day, chronicles the lives of gods through a story of infidelity, incest, jealousy, revenge, murder and resurrection. A prince is purged in an immortal fire. A goddess transforms into a bird. A sun god is conceived, through his mother’s tears, while husband and wife float on a casket down the Nile. In the ancient Egyptian court of the Afterlife, the deeds of one’s mortal life must be accounted for. But there is little to fear. Eventually each soul emerges—transformed and no worse-for-wear—beaming and eternal.

The posthumous publication of The Red Book, a modern version of the book of the dead—an autograph manuscript by Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961)—beckons judgment of another kind. The book chronicles and illustrates Jung’s own personal journey into the underworld (the unconscious) and the discovery, travails and rebirth of his soul.

In Jung’s book, which refers to ancient Egyptian gods, Judeo-Christian prophets, Dante, Eastern thought, Goethe’s Faust and Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra (just to name a few) are the seeds of Jungian mythologies—the interpretation of dreams, the collective unconscious, archetypes and psychoanalysis

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C.G. JUNG on page 6

Reprinted from The Red Book by C. G. Jung (c) Foundation of the Works of C. G. Jung. With permission of the publisher, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

BY LANCE ESPLUND

A page from Jung’s The Red Book on view at the Rubin Museum of Art through Jan. 25.

LetterFromtheEDITOR While I remember many of my dreams and enjoy recounting them to friends, I can’t say I’ve ever been devoted enough to immerse myself in Jung’s philosophy of psychoanalysis. That said, I am still fascinated by his rigor and the elaborate system of self-exploration that resulted, so I was thrilled to attend the book release for The Red Book that took place at the Rubin Museum of Art on a recent weekday morning. Gathered together were scholars who worked on the book, editors, journalists and even members of the Jung family who have had serious trepidations about the publishing of this particular work that they’ve kept hidden in a vault for decades. I was most amused by the two guards who stood near the actual tome—which is protected behind glass—and I asked them if there would be constant protection throughout the length of the exhibit. One guard gave me a quizzical look—as if I might be one of the crazies he’d been briefed about who might try to rush the book—before nodding yes. Afterward, I lugged my copy of the oversized, 8-pound reproduction back to the office and wondered how to tackle such a momentous publication and noteworthy exhibit.

Luckily our senior art critic, Lance Esplund, was up for the task, and in his critique, appearing on the cover of this issue, he analyzes the work from an artistic angle, along with the concurrent exhibit of Tibetan mandalas on view at the Rubin. Even if you have little interest in Jung the artist, check out this once-in-a-lifetime event. The Rubin is even staging special psychoanalytic “sessions” in which artists, writers and others will free-associate with Jung’s images. With such folks as Marina Abramovic, Alice Walker, Sarah Silverman and John Adams participating, you’ll want to reserve a spot.

Speaking of dreamers and geniuses, we also have a review of Peter Greenaway’s latest film, Rembrandt J’accuse, which opens at Film Forum for a two-week run. While most of us remember him for the visually spectacular Prospero’s Books or the disturbing The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, it’s been some time since we’ve had an original Greenaway to watch and ponder. While this film is a documentary about his exploration of Rembrandt’s “The Night Watch,” it’s the only new Greenaway film you’ll see for some time since his film Nightwatching still hasn’t received distribution.

On a completely different note, David Blum joins us to write about the current Broadway production of David Mamet’s Oleanna. Blum recalls seeing the original 1992 production, which occurred around the controversy of the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas case and how it reverberates now with the current David Letterman tabloid fodder regarding how he treated his female employees.

Hopefully, these pieces and the others provide a template for how to appreciate the artistic works with which we come into contact in the city. They are available to us to enjoy, but many works of art can also be studied to see how we may apply an artist’s observations to our own lives. But if you start dreaming about them, don’t blame me.

JERRY PORTWOOD Editor in Chief CORRECTION: We mistakenly labeled an image of a painting in last issue’s “At the Galleries” section to be a work by James Brooks. In fact, it was a painting by Giorgio Cavallon.

EDITOR Jerry Portwood jportwood@manhattanmedia.com MANAGING EDITOR Adam Rathe arathe@ manhattanmedia.com ART DIRECTOR Jessica Balaschak CONTRIBUTING ART DIRECTOR

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InBrief list of programs and presenters can be found at CreativeTime.org. (Christine Werthman)

111 is Not a Lonely Number Deutsche Grammophon is celebrating its 111th year with the release of a 55-CD box set, and although 111 seems like an odd year for a big anniversary, the number just made sense, according to Michael Lang, president of the classical music record label. “Ideally we have would have celebrated our 110th anniversary, but that also happened to be the Karajan year, and we didn’t want to step on the toes of that,” Lang explained, referring to a 38-disc Herbert von Karajan set released last year. “111 looked kind of cool, and lent itself to great graphical applications.” In the United States, the anniversary box set was released Oct. 20.

The chosen albums lean toward the breadand-butter of the classical repertoire, ranging from pianist Martha Argerich playing Chopin to Mahler 5 conducted by Gustavo Dudamel, the recently appointed 28-year-old conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. With plenty of predictable standards—symphonies conducted by Wilhelm Furtwangler and von Karajan, for example, and opera hits sung by Placido Domingo—the set also contains some newer recordings, featuring artists like pianist Lang Lang and Mexican tenor Rolando Villazón. The only choice that is not a “total classic” is Bernstein’s West Side Story, said Anja Rittmoeller, vice president of production and catalogue at DG. “[The label] didn’t do many crossover recordings, or recordings that came close to crossover, so that was not difficult to avoid,” she explained. “[Crossover recordings] haven’t mattered in our past, and neither do they matter in our present.”

The classical music world has been deluged with box sets as of late. Recent releases include a 90-disc set of Yo-Yo Ma recordings priced at $789, Brilliant Classics’ 170-disc Mozart and 155-disc Beethoven sets and multiple Haydn sets by Naxos. But as record stores continue to go out of business, and consumers are no longer willing to fork over $15 for a single CD, the box set trend makes sense, according to Lang. “It’s been a compromise between economic reality and giving the classical fan what they want,” he said. The new set has a list price of $169.98 and

Mama’s Baby

This 55-CD box set from Deutsche Grammophon celebrates its 111th.

can be ordered for $142.64 on Amazon.com.

In addition to the 55-CD set, Deutsche Grammophon is releasing a six-CD set with 111 tracks and a set of 11 classic videos, contained on 13 DVDs. If Lang has his way, the new releases will be profitable for the storied German classical label and offer a low cost-per-CD to the consumer. “It’s a win-win situation,” he said. (Corinne Ramey)

Making Time Innovative artists aren’t receiving enough institutional attention, so public arts organization Creative Time decided to launch the first Creative Time Summit, a conference to be held Oct. 24 at the New York Public Library’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building as part of the LIVE from the NYPL fall season.

Creative Time focuses on presenting, commissioning and promoting groundbreaking artistic work in the public realm, and its Summit, subtitled “Revolutions in Public Practice,” will be a means of honoring artists who “push culture forward and change the world,” said Nicholas Weist, in charge of marketing and communications for the organization. The conference brings together more than 35 artists, curators, critics, activists and scholars for conversations and presentations on issues of

social justice with relation to the arts.

The whirlwind of talks at the Summit lasts only one day, but the day prior to the Summit brings the presentation of The Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, a new annual award going this year to The Yes Men. The award is named for philanthropist and social activist Leonore Annenberg and is supported by The Annenberg Foundation with a $25,000 prize. A jury of “fellow artists and thinkers” was chosen to find a recipient, either an artist or a group of artists whose work engaged with the public and promoted social justice and awareness. The panel found that match with The Yes Men, which also happens to have a feature-length documentary, The Yes Men Fix the World, which premiered Oct. 7 at Film Forum. Founded by Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, the 300-person group alerts people to the dangers of greed and corruption through parody and high jinks, doing everything from posing as chief executives of top corporations to printing fake copies of the New York Times (which they did after the 2008 election), which announced the end of the Iraq war.

According to Weist, The Yes Men were selected because their works “provoke action” and make people ask questions. The Summit is sold out, but podcasts of some discussions will be available at ArtonAir.org, and a complete

Nearly 50 years after founding La MaMa E.T.C., the experimental theater that has become synonymous with the avant-garde, Ellen Stewart will be honored on Nov. 1 with a gala benefit to rename La MaMa’s Annex Theater the Ellen Stewart Theatre.

Founded by Stewart in 1961, La MaMa has long been world famous as a haven for risk takers, with the list of artists who launched their careers there reading like a who’s who of theater and film: Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Elizabeth Swados, Mike Figgis, Patti Smith, Lanford Wilson and many others. But if nothing else, La MaMa sealed its place in theater history by being both the first company to produce the works of Harold Pinter in America and the first home for what would eventually become Harvey Fierstein’s Torch Song Trilogy.

Now the woman who has served as the company’s artistic director since its inception will be honored by the theater she created.

Known simply as “Mama” to the scores of performers, composers and writers who have made names for themselves on her stages, Stewart will be justly immortalized for her contributions to Off-Off-Broadway by her namesake theater. The gala “was kind of Frank Carucci’s [president of La MaMa] idea,” says associate artistic director Mia Yoon. “It’s Ellen’s 90th birthday, and how we’ll celebrate is to name the Annex the Ellen Stewart Theater. We all know that the space is really special to her, and she’s made that space special herself.”

Located a few steps down the block from La MaMa’s main two-stage building, the Annex has been open since La MaMa’s production of The Trojan Women in 1974. The first event at the newly rechristened theater will be the Nov. 1 gala celebration celebrating both La MaMa’s storied past and Stewart’s unforgettable contributions to New York City theater, with a cocktail reception and a star-studded tribute from past performers, including Bill Irwin (currently co-starring on Broadway in Bye Bye Birdie), Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble, Peggy Shaw and Lois

October 20, 2009 | City Arts

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InBrief

OCTOBER BOOKS

Califone knows the score with new film.

Weaver and a few surprise guests.

Just how does a theater legend react to the news that she’s becoming a theater? “She’ll be very modest about the whole thing,” Yoon predicts, “But I think she’s thrilled. This is her life, and her baby. And hopefully, it will be a fitting tribute to all her passion and the inspiration she’s been giving to so many artists all over the world.” (Mark Peikert)

Movie ‘Fone “Sometimes you have to put yourself outside of your comfort zone,” said Tim Rutili, front man for the Chicago-based rock group Califone. Specifically he was discussing the Oct. 23 performance at 92Y Tribeca, where he and his band will play the soundtrack to a film called All My Friends Are Funeral Singers—a film that Rutili also wrote and directed and which is screening in New York for the first time that night.

Following a woman living in a house full of ghosts, the film is Rutili’s first attempt at writing a narrative screenplay, but thanks to years of playing in bands, he’s used to making music alongside films.

“If you’re writing songs, you put a DVD in and write just to get out of your own head a little bit,” he said. “But usually you turn the sound off and play guitar.”

Not this time; Califone has scored the entire film and will play along during a series of screenings. Not only does it give Rutili a chance to control the perception of his film, but it also allows the band to play in a way that nightclub gigs have never allowed.

“First of all, there’s a film to see, so that adds a whole new element to the show— people won’t have to look at us,” he explained.

“When people have something else to look at, there’s a lot more room for dissonance and sounds that don’t correspond with a specific

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instrument. There’s more freedom to think about doing things that will enhance the picture instead of the song.”

Still, despite the accessibility that the film brings to Califone’s sometimes-experimental music—Q magazine called the soundtrack “proof that experimentation doesn’t have to be alienating”—Rutili isn’t in a hurry to repeat the experience.

“I am working on a script, so I want to make another film after this,” he confessed.

“But I don’t know if I would score it again— I’d like Hans Zimmer or someone massive to score it.” (Adam Rathe)

ISSUE Moves Forward The death of ISSUE Project Room founder Suzanne Fiol on Oct. 5 left the future of the avant-garde, Brooklyn-based performance space in question as it was just beginning negotiations for the plan to move from the Old American Can factory in Gowanus to a new, rent-free Downtown Brooklyn location at 110 Livingston Street in a former Board of Education building.

Luckily for the New York arts scene, the move is still happening. Not only did Fiol continue working until her final days, but by securing the Livingston Street space, she had reason to organize a full staff, including a board of directors, advisory board, a development director and house manager—a realization of her dream of expanding ISSUE Project Room to a fully functioning home for experimental music, dance, theater, literary readings and film.

“She had tremendously amazing foresight in building up the organization,” said ISSUE Project Room chairman Steve Wax. “Suzanne has strong spirit—she is guiding us and helping us.”

According to Wax, Fiol’s colleagues were

aware of her battle with cancer and have been rapidly building up the organization to move forward with the venue change, anticipating her absence. Wax also pointed out that Fiol never stopped working, even in her darker hours.

“Her condition brought no diminution of effort,” he added later on. “A month ago, in the middle of chemo and being sick, she flew to L.A. to help a foundation raise a bunch of money. She did this fundraising during the worst part of her illness.”

Currently, the space at 110 Livingston (“a perfect European jewel box theater,” said Wax) is in the early stages of assessment and will soon begin recruiting architecture firms for the initial construction bids. The directors anticipate that it will take at least a year, if not two, before the space is ready.

In an email message, Jed Walentas, the real-estate titan who organized the deal at 110 Livingston, said he “chose to partner with ISSUE Project Room largely because of [Fiol’s] passion, ideas and perseverance.

In her absence, we intend to continue our relationship with ISSUE Project, knowing that her legacy will endure at the organization’s new home.”

While currently the board of directors is releasing no official decision about a memorial for Suzanne, they plan to put her name “on something prominent” in the new space. They will also set up a fund in her name separate from the regular operating budget.

In the meantime, the current space at the Old American Can Factory is still moving at the same pace, hosting about 200 shows a year.

“The main message is that we’re deeply saddened but proceeding at our usual speed, which for us is first gear,” said Wax, “100 miles per hour.” (Joseph Alexiou)

Serizawa: Master of Japanese Textile Design edited by Joe Earle

Released as a catalogue of the Japan Society’s current retrospective of his work, this book on the design of Serizawa Keisuke features hundreds of colorful photos and illustrations showcasing the textile work of the man who was named a Living National Treasure in 1956. Items including book covers, wall hangings and kimonos are exhibited, showing off the playful and colorful style that Serizawa became known for. In addition to the images, a slew of writers have contributed essays on Serizawa, his processes and his influence, giving the book an aesthetic edge and making it an interesting read.

Mapping New York edited by Phoebe Adler, Tom Howells and Duncan McCorquodale

Maps may mean more to New York than any other city. It was the rational planning of streets that created Manhattan, transforming it from pastoral island to the epitome of 20th-century modern planning. This beautifully illustrated book appeals to more than the map fetishist or the academic looking for a compendium for reference.

Rather than chronological, the editors have done a wonderful job organizing a wealth of maps—from the pragmatic and to the quixotic—into four sections: history, servicing, living and imagining.

One of the most intriguing sections is a series of pages that show the abstraction of New York through transit maps. The sort of graphic interpretations that can rarely be pored over for long in a museum setting, this British-produced volume is a must-have for any New Yorker who seeks to understand the city from the ground up.

Who Shot Rock And Roll: A Photographic History 1955Present

by Gail Buckland

ISSUE Project Room founder Suzanne Fiol.

There are photos of musicians that become iconic—Bob Dylan walking down Jones Street in the snow or Johnny Cash, middle finger extended, on stage at San Quentin—but in this collection, by Cooper Union professor Buckland, it’s the photographer, not the subject, who is celebrated. From Astrid Kirchherr’s shots of a young John Lennon to Ryan McGinley’s photos of fans at a 2004 Morrissey concert, the pictures, each paired with notes about the photographer and the photograph, say just as much about the person taking them as they do about the musicians on the other side. Whether they’re outtakes from famous shoots, images from live shows or candid snapshots, the photos that Buckland uses—and which will be exhibited in an upcoming show at The Brooklyn Museum—can be as exciting and exhilarating as the musicians they capture.

DANCE

Round and Round Exploring movement and meaning during Works & Process

BY JOEL LOBENTHAL tor when dancers stood at the There’s a deliberate lip of the stage, supported asymmetry, as well as by colleagues standing in a measured dialogue the tiny orchestra pit. between projection If it was in a spirit and recession in of lyrical exploration the Guggenthat Quanz’s dancers heim Museum’s wandered into the Peter B. Lewis theater’s spectator Theater. The regions, Keigwin’s theater functions cast by contrast was Pho to b as a subterranean intent on violating y To mC arav microcosm of proprieties, on sugagli a the museum itself. gesting an encroachIts circular shape ment of some kind. A binds the auditorium’s pile-up downstage was constituent parts into a tasked with pulling one of the continuum of perpetuum modancers seemingly back from the bile, in which you sit facing other brink. Tumbling into the auditorium, audience members as well as the stage. the dancers played tag, chase, tackle. Personal This is where Mary Sharp Cronson has quirks became rhythmic steps and patterns. convened the “Works & Process” series for The men fixed their ties and put on the jackets the last 25 years, in which performers—usuthey’d discarded as they sauntered back onally dancers or musicians—do things and stage for a final recapitulation. then talk about what they’ve just done. I went ABT’s program wasn’t as explicitly about twice in the last month and saw Steve Reich the Guggenheim layout so much as it was a Interpreted: New Choreography by Larry suite of topics on the concept of adaptation.

Keigwin and Peter Quanz in September. Last The smallness of the Guggenheim stage was week, it was American Ballet Theatre: The Art related to the small stage at the royal opera of Adaptation. house in Copenhagen, for which August The floating concentric circles that Bournonville composed his masterpieces make up the theater cry out to be exin the mid-19th century. That was given as plored, and in both Keigwin’s and Quanz’s explanation for the way that a lot of Bournpieces—each choreographed especially for onville combinations are performed in place, Works & Process to Steve Reich’s Double within a relatively contained spatial compass.

Sextet—the half-dozen performers left the This was demonstrated by students from stage, availing themselves of nooks and ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School, crannies and observation galleries on the members of a cast of characters that also other side of the footlights. Quanz’s In included young professionals in the junior Tandem was danced by the Royal Winnpeg ABT II company and adult members of the Ballet, and Keigwin’s Sidewalk by his own parent troupe. company.

Members of ABT’s coaching and Reich’s Double Sextet, percussive and production staff explained how much more inevitably repetitive, is hard to deal with; than meets the eyes there is to putting a you certainly don’t come out humming, but ballet onstage, how the company negotiates you might exit tapping from the relentlessthe varied performance venues in which it ness of it all. I was becoming impatient with performs around the world. The evening the score by the second iteration, but the two concluded with slivers of two new works choreographers found ways to step lightly commissioned for the Avery Fisher season: through its nautilus spiral, and this space is Alexei Ratmansky’s Seven Sonatas and a particularly apt one in which to negotiate Aszure Barton’s One of Three, strongly and rings within rings. expressively danced by ABT’s Yuriko Kajiya, The roundness of the stage makes a good Carlos Lopez and Jared Matthews. analogue to the classic ballet manège—a ABT and the Steve Reich: These were two circle of jumps. Quanz employed the manège good and stimulating shows—all around. with one dancer following another or leaping eponymously in tandem. Simultaneity of Shen Wei Dance Arts at 10 perform as part of contrasts, and the overlapping phrases beWorks & Process Oct. 24 & 25. The Peter B. tween dancers, added texture. Boundary isLewis Theater at the Solomon R. Guggenheim sues added to the mix as Quanz highlighted Museum, 1071 5th Ave. (at E. 89th St.), 212the threshold between performer and specta- 423-3575; 7:30, $10-$30.

Ursula Oppens, pianist Charles Neidich, clarinetist performing works by

John Corigliano, Elliott Carter (American premiere), Tania León, Tobias Picker (world premiere), and Joan Tower.

Plus a Conversation with the composers about creating and playing music in New York today For information, call 212-817-8215

PRESENTS

Oct 29–Nov 1 Thu-Sat 8pm, Sun 3pm

Two unique programs Two U.S. premieres Live music

Tickets start at $15

October 20, 2009 | City Arts

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“Vajrayogini Mandala” from 18th-century Tibet.

C.G. JUNG from page 1

mythology, he devoured everything available.

Universal signs and symbols played a key role in his theories of dream analysis, which Jung saw as a window into the soul. Jung was obviously moved by the mosaics seen during a trip to Ravenna. He probably saw the scandalous 1913 Armory Show of Modern art in New York, and he was well acquainted with the work of the Zurich Dadaists Hugo Ball, Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-

(named—by Jung’s mentor Freud—for Psyche, the goddess of the soul). Yet, with The Red Book’s publication this month and its debut in the exhibition The Red Book of C. G. Jung: Creation of a New Cosmology, at the Rubin Museum of Art, certainly more than Jung’s soul sits in the balance.

Nearly 100 years old, Jung’s unfinished Red Book, or Liber Novus, Latin for “New Book” In The Red Book, Jung wrestles with (edited by Sonu Shamthe conceptions of God, death, Hell dasani), was worked on intermittently from 1914 to and magic. He expounds on dreams, 1930. For some—especially visions and fantasies. He unravels his Jungians—the publication theories on psychoanalysis. And yet, of a facsimile and translafor material that is so modern, so tion of Jung’s original is a dream-come-true; for fraught with complexity and so deepothers—especially Jungians ly personal, the art feels rather tame and Jung’s descendents—it and backward-looking—a point drivcould be a nightmare that will fuel criticism from en home by the fact that the book Jung’s detractors. For artists was made during one of the most and the general public, I fertile periods in the history of art. doubt that it will create much of a stir.

Jung seems to have had a complicated relationship with art. He was certainly open to art’s signs Arp (Jung analyzed Taeuber-Arp’s sister)—a and symbols—which, instrumental to psychogroup he criticized in an essay published in a analysis, he discussed in his published writSwiss journal. But when it comes to underings and explored in his Red Book. A general- standing just how, exactly, an artist gives life ist when it came to world folklore, religion and to signs and symbols through structure and

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metaphor, Jung comes off as something of a self-taught Sunday painter—an amateur.

Jung was fascinated by the form of the mandala, which, although the Swiss psychoanalyst was not completely clear on its purposes and meanings, he painted often and used to assist him on his own spiritual journey. A number of Jung’s mandalas are exhibited at the RMA. A mandala, which represents man’s connection—through geometry—to the universe, is a difficult form to define. Made out of circles and squares, it is a cosmic and divine structure—in painting, sculpture or architecture, and populated with Buddha, deities and animals—whose meditative purpose is to help the onlooker achieve enlightenment. A spectacular exhibition, Mandala: The Perfect Circle, organized by Martin Brauen, is currently on view at the RMA. The gorgeous show, with works from the Eighth to the 21st centuries, explores the history and meaning of the mandala; and it is a beautifully instructive counterpoint to the mandalas in The Red Book, in which Jung’s forms feel borrowed and decorative, rather than purposeful, inventive and alive.

A brilliant thinker but not an artist, Jung was unable to get metaphor and tension in his designs. In the best Himalayan Buddhist’s mandalas, the forms and figures pressure forward, as they are also held vividly in the plane.

Concentric circles interweave and ripple— opening like flowers. You feel the presence of restrained light, as well as palpable tension between figure and ground—as if nirvana was held just out of reach, ready to burst through from one realm to the other. Jung remains an illustrative artist. He never arrives at that kind of formal integrity; and I doubt that he is truly aware of its existence.

The Red Book is fascinating both to peruse and to read, especially for anyone with an interest in Jung or psychoanalysis. It was considered by Jung to be his “prima materia for a lifetime’s work.” I have not had the chance to read the book cover-to-cover (and I am not sure that I would want to), but what I have read is poetic, dense, richly layered and occasionally verging on stream-of-consciousness lunacy—in a good way. (At times I was reminded in particular of Zarathustra.) In The Red Book, Jung wrestles with the conceptions of God, death, Hell and magic. He expounds on dreams, visions and fantasies. He unravels his theories on psychoanalysis. And yet, for material that is so modern, so fraught with complexity and so deeply personal, the art feels rather tame and backward-looking—a point driven home by the fact that the book was made during one of the most fertile periods in the history of art.

Thick and bound in red leather with gold lettering, The Red Book, at roughly 12 inches wide by 16 inches high, harkens

back to medieval illuminated manuscripts.

Written in a wandering, black calligraphy, with hand-painted drop capitals, the book resembles one of those early German printed books made to look as if it had been done by hand. Perpetually out-of-place, it suggests the nostalgia of the Arts & Crafts Movement, as well as the birth of New-Age. And Jung’s wildly obsessive and detailed illustrations—of figures, dragons, cities, deities, demons and mandalas—reminiscent of mosaics, crystals and stained glass, create a hodgepodge that is interesting more for what it reveals about its author than for what it reveals about its subject.

“Buddha Rathasambhava” The Red Book is a private journal taken to extremes. It served its function as the genesis of Jungian psychology. I presume that Jung, perhaps self-conscious and unsure of its artistic worth, was ambivalent about publishing it. This is probably why he left no instructions about what to do with the book, which is only being published now because copies of fragments of the manuscript had surfaced recently.

Private or not, Jung must have known that eventually The Red Book would come to public light. And you can sense that Jung is doing more here than giving private form to his dreams. You can sense that deep down he may wish to be seen artistically on par with those past seers and prophets—the medieval scribes, illustrators and rubricators who brought back physical proof of their spiritual journeys. Aesthetically, The Red Book is compulsive decoration—a therapeutic, rather than an artistic, act. Yet it will continue to hold our attention as an artifact of modern psychology—as a visual record of one man’s quest to save his soul.

The Red Book of C. G. Jung: Creation of a New Cosmology through Jan. 25; Mandala: The Perfect Circle through Jan. 11. Rubin Museum of Art, 150 W. 17th St. (at 7th Ave.), 212-620-5000.

Film

Dark Optimism Still confounding, Peter Greenaway returns with a documentary

BY MICHAEL JOSHUA ROWIN nce a leading, controversial light of international art cinema, Peter Greenaway hasn’t received much notice or play in the States since his provocative late 1980s heyday (Drowning By Numbers, The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover), and thus the strange circumstance of his latest film. Documentary supplement to his 2007 biopic Nightwatching, Rembrandt’s J’accuse would ordinarily take second billing as a DVD-only release, but instead the opposite has occurred: Nightwatching continues to go without theatrical distribution in the United States while J’accuse now arrives at Film Forum for a two-week run.

It’s a minor event, but a telling one: His work having become increasingly anti-commercial—J’accuse is his first feature to screen in America beyond the film festival circuit since 1999’s 8 1/2 Women—nobody knows what to do with the intellectual, vulgar, theatrical, experimental, playful, unabashedly highbrow Greenaway anymore. So while Nightwatching might have been the film to reintroduce him to curious audiences, J’accuse will have to suffice. An epic account of the creation of Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn’s masterpiece “The Night Watch,” Nightwatching depicts the economic, cultural and artistic currents of 17th-century Netherlands in hypnotic tableaux and chiaroscuro lighting worthy of the master painter himself. J’accuse incorporates scenes from Nightwatching, some newly added courtroom interrogations in which Greenaway directly questions characters, and Wlodzimierz Pawlik’s beautifully elegiac score to far drier and more didactic

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effect; as narrated by Greenaway in full lecture mode and structured around “30 (plus one)” mysteries concerning the painting, the documentary restates Nightwatching’s thesis, that in “The Night Watch,” Rembrandt satirized the then-popular “group military portrait” genre of painting to ironically, angrily accuse his conspiratorial subjects of assassinating a Dutch nobleman for political and monetary gain.

Whether Greenaway’s theory holds water or not, both Nightwatching and Rembrandt’s J’accuse are more interesting for what they say about their director than for what they say about Rembrandt. The films reverses the state of affairs of Greenaway’s first mainstream work concerning the political and optical perils of the visual artist, 1982’s The Draughtsman’s Contract. In that film the title character with his purely systematic, scientific rendering of physical reality is undone by continually failing to creatively understand what he sees, a series of misperceptions culminating in being literally “framed”—for murder. “A really intelligent man makes an indifferent painter,” one of the conspirators in that film remarks.

“An intelligent man will know more about what he is drawing than he will see, and in the space between knowing and seeing, he will become constrained, unable to pursue an idea strongly.”

This time the artist does the accusing.

Unlike The Draughtsman’s Contract’s arrogant and ultimately ignorant Mr. Neville, however, Rembrandt is a creative giant, and his humanistic, exploratory and multivalent vision allows him to penetrate forbidden areas of knowledge, making him a hero with whom Greenaway

Jodhi May as Rembrandt’s mistress, Geertje Dirks, in a re-enactment from the documentary Rembrandt’s J’accuse, directed by Peter Greenaway. sympathizes. Rembrandt’s quest is not to flatter or exploit privilege but to investigate and confront it, if not as a subtly veiled accusation then at least as a challenge to the artistic traditions and prejudices of the art of his era.

In this regard, Nightwatching is an optimistic, albeit tragic, (auto)biographical mirror reflecting the role Greenaway sees for himself as imagemaker. J’accuse makes the same point but is unfortunately far less ambitious; its dutiful but simple count-up structure lacking Godard’s complexly layered montage investi-

gations into the relationship between cinema and the plastic arts that might have done for “The Night Watch” in a non-fiction vein what Nightwatching did in a fictional one. For all its classroom-like accessibility, J’accuse is an auxiliary work, one that can’t help but play in the shadow of a film all the more grand for being so bafflingly neglected.

Rembrandt’s J’accuse. Directed by Peter Greenaway. At Film Forum Oct. 21-Nov. 3 Runtime: 86 min.

October 20, 2009 | City Arts

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JAZZ

Salsa (Hard) and Jazz (Hot) Chris Washburne continues to push the conventions and limits of Latin jazz

BY HOWARD MANDEL he PBS documentary series Latin Music USA, which was shown locally on two successive Mondays in October, and the White House “Fiesta Latina,” held Oct. 14 and broadcast on PBS the following night, belatedly reminded us—as they were meant to—that Hispanic Heritage Month had come and gone. This celebration of the culture of Americans from Spanish-speaking backgrounds—the largest and fastest growing ethnic group in the United States—is commonly overlooked, though Lyndon Johnson initiated it as a week-long affair in 1968 and Congress expanded it to a month in 1988.

One problem may be the month starts in mid-September, because Sept. 15 is independence day for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, Mexico’s independence day is Sept. 16 and Chile’s is Sept. 18.

Non-Hispanic Americans might not have those dates as firmly in mind as July 4 or 9/11, but we all should realize how vital the Latin tinge (as Jelly Roll Morton called Hispanic influence) is to our best vernacular music. That’ s especially true in New York City. Part 1 of Latin Music USA vividly demonstrated how Maurio Bauza and Dizzy Gillespie popularized Latin jazz in the late 1940s; Machito’s Afro-Cubans, Tito Rodriguez and Tito Puente’s orchestras integrated social dancing at the Palladium Ballroom in the ’50s; and Joe Cuba, Joe Bataan, Pete Rodriguez and Willie Colon, among others, funkified the old-school style in the ’60s to come up with the boogaloo. In the ’70s, an honor roll of virtuosic bandleaders, singers and instrumentalists convened under the flag of Fania Records Trombonist Chris Washburne plays Sundays at Smoke with his SYOTOS band. to reach musical peaks and rewarded dancers and listeners alike, designating their pan-Latin American triumph Salsa. don’t end with those veterans, as trombonist and also interviewed in Latin Music USA (which Of the stars of that era, composer-bandleadColumbia University professor Chris Washcan be viewed in its entirety online at www. er-pianist Eddie Palmieri is the most active survi- burne, one of the talking heads in Latin Music pbs.org/wgbh/latinmusicusa) and pianist Arturo vor. He’ s scheduled to perform at the Blue Note USA, makes clear in his book Sounding Salsa O’Farrill, who leads the Chico O’ Farrill Afro Dec. 9 through 13 to mark his Cuban Jazz Orchestra on Sunday nights at 73rd birthday, and if the dazzling Birdland, also pursue a creative aesthetic. Their performance his La Perfecta II enWe all should realize how vital efforts are in contrast to the watered down, semble delivered at Jazz at Lincoln salsa romántica, which Washburne the Latin tinge is to our best commercial Center last January is typical of his identifies as having emerged in the 1990s. At vernacular music. that time, young Latinos such as La India and sets now, that stand shouldn’t be missed. Like his colleagues Larry Marc Anthony took the assimilationist path Harlow (who plays New York infrequently, but and even better with his SYOTOS band. That forged by Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound was an artist-in-residence at Ramapo College in septet has held a Sunday night gig at Smoke, for Machine, singing with Hispanic inflections October) and Johnny Pacheco, el maestro of the the past 10 years that follows a long, mid-week but replacing much of Afro-Caribbean music’ s Fania All-Stars (whose concert at the United Pal- stint at the Nuyorican Poets Café in the East dynamic rhythms with squarer beats suitable to ace Theater Nov. 14 is billed as “Su Historia & Village. The group has also released four albums mainstream pop.

Su Música”), Palmieri has a genius for stacking of Latin jazz that ingeniously retains danceability Salsa romántica, which favors mellifluous fiery horns over hyperkinetic rhythms from piano while pushing the genre’s conventions of compo- ballads sung by pretty people in preference and percussion for waves of sound that compel a sition and virtuosic improvisation. to cuttingly synchronized instrumental work, listener’s feet, hips, ears, mind and spirit.

Washburne is not alone in mamboing down may have made Latin music safe for crossover Developments in Latin music, however, that ambitious line; drummer Bobby Sanabria, radio airplay, but it downplays the tension

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between tradition and innovation that’s stoked the taste for Latin music in America ever since John Philip Sousa (of Spanish, Portuguese and Bavarian ancestry) adapted Cuban themes to military marches back in the 1890s. Salsa dura—hard salsa—is more attractive to fans of jazz and other exploratory urban musics than melodramatic come-ons that seem to recapitulate the plots of telenovelas.

Is it just so to me? Nah. Washburne was diagnosed with nerve cancer in the early ’90s, and underwent lip surgery that doctors predicted he had only a 50-50 chance of surviving, with no possibility he’d ever play trombone again. They were wrong: Today he plays superbly. And his ensemble’s name, an acronym for “See you on the other side,” reflects the bravado that distinguishes Latin music in the U.S.A. It’s an assertion that tradition can embrace new circumstances without sacrificing its cojones.

LISA LIPPMAN, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT/DIRECTOR

Lisa Lippman

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We are pledged to the letter and spirit of U.S. policy for the achievement of equal housing opportunity throughout the nation. We encourage and support an afďŹ rmative advertising and marketing program in which there are no barriers to obtaining housing because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin.

AttheGALLERIES Subtle colors in “The Charleston” vividly convey the shadowy zone in the dry dock beneath the great, swelling hull.

As a kind of visual journal, Talese’s paintings brim with a sense of engagement and enthusiasm for her motif. The artist’s work may be less aggressively engaged with art trends, either contemporary or traditional; while they evince the honesty and empathy of Homer’s early scenes of Civil War soldiers and British fishermen, they show rather less of his pictorial adventurousness in seizing upon a jutting mast or lowering cloud. But Talese’s paintings speak amply about her devoted labor, and of the tactile pleasures of paint— qualities totally at one with the rusty nobleness of her subjects. (John Goodrich) Pamela Talese: Rust Never Sleeps, through Oct. 30.

Atlantic Gallery, 135 W. 29th St., Suite 601 (betw.

6th & 7th Aves.), 212-219-3183.

Frank Stella: Polychrome Relief

“The Valcogen Bow” by Pamela Talese

Pamela Talese: Rust Never Sleeps: Corrosion and Renewal in Maritime/Industrial New York With admirable directness, Pamela Talese’s 20 paintings at Atlantic Gallery document the changing face of the overlooked byways of Brooklyn and Queens. Her small canvases, executed on location in a sprightly realist manner, affectionately tell the stories of neglected landmarks and factories—and especially the aging ships under repair at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where she maintains a studio.

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If storytelling is a key impulse behind these works, the wall labels provide considerable background. Talese is clearly intimately acquainted with her subjects, and the labels’ descriptions reveal their peculiar, and often poignant, histories.

It turns out that the broad-hulled ship in “The Valcogen Bow” set records for cargos of barley and soybeans. In another canvas, the artist captures the kaleidoscopic piles of color heaped at the Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse after a 2006 fire; the label discloses that these are the countless scraps of fabric once stored in the facility, which

in an earlier incarnation housed what was probably the world’s largest cordage factory. And the Domino Sugar Factory, hunkering under a rainy sky—who knew this was once the largest sugar refinery on earth?

At times, Talese’s personal tales blend with her subjects’. Amidst the rusting hulks, an egret alights in a dry dock—”wildlife among industry!”

Elsewhere the dockhands complicate the artist’s task by repeatedly changing the lines tying up a tug.

Visually, the most striking images feature endon or sidelong views of the weather-worn vessels.

Small events, as we know, sometimes have big repercussions. One day in the early 1990s, Frank Stella looked more closely at a foam rubber sun hat he’d purchased on a beach in Rio de Janeiro.

Fashioned from a single flat disk of foam rubber, it could bulge to accommodate the shape of a head, thanks to slits that spiraled from its center. Stretched further, it became a nest of twisting tendrils. Over the next decade, this uniquely flexible headgear was to inspire a number of sculptures, murals and architectural projects.

Among the latest descendents of these works are the lively sculptures currently on view at Paul Kasmin. Like much of Stella’s work since the mid-70s, these give the impression of manic assemblages of studio experiments. The central element of each—a core of coiling petal-like forms, smooth or with grids of perforations—are produced by a process called “rapid prototyping,” in which computer-guided machines build forms out of layers of fast-hardening materials. Bits of steel tubing loop around these constructions and plunge through their centers. The sweeping gestures reflect the artist’s longstanding obsession with diagrammatic spatial thrusts. Familiar, too, is the design-shop palette: fuscia, aqua, avocado, candy-apple green, tangerine. But compared to the ponderous articulations of much of Stella’s work, these pieces have a buoyant archness. With their sleek surfaces and modular construction—the core elements reappearing in various sizes and orientations—they seem to delight in their own syntheticness. The larger pieces are propped on poles, almost like space-age appetizers on toothpicks, while smaller ones hang rather unceremoniously on the walls on large chrome-plated hooks. Over the decades, employing an impressive variety of means, the artist has managed to turn cerebrations about pictorial space into muscularly decorative events. These new works suggest a lighter touch. It’s as if the artist, baptized five decades ago in the nippy waters of Minimalism, and having traversed the churning currents of the Baroque, has emerged in the realm of Post-Pop. Amidst this flamboyance, two smaller sculptures stand out for their reticence. “K.17 (nickel and white variation)” (2009), an appealing study in svelte grays and shiny whites, has a reserve totally different from its much larger, carnival-colored variation on the opposite wall. The translucent, porcelain-like curls of a smallish sculpture in the front room have a delicacy completely foreign to two splashy variations in the third, rearmost gallery.

Be sure not to overlook in this third room “Circus of Pure Feeling for Malevich: Four Squares” (2009), a collection of 16 pieces resting on four tables. These small, bristling works, unpainted except for a few white portions, consist of computer-generated elements plus whatever small scraps apparently caught the artist’s eye: cables, ball bearings, tubing, wire. Pure feeling or not, they

In her black-and-white series, “Behind My Eyes,” Jin employs the technique of negative printing to create powerfully expressive photos of the sea, with smoke rising from the waves and clouds blending with foam. She does this by imposing a negative of the sea on another of the sky. Though shot in Maine, Nova Scotia and Hong King, they could depict the creation of the world or its end. They areas, ominous, surging, full of energy and as engrossing as the seascapes of Winslow Homer and J.M.W. Turner.

Nothing is exactly what it seems in Toshio Shibata’s highly textured photos of public works projects in Japan and the United States. He eliminates most reference to scale by using an 8by-10 camera, which enables him to shoot as if he were inside the landscape he photographs. Mostly black and white, they capture the power of water descending, spilling, crashing and pouring over walls and huge dams, such as “Grand Coulee Dam, Douglas County, Washington, 1996.” It appears silver here and also in the exquisite “Otaki Village, Nagano Prefecture, 2005,” where sheets of water slide into a green pool.

If art is meant to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, these photographers more than fulfill their obligation. (Valerie Gladstone) “K.17 (nickel and white variation)” by Frank Stella

seem less like performances than private, surreal musings; they could be on the verge of turning into either miniature motors or flowers. (JG) Frank Stella: Polychrome Relief, through Nov. 7.

Paul Kasmin Gallery, 293 10th Ave. (at W. 27th St.), 212-563-4474.

The Abstracted Landscape What amazing worlds these four photographers—Peter Bialobrzeski, Stephan Couturier, DoDo Jin Ming and Toshio Shibata— create. Shooting a variety of landscapes with poetic instincts, they make the viewer look at scenes in remarkably fresh ways, following in an esteemed tradition that includes Paul Strand and Edward Weston. Established, mid-career artists, their work can be found in major international collections.

Using a large-format camera, Bialobrzeski chooses desolate, industrialized areas as his subjects, usually shooting at night. In “Transition 23, 2007,” he pictures a building in the midst of construction with a sign saying “Grand Mall” in a no man’s land where graffiti shouts from a distant wall.

But dazzling light transforms the ordinary into a haunting scene that could serve as an illustration for Cormac McCarthy’s dark, end-of-the-world novel The Road.

Couturier peers into buildings with his camera, like a surgeon examining the inside of a body, opening up interiors usually hidden or overlooked.

His beautiful “Rue du Sevres, Paris, 1998,” shows windows, staircases and steel supports of a forsaken building, perhaps a view only available to someone in its backyard. Just as mysterious is his “HavanaMur #1, 2006,” of crumbling walls in shades of blue that could be 1,000 or five years old.

The Abstracted Landscape, through Nov. 14 Laurence Miller Gallery, 20 W. 57th St. (betw. 5th & 6th Aves.), 212-397-3930.

Sara MacCulloch: New Paintings, through Nov. 14.

Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, 529 W. 20th St. (betw.

10th & 11th Aves.), 212-366-5368.

Rolf Behm: Pandora The dozen, 5-foot-wide still lifes and abstract landscapes in German artist Rolf Behm’s vibrant show at Howard Scott fill the gallery with light and color. This is one of those exciting exhibitions where you don’t know where to put your attention first.

Painted by Behm, the work shares qualities

Sara MacCulloch: New Paintings In her first exhibition at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, Sara MacCulloch catches the fields, shores and forests of her native Nova Scotia in broad, fluid brushstrokes and nuanced hues. Not often do landscape paintings seem at once so voluptuous and so spare.

At a glance, the paintings appear to aim for a quick and easy seduction. (The artist indeed produces them in single painting sessions, in order to preserve their freshness of technique.) Gaze awhile, though, and her adroit color and evocative atmosphere offer lingering rewards. She energizes her simplified forms with subtle shifts of hue; milky off-whites are especially effective in a painting like “Winter River” (2009), in which gray-greens and various warm grays lend a palpable thickness to the air between foreground trunks and distant trees.

One senses the kind of clouded winter day when snow falls so finely that it’s felt rather than seen. In

“Winter River” by Sara MacCullough

“Transition 23, 2007” by Peter Bialobrzeski

observed fact—to, say, the busy gathering of trees rooted at the far side of streaming green bands in “Fields Near Kingsport” (2009). A trip to Great Britain produced the spirited “Fields, England” (2009), in which bushes, posed tensely at either side, frame a broad recession into space. At the canvas’ center, just before the ground sweeps down to a distant patchwork of farmland, a tree stares back at us, small but determined. Most memorable of all is the small panel “Dusk, England” (2009), with deeper darks poignantly locating a lone tree among shifting plains of green. MacCulloch is consistently adept at orchestrating the suggestive, but here she also deliberates on the rhythmic meaning of particulars. Such moments hint of what might occur in a sketch by Corot, in which the final miracle is that formal impulses—cohering, compounding, quantifying—yield so naturally the appearance of a tree. (JG)

“Beach Waves” (2009), faint, sweeping arcs of surf neatly plant a beach beneath a large sky—which, barely differing in its greenish-blue hue from the water, nevertheless conveys a wholly different impression of vacant depths. These two worlds are crisply divided by a knifing horizontal of cerulean blue: a wave, breaking perhaps a hundred feet from the viewer.

If MacCulloch’s elegant strokes and evanescent tints sometimes flirt with the decorative, her paintings are generally saved by a cool adherence to

“Sue, Displaced Farmer’s Daughter” by Charlotta Janssen

“Pandora’s Box” by Rolf Behm

with Matisse’s marvelous cutouts, with each painting containing geometric shapes floating in space. But his shapes are rounded and more integrated into his backgrounds than are Matisse’s, though they display the antic spirit.

Trained in his native Germany, Behm attended a workshop in Brazil 15 years ago that changed his life. Moving from the gray of Eastern Europe to the tropical atmosphere of Brazil gave him a whole new palette and appreciation for color. Since that time, he has always spent at least three months a year in Rio de Janeiro, its culture slowly affecting his aesthetic.

Three works stand out. In “Pandora’s Box,” (2008), Behm painted a somewhat off-balance red and black box or house with a yellow window floating in a blue, green, yellow and white landscape. There is a storybook-like quality to this work, not unlike that of Chagall. The legendary Pandora’s Box, of course, was filled with evils, the most ambiguous being hope. Is that represented by the light glowing in the window?

The ethereal “Vision Jeri XI,” (2004), is filled with overlapping splotches of color, so fluid one would think the artist employed watercolors rather than an ingenious mix of thin acrylics and oils. Puffy white clouds, outlined with blue dots, hang over a green and brown forest or jungle, in an imaginary land. He visits the same setting in “Vision Jiri XII” (2004), but this time his palette includes deep rosy red and pale pinks, creating a brighter vision of what could be the same place.

Each painting invites the viewer into the work, leaving space for a human presence.

The combination of Behm’s longtime absorption in European art and his passion for the sensuality of his part-time home makes for especially rich and many-layered works. (VG) Rolf Behm: Pandora, through Nov. 7. Howard Scott Gallery, 529 W. 20th St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 646-486-7004.

Charlotta Janssen: Can’t Live the Commonest Way On Six Bits a Day Charlotta Janssen has used old archival photographs and portraits of working-class Americans taken during the Great Depression as her source material. There’s not a smile to be seen, rather, a type of toughness and sternness is present on the subjects’ faces that feels almost confrontational. Using acrylic, oil paint and iron oxide, Janssen creates tones and textures that render the subjects ghostly. Her works manage to be mysterious and sublime, while also having a message.

The rusted, somber tones provide more real edginess than most Lower East Side galleries can muster. Janssen’s utilization of iron oxide is quite effective in invoking a feeling of desolation, otherness and dignity (in the face of adversity).

Sunken cheekbones become a rust-tinged palette of re-imagined surfaces that reinforce the mood without exaggerating it. Stoic faces co-exist with dismal—mostly minimal—backgrounds, so nothing distracts from the main focus. As Janssen states about her work: “I like bringing out the kinetic energy of awkward characters from a time past, where smiling for a picture wasn’t expected.”

She has effectively transformed the images through her unusual choice of materials, so that they achieve a timeless quality that seems ageless, yet ancient. (Joe Bendik) Charlotta Janssen: Can’t Live the Commonest Way On Six Bits a Day, through Nov. 7. NY Studio Gallery, 154 Stanton St. (at Suffolk St.), 212-627-3276

October 20, 2009 | City Arts

11

THEATER

Playing by Mamet’s Rules

Craig Schwartz

Julia Stiles gets all the best lines in Oleanna and manipulates the audience all the more

Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman in Oleanna.

BY DAVID BLUM n 1992, David Mamet’s Oleanna debuted Off-Broadway against the backdrop of the just-ended Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas case. This month’s Broadway production has David Letterman’s sex scandal as its true-life context. Times have changed; where feminists then defended Hill in her accusations against the would-be Supreme Court justice, now they defend Letterman even though he’s likely exerted far more power over women than Thomas ever did—or could.

Sometimes it feels like we’re moving backward through history.

But in one respect, at least, we have taken a giant leap forward: This new production takes the powerful bare-bones drama—still one of Mamet’s best—and gives it an emotionally shattering new life. With Doubt director Doug Hughes and the gifted actress Julia Stiles leading the way, Oleanna now enrages on a lavish set designed by Neil Patel with high-tech blinds to keep the sunshine out. This new production reminds us that harsh words incite dark actions in ways that Mamet’s own 1992 staging at the Orpheum didn’t. Among other things, Mamet divided the play into two acts that slowed the intensity. This far-more-theatrical version, done in three consecutive scenes without intermission, forces us to confront aggressively the consequences of words.

The central characters, John and Carol, are teacher and student locked in a semi-ludicrous argument over who said what in a post-class conference. The plot turn of Oleanna rests with our belief that a single girl can use words like

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“harassment” and “rape” to transform our view of reality. Mamet may have written this play with some sympathy for the beleaguered professor, whose harried afternoon turns nightmarish when a student challenges his work as bogus.

But by the end of this sizzling 80-minute production, you won’t have anyone to root for.

After the wretchedly unfunny November and some mediocre movies (like nearly everyone else, I spared myself the tedium of Redbelt), it’s nice to be reminded how brilliant Mamet can be for a man without an unpublished thought. Oleanna marked his first foray into topical drama, and he managed not to take the obvious tack that might have comforted women still scarred by the Thomas hearings. Instead, he pushed buttons that provoked arguments then, and still do. What did Mamet mean? Who was right? Why did John become violent at the end? No convenient answers come with the Playbill (that’s apparently why “talkbacks” are offered following the play). As usual, Mamet has left us exhilarated by his poetry; maybe, in the end, that’s the main point.

The odd, forced smiles at the curtain call belong to two unexpectedly subtle performers: Bill Pullman, the ubiquitous movie good-guy, as John, and blond screen siren Julia Stiles as Carol. It’s Stiles who carries this Oleanna with her new, harsh interpretation of the angry student. Pullman manages, in his best moments, to artfully dodge her verbal barrage. But in an uncharacteristic reversal—one of his most theatrical surprises—Mamet has handed Carol all the best lines. She repeats Pullman’s innocuous phrases back to him as weapons aimed at

his soul and recounts his movements as those of a sexual predator. It’s a reversal that takes place inside the audience’s head.

I remember watching Mamet’s version in 1992 and feeling mesmerized by the words, but bored by Rebecca Pidgeon’s performance—shown up mercilessly by the master thespian of the Mamet court, William H. Macy. This matchup struck me as more level; both sides seemed to be courting the audience’s support. No matter where you end up, the ride that Oleanna delivered in 1992 holds up alongside its contemporary competition.

Mamet still rules. inning the 1984 Pulitzer Prize may have helped Mamet’s mojo leading into Oleanna. In the first five years after Glengarry Glen Ross, he delivered Speed-the-Plow, House of Games and Oleanna. Regrettably, Tracy Letts has made Superior Donuts his first offering after winning the award last year for August: Osage County.

Now he’s got some catching up to do. Even without the Act II fight scene—the worst I’ve ever seen staged anywhere, coincidentally (or not) by Oleanna fight director Rick Sordelet—Superior Donuts doesn’t offer anything you can’t get at Dunkin’ Donuts for less.

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Oleanna. Open run, at the Golden Theatre, 252 W. 45th St. (betw. Broadway & 8th Ave.), 212-239-6200; $75.50–$116.50.

Big ANT Festival What happens when you curate a theater festival based on an open call to artists? You get another year of ANT FEST, Ars Nova’s annual collection of over 30 new creative types parading their ideas on stage for the next five weeks.

“Each evening is a completely different piece,” said Jason Eagan, the artistic director of Ars Nova and head curator for the festival.

“The focus is on new work being created and the theme is the diversity of it all.”

Eagan spent the majority of the summer weeding through the hundreds of submissions, which ranged from recommendations to YouTube clips to full scripts. The end result is performances like A Trail to Lions (Oct. 23), about the world of competitive cat shows or Richard DiBella’s Varsity Interpretive Dance Squad in Faster Than the Speed of Night (Nov. 21), which features interpretive dance to pop music.

One night features a hillbilly hoedown with The Defibulators in Total Ree-Haw (Oct. 24). And if that’s not enough music, The Academics in Chaos Theory (Oct. 30) features the punky, four-member band of the same name on a quest for the meaning of life, love and overdue library books.

Also on the roster, The Jersey Devil (Nov. 14), created by a band of Philly guys about the adventures of a traveling sideshow that claims to have caught the New Jersey Devil. “These guys are insanely talented,” said Eagan. “They have made a name for themselves on the Philly fringe scene and this is their debut on the New York stage.”

The catch: Each show plays only once, but, every one is also cheap enough that you can see a few. Eagan recommends getting the three-for-$20 deal, which comes with suggestions for which three performances complement one another. Also this year, Ars Nova has decided to include its regular, weekly Showgasam in the program. Thursday nights during the festival, people from the shows will give previews of their acts in a free, curated open mic.

All the performances in the festival showcase the artist community nature of Ars Nova. For the past six years, Jon Steingart and Jenny Wiener Steingart have run the space, which they run as a non-profit supporting resident artists. The root of Ars Nova was the main reason the ANT Festival started. “It’s really a foundation for our developments,” explained Eagan. “I created the festival because we are growing as an organization, and we needed to remain a point of entry for new talent.”

—Linnea Covington

Superior Donuts. Open run, at the Music Box Theater, 239 W. 45th St. (betw. Broadway & 8th Ave.), 212-239-6200; $76.50 - $116.50

Oct. 19-Nov. 21, at Ars Nova, 511 W. 54th St. (at 10th Ave.), 212-352-3101; $10/$20.

ClassicalMUSIC

Opera singers, that is

BY JAY NORDLINGER n an interview with me some years ago, Marilyn Horne, the legendary mezzo-soprano, had a complaint. The typical opera review, she said, went on and on about the production—about what the stage director had done, what the set designer had done and so on. Only at the bottom was there a smidgeon of comment about singing. That is a complaint that I have long shared. In honor of Horne, and this complaint, let me go on for a while about singing, leaving productions to one side.

The Metropolitan Opera has been lucky in its Rosinas. That is the big female role—almost the only female role—in Rossini’s Barber of Seville. In the last few years, the Met has had Diana Damrau, the German soprano; Elina Garanca, the Latvian mezzo-soprano; and Joyce DiDonato, the American mezzo. All have been different, one from another, and all have been smashing. In the last few weeks, DiDonato has been back, lighting up the Met stage.

That is what she did in 2005, when she appeared as Stéphano in Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet. That is a nothing role, frankly, with a nothing aria. But DiDonato, this sparkler from Kansas, practically stole the show with it. Since then, she has been stunning in recital—I think particularly of her singing of Rossini’s Joan of Arc cantata, and of Copland’s Dickinson songs. And stunning in just about everything else, too. Last January, she ended Marilyn Horne’s 75th-birthday gala in Carnegie Hall with Rossini’s aria “Tanti affetti,” from La donna del lago. Even Horne—no slouch herself in that aria—had to be wowed.

DiDonato was in top form as Rosina on a recent Saturday night. She has just about every gift an opera singer can have, musically, vocally and theatrically. The voice can be sultry and smoky, particularly in its lower register; and it can be pure as the driven snow—everything depends on the musical needs of the moment. DiDonato is perpetually alive, even in relatively trivial bits of recitative: Nothing is routine, humdrum or phoned in.

And her technique is quite simply an envy of the vocal world.

Let me offer just one detail, from that Saturday night: In the “Freddo ed immobile” section, Rosina, along with other singers, must sing detached notes—very hard to keep on pitch. Not for DiDonato. And I will not forbear commenting on Rosina’s big aria, “Una voce poco fa.” DiDonato is always coming up with new interpolations for it, new wowings: and they are fitting, exciting—wowing, indeed.

Finally, DiDonato has what I have long called her special ingredient: adorability, which,

I

By Sheila Rock, courtesy of Virgin Classics

Take Five

and then some. Besides, in this age when along with some other key ingrediVerdi tenors are thin on the ground, who ents, cannot be learned, but seems can complain? On the night I heard him, to come from within, or above. And, Botha sang gleamingly, sensibly and speaking of adorability: Diana Dampowerfully, of course. Also effortlessly. It rau returns for another stint as Rosina was unusual to hear “Celeste Aida” with in February. no tenorial struggle whatsoever. Botha was DiDonato’s Count Almaviva just falling off a log. And I’ll tell you somewas Barry Banks, the English tenor, thing funny: He would sing a little head whom some of us think underrated voice on an F, and it still sounded huge. and underappreciated. He has had Many singers are worried about their many shining evenings in New weight, not to say terrified. Some are York: in Stravinsky’s Rossignol at the undergoing surgery. We are in an age that Met, for example, and in Strauss’ emphasizes the visual, and sometimes Capriccio at City Opera. I particuadministrators hire by looks. I like the larly remember a turn he did in La soubrette or starlet as much as the next cenerentola (Rossini) one night guy. But it was nice to see opera-sized at the Met: He produced a string people onstage for Aida; nice to know that of high Cs that were ringing and there is still room for such people. When spot-on.

Botha, Zajick and Urmana sang together, There was something else he did I thought, “This is grand opera, this is the that stays in the memory: Toward real deal, and be grateful you’re here.” the end of Don Pasquale (Donizetti), I said I wouldn’t talk about produche replaced Juan Diego Flórez, who tions, but let me go back on my word, had become indisposed. Flórez is Mezzo Joyce DiDonato, the sparkler from Kansas, knows how here at the end: The Met’s current Aida, the leading bel canto tenor in the to steal the show. produced by Sonja Frisell, looks like world right now, or at least the most and the voice remains pulpy, bold and often Aida. Is Aida. It is not “traditional” or prominent and praised. (Deservedly “conventional” or “conservative.” The producpraised, too.) When Banks stepped in for him, thrilling. Plus, Zajick has gobs of operatic smarts and guts. tion is simply right, appropriate to the opera. the show did not suffer one iota.

Botha is not a natural Radamès, or a natural It comes back in March, and, if you haven’t He had a good and characteristic night with Verdi tenor in general, but he can do the job, already, you should treat yourself.

DiDonato in The Barber. He is secure, astute and completely professional. He is sweet and smooth in cavatina, sweet, smooth and nimble in cabaletta. He performs with confidence, and that confidence is earned. Should he be a bigger star? I think so, but he has had a busy, applauded and, I would think, rewarding career.

That must be stardom enough. wo nights after the Met Barber I have been discussing, the volume in the house was turned up considerably: from Rossini and bel canto singing to Aida and Verdi singing—heavy-duty Verdi singing.

There were big voices upon that stage, some of the biggest we have: Violeta Urmana, the Lithuanian soprano; Dolora Zajick, the American mezzo-soprano; and Johan Botha, the South-African tenor. There was no apology on this evening: This was big singing by big people in a big ol’ grand opera—very satisfying.

Urmana used to be a mezzo. In fact, I first heard her in Verdi’s Requiem with the New York Philharmonic, under Riccardo Muti. Unexpectedly, the mezzo was the best thing about the performance. As Aida, she was wonderful. The voice was big and rich, but it was also penetrating: It had a cutting, pleasing edge. And her technical control was almost sovereign. Of particular interest was the “Ritorna vincitor” she sang: Seldom will you hear it so musical, so naturally, engagingly shaped. As for Zajick, our Amneris, she has been a mezzo stalwart for 20 years now,

T

October 20, 2009 | City Arts

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ArtsAGENDA GALLERIES Gallery listings courtesy of

Oct. 31, 526 W. 26th St., suite 915, 646-336-8053.

FLOMENHAFT GALLERY: “Women of Valor: Jaune

106 GREEN: “What’s Bin Did And What’s Bin

Hid.” Ends Nov. 14, 106 Green St, Brooklyn, www.106green.blogspot.com.

ACA GALLERIES: “Eccentrics, Misfits and Idealists.” Opens Oct. 29, 529 W. 20th St., 212-206-8080.

A.I.R. GALLERY: Ann Schaumbuger: “New Paintings.”

Open A.I.R. Group Exhibition “Locks in Translation.” Taryn Wells “Color Lines.” Ends Nov. 2, 111 Front St. #228, Brooklyn, 212-255-6651.

ALEXANDRE GALLERY: Tom Uttech: “New Paitings.”

Ends Nov. 14, The Fuller Building, 41 E. 57th St., 212-755-2828.

AMADOR GALLERY: Keizo Kitajima: “The Joy of Portraits.” Ends Nov. 7, 41 E. 57 St., 6th Floor, 212-759-6740.

AMERICAS SOCIETY: Fernell Franco: “Amarrados [Bound].” Ends Dec. 12, 680 Park Ave., 212-249-8950.

BABCOCK GALLERIES: Alan Gussow: “A Painter’s Nature”. Ends Nov. 25, 724 5th Ave., 212-767-1852.

BLACK & WHITE PROJECT SPACE: Blane De St. Croix: “Mountain Strip”. Ends Jan. 10, 483 Driggs Ave., Brooklyn, 718-599-8775.

BLT GALLERY: Julia San Martin: Paintings and Drawings. Ends Nov. 7, 270 Bowery, 2nd Floor, 212-260-4129.

BLUE MOUNTAIN GALLERY: Charles Kaiman. Ends Oct. 31, 530 W. 25th St., 4th floor, 646-486-4730.

BOWERY GALLERY: Christine Hartman. Ends Oct. 31, 530 W. 25th St., 4th floor, 646 -230-6655.

BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC: “Next Wave Art.” Ends Dec. 20, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, 718-636-4100.

CANADA: Michael Willaims: “Uncle Big.” Ends Nov.15, 55 Chrystie St., 212-925-4631.

CAUSEY CONTEMPORARY: Alexis Portilla: “Under Currents.” Ends Nov. 9, 293 Grand St., Brooklyn, 718.218.8939.

CHEIM & READ: Jack Pierson: “Abstracts.” Ends Nov.14, 547 W. 25th St., 212-242-7727.

CHINESE AMERICAN ARTS COUNCIL: “War Toys/Toy Wars.” Ends Nov. 6, 456 Broadway, 3rd Floor, 212-431-9740.

CINDERS GALLERY: “Cutters.” Ends Nov. 15, 103 Havemeyer St., Brooklyn, 718-388-2311.

CROSSING ART GALLERY: “The Solid and the Sublime.”

Ends Nov. 22, 136-17 39th Ave., Queens, 212359-4333.

DCKT CONTEMPORARY: Tom Gallant: “Two Arcs That Curve in Opposite Senses.” Ends Nov. 15, 195 Bowery, 212-741-9955.

DCKT CONTEMPORARY: Ted O’Sullivan: “Reclamation of the Modern Tongue.” Ends Nov. 15, 195 Bowery, 212-741-9955.

DEAN PROJECT: “Mirror on Mirror Mirrored.” Ends Nov. 19, 45-43 21st St., Queens, 718-706-1462.

DENISE BIBRO FINE ART: “Gone to the Dogs.” Ends Nov. 7, 529 W. 20th St., 4th Floor, 212-647-7030.

DENISE BIBRO FINE ART / PLATFORM: Christopher Reiger: “Some Species of Song.” Ends Nov. 7, 529 W. 20th St., 4th Floor, 212-647-7030.

DIEU DONNE: E.V. Day: “New Work in Handmade Paper.” Ends Nov. 25, 315 W. 36th St., 212-226-0573.

DUMBO ARTS CENTER: “The Experience of Green.”

Ends Nov. 29, 30 Washington St., Brooklyn, 718-694-0831.

ELI KLEIN FINE ART: “Chasing Flames.” Ends Nov.15, 462 W. Broadway, 212-255-4388.

EYELEVEL BQE: Julien Gardair: “Dis’place.” Ends Nov. 9, 364 Leonard St., 917-660-4650.

FIFI PROJECTS: “Vanishing Act.” Ends Nov. 14, 29 Essex St., 786-280-5783.

FIRST STREET: Lisa Zwerling: “The Fountains.” Ends

14

City Arts | www.cityarts.info

Quick-to-see Smith and Linda Stein.” Ends Oct. 24, 547 W. 27th St., suite 200, 212-268-4952.

FRONT DESK APPARATUS: “Jasmine & Plus B.” Ends Nov. 21, 54 King St., 917-475-1562.

GAGOSIAN GALLERY: Sally Mann: “Proud Flesh.”

Cy Twombly: Eight Sculptures. Ends Oct. 31, 980 Madison Ave., 212-744-2313.

GAGOSIAN GALLERY: Takashi Murakami: Anselm Reyle.

Ends Oct. 24, 555 W. 24th St., 212-741-1111.

GALLERY HANAHOU: “Before and After: Hijacking Everyday Stuff to Craft Incredible Creatures.” Ends Nov. 13, 611 Broadway, suite 730, 646-486-6586.

GALLERY NINE5: “L’Atlas: Urban Activist.” Ends Nov. 6, 24 Spring St., 212-965-9995.

HANS P. KRAUS, JR. FINE PHOTOGRAPHS: “Silver Anniversary: 25 Photographs, 1835 to 1914.” Ends Nov. 20, 962 Park Ave., 212- 794-2064.

HARRIS LIEBERMAN GALLERY: Alexandre Singh: “Assembly Instructions (Tangential Logick).” Ends Nov. 14, 89 Vandam St., 212-206-1290.

HARRIS LIEBERMAN GALLERY: Bernd Ribbeck. Ends Nov. 14, 89 Vandam St., 212-206-1290.

HENRY STREET SETTLEMENT, ABRONS ARTS CENTER: Susan C. Dessel: “Still Lives.” Ends Nov. 7, 466 Grand St., 212-598-0400 ext 202.

JACK SHAINMAN GALLERY: “T.V. Santhosh, Blood & Spit.” Ends Nov. 14, 513 W. 20th St., 212-645-1701.

JAN KRUGIER GALLERY: “Stillness.” Opens Nov. 6, 980 Madison Ave., 212-472-4351.

JEFF BAILEY GALLERY: Jim Gaylord: “Based on True Events.” Ends Nov. 14, 511 W. 25th St., suite 207, 212-989-0156.

JEN BEKMAN GALLERY: Hosang Park: “A Square.” Ends Nov. 7, 6 Spring St., 212-219-0166.

KATHARINA RICH PERLOW: “American Abstractions Part Two 1950-Present.” Ends Oct. 28, 41 E. 57th St., 13th floor, 212-644-7171.

KLAUS VON NICHTSSAGEND GALLERY: Joy Curtis.

Ends Nov. 15, 438 Union Ave., Brooklyn, 718-383-7309.

LEILA TAGHINIA-MILANI HELLER GALLERY : Roya Akhavan: “Nexus.” Ends Nov. 7, 39 E. 78th St., 212-249-7695.

LENNON, WEINBERG, INC.: “Before Again”– Joan Mitchell, Louise Fishman, Harriet Korman, Melissa Meyer, Jill Moser, Denyse Thomasos. Ends Nov. 28, 514 W. 25th St., 212-941-0012.

LOHIN GEDULD GALLERY: Jay Milder. Ends Nov. 14, 531 W. 25th St., 212-675-2656.

LOMBARD-FREID PROJECTS: Lee Mingwei: “The Mending Project.” Ends Nov. 14, 531 W. 26th St., 212-967-8040.

MARVELLI GALLERY: Mariah Robertson. Ends Nov. 14, 526 W. 26th St., 2nd Floor, 212-627-3363.

METAPHOR CONTEMPORARY ART: “Slippery When Wet.” Ends Nov. 22, 382 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, 718-254-9126.

MITCHELL-INNES & NASH: Justine Kurland: “This Train is Bound for Glory.” Ends Nov. 14, 534 W. 26th St., 212-744-7400.

MIXED GREENS: Adia Millett: “The Birth of Bardo.”

Ends Nov. 7, 531 W. 26th St., 212-331-8888.

MORE NORTH: Hjortur Hjartarson: “Evoking Iceland.”

Ends Dec. 6, 39 North Moore St., 212-334-5541.

MOUNTAIN FOLD GALLERY: Rinko Kawauchi: “Condensation.” Ends Nov. 28, 55 5th Ave., 18th Floor, 212-255-4304.

NABI GALLERY: Nick Savides’ “New York/Paris.”

Opens Oct. 22, 137 W. 25th St., 212-929-6063.

NOHO GALLERY: Nancy Staub Laughlin. Through Oct. 31, 530 W. 25th St., 212-367-7063.

NY STUDIO GALLERY: “Can’t Live the Commonest Way On Six Bits a Day.” Ends Nov. 7, 154 Stanton St., 212.627.3276.

“Effervescence of the Spring Snow” by Nancy Staub Laughlin at Noho Gallery through Oct. 31.

OPEN SOURCE GALLERY: Patrick May. Ends Nov. 3,

255 17th St., Brooklyn, 718-877-5712.

PACE PRIMITIVE: “Art Brut, African Tribal Art.” Ends Oct. 31, 32 E. 57th St., 877-440-7223.

PACE PRINTS: David Hockney “Portraits.” Opens Oct. 23. Jim Dine “Recent Editions.” Opens Nov. 4, 32 E. 57th St., 877-440-7223.

PACE PRINTS: Qi Zhilong “New Editions.” Ends Oct. 31. Jim Dine “Recent Editions.” Opens Nov. 4, 521 W. 26th St., 212-629-6100.

PRINCE STREET GALLERY: Judith Lambertson. Ends Oct. 31, 530 W. 25th St., 4th floor, 646-230-0246.

PETER BLUM: Rosy Keyser: “The Moon Ate Me.” Ends Nov. 14, 526 W. 29th St., 212-244-6055.

PIEROGI: Hugo Crosthwaite: “Escape Rates Escaparates.” Ends Nov. 15, 177 N. 9th St., Brooklyn, 718-599-2144.

RECESS: Corin Hewitt and Molly McFadden. Ends Nov. 28, 41 Grand St., 646-836-3765.

ROBERT MANN GALLERY: Robert Frank. Ends Dec. 23, 210 11th Ave., 212-989-7600.

SALON 94: Maya Lin: “Recycled Landscapes.” Ends Nov. 13, 12 E. 94th St., 646-672-9212.

SLOAN FINE ART: “Relocation.” Ends Nov. 7, 128 Rivington St., 212-477-1140.

SPATTERED COLUMNS: “Awakenings.” Ends Dec. 16, 491 Broadway, suite 500, 646-546-5334.

SPUTNIK GALLERY: “The Journey Home.” Ends Dec. 3, 547 W. 27th St., 518, 212-695-5747.

SUGAR: “A Taste of Sugar.” Ends Nov. 7, 449 Troutman St., Brooklyn, 718-417-1180.

SUNDAY: Bryan Zanisnik: “Dry Bones Can Harm No Man.” Ends Nov. 15, 237 Eldridge St., 212-253-0700.

TALLER BORICUA: “Crossing Bridges/Cruzando Puentes.” Ends Nov. 7, 1680 Lexington Ave., 212-831-4333.

TEAM GALLERY: Muntean/Rosenblum. Ends Nov. 7, 83 Grand St., 212-279-9219.

THIERRY GOLDBERG PROJECTS: Barbara Ess. Ends Nov. 15, 5 Rivington St., 212-967-2260.

UNION GALLERY: Inaugural Group Exhibition. Ends.

Nov. 7, 359 Broadway, 646-613-0434.

THE URBAN CENTER: “Toward the Sentient City.” Ends Nov. 7, 457 Madison Ave., 212-935-3960.

VON LINTEL GALLERY: Mark Sheinkman. Ends Nov. 14, 520 W. 23rd St., 212-242-0599.

WASHBURN GALLERY: Leon Polk Smith. Ends Oct. 31,

20 W. 57th St., 212-397-6780.

WESTWOOD GALLERY: James Juthstrom: “(1925-2007)

REDISCOVERED: Paintings from the Loft.” Ends Nov. 7, 568 Broadway, suite 501, 212-925-5700.

ZIEHERSMITH: Stéphane Calais: “Flowers For America.” Ends Nov. 7, 516 W. 20th St., 212-229-1088.

AUCTION HOUSES CHRISTIES: 19th Century Furniture, Sculpture, Works

of Art & Ceramics. Oct. 20, 10 a.m. and 2. Important Silver and Objects of Vertu Including the Inventory of Marks Antiques of London. Oct 22, 10 a.m., 20 Rockefeller Plz., 212-636-2000.

DOYLE NEW YORK: Old Master, Modern and Contemporary Prints. Oct. 28, time TBA, 175 E. 87th St., 212-427-2730.

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

SOTHEBY’S: 19th Century Furniture, Sculpture, Ceramics, Silver and Works of Art. Oct. 21, 10 a.m. and 2, 1334 York Ave., 212-606-7414.

SWANN AUCTION GALLERIES: Autographs. Oct. 29, 1:30, 104 E. 25th St., 212-254-4710.

ART EVENTS MERCE CUNNINGHAM MEMORIAL: This free, public

memorial to the late dance icon will include performances by Merce Cunningham Dance Company, former Company members and musicians. Oct. 28, Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave., 212-616-3930; 4, Free.

DOWNTOWN MUSIC PRODUCTIONS BENEFIT: Mimi SternWolfe’s Downtown Music Productions will hold a benefit performance and party as it enters its 30th year. Oct. 29, Nabi Gallery, 137 W. 25th St., 212-477-1594; 7, $30.

AVENUE ANTIQUES AND ART AT THE ARMORY: Featuring a world-class selection from 50 prominent dealers. Dec. 3-6 at the Park Avenue Armory.

Dec. 2 Opening Night Preview Benefit for The American Cancer Society HOPE LODGE NYC. Purchase tickets, 646-442-1646. Lectures provided by Royal Oak Society Dec. 3 & 5. www.avenueshows.com.

P O S T E R AU C T I O N MUSEUMS BARD GRADUATE CENTER: Dutch New York Between

East and West: The World of Margrieta van Varick. Ends Jan. 2010, 18 W. 86th St., 212-501-3023.

BRONX MUSEUM: Intersections: The Grand Concourse Commissions. Ends Jan. 2010, 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx, 718-681-6000.

BROOKLYN HISTORICAL SOCIETY: Public Perspectives: Brooklyn Utopias?. Ends Jan. 2010, 128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, 718-222-4111.

BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY: Partners in Art and Life.

Ends Nov. 5, Grand Army Plaza at Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-230-2100.

BROOKLYN MUSEUM: James Tissot: “The Life of Christ”. Ends Jan. 2010, 200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, 718-638-5000.

CHELSEA ART MUSEUM: Jean Miotte: What a Beautiful World. Ends Dec. 2009, 556 W. 22nd St., 212255-0719.

COOPER-HEWITT NATIONAL DESIGN MUSEUM: Design for a Living World. Ten designers found eco-friendly materials to explore design and the environment.

Ends Jan. 2010, 2 E. 91st St., 212-849-8400.

JAPAN SOCIETY: Serizawa: Master of Japanese Textile Design. Ends January, 333 E. 47th St., 212-832-1155.

JEWISH MUSEUM: Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life, explores the new Jewish rituals since the mid-1990s. Rite Now: Sacred and Secular in Video. Ends Feb. 7, 1109 5th Ave., 212-423-3200.

MERCHANT’S HOUSE MUSEUM: Death & Mourning in the Mid-19th Century Home. Ends Nov. 2, 29 E. 4th St., 212-777-1089.

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: Watteau, Music, and Theater. Through Nov. 29, 2009 (weather permitting). Surface Tension: Contemporary Photographs from the Collection. Ends May 2010, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710.

THE MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM: Where the Wild Things Are: Original Drawings by Maurice Sendak. Ends Nov. 1. “William Blake’s World: New Heaven Is Begun” includes more than 100 works and two major series of watercolors. Ends Jan. 2010, 225 Madison Ave., 212-685-0008.

EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO: Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis, the museum’s first show following extensive renovations.

Ends Jan. 2010, 1230 5th Ave., 2128-31-7272.

MUSEUM OF AMERICAN FINANCE: Women of Wall Street.

Ends Jan. 2010, 48 Wall St., 212-908-4110.

MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE: Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges.

Ends Jan 4, 36 Battery Pl., 646-437-4200.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: Projects 91: Artur Zmijewski, The Erotic Object. Opens Oct. 28, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400.

NATIONAL ACADEMY MUSEUM: Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820-2009. Ends Nov. 15, 5 E. 89th St., 212-996-1908.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN: Andrea Carlson. Through Jan. 10, 1 Bowling Green, 212-514-3700.

NEW MUSEUM: Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty.

Opens Oct. 28, 235 Bowery, 212-219-1222.

NEW-YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY: Nature and the American Vision: The Hudson River School at the New-York Historical Society. Ends March 2010, 170 Central Park West, 212-873-3400.

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY: Mapping New York’s Shoreline, 1609-2009. Through June, 2010.

Candide at 250: Scandal and Success. Opens Oct. 25, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, 42nd Street and 5th Avenue, 917-275-6975.

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS:

Lincoln Center: Celebrating 50 Years. Ends Jan. 2010, 40 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-870-1630.

NOGUCHI MUSEUM: On Becoming An Artist: Noguchi and his Contemporaries, 1923 - 1960. Opens Nov. 2010, 33rd Road at Vernon Boulevard, Queens, 718-721-2308.

SOLOMON R. GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: Intervals: Kandinsky. The first major American retrospective of the artist’s work since the 1980s. Ends Jan. 13, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500.

STUDIO MUSEUM OF HARLEM: Collected. 30 Seconds off an Inch. Opens Nov. 12, 144 W. 125th St., 212-864-4500.

at the International Poster Center 601 West 26th St. (bet. 11th&12th Ave), NYC

550 RARE

POSTERS VIEWING DAILY TO NOV 7 Mon-Fri, 9am-5pm Sat-Sun, 11am-6pm

MUSIC & OPERA LONDON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: Performs as part of the

Symphonic Masters series. Oct. 21, 23, 25, Avery Fisher Hall, 10 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-8755656; times vary, $35 and up.

THE SECRET AGENT: Center for Contemporary Opera opens its 27th season with Michael Dellaira and JD McClatchy’s “The Secret Agent.” Oct. 22 & 23, The Cell Theater, 338 W. 23rd St., 646-8612253; 8, $20.

NEW YORK ARABIC ORCHESTRA: Featuring works from a classical Andulasian repertorire and highlighting pieces by Fairuz and Wadi’el-Safi under the direction of Bassam Saba. Oct. 23, Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, 212-864-5400; 8, $25.

LANG LANG AND FRIENDS: The celebrity pianist performs Chinese chamber music with a group of young musicians. Oct. 27, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 8, $39 and up.

THE LONG COUNT: Musicians Bryce and Aaron Dessner and visual artist Matthew Ritchie explore ideas of symmetry and creation with their immersive multimedia experience. Oct. 28, 30 & 31, BAM, 30 Lafayette Ave., 718-636-4100; 8, $20 and up.

LINDSAY MAC: The cello virtuoso hailing from Boston entertains with her unique performance style of playing the cello like a guitar. Oct. 29, The Living Room, 154 Ludlow St., 212-533-7237; 8, $TBA. HONG KONG CHINESE ORCHESTRA: Traditional Chinese instruments in a Western configuration play folk music and newly commissioned classical works.

Oct. 30, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-2477800;8, $28 and up.

I GIULIARI DI PIAZZA: New York’s authentic Southern Italian folk music/dance/theater company celebrates its 30th anniversary with a performance of “Tarantelle e Canti d’Amore,” an exciting journey through the south of Italy. Oct. 30, Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, 212-864-5400; 8, $25.

TILL FELLNER: Performing Beethoven’s complete piano sonatas. Oct. 30, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 5th Ave., 212-570-3949; 7, $45.

EMANUEL AX: The famed pianist will join conductor Alan Gilbert for additional three additional concerts featuring Beethoven’s Egmont Overture and Piano Concerto No. 3, Bernstein’s symphonic dances from “West Side Story” and Falla’s Suite No. 2 from The Three-Cornered Hat. Oct. 30 & 31, Avery Fisher Hall, 10 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-875-5656; times vary, $31 and up.

GRAVEYARD MUSIC: A program to celebrate All Hallows’ Eve, with original poetry and Renaissance and baroque music from Italy and England. Oct. 31, Bargemusic, Fulton Ferry Landing, Brooklyn, 718-624-2083; 8, $50.

LA COUPE ET LES LEVRES: A transformation of Puccini’s “Edgar” with a new libretto. Oct. 31, The Kaye Playhouse, 695 Park Ave., 212-772-4448; 7:30, $25 and up.

DAME EMMA KIRBY & JAMES KIRBY: Perform works

by Dowland and Purcell as part of the Special Music on Madison Event “Orpheus in England”

SALE SUNDAY, NOV 8 AT 11am

View catalogue, bid online: w w w. p o s t e r a u c t i o n s . c o m Paul Colin, 1938

POSTER AUCTIONS INTERNATIONAL, INC. 601 W. 26 St., NYC 10001 Tel 212-787-4000 Fax: 212-604-9175 EMAIL: info@posterauctions.com

AT AUCTION Oct 20

Medical & Scientific Books; Bibles & Early Printed Books Specialist: Tobias Abeloff, ext 18 tabeloff@swanngalleries.com • lllustrated Catalogue: $35

Oct 22

Photographs & Photographic Literature Specialist: Daile Kaplan, ext 21

David Bailey, Jean Shrimpton, silver print, 1963 or 1964.

Estimate $8,000 to $12,000.

At auction Oct 22.

dkaplan@swanngalleries.com • lllustrated Catalogue: $35

Oct 29

Autographs Specialist: Marco Tomaschett, ext 12 mtomaschett@swanngalleries.com • lllustrated Catalogue: $35

Nov 5

Important Old Master through Modern Prints Specialist: Todd Weyman, ext 32 tweyman@swanngalleries.com • Illustrated Catalogue: $40 U.S./$50 Elsewhere

Nov 9

The James B. Parks Collection of Fine Prints Specialist: Todd Weyman, ext 32 tweyman@swanngalleries.com • Illustrated Catalogue: $35

Nov 10

Art, Press & Illustrated Books Specialist: Christine von der Linn, ext 20 cvonderlinn@swanngalleries.com • lllustrated Catalogue: $35

Marc Chagall, Bible, one of 275 signed sets, Paris, 1956.

Estimate $30,000 to $40,000.

At auction Nov 10.

Nov 18

Rare & Important Travel Posters Specialist: Nicholas Lowry, ext 53 nlowry@swanngalleries.com • lllustrated Catalogue: $35

Catalogue Orders and General Inquiries: 212 254 4710, ext 0.

104 East 25th Street • New York, NY 10010 View catalogues and bid online at www.swanngalleries.com October 20, 2009 | City Arts

15

ArtsAGENDA

See the premiere performance of a new shadow puppet play by artist Caroline Borderies.

16

City Arts | www.cityarts.info

in celebration of the 350th anniversary of Henry Purcell’s birth. Nov. 1, Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, 921 Madison Ave., 212-2888920; 3, $20 and up.

BOSTON SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA: Performs works of Beethoven. November 2, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 8, $49 and up.

LE DAMNATION DE FAUST: Robert Lepagea’s imaginative production of Berlioz’s masterpiece returns for a second season. Ends Nov. 17, Metropolitan Opera, West 62nd Street (betw. Columbus & Amsterdam Aves.), 212-362-6000; times vary, $20 and up.

IL NOZZE DI FIGARO: John Relyea and Emma Bell star in this Mozart masterpiece comedy. Ends Dec. 2009, The Metropolitan Opera; times vary, $20 and up.

DER ROSENKAVALIER: Renee Fleming and Susan Graham reign supreme in Richard Strauss’s romantic comedy. Ends January 2010, Metropolitian Opera; times vary, $20 and up.

IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA: Bartlett Sher’s hit production of Rossini’s comic masterpiece. Ends Mar. 2010, Metropolitan Opera; times vary, $27 and up.

AIDA:Violeta Urmana stars in the title role of the enslaved Ethiopian princess, with Dolora Zajick as her rival for the affections of Johan Bothas.

Ends April 2010, Metropolitan Opera; times vary, $20 and up.

TOSCA: Puccini’s famed work, directed by Luc Bondy. Ends May 2010, Metropolitan Opera; times vary $20 and up.

JAZZ ALI JACKSON BAND: Celebrates Dizzy’s 5th anniversary

with help from Ryan Kisor, Craid Handy, Aaron Goldberg and Reuban Rogers. Oct. 21, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, 33 W. 60th St., 212-258-9595; times vary, $35.

STEVE TURRE QUINTET: Takes the stage for the start of their two night engagement featuring saxophonist Billy Harper. Oct. 23 & 24, Smoke Jazz and Supper Club, 2751 Broadway, 212-864-6662; times vary, $30.

MARTY EHRLICH RITES QUARTET: Renowned saxophonist and clarinetist Ehrlich brings his Rites Quartet to Miller Theatre in celebration of its newest album.

Oct. 24, Miller Theatre, 2960 Broadway, 212854-7799, 8, $7 and up.

NINO JOSELE TRIO: The Gitano guitarist performs with John Benitez and Horazio “El Negro” Hernandez.

Ends Oct. 25, The Village Vanguard, 178 7th Ave., 212-255-4037; times vary, $35.

DIZZY GILLESPIE ALUMNI ALL-STARS: Spend the night celebrating the iconic jazz musician with special guest Jimmy Heath featuring James Moody, Roy Hargrove, Roberta Gambarini and more. Ends Oct. 25, Blue Note, 131 W. 3rd St., 212-4758592; times vary, bar $20/table $35.

VINCE GIORDANO: The Sidney Bechet Society presents “Remembering Stuyvesant Casino and Central Plaza,” a celebration of traditional jazz hotbeds.

Oct. 27, Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway, 212864-5400; 6:25 and 9, $25.

AMANDA MCBROOM: The critically acclaimed jazz and cabaret vocalist performs the songs of Jacques Brel from her latest CD “Chanson.” Oct. 27 & 30, The Metropolitan Room, 34 W. 22 St. , 212206-0440; times vary, $35.

FLYING HOME: Musicians Igor Butman, Julius Tolentine, Brian Lynch and more celebrate the music of Illinois Jacquet. Ends Nov. 1, Dizzy’s Club Coca Cola, 33 W. 60th St. (at Broadway), 212-258-9595; times vary, $35.

JAZZ NIGHT: The Russ Kassoff Big Band featuring Jazz Vocalist Catherine Dupuis. Oct. 29, Bargemusic, Fulton Ferry Landing, Brooklyn, 718-624-2083; 8, $25.

THE SMOKE BIG BAND: The 16-piece jazz orchestra

takes the stage as part of big band night. Oct. 29, Smoke Jazz and Supper Club, 2751 Broadway, 212-864-6662; times vary, $9.

JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA WITH WYNTON MARSALIS: The orchestra will join Marsalis’ quintet

with tenor saxophonist Walter Blanding for a special evening featuring tap dance Jared Grimes.

Oct. 29 through 31, Rose Theater, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Time Warner Center, Broadway at W. 60th St., 212-721-6500; 8, $30 and up.

SINGERS OVER MANHATTAN: Famed jazz vocalist Dianne Reeves featuring guitarist Romero Lubambo. Oct. 30 & 31, The Allen Room, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Time Warner Center, Broadway at W. 60th St., 212-721-6500; times vary, $55 and up.

THEATER AFTER MISS JULIE: Sienna Miller and Jonny Lee

Miller star in Patrick Marber’s reimagining of Strindberg’s classic drama of sexual politics, now set in 1945 London. Ends Dec. 6, American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42 St., 212-719-1300.

BYE BYE BIRDIE: This classic musical about rock-androll fan worship gets its first Broadway revival, with stars John Stamos and Gina Gershon. Ends Jan. 10, 2010, Henry Miller’s Theatre, 124 W. 43 St., 212-239-6200.

COUNTY OF KINGS: A Def Poetry Jam alum’s solo show about growing up in Brooklyn as hip-hop emerges. Ends Nov. 8, Public Theater, 425 Lafayette St., 212-967-7555.

FINIAN’S RAINBOW: The 1947 musical fable about a mischevious Irishman, his headstrong daughter, and a stolen pot of gold follows its well-received Encores! run with a move to Broadway. Opens Oct. 29, St. James Theatre, 246 W. 44 St., 212239-6200.

LET ME DOWN EASY: Legendary performer Anna Deavere Smith addresses health care and the human body in her latest one-woman show, which features material from interviews with Lance Armstrong, Anderson Cooper and Ann Richards.

Ends Dec. 6, Second Stage Theatre, 307 W. 43rd St., 212-246-4422.

LOVE, LOSS AND WHAT I WORE: Nora and Delia Ephron adapt Ilene Beckerman’s popular book of the same title. Ends Dec. 13, Westside Theatre, 407 W. 43rd St., 212-239-6200.

MY LIFE IN A NUTSHELL: Barely clothed life-size marionettes made of burlap are manipulated through a counterweight system of approximately 80 strings, operated as a vertical keyboard in full view of the audience. Ends Oct. 25, HERE Arts Center, 145 6th Ave., 212-647-0202.

THE NEIL SIMON PLAYS: Brighton Beach Memoirs: David Cromer directs Simon’s autobiographical play about life as a baseball-obsessed Jewish boy in Brooklyn, which will play in repertory with Simon’s Broadway Bound. (Previews begin Nov. 18). Ends Jan. 2010, Nederlander Theatre, 208 W. 41 St., 212-307-7171.

THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM: The American Premiere of Edna Walsh’s “The New Electric Ballroom.”

This production is a companion piece to “The Walworth Farce,” which made its critically lauded American premiere in April 2008. Opens Oct. 27, St. Ann’s Warehouse, 38 Water St., Brooklyn, 718-254-8779.

THE NIGHT WATCHER: In this autobiographical solo show, Charlayne Woodard considers the roles she has played in the lives of other people’s children. Ends Oct. 31, 59E59 Theaters, 59 E. 59 St., 212-279-4200.

THE PLAYBOY OF THE WESTERN WORLD: J. M. Synge’s eccentric, high-spirited comedy celebrates the grand poetry and reckless abandon of the Irish imagina-

tion. Ends Nov. 22, City Center, West 55th Street betw. 6th & 7th Avenues, 212-581-1212.

THE ROYAL FAMILY: Rosemary Harris, Ana Gasteyer, and John Glover are among the theater veterans populating this revival of George S. Kaufman and Enda Ferber’s 1927 backstage comedy. Ends Nov. 29, Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, 261 W. 47 St., 212-239-6200.

STILL LIFE: This drama about a renowned photographer’s creative paralysis features such acclaimed actors as Sarah Paulson, Dominic Chianese, and Adriane Lenox. Ends Nov. 1, MCC Theater at the Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher St., 212-279-4200.

THE 39 STEPS: This comic take on Alfred Hitchcock’s 1935 film features a cast of four portraying dozens of characters. Ends Jan. 10, 2010, Helen Hayes Theatre, 240 W. 44 St, 212-239-6200.

VIGIL: A verbose malcontent takes questionable care of his dying aunt in Morris Panych’s darkly comic play. Ends Nov. 29, DR2 Theatre, 103 E. 15 St., 212-239-6200.

DANCE CEDAR LAKE CONTEMPORARY BALLET: Presents “Orbo

Novo”—the company’s latest commission from Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. Oct. 20 through 25, The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212-691-9741; times vary, $10 and up. …HER’S A QUEEN AND DOG BREAKS: Neal Medlyn and Dance Gang present two world premieres. Oct. 22 through 24, Dance Theater Workship, 219 W. 19th St., 212-924-0077; 7:30, $15.

CAVE NY BUTOH FESTIVAL: The fourth biennial Butoh Festival features performances, workshops and conversations with artists. Begins Oct. 23, various locations, www.nybf09.caveartspace.org.

KAZUKO HIRABAYASHI DANCE THEATER: The dance company, celebrating its 39th year, will present the world premiere of three works, “The Spring,” “Haiku” and “Light Is Calling” and revive two master works, “Mudai” and “Bereft.” Oct. 23 through 25, Ailey Citigroup Theater, 405 W. 55th St., 212-966-6414; times vary, $20.

TELLUS: An exploration of the clash and harmonization of different cultures. Ends Oct. 24, Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie St., 212-219-0736; 7:30, $20.

GARTH FAGAN DANCE: Presents the New York City premiere of “Mudan 175/29.” Oct. 27 through Nov. 1, The Joyce Theater, 175 8th Ave., 212691-9741; times vary, $10 and up.

MORPHOSES/THE WHEELDON COMPANY: Opens its third season with Wheeldon’s “Commedia” and “Continuum.” Oct. 29 through Nov. 1, City Center, W. 55th St., 212-581-1212; times vary, $15 and up.

VISIBLE/INVISIBLE: Naked City: Harlem Stage presents the first section of a commissioned dance piece by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Nora Chipaumire—focused on Harlem and featuring Urban Bush Women dancers. Oct. 29, The Gatehouse, 150 Convent Ave., 212-281-9240; 7:30, $15.

LIZ ONE (HER SECRET DIARIES IN THE LAND OF 1000 DANCES): John Jesurun’s Liz One re-imagines Elizabeth I of England as revealed through her private diaries. Ends Oct. 31, The Chocolate Factory, 5-49 49th Ave., Queens, 212-352-3101; 8, $15.

FILM 1962: New York Film Critics Circle: In celebration

of the 75th anniversary of the revered critics’ organization, BAM showcases the output from the one year when the NYFCC did not present its annual awards due to a newspaper strike. Ends Nov 9, BAM Rose Cinema, 30 Lafayette St., Brooklyn, 718-636-4100; times vary, $11.

Sara MacCulloch

BIG APPLE FILM FESTIVAL: Now in its sixth year, the

festival will feature 114 films over five days. Nov. 3 through 7, Tribeca Cinemas, 54 Varick St., 212-947-2001; times vary, $20.

CARTE BLANCHE: Béla Tarr and Satantango: MoMA celebrates the 15th anniversary of Tarr’s epic masterwork with a special screening of Satantango, as well as a Tarr-curated program of Hungarian films he has either produced or been inspired by. Ends Oct. 30, The Museum of Modern Art 11 W. 53 St., 212-397-6980; times vary, $20.

THE CONTENDERS 2009: This annual series, highlighting overlooked and underrated films from the past year, will kick off with Sam Raimi’s acclaimed comedy-horror hybrid, “Drag Me to Hell.” Oct. 31 through Jan. 10, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53 St., 212-397-6980; times vary, $20.

COST FAN TUTTE: An HD screening of Mozart’s classic opera. Nov. 1, Symphony Space, 2357 Broadway, 212-864-5400; 7, $21.

FREAKY CATS: BAM highlights the scarier side of our feline friends. Oct. 30 & 31, BAM Rose Cinema, 30 Lafayette St., Brooklyn, 718-636-4100; times vary, $11.

THE FUTURIST IMPULSE AFTER FUTURISM: To honor the centenary of the Futurist movement, Anthology presents an evening of shorts indirectly influenced by the Italian technocentric movement.

Nov. 12, Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave., 212-505-5181; 7:30, $9.

HALLOWEEN DOUBLE BILL: Haunted houses, murdered theater critics and more await those who come to this double feature, with two lesser-known horror classics for the price of one. Oct. 30 through Nov. 5, Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St., 212627-2035; times vary, $12.

NIGHT AND DAY: The one-week run of Hong sang-soo’s latest dissection of male insecurity concludes this week at Anthology. Ends Oct. 29, Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Ave., 212-5055181; 7:30, $9.

NUTS AND BOLTS: Machine Made Man in Films From the Collection: Futurism and film. Ends Jan. 2, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53 St., 212397-6980; times vary, $20.

O’HORTEN: This Norwegian comedy follows an aging train engineer on a series of misadventures after he is forced into retirement. Nov. 1, Symphony Space, 2357 Broadway, 212-864-5400; 6, $15.

TO SAVE AND PROJECT: MoMA’s international film preservation festival. Oct. 24 through Nov. 15, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53 St., 212397-6980; times vary, $20.

WILD RIVER: The conclusion of Film Forum’s tribute to Elia Kazan. Ends Oct. 29. Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St., 212-627-2035; times vary, $12.

UNDER THE INFLUENCE: The “Save and Project” festival at MoMA begins. Ends Nov. 3, The Museum of Modern Art, 11 W. 53 St., 212-397-6980; times vary, $20.

New Paintings Through November 14 Dusk, England, 2009, Oil on panel, 10 x 10 inches

KATHRYN MARKEL FINE ARTS

212 366 5368 | markelfinearts.com 529 W. 20th St. | Tues-Fri 10-6, Sat 11-6

JAY MILDER RECENT WORK

LOHIN • GEDULD • GALLERY 531 West 25th St • New York, NY 10001 212.675.2656 • LohinGeduld.com Hours: Tue - Sat 10:30 am - 6 pm Through November 14, 2009

NEW YORK / PARIS

LITERARY EVENTS

Paintings by Nick Savides October 22-November 28, 2009

ART WORKS: New York Times columnist Frank Rich

joins NEA chairman Rocco Landesman for a conversation about the state of the arts in the United States. Oct. 20, Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway (at 95th Street), 212-864-5400; 7:30, $25 and up.

GORE VIDAL: The legendary writer shares his visual memoir, “Gore Vidal: Snapshots in History’s Glare.” Oct. 21, Barnes & Noble, 33 E. 17th St., 212-253-0810; 7, Free.

PAUL RUDNIK: The author of “I Shudder, And Other Reactions to Life, Death and New Jersey” reads.

Oct. 29, McNally Jackson, 52 Prince St., 212274-1160; 7, Free.

Opening Reception Thursday, October 22, 6-8

NABI GALLERY Meatpacking District, oil on linen, 24x36, 2009

137 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10001 212 929 6063 | www.nabigallery.com October 20, 2009 | City Arts

17

AVENUE Shows

Antiques & Art at the Armory

Exhibitor Images: Hollis Reh & Shariff, European Decorative Arts Company, Michael Pashby Antiques, Ophir Gallery

DeďŹ ned by Quality & Design December 2, 2009 Private Preview Opening Benefit for The American Cancer Society HOPE LODGE NYC

December 3-6, 2009 Open to the Public

THE PARK AVENUE ARMORY 643 PARK AVENUE,NEW YORK CITY For show information please visit:

www.avenueshows.com or call 646.442.1627 Admission $20 Show design by Richard Mishaan

THE ROYAL OAK FOUNDATION The American membership a liate of the National Trust of England, W ales & Nor thern Ireland

PainttheTOWN Photos by Amanda Gordon

Photo by Don Pollard

By Amanda Gordon

Artist William Villalongo and Alita Giacone of Josée Bienvenu Gallery

DRAWING GIFTS At the Drawing Center’s fall auction, Claudia Overstrom took home a Claudia Overstrom Sean Scully watercolor on paper valued at $30,000. “It’s an anniversary present from my husband,” said the Lela Rose-clad collector. “I like the tones and the movement. It spoke to me.” The winning bids, combined with ticket sales, raised $420,000 for drawing exhibitions and programs. Many of the artists hanging on the walls were also present at the event including Pat Steir, Mickalene Thomas and William Villalongo. Will Cotton donated a drawing of his wife, Rose Dergan, wearing a tiara of cupcakes; the couple stuck close together to confer on bids.

James Salomon of Salomon Contemporary and Blair Voltz Clarke, who organizes exhibits of contemporary artists

New-York Historical Society trustee Bernard Schwartz and its president, Louise Mirrer with Bill Clinton

SPEECH PRIZES

everything to everyone. But I don’t want to add anything,” the Best Geographical Tie-In: “The number of people learning character Monroe (played by Ptolemy Slocum), a conceptual about Himalayan art thanks to the Rubin Museum of Art is artist of works such as “Pushkin Stuck in Wall” and “Light Bulb getting so great that Mayor Bloomberg is now considering Turning On and Off,” says in Jonathan Parker’s new film about whether the Hudson should be considered a Himalayan river,” the Chelsea gallery scene, (Untitled), opening Oct. 23. said trustee Vikas Kapoor at the museum’s fifth-anniversary NEXTS & NOTES gala … Best Historical Trivia: At the New-York Historical The Merce Cunningham Memorial, which is open to the Society History Makers gala, public, takes place Oct. 28 from 4-9 at the Park Avenue Armory.

President Bill Clinton observed of Mary Todd that she is “the only … The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art honors painter and sculptor Richard Artschwager, collector woman in history to be courted Douglas S. Cramer, textile designer by three presidential candidates.”

Jack Lenor Larsen and writer and We might add that Clinton is the independent curator Klaus Kertess only former president married on Oct. 29 at the Mandarin Oriental. to a presidential candidate and … The first Doha Tribeca Film secretary of state. Clinton also Festival in Qatar opens Oct. 29 with took pride in having given the Mira Nair’s Amelia; also showing: third shortest inaugural speech, Michael Moore’s Capitalism: A after George Washington Love Story and Cairo Time starring and Abraham Lincoln Patricia Clarkson. … Nelly (all at the start of their McKay will perform at the second terms). … Best opening of the David Rubenstein compliment: At the Atrium at Lincoln Center, annual Lunch at the Vikas Kapoor designed by Tod Williams and Landmark at the Billie Tsien, on Nov. 17.

Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building, Patricia Clarkson with the owner of the building, Aby Rosen, in the audience, architect Cesar Pelli said, “For me, the Seagram For more party coverage, visit www.cityarts.info. building is probably the best building in New York and one To contact the author or purchase photos, email of the best in America.” … Best satire of the art world: “I want Amanda.Gordon@rocketmail.com; bit.ly/agphotos my work to have the whole world in it and I want it to mean October 20, 2009 | City Arts

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