If you lived in the Cinematheque as I did for six months when there were two -one at the Palais de Chaillot and one at the rue d’Ulm in Paris-there was no way of not falling for Anna Karina erstwhile muse and wife of Godard. Of much longer duration than Jean Seberg, she shared with her the quixotic lawlessness and free spiritedness of girls on the run from the flics and even themselves. Like many of the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers he put women on a pedestal from which they often toppled off. See the writing archive for posts on Breathless, Jules and Jim, and other Nouvelle Vague classics.
Dorrance Dance at the Joyce: a new Nutcracker is the bee's knees
Michelle Dorrance is never content to let things lie. She is mounting her own version of The Nutcracker minus Tchaikovsky plus Duke Ellington and Billie Strayhorn--a jazzy version of the beloved classic. Ok, so maybe there isn't a tree growing to the heavens but there is this heavenly dancer, Josette Wigan Freund— co-creator with Dorrance and Hannah Heller, who plays the Sugar Rum Fairy- and others tapping their way to celestial bliss. I've seen Dorrance at the Joyce before--she takes over the place with her fascinating rhythms.
Image by Matthew Murphy, courtesy Richard Kornberg and Assoc.
Juilliard Dance winter performances
The Juilliard Dance division had its winter culminating last night. All I can say is: I hope there are enough companies to absorb all of these beautiful dancers. Alas, the sameness of the 4 premiere choreographies did not serve the students as well as it might have--writhing, undulating, crazy lifting--but despite that, these talented kids are our hope for a future filled with dynamism. A few things stood out: The freshman class is noticeably more diverse than the other classes. Two choreographers were artists of color. The Misty Copeland effect is present: athletic bodies are now welcome in dance. There is gender diversity and fluidity in all classes, and the 2020 grads sported a lot of facial hair and man buns! The young Juilliard musicians though hidden are equally spectacular. I cannot recommend more highly trying to catch these performances through Sunday. The Nutcracker may be playing next door at five times the price but you will have just as much joy at Juilliard.
Gaffe Hall adds architects but subtracts art
The saga of the re-do of David Geffen Hall formerly known as Philharmonic Hall and Avery Fisher Hall is a long and tortured one. The #Hall was never beloved and now Deborah Borda has come from LA with her excellent musical bona fides adding Todd Williams and Billie Tsien to redo some of the lobby and public spaces, adding to an already full complement of architectural teams. They, of the recently torn down Folk Art Museum replaced by MoMA's new wing should therefore know better than to eliminate the Richard Lippold sculpture. You might better know Lippold from his marvelous Four Seasons restaurant sculpture which hangs over the bar (still extant in the current The Grill iteration). I am hoping they will reconsider and find a way to make use of it in the new Geffen Hall. I think David would like it!
Manet at The Getty
The exhibition of late Manet at the Getty is brighter and gayer than his more classical palette but it still holds many charms. One painting in particular, a portrait of the opera singer Emilie Ambre dressed as Carmen hailing from Philadelphia reminded me of how sloppily I now dress for flamenco class when in fact I should be going all out with the mantilla and flowers. When I dance the guajira, the fan dance, I do not look like Emilie. When he finished the portrait Manet wrote to a friend, "Come up tomorrow on your way home, I've a primadonna for you to meet". Manet died of complications of syphilis, this painter of modern life whose admiration of shapely legs under a Parisian cafe table must have haunted him when they had to amputate his leg just before his death. The gaiety of the images in this show then belies the declining state of his health, almost as if it was a counterweight.
Isaac Julien takes a look at Bo Bardi
Isaac Julien is introducing his evocative 9-screen video composite about Lina Bo Bardi at Art Basel. Two actresses inhabit this dynamic innovator of 20th century architecture, design and unusually brave prose, an Italian who embraced Brazil both for its modernist innovation and its ethnic heritage. Bo Bardi is also the subject of a just opened drawing show at the Carnegie and an upcoming show in 2020 at MCAChicago which is traveling from Sao Paolo, her home, via Jumex, but Julien takes his inspiration also from Salvador where a number of Bo Bardi sites are decaying. This is something not to miss if you are in Miami.
Photo courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London/Venice.
Dana Schutz at Art Basel
This new Dana Schutz painting which Petzel has at Basel jumped out at me--but then Dana's paintings always do. Titled Forever 21, its newer more fluid forms still pack the Schutz punch. In trying to decipher it, I brought my own desires to go back to 21, and I'm told that indeed, the painting is about a woman who is jealous of her own online profile. That hovering turquoise object is a flat screen, and the golden cherub is her digital presence. In the looking glass--is that her older self? Schutz has had more than her share of online hazing--but certainly we all want to be 21 again, though I'm not sure about forever. However: the recent Japanese buyer who flipped Dana's painting at auction is mad--a Schutz is a forever keeper.
Lola Picasso at Sotheby's
Having worked as a producer on a PBS documentary on Picasso in conjunction with the grand Bill Rubin curated MoMA retrospective after his death I thought I had seen so many of the early Picassos. But this beautiful one of 1901 of his younger sister Lola was new to me. It's provenance shows that it was first owned by Olivier Sainsere, one of Picasso's earliest collectors and later, by Paul Mellon. Her glance, which is both sober and haunting, is but one view of this very beautiful woman but Picasso was still suffering from the death of his best friend Casagemas and was gradually working his way into his full-on blue period. Here the background is more muted and her left eye is almost drifting, looking towards something she too is possibly concerned about. Auctions sometimes give us the chance for a glimpse of things we would never get to see otherwise and this jewel of a painting is a prime example of that.
The Lives of Lucian Freud: a new biography is in the room with Freud
The Lucian Freud who appears in the first of two volumes of his new biography The Lives of Lucian Freud is raw and unfiltered. It's practically a memoir as writer William Feaver was able to have countless conversations with Freud over the years on the record. Freud was an extremely talented but extremely complicated artist and man, the two interleaved more often than not. He is legendary for his many women and children, but also for his exquisite portraits which sucked the life out of the sitters as much as their crags and folds. Sitting for Freud--days and weeks on end--was clearly a trial but people did it, seemingly uncomplainingly. I wish I could be transported to the important show of self-portraits now on view at the Royal Academy in London, but it will be coming to MFA Boston in February so there's hope.
Troy Schumacher's The Auditions at Peak Performances
Troy Schumacher’'s vibrant, provocative new ballet The Auditions to a new score by Augusta Thomas had its world premiere this week at the Kasser Theater at Montclair State--the not-so-secret home for some of the most dynamic cultural programming and well worth the short trip to New Jersey. Schumacher has had something of a breakthrough with this piece. It was programmed to be responsive to the Graham 75th anniversary production of Appalachian Spring but fully stands on its own and deserves to be widely seen. Dancers--and the glorious Graham dancers show they can shine in anything-- in street clothes inhabit the stress of the modern world while as a sherbet-style palate cleanser, fairies in turquoise netting slowly aggregate and look towards an uncertain future. The choreography is alternately smart and showy and dreamy and summons many discursive and engaging thoughts.
Paul Pfeiffer brings the U Georgia Redcoat marching band to the Apollo
As part of Performa 2019, conceptual artist Paul Pfeiffer brought 50 members of the U of Georgia Redcoat marching band to the Apollo theater in Harlem to infiltrate the theater and our deepest rhythms. The genius of the juxtaposition of the largely white band with the almost entirely black football team—seen at the Apollo on a live stream as the band played synchronized with its other half at the Sanford Stadium in Athens in the storied home to black artists was impossible to miss.
Audience members were encouraged to roam the theater, encountering pods of Bulldog band members in the basement, backstage, on stairwells and balconies. They recreated the program of this past Saturday’s game—which they won. Pfeiffer who is a sports fan, brought the game to us.
For those who love a marching band like me but can take or leave a football game, it was the best of all worlds. For the French couple sitting next to me, it was harder to parse as they knew nothing of the way a marching band both signals plays on the field and rewards touchdowns or yardage. Still, everyone seemed to enter into this original pairing with gusto, and the bands enthusiastic, dynamic playing which included their typical chanting, cheering and moves.
David Adjaye at Columbia University
In front of a packed house at Columbia University, David Adjaye presented three projects. One of his already well known Museum of African American History and #Culture in DC. One, the upcoming Studio Museum in Harlem which carves a new building in an old space on 125th St. But the one that was most exceptional from a design standpoint were the three religious structures he is designing known as 'the abrahamic family house', which will be located on Abu Dhabi's Saadiyat Island comprised of a church, a mosque and a synagogue. These are structures that look back to sixties palaces like the Music Center of LA and Lincoln Center, white clad buildings with golden interiors, but as they are adjacent to the projects that have had difficult trajectories (Gehry, Nouvel, Foster, Hadid's no longer), they will--as Adjaye hopes--stand as symbols for a new way of working in the Emirates.
Lola Picasso at Sotheby's
Having worked as a producer on a PBS documentary on Picasso in conjunction with the grand Bill Rubin curated MoMA retrospective after his death, I thought I had seen so many of the early Picassos. But this beautiful one of 1901 of his younger sister Lola was new to me. Its provenance shows that it was first owned by Olivier Sainsere, one of Picasso's earliest collectors and later, by Paul Mellon. Her glance, which is both sober and haunting, is but one view of this very beautiful woman, but Picasso was still suffering from the death of his best friend Casagemas and was gradually working his way into his full-on blue period. Here the background is more muted and her left eye is almost drifting, looking towards something she too is possibly concerned about. But he image of her in her traditional black mantilla is ambiguous on that point.
I checked with Marilyn McCully, who had been an advisor on our film and who is considered the expert on Picasso's early Spanish years. She said, "Picasso was always close to his sister, and he kept up with her children later in life, when two of her sons left Spain at the end of the Civil War for France. She was married to a doctor called Juan Vilató and they had seven children: Fin and Xavier, both became artists. Lola and her husband eventually settled in Barcelona, and she became the “head” of the family, in a sense, after their mother died in 1939. As a girl, Lola was Picasso’s principal model, and she also did drawings in the late 1890s.This suggests that Picasso painted the little panel in Barcelona and then took it with him to Paris (there were other small works he brought with him) in the spring of 1901. There is no evidence this painting was in the Vollard show (the first 'big show’ which Sotheby's suggests it was). Auctions sometimes give us the chance for a glimpse of things we would never get to see otherwise, and this jewel of a painting is a prime example of that. It goes under the hammer tomorrow night.
Black Power at The Broad
This 1965 painting by Norman Lewis opens the install of the Black Power show at The Broad. Its title, Processional, evokes the Selma marches but it also has an unusual affinity with Italian Futurism as if Boccioni or Balla had catapulted further into the 20th century. The galleries were filled with a processional of African American clusters of friends and parents showing their children the rich artistic history which paralleled the Civil Rights movement. It was as if the artists were speaking directly to future generations- so a futurism of a different, but very moving sort.
Anni Albers: A Visionary
Anni Albers was first known as her husband Joseph’s wife. The Bauhaus was purportedly egalitarian however and though textiles largely a female ghetto, the many exhibitions of her innovative work since then prove her intrinsic worth as a designer. A new exhibition at David Zwirner gallery tells the tale. Photo courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery.
Kader Attia at Berkeley
Kader Attia’s work asks: How do individuals and social bodies enact a process of healing after having suffered both physically and psychologically during major political conflicts? A new exhibition at Berkeley Arts Studio explores the French Algerian artist’s work.
Long Live Woodstock!
PBS #AmericanExperience takes on Woodstock on August 6, and you’re smiling the whole time. The original Woodstock film was a totem in my life as it represented not only the music and the generation but home when I was living far away. Now, they have gathered up the founders (notably missing Michael Lang’s voice) and dived back into the late sixties, a time of terrible troubles (Vietnam, assassination) but also a time of #rebellion and change. The music is there but not the focal point. This time it’s the hundreds of thousands of people who attended and the town that took them in. Every generation needs to see this film, (and the original too), a testament to a very different time. #WavyGravy forever!
Photo courtesy of Elliott Landy
Lari Pittman
It's with particular pride that Angelenos who have known of Lari Pittman both as a painter of consummate skill and intelligence as well as a professor at UCLA who has launched so many other careers can now point to the Hammer Museum's coming retrospective of his work. Pittman's work was social media clickbait long before social media even existed and in this and many other ways he presaged so many different strands of the current artistic climate. MoCA's coming Pattern and Decoration show will complement this one, so it's a good time to visit.
Vera Paints at the Museum of Arts and Design
There was a tug at my heart when I saw the press release for this exhibition of the designer Vera Neumann at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York in my in box. I remembered all the tablecloths and scarves I had given away after my mother died, among them many examples of Vera’s work of the 1960s. My mother wore scarves the way some people wear a bra and undies: as if it were a truly necessary part of her daily wardrobe, something that at first enhanced, then possibly served to disguise her neck. (See Nora Ephron on necks). I went to the closet to look to see if by chance I had saved any, but no. The scarves went to my aunt Mitzi and the tablecloths and napkins to Housing Works. I couldn’t keep everything.
We knew Vera by her first name, like any other kind of diva. She was a star but one who radiated inclusiveness. Vera was more or less a cottage industry with her husband George. She had inherited the mantle of the Bauhaus—the fusion of design with the everyday—and so middle class moms like mine could have access to nice things too.
Vera wasn’t Cardin, or Gernreich or Quant, but rather someone who took pleasure in flowers and natural things. She wasn’t trying for the cutting edge. And of course, I love her fish most of all.
Pierre Cardin at the Brooklyn Museum
“Buy belt at Pierre Cardin.”
This short phrase comes from a list I made my junior year abroad in Paris. It was, however, loaded with complexity. I thought of Pierre Cardin as the very height of chic but I wore jeans, and only jeans at the time, and considered anything north of jeans a betrayal of the political principles I had silently sworn to uphold. I had gone to Biba and Mary Quant, but that was swingin’ London and somehow this was different. It was Paris and Ready to Wear. As a result, it stayed on the list for quite some time, as I had to get up my nerve to actually go to the right bank and into the very chic boutique. My aunt’s birthday was the excuse I needed to cross this Rubicon.
Cardin had opened the futuristic Espace Cardin near the American Embassy. He was inspired by NASA uniforms. The clothes were sculpted and space age, some with cut outs or with checkerboard patterns that made you dizzy just to look at them. A salesgirl wearing a black and white geometric print and white booties glided over to me. “I’m looking for a belt,” I said, somewhat defiantly into outer space lest I get vertigo from the op art of her dress. “It’s a present,” I stated loudly for the record since I wanted everyone to know I thought anyone who owned a dress just for cocktails was hopelessly bourgeois.
I looked around while she was wrapping the present. I desperately wanted to be able to afford one of these beauties and have the courage to wear it too. Truthfully I was tired of marching and the Revolution. I loved clothes and fashion.
Like Mary Quant and Rudi Gernreich, Cardin wanted to democratize fashion. He was interested in theater and design in general. At 97, he can be considered one of the last survivors of this era of fashion, which was largely a reaction to the stuffiness of previous decades, e.g. tight wasp waists, full skirts and nipped in jackets or ruffled gowns.
A new exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum has brought this all back to me. I’m very much looking forward to seeing it.
Images courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum.