The life and career of influential artist and collector Claude Simard will be celebrated at Jack Shainman Gallery on May 17
Who: Hank Willis Thomas, Leslie Wayne, Sarah Douglas, Ian Berry, Jack Shainman
What: Roundtable discussion in conjunction with “If I Had Possession over Judgement Day: Collections of Claude Simard,” running through September 24 at the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College
Where: Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 West 20th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., 212-645-1701
When: Wednesday, May 17, free with RSVP, 6:30
Why: In September 2014, influential gallerist and artist Claude Simard, the cofounder of Jack Shainman Gallery (first in DC, then NYC), passed away suddenly at the age of fifty-eight. In conjunction with the new exhibition “If I Had Possession over Judgement Day: Collections of Claude Simard,” at the Tang Museum at Skidmore, Jack Shainman Gallery will host a roundtable discussion on Simard, with artists Hank Willis Thomas and Leslie Wayne and ARTnews editor in chief Sarah Douglas, a former assistant to Simard and Shainman. The event will be hosted by Tang director and exhibition curator Ian Berry, and Shainman will be in attendance. “Simard dedicated over thirty years of his life to engaging with and enriching the lives of artists as both muse and patron,” the exhibition website explains. “His voracious drive to collect and discover resulted in a sizable collection of art and artifacts from across centuries and continents.” The Skidmore show features works by John Ahearn, Matthew Barney, Alighiero e Boetti, Nick Cave, Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Leon Golub, Kerry James Marshall, Roberto Matta, Chris Ofili, Gabriel Orozco, Nancy Spero, Jessica Stockholder, Wayne, Thomas, and many others. You can read the reactions of Skidmore students to specific works in the show here. Currently on view at Jack Shainman is “Becky Suss: Homemaker.”
“You call this a film?” Jafar Panahi asks rhetorically about halfway through the revealing documentary This Is Not a Film. After several arrests beginning in July 2009 for supporting the opposition party, the highly influential and respected Iranian filmmaker (Crimson Gold, Offside) was convicted in December 2010 for “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic.” Although facing a six-year prison sentence and twenty-year ban on making or writing any kind of movie, Panahi is a born storyteller, so he can’t stop himself, no matter the risks. Under house arrest, Panahi has his friend, fellow director Mojtaba Mirtahmasb (Lady of the Roses), film him with a handheld DV camera over ten days as Panahi plans out his next movie, speaks with his lawyer, lets his pet iguana climb over him, and is asked to watch a neighbor’s dog, taking viewers “behind the scenes of Iranian filmmakers not making films.” Panahi even pulls out his iPhone to take additional video, photographing New Year’s fireworks that sound suspiciously like a military attack. Panahi is calm throughout, never panicking (although he clearly does not want to take care of the barking dog) and not complaining about his situation, which becomes especially poignant as he watches news reports on the earthquake and tsunami disaster in Japan.
Writer, actor, and former cabaret star Josef Hader gives a deeply intelligent, intensely gentle and thoughtful performance as Austrian writer Stefan Zweig in Maria Schrader’s moving biopic, Stefan Zweig: Farewell to Europe, opening May 12 at Lincoln Plaza. The episodic film follows the exiled Jewish writer as he and his second wife, Lotte (Aenne Schwarz), try to find a new home as Fascism takes hold across Europe. He is a man without a country, and it profoundly troubles him; he grows more and more brittle over the course of a prologue, four chapters, and an epilogue that follows him from Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires to Bahia, New York, and Petrópolis between 1936 and 1942. But none of them is his beloved Austria. “Apart from the personal joys your country has given me, apart from its beauty, its daring architecture . . . there is an even more powerful impression that I would like to share with you,” he tells Brazilian foreign minister José Carlos de MacedoSoares (Virgílio Castelo) and an adoring crowd gathered around a gorgeously designed long table for a celebration in his honor at the Jockey Club in Rio. “Every nation, in every generation — and therefore ours too — must find an answer to the most simple and vital question of all: How do we achieve a peaceful coexistence in today’s world despite all our differences in race, class, and religion? And it seems to me that Brazil has found an answer, even though not only its vegetation but also its population are more diverse in color than in Europe. Since my arrival in the Bay of Rio, it has seemed to me like a vision of the future,” he concludes. At the XIV International P.E.N. Congress in Buenos Aires, he is interviewed by reporters who almost demand that he take a public position on Adolf Hitler and events in Germany and Austria, but he refuses to speak ill of his native land. “Where is the line between literature and politics?” his rival, Emil Ludwig, asks from the podium, insisting it is the writer’s responsibility to cry out against injustice. When Belgian author Louis Piérard (Vincent Nemeth) then reads a list of names of banned writers, including Zweig’s, Zweig buries his face in his hands, refusing to claim a place as a martyr for the cause. (However, the newspapers claimed he was crying. “What a disgusting vanity fair,” he wrote to his first wife, portrayed in the film by Barbara Sukowa.)
Gillies Mackinnon’s Whisky Galore! follows in the tradition of such British charmers as Local Hero, Waking Ned Devine, and The Full Monty, another quirky tale of a small community coming together when facing unexpected challenges. It’s 1943, and WWII has not quite made it to the remote (and fictional) Scottish island of Todday, but you wouldn’t know it from the actions of Captain Wagget (Eddie Izzard), an English commander rigidly leading a ragtag unit of islanders just in case Hitler should attack. The town has gone dry, with no alcohol deliveries expected because of the war, putting a damper on everything, including celebrations; most importantly, postmaster Joseph Macroon (Gregor Fisher), a leader on the island, won’t allow his daughters, Catriona (Ellie Kendrick) and Peggy (Naomi Battrick), to marry their intendeds, schoolteacher George Campbell (Kevin Guthrie) and Sergeant Odd (Sean Biggerstaff), respectively, until they can have the proper party, with plenty of booze. George also faces the wrath of his Bible-thumping mother (Ann Louise Ross), who forbids him from marrying Peggy. In desperate need of drink, the town gets excited when a cargo ship runs aground just off the island, transporting tens of thousands of export-only alcohol for a cabinet minister. While Captain Waggett seeks to protect the bounty from thieves — his colleagues and neighbors — a group of thirsty islanders, including Joseph, George, Odd, Sammy (Iain Robertson), the Biffer (Antony Strachan), Old Roddy (Sean Scanlan), and Angus (Brian Pettifer), devise a plan to obtain the contraband whisky, right under Waggett’s nose.