OCT. 27-NOV. 9, 2010 Volume 2, Issue 17 Sutra, a modern dance work by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, is part of the White Light Festival. Photo: Hugo Glendinning
IN THIS ISSUE
PLUS:
Advice for fine art print collectors as they prepare for Print Week.
Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival shows spirit. Gergiev busy at Met Opera & Carnegie. Breaking from theater tradition is never easy.
An American Craftsman Galleries Presents TWO Shows ONE Admission
November 19 • 20 • 21 2010
Ame r i ca n Ar t M a r ke t i n g . c om
InthisIssue 6 Classical Music
JAY NORDLINGER on Valery Gergiev and others at the Met Opera and Carnegie Hall.
8 Focus on Print Week Professional advice on how to care for prints; a morning at Pace Prints reveals the complex process to create a quality print; ‘Ink Plots’ exhibit features graphic novel prints and other sequential art.
12 At the Galleries Reviews: Stanley Lewis: Recent Work at Lohin Geduld Gallery; Ron Milewicz at Elizabeth Harris Gallery; C.K. Wilde at Pavel Zoubok Gallery; Gregory Amenoff at Alexandre Gallery; ‘Shapes’ of the Space at Washburn Gallery; Matthew Day Jackson at Peter Blum Chelsea; Jonas Mekas at James Fuentes Gallery; Willie Cole Works on Paper at The James Gallery at CUNY Grad Center.
14 Dance Joel Lobenthal analyzes how Pina Bausch celebrated individual quirks and Alwin Nikolais tapped into the universal.
15 Jazz HOWARD MANDEL celebrates Randy Weston.
16 Performance: White Light Festival Lincoln Center presents performances with spiritual matters in mind.
17 Theater Artists with Woodshed Collective, P.S. 122 and HERE all tackle the difficult task of alternative theater spaces.
18 Arts Agenda Galleries, Art Events, Museums, Classical Music, Opera, Theater, Out of Town.
23 Paint the Town by Amanda Gordon EDITOR Jerry Portwood jportwood@manhattanmedia.com MANAGING EDITOR Adam Rathe arathe@ manhattanmedia.com ASSISTANT EDITOR
Christine Werthman ART DIRECTOR Jessica Balaschak CONTRIBUTING ART DIRECTOR
Wendy Hu
SENIOR ART CRITIC Lance Esplund SENIOR MUSIC CRITIC
Jay Nordlinger
SENIOR DANCE CRITIC
Joel Lobenthal
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:
Valerie Gladstone, John Goodrich, Amanda Gordon, Howard Mandel, Maureen Mullarkey, Mario Naves
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CFO/COO Joanne Harras jharras@manhattanmedia.com
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Lesley Siegel INTERNS: Hsiaoli Cheng, Chelsea I. Garbell
Gerry Gavin
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Tom Kelly
Controller Shawn Scott Accounts Manager Kathy Pollyea
www.cityartsnyc.com Send all press releases to cityarts@manhattanmedia.com CityArts is a division of Manhattan Media, publishers of New York Family magazine, AVENUE magazine, Our Town, West Side Spirit, New York Press, City Hall, Chelsea Clinton News, The Westsider and The Blackboard Awards. © 2010 Manhattan Media, LLC | 79 Madison Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, NY 10016 | t: 212.268.8600, f: 212.268.0577 | www.manhattanmedia.com
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
InthisIssue 6 Classical Music
JAY NORDLINGER on Valery Gergiev and others at the Met Opera and Carnegie Hall.
8 Focus on Print Week Professional advice on how to care for prints; a morning at Pace Prints reveals the complex process to create a quality print; ‘Ink Plots’ exhibit features graphic novel prints and other sequential art.
12 At the Galleries Reviews: Stanley Lewis: Recent Work at Lohin Geduld Gallery; Ron Milewicz at Elizabeth Harris Gallery; C.K. Wilde at Pavel Zoubok Gallery; Gregory Amenoff at Alexandre Gallery; ‘Shapes’ of the Space at Washburn Gallery; Matthew Day Jackson at Peter Blum Chelsea; Jonas Mekas at James Fuentes Gallery; Willie Cole Works on Paper at The James Gallery at CUNY Grad Center.
14 Dance Joel Lobenthal analyzes how Pina Bausch celebrated individual quirks and Alwin Nikolais tapped into the universal.
15 Jazz HOWARD MANDEL celebrates Randy Weston.
16 Performance: White Light Festival Lincoln Center presents performances with spiritual matters in mind.
17 Theater Artists with Woodshed Collective, P.S. 122 and HERE all tackle the difficult task of alternative theater spaces.
18 Arts Agenda Galleries, Art Events, Museums, Classical Music, Opera, Theater, Out of Town.
23 Paint the Town by Amanda Gordon EDITOR Jerry Portwood jportwood@manhattanmedia.com MANAGING EDITOR Adam Rathe arathe@ manhattanmedia.com ASSISTANT EDITOR
Christine Werthman ART DIRECTOR Jessica Balaschak
Advertising
MANHATTAN MEDIA
PUBLISHER Kate Walsh kwalsh@manhattanmedia.com
PRESIDENT/CEO Tom Allon tallon@manhattanmedia.com
advertising consultantS
CFO/COO Joanne Harras jharras@manhattanmedia.com
Don Burkett
dburkett@manhattanmedia.com
Adele Mary Grossman
Group Publisher
Alex Schweitzer
aschweitzer@manhattanmedia.com
CONTRIBUTING ART DIRECTOR
Account Executives
Ceil Ainsworth, Monica Conde
NEWSPAPER GROUP PUBLISHER
SENIOR ART CRITIC Lance Esplund
Production PRODUCTION MANAGER
ggavin@manhattanmedia.com
Wendy Hu
SENIOR MUSIC CRITIC
Jay Nordlinger
SENIOR DANCE CRITIC
Joel Lobenthal
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:
Valerie Gladstone, John Goodrich, Amanda Gordon, Howard Mandel, Maureen Mullarkey, Mario Naves
Gerry Gavin
Mark Stinson
MARKETING DIRECTOR
ADVERTISING DESIGN
tkelly@manhattanmedia.com
Heather Mulcahey WEB DESIGNER
Lesley Siegel INTERNS: Hsiaoli Cheng, Chelsea I. Garbell
Tom Kelly
Controller Shawn Scott Accounts Manager Kathy Pollyea
www.cityartsnyc.com Send all press releases to cityarts@manhattanmedia.com CityArts is a division of Manhattan Media, publishers of New York Family magazine, AVENUE magazine, Our Town, West Side Spirit, New York Press, City Hall, Chelsea Clinton News, The Westsider and The Blackboard Awards. © 2010 Manhattan Media, LLC | 79 Madison Avenue, 16th Floor, New York, NY 10016 | t: 212.268.8600, f: 212.268.0577 | www.manhattanmedia.com
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
InBrief greed. These may sound like the themes in a season of Desperate Housewives, but long before TV writers manipulated our prurient appetites for entertainment value, Shakespeare revealed it all in The Merry Wives of Windsor. First published in 1602, the play fully exposes foibles familiar, horrifying and fundamentally humorous in such an engaging manner that it’s never lost its charm. As Shakespeare’s only work set in his own period and with no royal characters, it also keeps its contemporary currency. Few perform the comedic masterpiece with greater elan than Shakespeare’s Globe. Fresh from its recent success in Los Angeles, the illustrious London-based troupe presents its complete reimagining of its 2008 season hit at the Schimmel Theatre at Pace University Oct. 28 through Nov. 7. Under the direction of Christopher Luscombe, it features Serena Evans, Sarah Woodward and Christopher Benjamin as Sir John Falstaff. Designer Janet Bird reinvents the Globe with Tudor-style timber and a turntable, which rotates for each scene change. The gifted musicians sit on top of the set, playing Nigel Hess’ original, infectious Elizabethan-style score. This makes the company’s second year in the university’s acclaimed Shakespeare series. “The Globe style lends itself very well to the play,” says David Watson, director of cultural events at Pace University. “The actors are entirely comfortable with the language as natural speech. Since the language is the vehicle for conveying character, it’s essential for performing Shakespeare well.” The plot revolves around Falstaff’s attempt to blackmail two wealthy married women, Mistress Ford and Mistress Page, by pretending to be their lovers. In need of cash, he believes they’ll be so flattered by his romantic invitations that they won’t be able to resist him. Instead, upon discovering his hoax, they decide to fool him, in the process involving their husbands and almost everyone in the community. Secret
John Tramper
Falstaff With Flourish Jealousy, revenge, lust, betrayal,
Serena Evans, Christopher Luscombe and Sarah Woodward in The Merry Wives of Windsor.
meetings, false disguises, prideful speeches and wounded egos all make for rollicking, rambunctious scenes, with no character escaping Shakespeare’s clear-eyed scrutiny. “What you need for this play is an extraordinary team,” Conrad Lynch, the Globe’s executive producer, explains. “And that’s what we have. You can feel their chemistry on stage. It’s a very physical show and they have lots of fun with it.” Critics have raved that Evans appears to be having the time of her life as Mistress Page, a notable comment given her credentials as a respected theatrical and television actor with 30 years in the profession. It helps that she is performing opposite Woodward, with whom she first shared a stage 25 years ago in Charley’s Aunt. “We know each other so
well that the jokes we play on Falstaff and our husbands are twice as much fun,” Evans says. [Valerie Gladstone]
Gentleman Calling
Amanda Wingfield, the spurned woman and mother in Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie, has been interpreted by a slew of acclaimed performers: Jessica Tandy, Julie Harris, Katharine Hepburn and Mark Dendy. If that last name doesn’t ring a bell, you probably didn’t get to see Jane Comfort’s 1993 Faith Healing, an imaginative dancetheater work inspired by the play. Dendy’s turn as Williams’ memorable matriarch was the heart of the inventive production, in which dialogue ceded the stage to intense
physicality as Comfort investigated the aspects of longing and desire that are so pivotal to Williams’ characters. Like most Downtown choreographers, Comfort usually moves on to her next project as soon as one has had its run, and she has an extensive roster of challenging, often politically charged works to her credit. But thanks to a National Performance Network commission, and the Joyce Theater Foundation’s American Masterpieces Series, Faith Healing returns this week for five performances Oct. 27-31 at the Joyce Soho, with Dendy (an acclaimed choreographer in his own right) reprising his role, amid an otherwise new cast. “Mark begged me for seven years to bring it back,” Comfort explains in a recent phone interview, before heading to Raleigh, N.C.,
BOBBY SHORT & JEAN BACH by Sigrid Estrada
also featured:
PAT BUCKELY
MARTHA STEWART
SANFORD WEILL
DOMINICK DUNNE
by George Lange
by Sigrid Estrada
by George Lange
by Josh Lehrer
FOR DETAILS & TO PURCHASE: www.AVENUEmagazine.com/iconic-newyorkers October 27, 2010 | City Arts
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InBrief the idea of updating some aspects of the piece. One idea: “Amanda comes home and catches Laura on Facebook, looking up Jim’s profile. Then Mark said, ‘Let’s keep it where it was.’ I feel the structure stands up pretty well, so it’s really been more about letting these new performers find their own characters.” [Susan
Arthur Elgort.
Reiter]
Nancy Alfaro and David Neumann from the original cast of Faith Healing.
This Fall at
Living for Art: The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel ColleCtion
September 24, 2010–January 2, 2011 50 gifts of contemporary art from the collection of this Features remarkable couple known more for their passion for art than for material wealth.
3 South Mountain Ave., Montclair, NJ 07042 973-746-5555 | montclairartmuseum.org
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City Arts | www.cityarts.info
for the premiere of this re-staging. “People loved that show. This will be slightly different, and maybe people who saw it then will love it just as much. And then there will be people who’ve never seen it before. But I think when you do these re-stagings, you do run a risk of dealing with people’s memory.” Memory, of course, is a key element of Williams’ 1945 play, and as Comfort explains, when she read the play, “what really connected with me was the idea of longing and desire—because everybody has it.” With her cast of dancer-actors, she incorporated scenes from the script as well as danced scenes in which the characters reveal and explore their deepest desires and fantasies. Drawing on Tom’s propensity of going “to the movies” as his all-purpose escape from the family’s harsh reality, she used dialogue scenes from films to accompany several of the major danced interludes, in which the characters effortlessly abandon their mundane reality and enter their own movie-fantasy world. “I feel that we really address the subtext of the play.” Dendy was crucial to her conception, according to Comfort. “Mark and I were both from the South,” says Comfort, who was raised in Tennessee. “So we knew what we were talking about. There’s a lot of longing and nostalgia in Southern mindset, for something that no longer exists. Mark was more open and loving towards the awful part of the South than I was at the time.” She had firm guidelines for Dendy in the role: Though costumed appropriately for Amanda, “he couldn’t do it as a drag queen,” she explains. “I said he couldn’t grow his hair or wear makeup.” The performers joining Dendy this time around—Heather Christian, Leslie Cuyjet, Sean Donovan and Matthew Hardy—are actor-dancers with whom Comfort is working for the first time. Original cast members Nancy Alfaro (who will conduct a talkback after the Oct. 29 performance) and David Neumann have dropped by during rehearsals, and original designers Liz Prince (costumes and sets) and David Ferri (lighting) are once again on board. Early on, Comfort recalls, she played with
Priceless Culture
If you’ve reached your limit of watching cats play on YouTube, you may be ready for FORA.tv, a Web video platform with the tag line “Get Smart.” The site targets the intellectual couch potato with recordings and live streams of idea-oriented events held around the country, including dozens in New York. Programs at the Asia Society, the New York Public Library, the New School and the Graduate Center at CUNY are all represented in the current offerings. But New Yorkers can also expand their worldview by surfing into events held in San Francisco, Aspen and Washington, D.C. The high-minded ideals are even built into the name: fora is the plural of forum, referring to the Roman open public space for debate and discourse. “By capturing provocative and insightful events on video, we extend their shelf-life and expose them to an audience perhaps thousandsfolds greater than were there in person,” Blaise Zerega, FORA.tv’s CEO, said. Zerega previously worked as an editor at Condé Nast Portfolio and Red Herring magazine. Many past events are available to view for free, and the New York Public Library’s LIVE events can be streamed live for a fee of $4.95. A $59.95 pass buys access to all the events in this year’s New Yorker Festival, including SNL’s Seth Myers discussing his news rivals. Events that carry the “premium” label are offered on a pay-on-demand basis, and the site is currently averaging three million video views a month. Although it’s no match for being at a live performance or event, the site’s content partners are, of course, happy to expand their audience. “It’s a tremendous opportunity to provide access to patrons who cannot attend our programs,” said Meg Stemmler, the producer of the LIVE from the NYPL series. “What is created is a culturally linked community that begins between the lions and grows outward with boundless potential to connect minds.” Subject areas covered on the site include culture, the environment, technology, politics, science and the economy. But the mostwatched content generally has a pop culture dimension: the Graduate Center’s evening with Patti Smith is one of the site’s top-ranked videos. The site is also currently promoting an Oct. 27 talk with director James Cameron and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, hosted by Silicon Valley’s Churchill Club. The price of such stimulating conversation: $9.95. [Amanda
Gordon]
ArtsNews almost every aspect of the films’ production, from start to finish. It will screen Oct. 28 at Anthology Film Archives… Phillips de Pury & Co. opens its new flagship location at 450 Park Ave. with two auctions: Carte Blanche, curated by Phillipe Segalot, and Part 1 Contemporary Art. The sales will take place Nov. 1… ArtCrawl Harlem, a guided trolley tour of East Harlem, brings riders to neighborhood art galleries and public spaces. The next tour begins Nov. 13, and will highlight a new work created by eminent sidewalk chalk
artist James De La Vega and some of the children at Union Settlement. The tour also includes a reception with dinner, drinks and live music at Taller Boricua/The Puerto Rican Workshop… On Nov. 19, Prospect New Orleans will hold its first New York fundraiser, Prospect New Orleans Art Auction & Throwdown honoring founding philanthropist Toby Devan Lewis at Jack Shainman Gallery. Proceeds will fund the biennial exhibition, which supports New Orleans by bringing in tourism and drawing at-
tention to the city’s vibrant arts community… Peter Greenaway will unveil his ambitious update of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” at Park Avenue Armory Dec. 2. The multimedia installation, titled “Leonardo’s Last Supper: A Vision by Peter Greenaway,” adds sound, light and “theatrical illusion” to a detailed copy of da Vinci’s painting, set in a full-scale model of the portion of Refectory of Santa Maria Delle Grazie where the work was originally housed. The work will be on display through Jan. 6.
LaPlacaCohen 212-675-4106 7.341 X 8.5, 4C NEWS
The first segment of Richard Pasquarelli’s two-part “Secret Gardens” installation is now on display on Chambers Street between West and Greenwich streets; the second half will go up later this month. The work, a collection of vinyl and mesh garden scenes, is part of Re:Contruction, a series of temporary public art projects designed to brighten up the appearance of ongoing construction Downtown… LEED accredited artist and interior designer Melissa McElroy launched her new eco- and local-friendly sustainable home furnishings web store at her website melissamcelroy.com… On Oct. 14, Leslie Ligon was presented with the 2010
Publication: City Arts
Michelle Obama.
Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures
Insertion date: OCTOBER 27, 2010
People’s Design Award at the CooperHewitt National Design Museum’s National Awards gala for her Braille Alphabet Bracelet. The front of the bracelet is imprinted with the entire Braille alphabet, while the back features the standard English alphabet. Ligon, who has a blind son, designed the At First Sight Braille Jewelry line to promote Braille literacy… On Oct. 20, local organizations Global Action Project and Heart of Brooklyn Cultural Institutions received two of 15 awards given nationally to community-based organizations serving at-risk youth in underserved communities, by the President’s Committee on the Arts. First Lady Michelle Obama presented the awards in the East Room of the White House… Also Oct. 20, a launch party was held at David Zwirner Gallery for the release of the book Modern Views, which showcases Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House & Garden and Philip Johnson’s Glass House. The book includes an introduction by Paul Goldberger, and contributions from the likes of David Adjaye and Annie Leibowitz… Electronic musicians and fine artists Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Miller of the band ADULT. present and provide a live soundtrack for their horror-influenced film trilogy The Three Graces Triptych. The two are responsible for
metmuseum.org The exhibition is made possible by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund, Flanders House New York, and the Society of Friends of Belgium in America.
Additional support is provided by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Hester Diamond, David Kowitz, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and Joyce P. and Diego R. Visceglia.
MET-0039-Gossart_CityArts_7.341x8.5(1.16)_Oct27_v1.indd 1
The exhibition was organized by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in association with The National Gallery, London.
It is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Jan Gossart, Portrait of a Man (Jan Jacobsz. Snoeck?), detail, ca. 1530, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1967.
10/21/10 9:55:58 AM
October 27, 2010 | City Arts
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ClassicalMUSIC
NOV 9 YALE GUITAR MUSIC TODAY Tue, 8 pm | Weill Recital Hall Benjamin Verdery, director World premieres by Ezra Laderman, Kathryn Alexander, Jack Vees + Samuel Adams + music by Martin Bresnick, Aaron Jay Kernis, Ingram Marshall, David Lang + Benjamin Verdery
YALE ›››NY DEC 12 YALE PERCUSSION GROUP
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TICKETS
Sun, 8 pm | Zankel Hall Robert van Sice, director
CARNEGIE HALL
Music for percussion ensemble by Thierry de Mey, Steve Reich, James Wood + Mauricio Kagel
$15–$25 at www.carnegiehall.org CarnegieCharge: 212 247-7800 Box Office: 7th Ave & 57th St
City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
Mussorgsky Time, Mahler Time Valery Gergiev and others at the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall
T
By Jay Nordlinger he star of the Metropolitan Opera’s Boris Godunov, of course, was the great German bass in the title role, René Pape. But, in a way, the real star was the work itself. Mussorgsky’s opera is not just a Russian national song or tale; it is an all-around masterpiece. Of that, we were reminded. Or maybe I should say that I was reminded. I have called Pape “great,” and that is no light word. And it is not lightly applied. Pape is a famous Boris, and also an unusual one: a lyric Boris, you could even say a Boris cantante. The qualities he brings to Sarastro (in Mozart’s Magic Flute), he brings to the tormented czar. Seldom has a Boris been so warm, tender, sensitive. Seldom have his prayers sounded so prayerful. Does one miss a little heft in Pape’s Boris? I think so. But you can’t have everything, and Pape has plenty. Also, he resisted the temptation to oversing, to manufacture heft. The same can be said of Bryn Terfel, the great Welshman starring as Wotan in the Met’s new production of The Ring. He is not quite a Wotan. But, on the night I heard him in Das Rheingold, he did not oversing. He stayed lyric. Pape is not merely a voice—a throat— but also something of a stage animal. He acted Boris with fair conviction. But most of the acting, of course, is done with the voice—with the singing. His Russian, I cannot judge. But I certainly know people who can. And the judgment of one of them is, “Excellent, almost perfect.” Boris Godunov is not a one-singer opera, and the Met had a slew of worthy singers, making the performance a vocal treat—a feast, really. Pape’s was not the only bass onstage: Mikhail Petrenko owns one too, and he showed it to moving effect as Pimen. This summer in Salzburg, I walked into a Roméo et Juliette without looking at the program. (I knew that Beczala and Netrebko were the principals.) Friar Laurence started to sing, filling the Felsenreitschule (which is hard to fill) with bass beauty. It was Petrenko. In Boris, Aleksandrs Antonenko had a splendid night as Grigory (a.k.a. the False Dimitry). This tenor combined lyricism and strength, providing a definition of smooth power. He came close to stealing the show. Ekaterina Semenchuk, the mezzo-soprano, brought off Marina with panache. The character singers sang characterfully. All in all, there was a
boatload of authenticity on that stage. And there was a boatload of authenticity in the pit. Valery Gergiev is an off-and-on conductor, and, on this occasion, he was definitely on—from the opening measure. He was completely alive to the score, and he made the orchestra alive to it as well. The drama was as much in the music coming from the pit as it was in the singing and the acting on the stage. The Met Orchestra sounded both Russian and Western. It had some of the earthiness, and growl, of the East and the beauty and refinement associated with the West. (Pardon the stereotypes.) The chorus, as you know, is assigned a major task in this opera. The Met’s— American or not—was up to it. How about the production? It is a new one, originally in the care of Peter Stein, the German director, and then handed to Stephen Wadsworth, the American. Stein withdrew for reasons not entirely clear (or important). This new Boris is OK— superbly costumed, for one thing. I’m not sure about the relationship between Marina and the priest Rangoni: all sin. And I’m not sure there has to be so much brutality at the end: so much torture, so much sadism, to go with ordinary murder or execution. A little suggestion can go a long way. But Wadsworth no doubt has arguments for what he does. What I really don’t understand is why a Boris at the Met has to be so spare—so un-grand. Here’s my argument: The Met is the home of grand opera, a big old opera house with a big old stage. Boris is about the grandest of grand operas. Why not do it up, with onion domes and the whole nine yards? You can do a sparer Boris in any old house, in any old burg. Why waste the Met—its space, its time, its myth? Just so you know, Stephen Wadsworth is very much with-it. In an interview with Opera News, he said the following about the Russian people, as depicted in Boris: “They’re just so happy to kick out the old, they surrender rational thought and go on a rampage. Can you say ‘Tea Party’?” I told you he was with-it. That line must have been greeted as a clever and wise pronouncement at the Met, and elsewhere in the arts world. In any case, this Boris Godunov runs until Oct. 30 and returns for three performances in March.
Jack Viertel, Artistic Director rob berman, MUsic Director
BELLS ARE RINGING booK And lyricS by betty coMden and adolph green
MuSic by Jule Styne
EntirE oriGinAl Production dirEctEd by JeroMe robbinS dAncE & MuSicAl nuMbErS oF oriGinAl Production StAGEd by
JeroMe robbinS and bob FoSSe StArrinG Kelli o’hara FEAturinG the encoreS! orcheStra MuSic dirEctor rob berMan dirEctEd And cHorEoGrAPHEd by Kathleen MarShall
FiVe PerForMANces onlY!
noVember 18 – 21
THU-FRI 8PM, SAT 2 & 8PM, SUN 6:30PM TICKETS START AT $25 Production GEnErouSly SuPPortEd by
JoSeph S. and diane h. Steinberg charitable truSt roz and Jerry Meyer
2010-11 Encores! Season Sponsors
Stacey and eric Mindich
F O U N D A T I O N
Manhattan School of Music Brent Ness
MSM SyMphony and SyMphonic choruS
René Pape in the title role of Boris Godunov.
M
aestro Gergiev has been busy in New York, busyness being almost his trademark. He and Plácido Domingo have enough energy to power a trip to Mars. In addition to conducting Boris, Gergiev has been leading his Mariinsky Orchestra, from St. Petersburg, in Carnegie Hall. They have been performing Mahler symphonies. This year marks 150 years since the composer’s birth; next year marks 100 years since his death. Such anniversaries mean a lot to concert programmers. On a Sunday afternoon—the day before the Boris I have discussed—Gergiev led the Mariinsky in the Mahler Sixth. He was not at his most engaged, not at his most musical. Buried in the score, he was competent, efficient, businesslike—no more, really. The first movement could have used more spark and thrill. The second movement, that rocking, miraculous Andante, could have used
more charm and wistfulness. The Scherzo seemed sight-read, by all involved. It did not have its color and did not have its impishness. The Finale? It was all right. It delivered a certain charge. But that was more thanks to Mahler than to his performers on this afternoon. Gergiev’s was not a bad Mahler Sixth. One has heard worse, and will again. It’s just that the symphony was barely touched, not truly exploited. Three days later, and two days after the Boris, Gergiev conducted Mahler’s Second, the “Resurrection.” And? It was earth-shatteringly good. Gergiev and his forces knocked it out of the park, knocked it to kingdom come. You just never know: It always pays to show up. Gergiev will conduct more Mahler symphonies, with the London Symphony Orchestra, next February at Avery Fisher Hall, in the Great Performers series. <
opEra ScEnES: SpaniSh TrEaSurES
Kent Tritle, Conductor
Gordon Ostrowski, Director
BRAHMS Ein Deutsches Requiem, op. 45
NOV 19 / fRi 7:30 pM Borden Auditorium
NOV 3 / WED 7:30 pM Borden Auditorium
NOV 21 / SUN 2:30 pM Borden Auditorium
SuMMEr and SMoKE
MSM Jazz philharMonic
by LEE HOIby
Justin DiCioccio, Conductor With Dave Liebman, saxophone, and Randy Brecker, trumpet
Libretto by Lanford Wilson based on the play by Tennessee Williams Steven Osgood, Conductor Dona D. Vaughn, Director
COLTRANE (arr. Gunnar Mossblad) The Meditations Suite
DEC 8 & 10 / WED & fRi 7:30 pM Borden Auditorium
NOV 5 / fRi 7:30 pM Borden Auditorium
DEC 12 / SUN 2:30 pM Borden Auditorium
KurT MaSur conducTinG SEMinar final Concert
MSM SyMpHONy
Kurt Masur, Conductor and Selected Seminar participants BEETHOVEN Leonore Overture No. 3, op. 72a SCHUMANN Symphony No. 4 in D Minor, op. 120 SHOSTAKOViCH Symphony No. 5 in D Minor, op. 47 NOV 12 / fRi 7:30 pM Borden Auditorium
122ND STREET AND BROADWAy
917 493 4428
WWW.MSMNyC.EDU
October 27, 2010 | City Arts
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Hanging in the Balance Knowing how to care for prints is a collector’s priority
Israel Goldman will exhibit Katsushika Hokusai’s “Mishima Pass.”
Focus on Fine Art Prints
T
his year, the International Fine Print Dealers Association presents the 20th edition of its annual Print Fair from Nov. 4 through 7 at the Park Avenue Armory. To commemorate the event—which includes panels and forums for collectors, dealers and curators, along with 89 dealers exhibiting everything from Old Masters to contemporary works—we focused on a few of the questions and issues collectors of prints often face. To help new and old collectors on the care and handling of prints, we talked to Kim Schmidt, director of Marlborough Prints. To help others understand what a print is and why artists choose to make prints, we had a writer spend time with printmaker Justin Israels at Pace Prints. Along with the official events of the print fair, there are also quite a few shows during Print Week (Nov. 1-8) that may interest print aficionados, from 20th-century Japanese prints at Scholten Japanese Art to the giant prints by John Baldessari at the Met. We also go off the beaten path to a show presented by SVA of original prints from graphic novels by the school’s alumni.
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
By Valerie Gladstone An artist conceives of an idea for a print, he or she collaborates with a printmaker to get it perfect, then you see that gorgeous lithograph, take it home—and screw it up. The organizers of International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) know that buying prints involves far more than loving a piece of art. Too many new collectors end up with a damaged print because they don’t know how to care for one. Good framing, hanging and maintenance go far in extending its survival. So that novices can learn the basics, the IFPDA is offering an informative panel discussion titled “Caring for Your Collection” Nov. 6, moderated by Mary Pontillo, a vice president at DeWitt Stern, the insurance and risk management firm that specializes in fine art and is co-sponsor of the event. Conservators Elizabeth Coombs and Rachel A. Mustalish, framers Russ
Gerlach and Jed Bark and noted collector Charles Hack will be among the panelists. “We’ll cover as much as possible,” Pontillo says. “There are hundreds of different kinds of prints, and every one needs special handling. We’ve come very far in the past 20 years as far as conservation, but still many people don’t educate themselves sufficiently. Our panel should be able to answer the most important questions.” No one cares more about the condition of prints than Kim Schmidt, director of Marlborough Prints. “We deal chiefly in the secondary market, where nothing is more important,” Schmidt explains. “Everything affects prints: the environment, framing, handling, the archival material and the installation.” She has advice from the very beginning of your relationship with a new print, suggesting that the dealer send it directly to the framer. “Don’t handle it yourself,” she advises. “Have a professional
Martin Lewis’ “Glow of the City,” 1929 exhibited by The Old Print Shop. unwrap it and have it framed as soon as possible.” She warns against touching the paper and rolling prints in tubes, recalling that artist Richard Diebenkorn’s prints were on such soft paper that when she had to handle them she worried about putting “dings” or half-moon creases on them, so she constantly washed her hands. These kinds of small imperfections can be removed, but
the process to do so is costly and timeconsuming. “People forget that paper has memory,” she says. Experts at Marlborough also suggest framers and installers to their clients, hoping that they will take their recommendations. “There are so many choices as far as type and color of frame and whether you use museum glass or Plexiglas,” Schmidt says. “There are hundreds of whites, hundreds
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STUDIO PRINTWORKS
same risks as lithographs and etchings. The environment poses the biggest threat, light particularly, but also humidity. “In New York apartments, you have the most extreme variations,” Bark says. “In the winter, it can be drier than the desert and in summer incredibly humid. This causes the paper to shrink in winter and expand in summer, distorting it and causing wavy lines. We call it ‘exercising the paper,’ and it’s terrible.” Finding out how to counter these changes should be a collector’s priority. So much of a print’s preservation is up to the framer. “The material you use should protect, not damage. You should interfere as little as possible with the print,” Bark advises. “It has to be attached with hinges, but the type you use is critical. The best are Japanese papers called washi. They come in a variety of textures. Usually framers make their own paste, which is made of vegetable starch. We use rice paste. The thing is to go with the tried and true—and maintain the highest standard practice. We are just as interested as collectors in preserving over the long term.” Robert Newman, director of The Old Print Shop, agrees. “Your dealer is the person to ask about the print’s condition and its care. Make friends with him or her. When I see prints hanging in people’s homes that belonged to their grandparents—and still wonderfully preserved—I know the owners have gotten good advice all the way down the line.” <
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of types of frames. It’s best left in the hands of experts.” Usually museum glass makes the best choice for framing, unless the work weighs a lot and then Plexiglas may be the best option. All these glasses now come with UV-blocking material, which keeps out up to 99 percent of UV rays, a great advance over the past 20 years. Still, prints should never be hung where there is direct sunlight. According to the experts, even one’s geographic location should influence the choices of frame and care. “If you live in California, where earthquakes occur, you definitely want to use unbreakable Plexiglas. Pictures fall off walls there,” Schmidt says. “I also recommend Plexiglas for public spaces because it can’t be broken or scratched.” In New York City, where old apartment houses can sway, it’s best to hang with two hooks rather than one and use rubber bumpers on the back of the frame to stick to the wall, so you don’t wake up every morning to crooked pictures. And hang them 60 inches from the floor, about eye level. The cleaning of the glass also makes a difference. Never spray the cleaner directly onto the surface of glass, Schmidt warns. “Spray it onto a cloth first. I recommend Brillianize.” While Schmidt admittedly knows a great deal about framing, she defers to authorities, like Jed Bark of Bark Frameworks, for the final word. Like Schmidt, he stresses the vulnerability of prints. Among prints, the most fragile are traditional—not digital— photographs. Digital photographs share the
twentieth anniversary Donald Baechler, No Need to Shout, 2007, screenprint with flocking.
October 27, 2010 | City Arts
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R
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PAINTINGS. PRINTS. PHOTOGRAPHS. SCULPTURE. In-House Packing, Shipping & Framing
Justin Israels operating a hydraulic press to make a test print from a linoleum block.
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by Amanda Gordon Justin Israels is working his way around the walls of a castle. “It’s very physical,” he says as he leans in. The castle is a drawing printed on a piece of wood with a T-shirt transfer. Israels is carving around the lines of the castle, taking care to keep his cuts at a 45-degree angle. “The idea is to protect the drawing,” he says. Israels, a printmaker at Pace Prints, is working on a test for artist Paul Morrison, and the castle is part of a large blackink drawing by Morrison that depicts a fantastical landscape that includes bold graphic flowers. The printmaker has already made some prints of one of these flowers from a linoleum block. These tests will help establish which processes and papers will achieve what the artist wants. “We’ve never worked together before. We’ve had some emails, and I went and looked at his show,” Israels explains. “You get an idea, you can kind of get a feel for the artist. It’s about figuring out a language. When the language clicks, everything takes off.” Israels, 32, has been at Pace Prints for eight years. Each day when the Windsor Terrace resident, who was raised in Spencer, Iowa, arrives at work, he walks past photographs that remind him of this print shop’s great history: the photographs show Jim Dine, Chuck Close and Kiki Smith at work. “Here’s one of Tara Donovan, shooting me in the face with a chicken gun,” Israel says. Donovan used the “chicken gun”— which shoots thread—to make impressions for a print. It seems some artists are very hands on. Inside the shop, light streams in on the counter alongside the windows, where Israels—wearing paint-speckled clogs and an apron—has been working on the
Morrison project. “I’ve been carving wood, so I have lots of splinters,” he says. “The apron has pockets, so you have everything on you.” During a tour of the studio on a recent Friday morning, Israels stopped to watch printmaker Kyle Simon applying red ink on a steel-faced copper plate. Simon is making proofs for a print by Dan Walsh. Yesterday, he was printing blue; two days before that it was yellow. All part of the process. Time must pass to allow the ink to dry, but the paper is kept wet, so that the next round of ink will absorb well. The wetness also helps the paper keep its shape since under the pressure of the press the paper can stretch. In the curating room, another printmaker is checking editions of a Robert Mangold print. She needs to make sure the gray lines align with the colored shapes they outline. If something is off, she has colored pencils to make corrections. As much as the printmakers work with their hands, lots of chemistry is involved as well. “I got into printmaking because I was interested in science,” Israels says, recalling his first printmaking class, in lithography, at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. To show off the kind of chemistry that goes on at Pace Prints, Israels walks over to a hulking wood cabinet. “This is the aquatint box,” he explains. He opens up the cabinet doors and a strong smell fills the air. “Don’t huff it,” he warns of the overpowering scent of ground-up pine resin. A large crank in the cabinet throws the fine particles in the air, to make an even fog that comes down on a copper plate. There’s a formula written on the side of the cabinet for how long to crank, and how long to leave the plate in. “You can’t sneeze when you take it out!” Just one more rule to get that perfect print made just right.
Comic Tribute SVA celebrates its alumni who are influencing graphic novels
Art Spiegelman’s work on display at Ink Plots. After years of attempting to sell friends and family members on the concept of comics as a viable art form, the School of Visual Arts is presenting its exhibit Ink Plots: The Tradition of the Graphic Novel at SVA at its Visual Arts Gallery (601 W. 26th St.), smack in the middle of the Chelsea art galleries. Perhaps we’re past the point of justification, however, and anyone who is likely to be convinced of such things has surely been won over by the countless literature awards and the constant recognition by literati tastemakers. The show includes original works by faculty members like Ben Katchor, Sue Coe, Art Spiegelman and Jerry Moriarty, as well as showcasing other SVA alumni who are influencing the graphic novel. But hanging drawings and prints on white walls may not necessarily be the best way to present
material better consumed while lounging on the couch—or even under the sheets with a flashlight. Inked panels and word bubbles aside, the works are almost indiscernible from much of the typical gallery fare found nearby—but it’s difficult sometimes not to be very conscious of the fact that you’re staring at the page of a comic book thumb tacked to the wall. Thankfully, the curators have included a reading table in the middle of the gallery, complete with several green-shaded library desk lamps. This is, after all, not so much justification as celebration of the rather impressive list of SVA alumni and faculty, which reads like something of a who’s who of American cartoonists, from Will Eisner, Edward Gorey and Gary Panter, to Dash Shaw, Raina Telgemeier and Nate Powell. An impressive list indeed. [Brian Heater]
October 27, 2010 | City Arts
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AttheGALLERIES
“Ribbonfall,” by Gregory Amenoff.
Gregory Amenoff: At All Hours: New Paintings
Carpentry brings out the best in Gregory Amenoff. In a statement accompanying his third solo exhibition at Alexandre Gallery, Amenoff speaks to how building a studio cabin from the ground up led to changes in his art—most noticeably, the wooden frames surrounding his abstract paintings. Sometimes the frames are integrated within the image; sometimes they’re separate. Always they’re humble and straightforward, bordering on naive. Amenoff has never been a fancy paint-handler, favoring brusque, fleshy and, at times, over-insistent brush handling. His way with a saw is no less inelegant. It’s a fit. But less so because of how the frames function pictorially—they’re a bit of an obvious gambit, really—than how they function temperamentally. The recent paintings are, after all, par for Amenoff’s course: vigorous riffs on the natural world that tap into a deeply American vein of mysticism. Think Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley and the keening vistas of Clyfford Still; think awe and sobriety, starry-eyed transcendence and keeping your feet on the ground. But these paintings are also among Amenoff’s best. Never before have his monolithic shapes, vine-like arabesques and craggy rays of light been as true or as self-possessed. They now have the same “weight and substance”—the same hard-headed credibility—Amenoff divined from the lumberyard materials he employed when building his studio.
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Scale plays a vital role here. With the exception of “Ribbonfall,” the jangled midsized picture that opens the exhibition, the finest pieces are small, hardly more than a foot in any direction. For Amenoff, less surface area means fewer and decidedly blunter forms. The resulting compression makes the relationship between, say, a clunky rectangle, a veering triangle and an encompassing scrabbled line all the more muscular, organic, peculiar and necessary. Amenoff’s touch benefits as well, his brush having found an appropriate format for its size and sweep. Paintings like “Rill,” “Stand” and the irresistible “Semaphore,” all made in 2010, are happy to the extent in which they lumber, lurch and unfurl within the boundaries Amenoff has set for them. [Mario Naves] Through Nov. 27, Alexandre Gallery, 41 E. 57th St., 212-755-2828.
Matthew Day Jackson: In Search of
There is something absent from Matthew Day Jackson’s In Search of. The artist’s body is present purely in absentia. Instead, cultural artifacts documenting his existence—a forensic artist’s sculptures of Jackson’s head; “Me, Dead at 36,” a photograph of Jackson’s (purportedly) dead body in a burlap bag; and facsimiles of a front page of the Times with an article about the artist’s mysterious disappearance—prove his existence through the materiality of the artwork. Jackson removes himself from his work in order to construct his personal mythology, something akin to Joseph
Beuys’ personal narrative. Jackson works as an archeologist of the present, where material culture is analyzed to attain a kind of meaning. The narrative thread is In Search of, a 30-minute video that satirically asks “who we are, where we come from, and what lies in our future.” The film consists of three sections exploring the role of anthropomorphism in constructing cultural and historical identity. In one section, the earnest and didactic narrator walks us through “enigmatic objects” supposedly found during an emergency excavation in the American Southwest, now on view at The Met. Referencing a Borges story, the narrator suggests the relics could be “remnants of the lost land of Uqbar.” The objects in the filmed “exhibition”— taken overly seriously and completely misinterpreted (the narrator identifies an Eames leg brace as a ceremonial mask)—are elements of a sculpture in the next room. “Study Collection VI” dominates one wall of the main gallery. On five steel shelves, artifacts are collected in a sort of figurative sculpture. Anthropomorphizing tree limbs into legs, and wire fencing into ribcages, the piece connects Jackson’s creative drive with man’s inherent desire to cement us in the world, to naturalize the artificiality of permanence. Any exhibition that explicitly nods to Beuys, Borges and Bruce Nauman would seem likely to be lost in reference and reverence, but Jackson’s work maintains distance and reaches an identity of its own. In Search of is a highly ambitious project and largely pays off on that ambition. [Nicholas Wells] Through Nov. 13, Peter Blum Chelsea, 526 W. 29th St., 212-244-6055.
Stanley Lewis: Recent Work
The 69-year-old painter Stanley Lewis has acquired a growing circle of admirers over the decades, and for good reason. His heavily reworked landscapes and cityscapes are unique. They have about them a kind of scourged luminousness that locates houses, cars and telephone poles in charged spaces. Often built up of sections of paper or canvas rather artlessly stapled over each other, his paintings radiate a singular mixture of intense purpose and offbeat technique. As his recent paintings on view at Lohin Geduld confirm, his attack has mellowed in recent years, but only slightly—and in the best of ways. Less conspicuous are the almost hallucinatory anglings and arcings of forms. While demonstrating less explicitly the processes of perception, his latest paintings may convey more of its poetic ramifications. Lewis’ palette—tawny-greens, terracotta reds and trenchant blues—has always imparted visceral weight to his subjects. But his large painting “View of Hollins University Campus in the Snow” shows how fleet-footed his color can be, too. It’s a
remarkable painting: crystalline in its light, scrappy in facture and intensely deliberate in its location of each element. Across the gallery hangs another version of the scene, painted in the spring. Everything is experienced anew: between the earthy green of foreground and spacious sky, a compact stream of houses and trees, pulsating with shadowy depths, extends the canvas’ entire width. Measuring out its flow are a neo-classical colonnade and a grid of minutely detailed windows, tilting at odd but somehow necessary angles. Other striking paintings include “Lake Chautauqua, July,” which turns a picturesque scene—a tree before a sailboat-dotted lake—into a vigorous, saw-toothed encounter between shrubs and leafy, overhead canopy. Again, one senses classical impulses emerging, without preconception, through decidedly nontraditional means. Expressionism tends to be an immodest affair; it broadcasts, often indulgently, the artist’s struggles to discover. Lewis’ ravaged surfaces, however, seem driven by a kind of humility. He appears to be in pursuit of something completely outside of himself, something lucid and coherent. At Lohin Geduld, these discoveries can be gripping. [John Goodrich] Through Nov. 13, Lohin Geduld Gallery, 531 W. 25th St., 212-675-2656.
Ron Milewicz: New Work
Ron Milewicz has become a formidable presence among painters of the urban landscape. This, his second exhibition at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, establishes his place as a painter to be reckoned with. No small part of his achievement derives from his understanding of architecture as a vital part of the tissue of our lives. His interest is less in particular structures than in the way those structures reveal something about the tenor of the city that houses them. The distinction of Milewicz’s work affirms John Ruskin’s assertion that, “Architecture is an art for all men to learn because all men are concerned with it.” On view are nine recent works—eight oil paintings and one drawing—all made over the course of a year from a single vantage point in Long Island City. Like any landscape painter, Milewicz has to make multiple trips to a chosen location. But he extends the requirement further, establishing a temporary studio in odd spaces for extended study of a particular motif. It is an arduous practice that yields great reward for admirers of his work. The complex cacophony of forms that, in previous work, raised a blaring voice in high-keyed color is quieted here. A harmony emerges from what might be, in lesser hands, a depiction of incoherent industrial homeliness. The city’s essential nobility of purpose is apparent in such canvases as “Dusk.” A darksome industrial
roofscape spans the foreground. It is separated from the length of Manhattan, with its office towers and residential buildings, by a pale stretch of the East River. Dying light glances off ducts and vents close by and grazes off the edges of distant buildings, distinguishing them from the darkening sky. Subtle differentiation of color and tone coalesce to impose unity on the precisely articulated planes and sharply defined edges, taming a confusion of forms. Milewicz sidesteps the naturalism that characterizes so much urban painting. Instead, there is an expressiveness—partly a matter of color and distribution of tone— that, by indirection, signals the spiritual condition of the modern city. He selects from his surrounding motif a keynote, some structure that serves as the nucleus of the environment depicted. In those paintings, that crucial feature is an ambiguous construction with an octopus-like series of ducts. The dominant image of the large-scale “Cephalopod,” it looms in the foreground as a visual metaphor for the city as an enormous man-eater, something that preys on its unseen inhabitants. In all, this is an intelligent and beautiful performance. [Maureen Mullarkey] Through Nov. 13, Elizabeth Harris Gallery, 529 W. 20th St., 212-463-9666.
C.K. Wilde: Tender
Money, money everywhere, but not a buck to spend. That was one of the thoughts running through my mind as I viewed Tender by C.K. Wilde at Pavel Zoubeck Gallery. The exhibition is a giddy cacophony of currency from all nations, painstakingly dissected and used as collage material. The resulting pieces are at once strong political statements and beautiful compositions. Wilde has certainly benefited from the European nations’ switch from their native currencies to the Euro. Worthless kopeks, lira, guilders and francs now dance across the page (or “spring from the register”) of Wilde’s imagination. The array of colors is staggering; who knew that money could be so beautiful?
“Study Collection VI,” by Matthew Day Jackson.
But the message beneath these gorgeous bits of paper is serious and provocative. Wilde has carefully used the money from specific countries to illustrate the political points he seeks to make. In the collage “Destroyer of Worlds,” the mushroom cloud of Hiroshima is depicted as a wild swirl of Asian currencies, beautiful and deadly. In other works, Wilde takes on famous art from history. His use of the currency collage in reimagining Goya’s “Disasters of War” underlines the ways in which money and war go hand in hand, always resulting in disaster. Wilde inhabits an interesting niche. His method is part of a long-standing collage tradition, but his sensibility is that of a narrative painter. This combination is not often seen in the collage genre. More often it’s the importance of an image in and out of context that drives the power of collage. Here, we see the importance of narrative take precedence over the material. His technical ability in creating these ambitious narratives out of tiny little bits of paper is staggering. But it is the stories that he chooses to tell that give the work its true artistry. [Melissa Stern] Through Nov. 13, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, 533 W. 23rd St., 212-675-7490.
“Shapes” Of The Space
The dialogue that accrues between the painter Stuart Davis (1892-1964) and the sculptor George Sugarman (1912-1999), the subjects of an exhibition at Washburn Gallery, is predicated on “ideal space relations,” on how fully their respective mediums embrace and embody that essential attribute of art-making. Davis believed that “one must see the ‘shapes’ of space not the shapes of the objects that occur in it.” Sugarman’s “absolute conviction [was] that the purpose of a sculpture is to create the presence of space.” You wonder: Did the two New Yorkers meet? If so, they must have considered each other brothers-in-form. The Washburn show is geared more to specialists than the layperson, if only because it is too modest to fill out its
conceit. Juxtaposing four Sugarman sculptures with a handful of Davis pieces—two drawings, one painting and, somewhat incongruously, actual-size photoreproductions of related works—Washburn aims to reveal and confirm aesthetic commonalities. Given that both men took inspiration from Cubism, favored cobbled and jutting shapes and exuded a brash exuberance rooted in the American vernacular, it can’t have been too arduous a task, even at this adumbrated scale. Still, what there is to see has been set forth with the nuance and surety we’ve come to expect from this venue. This is particularly evident in the Davis works that have been selected, diagrammatic pictures that, because of their lack of color, explicitly key in to Sugarman’s carved forms, sloping contours and jaunty rhythms. It’s left to the sculptures to pick up the chromatic slack—particularly in Washburn’s back gallery, wherein the selfevident “Yellow to White to Blue to Black” and an untitled piece from 1969, with its saturated purples and oranges, fill in the blanks left by Davis. Would that Sugarman held as fast a place in the American firmament as Davis; his art tells us more about the possibilities of sculpture and space than any stray Minimalist you could name. Maybe this exhibition will help to rectify that situation. In the meantime, the work is there to be mooted and enjoyed. [MN] Through Dec. 18, Washburn Gallery, 20 W. 57th St., 212-397-6780.
Jonas Mekas: To New York With Love
My father tells a story of a Yugoslav colleague who came to the U.S. for a conference in 1985. He was reduced to tears by the variety and bright packaging of products in the local grocery store. I was reminded of this culture shock when viewing Jonas Mekas’ To New York With Love at James Fuentes Gallery. Born in Lithuania in 1922, Mekas and his brother fled their native country after publishing anti-Nazi materials during the war. Eventually settling on the Lower East Side, Mekas fervently documented his new surroundings. To New York With Love consists of two new films, pieced together from archival footage and scraps from old projects. “World Trade Center Haikus” consists of glimpses of the WTC in footage shot from 1975 to 1995. The film features the WTC as a common backdrop to a variety of tenderly portrayed scenes: a young family flying a kite off a tenement roof, night skiing over cobblestones on snowy Soho streets and a ferry trip around the Statue of Liberty covered in scaffolding. The recurrence of the blocky forms of the WTC buildings themselves lends an eerie presence through repetition.
Shorter and less focused, “Orchard Street” nostalgically explores Mekas’ tenure as a resident of the Lower East Side. The hand-held, oversaturated footage shows full-street gatherings in which street-food vendors and groups of girls in plaid wool coats come on and off screen. The film is a focused celebration of the individual caught apart from the crowd. Part love letter to the city that embraced him when he was stateless, part vanity project before next year’s retrospective at Serpentine Gallery in London, To New York With Love is intensely personal and squeamishly nostalgic for a New York before ubiquitous Duane Reades, SUV strollers and “quality of life” enforcers. [NW] Through Oct. 31, James Fuentes Gallery, 55 Delancey St., 212-577-1201.
Deep Impressions: Willie Cole Works on Paper Willie Cole is one of the most innovative artists working today. And what makes his work so special is that he chooses to focus at any given time on a highly limited range of subject and imagery. Like a dog gnawing at a bone, Cole devotes himself to an image or object and mines it for all the depth of meaning it can yield. It is a mode of work that continually reveals surprises in the most mundane of subjects. This exhibition at The James Gallery located in the CUNY Graduate Center is billed as sort of a retrospective of Cole’s works on paper, but it centers mainly on the work that he produced using a collection of old steam irons as a source of both imagery and actual marks on paper. The result is rich and layered in meaning and surprisingly diverse. Cole has a collection of 12 steam irons from various eras of the 20th century, and each has its own distinct burn pattern of vents and holes on the bottom of the device. Cole has applied these patterns, in conjunction with photography and various printmaking techniques, to singe sheets of paper to produce a range of images that reference everything from masks to flowers to tribal shields. The effect is a brilliant rumination on the power of common objects to transcend their original purpose and take us to unexpected places. Several of the works are powerful comments on race, the slave trade and colonial views of Africans. Three large photographic prints use chipper advertising slogans for irons as titles. “Loyal and Dependable,” “Quick as a Wink” and “Satisfaction Guaranteed” describe the portraits of fierce mask-like irons. Like the heads of cruel robots, they dare the viewer to see them solely as domestic objects. [MS] Through Jan. 8, 2011, The James Gallery of the Graduate Center, The City University of New York, 365 5th Ave., 212-817-7392. October 27, 2010 | City Arts
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DANCE
Illusion of the Individual
Courtesy of the Nikolais-Louis Foundation
While Pina Bausch may have celebrated quirks, Alwin Nikolais looked to tap into the universal
Crystal and the Sphere, a blacklight piece choreographed by Alwin Nikolais for children’s audiences, as performed by the Ririe Woodbury Company. Photograph by Fred Hayes, 1990. former mentor’s ballet: She plumbed the By Joel Lobenthal same movement principles and manifested Pina Bausch died last year, but her her own understanding of them. While company, the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch piled on every conceivable Basch, returned to the Brooklyn Academy of Music earlier this month with Vollmond, constituent part in her dance theater which she created in 2006. When I went works—movement, speech, closely to see them I was fascinated by what almost quartered interaction with significant looked like an encrypted tribute to the great sets and props, spectacle of a sort—some choreographer Antony Tudor. German-born of the strongest and truest episodes in Bausch studied at Juilliard with Tudor 50 Vollmond were the intermittent segments years ago, and danced in opera ballets he of pure movement. These were solo choreographed at the Met. Vollmond is an monologues as well as ensemble passages evening-length homage to the unleashed saturnalia occasioned by the full While Bausch highlighted personality moon. In part two, the quirks both to anatomize their oddity female members of her and to pinpoint larger patterns of 12-dancer cast start walking human behavior, Alwin Nikolais with broken elbows, moving in circles. It is as if frequently blurred the boundaries of their wheels are spinning individual identity through costuming, in tragic, inexorable lighting and technology, as well as repetition, until one spatial disposition. woman eventually breaks rank and starts to thrash, signaling that the interlude was over. This scene recalled one in Tudor’s that demonstrated her command of steps 1942 Pillar of Fire, where the heroine— in space, of skillfully plotted ground-tohaving lost the acceptance of family and air transitions, of varied fundamentals of community due to sexual transgression— modern dance vocabulary. seems to be reflecting on her life, her feet Syntactically, Bausch’s sympathies tracing circles and loops under another moon in Vollmond leaned, as always, toward of equally mythic potency. what might be considered the kinetic Bausch did more than allude to her and theatrical equivalent to the free word
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order as practiced by Latin or Russian language. Water provided the chosen element through which her disjointed vignettes, charades and one-liners could be suspended. The stage was frequently flooded and it all ended in a mega freakout in the rain. At times, she reminded us of the origins of all life on Earth as we left our amphibious state behind. But at the same times she seemed to be revivifying old-time drawing room comedy and its concentration on the foibles of the leisured class, which she sometimes viewed through the modality of cinematic satire as practiced by Buñuel or Bergman. Watching Bausch’s ensemble wig out in full lunar license, I even surrendered to her rather slickly marketed Europeanism, the slightly overripe piquancy of which for the moment made, by contrast, so many of the theatrical sensibilities one encounters here seem painfully all-American. While Bausch highlighted personality quirks both to anatomize their oddity and to pinpoint larger patterns of human behavior, Alwin Nikolais frequently blurred the boundaries of individual identity through costuming, lighting and technology, as well as spatial disposition. His particular brand of illusionism might de-personalize in order to construct novel fantasy aggregates. Sometimes his goal seemed
to be universality, sometimes simply the provocation of the retina and imagination via ever-changing facades and facets. Nikolais, who lived from 1910 to 1993, is being honored with a multimedia exhibit in the Vincent Astor Gallery at the New York Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. The exhibit, titled Alwin Nikolais’ Total Theater of Motion, opened last week and runs through Jan. 15, 2011. The exhibit contains artifacts, documents, samples of sets and costumes. The exhibit catalog relates how, as a young man, Nikolais played piano accompaniment for silent movies. From his perch in the orchestra pit Nikolais couldn’t see the action as it transpired on screen, but the play of light and shadow that he was able to intuit provided its own compelling narrative, cuing him to appropriate musical comment. Thus was born the pursuit of a particular theatrical ethos. Before studying dance, he began as a puppeteer, and in his later kinetic creations the live human figure was manipulated and disguised with something of the same detachment. Video installations in the exhibit provide selections of his delightfully disorientating human kaleidoscopes. Nikolais’ work was a bold and deliberate rebuttal—or at least an alternative to Western theatrical culture’s elevation of the showcased individual. <
Jazz
Randy Weston, Giant Standing
A jazz legend who may just know the secret to staying vital By Howard Mandel An 84-year-old pianist performing hither and yon upon publication of his autobiography might be thought of as taking a victory lap, but for Randy Weston, it’s business as usual. This NEA Jazz Master and huge eminence—6-foot-5-plus with hands the size of baseball mitts and fingers like long, thick cigars—protégé of the bebop originators and promoter of the notion that America’s modern vernacular music carries the essence of West Africa—was hale and hearty, spontaneous and playful, fronting his quartet at the Jazz Foundation of America’s loft party fundraiser Oct. 17. The man is in his prime. Weston’s schedule through next April includes gigs at the Kennedy Center, Philly’s Kimmel Center, the Portland (Oregon) Jazz Festival, Boston’s Berklee College of Music and several venues in Chicago. But New York’s got him first and foremost. At the Tribeca Performing Arts Center over the next three weeks he’ll talk with Princeton University’s Cornel West and WQXR’s Terrence McKnight (Oct. 26), sign his book African Rhythms following a screening of the 2002 film Randy Weston in St. Lucia (Oct. 30) and front a 22-piece orchestra in celebration of the 50th anniversary of his magnum opus, Uhuru Afrika (Nov. 13), a four-part suite with lyrics by Langston Hughes originally recorded during the “Year of Freedom,” in which 17 African nations established self-governance after an era of Western European domination. Though born and raised in Brooklyn, where he was friends with drummer Max Roach and through him met Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, et al., Weston has been enthralled with Africa since childhood. His Caribbeanborn father subscribed to Marcus Garvey’s pan-African philosophy and embraced music of all genres by African Americans as cultural heritage. In childhood, Randy was encouraged to study piano, but considered himself a dabbler. As he says in his autobiography (“arranged by” Willard Jenkins, journalist, radio show host and arts administrator), “I was a bit intimidated because the ’40s on into the early ’50s were a time when many of the real monsters of the piano were around, and for a young guy like myself who hadn’t quite gotten his confidence up, it was a rather competitive atmosphere.” His breakthrough came during the early ’50s: Working as a cook’s assistant in the Berkshires, where he’d gone to get clear of black New York’s scourge of
gangs and drugs, Weston met Marshall Stearns, proto-jazz educator, and became his lecture-demonstrator. Subsequently, Weston socialized and collaborated with many critically acclaimed, virtuosic and progressive jazzmen and women (he developed a close professional relationship with trombonist/arranger Melba Liston), but his artistic temperament, Afro-centric leanings and personal modesty cast him for many years as a musician’s musician—and a black musician’s musician at that. Over the past 40 years, since Weston first traveled to Africa and lived for a time in Tangier, jazz aficionados of every stripe have embraced him. Hang around, remain creative and productive: lo and behold, your artistry may gain the notice it deserves. So it’s been for Weston, whose music today is basically as it’s been right along but sounds timeless. His compositions, including “Berkshire Blues,” “Hi-Fly,” “Little Niles” and “African Cookbook,” are clear-cut and memorable but open to far-flung improvisation. His own playing is typically spare and deliberate, emphatically percussive yet tender, too. He has recorded with sizable ensembles and solo, repertoire of Monk and Ellington as well as works showcasing the handclaps, vocals and threestringed goat-gut lutes of Gnawa musicians of Morocco. His sound is seldom hurried or outright aggressive, usually lyrical with hints of profundity. He is consistent but never offensive delivering his message of African essentialism. A big man, Weston makes a powerful impression with the lightest shtick. At the Jazz Foundation benefit, Weston casually set up intense solos by his sidemen, longtime bassist Alex Blake, handpercussionist Neil Clarke and guest tenor saxophonist Billy Harper. He set the pace, voiced the themes, laid down bass lines and held an implacable groove. Their fellowship was palpable; all knew exactly what to do. Just before the music began, I whipped out my advance copy of Weston’s autobiography, asking for an autograph. Clarke glanced at his leader signing the inside jacket, and joked, “How’s that book end?” “Haven’t finished it yet,” I admitted, “but I imagine with world-wide gratitude for Randy’s music.” “I want to know, does he get the girl?” Clarke asked mischievously. “Probably so; he always has,” I answered, glancing at Mrs. Weston, much younger than 84, wearing a leopard-print outfit, sitting in the front row. Weston and Clarke guffawed. Jazz musicians age and stay vital.
Hutter Auction Galleries at Cirkers Preview days: Tuesday November 2nd Wednesday November 3rd from 10 am-7 pm Cirkers Art Storage Building
October 27, 2010 | City Arts
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Go Toward the White Light By Corinne Ramey Tully and Avery Fisher to the less-standard “What struck me quite forcefully was Church of St. Ignatius Loyola and the the state of people’s attention in the time in Church of St. Paul the Apostle. Nonwhich we live,” says Jane Moss, Lincoln musical events—including post-concert Center’s vice president for programming. receptions with the artists and two panel “With the explosion of technology what we discussions—take place at At65 Cafe and see increasingly is a kind of ADD out there the Kaplan Penthouse. While most events with the constant cell phones and texting are ticketed, an opening night Meredith and emails.” Monk concert, an installation by Janet Moss’ solution was to create an arts Cardiff and the two panel discussions festival around the theme of transcendence, are free. based on the idea that in order to let art Canadian installation artist Cardiff’s in, one has to empty oneself from life’s “The Forty-Part Motet” will be installed many distractions. Titled the White Light in Agnes Varis and Karl Leichtman Studio Festival, the series of diverse performances from Oct. 28 to Nov. 13. The work involves will take place at various locations from Oct. 40 speakers, which are strategically placed 28 through Nov. 18. around the room. Each speaker plays the “By transcendence, I mean those voice of a separate singer from the Salisbury moments when you are outside of your own Cathedral Choir, performing Thomas ego in some way,” Moss says. “Not only Tallis’ “Spem in Alium,” a polyphonic work does music offer you a wonderful aesthetic written for 40 singers. experience, but actually great musical In a description of the work on her experiences can take you to very deep places website, Cardiff writes that she wanted the inside yourself.” audience to experience choral music from The festival’s name comes from a quote the viewpoint of the choir singers, and from Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. “I could to literally feel inside the music. “Every compare my music to white light which performer hears a unique mix of the piece of contains all colors,” Pärt explains. “Only a music,” she wrote. “Enabling the audience prism can divide the colors and make them to move throughout the space allows appear; this prism could be the spirit of the them to be intimately connected with the listener.” voices… I am interested in how sound may White Light’s repertoire runs from the physically construct a space in a sculptural standard to the nontraditional. There are way and how a viewer may choose a path some works that fall squarely into what we through this physical yet virtual space.” often think of as spiritual or transcendent: The festival is slated to be an annual the Tallis Scholars singing Palestrina; one. According to Moss, this year’s organist Paul Jacobs performing Bach’s theme is spirituality because she thought Clavier-Übung III; and pianist Alexei it would be easier, and less abstract, for Lubimov playing the compete Schubert audiences to connect the spiritual with the Impromptus. transcendent. “Spirituality isn’t the only But others are less predictable. In one path, but we thought for the first year that unusual pairing, band Antony and the would be a graspable way of putting it out Johnsons collaborates with the Orchestra there,” she says. The focus on spirituality of St. Luke’s, with the Johnsons’ violinist also led to quite a bit of choral music and and guitarist, Rob Moose, conducting. The Renaissance programming. Future festivals band will perform songs from two recent may explore other facets of transcendence, recordings, The Crying Light and Swanlight, like love, nature or even negative things like with director Chiaki Nagano’s film Mr. “existential despair.” O’s Book of the Dead projected simultaneously. According to Moss, this year’s Another unusual event will be the U.S. theme is spirituality because she premiere of Sutra, a work thought it would be easier, and less by Belgian-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi abstract, for audiences to connect Cherkaoui, which features the spiritual with the transcendent. dancing and martial arts from China’s Buddhist Shaolin monks. From the artist’s perspective, White Moss says she can’t pick just one Light fits a needed niche, according favorite performance. “I love all my children to Paris-based singer and musicologist equally,” she says, laughing. “I absolutely Katarina Livljanic, the founder and voice love the juxtaposition. It’s really, really of Ensemble Dialogos, which specializes cool.” in medieval chant and liturgical theater. The venues are as varied as much of During the festival, the group will perform the repertoire: from the predictable Alice the New York premiere of Judith, a musical
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Corinne Silva
Lincoln Center’s Jane Moss has a solution for overscheduled, technology-driven modern life
Katarina Livljanic and Albrecht Maurer reconstruct a 16th-century Croatian poet’s Judith Nov. 3, 5 & 6. theater version of a biblical story set by 16th-century Croatian poet Marko Marulic. “I personally think [the festival] is almost the best setting for this piece, better than putting it in a specialized early music event,” says Livlijanic. “There’s a moment when Judith’s mind and her soul are talking to each other, and there is the idea of entering the interior universe of the character.” Fiddle, lirica and flutes will accompany Livlijanic in the performance. “We are trying to use the instruments and style that would have been appropriate at the time,” she says. “But the staging is modern, because we are trying to speak to the audience of today and not just a museum.” Another modern concern, the marketing of an event, has also differed from the norm, says Moss. “In the past all of what we did we really articulated and marketed and put
in a context of the aesthetic: this is the best Mozart collection you’ll ever hear; this is the extraordinary collection of Beethoven symphonies,” she says. “This was a big departure to say that these works have a powerful intersection with your life and can have a powerful impact on you.” Instead of using a large marketing brochure, Moss explains, the small palmsized black book that contains the event materials was designed to resemble a prayer book. Ticket sales have been surprising as well, she adds. “What has been extremely rewarding is that New York City is a competitive marketplace, and it is really selling well,” Moss says. “A little piece of me believes that if I’m feeling this way, maybe others are, too.” < White Light Festival, Oct. 28-Nov. 18. For complete details, visit whitelightfestival.org.
THEATER
Nod to the Odd by Leslie Stonebraker Teddy Bergman is frustrated. The artistic director of the Woodshed Collective, Bergman’s been on the hunt for the perfect space to stage the company’s spring show, an adaptation of The Tenant. He thought he’d finally found it: a large warehouse space in Greenpoint, but the real estate folks he contacted wouldn’t lower the price to work within his small budget. They were “not exactly the amenable or artistic sort,” Bergman says. As the Woodshed Collective envisions The Tenant, inspired by Roland Topor’s book of the same name, an industrial hangar space will host an investigation into the relationship between “who we are and where we live.” Similarly, organizations committed to alternative theater like Woodshed challenge the ritual relationship between performance and place, and feel the rigid geography of a proscenium arch with a stage and captive, seated audience is out of date. The time has come to rethink the boundaries of the theater. “The theaters that we normally play in have become very fixed and kind of dull places, two dimensional sometimes,” claims Vallejo Gantner, artistic director of P.S. 122 and curator of Hotel Savoy, currently taking place at the Goethe-Institut across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. While the Woodshed Collective sees traditional theater as “a static monologue,” Jake Margolin, who is creating Marriage: 1 for HERE Arts Center with husband Nick Vaughan, believes that proscenium arch theater is “a totally dictated experience [that] tells you exactly how you should be watching what you’re watching and when you should be watching what you’re watching.” Margolin prefers an audience to approach art without the controlling boundaries imposed by the atmosphere of a theater. This trend toward staging theater in unusual spaces has existed for generations, but it has gained more currency beyond those dedicated solely to experimental performance since it breaks down the traditional roles of viewer and viewed, re-imagining the relationship between audience, space and performance. In the last few years, New York City audiences have experienced a broad array of theater that has been presented in apartments, on boats, in churches, in subway cars and in hotel rooms. Though the form has gained significant popularity, the actual process and struggle to locate a space for the eventual performance has not gotten any easier. That doesn’t stop a dedicated and growing cohort, however, from attempting to find the next weird place that doesn’t resemble a
Paula Reissig
A growing number of theater professionals abandon the proscenium for unusual spaces
A room of the Goethe-Institut transformed for Hotel Savoy. stage in the traditional sense. Gantner says he’s dedicated to staging performances in odd spaces since it affords a sense of intimacy. “It’s not so much about the space,” he explains. “The reason why it’s exciting is not because the stairwell is particularly pretty, although it is, but because it creates a mood and makes you engage with the lives and the experience.” Hotel Savoy is a clear example, with ballrooms covered in creepy plastic and scenarios taking place in a room made of mirrored doors and corners of rooms populated with birds’ nests and other objects, but it’s actually the actors playing characters who try to engage visitors with the built space. Margolin and Vaughan have a different perspective, and emphasize the importance of the space’s physicality; each often designs pieces specifically for a particular area. During their Pittsburgh installation, for example, a dilapidated elevator that happened to be in the gallery became a key focal point for one of their sculptures in a piece titled Preparations for Marriage. For them, what makes for a direct and honest performer-audience relationship is what sets their work apart from traditional theater. “We’re trying to obliterate a sense of frame, or constructed context,” Vaughan
explains. “The relationship between our viewer and our performer... is something that’s very direct and exists in the space that both are sitting in.” And it’s meant to be more than a marketing gimmick. When Woodshed Collective presented Confidence Man aboard a U.S. Coast Guard ship docked at Pier 40, audience members were barred from the passive involvement typical of a traditional Broadway show. And in P.S. 122’s Hotel Savoy, visitors are exposed to the Goethe-Institut’s building, which has been empty and languishing in obscurity. Woodshed “sells out” all of their shows, which are presented free of charge, thereby generating thousands of prospective money-spenders for any neighborhood where the Collective take up residency. The Woodshed audience is consistently younger than Broadway’s, according to Bergman, and will travel to an outer borough specifically to see theater in a nontraditional setting. Margolin and Vaughan plan to utilize the entire HERE complex—from bathrooms to sidewalks—for Marriage: 1 because “each of these different spaces is so wonderful on their own, and all together make the building that is the HERE Arts Center, that it feels almost false to put something in only
one of the rooms.” As with most innovative ideas, the movement is plagued by challenges. Finding suitable, affordable spaces is difficult when residencies can run four months and budgets are tight. “We manage to create a great spectacle and keep it free by really, really, really stretching a dollar,” Bergman explains. “As a non-profit, any landlord that would donate space could write off the rent as a donation in kind, but it can be a hard sale to a businessman.” The very non-commercial nature that makes alternative theater attractive often makes it a prohibitively pricey endeavor. While Woodshed gets thousands of nonpaying viewers through its shows in each of its runs, Hotel Savoy can be seen only by a tiny audience of 32 on any given night, and can only hope to show the rebuilt and transformed interior of the Goethe-Institut to a total of about a thousand people. “There’s no way of making money out of this stuff most of the time… [But] I think rethinking how the audience sees things, rethinking how you plug into the audience’s brain and how you plug into their ideas and their imagination, is absolutely the way of the future for theater,” Gantner says. “So in that sense, it’s the way of the future—if we can find the cash.” < October 27, 2010 | City Arts
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ArtsAGENDA Gallery Openings
Gallery listings courtesy of
The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park: Anthony
Almeida: “The Everglades: Vanishing Splendor.” Opens Nov. 4, Fifth Avenue & East 64th Street, 3rd Fl., no phone. Benrimon Contemporary: Simon Patterson: “Anthology.” Opens Nov. 6, 514 W. 24th St., 2nd Fl., 212-924-2400. Blue Mountain Gallery: John Wallace. Opens Nov. 2, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 646-486-4730. Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery: Abelardo Morell: “The Universe Next Door.” Opens Oct. 29, 505 W. 24th St., 212-243-8830. Calumet Gallery: “Inspired by Nature.” Opens Nov. 2, 22 W. 22nd St., 212-989-8500. Carrol Boyes: Gemma Orkin. Opens Nov. 1, 126 Prince St., 212-334-3556. Ceres Gallery: Ann R. Shapiro: “Altering Landscapes.” Opens Nov. 2. Pat Hill Cresson: “Exotic Scenes & Natural Habitats.” Opens Nov. 2, 547 W. 27th St., Ste. 201, 212-947-6100. Flomenhaft Gallery: Roger Shimomura: “An American Knockoff.” Opens Oct. 28, 547 W. 27th St., Ste. 200, 212-268-4952. Haunch of Venison: Peter Saul: “Fifty Years of Painting.” Opens Nov. 5, 1230 6th Ave., 212-2590000. Invisible-Exports: Mickey Smith: “Believe You Me.” Opens Oct. 29, 14A Orchard St., 212-2265447. Katharina Rich Perlow: Sally Michel: “Figures & Landscape - Selected Paintings.” Opens Nov. 6, 980 Madison Ave., 3rd Fl., 212-644-7171. Laurence Miller Gallery: “Ojos Privados: A Selection of Photographs From the Personal Collection of Laurence Miller.” Opens Nov. 4, 20 W. 57th St., 212-397-3930. Lesley Heller Workspace: Claire Seidl. Opens Nov. 3, 54 Orchard St., 212-410-6120. Leslie Feely Fine Art: “Naked Art: Jules Olitski & Anthony Caro, 1964-1978.” Opens Oct. 27, 33 E. 68th St., 5th Fl., 212-988-0040. Lombard-Freid Projects: William Earl Kofmhel III. Opens Nov. 4, 518 W. 19th St., 212-967-8040. LZ Project Space: Emmy Mikelson: “Stalemate.” Opens Oct. 27, 164 Suffolk St., no phone. Maxwell Davidson Gallery: George Segal: “Women.” Opens Nov. 4, 724 5th Ave., 212-759-7555.
MetroTech Center Commons: Public Art Fund
presents “Total Recall.” Opens Nov. 3, Myrtle Avenue betw. Jay Street & Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, 212-223-7800. Mike Weiss Gallery: Kim Dorland: “New Material.” Opens Nov. 6, 520 W. 24th St., 212-691-6899. Noho Gallery: Marilyn Henrion: “Soft City.” Opens Nov. 2, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 212-367-7063. Nohra Haime Gallery: Julie Hedrick: “Red.” Opens Oct. 26, 730 5th Ave., Ste. 701, 212-888-3550. Open Source Gallery: Pirmin Hagen: “First.” Opens Nov. 5, 255 17th St., Brooklyn, 718-877-5712. The Pace Gallery: Hiroshi Sugimoto. Opens Nov. 5, 545 W. 22nd St., 212-989-4258. PaulaBarr Chelsea: Milhone Tosta: “Notebook Sketches.” Opens Nov. 4, West Chelsea Arts Building, 508/526 W. 26th St., 9G, no phone. Pleiades Gallery: Hilda Green Demsky: “The Atlantic From Ireland to Maine.” Opens Nov. 2, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 646-230-0056. Priska C. Juschka Fine Art: Nicky Nodjoumi: “Invitation to Change Your Metaphor.” Opens Oct. 28, 547 W. 27th St., 2nd Fl., 212-244-4320. Renaissance Studios: “Adam Van Doren: Paintings.” Opens Oct. 28, 130 W. 57th St., 212-581-0541. Robert Mann Gallery: David Vestal: “Once Upon a Time in New York.” Opens Oct. 28, 210 11th Ave., 212-989-7600. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts: Andy Warhol: “Warhol’s Andys.” Opens Nov. 5, 31 Mercer St., 212-2263232. Soho Photo Gallery: “Sixth Annual Alternative Processes Competition.” Opens Nov. 2. Dan Burkholder: “The Next Phase: iPhone Photographs.” Opens Nov. 2, 15 White St., 212-226-8571. Team Gallery: Chris Vasell: “The Estate of Chris Vasell.” Opens Oct. 28, 83 Grand St., 212-2799219. Tyler Rollins Fine Art: Tiffany Chung. Opens Nov. 4, 529 W. 20th St., 10W, 212-229-9100. The Wild Project: Elizabeth Huey: “Nite Lite.” Opens Nov. 2, 195 E. 3rd St., 212-228-1195. Yashar Gallery: Amelie Mancini: “Sacrebleu! Napoleon Would Have Made A Fine Shortstop.” Opens Nov. 2, 276 Greenpoint Ave., Brooklyn, 917-701-1956. Zürcher Studio: “In A Violet Distance.” Opens Oct. 29, 33 Bleecker St., 212-777-0790.
N.H. (1921-1983) Stubbing NABI GALLERY 137 W 25, NYC 10001 212-929-6063 WWW.NABIGALLERY.COM
“Sad but True,” by Claire Seidl
Gallery Closings 8th Floor Space: Charlotte Lichtblau: “A World of
Its Own.” Ends Oct. 31, 17 W. 17th St., 8th Fl., no phone. A.I.R. Gallery: Barbara Roux, Louise McCagg & Crit Streed. Ends Oct. 31, 111 Front St. #228, Brooklyn, 212-255-6651. Abrons Art Center: Rick Cary: “Credo.” Ends Nov. 5, 466 Grand St., 212-598-0400. Adelson Galleries: Andrew Stevovich: “Alternate Universe.” Ends Oct. 29, 19 E. 82nd St., 212439-6800. apexart: “You Can’t Get There From Here But You Can Get Here From There.” Ends Oct. 30, 291 Church St., 212-431-5270. The Arsenal Gallery in Central Park: “Arboreal.” Ends Oct. 28, Fifth Avenue & East 64th Street, 3rd Fl., no phone. Atlantic Gallery: Geri Gventer. Ends Oct. 29. William Oberst. Ends Oct. 29, 135 W. 29th St., Ste. 601, 212-219-3183. Blue Mountain Gallery: Margaret Grimes: “New Work.” Ends Oct. 30, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 646-486-4730. Bowery Gallery: Iris Osterman: “Paintings.” Ends Oct. 30, 530 W. 25th St., 646-230-6655. Brooklynite Gallery: Sten & Lex, & Gaia: “Por-
traits.” Ends Nov. 5, 334 Malcolm X Blvd., Brooklyn, 347-405-5976. Broome Street Gallery: Vincent Arcilesi: “Arcilesi in Rome.” Ends Nov. 7, 498 Broome St. 212-2266085. BWAC: “Lineage.” Ends Oct. 31, 499 Van Brunt St., Brooklyn, 718-596-2506. Ceres Gallery: Madelon Jones: “Nature Abstracted.” Ends Oct. 30. Roslyn Rose: “Past As Prologue.” Ends Oct. 30, 547 W. 27th St., Ste. 201, 212947-6100. ClampArt: “Bruce Sargeant & His Circle.” Ends Oct. 30, 521-531 W. 25th St., Ground Floor, 646-230-0020. Dacia Gallery: “Awake.” Ends Oct. 31, 53 Stanton St., 917-727-9383. David Findlay Jr. Fine Art: Jon Schueler: “The Castelli Years.” Ends Oct. 28, 41 E. 57th St., 11th Fl., 212-486-7660. Davidson Contemporary: Kiel Johnson: “Listen Here, Busker!” Ends Oct. 30, 724 5th Ave., 212-759-7555. DC Moore Gallery: Joyce Kozloff: “Navigational Triangles.” Ends Oct. 30, 724 5th Ave., 212247-2111. DCKT Contemporary: Cordy Ryman. Ends Oct. 31, 195 Bowery, 212-741-9955. Dillon Gallery: Per Fronth: “Evolution of Melan-
mari lyons SunSetS / HillSideS
nov 2-dec 4 FirSt Street Gallery 526 West 26th Street Studio 915
Journey through Pale Blue (detail), 1978, oil on linen, 40 x 39 inches
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
646.336.8053 firststreetgallery.net
Alexandre CityArts 10-2010
The Painting Center: Douglas Wirls: “Terrains.”
Ends Oct. 30, 52 Greene St., 2nd Fl., 212-3431060. Pandemic Gallery: Dan Taylor: “Notes From the Inside.” Ends Nov. 6, 37 Broadway, Brooklyn, 917-727-3466. Phoenix Gallery: Steven Miller: “Splendor in the Grass.” Ends Oct. 30, 210 11th Ave., 212-2268711. Pleiades Gallery: Ellen Bradshaw: “Snow Day, Lower Manhattan.” Ends Oct. 30, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 646-230-0056. Prince Street Gallery: “The Common Object.” Ends Oct. 30, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 646-2300246. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts: Hannah Wilke: “Early Drawings.” Ends Oct. 30, 31 Mercer St., 212226-3232. The Sacred Gallery: Nick Kushner: “Blood, Sweat & Fears.” Ends Oct. 31, 424 Broadway, 2nd Fl., 212-226-4286. Salomon Contemporary: “Plank Road.” Ends Oct. 30, 526 W. 26th St., #519, 212-727-0607. Soho Photo Gallery: “Asian Traces.” Ends Oct. 30, 15 White St., 212-226-8571. Soho20 Gallery Chelsea: Jane Voorhees: “The Abstraction of Memory.” Ends Oct. 30, 547 W. 27th St., Ste. 301, 212-367-8994. Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects: E.M. Saniga: “Paintings.” Ends Oct. 30, 24 E. 73rd St., #2F, 917-861-7312. Studio 82: Stephen Green. Ends Oct. 31, 349 E. 82nd St., 917-609-7520. Tracy Williams, Ltd.: Peter Stichbury: “The Proteus Effect.” Ends Oct. 30, 521 W. 23rd St., 212-2292757. Tyler Rollins Fine Art: Manuel Ocampo. Ends Oct. 30, 529 W. 20th St., 10W, 212-229-9100. Visual Arts Gallery: “Ink Plots: The Tradition of the Graphic Novel at SVA.” Ends Nov. 6, 601 W. 26th St., 212-725-3587. Walter Wickiser Gallery: “Kawaguchi Jazz I.” Ends Oct. 27, 210 11th Ave., Ste. 303, 212-941-1817. Wild Project: Rob Roth: “Back to the Future.” Ends Oct. 30, 195 E. 3rd St., 212-228-1195. Y Gallery: Alberto Borea: “Fortalezas.” Ends Oct. 31, 355A Bowery St., 917-721-4539.
4:52 PM
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Gregory Amenoff AT ALL HOURS: NEW PAINTINGS Reception for the artist Thursday, October 14, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm
Trine, 2010, oil on panel, 32 1/4 x 34 1/2 inches
choly.” Ends Nov. 6, 555 W. 25th St., 212-7278585. Elga Wimmer Gallery: Dinorah Delfin: “Honoring Her Friend & Mentor Chuck Close.” Ends Oct. 30, 526 W. 26th St., #310, 212-206-0006. First Street Gallery: Sallie Benton: “Shadows.” Ends Oct. 30, 526 W. 26th St., Ste. 915, 646336-8053. Fountain Gallery: Gary Brent Hilsen: “Feminine Wiles.” Ends Oct. 27, 702 9th Ave., 212-2622756. Franklin Parrasch Gallery: Jesse Wine: “Every portrait is a self-portrait, kinda like every pizza is a master pizza.” Ends Oct. 30, 20 W. 57th St., 212-246-5360. Frederico Seve Gallery: Peter Soriano: “Dimensions Variable.” Ends Nov. 6, 37 W. 57th St., 4th Fl., 212-334-7813. Gagosian Gallery: Gregory Crewdson: “Sanctuary.” Ends Oct. 30, 980 Madison Ave., 212-744-2313. Gallery Bar: Michael M. Koehler: “Along Bayou Road.” Ends Oct. 27, 120 Orchard St., 212-5292266. Gallery Henoch: Steve Mills: “Paintings.” Ends Nov. 6, 555 W. 25th St., 917-305-0003. Gary Snyder Project Space: “Audrey Flack Paints a Picture.” Ends Nov. 6, 250 W. 26th St., 212929-1351. George Billis Gallery: Nicholas Evans-Cato. Ends Nov. 6, 521 W. 26th St., B1, 212-645-2621. Half Gallery: Andisheh Avini: “Screw, Spread, Slip, Suck, Stab, Fall, Cross & Writhe.” Ends Nov. 8, 208 Forsyth St., no phone. Haunch of Venison: Patricia Piccinini: “Not As We Know It.” Ends Oct. 30, 1230 6th Ave., 212259-0000. Henry Gregg Gallery: Phillip Sugden: “Visions From the Fields of Merit.” Ends Nov. 7, 111 Front St., Ste. 226, Brooklyn, 718-408-1090. Hollis Taggart Galleries: Luciano Ventrone: “Beyond the Veil.” Ends Oct. 30, 958 Madison Ave., 212-628-4000. J. Cacciola Gallery: James Lahey: “Guido’s Rhombus.” Ends Oct. 31, 617 W. 27th St., 212-4624646. Katharina Rich Perlow: “Abstract Expressionism in New York.” Ends Nov. 4, 980 Madison Ave., 3rd Fl., 212-644-7171. Laurence Miller Gallery: Jessica Backhaus: “I Wanted to See the World.” Ends Oct. 30, 20 W. 57th St., 212-397-3930. Le Petit Versailles: Elisabeth Kley: “Birdhouses & Birdbaths.” Ends Oct. 31, 346 E. Houston St., 212-529-8815. Lyons Wier Gallery: Patte Loper: “The Sky Is Burning, the Sea Aflame.” Ends Nov. 7, 175 7th Ave., 212-242-6220. McKee Gallery: Lucy Williams: “Glass Houses.” Ends Oct. 30, 745 5th Ave., 212-688-5951. Meulensteen: Annabeth Rosen. Ends Nov. 6. Oliver Herring: “Areas for Action.” Ends Nov. 6, 511 W. 22nd St., 212-633-6999. Michael Rosenfeld Gallery: Morris Graves. Ends Oct. 30, 24 W. 57th St., 7th Fl., 212-247-0082. Mike Weiss Gallery: Liao Yibai: “Real Fake.” Ends Oct. 30, 520 W. 24th St., 212-691-6899. Milk Gallery: Roxanne Lowit: “Backstage Dior.” Ends Oct. 30, 450 W. 15th St., 212-645-2797. Mitchell-Innes & Nash (Chelsea): Roy Lichtenstein: “Reflected.” Ends Oct. 30, 534 W. 26th St., 212-744-7400. Noho Gallery in Chelsea: Anne Kolin: “Wall Side Story.” Ends Oct. 30, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., 212-367-7063. NY Studio Gallery: aricoco: “nest-un-settled.” Ends Nov. 6, 154 Stanton St., 212-627-3276. Open Source Gallery: Nobuko: “Wa.” Ends Oct. 31, 255 17th St., Brooklyn, 718-877-5712.
10/8/10
A l e x a n d r e Ga l l e r y Fuller Building 41 East 57th 212.755.2828 www.alexandregallery.com
Museums American Folk Art Museum: Eugene Von Bruenchen-
hein. Nov. 3-Oct. 9. “Quilts: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum.” Ends Apr. 24. “Perspectives: Forming the Figure.” Ends Aug. 2011, 45 W. 53rd St., 212-265-1040. American Museum of Natural History: “Race to the End of the Earth.” Ends Jan. 2, Central Park West at West 79th Street, 212-769-5100. Brooklyn Historical Society: “Home Base: Memories of the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field.” Ends Apr. 24. “It Happened in Brooklyn.” Ongoing, 128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, 718-2224111. Brooklyn Museum: Sam Taylor-Wood: “Ghosts.” Oct. 30-Aug. 14. “Fred Tomaselli.” Ends Jan. 2. “Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958-1968.” Ends Jan. 9, 200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, 718-638-5000. Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum: “National Design Triennial: Why Design Now?.” Ends Jan. 9, 2 E. 91st St., 212-849-8400. Discovery Times Square Exposition: “King Tut NYC: Return of the King.” Ends Jan. 2, 226 W. 44th St., no phone. The Drawing Center: Gerhard Richter: “Lines Which Do Not Exist.” Ends Nov. 18. Claudia Wieser: “Poems of the Right Angle.” Ends Nov. 18, 35 Wooster St., 212-219-2166.
October 27, 2010 | City Arts
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ArtsAGENDA Frick Collection: “The King at War: Velazquez’s
Portrait of Philip IV.” Oct. 26-Jan. 23. “The Spanish Manner: Drawings from Ribera to Goya.” Ends Jan. 9, 1 E. 70th St., 212-288-0700. International Center of Photography: “The Mexican Suitcase: Cuba in Revolution.” Ends Jan. 9, 1133 6th Ave., 212-857-0000. Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum: “27 Seconds.” Ends Nov. 21, Pier 86, West 46th Street & 12th Avenue, 212-245-0072. Japan Society: “The Sound of One Hand: Paintings & Calligraphy by Zen Master Hakuin.” Ends Jan. 9. Max Gimblett & Lewis Hyde: “oxherding.” Ends Jan. 16, 333 E. 47th St., 212-8321155. Jewish Museum: “Houdini: Art & Magic.” Oct. 29Mar. 27. “Fish Forms: Lamps by Frank Gehry.” Ends Oct. 31. “Shifting the Gaze: Painting & Feminism.” Ends Jan. 30, 1109 5th Ave., 212423-3200. Merchant’s House Museum: “Post-Mortem Photography.” Ends Nov. 29, 29 E. 4th St., 212-7771089. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Doug & Mike Starn on the Roof: “Big Bambu.” Ends Oct. 31. “Vienna Circa 1780: An Imperial Silver Service Rediscovered.” Ends Nov. 7. “The World of Khubilai Khan: Chinese Art in the Yuan Dynasty.” Ends Jan. 2. “John Baldessari: Pure Beauty.” Ends Jan. 9. Joan Miró: “Miró: The Dutch Interiors.” Ends Jan. 17. “Man, Myth & Sensual Pleasures: Jan Gossart’s Renaissance.” Ends Jan. 17. “The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs.” Ends Jan. 23. “Katrin Sigurdardottir at the Met.” Ends Mar. 6. “The Roman Mosaic from Lod, Israel.” Ends Apr. 3, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710. The Morgan Library & Museum: “Anne Morgan’s War: Rebuilding Devastated France, 1917-1924.” Ends Nov. 21. “Mark Twain: A Skeptic’s Progress.” Ends Jan. 2. “Roy Lichtenstein: The Blackand-White Drawings.” Ends Jan. 2. “Degas: Drawings & Sketchbooks.” Ends Jan. 23, 225 Madison Ave., 212-685-0008. El Museo del Barrio: “Voces y Visiones.” Ends Dec. 12. “Nueva York (1613-1945).” Ends Jan. 9, 1230 5th Ave., 212-831-7272. Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology: “Eco-Fashion: Going Green.” Ends Nov. 13, Seventh Avenue at West 27th Street, 212-2174558. Museum of Arts & Design: “The Global Africa Project.” Nov. 17-May 15. “Think Again: New Latin American Jewelry.” Ends Jan. 9. “Eat Drink Art Design.” Ends Mar. 27, 2 Columbus Cir., 212-299-7777. Museum of Jewish Heritage: “Fire in My Heart: The Story of Hannah Senesh.” Ongoing. “The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service.” Ends Dec. 2010, 36 Battery Pl., 646-437-4200. Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators: “The Original Art.” Ends Nov. 24,
128 E. 63rd St., 212-838-2560.
Museum of Modern Art: “Small Scale, Big Change:
New Architectures of Social Engagement.” Ends Jan. 3. “New Photography 2010.” Ends Jan. 10. “Underground Gallery: London Transport Posters, 1920s-1940s.” Ends Feb. 28, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400. New Museum: “The Last Newspaper.” Ends Jan. 9. “Voice & Wind: Haegue Yang.” Ends Jan. 23. “Free.” Ends Jan. 23, 235 Bowery, 212-219-1222. New York Public Library: “Recollection: Thirty Years of Photography at the New York Public Library.” Ends Jan. 2, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Print Gallery & Stokes Gallery, East 42nd Street & Fifth Avenue, 917-275-6975. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts: “Talking Pictures.” Ends Nov. 27. “Alwin
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City Arts | www.cityartsnyc.com
Nikolais’ Total Theater of Motion.” Ends Jan. 15. “On Stage in Fashion: Design for Theater, Opera & Dance.” Ends Jan. 22, 40 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-870-1630. Noguchi Museum: “On Becoming An Artist: Isamu Noguchi & His Contemporaries, 1922-1960.” Nov. 17-Apr. 24, 33rd Road at Vernon Boulevard, Queens, 718-721-2308. Rubin Museum of Art: “Grain of Emptiness: Buddhism-Inspired Contemporary Art.” Nov. 5-Apr. 11. “Embodying the Holy: Icons in Eastern Orthodox Christianity & Tibetan Buddhism.” Ends Mar. 7. “The Nepalese Legacy in Tibetan Painting.” Ends May 23. “Tibetan Shrine Room.” Ongoing. 150 W. 17th St., 212620-5000. Skyscraper Museum: “The Rise of Wall Street.” Ends Nov. 28, 39 Battery Pl., 212-968-1961. Society of Illustrators: “Murray Tinkelman.” Ends Oct. 30. “2010 Original Art: Celebrating the Fine Art of Children’s Book Illustration.” Ends Nov. 24, 128 E. 63rd St., 212-838-2560. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum: “Broken Forms: European Modernism from the Guggenheim Collection.” Ends Jan. 5. “Vox Populi: Posters of the Interwar Years.” Ends Jan. 9. “Kandinsky at the Bauhaus, 1922-1933.” Ongoing. “Thannhauser Collection.” Ongoing, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3500. South Street Seaport: “Tigers the Exhibition.” Ends Jan. 15, Pier 17 at South Street Seaport, 800-745-3000. Studio Museum: “VideoStudio: Changing Same.” Nov. 11-Mar.13. “The Production of Space.” Nov. 11-Mar. 13. “StudioSound: Matana Roberts.” Nov. 11-Mar. 13. “Harlem Postcards: Fall/Winter 2010-11.” Nov. 11-Mar. 13. Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: “Any Number of Preoccupations.” Nov. 11-Mar. 13. Mark Bradford: “Alphabet.” Nov. 11-Mar. 13, 144 W. 125th St., 212-864-4500. Whitney Museum of American Art: Slater Bradley & Ed Lachman: “Shadow.” Oct. 29-Jan. 23. “Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork.” Nov. 18-Feb. 13. “Lee Friedlander: America by Car.” Ends Nov. 28. “Sara VanDerBeek.” Ends Dec. 5. “Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective.” Ends Jan. 9, 945 Madison Ave., 212-570-3600.
Out of Town EVENTS & ATTRACTIONS Museum at Bethel Woods: “The Collecting Wood-
stock” exhibit features photographs, objects & ephemera from the 1969 Woodstock festival. Included are 30 new Woodstock festival images from five photographers; festival artifacts that have never been previously displayed; & a video compilation of rare Woodstock footage, interviews & home video of the festival. Ends Jan. 2, 200 Hurd Rd., Bethel, N.Y., 866-7812922, www.bethelwoodscenter.org. The Roxbury Arts Group : On the first Monday of every month, join other writers to present new works in progress. All writing styles are encouraged, & a moderated Q&A session will follow. RAG, 76 Main St., Stamford, N.Y., 607-326-7908, www.roxburyartsgroup.org; 7 p.m. Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre: Shakespeare & Co. performs Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Inspector Hound,” directed by Jonathan Croy. This comedic mystery is a sharp-witted parody of the parlor mystery genre & of conventional theater criticism. Ends Nov. 7, 70 Kemble St., Lenox, Mass., 413-637-3353, www.shakespeare.org. Center for Performing Arts: Seasoned Shakespearean actors perform “The Merchant of Venice,” the Bard’s timeless & compelling drama that examines the themes of trust, morality & justice in Renaissance Venice. Ends Oct. 31, 661 Rte. 308, Rhinebeck, N.Y., 845-876-3080, www. centerforperformingarts.org. The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center: In “Kaleidoscope: Interdisciplinary Views on Art: Piety & Pilgrimage: The Life & Times of a 13th-century Madonna & Child,” the Vassar College faculty will discuss a medieval Spanish sculpture of the Madonna & Child. The evening will include music by student group the Vassar Camerata. Oct. 28, Chapel, 124 Raymond Ave., Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 845-437-5237, fllac.vassar.edu/ index.html; 6 p.m. Art Along the Hudson: Join the year-long celebraits art fair. Nov. 4-7, Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave., www.printfair.com; times vary, $10+.
Art Events
Auctions
American Craft Show NYC & Contemporary Art Fair NYC: These simultaneous events bring 200
Christie’s: Prints & Multiples Including Property
juried American Craft Artists to show & sell ceramic, fiber, glass, furniture, wearable art & jewelry works, as well as presentations by 100 independent contemporary artists specializing in painting, photography, sculpture & mixed media. Nov. 19-21, Jacob K. Javits Convention Center of New York, 655 W. 34th St., 212-216-2000, www.javitscenter.com. BAM 2010 Next Wave Festival: The Brooklyn Academy of Music hosts its annual festival. Now in its 28th year, Next Wave comprises 16 music, dance, theater & opera performances, in addition to artist talks, art exhibitions & more. Ends Dec. 19, BAM, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, 718-6364129, www.bam.org. Dissident Arts Festival: Progressive artists speak out for social justice in the fifth annual festival. Nov. 6, The Brecht Forum, 451 West St., 212-2424201; 3, $6+. Editions|Artists’ Book Fair: The premier showcase for contemporary publishers & dealers presents the latest in prints, multiples & artists’ books. Nov. 4-7, 548 W. 22nd St., 212-925-4338; 11 a.m., free. IFPDA Print Fair: The International Fine Print Dealers Association celebrates the 20th edition of
From the Collection of Max Palevsky. Oct. 26 & 27, 10 a.m. & 2. Impressionist/Modern Evening Sale. Nov. 3, 6:30. Impressionist/Modern Work on Paper. Nov. 4, 10 a.m. Impressionist/Modern Day Sale. Nov. 4, 2, 20 Rockefeller Plz., 212636-2000. Doyle New York: Important English & Continental Furniture/Old Master Paintings. Oct. 27, 10 a.m. Books, Photographs & Prints. Nov. 1, 10 a.m. Coins, Bank Notes & Postage Stamps. Nov. 1, 5, 175 E. 87th St., 212-427-2730. ROGALLERY.com: Fine art buyers & sellers in online live art auctions. 800-888-1063, www.rogallery. com. Salmagundi: Fall Auctions. Oct. 29, 8, 47 5th Ave., 212-255-7740. Swann Auction Galleries: Whistler & His Influence. Oct. 27, 2:30. Old Master Through Modern Prints. Oct. 28, 10:30 a.m. & 2:30. Autographs. Nov. 4, 1:30, 104 E. 25th St., 212-254-4710.
Music & Opera 92YTribeca: New York City’s Lucinda Black Bear
celebrates the release of its latest album, Knives, with a CD release show. Nov. 5, 200 Hudson St., 212-601-1000; 9, $10+.
tion in Beacon, N.Y., as every second Saturday, galleries & shops in Beacon open their doors to artist receptions, musicians & events. Ongoing, Beacon Arts Community Association, Beacon, N.Y., www.beaconarts.org. Carrie Haddad Photographs: In his exhibition “Still Life, In Color,” David Halliday’s photographs show simple objects from new, fresh vantage points, exploring how the common is not necessarily so. Ends Nov. 7, 318 Warren St., Hudson, N.Y., 518-828-7655, www.carriehaddadgallery.com. Liberty Science Center: “Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age” features video installations, hands-on interactive displays, life-size models, fossil tusks & skulls. Through Nov. 10, meet a 42,000-year-old baby mammoth named Lyuba, discovered in 2007 in Siberia & on loan from the permanent collections at the Shemanovskiy Museum & Exhibition Center in Yamal, Russia. Ends Jan. 9, Liberty Science Center, Liberty State Park, 222 Jersey City Blvd., Jersey City, N.J., 201-200-1000, www.lsc.org. Woodstock School of Art: Originally intended to put troubled youth of the Great Depression back on track, the Woodstock School of Art (WSA) has blossomed into so much more. This school that once taught practical skills such as wood- & metal-working to youth as part of FDR’s New Deal, now offers classes & workshops in more artistic areas like oil & watercolor painting. All instructors are professional artists & utilize their fully equipped studies to teach their eager students. Every Tuesday, Nov. 2-30, there will be a class offered in Abstraction & Large-Scale Drawing, & on Nov. 6 & 7, there will be classes in Sand Painting Madalas. To register & learn more, visit the school’s website. WSA, Rte. 212, Woodstock, N.Y., 845-679-2388, www. woodstockschoolofart.org. Alice Tully Hall: The Philharmonic Orchestra of
the Americas, led by Alondra de la Parra, opens it New York season with a concert that features actor Chris Noth as the narrator in Aaron Copland’s Lincoln Portrait. Oct. 29, Lincoln Center, 1941 Broadway, 212-671-4050; 7:30, $15+. Avery Fisher Hall: Pianist Rudolf Buchbinder performs with the Dresden Staatskapelle. Nov. 1, Lincoln Center, 70 Lincoln Center Plz., 212-6714050; 8, $35+. Baryshnikov Arts Center: Pianist Eteri Andjaparidze & lighting designer Jennifer Tipton create a music-theater work that relates Scriabin’s music to colors & lights in Spectral Scriabin. Oct. 26, Jerome Robbins Theater, 450 W. 37th St., 212868-4444; 8, $20. Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts: The Center hosts a Brooklyn gospel celebration. Nov. 7, Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts, Walt Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College, 2900 Campus Rd., Brooklyn, 718-951-4500; 4, free. Doctors Orchestra: The orchestra inaugurates its 73rd consecutive season with an all-Beethoven concert. Oct. 28, Norman Thomas High School, 111 E. 33rd St., no phone; 7:30, free. David H. Koch Theater: New York City Opera presents an evening with soprano Christine Brewer. Oct. 28, 20 Lincoln Center, 212-721-6500; 7, $12+. David Rubenstein Atrium: As part of Target Free Thursdays, The Fish Police & Terror Pigeon Dance Revolt perform. Nov. 4, Lincoln Center, Broadway betw. West 62nd & 63rd Streets, 212-
875-5000; 8:30, free.
Feinstein’s at Loews Regency: Broadway star Kelli
O’Hara mixes songs by newer songwriters like Tom Kitt & Ricky Ian Gordon with classics by Frank Loesser & Irving Berlin. Oct. 30, Regency Hotel, 540 Park Ave., 212-339-4095; times vary, $40+. Laurie Beechman Theatre: Singer Kevin Dozier closes his new cabaret show, Take Me to the World. Oct. 26, 407 W. 42nd St., 212-695-6909; 7, $35. Merkin Concert Hall: The Afiara String Quartet performs as part of Tuesday Matinees. Nov. 2, Kaufman Center, 129 W. 67th St., 212-501-3300; 2, $16. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Pianist Alessio Bax makes his New York recital debut. Nov. 5. Patti Smith’s eighth concert at the Metropolitan Museum devotes a program to the world of Khubilai Khan & the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Nov. 6, 1000 5th Ave., 212-535-7710; 7, $40+. Metropolitan Opera: David McVicar’s production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore. Opens Oct. 26. Frank Zeffirelli’s production of Puccini’s La Bohème. Ongoing, West 62nd Street, betw. Columbus & Amsterdam Aves., 212-362-6000; times vary, $25+. Miller Theatre: Eastman BroadBand, the Eastman School of Music’s contemporary chamber ensemble, performs “New Music From the Americas.” Nov. 1, 2960 Broadway, 212-854-7799; 8, $12+. Stern Auditorium: Cellist Yo-Yo Ma & pianist Kathryn Stott perform a recital of cello sonatas by Schubert & Shostakovich, Piazzolla’s Le Grand Tango, Claudio Carneiro’s Bodas de Prata & Quatro Canto & Franck’s Violin Sonata in A Major transcribed for cello. Oct. 27. The Orchestra of St. Luke’s begins its annual three-concert
Carnegie Hall series with a concert led by violinist & Perspectives artist Christian Tetzlaff. Oct. 28. Music director Robert Spano conducts the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Oct. 30, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 8, $14.50+. Zankel Hall: Tenor Mark Padmore joins fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout for a recital of songs by Schumann & Lachner. Oct. 27, Carnegie Hall, 881 7th Ave., 212-247-7800; 7:30, $42+.
Jazz Bar Next Door: The Sean Smith Trio performs. Nov.
6, 129 MacDougal St., 212-529-5945; times vary, $12. Brooklyn Center for the Performing Arts: The Tito Puente Jr. Orchestra, led by the son of the late, legendary Latin percussionist, performs Latin jazz. Nov. 6, Walt Whitman Theatre at Brooklyn College, 2900 Campus Rd., Brooklyn, 718-9514500; 8, $37+. Cornelia Street Cafe: Bob Stewart Quartet. Oct. 29. Bill McHenry Quartet. Oct. 30. Sam Sadigursky & Jeremy Udden. Oct. 31. Vocalist Julie Hardy. Nov. 2. Drummer Sunny Jain. Nov. 3. Stephan Crump with Rosetta Trio. Nov. 4. Ralph Alessi & Modular Theatre. Nov. 5. Lucian Ban’s Deco Heart, featuring Bob Stewart & Mat Maneri. Nov. 6. Greg Ward’s Fitted Shards. Nov. 7, 29 Cornelia St., 212-989-9319; times vary, $10+. Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola: Keyboardist Kenny Werner with the Brussels Jazz Orchestra. Oct. 26-31. Pianist Dado Moroni with Joe Locke, Jed Levy, Peter Washington & Billy Drummond. Nov. 2-7. The Don Friedman Trio with vocalist Hiromi Shimizu. Nov. 8, 33 W. 60th St., 212-258-9595; times vary, $10+. Jazz Standard: Bassist Michael Formanek celebrates
his CD release. Oct. 27. The Houston Person Quartet. Oct. 28-31. Christian McBride & Inside Straight. Nov. 3-7. Mingus Orchestra. Nov. 8, 116 E. 27th St., 212-576-2232; times vary, $20+. Symphony Space Thalia: The Pocket Opera Players presents Space in the Heart, A Jazzopera. Following the one-act opera, the cast & instrumentalists will perform a set of original songs & jazz standards. Nov. 5 & 6, 2537 Broadway, 212-864-5400; 7:30, $25+.
Dance American Ballet Theatre: ABT offers a sneak peek
of The Nutcracker by Alexei Ratmansky, prior to its world premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Nov. 7 & 8, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Peter B. Lewis Theater, 1071 5th Ave., 212-423-3587; 7:30, $10+. Ballet Preljocaj: Angelin Preljocaj’s company returns with Empty moves (parts I & II) with music by John Cage. Oct. 27, 29 & 30, BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, 30 Lafayette Ave., 718-636-4129; 7:30, $20+. Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet: The company returns to The Joyce with 15 dancers performing two programs. Oct. 26-Nov. 7, The Joyce, 175 8th Ave., 212-242-0800; times vary, $10+. Ivy Baldwin Dance: The Chocolate Factory presents Ivy Baldwin Dance in Here Rests Peggy. Ends Oct. 30, The Chocolate Factory, 5-49 49th Ave., Long Island City, 212-352-3101; 8, $15. Leilah Broukhim: The Persian-American Jewish dancer takes viewers on a Sephardic flamenco journey with her work Traces. Nov. 4, 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Ave., 212-415-5500; 8:15, $32. Manhattan Movement & Arts Center: The center pres-
ents the hip-hop showcase of the Your Move! series. Nov. 7, 248 W. 60th St., 212-787-1178; 6, $10. Matthew Bourne: Bourne’s Swan Lake returns to New York with a blend of dance, humor & spectacle. Ends Nov. 7, New York City Center, 131 W. 55th St., 212-581-1212; times vary, $25+. Molissa Fenley: Fenley & Dancers perform at Joyce SoHo as part of its American Masterpieces Series. Nov. 4-7, Joyce SoHo, 155 Mercer St., 212-242-0800; times vary, $22. New York City Ballet: The company performs The Magic Flute, the comedic tale for all ages, set to a score by Riccardo Drigo. Feb. 2, 4, 6 & 8, David H. Koch Theater, 20 Lincoln Center, 212-7216500; times vary, $20+. Repertorio Español: Legendary flamenco & Spanish dancer Pilar Rioja presents her new dance, Habanera, with musical accompaniment by Cuban composer & singer Guillermo Portabales. Ends Nov. 8, Gramercy Arts Theater, 138 E. 27th St., 212-225-9999; times vary, $25+. Soaking Wet: Now in its eighth season at the West End Theater, Soaking Wet features eight choreographers in a mini-festival of a contemporary battle of the sexes. Nov. 4-7, West End Theater, 263 West End Ave., 212-337-9565; times vary, $10+. White Wave: White Wave presents its fifth annual Wave Rising Series, featuring 19 national and international dance companies. Ends Nov. 7, White Wave John Ryan Theater, 25 Jay St., Brooklyn, 212-868-4444; times vary, $25. Zach Morris/Third Rail Projects: Steampunk Haunted House returns to terrify with its dreamscape of neo-Victorian elegance & clockwork horrors. Ends Oct. 31, Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement, 466 Grand St., 212-598-0400; times vary, free+.
October 27, 2010 | City Arts
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WHY I BELIEVE IN NEW YORK’S FUTURE ll. And at affect us a th s m le b ro p rious ment problems — se r state govern u o , g in rt u h . Our state has f the problem o our people are f rt o a y p n n a e e m b so s while lution ha e part of the so b et ld u o sh t a th ople I have m e p e th , te a st thrive our great rvive but will veled around su a tr st ju ve a t o h n I l s il a But State w faith that our e m n e iv g ve a h nce again. and prosper o people ment that puts rn ve o g a is w ad and no re willing to le a What we need o h w rs e d s a s, with le r than drive u e th ra r e before politic th e g to d to bring us are committe apart. can do use I know we a c e b r o rn ard ve o rG take on the h to il I’m running fo fa e w if t g know tha nly keep losin o t o n l il it. And I also w te must , New York Sta ur future. We o g problems now n si lo f o n the risk jobs but we ru ppen. not let that ha ork New York to w t n a w I d n a aughters y of us. I re for so man I have three d fo e b d e rk o w it has better, fairer, is t a th for them like rk o Y w live in a Ne want them to before. fer than ever sa d n a r, e g n stro yield to it if we do not o d n a c e W ether. if we work tog We can do it ision. rkness and div a d f o s e ic vo the build a gether we will To . d n 2 r e b vem support on No I ask for your rk. better New Yo
ANDREW CUOMO FOR GOVERNOR. VOTE TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2ND. www.andrewcuomo.com
Paid for by Cuomo Duffy 2010 Inc., Richard Sirota, Treasurer.
PainttheTOWN
By Amanda Gordon
Ladies’ Night “I’m writing an anti-memoir,” said Jane DeLynn from her seat at the Feminist Press’ 40th anniversary gala Oct. 18 at The Roosevelt Hotel. “It’s about the unknowability of things.” One table over, Florence Howe was talking of her memoir, A Life in Motion, which the Feminist Press is publishing in March 2011. The book is about, among other things, Howe’s friendships with Grace Paley and Tillie Olsen, the phone call from Wallace Shawn asking her to write for The New Yorker and the small notice printed in Baltimore’s Women’s Liberation Newsletter that led to her founding the Feminist Press. Natalie Peart, Micaela Walsh and Ayana Smythe. Anti-memoir and memoir, scholarly works and pulp fiction, lost classics and new voices: the Feminist Press, which is affiliated with the City University of New York, has room for all of it. Some sample titles: punk memoir King Kong Theory by Virginie Despentes, Charlotte Perkins GilUma Thurman yields the podium to honoree Mira Nair. man’s classic American short story The Yellow Wall-paper, Zubaida’s Window, a novel about an Iraqi exile by Iqbal Al-Quzwini, translated from Arabic, and Bunny Lake Is Missing, by Evelyn Piper, a thriller published in the 1950s and reprinted in the Feminist Press’s Femmes Fatales series. Such a list requires financial support, or as Feminist Press executive director Gloria Jacobs put it, “We rely on the kindness of friends.” Hence a gala, offering not just financial but moral support. “The Feminist Press needs more encouragement and visibility,” Jane Friedman, CEO of OpenRoad Integrated Media, which publishes Meena Alexander with two of the Press’ “40 under premium e-books, said in an interview. “It’s an extraordinary platform for women writers.” 40” honorees, poets Ana Bozicevic and Amy King. Or as Mira Nair put it at the podium, accepting an award: “Let’s say the F-word loud and clear!”
E.V. Day and Barbara de Portago, who runs the Versailles/Giverny Foundation.
Day’s Dreams
On The Hunt
Here’s a formula for a great fall party: Show guests what you did last summer. That’s what E.V. Day did Oct. 19, inviting friends to her studio near Brookyn’s Navy Yard to view the work she created at Giverny. There were blue fishnet stockings studded with hot pink flowers, giant close-ups of the insides of flowers revealing their insectlike intricacy and a series of photographs in Monet’s gardens introducing a devilish nymph among the water lilies portrayed by Emily Miranda, wearing her own Kembra Pfahler. Not your typical vacation jewelry designs. slide show, but not everyone visits Giverny as an artist in residence (arranged with help from collector Beth Rudin DeWoody and Barbara de Portago, who raises money for the Versailles-Giverny Foundation, having grown up at Versailles). Next up for Day: a winter residency at ArtPace in San Antonio, the fruits of which will be displayed at ArtPace beginning in March.
This year, partying at The Print Fair means more than lithograph chit-chat. At the fair’s benefit for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation Friday, Nov. 5, guests can purchase a card of clues that lead them on a Treasure Hunt. “The whole idea is to make people go to booths they’ve never been to before,” said Tara K. Reddi, board president of the International Fine Print Dealers Association and vice president of Marlborough Gallery. The Treasure Hunt event is organized by the association’s Paper/Ink Committee, a group of young dealers. The clues, which lead hunters to specific works of art on display at the fair, are written by members of the committee who meet in secret. The clues are not meant to be difficult. “Even a person without a print background will be able to do the Treasure Hunt,” Reddi says. “If you read literature, go to the theater and know your history, you should be fine.” Children are welcome. At last year’s hunt, a 14-year-old made his family accompany him until all the clues were solved. The 84 dealers at the print fair, which runs from Nov. 4 through 7 at the Park Avenue Armory, have promised they won’t give anything away, but volunteers with aprons bearing a large pink elephant will be on hand to help what Reddi politely calls “the stumped and the lost.” The Treasure Hunt is not a time-sensitive game. Those who submit the correct answers to all 10 clues are entered in a raffle for a number of prizes, including a three-night getaway at The Four Seasons in Nevis; a signed Baldessari Catalogue Raissone from Hudson Hills Press and dinner for two at Bar Boulud.
A Monumental Award Haiti’s gingerbread houses, only a few of which escaped significant damage in the January earthquake; Chiktan Castle in northern India, built on a cliff in the 16th century; and the bridges of the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut: These are among the sites on the World Monuments Fund 2010 Watch List, which is to say, the organization is everywhere. And so too are the recipients of its Hadrian Award. This year’s, Ratan Tata, is from India, where his family is synonymous with a great philanthropic tradition devoted to preserving India’s culture. But the Tatas now also have their eye on America. Two years ago his company gave $50 million to Cornell, his undergraduate alma mater, and the day after the World Monuments Fund gala, he announced a $50 million gift to Harvard Business School. Hopefully these schools will train future leaders that, like Tata, understand the value of preserving the glories of the past.
Honoree Ratan Tata, center, seated between Bollywood actress Sharmila Tagore (left) and World Monuments Fund president Bonnie Burnham. For more party coverage, visit www.cityarts.info. To contact the author or purchase photos, email Amanda.Gordon@rocketmail.com; bit.ly/agphotos.
October 27, 2010 | City Arts
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