Cool MoMA Summer Pop

Posted on July 19, 2012 by MsSusanB

There’s no better way to cool down during the heat wave than by visiting MoMA’s Fourth Floor to see the last days that one of Pop’s masterpieces is on view: Rosenquist’s epic F-111.

The great thing about this display is that the spectacular 84-foot-long, 23-section work is installed just as it was first put on public display in Castellli’s gallery on East 77^th Street back in 1965…in a small 22 x 23-foot room in which the spectacular panels and images wrap around you (instead of spread out on a long, long wall).

The thrill of this installation is being so bombarded with color, image, shine, and texture but not being able to take it all in at once. You can take time to meditate on the forces ripping through American culture in 1964, when Rosenquist created this opus.

And listen to him tell about it on the MoMA web site. Get to MoMA and see for yourself. It’s a visual Sixties yin to Avedon’sb/w yang.

Installation view of James Rosenquist: F-111 (1964-65) at MoMA. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alex L. Hillman and Lillie P.Bliss Bequest, both by exchange. © 2012 James Rosenquist/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY. Photo by Jonathan Muzikar

Classical Israeli Hip Hop

Posted on July 16, 2012 by MsSusanB

What do you see when a classically trained African American fine artist from LA decides to mash up Jewish Eastern European folk art with portraits of passionate Israeli hip-hop men of color?

Kehinde Wiley portrait of Jewish Ethiopian Israeli hip-hop artist Kalkian Mashasha

Find out at the most recent installment of Kehinde Wiley’s series, The World Stage, which will soon end its run at The Jewish Museum. It’s the Israel portion of Wiley’s effort to “chart the presence of black and brown people around the world.” It’s a stunner partly because of the paintings, the models, the provocative country choice, the Museum, and the physical Fifth Avenue setting.

Traveling to Tel Aviv during 2011, Wiley wanted to see, meet, and document men of color in a country that he really only associated with an anxious source of conflict. When he scoured the discos, malls, and promenades, he found that hip-hop practitioners and fans associated regardless of their identity as Ethiopian Jews, Arab Israelis, and other native-born Jews. That’s who you’ll meet on the walls and in the video.

If you’ve seen Wiley’s other work, you know that he smothers his canvases and subjects in pattern. In this case, inspired by the collection at the Jewish Museum, you’ll have the treat of actually viewing patterned 19^th-cetury textiles and Eastern European paper cuts from the collection that inspired him. Plus, you can enjoy the echo between the curlicues on canvas and on the wood paneling of the (former) Felix Warburg mansion.

Wiley wanted to “broaden the discussion” about Israel, race, culture, and art, and his skill, vision, creativity, and deep-dive into the Tel Aviv youth scene delivers big time. Enjoy walking the Tel Aviv streets with the artist at work. (And for more, look at the other discussions and videos here.)

Best gift items associated with a current exhibition: Wiley’s skateboard deck and dog tags featuring his proud subjects.

Daring Sea Rescue Yields Treasure

Posted on June 30, 2012 by MsSusanB

Treasure is what you’ll find in the upstairs galleries of The South Street Seaport Museum in Lower Manhattan, following its daring rescue by The Museum of the City of New York.

Armed with a two-year plan, a dedicated team, and construction crews, MCNY figured out how to transform former storage areas into sixteen beautiful galleries, re-open, and give new life to the museum and iconic tall ships anchored downtown.

In a brilliant use of space, MCNY enables us now to enter three separate time machines that should warm the heart of any NYC booster, particularly the side-by-side installation of two versions of Manhatta (the original name of our island community). The first is the (slightly reduced) reinstallation of the acclaimed Manhatta exhibition (and scientific project), which shows you visions of the island, inhabitants, geology, river systems, and fauna that Henry Hudson would have seen in 1609. (Crowds flocked to this uptown in 2009, so you here’s your second chance.)

The second is the adjacent gallery, where you can sit down and contemplate three stunning simultaneous views of our waterfront — Paul Strand’s famous 1921 documentary of our waterfront (Manhatta), Edison’s early 1900s views of our water’s edge, and a contemporary visual meditation. Time travel doesn’t get any better than this!

The third view, MCNY’s Timescapes film, sweeps more grandly over time and history. Images pop onto three screens as Stanley Tucci narrates the whole, complete story, from forested island to home of the High Line. It’s hard to take it all in, but you’ll be swept away and seriously, it will make you proud.

Although these shows are in open-ended runs, check them out sooner rather than later. Although the Seaport Museum has been thrown a lifeline, it’s only temporary. MCNY only has 18 months to demonstrate that these stories, ships, artifacts, buildings, Bowne & Co. Stationers, and galleries are worth saving.

Be part of the rescue. Shop at Bowne, bring your friends, and step back in time.

Virtual Trip around London

Posted on June 26, 2012 by MsSusanB

Even if you’re not going to the Olympics, it’s still possible to get around London and environs on the train virtually by stopping into Grand Central to see the last week of the Transit Museum’s Art of the Poster show.

You’ll see original artwork commissioned by the London Underground made into posters seen by the riding public over the last 100 years. You’ll see how the transit network enticed folks to take the train to the country in 1913, encouraged fashionable people to get to the theater in the 1920s, brought people together during the War, and wryly encouraged courtesy in the 1950s.

There’s even a section about the designs that were never used and why. The best known fine artists in the show are Howard Hodgkin and R.B. Kitaj, but you’ll also get to know original work by many innovators in British graphic design and see the differences between the original and the final printed product.

Walter E. Spradbery, Ascot Sunday (1924), ©TfL from the London Transport Museum

If you can’t get to Grand Central, check out the online exhibition on the London Transport Museum’s site.

Seventh-Century Fashionable

Posted on June 23, 2012 by MsSusanB

If you’re running over to the Met to catch the Prada/Schiaparelli show in the next two weeks (don’t worry, it’s up until August 19), be sure to see the other rarely seen, worth-the-trip clothes – the robes, tunics, and kids’ stuff that’s straight from the Seventh Century.

It’s the textile/clothing room of the show Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition. It’s not often you get to see clothes from 430-870 A.D., much less see a one-room summary of all the cross-cultural fashion trends.

It’s Byzantine fashion at it’s best, from a time when Greek Orthodox, Coptic, Christian, and Jewish lifestyles were all mixing and mingling across the Empire between the Seventh and Ninth Centuries. Radio carbon dating of the fibers gave the curators a range of dates on the outfits, but let’s just call it even by saying “Seventh Century”.

In the fashion gallery of the show, you’ll see several tapestry-weave tunics (woven to shape), along with a small Egyptian kid’s fringed-trimmed hoodie (430-620 A.D.), a tunic with polychrome-pattered trim, and a huge, oversized Persian riding coat made of cashmere and wool. In a tapestry panel, you’ll see a veritable Vogue layout of various styles, including someone dressed in skins and boots below this more conservative tunic/mantle combo. Did they really wear that? You be the judge.

Amazingly enough, a lot of the coats and tunics come from the Met’s and the Brooklyn Museum’s own collections. Take a look and marvel at what curatorial care has wrought. (And check out the popular Samson silk fabric swatch in the adjacent gallery.)

London Siege Ends

Posted on June 20, 2012 by MsSusanB

Interruption, displacement, spatial challenge, and scrounged street materials are just a few of the components of the New Museum’s fourth-floor sculpture installation by London artist Phyllida Barlow, which continues only for the remainder of this week.

Installation view of Phyllida Barlow’s “Siege” installation at The New Museum

Part of the post-minimalist generation of London sculptors (Eva Hesse contemporaries), Barlow surprises visitors with a completely monumental, low-tech exploration in what she calls a “very, very awkward” space, particularly for visitors confronted by her work as they step out of the elevator.

Barlow says that the first time she saw her project space, it was “shocking” in its directness, which provided her with an exciting challenge. “Stepping out of the elevator, it’s as though you’ve stepped on stage,” she says, hoping that visitors find a “performative element” to their experience.

“Once you’re in there, there’s kind of no escape,” she says, calling it a “kind of a hostage space.” No fooling. You get to poke in, around, and about the work that she aptly names Siege.

The New Museum gives us several audio tracks in which Barlow explains her process, but go down to the Bowery to experience Siege first-hand and then listen in on what Barlow has to say. It’s like having your own, private Stonehenge experience inside a white cube.

Romantic Dark Side

Posted on June 17, 2012 by MsSusanB

Entering the black-draped Wachenheim gallery off the New York Public Library’s main Fifth Avenue entrance is a quick way to travel back in time to view manuscripts, memoirs, and mementos of the 18^th and 19^th centuries’ most creative literary minds.

Portrait of Mary Shelley

Tragic love, unbridled romance, women’s liberation, wicked family disconnects, and man-machine mash-ups converge in a tantalizing true tale in the tiny exhibition jewel, Shelley’s Ghost: The Afterlife of a Poet. The intertwined lives of Shelley and his wife, Mary (author of Frankenstein), Lord Byron, and their circle of friends are the subject.

To untangle this web of infamous ground-breakers, the Bodleian Libraries of Oxford and the NYPL have collaborated on assembling some rarities — one of the earliest English-language treatises on women’s rights (courtesy of Mary’s mother Mary Wollenstonecraft), Mary’s first draft of her horror novel, Shelley’s baby rattle and guitar, assorted notes and diaries, and Shelley’s treatise on the advantages of a vegetarian diet.

As this exhibit’s run comes to an end, literary (and scandal) hounds are flocking to this space, Thank goodness that NYPL and Oxford have seen fit to commission a short graphic novella of Mary Shelley’s incredible life, an innovative (free) Frankenstein-themed iPad app, and throw much of the scholarship up on the web for the iPad-less fans. Bonus: listen to some of the diary entries, personal letters, and works read online by Oxford-trained actors.

Screenshot of NYPL Biblion’s free Frankenstein iPad app

Venus in Transit or Fur

Posted on June 6, 2012 by MsSusanB

In an out-of-this-world coincidence, Venus (the planet) gave Venus in Fur (the play) a run for its money yesterday, pulling in gigantic audiences in New York City just a few days before the Tony Awards.

On an intermittently cloudy day, crowds flocked to the Hayden Planetarium (AMNH) to watch Venus (the planet) begin its stroll across the face of the Sun via the NASA feed projected on the giant screen in the Cullman Hall of the Universe. Venus put on similar shows in 1882 and 2004. Hundreds of science geeks heard astronomer Steve Bayer interpret what they were seeing on the live simulcast generated from Hawaii’s Mauna Kea Observatory.

Venus (the planet) appeared as a tiny dot at the “8 o’clock” position on the Sun’s disk and kept on moving across until well after midnight (like the movements of Tony Award and theater attendees). The AMNH cut the live feed around 7pm, but not before the planetarium paparazzi snapped photos of the disk, and the diminutive moving Venus dot with and without friends, families, and kids in front of the giant screen to commemorate this once-in-a-lifetime event. Check out the photos.

Our only questions are 1) will Venus in Fur favorite Nina Arianda get similar attention at the Tony Awards next Sunday a few blocks south at the Beacon, and 2) will you see Venus in Fur before it completes its Broadway transit in two weeks?

Venus begins its journey across the Sun

Bronx Senior Home = Art

Posted on June 4, 2012 by MsSusanB

“This Side of Paradise” installation view

The final days have come to pass for one of the most innovative art sites in the Bronx – the multi-artist/multi-organizational show This Side of Paradise at the Andrew Freedman Home on the Grand Concourse.

For the past several months, visitors have entered the long-shuttered gates, crossed the lawn under gigantic trees, and entered once-grand rooms where formerly wealthy seniors sat out their golden years to experience two floors of art works by Bronx sculptors, painters, videomakers, and installation artists. Take a look at the entrance and first floor.

No Longer Empty organized the project with participation by members of The Bronx Arts Alliance, featuring new works, Bronx collections, and recent artist-in-residence programs. On the second floor: The Bronx Documentary Center displayed Tim Hetherington’s film Diary in a wreck of a room; Wave Hill’s artist Adam Parker Smith bedazzled another nearby room; and photographer Sylvia Plachy placed her 1980 Village Voice portraits of the former residents in Room 246 amid furniture and knick-knacks evoking her long-ago visit.

Nicky Enright’s “The Ravages” (2012)

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