I, YOU, WE: Art on the Front Lines of the 80s Culture Wars

Posted on August 21, 2013 by MsSusanB

Les Levine mounted his poster everywhere in the subway in 1981, a tough time in New York. Source: The Whitney © Les Levine for The Museum of Mott Art, Inc.

It’s not a comfortable art show, but the 1980s weren’t comfortable times. The Whitney Museum of American Art’s show I, YOU, WE resurrects art from a time when artists were protesting inequality and gentrification, the AIDS epidemic was raging, Wigstock brought gender shifting into the open air, and New York’s downtown community waited apprehensively for the next police crackdown on squatters, community gardens, and anyone flaunting an alternative lifestyle.

As it prepares to move to the High Line in 2015, The Whitney asked its curators to mine its permanent collection to see if there were periods of time that might have been overlooked in the shows of recent years.

I, YOU, WE is the answer: the difficult, searching, and searing work produced by the passionate and disenfranchised denizens of New York’s tumultuous 1980s and early 1990s.

No one could miss Alfred Martinez’s 1987 screenprint. Source: The Whitney. © 1986 by Alfred Martinez

Works feature the flip side of Warhol’s Interview magazine and Studio 54 – people struggling with identities, illness, injustice, and the consequences of Washington’s culture wars against edgy art.

The Whitney produced this video about the “WE” section of the show, when artists began protesting gentrification, how they used art as the lever to galvanize the East Village, and the battles that raged for the community. Other sections of the Whitney show focus on artists’ exploration of race, gender, religion, and the AIDS crisis.

Revisit the emerging street styles – graffiti, comics-inspired drawings, stencils, and posters – as Andrew Castrucci of Bullet Space leafs through one of the seminal art-protest pieces.

When you visit, make enough time to Nan Goldin’s 700-slide extravaganza that documents everything. Scroll down here to see installation views and other works in the show by Mapplethorpe, Basquiat, Currin, Wojnarowicz, and Ligon. Tough stuff, but not tougher than the lives these artists lived during that decade.

Congratulations to the Whitney for not forgetting, presenting this work to the next generation, and testing if the work still sticks 20 to 30 years later. The show runs through September 1.

Matthew Barney Digs Up Morgan Treasures

Posted on July 10, 2013 by MsSusanB

Barney’s show entrance at the Morgan, as photographed by Graham S. Haber. Courtesy: Matthew Barney, Morgan Library.

Barney’s storyboard case for River of Fundament in the entrance to his show at the Morgan. Photo: Graham S. Haber. Courtesy: Matthew Barney, Morgan Library.

The brilliant, perplexing, and mysterious Matthew Barney has combed through the Morgan’s collection to curate mini-collections for the first-ever retrospective of his drawings — Subliming Vessel: The Drawings of Matthew Barney (on view through September 8).

Whether you enjoy his work or not, you can’t deny that he and his curators did a bang-up job of presenting his works-on-paper. Get over to enjoy highlights of the Morgan’s collection in an entirely new way – a mash-up of controversial contemporary work with infrequently seen gems, many collected by J.P. himself.

Barney’s CREMASTER 4: Manx Manual (1994-95) Graphite, lacquer, and petroleum jelly on paper framed in cast epoxy, prosthetic plastic, and Manx tartan. Source: Private collection. Courtesy: Matthew Barney, Gladstone Gallery.

There’s real fun to be had by examining the flat waist-high cases in chronological order (clue: they are marked with the letters A to O). Your walk will take you through Barney’s storyboards for his early works, through Cremaster, and to his current project – River of Fundament, a seven-act opera combining film and live performance.

The cases contain stuff from the Morgan Library interspersed with the props, photos, drawings, and other images that inspired Barney’s extravaganzas. In order to enjoy this to the max, take a guidebook (in a stack right inside the gallery door). Even if you’re a Barney connoisseur, you’ll need the gallery guide to ID the great picks from the Library.

Case C is very satisfying to anyone who’s followed Barney’s career from his satyr-prancing videos at his first Biennials – you’ll see an 18^th-century satyr drawing from Italy and the 1290 Persian blockbuster, The Benefits of Animals, opened right to the page with two crazy mountain goats. (And, yes, they’re standing in trees!).

Barney’s Ancient Evenings: Ba Libretto, 2009. Ink, graphite and gold leaf on paperback copy of Norman Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, on carved salt base, in nylon and acrylic vitrine. Courtesy: Marguerite Steed Hoffman and Matthew Barney

Barney’s Ancient Evenings: Ba Libretto, 2009. Ink, graphite and gold leaf on paperback copy of Mailer’s Ancient Evenings, on carved salt base, in nylon and acrylic vitrine. Courtesy: Marguerite Steed Hoffman and Matthew Barney

The Cremaster 2 storyboard in Case F has an Goya drawing and the original edition of one of New York’s most popular entertainments – Joseph Smith’s 1830 The Book of Mormon. (Trust me, you won’t find it without the guidebook.)

Cases K-O contain the River of Fundament storyboards, which were inspired by Norman Mailer’s book, Ancient Evenings, Egyptian reincarnation myths, and the Chrysler bankruptcy. Alongside Barney’s props and things, you’ll glimpse sky burials documented by Curtis, Whitman’s original Leaves of Grass, and a Diane Arbus portrait of Mailer.

Look at the slide show from the exhibition, but know that Barney’s drawings are best enjoyed in person. They’re tiny, detailed, and often disturbing. With many references to Egyptian deities, Renaissance drawings, and cars, each is a tiny world unto itself.

Will you ever understand what those iconic self-lubricating frames are about? It doesn’t matter. It’s just nice to dive into an alternate, mysterious universe and simply swim around in Barney’s non-linear excavation of similarly provocative illuminations and page-turners from Mr. Morgan’s stacks.

More Time Tripping at Grand Central

Posted on June 26, 2013 by MsSusanB

Annex window view of Lothar Osterburg’s model of his dream of Grand Central as a zeppelin docking station back in the 1930s

Even if you didn’t manage to board the historic train cars at Grand Central in May, you can still go back in time, courtesy of 18 artists featured in the GCT exhibition in the New York Transit Museum Annex, On Time: Grand Central at 100.

Inspired by The Clock and the continual flow of people and trains through Grand Central, MTA Arts for Transit cooked up a delightful mix of contemporary 2D works, models, videos, and digital art that puts a smile on the face of every commuter, tourist, and art-seeker that we’ve seen inside the tiny Annex.

Look closely to find this minute secret portal: Ledge with Lunette, 2013 by Patrick Jacobs

Look closely to find this minute secret portal: Ledge with Lunette by Patrick Jacobs

Have you seen the mysterious Zeppelin posters by Lothar Osterburg on the subway? Right in the Annex window you’ll see the gigantic, fun-house model that he created to photograph as one step in the process of making the photogravure you see on the A train. Kids and parents can’t resist Lothar’s newspaper-covered multi-story GCT impression and the funny, fat yellow old-time taxis and zeppelin ends that poke out. Right next to it, you can examine his resulting print, Zeppelins Docking on Grand Central.

People are usually transfixed by the 2008 video documenting Frozen Grand Central, where Improv Everywhere staged a 250-person flash mob, where people “froze” for 5 minutes as commuters, tourists, and workers wondered what was going on.

Another hit is Grand Central Diary. London Squared Productions interviewed tourists and commuters about GCT, animated the furniture and items around the terminal, and…well, just watch The Clock and the Maintenance Cart speak for themselves:

Nearby, several small digital screens show Alexander Chen’s Conductor, a 15-minute video loop that animates the subway lines, suggesting trains moving through the system. He turns the subway lines into an animated stringed instrument. No wonder he’s working for Google Creative Labs. Spend a few moments, take a look, and experience it here.

Close-up of Viewmasters and other leave-behinds inside Jane Greengold’s Lost and Found.

Another must-see piece (among many) is Jane Greengold’s Lost and Found. She’s created a sort-of fiction about the dozens of tagged items in the vitrine, evoking the memories and observations of generations of conductors who found items that train passengers left behind. Actually, the items you’re looking at are actual leave-behinds collected by real-life conductors, so Jane’s work isn’t entirely made up. The archeological discoveries include things from the old Lake Shore Limited on the NY Central, a 1948 boxed baby tooth, 1943 ration cards, 1952 Viewmasters, a Kennedy campaign button, and a Kindle.

Get to the Annex before July 7. In the meantime, check out curator Amy Hausmann and her artists telling about the fun they had contemplating time, architecture, fashion, and Jackie O.

War Ends at NY Historical

Posted on May 26, 2013 by MsSusanB

Join the crowds for two more days to pay tribute to NYC’s Greatest Generation at the revealing, reflective exhibition, WWII & NYC created by the New-York Historical Society. If you can’t get there in person, take a look at the synopsis here, but in the galleries there are surprises at every turn. The slideshow gives you a glimpse.

Right inside, you’ll find a line-up of people checking out a portion of the actual 1938 Cyclotron, a kind-of atom smasher that physicists at Columbia University were using confirm nuclear fission. It’s also surprising to see an interactive map of where “The Manhattan Project” was actually located in Manhattan. At Fifth Avenue and 29^th Street, the Army had 300 people on the 22^nd Floor of 261 Fifth sourcing materials for the first atom bomb. Other teams were working in the Woolworth Building and at 270 Broadway.

People also cluster around the interactive map of New York’s harbor, which explains how all those interesting-looking, now quiet big buildings, forts, and warehouses along the shore were once alive with 3.3 million active duty service men and women headed for Europe and North Africa. Take this video tour and see it then and now:

And the show would not be complete without a in-depth look at the activities of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the rise of Rosie the Riveter. Watch this video to experience what it was like from a woman who lived it:

The show includes stories about how Tito Puente, Jacob Lawrence, filmmaker Francis Lee, MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Maiden Form, Nabisco, and countless other New York people and companies joined in to the war effort. Check out additional videos expertly produced by NYHS on line. You’ll never look at these City streets or harbor the same way again.

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:

If You Love Brooklyn, Get to GO!

Posted on February 14, 2013 by MsSusanB

Installation view of Yeon Ji Yoo’s The Fight (2012), made of paper, paper pulp, acetate, glue, packing tape, cheesecloth, plastic flowers, recycled plastic bottles and bags

Tucked away in the Mezzanine Gallery on the second floor at the Brooklyn Museum is a valentine to the borough, its artists, and the support and love they received last September in Go: A Community-Curated Open Studio Project. It mixed trudging around Brooklyn, democracy in action, and high-tech to peer into other worlds right in our own backyard.

The museum commissioned an app, asked artists to open their studios, and invited the world to visit and vote for their favorites. (Apparently, it was inspired by an art competition organized out of Grand Rapids!)

GO tracked the art makers and art seekers – take a look at the “weekend activity heatmap” and the other GPS-gathered stats. The results showed a lot of love – 18,000 visitors making 147,000 studio visits to about 1,700 artists over a two-day period, or about eight studio visits per participant. See the raw data for yourself, broken out by neighborhood. Learn a bit more about the voters here.

Art lovers nominated 9,457 artists for a museum showing, and eventually voting and curators whittled it down to five spectacular representatives. Interestingly, four on display were born outside the United States.

Yeon Ji Yoo of South Korea, currently lives in Greenpoint and works in Red Hook. The large installation piece in the show is inspired by her grandmother’s fading memory. Listen as she talks about growing up in South Korea’s rural countryside:

Installation view of Naomi Safran-Hon’s Home Invasion (2011). Archival inkjet print, lace, and cement on canvas

Naomi Safran Hon (of Prospect Heights) prints photographs of her hometown of Haifa, Israel on canvas; makes some cuts in the image; and pushes cement through lace to make a 3-D effect. She feels she’s working out the push/pull of the political and domestic realities of where she grew up. But let her tell you:

Meet the other artists, too: urban watercolorist Adrian Coleman, and painters Oliver Jeffers, and Gabrielle Watson. But if you really love Brooklyn, get over to experience the work in person, and add your comments. The museum’s open late on Thursday.

Meet The Building You Didn’t Know at NYHS

Posted on February 6, 2013 by MsSusanB

Installation view featuring photos of the Whitehall Building (17 Battery Place), Grand Central Terminal, the Free Public Baths (538 East 11th), and the interior of the Plaza Hotel

In one of the most deceptively simple installations at the New-York Historical Society, visitors can’t stop looking, reading, absorbing, talking, and pointing. The Landmarks of New York show was humming all last weekend, with exhibition goers moving up and down the staid second-floor hallway, quietly moving from photo to photo learning stuff about buildings they’ve seen a million times.

Did you ever think the entire history of New York could be told in 90 identically framed photographs? Take a look at a few of the 1,287 landmarked buildings in NYC. Since the NYHS web site does not contain any of these buildings’ compelling stories, run up to their second floor before the show closes.

The show pays tribute the 1965 Landmarks Law and resulting Landmarks Commission, established in the wake of the greatest architectural disaster in the history of the modern City – the 1963 destruction of the historic Penn Station. Today, 30,000 structures are protected, and the photos show you some of the exteriors, interiors, and scenic landmarks of our five boroughs.

Installation view of John Bowne House (1661) photo by Jeanne Hamilton

Which are the oldest? The Wyckoff House, built sometime before 1641, at 5816 Clarendon Road, Brooklyn, and the oldest surviving home in Queens, the 1661 John Bowne House. The label copy says that Bowne had a huge flare-up with Peter Stuyvesant over his ban on the Quaker religion (actually, he was arrested), which led Bowne to lend his sliver of Flushing to regular meetings of the Quaker community.

Nothing in Manhattan even come close, although 1764 St. Paul’s Chapel is the oldest surviving church. Did you know it was modeled upon St. Martin-in-the-Fields on London’s Trafalgar Square?

This exhibit is packed with story after story of places you pass all the time. Charlie Parker’s Residence at 151 Avenue B is a landmark, partly because Charlie lived there between 1950-1954, but also because Franz Kline did, too.

Lucky for us, that the City has posted all of the Historic District Maps for each borough. Or go to the interactive city map and click on “Landmarks” to see what’s in your neighborhood. Who knew Greenpoint has the Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District? Adventures await. Get to know a building.

itsnewstoyou

Susan B's advice on what you shouldn't miss in NYC and other museums

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