twi-ny recommended events

ART AT A TIME LIKE THIS: LIVESTREAM CONVERSATION WITH JERRY SALTZ

Jerry Saltz will discuss his new book and the state of art during the age of corona in live online conversation (photo courtesy Jerry Saltz)

Who: Jerry Saltz, Barbara Pollack, Anne Verhallen
What: Book and art talk with Jerry Saltz
Where: Livestream (email info@artatatimelikethis for password)
When: Friday, April 17, free, 4:00
Why: Rock star art critic Jerry Saltz’s latest book has come along at just the right moment. How to Be an Artist (Riverhead Books, March 2020, $22) guides you through the creation of art — by anyone, regardless of talent and skill — espousing a dedicated work ethic, something that many of us are paradoxically demonstrating more than ever now that we’re stuck at home. “I have tried every way in the world to stop work-block or fear of working, of failure. There is only one method that works: work. And keep working,” Saltz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning senior art critic for New York magazine, writes in the book. “Every artist and writer I know claims to work in their sleep. I do all the time. Jasper Johns famously said, ‘One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag, and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it.’ How many times have you been given a whole career in your dreams and not heeded it? It doesn’t matter how scared you are; everyone is scared. Work. Work is the only thing that takes the curse of fear away.”

On March 17, Barbara Pollack and Anne Verhallen launched Art at a Time Like This, a website that features the work of a different artist every weekday, focusing on the question “How can you think of art at a time like this?” Among the participating artists are Ai Weiwei, Mickalene Thomas, Jacolby Satterwhite, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Dread Scott & Jenny Pollak, Marilyn Minter, and Dan Perjovschi, presenting new and older paintings, photographs, and videos, all of which illuminate in some way the crisis we are facing together, the onslaught of Covid-19, which has shut down galleries and museums around the world.

how to be an artist

A social media icon, Saltz will join Pollack and Verhallen on April 17 at 4:00 for a live online conversation about the state of art on a planet in lockdown. “Jerry Saltz is a natural for livestream because he is the completely accessible art critic, dedicated to reaching all kinds of art lovers, from the aficionado to the art-curious,” Pollack told twi-ny. “His new book puts forth the insane idea that anyone can be an artist, or at least artistic. Of course, people love him for this!”

As someone who has been writing about art for nearly twenty years, I’ve been forced to reconsider how we all experience art during this pandemic, looking at it onscreen, right next to Facebook, Google, and my day-job site. Obviously it’s not the same, and I have to admit I at first had trouble adjusting, but I’m getting more used to it every day. But can you critique a work of art you’ve seen only online, not in person? When viewed in real life, you can sense a painting’s texture, its physical presence; a photograph can envelop you and shake your surroundings loose; and videos can beam out from unique sculptural installations. But when is the next time any of us is likely to step foot in a gallery or museum in the five boroughs (or elsewhere)? What will things be like once they do reopen? Will crowds descend on MoMA and the Met like they did before corona?

In his October review of the new MoMA for New York magazine, a piece entitled, “What Does the New MoMA Mean for Modernism? And What Was Modernism Anyway?,” Saltz wrote, “Here’s how art has already moved on. Modernism is now just part of art history to artists, and not even the only or best part.” How will art move on after Covid-19? What will become part of art history? I can’t wait to hear what Saltz has to say about what will become of art’s future.

HUMP DAY WITH HAMPSHIRE: Featuring Emily Hampshire, Michelle Visage, Ross Mathews, and Katherine Moennig

Newly minted talk show host Emily Hampshire is obsessed with her bitmoji

Who: Michelle Visage, Ross Mathews, Katherine Moennig, host Emily Hampshire
What: Hump Day livestreamed talk show benefiting the Actors Fund
Where: The Actors Fund YouTube page
When: Wednesday, April 15, suggested donation, 2:00
Why: Schitt’s Creek might be over, but you can still keep getting your Emily Hampshire fix on Wednesdays during the pandemic with Hump Day with Hampshire, a livestreamed talk show hosted by Hampshire, who played everyone’s favorite motelier, Stevie Budd, on the Canadian comedy. On April 15 at 2:00, Hampshire, who also starred in 12 Monkeys, Made in Canada, and Blood, will be joined by singer, author, and radio and TV personality Michelle Visage (RuPaul’s Drag Race, Strictly Come Dancing), author and podcaster Ross Mathews (The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, RuPaul’s Drag Race), and actress Katherine Moennig (The L Word, Ray Donovan). In addition to virtual interviews, be on the lookout for such games as “Show Us Your Junk (Drawer),” “What Is Your quarROUTINE,” and “Phone a Friend Roulette.” The series is a benefit for the Actors Fund, so if you can, please donate, although you don’t have to in order to watch and enjoy.

“I couldn’t ask for a better creative distraction than hosting a show that not only helps raise money for an important cause but also lets me connect with a dream-team roster of guests without having to leave my apartment or even put on pants!” Hampshire, who is utterly charming as host, said in a statement. “There’s such an insane amount of stress in the world right now, and if we can do something a little fun for all the stir-crazy people out there and help the industry, that means everything to me.” You can also catch up with previous episodes; Bobby Berk, Sophia Bush, Annie Murphy, and Adam Rippon appeared on April 1 and Gigi Gorgeous, Noah Reid, Sarah Levy, and Lance Bass on April 8.

OUR BRILLIANT FRIENDS AFTER DINNER BOOK CLUB AND WATCH PARTY

watch party

Who: Ann Goldstein, Michael Reynolds, Alexander Chee, Sarah Treem
What: Live discussion, reading, and watch party to benefit #SaveIndieBookstores
Where: McNally Jackson Zoom meeting
When: Monday, April 13, advance registration required here, suggested donation $5 and up, 9:00
Why: Fans of Elena Ferrante’s novels, which include The Days of Abandonment, The Story of a New Name, and The Lost Daughter, will gather online on April 13 at 9:00 for a book club and watch party hosted by Ferrante’s publisher, Europa Editions, along with City Lights Books in San Francisco, the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, and McNally Jackson Books here in New York City. The event begins at 9:00 with a live conversation and chat about Ferrante’s work and the HBO adaptation My Brilliant Friend, followed at 9:50 by a reading from her latest book, The Lying Life of Adults (Europa Editions, November 2019, $26) and a watch party at 10:00 of episode five of the second season of the series, The Betrayal, which is directed by Italian auteur Alice Rohrwacher, the writer-director of such international successes as Heavenly Body, The Wonders, and Happy as Lazzaro. (Note that the show will not be aired over the livestream but must be watched over HBO.) The discussion features Ferrante’s English-language translator, Ann Goldstein, who will read an excerpt from the new novel; Europa editor in chief Michael Reynolds; writer, professor, and poet Alexander Chee; and writer and producer Sarah Treem (The Affair, In Treatment). The mysterious and elusive, pseudonymous Ferrante will not be participating, of course. Suggested donation is $5 (or more if you can afford it), with all proceeds benefiting #SaveIndieBookstores.

FOCUS MOVIE MONDAYS: MOONRISE KINGDOM (Watch Party with Wes Anderson Q&A)

Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) and Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) are on the run in Wes Anderson’s delightful Moonrise Kingdom

MOONRISE KINGDOM (Wes Anderson, 2012)
Monday, April 13, free, 5:00
www.facebook.com/events
www.eifoundation.org

As part of Focus Features’ free Movie Mondays livestreaming series, director Wes Anderson will participate in a Q&A on April 13 following a 5:00 watch party for his 2012 gem, Moonrise Kingdom. In such unique films as Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, and The Grand Budapest Hotel, black-comedy master Anderson has created a bizarre collection of characters who seem to live in their own alternate realities. In Moonrise Kingdom, he has once again assembled an oddball assortment of men, women, and children in a terrifically clever and entertaining fairy tale all its own. Tired of being abused by his fellow Khaki Scouts and dismissed by his foster parents, twelve-year-old orphan Sam Shakusky (Jared Gilman) runs away from Camp Ivanhoe on the island of New Penzance, much to the chagrin of dedicated scout master Randy Ward (Edward Norton). Meanwhile, twelve-year-old loner Suzy Bishop (Kara Hayward) is fed up with her life as well, which she mostly spends listening to Benjamin Britten, reading fairy tales (fictitious stories made up by Anderson), watching the world through a pair of ever-present binoculars, and despising her parents (Bill Murray and Frances McDormand).

Afraid of what might have happened to the children, the local police officer, Captain Sharp (Bruce Willis), gets involved, as does a stern woman from social services (Tilda Swinton) and, eventually, a very different kind of scout, Cousin Ben (Jason Schwartzman). The proceedings are overseen by a narrator (Bob Balaban) who ends up being more than just an omniscient presence. Moonrise Kingdom is an absolute gem of a film, an exciting, original tale about growing up, told in a fabulously funny, deadpan manner that combines slapstick humor with wildly ironic elements, filled with the endless wonders of childhood, although it is most definitely not for children. Newcomers Gilman and Hayward appear wise beyond their years in the lead roles, with outstanding support from an all-star cast, most prominently Norton as the by-the-book scout master on a mission. Written by Anderson with Roman Coppola and featuring a lovely score by Alexandre Desplat, Moonrise Kingdom is one of the best films of 2012, by a director whose imagination never ceases to amaze. Focus Movie Mondays continues April 20 with Kevin Smith’s Mallrats and April 27 with Paweł Pawlikowski’s My Summer of Love.

REMARKABULL PODVERSATIONS: “QUEEN MAB” WITH MICHAEL URIE

Who: Michael Urie, Nathan Winkelstein
What: Live discussion of “Queen Mab” speech from Romeo & Juliet
Where: Red Bull Theater’s website, Vimeo, Facebook (and Zoom for up to fifty participants; requires advance registration here)
When: Monday, April 13, free, 7:30
Why: Red Bull Theater’s RemarkaBULL Podversations streaming series kicks off April 13 at 7:30 with actor Michael Urie discussing Mercutio’s “Queen Mab” speech from William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet with host Nathan Winkelstein, the company’s associate producer. Red Bull specializes in Jacobean and Shakespearean works; Urie (Ugly Betty, Buyer & Cellar) starred in the troupe’s 2017 adaptation of Nikolai Gogol’s 1836 satire, The Government Inspector. The monologue, delivered in Act 1, Scene 4, begins: “O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you. / She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes / In shape no bigger than an agate-stone / On the fore-finger of an alderman, / Drawn with a team of little atomies / Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep.” Urie portrayed Mercutio in Folger Theatre’s 2005 production of the play, directed by PJ Paparelli. If you want to participate in the live chat, you need to register in advance for the Zoom feed here.

HENRY WARD BEECHER MONUMENT

Longtime Brooklyn minister Henry Ward Beecher is honored with statue in Columbus Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Columbus Park
Cadman Plaza near Johnson St.
www.nycgovparks.org
www.mas.org

“It is not what we take up, but what we give up, that makes us rich,” American abolitionist, orator, minister, and social reformer Henry Ward Beecher said. The eminently quotable Connecticut native and longtime Brooklynite would most likely have a lot to say about the novel coronavirus, particularly this Easter weekend as many churches around the country remain open, declining suggestions and even local regulations regarding social distancing.

“To array a man’s will against his sickness is the supreme art of medicine.”

Beecher first served as a Presbyterian minister in Indiana before moving to Plymouth Church in Brooklyn in 1847. He advocated for evolution, science, and woman suffrage and against slavery while also generating a spectacular sexual scandal. Beecher was a celebrity preacher, and he got a lot of press; he was even popularized in limericks, such as this fine one from English writer and artist Oliver Herford: “Said a great congregational preacher / To a hen, ‘You’re a beautiful creature.’ / And the hen, just for that, / Laid an egg in his hat, / And thus did the Hen reward Beecher.”

“Expedients are for the hour, but principles are for the ages.”

Master sculptor John Quincy Adams Ward, who designed statues of George Washington at Federal Hall, Horace Greeley in City Hall Park, William Earl Dodge in Bryant Park, Roscoe Conkling in Madison Square Park, and William Shakespeare, the Indian Hunter, and the Pilgrim in Central Park, honored Beecher with a monument dedicated at Borough Hall in 1891 and relocated to Columbus Park in 1959; the face was modeled after a death mask Ward made of Beecher on March 8, 1887, when the minister died at the age of seventy-three.

“Law represents the effort of man to organize society; governments, the efforts of selfishness to overthrow liberty.”

In a closed-off grassy area, Ward’s figure of Beecher stands proudly on a Barre granite plinth designed by architect Richard Morris Hunt. Beecher is dressed in an Inverness cloak, arms at his side, staring off into the distance, his eyes on the future. To his right, a young black woman places a palm branch on the pedestal at his feet, while to his left a pair of white children offer a garland. The unpunctuated inscription on the back reads: “The grateful gift of the multitudes of all classes creeds and conditions at home and abroad to honor the great apostle of the brotherhood of man.” The sculpture was restored in 2017 and 2019 as part of the Municipal Art Society of New York’s Adopt-a-Monument/Mural program.

Henry Ward Beecher monument undergoes restoration in 2019 (photo courtesy Municipal Art Society of New York)

“There is no faculty of the human soul so persistent and universal as that of hatred.”

Beecher, the son of Presbyterian minister Lyman Beecher and brother of Uncle Tom’s Cabin author Harriet Beecher Stowe, is surrounded by several other prominent works, including Anneta Duveen’s 1972 bust of Robert F. Kennedy, S. Hemming’s 1973 bas relief of Brooklyn Bridge builder Washington A. Roebling, a 1965 marker paying tribute to former Brooklyn borough president John Cashmore, and Emma Stebbins’s large-scale 1867 statue of park namesake Christopher Columbus, rising atop a giant plinth by architect Aymar Embury II.

“When a nation’s young men are conservative, its funeral bell is already rung.”

Beecher, who is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery, wrote such books as Notes from Plymouth Pulpit, Summer in the Soul, Yale Lectures on Preaching, Evolution and Religion, and the novel Norwood, or Village Life in New England. One can only wonder what he would say today about what is happening in Brooklyn and all over the world as a pandemic rages among the populace and divides people along political and religious lines.

“We should not judge people by their peak of excellence; but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.”

JEAN-MARIE APPRIOU: THE HORSES

Jean Marie-Appriou’s Public Art Fund commission sits at the entrance to Central park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Scholars’ Gate, Doris C. Freedman Plaza
Central Park entrance, 60th St. & Fifth Ave.
Through August 30, free
www.publicartfund.org
online slideshow

Most of us rarely see horses without a human on top of them or pulling a carriage. A jockey on a racehorse. A cowboy galloping across the plains. An equestrian jumping at Madison Square Garden. A cop at a parade. At Grand Army Plaza near the Sixtieth St. entrance to Central Park on Fifth Ave., William Tecumseh Sherman sits proudly on his horse Ontario in Augustus Saint Gaudens’s shimmering, gilded 1903 bronze monument of the Civil War hero, rising high on Charles McKim’s granite base, led by the figure of a crowned Victory. Nearby, hansom cab drivers line up to take lovers and families on carriage rides through the park, a controversial profession that continued to operate well into the coronavirus epidemic. “As we face an unprecedented crisis of contagion, it is shocking that carriage drivers still cram tourists into small carriages and give them shared, reused blankets, with the driver seated just inches ahead of them,” Alec Baldwin wrote in a letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio when they were still in business. “This reckless disregard may well fuel the spread of the coronavirus to both New Yorkers and unwitting visitors from across the country.” NYC Horse Carriage Rides ultimately announced they were shutting down on March 25.

“Le Guerrier” (“The Warrior”) displays his unique headgear in equine installation (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Near the troublesome spectacle of the carriages and the majestic equestrian Sherman, French artist Jean Marie-Appriou has installed his first New York City public commission, The Horses at Scholars’ Gate on Doris C. Freedman Plaza, at the start of the path that leads to the zoo. The thirty-three-year-old Paris-based sculptor references multiple aspects of Equus ferus in the cast aluminum work, which consists of three parts that incorporate Symbolism, mythology, and a touch of alchemy.

Jean Marie-Appriou’s The Horses invites visitors to walk under, around, and through them (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The trio of silvery sculptures is centered by “Le Guerrier” (“The Warrior”), a sixteen-foot-high armored horse that has twisted its skinny body to form a gateway into and out of the park. On one side of it is “Les Amants au Bois” (“The Lovers in the Woods”), the bottom half of two horses, melded together, their flat tops like vacant plinths. On the other side is “Le Joueur” (“The Player”), relaxing on the ground like a caped Sphinx waiting to be worshiped. The detail on the horses is impressive, from their hooves to the shaffron and ribcage of horse heads of “Les Amants au Bois,” from the intricate leaves and bugs on “Le Joueur” to the bumps and thumbprints that reveal the hand of the artist and the casting process, which involved clay and foam models.

Detailed inspection of The Horses offers cool surprises (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“The playful horse, the war horse, they are not horses as they are often represented in art history, as very brave,” Appriou, who has also installed outdoor works in France, Switzerland, and Miami, explains in a Public Art Fund video. “They are crouching, they are a bit scared, they hang their heads as they are approaching the spectator. It’s more like horses stepping down from the base, that do not radiate power, nor are they objects that valorize a soldier or a general.”

Augustus Saint Gaudens’s golden statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman can be seen through “Le Guerrier” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Passersby are encouraged to interact with the horses, even invited to sit on “Le Joueur,” although you should probably avoid that during the coronavirus pandemic. But you can walk under, through, and around them and glory in the sheer beauty and grandeur of the animals. It’s tempting to think about hopping on one of them and riding off into the sunset, like at the end of a Clint Eastwood Western, venturing into another world, far away from the myriad challenges of this one, amid echoes of Richard III crying out, “A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!”