Well, I’m continuing with the top ten list theme for this week, and I’m giving you my recommendations for 10 art shows in NYC right now, or soon, which I think are pretty cool.
1. Georges Hugnet – “The Love Life of the Spumifers” through Jan 28th at Ubu Gallery –
I’m a big fan of the Surrealists and Hugnet was quite a strong one who never gets much attention. I’ve never seen his work in any show, so this is a rare opportunity to catch one of the better, lesser-known Surrealist’s work in town. This show focuses on his “Spumifer” works, where he painted fanciful fake animals on top of racy postcards (pre-porn, I guess). It works, and they’re pretty cool. Huget had a falling out with Breton, and ridicules him in one of the postcard, turning him into the “Conceited Wooleton” spumifer. Ken Johnsons’s review of the show in the NYT is worth reading, it may be one of his best reviews ever. From the review:
“The theme of beauty and the beast reverberates. It implies that formal beauty is cold, lonely and sterile without the warming vitality of erotic urgency. Christian tradition, however, separated the spiritual and the carnal into the angelic and the demonic. The Spumifers look as if they had escaped from the margins of a Medieval manuscript illumination, from a borderland where miniscule demons were sometimes allowed to cavort freely. They come to rescue and ravish the virginal soul of a modern consciousness still haunted by ghosts of puritanical religious dogma.”
And later still:
“Some Surrealists — Breton in particular — took very seriously their campaign to subvert norms in the service of psycho-social revolution. But Hugnet, unlike Dali, to name another monster of self-importance, had an appealing sense of humor and an allergy to sanctimony. He was playing a sophisticated, subversive game of his own with clichés: those of the classical nude and the kitsch pornography that imitates it; those of framing devices that domesticate expressions of erotic exuberance; and even those of Surrealism itself. Fundamentalism of any kind was Hugnet’s enemy, irreverence his scourge.”
Whew boy, that’s some good writin’. Go see the show.
2. Swanlight by Antony and the Johnsons, presented by MoMA at Radio City Music Hall, One night only – Jan. 26th
The title alone should get you to go. My membership to MoMA paid for itself many times over when I was able to buy advance tickets to this show. I’m a big fan of Antony’s singing, and MoMA is genius to have commissioned him to do this show, and I’m very excited to go see it. From the event description:
“The Museum of Modern Art has commissioned artist/musician Antony to conceive, produce, and perform a large-scale concert and performance event, Swanlights, with Antony and the Johnsons, on Thursday, January 26, 2012, at 8:00 p.m. at Radio City Music Hall.
Featuring a 60-piece orchestra, the performance piece is conceived as a new commission especially developed for the January 26 performance, and an evolution of the highly acclaimed The Crying Light, which was presented at the Manchester Opera House for the 2009 Manchester International Festival.
Envisioned as a meditation on light, nature, and femininity, Swanlights includes songs from all four of Antony and the Johnsons’ albums (self-titled, I am a Bird Now, The Crying Light, and Swanlights), set to symphonic arrangements by Nico Muhly, Rob Moose, and Maxim Moston. It is produced in collaboration with light artist Chris Levine, lighting designer Paul Normandale, and set designer Carl Robertshaw.”
Who would miss that?
3. Weegee: Murder is My Business, at ICP Jan 20 – Sept 2, 2012
I’ve been a fan of the great photographer Weegee since the first time I looked at a photo history book. Weegee captured the seedier side of things, being a news photographer (who developed his prints in his trunk!), but did so most artfully. No reason to give more history here, you probably know it, but this show promises to have some great photos from the ICP’s collection. Not to be missed.
4. The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde at the Metropolitan Museum, Feb 28-June 3, 2012
This here’s a blockbuster show. The kind Museum’s throw to keep the doors open. Nevertheless, it’s worth seeing. The Stein’s were some of the most important patrons of modern art in Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, and therefore funded and collected some of the most important works of the avant-garde. I’ve spoken a lot about how we can still learn a lot from the avant-garde, and here’s a chance to do so. I think there’s something like 200 works to look at, and some of the biggest names are included. Definitely one to see, perhaps a few times, in 2012.
5. Cynthia Hopkins, Songs from This Clement World, St Ann’s Warehouse, May 4, 8pm
I’ve been a huge fan of Cynthia Hopkins since Colin Stanfield introduced her work to me when he played saxophone in her band back about 12 years ago (Colin is now head of the Nantucket Film Festival, for those who don’t know him). I found her mix of punk, rock, blues, country, performance, jazz and….who knows what else, to be pretty amazing. I’ve listened to her perform with Gloria Deluxe and have seen each of her recent performance works at St Ann’s. This is a work-in-porgress for her new performance, and it’s something of a change in direction for her. Her previous works have been very personal (too personal for my taste lately), but this one is looking at climate change and how it impacts more than just her. I’m interested in getting a sample of this new direction, and she’ll be playing some old songs too, so this is a good intro to her if her work (and that of her collaborators) is new to you. She’s also doing a performance at Abrons Art Center on Jan 8 and 10th, but I’m not able to attend those.
6. Rashid Johnson, Rumble, at Hauser & Wirth, Jan 11- Feb 25 – The wife recommended this show to me, but when I read about Rashid’s connection to boxing in the NYT, I was sold. See, it turns out that Rashid learned that the Hauser & Wirth gallery is located inside a townhouse which was once owned by the boxing promoter Don King. Rashid’s father was a boxer and Rashid grew up watching Don King and boxing matches and decided to name the show after the “Rumble in the Jungle” between Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in (former) Zaire in 1974. Being a former boxing fan myself, this gave me a new interest in his work – but trust me, Rashid Johnson is an upcoming art start regardless of this tidbit. He’s a finalist for the Hugo Boss prize and in addition to his growing fame in the art world, he’s doing some film work too, showing ” The New Black Yoga” at this show.
7. Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds, Mary Boone, Jan 7 – Feb 4 – Ai Weiwei’s blockbuster show from the Tate Modern is now in NYC, albeit in a much smaller version. I saw the original show in London, and I went and saw this on opening day this weekend. Truth be told, I’m not the biggest fan of Ai Weiwei’s work here, but I am a huge fan of his activism generally and of the concept behind this project. Gazillions of sunflower seeds – crafted by porcelain artists from China, that’s right – hand-made, hand-painted, little sunflower seeds line the floor of the gallery in a pile about 4 inches thick. You have to see it to understand the enormity of this undertaking. To my mind, it works better in this smaller gallery, compared to the Tate’s Turbine Hall, where it was practically dwarfed by the space (there, the sunflower seeds numbered in the many millions). It’s worth seeing, even if (to my mind) it isn’t the best art. Now, what I do like about it is the unintended conceptual art it has become: Originally, guests could walk on the Sunflowers and pick them up, and take the seeds, but this soon caused a porcelain dust to fill the air, and the Tate decided after a couple of days that they should stop people from interacting with the seeds. This gallery also keeps you off the seeds. To my mind, it’s hilarious that seeds made by relatively poor artists in China could have caused a dust storm that might kill the relatively rich art lovers of the West and now we’re reduced to security guards keeping us away from this potentially lethal art – and with folks reduced to stealing seeds and buying them at auction (yes, I’ve seen this in person). That wasn’t the intent, but pretty cool anyways. On a quick side note: I’m on the board of a nonprofit, Muse Film and Television, that produced a film on Ai Weiwei which premieres at Sundance – Ai Weiwei:Never Sorry, by Alison Klayman (links to video with her). Check it out at Sundance if you have the chance.
8.The Wedding (The Walker Evans Polaroid Project) with Roni Horn, A curatorial composition by Ydessa Hendeles, Andrea Rosen Gallery, til Feb 4. – This is a real gem of a show, and I just caught it this weekend (it’s right across the street from the Ai Weiwei show). Hendeles, who does this sort of thing a lot, was given permission to curate a show of any type she wanted in the Andrea Rosen gallery, with the only stipulation being that she use at least one work from the series of Polaroid photos which Walker Evans took during the last year of his life. She ended up using 83 of them, along with photos from “Bird” by Roni Horn, one amazing Eugene Atget Paris photo, a great set of Eadweard Muybridge animal locomotion series, a giant (really, huge) bird cage/house/Indian Palace, a French model of a cooper’s workshop and the furniture of Gustav Stickley and some other early 20th Century arts and craft movement folks. Sounds like an odd mix, and it kinda is, but it works very well. Pick up the artist booklet at the front desk and read it – some cool connections are written about that you won’t pick up on your own unless you’re a very well-read art scholar. My favorite part of the show are the Evans photos – tiny little Polaroid photos which he took using what many considered to be a toy camera. In an interview quoted in the show’s book, he says that he liked using it because it stripped away all the other stuff and left him to just find the best image. Which he did, and did very well.
9. Eugene Atget at MoMA, Feb 6 – April 9 – If the one photo at Andrea Rosen isn’t enough for you, there’s a whole bevy of Atget photos being exhibited at MoMA starting in February. Atget was a hard-working artist with little recognition when he died. Keep that in mind, struggling artists, as you go to this show. He sold his photos to architects and such, mainly as models, to pay his bills. Man Ray lived down the street from him and loved his work, he convinced Berenice Abbott that he rocked (while she was his intern) and she convinced a wealthy art dealer to finance the purchase of his works, which MoMA then bought, and now you can see what they got – an amazing body of work which ended up influencing the Surrealists, as well as many other artists. Atget considered himself an auteur, and for good reason. I can’t think of a better show to see in NY this year, and can’t wait for this to open. BTW, you can learn more about this history in the book accompanying the “Wedding” show mentioned above, and the photo in that show is not in the MoMA collection, so again, see both.
10.The Radical Camera: New York’s Photo League, 1936 – 1951, The Jewish Museum, through March 25 I can’t believe I haven’t made it to this show yet, it’s been up since November, but to finish this photo-centric must-see list, I mustn’t forget this show. The Photo League was a group of mostly Jewish photographers who in the Thirties decided to turn their lens to documentary photography (and socialist ideals) during a quite tumultuous time in US history. It included folks like Berenice Abbott, Weegee, Paul Strand and many others,and it was quite a collaborative – with dark rooms and shows, lectures and talks. In the late 40s things started getting a little toxic in the US, and some members ended up on blacklists and the league finally closed. But their work remains influential to many, and it seems to me to be quite a timely show. While there, you can also catch Jem Cohen’s “Weights and Measures” his 2006 film, which is quite lovely.
I realize this is quite the male-centric list, although not entirely. It’s also Manhattan heavy on the venues. Sorry, but these are the shows I most want to see/have liked thus far, and that’s just how it seems to have happened. Anyway, I’d most like to hear from you – what other shows should I see that I’m missing? If you’ve seen these, what are your thoughts on the shows?