Yearly Archives: 2012

GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING

Gerhard Richter reveals his creative process in fascinating new documentary (photo courtesy of Kino Lorber)

GERHARD RICHTER PAINTING (Corinna Belz, 2011)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
March 14-27
212-727-8110
www.filmforum.org
www.gerhard-richter-painting.de

There’s nothing abstract about the title of Corinna Belz’s documentary on German artist Gerhard Richter, no missing words or punctuation marks. Gerhard Richter Painting is primarily just that: Ninety-seven minutes of Gerhard Richter painting as he prepares for several exhibitions, including a 2009 show at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York City. In 2007, Belz got a rare chance to capture Richter on camera, making a short film focusing on the stained-glass window he designed for the Cologne Cathedral. Two years later, the shy, reserved German artist, who prefers to have his art speak for itself, invited Belz into his studio, giving her remarkable access inside his creative process, which revealingly relies so much on chance and accident. Belz films Richter as he works on two large-scale canvases on which he first slathers yellow paint, adds other colors, then takes a large squeegee and drags it across the surface, changing everything. It’s fascinating to watch Richter study the pieces, never quite knowing when they are done, unsure of whether they are any good. It’s also painful to see him take what looks like an extraordinary painting and then run the squeegee over it yet again, destroying what he had in order to see if he can make it still better. “They do what they want,” he says of the paintings. “I planned something totally different.” About halfway through the film, a deeply concerned Richter starts regretting his decision to allow the camera into his studio. “It won’t work,” he says. “At the moment it seems hopeless. I don’t think I can do this, painting under observation. That’s the worst thing there is.” But continue he does, for Belz’s and our benefit. Belz (Life After Microsoft) even gets Richter to talk a little about his family while looking at some old photos, offering intriguing tidbits about his early life and his escape to Düsseldorf just before the Berlin Wall went up. Belz also includes clips from 1966 and 1976 interviews with Richter, and she attends a meeting he has with Goodman about his upcoming show, lending yet more insight into the rather eclectic artist. “To talk about painting is not only difficult but perhaps pointless, too,” Richter, who turned eighty last month, says in the 1966 clip. However, watching Gerhard Richter Painting is far from pointless; Belz has made a compelling documentary about one of the great, most elusive artists of our time. “Man, this is fun,” Richter says at one point, and indeed it is; watching the masterful artist at work is, well, a whole lot more fun than watching paint dry. Gerhard Richter Painting opens on March 14 at Film Forum, with Yale School of Art dean Robert Storr introducing the 8:00 screening.

THE KREUTZER SONATA

Hilton McRae gives a virtuoso performance in the Gate Theatre adaptation of the Tolstoy novella THE KREUTZER SONATA

La MaMa First Floor Theatre
74A East Fourth St. between Bowery & Second Ave.
Through March 25, $18
212-475-7710
www.lamama.org

Leo Tolstoy’s 1889 novella, The Kreutzer Sonata, which examines love, jealousy, morality, and manners, was initially banned in both Russia and the United States. But over the years, it has since been made into several films and has inspired paintings, ballets, and musical compositions. In 2009, Nancy Harris adapted it for London’s Gate Theatre, and the intimate production has now crossed the pond, where it continues at La MaMa through March 25. As the audience is still being seated, Pozdynyshev (Hilton McRae) takes the stage, a well-dressed, erudite man carefully preparing a pot of tea on a moving train. For the next eighty minutes, he relates the fateful story of his marriage to a woman (Sophie Scott) he describes as “that one special lady who would stand above all others in virtue, ideals, character, and beauty.” Both feminist and misogynist, Pozdynyshev tells his tale of jealousy and murder almost matter-of-factly, making such grandiose declarations as “Women will never be equal until they’re free of men’s desire, and women will never be free as long as that desire is something they court. Women are slaves who think their shackles are bracelets. And marriage is . . . whoredom with a license.” Pozdynyshev, who freely admits to not being a music lover, describes how when Trukhachevski (Tobias Beer), a childhood acquaintance, suddenly showed up at his door one day, he virtually forced the violinist to spend time with his wife, who had recently taken up the piano again. Very soon Pozdynyshev’s jealousy overwhelms him, leading to tragedy of the most sordid order. Directed by Natalie Abrahami, The Kreutzer Sonata is essentially a one-man show, a virtuoso performance by McRae, who addresses the audience directly, not asking for forgiveness as much as just explaining himself. As he talks about his wife — he regularly begins sentences by calling out, “My wife,” infused with emotion and memory, before going on — and Trukhachevski, they appear either projected on a screen or live behind a scrim, flashbacks come to life. Chloe Lamford’s set, an open train car, practically places the audience on board, as if they are sitting next to Pozdynyshev, traveling companions who will be enraptured for this eighty-minute journey into one man’s soul.

HAPPENINGS: NEW YORK, 1958-1963

Milly Glimcher revisits the Happenings movement at Pace Gallery (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Pace Gallery
534 West 25th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through Saturday, March 17
www.thepacegallery.com

For twenty-five years, the idea of putting on an exhibition detailing the Happenings movement that exploded in New York City during the late 1950s and early 1960s had been percolating inside Milly Glimcher, waiting for the right moment to emerge. That time has come, as the art historian and cofounder of the Pace Gallery (with her husband, Arne) has at last unveiled a surprisingly welcoming show that explores a very specific corner of the development of performance art in downtown Manhattan, complete with all the requisite characters and chaos. Arranged somewhat chronologically by artist, “Happenings: New York, 1958-1963” details extremely low-budget creative gatherings staged by such seminal figures as Red Grooms, Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Carolee Schneeman, and Robert Whitman, with original artwork, photographs, programs, scripts, film clips, advertisements, and other ephemera collected by Glimcher as she met with all of the surviving artists. Many of the photos were taken by Robert McElroy, who died of Alzheimer’s disease shortly after the exhibition opened. Other participants in the events, which took place at such locations as Judson Church, the Reuben Gallery, and the Delancey Street Museum, included Lucas Samaras, Trisha Brown, Tom Wesselman, Yvonne Rainer, and Robert Rauschenberg. Glimcher has done a splendid job curating the exhibition, allowing visitors to delve in as deep as they want as they wander through sections dedicated to Grooms’s “A Play Called Fire,” Dine’s “Car Crash,” Kaprow’s “18 Happenings,” Oldenburg’s “Snapshots from the City,” Schneeman’s “Quarry Transposed,” and others. It would have been easy for “Happenings” to have turned into a “You had to be there” experience, but instead it offers more than just a taste of what it was all like.

PRESIDENT’S FORUM WITH SARAH SZE AND SIDDHARTHA MUKHERJEE

Sarah Sze’s “Random Walk Drawings” are universes unto themselves at Asia Society (photo courtesy Asia Society)

EXPLORING THE CREATIVE PROCESS — A CONVERSATION
Asia Society
725 Park Ave. at 70th St.
Wednesday, March 14, $20, 6:30
Exhibition continues through March 25
212-288-6400
www.asiasociety.org

For more than fifteen years, New York-based visual artist Sarah Sze has been creating fragile, mysterious environments that are their own little worlds. Using found objects and everyday materials, Sze employs her architectural background to build fascinating structures that combine a Rube Goldberg playfulness with what she calls an “anti-monumental” aesthetic, inspired by Japanese gardens and butoh dance. Her show at Asia Society, “Infinite Line,” delves into her creative process through drawing, sculpture, and installation, spread across two galleries. In the smaller room, such drawings and collages as “Guggenheim as a Ruin,” “Funny Feeling,” “Night,” and “Day” are like architectural plans for fantastical cities while recalling traditional Japanese scroll painting. Visitors have to be careful where they walk in the larger gallery — a security guard will make sure you don’t get too close — which is filled with delicate, expansive pieces made of string, stones, laser-engraved paper, Styrofoam cups, a blinking digital clock, bottle caps, colored tape, and other items that examine the intersection of drawing and sculpture through physical space and perspective. The eight “Random Walk Drawings,” which contain such subtitles as “Compass,” “Window,” “Air,” “Water,” and “Eye Chart,” dangle from the ceiling, spread across the floor, emerge from the wall, and even make their way onto the outside balcony overlooking Park Ave. The Boston-born Sze, who has also treated New Yorkers to such outdoor works as “The Triple Point of Water” in the Whitney’s Sculpture Court in 2003, “Corner Plot” at the Scholars’ Gate entrance to Central Park in 2006, and the current “Still Life with Landscape (Model for a Habitat)” bird feeder on the High Line, will be at Asia Society on March 14 for a discussion with her husband, Indian-born author Siddhartha Mukherjee, who won the Pulitzer Prize for his 2010 book, The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, moderated by Asia Society president Vishakha N. Desai. The galleries will remain open until 9:00 that night to allow ticket holders to see the show. If you can’t make it to the event, you can watch the live webcast here.

ARTISTS IN DIALOGUE WITH JOAN JONAS AND KATE GILMORE

Kate Gilmore’s “Break of Day” hangs over the mantelpiece at “The Annual: 2012” at the National Academy (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Wednesday, March 14, $12, 6:30
Exhibition continues through April 29
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org

“The Annual: 2012” at the National Academy, which usually focuses on American painting and sculpture, includes several excellent videos in this year’s exhibition, and two of the featured artists will be on hand March 14 to talk about their work. Longtime avant-garde video and performance artist Joan Jonas, who has had recent major shows at the Queens Museum of Art, MoMA, and Yvon Lambert, has been on the cutting edge for five decades. The Annual is displaying her video installation “Lines in the Sand,” a reimagining of the story of Helen of Troy inspired by H.D.’s “Tribute to Freud” and “Helen in Egypt” and transported to Las Vegas. Kate Gilmore, who was born when Jonas’s career was already in full force (in 1975), is represented at the Annual by “Break of Day,” a video in which she climbs up a white cube into which she drops pots of pink paint.

Joan Jonas’s “Lines in the Sand” installation reimagines the story of Helen of Troy (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The two artists will be at the National Academy on Wednesday at 6:30 for an “Artists in Dialogue” session with moderator Marshall Price, the museum’s curator of modern and contemporary art. Future Annual programs include “On and On and On: Arlene Shechet and Faye Hirsch in Conversation” on March 28 and “Curator’s Insights” on April 11.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: ELLIOTT BROOD AT PIANOS

Elliot BROOD tells poignant stories of war on gorgeous new album

Pianos
158 Ludlow St.
Wednesday, March 14, $8, 11:00
212-505-3733
www.elliottbrood.com
www.pianosnyc.com

Inspired by a five-day trip to military cemeteries and Juno Beach in France while on a 2007 European tour, Toronto trio Elliott BROOD has just released the dazzling Days into Years (Paper Bag, February 28, 2012). The follow-up to 2008’s highly acclaimed Mountain Meadows, the new record tackles issues of life and death during wartime on ten jaunty, rollicking tunes rooted in folk and country, filled with sweet harmonies and expert musicianship from Mark Sasso on guitar, banjo and harmonica, Casey Laforet on guitars, bass, mandolin, banjo, and lap steel, and Stephen Pitkin on percussion and piano. “When we got here we were young men / What we’ve done has made us old / Left to die out in these frozen fields so far away from home / And if I live to see the end / I’m gonna make a brand new start / But I’ll never be the same again without my youthful heart,” they sing on the gorgeous “If I Get Old” over a bouncy, infectious melody. Songs such as “Hold You,” “Will They Bury Us?” and “Northern Air” set the darkness against the light as characters search for home while the grave beckons. “All they sold me was a lie / All they owed me was mine / Still lost in the moonlight,” they sing on “My Mother’s Side,” powered by driving guitars and a fierce beat. A beautiful, poetic tribute to Canadian war veterans and casualties without getting maudlin or preachy, Days into Years is one of the best albums so far of 2012, a stirring collection of roots-based rock that is a must for fans of Neil Young, Railroad Earth, old Wilco, and other country-folk standouts.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Elliott BROOD will be headlining Pianos on the Lower East Side on Wednesday, March 14, on a bill with Pet Lions and Pack Ad. We have two spots on the guest list to give away for free to see this amazing band. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and favorite war-related song to contest@twi-ny.com by Tuesday, March 13, at 5:00 to be eligible to win. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; four winners will be selected at random.

MONDAY NIGHTS WITH OSCAR: CAVALCADE

CAVALCADE gets a rare public screening Monday night as part of Noël Coward in New York festival

CAVALCADE (Frank Lloyd, 1933)
Academy Theater at Lighthouse
111 East 59th St.
Monday, March 12, $5, 7:00
www.oscars.org
www.noelcowardinnewyork.com

Hailed in ads as the “Picture of the Generation,” Frank Lloyd’s 1933 historical family epic, Cavalcade, took home the Academy Award for Best Picture, along with trophies for Best Art Direction (William S. Darling) and Best Director. The tale of the British Marryott clan from 1899 to 1933, the film was based on the 1931 play by Noël Coward and adapted by Russian screenwriter Sonya Levien (State Fair, Oklahoma!) and Hollywood scribe Reginald Berkeley (Dreyfus). Featuring songs by Coward, George M. Cohan, and others, the film earned a Best Actress nod for Diana Wynyard as family matriarch Jane Marryot and also stars Clive Brook, Una O’Connor, and Bonita Granville. The only Best Picture winner not available as a single DVD — it’s part of a three-volume Fox seventy-fifth anniversary package — Cavalcade will get a rare public screening tonight at the Monday Nights with Oscar series at the Academy Theater, hosted by Brad Rosenstein, curator of the exhibition “Star Quality: The World of Noël Coward,” on view at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center through August 18. The screening and the display are part of the Noël Coward in New York festival, which continues with a series of special events including lectures, live performances, staged readings, and a master class at Juilliard.