With NYC declaring a state of emergency blizzard as of 2.30pm Saturday and a virtual lock down on city transport (except underground subway) one feels a pang of grief for so many many out-of-towners who’ve spent oodles of mullah getting to NY to sell their wares just for the weekend:
New York Ceramics and Glass Fair
Video HERE
The Outsider Art Fair
Video HERE
some pics HERE of glass maker Jeff Zimmerman to entertain the time while away the time staying warm and relatively sane editing all my video footage etc etc.
at the NY Ceramics and Glass Fair everyone is entitled to some zzzz'a as well as aaaaa's..;)
'Outsider Art' comes in all shapes, sizes and ummm: denominations.....!;)
Flowers Gallery NYC: opening of THE REAL THING- Juno Calypso's Seaweed Wrap [2015] in background, her seaweed friends in foreground.
Anri Sala at the (New Museum) is strangely a shock of the old, a trope he probably wouldn’t deny. The early ‘films’ on view are in many ways more ‘new’ than the surround sound classical music ‘re-mixes’. At first you may be disappointed- more large multi-screen installation art. The sound then hits you. A little more time and you may think is this all emporor’s new 000111’s? The execution of the music mixing is without criticism. The question is then: how familiar are you with the somewhat familiar Ravel left-hand piano concerto (French Pavilion-Venice Biennale 2013). Or indeed Schönberg ’s Verklärte Nacht . For many, not very!
Sala’s installation does somewhat haunt even a classical musician long after leaving the gallery. A question may be: is it all worth the installation effort? There are countless fabulous extant music re-mixers out there- most recently Vicki Bennett’s People Like Us comes to mind. The late great Pierre Boulez, in a sense, re-mixed Schönberg a la analogue.
Sala clearly has/always had a ‘real-politik’ in mind, though as any great artist, not interested in thrusting such at the visitor/observer. The art gallery is possibly the wrong space for Sala’s dissection/meditation/intersection. William Kentridge created the fantasmagorical real in a Dokumenta warehouse but equally strange music in Marian Goodman’s NY gallery. Goodman is also Sala’s gallerist. And you just somehow wish these installations were atop her gallery, the Met Museum or in a disused something/somewhere in New York City. Deconstructing in a gallery space is really more a shock of the old. Nonetheless don’t be put off by an old shocker! Having said thus: I'd make the same muse re: Instagram. Everything old is new again. Just not quite that everthus.
Literally just around the New Museum’s corner are On Stellar Rays (worth a visit when they open their next show Feb 28) and a fantastic show extended until March at Betty Cuningham travelling from Pittsburg’s Warhol Museum. If early Andre Warhola wasn’t enough there is Dorothy Cantor’s whirring swirling world of the 50s. Her husband Philip Pearlstein’s 2015 world may be an acquired taste but he is still going strong going way back to being Warhol’s flatmate on St. Mark's Place in 1949. Fascinating, fascinating show. Don't miss.
Around the time Warhol was finding his way in 1962, the Hollywood movie musical was still attempting to keep strong. On Sept 10th 2012 dance critic Debra Levine hosted an evening on TCM devoted to the choreography of Jack Cole. She now even more passionately hosts a season of those films and many more at MoMA closing Feb 7. Jack who? isn’t a question asked by anyone in the dance community. He is unofficially the father of Broadway jazz dance. Even Gene Kelly was said to have dropped to his knees at the mention of his name. There is never too too much to say about Mr Jack Cole and there are many who are more than willing. Wayne Cilento introduced Let’s Make Love this afternoon recounting how in a Jack Cole homage show he literally did all the moves of Marilyn Monroe’s My Hear Belongs to Daddy.
There are some really great films in this season. What is fascinating about the 1960 Cinemascope Let’s Make Love is just how wondrous an experience it all is. It was a nightmare for director Geoge Cukor (there’s a photo of Cukor berating Cole on set while Yves Montand calmly looks at his script). Cole recalled waiting for a Monroe who never showed for rehearsals at Carnegie studios and that Daddy was the only number fully rehearsed- everything else ‘winged’ it on set. And yet Cole seemed the man Monroe trusted (apart from Arthur Miller).
If you research a little, everyone has negativity about the film. What they don’t stress in just how amazing and brilliantly comedic it all is. In a way this 'so-termed failure' is a perfect example of Cole working in Hollywood- the whole ‘9yards yin-yang’. Montand is fantastic and Monroe (suffering weight problems at the time-who cares?!) takes your breath away, her eyes always seemingly ablaze with the truth. Bing Crosby, Gene Kelly, Milton Berle tutoring Montand’s billionaire character in order for him to win Amanda’s (Monroe’s) heart by pretending to be a penniless lookalike actor to himself. What’s not to like.
