Morgan Deconstructs Degas’s 19th c. Cirque-du-Soleil Experience

Posted on May 4, 2013 by MsSusanB

Edgar Degas, Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando, 1879. Oil on canvas. Source: National Gallery © National Gallery, London / Art Resource, NY

Long before Cirque du Soleil began selling $180 seats to eight shows in Las Vegas or Floating Kabarette came to Brooklyn, high society and avant-garde crowds were flocking to extravagant theaters on Montmartre in Paris to see the finest aerialists from Europe.

The Morgan Library’s exquisite micro-show, Degas, Miss La La, and the Cirque Fernando, documents the meticulous work of Mr. Degas to portray the magic, daring, and wonder inside a 2,000-seat arena where he experienced the artistry of one of the must-see acts of 1879 – a mixed-race German aerialist who hung from a trapeze clenching an apparatus in her teeth from which she dangled a firing cannon.

As in the Met’s blockbuster show, Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity (which also features a circus-themed painting in its last gallery), the Morgan makes the case that Degas selected this subject because was associated with the height of fashion (along with café concerts and racetracks). Although this particular work was the only circus image Degas would ever paint, just tackling the dazzle and glamour of Miss La La dangling 70 feet in the air (before the cannon stunt) showed that he was capturing what was “happening” among high society and artsy types in their “modern” life.

A vibrant pastel study of the artist by Mr. Degas. Source: Tate, London/Art Resource, NY

Although we can marvel at how well Degas captured this fleeting moment, the Morgan lays bare that this work was planned in meticulous detail. They’ve displayed preparatory works, sketchbooks, and even architectural drawings of the theatre’s interior that Degas created to work out the feeling, look, composition, and setting for this spectacular work. As Degas said, “No art was less spontaneous than mine.”

If you love Impressionism and theatricality, get over to the Morgan to enjoy the mechanics behind the creative process and flip through the digital version of our artist’s sketchbook (which was to fragile to be sent from France) right inside the colorful upstairs gallery.

Visit Mr. Degas and Ms. La La before May 12, when they leave for the Continent. (Sorry, no video, but here’s a photo of the star herself.)

Photograph of the artist, Miss La La (c. 1880). Albumen silver print. Source: Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University

FIT’s Fashion Tech Timeline

Posted on May 1, 2013 by MsSusanB

Black velvet evening dress by Charles James (c. 1955) with a zipper inserted along that diagonal seam

Black velvet evening dress by Charles James (c. 1955) with a 3-ft. zipper inserted along that diagonal seam

Once you see the clothes in FIT’s Fashion and Technology exhibition inside a technology context, you’ll start making the connections at other shows all over town.

Exhibit A right inside the entrance – a seamless nylon-powder dress and bag made from CAD software and a 3D printer by Freedom of Choice in 2005 is a mesh wonder that is made by the same process as Amanda Levete’s woven Fruit Bowl in MoMA’s current Applied Design show.

Take the brilliant purple British day dress that FIT displays as an example of the revolution in color that occurred in the 1860s as analine dyes began to be used for the first time in commercial cloth manufacture. The Metropolitan Museum showcases the same point (except surrounded by Manet and Monet masterpieces) in its blockbuster time-series Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity. (Reference Camille.)

The 1860s color revolution due to analine dyes in commercial fabrics

Outstanding achievement award invention + application at the FIT show: invention of the zipper in 1913 and the stunning accomplishment of Charles James, who inserted a three-foot-long zipper into a spectacular gown in a hidden seam on the bias (see left).

In Fashion and Technology, FIT makes brilliant use of its own stellar collection to chronicle the changes in technology that revolutionized fashion, from the advent of the Spinning Jenny in 1764 to the world’s first programmable T-shirt (see below).

For fans of the 18^th and 19^th centuries, here’s what technology mattered:

1764 – cotton replaces wool and linen as the go-to fabric (thanks, Spinning Jenny)

1780s – machine-knit textiles (200 years before double-knits)

1801 – Jacquard looms create complex patterns by using punch cards (up to 10,000, so take that Univac!)

1846 – sewing machines eliminate tedious hand stitching for the interiors of gowns

Pierre Cardin, dress, fuchsia “Cardine” textile with molded 3D shapes, 1968, Gift of Lauren Bacall.

1856 – analine dyes bring about a color revolution to ladies’ fashions (go, hot pink!)

1857 – chain-stitch sewing machine

1860s – more color complexity with roller-printed fabrics

1880s – collapsible bustles let ladies sit down

1882 – celluloid used to imitate ivory and tortoiseshell for accessories

Check out the excellent exhibition timeline interactive to see these breakthroughs and what happened in the 20^th and 21^st centuries.

As promised, here’s the video of the world’s first programmable T-shirt:

Dance into Spring to Mr. Burrows’s Color-Block Beat at MCNY

Posted on April 26, 2013 by MsSusanB

Studio 54 dance wear by Stephen Burrows.

To experience an all-out burst of color, walk through the doors of the Museum of the City of New York and visit the paparazzi-worthy tribute to a 1970s design legend, Stephen Burrows: When Fashion Danced. You’ll get to know the man who styled Liza, Cher, Diana, Farrah, and so many icons of the 1970s with bright, beautiful, glamorous draped designs were made to whirl around the dance floor.

Vogue issues throughout the 1970s were filled with cavorting models sporting color-blocked coats, dresses, sweaters, and evening wear and lettuce-edged jersey wrap tops, cocktail dresses, and pant suits by King of Qiana, Stephen Burrows. When he burst upon the scene in the late Sixties, Geraldine Stutz installed him in her ground-breaking “street of shops” that she created at Henri Beldel, when it was still on 57th Street. If you don’t know Stephen’s work, a stroll through the first floor of MCNY will set you straight about who actually created the draped metallic disco top emblematic of Studio 54.

It’s the first retrospective dedicated to this stylish creative powerhouse, with ensembles drawn from the Burrows archive, FIT, the Metropolitan, and MCNY’s own treasure trove, and you’ll have until July 8 to see it.

Stephen gave us the draped metallic disco top and so much more.

The opening night party drew fashion royalty, and when we visited, Michael Kors was levitating with excitement, seeing the work that inspired so many to drape, piece, and glamorize with eye-popping colors. Check out the looks on the Flickr feed.

Don’t miss the major piece of fashion history hiding in one corner of the show: At a time when American fashion was viewed by Europeans as second rate, Burrows and Blass, Calvin, Oscar, and Halston were invited to follow the French at the still-talked-about 1973 benefit fashion show at Versailles. You’ll witness how Stephen and the NYC crew battled it out on the stage against YSL, Cardin, Ungaro, Givenchy, and Dior.

Spoiler alert: Stephen and his American crew won. Historic is an understatement.

Fluffy AMNH Animal Superstars Win Webby

Posted on April 23, 2013 by MsSusanB

Steve Quinn, diorama master

Steve Quinn couldn’t send them to the L’Oreal Paris hair and make-up room like Tim Gunn does on Project Runway. They’re just too big, too famous, and too fragile. We’re talking about the furry animals that populate the 43 dioramas on Floor 1 of the American Museum of Natural History’s in the Hall of North American Mammals.

So how do you buff, puff, make up, color, groom, blow dry, restore eyelashes, color brows, and repair noses on New York superstars that have been in the (literal) spotlight since the early 1940s? That’s the subject of AMNH’s YouTube sensation, Restoring Dioramas in Hall of North American Mammals – a 16-show reality series that won a prestigious Webby Award earlier this month. Download the North American Mammal app (with before and after looks at the enhanced fur).

No more “demon” eye in the baby Mountain Goat, who is surrounded by thousands of flowers refurbished by AMNH volunteers

Steve Quinn leads a team of accomplished artists to, well, perform makeovers on the animals, plants, and background paintings that reside inside some of the most famous 3D attractions inside the AMNH. Steve told us that the first step was to update the decades-old lighting inside each case with state-of-the-art illumination that would inflict much less damage on the mammal coiffures.

His team engineered wooden platforms that extended into each scene so that leaf-turning and snow repair could occur with minimal disruption to the diorama floor. If you watch the 4-minute videos, you’ll see how they fixed a bison’s nose, put whiskers on cougars, restored the grass on the Great Plains, and restored the jackrabbit’s ears. The runaway hit of the series is Updating the “Moon Shadow” in the Wolf Diorama. With over 8,000 views, it’s not going to knock Dr. Neil off the AMNH charts any time soon, but Steve’s magical artistry is something to savor.

Go to the AMNH YouTube channel and scroll down to find the North American Mammal diorama series, depicting Steve and his crew at work. Check out this series trailer:

Just before Steve retired the other week, he gave us a special Night at the Museum, walking around and visiting his favorite dioramas after the visitors left.

Steve, you’re a total rock star. Thanks for all your spectacular work at AMNH over the years, and congratulations on the Webby.

Elvis has left the building.

Surrealists Get Out Pencils and Scissors at The Morgan

Posted on April 21, 2013 by MsSusanB

César Moro’s Adorée au grand air (1935). Source: The Getty Research Institute.

Automatic drawing, games, rubbings, collage, and dreams are all chronicled in the spectacular Drawing Surrealism show closing today at The Morgan. It’s an encyclopedia of what you can do with a scissors and pencil and demonstrates that these forms of play were critical to the most famous Surrealist works by superstars Ernst, Dali, Masson, and their European colleagues.

Some of the off-the-wall creations born out of the Surrealist’s drawing games eventually made their way into big-time oil paintings. The curators also contend that the monochrome grey-scale of some famous paintings is actually a tribute to the importance they attached to charcoal and pencil media.

The show, co-organized with the LA County Museum of Art, is the first time that Surrealist drawings have been the subject of an exhibition, and curators make quite the case for drawing technology transfer by showing us how these techniques (especially collage) spread to the rest of the world.

Man Ray’s Safety Pin (1936). Ink and pencil on paper. Source: MoMA. © 2013 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS)

One of the genuine revelations is the work and importance of César Moro, a Parisian-trained Peruvian who brought Surrealism to Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

You can’t help but be struck by the forerunners of Pop: Man Ray’s Safety Pin sure looks like a precursor to Claes Oldenburg’s 1970s Clothespin, and there’s no question about the influence of Eduardo Paolozzi’s 1940s Surrealist-influenced collages: He and Richard Hamilton invented Pop Art in Britiain.

When the show was installed at LACMA, several contemporary artists were asked to create Surrealist-inspired works. Listen as Alexandra Grant, Mark Licari, and Stas Orlovski show and tell how European mind-and-hand games of the 1930s inspire work today:

Get Out into the Fresh Air (in Italy and France)

Posted on April 15, 2013 by MsSusanB

Théodore Caruelle d’Aligny’s Edge of a Wood (1850). Oil on canvas done northeast of Paris. The flattening technique was developed with his hiking companion, Corot.

There’s nothing like stepping out into the fresh air to get a little perspective – exactly the view taken by the group of landscape painters featured in the Met’s exhibition, The Path of Nature: French Paintings from the Wheelock Whitney Collection, 1785-1850, on display in the Lehman Wing for a few more days.

Most of them feature Italian or French landscapes, and you’ll be surprised to know these tranquil, beautiful visions of nature were considered a little bit radical at the time. Apparently, there once was a time when painters didn’t travel beyond the studio, and certainly did not work outdoors.

Installation view of The Gate to the Temple of Luxor (1836) by La Bouëre. After Napolean invaded Egypt, the exotic Middle East became all the rage. The missing obelisk ended up in the Place de la Concorde.

The artists in this collection (gifted to the Met 10 years ago by Mr. Whitney) literally went on the road, took to the hills, and created spectacularly perfect outdoor oils to record a bit of the exotic, wild, and ruined visions they experienced. And it all happened long before Monet went outside to serialize his haystacks.

If you’ve ever wanted to take a Grand Tour of the wonders of Europe and the Middle East, now is your chance. Check out the Met’s online gallery of these works, and enter the mountains, hillsides, parks, ruins, and vistas with new 18^th and 19^th century friends.

If you have some time, you can listen to the Met’s curator, Asher Miller, discuss how adventure travel inspired a generation of painters to break the rules.

Abstraction All-Stars Featured in MoMA’s LinkedIn

Posted on April 13, 2013 by MsSusanB

Installation view of the network behind the birth of abstract art, according to MoMA and Columbia Business School

As soon as you arrive at Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925, MoMA’s soon-to-close extravaganza featuring the relationships among painters, poets, composers, and dance innovators, you encounter a big, bold infographic on the wall – a web showing who was collaborating with, influencing, viewing, and reading each other as “abstract art” was born.

The stunning exhibit is a who’s who of modern art, with work by Picasso, Kandinsky, and Malevich (of course), but pulls in works from lesser-known early innovators from Britain, Poland, Italy, and America (hi, Georgia!) and across disciplines. So many connections, so little time! The show has books, music, pioneers of modern dance…just about everything.

If you can’t get to it, don’t worry. MoMA’s put it all on the web so you can explore all the connections yourself. The highlighted names show the artists with over 25 connections, like an early 20^th century LinkedIn or really popular Facebook friends. Who knew that Russian fine-art diva Goncharova was more connected than, say, Malevich or El Lissitsky? I guess inventing Rayism and designing sets for the Ballet Russes paid off in getting her positioned in this MoMA pantheon.

Created by MoMA curators, designers, and pros from the Columbia Business School, the interactive web highlights every artist featured in the massive MoMA show. The infographic allows you to zoom in to see how the buzz, particularly in 1911-1915, brought abstract art into being. No matter which name you click on, you’ll get to view the works, play the music, and watch the dances – a web-based multimedia tour-de-force.

Now dive into one of the best art-websites ever, and get to know the network and likes of the hot, emerging artists who made the art world of 100 years ago into what we know today.

Watch how this show and web project were brought to life with Excel, great minds, and graphic design. And be sure to check out Paul Ingram’s views on the value of networks at the MoMA video site.

Allen Ginsberg’s Time Machine Walkabout at NYU

Posted on April 4, 2013 by MsSusanB

Myself seen by William Burroughs, Kodak Retina new-bought 2’d hand from Bowery hock-shop…, 1953, printed 1984-97. National Gallery of Art, Gift of Gary S. Davis.  Images © 2012 Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved.

Walking through the Grey Art Gallery’s show Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg is pretty much a stroll through the neighborhood circa 1953 – Tompkins Square Park, Avenue B, three-room apartments for $29 per month.

This incredible tribute to all things Beat was initially mounted by the National Gallery, but the best place to see it is NYU’s gallery in the Village, just steps away from where it all happened. Get to Washington Square to see what it was like to be young, broke, ambitious, and at the edge of a generational shift in America.

Allen Ginsberg had just gotten a $13 Kodak camera in a Bowery pawnshop and began taking photos of himself and his friends – Jack Kerouac, William S. Boroughs, and Gregory Corso. No one was famous yet. About thirty years later, Ginsberg found the snapshots, printed and enlarged them, and wrote in the margins his memories of sharing the flat, living on nothing, and breaking the rules.

The photos tell quite a coming-of-age story – the first publication of Howl, Ferlinghetti’s bookstore in San Francisco, emerging Beat sensibility, and life in a flat at 206 East 7^th Street while Kerouac took to the road. The earlier photos were all taken from 1953 to 1963, but later photos of his from the 1980s include Dylan, Larry Rivers, Francesco Clemente, and even Madonna.

As an extra bonus, Grey Art Gallery interns developed a walking tour of Ginsberg’s East Village haunts, so you can actually experience Café Reggio, Café Wha?, and over 25 other spots where it all took place. Download the PDF tour inside the Beat Memories site and walk the walk of literary and cultural rebellion.

Get to this show right now in New York, or catch it in San Francisco’s Contemporary Jewish Museum later this year. If you can’t do either, poke through the online photos with Ginsberg’s commentary at either the Grey or the National Gallery sites (at the latter, you can enlarge the photos to read Ginsberg’s addendums). Here’s a promo from WNET:

FIT Grad Students Give Everyone the Boot

Posted on April 1, 2013 by MsSusanB

Curvy, red-lined leather “it” boot of 1900 by Jack Jacobus Ltd. Austrian fashion, gift of the V&A.

As part of FIT’s program in Fashion and Textiles Studies, the grad students have mounted a gem of a show about fashionable footwear — Boots: The Height of Fashion, running just a few days more.

The museum’s side gallery tells an interesting story about how boots went from practical to glam, and from guy wear to girl fashion, beginning with some thought-provoking high-buttoned “look at me” boots from 1900, following on to the boot-clad flappers, and taking us straight through boot history to the heyday of the Warhol factory.

The students have rummaged through the FIT collection to show us their picks to demonstrate “boots as a second skin” (David Evins, Charles Jourdan, and silk Louboutins), the rebel look, fashion-tribe style, and over-the-top luxury.

Fantasy-meets-luxury suede and shearling creation by Manolo Blanik (1997, UK). Gift of Ruffo.

Among our favorites are the 1922 Ball Brand flapper galoshes and everything from the collection of Warhol superstar Baby Jane Holzer – 1963 Davide Beatle boots, 1969 Guccis, and 1971 embroidered boots from The Chelsea Cobbler.

The students also gave us a behind-the-scenes look with two cases about boot conservation. One case features pairs of boots (baby boots and high-buttoned shoes) with one shoe “conserved” and the other in its deteriorating state. The second case shows how the museum is preserving those famous “second skin” David Evins polyurethane leggings from 1960s, which sadly have broken down due to the atmosphere and light.

Although the following video is not associated with the show, it certainly shows that form-fitting high-style boots did not originate with Mr. Evins. Enjoy:

Second-skin Louboutin satin boots (1994-95 Fall collection)

Celebrity Robot Says Good-Bye to Upper East Side

Posted on March 26, 2013 by MsSusanB

As musician Lois Kendall shows him red roses and green leaves, Elektro tells her the color of each. Source: NYPL

If you love the future, you have to see Elektro, the celebrity robot, who once held court in the Westinghouse pavilion at the 1939 New York’s World’s Fair, before he leaves the city once again. He’s the star attraction in the Museum of the City of New York’s Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s exhibition, closing soon.

We couldn’t take photos inside the show, so here’s a publicity picture of Elektro back in 1939. He walked, talked, smoked cigarettes, as you’ll witness in this 1939 YouTube clip. This sensational moto-man used vacuum tubes, a 78 RPM record player, photoelectric cells, and telephone relays to wow the crowds.

But Elektro is only the tip of the Trylon of how fair design and engineering shaped modern American style. The show introduces the industrial design engineers that shaped products that grace MoMA’s design collection and insinuated themselves into everyday life – streamlined appliances, nylon stockings, Herman Miller clocks, Greyhound buses, and superhighways. Check out the MCNY’s excellent Tumblr feed for their visions of the future.

Postcard of the General Motors Futurama, NY 1939 World's Fair. Source: MCNY

Postcard of the General Motors Futurama, NY 1939 World’s Fair, that resembles BPC today. Source: MCNY

Among the show’s highlights are clips showing the GM Futurama, where New Yorkers waited in line for hours to see what the city of 1960 would look like. “Sound chairs” moved them along a conveyor belt where they could witness a vast scale model of modernized America, with superhighways soaring over canyons and cutting through mountains, and urban/suburban cloverleaf interchanges to keep traffic moving.

Afterward, people would exit into a full-scale World of Tomorrow where they would see what the urban intersection of the future would be – filled with pedestrian overpasses, department stores, and unimpeded whizzing traffic. It sure looked a lot like the view of Battery Park City along West Street.

Suggested Exhibit for NY 1939 World's Fair. Watercolor & gouache on board. Source: MCNY

Beautiful watercolor/gouache from MCNY collection: “Suggested Exhibit for NY 1939 World’s Fair.”

Oh! Wallace Harrison, one of the architects of the Trylon and Perisphere actually did the master plan for Battery Park City…and Lincoln Center and the UN Headquarters building and Time-Life on Sixth Avenue!

So, no wonder Elektro feels right right at home in 2013 Manhattan. In 1939, he already could see what it would look like, right from his pavilion!

Take a spin around Elektro’s world, courtesy of the New York Public Library:

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