twi-ny recommended events

CHOICE EATS 2016

Food purveryors await the annual massive crush at the Choice Eats food festival at Metropolitan Pavilion (photo by twi-ny/ees)

Food purveyors await the annual massive crush at the Choice Eats food festival at Metropolitan Pavilion (photo by twi-ny/ees)

THE VILLAGE VOICE CHOICE EATS NINTH ANNUAL TASTING EVENT
Metropolitan Pavilion
125 West Eighteenth St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Friday, March 11, $70 – $90, 6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
choiceeats.villagevoice.com
www.metropolitanevents.com

Spending Friday night feasting on interesting, innovative fare is not unusual in New York, but tasting signature dishes from more than sixty restaurants, with complimentary craft beer, liquor, and wine pairings, all in one place, certainly is. Doing it for one price, without ever needing to hail a cab or get an Uber? That’s one of the many benefits of attending Village Voice Choice Eats, and it’s probably why VIP ($99, 6:00), Early Entry ($85, 6:30), and General Admission ($70, 7:00) tickets to this super-popular once-a-year event are now sold out. Once inside, you will find healthy samples of dishes from Javelina Tex-Mex to Kailash Prabat, from Luke’s Lobster and Littleneck to Maima’s Liberian Bistro, as well as Awadh, Broken Spoke Rotisserie, Fletcher’s Brooklyn Barbecue, Fonda, the Handpulled Noodle, Kuma Inn, Le Fond, Mable’s Smokehouse, the Meatball Shop, Meat Hook Sandwich Shop, No. 7 Veggie, Queens Comfort, Raclette, Socarrat Paella Bar, StreetsBK, Swine, and Veselka, washed down with Califia Farms coffee drinks, Union Beer, Tsingtao, Asahi, Stella Artois, Vita Coco water, Four Roses bourbon, and other beverages. And you can mix in desserts too, not necessarily saving them for the end; among your options are Butter Lane, Dough Handmade Artisanal Doughnuts, Robicelli’s, and Sugar Couture. Most of the chefs will be on hand and are only too happy to talk about their food and restaurant. And one of our favorite DJs, Delphine Blue, who hosts “The Rest Is Noise” on Wednesdays at noon on Little Water Radio, will be spinning tasty tunage throughout. Like all great New York events, it’s advisable to get your tickets early (we warned you back in mid-January) and be prepared to get in line; bring an empty stomach and an adventurous palate for one of the great food events of the year.

SEE IT BIG! JACK FISK: THE NEW WORLD / TO THE WONDER

Colin Farrell and Q’orianka Kilcher nearly ignite the screen in THE NEW WORLD

THE NEW WORLD (Terrence Malick, 2005)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, March 11, $12, 7:00
Series runs March 11 – April 1
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us

Although production designers play a critical role in the making of a film, it’s something that the public tends to take for granted; the best of the best are not exactly household names. The Museum of the Moving Image seeks to rectify that in at least one case with its new series, “See It Big! Jack Fisk,” a celebration of the work of Oscar-nominated production designer, art director, and carpenter Jack Fisk. The fifteen-film series runs March 11 to April 1, kicking off with Terence Malick’s The New World. At the time the film was released in 2005, the iconoclastic American auteur had directed a mere four films in his forty-year career, each a gem in its own way — 1973’s Badlands, 1978’s Days of Heaven, 1998’s The Thin Red Line, and 2005’s The New World, and all of which Fisk worked on. Spectacularly photographed by cinematographer Emanuel Luzbeki (who has won three consecutive Oscars as of the 2016 Academy Awards), The New World reimagines the story of Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahontas (Q’orianka Kilcher) as an epic tale of unrequited desire, a fiercely passionate, if not completely accurate, love story for the ages. In 1607, a crew led by Captain Christopher Newport (Christopher Plummer) has landed in what will come to be known as Jamestown. The disgraced Smith, who was nearly hanged for mutiny, is ordered to meet with “the naturals” in order to develop a favorable relationship. But Smith falls deeply for Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan’s (August Schellenberg) beautiful young daughter, who shares his feelings, leading to a dangerous love that threatens to leave death and destruction in its wake. Large stretches of the film feature no dialogue, instead consisting of gorgeously framed shots with gentle, poetic narration from Smith, Pocahontas, and, later, John Rolfe (Christian Bale). The scenes between Farrell and Kilcher nearly ignite the screen, their eyes burning into each other. Malick and Luzbeki focus on lush, rolling fields and rushing rivers that are more than just beautiful scenery; the gorgeous landscape of this new world is filled with promise, with hope, even though we know what eventually, tragically happens. The film, which experienced well-documented casting, editing, and distribution dilemmas, bogs down considerably when Smith’s place in the newly named Rebecca’s life is taken over by Rolfe, but it all builds to a heart-wrenching conclusion. The New World is screening March 11 at 7:00; the series is being held in conjunction with the upcoming release of Malick’s latest film, Knight of Cups, which is being shown April 1 and on which Fisk, who has worked on every one of Malick’s feature films, served as production designer.

Ben Affleck and Olga Kurylenko explore a poetic love in TO THE WONDER (photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

TO THE WONDER (Terrence Malick, 2012)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Saturday, March 12, $12, 2:00
Series runs March 11 – April 1
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
www.magpictures.com

The Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big! Jack Fisk” series features all seven collaborations between two-time Oscar nominee Fisk (There Will Be Blood, The Revenant) and Terence Malick, including what might be their least successful, To the Wonder. The polarizing auteur followed up his Oscar-nominated, Palme d’Or-winning The Tree of Life with To the Wonder, one of the most beautifully shot, elegantly paced, and innately poetic films you’re ever likely to see — but it’s also one of the most confusing, annoying, and frustrating. An unnamed American man (Ben Affleck) and Ukrainian woman (Olga Kurylenko) are exploring their newfound love in Paris, she reciting melodramatic romantic thoughts in voice-over, he looking on like a man harboring a secret, barely speaking. They travel to the spectacular island abbey known as Mont St. Michel, home to the ancient buildings called la Merveille (“the marvel,” or “the wonder”), where they walk across a mysterious landscape of soft ground that might give way and swallow them up at any moment. The man asks the woman and her ten-year-old daughter (Tatiana Chiline) to move with him to his home in rural Bartlesville, Oklahoma, where he works as an environmental inspector evaluating drilling projects. There, a local priest (Javier Bardem) is questioning his own faith, and the man soon meets up with a former flame (Rachel McAdams). Or something like that. The plot, if you can even call it that, is just an excuse for Malick, cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, and production designer Fisk to create spectacular visual imagery, and every minute of it is indeed dazzling. But unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to care about the characters amid a purposefully vague and ambiguous narrative — at least we’re hoping it’s purposeful, because otherwise it’s simply amateurish. The central problem is the man; Affleck tries his best, but the character lacks any kind of depth or believability. You’re likely to want to smack some sense into him. And the priest seems to come from a completely different movie. In his forty-year career, Malick (The New World, Badlands, The Thin Red Line) had written and directed only five features prior to this film, and never fewer than five years apart. Perhaps he should have taken more time with To the Wonder, his second film in two years, to figure out what he wanted to say about love and faith and not just beauty. The film is screening at the Museum of the Moving Image on March 12 at 2:00; the series continues through April 1 with such other works as Brian De Palma’s Carrie, Malick’s Badlands, David Lynch’s The Straight Story, and Fisk’s directorial debut, Raggedy Man, all of which star his wife, Sissy Spacek, whom he met on the set of Badlands.

OF GHOSTS, SAMURAI, AND WAR — A SERIES OF CLASSIC JAPANESE FILM: UGETSU

Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) makes his pottery as son Genichi (Ikio Sawamura) and wife Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka) look on in UGETSU

UGETSU (UGETSU MONOGATARI) (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1953)
Asia Society
725 Park Ave. at 70th St.
Friday, March 11, $10-$12, 6:30
Series continues through March 19
212-288-6400
asiasociety.org

Asia Society’s “Of Ghosts, Samurai, and War: A Series of Classic Japanese Film” series heads into its second weekend with one of the most important and influential — and greatest — works to ever come from Japan. Winner of the Silver Lion for Best Director at the 1953 Venice Film Festival, Kenji Mizoguchi’s seventy-eighth film, Ugetsu, is a dazzling masterpiece steeped in Japanese storytelling tradition, especially ghost lore. Based on two tales by Ueda Akinari and Guy de Maupassant’s “How He Got the Legion of Honor,” Ugetsu unfolds like a scroll painting beginning with the credits, which run over artworks of nature scenes while Fumio Hayasaka’s urgent score starts setting the mood, and continues into the first three shots, pans of the vast countryside leading to Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) loading his cart to sell his pottery in nearby Nagahama, helped by his wife, Miyagi (Kinuyo Tanaka), clutching their small child, Genichi (Ikio Sawamura). Miyagi’s assistant, Tōbei (Sakae Ozawa), insists on coming along, despite the protestations of his nagging wife, Ohama (Mitsuko Mito), as he is determined to become a samurai even though he is more of a hapless fool. “I need to sell all this before the fighting starts,” Genjurō tells Miyagi, referring to a civil war that is making its way through the land. Tōbei adds, “I swear by the god of war: I’m tired of being poor.” After unexpected success with his wares, Genjurō furiously makes more pottery to sell at another market even as the soldiers are approaching and the rest of the villagers run for their lives. At the second market, an elegant woman, Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyō), and her nurse, Ukon (Kikue Mōri), ask him to bring a large amount of his merchandise to their mansion. Once he gets there, Lady Wakasa seduces him, and soon Genjurō, Miyagi, Genichi, Tōbei, and Ohama are facing very different fates.

Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyō) admires Genjurō (Masayuki Mori) in Kenji Mizoguchi postwar masterpiece

Written by longtime Mizoguchi collaborator Yoshitaka Yoda and Matsutaro Kawaguchi, Ugetsu might be set in the sixteenth century, but it is also very much about the aftereffects of World War II. “The war drove us mad with ambition,” Tōbei says at one point. Photographed in lush, shadowy black-and-white by Kazuo Miyagawa (Rashomon, Floating Weeds, Yojimbo), the film features several gorgeous set pieces, including one that takes place on a foggy lake and another in a hot spring, heightening the ominous atmosphere that pervades throughout. Ugetsu ends very much as it began, emphasizing that it is but one postwar allegory among many. Kyō (Gate of Hell, The Face of Another) is magical as the temptress Lady Wakasa, while Mori (The Bad Sleep Well, When a Woman Ascends the Stairs) excels as the everyman who follows his dreams no matter the cost; the two previously played husband and wife in Rashomon, which kicked off the Asia Society series. Mizoguchi, who made such other unforgettable classics as The 47 Ronin, The Life of Oharu, Sansho the Bailiff, and Street of Shame, passed away in 1956 at the age of fifty-eight, having left behind a stunning legacy, of which Ugetsu might be the best. “Of Ghosts, Samurai, and War: A Series of Classic Japanese Film,” being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Kamakura: Realism and Spirituality in the Sculpture of Japan,” continues March 18 with Keisuke Kinoshita’s Fuefuki River and concludes March 19 with Kaneto Shindo’s Onibaba.

GOLDEN DAYS — THE FILMS OF ARNAUD DESPLECHIN: A CHRISTMAS TALE

Mathieu Amalric and Catherine Deneuve star as siblings in a dysfunctional family in Arnaud Desplechin’s A CHRISTMAS TALE

A CHRISTMAS TALE (UN CONTE DE NOËL) (Arnaud Desplechin, 2008)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Francesca Beale Theater, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Saturday, March 12, 8:00, and Wednesday, March 16, 7:00
Series runs March 11-17
www.filmlinc.org

One of the best films of 2008, A Christmas Tale is yet another extraordinary work from French post-New Wave filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin (La Sentinelle, Esther Kahn). Desplechin, who examined family dysfunction in the masterful Kings and Queen (one of the best films of 2006), brings back much of the same cast for A Christmas Tale. Catherine Deneuve stars as Junon, the family matriarch who has just discovered she has leukemia and is in need of a bone-marrow transplant. Although it is rare for children to donate bone marrow to their mother (or grandmother), Junon insists that they all take the test to see if they are compatible. Soon they gather at Junon and Abel’s (Jean-Paul Roussilon) house for the holidays: oldest daughter Elizabeth (Anne Consigny), a dark and depressed woman whose teenage son, Paul (Emile Berling), has been institutionalized with mental problems and whose husband, Claude (Hippolyte Girardot), is rarely home; Ivan (Melvil Poupaud), the youngest son, a carefree sort married to Sylvia (Chiara Mastroianni, Deneuve’s real-life daughter), whom Junon strongly distrusts; and black sheep Henri (Mathieu Amalric), the middle child who was initially conceived primarily to save Abel and Junon’s first son, Joseph, who ended up dying of the same leukemia that Junon has contracted. Henri, who shows up with a new girlfriend, the very direct Faunia (Emmanuelle Devos), is a philandering ne’er-do-well who is deeply estranged from Elizabeth and not close with his mother, leading to much strife as Christmas — and a possible transplant — nears. Desplechin, who wrote the script with playwright and director Emmanuel Bourdieu, once again has created powerful, realistic characters portrayed marvelously by his extremely talented cast; despite the family’s massive dysfunction, you’ll feel that even spending more than two and a half hours with them is not enough. A Christmas Tale is screening March 12 & 16 in the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Golden Days: The Films of Arnaud Desplechin,” a weeklong retrospective celebrating the March 18 release of his latest film, My Golden Days. Running March 11-17, the festival features such other films as My Sex Life . . . or How I Got into an Argument, La vie des morts (which Desplechin will introduce on March 15), Kings and Queen (which will be followed by a Q&A with the director on March 17), and My Golden Days (with Desplechin on hand for Q&As after screenings on March 15 & 18).

GREGORY CREWDSON: CATHEDRAL OF THE PINES

Gregory Crewdson, “The Barn,” digital pigment print, 2014 (© Gregory Crewdson)

Gagosian Gallery
522 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Extended through Saturday, March 12, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-741-1717
www.gagosian.com

In Ben Shapiro’s 2012 documentary, Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, Brooklyn-born photographer Gregory Crewdson says, “My pictures are about a search for a moment — a perfect moment.” In such series as “Twilight,” “Dream House,” and “Beneath the Roses,” Crewdson captures that critical in-between moment, creating fictional cinematic images in which something seems to have just happened, or is about to happen, but he leaves it up to viewers to create their own narratives. Those were followed by “Sanctuary,” in which he photographed abandoned sets at the Cinecittà studios in Rome, black-and-white shots of postapocalyptic architecture devoid of people. It was almost as if he was saying goodbye to his movie-like oeuvre, his trademark style that was part Alfred Hitchcock, part David Lynch. For two years, while going through a painful divorce, Crewdson did not pick up his camera, but he’s back with an intimate, personal series, “Cathedral of the Pines,” taken in and around his new home in Becket, Massachusetts. The large-scale photographs, each one 37.5 x 50 inches framed, focus on seemingly downtrodden friends and relatives, including his daughter, Lily, his new partner, Juliane Hiam, and Hiam’s children, in contemplative poses under an arched bridge, on the back of a pickup truck, in a living room, in a kitchen, in a barn. The crystal-clear, deep-focus photos combine the indoors and the outdoors, human figures and nature, as the subjects look forlornly into an imaginary abyss. The men and women are surrounded by snowy mounds, lush green trees, a rolling river. As opposed to Crewdson’s previous series, in which the photos were like movie stills, these Hopper-esque scenarios capture heart-rending moments that are palpable, that feel like they come closer to approaching reality than his more fantastical creations, like we’re intruding on these people’s difficult, domestic lives, like we have compromised their privacy.

Gregory Crewdson, “The Pickup Truck,” digital pigment print, 2014 (© Gregory Crewdson)

In “Reclining Woman on Sofa,” a naked woman lies on a couch, her body mimicking the icy pond out her window. In “The Motel,” a distraught couple sits on a porch, almost disappearing into the snowy scene. In “Seated Woman on Bed,” a woman in a nightgown waits on the corner of her bed, part of her visible in a mirror, the blanket arranged to show that she slept alone. And in “The Shed,” a woman stands outside the door of a nearly empty wooden shed, her hands coated in mud, her head down, as if giving up. The photos might be wrapped in sadness, as if the subjects are all dealing with some kind of loss, but there is a serene beauty to them. “It was deep in the forests of Becket, Massachusetts, that I finally felt darkness lift, experienced a reconnection with my artistic process, and moved into a period of renewal and intense creative productivity,” Crewdson says about the series, which in many ways is a natural progression, a culmination, of everything he has done before. What comes next for the photographer? In October 2006, Crewdson told the Guardian, “I think I’d be a terrible movie maker because all I know is the one image. I’m not really that interested in the before or after. I want the story to remain unresolved.” But Crewdson appears to not be done with cinema quite yet; it was recently announced that he and Hiam will adapt Carla Buckley’s The Deepest Secret into a film.

A ROOM OF MY OWN

Little Carl (Nico Bustamente) and Adult Carl (Ralph Macchio) go over old times in A ROOM OF MY OWN (photo by Ben Strothmann)

June Havoc Theatre, Abingdon Theatre Company
Abingdon Theatre Arts Complex
312 West 36th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through March 13, $65
212-868-2055
abingdontheatre.org

Playwright and director Charles Messina wishes everyone a merry frickin’ Christmas in the raucous and riotous, and poignant and bittersweet, A Room of My Own. Eight years in the making, the show, making its world premiere at the Abingdon Theatre Company through March 13, is based on Messina’s childhood, when he was a boy living with his family in a one-room tenement apartment on Thompson St. in Greenwich Village. Ralph Macchio stars as Carl Morelli, Messina’s alter ego, who serves as the play’s narrator and ostensible scribe, carrying around a MacBook Air along with the marble composition notebook he wrote in when he was a kid, referring to both as the play unfolds through his memory. It’s Christmas season in 1979, a time that Morelli describes as “after Stonewall but before AIDS. Post-Watergate and pre-Reagan. Our little corner of the world was still a staunch Italian American enclave, with the first wave of immigrants who had settled there around the turn of the century, now aging, and dying in the shadow of the church.” Morelli’s father, Peter (Johnny Tammaro), stays at home, collecting disability, while Morelli’s mother, Dotty (Joli Tribuzio), works at a local bakery and has a penchant for stealing things. At night, Peter shares the pull-out couch with ten-year-old Carl (Nico Bustamante), while Dotty sleeps on the sofa with teenage daughter Jeannie (Kendra Jain). Dotty’s gay brother, Jackie (Mario Cantone), lives upstairs with his beloved dog, Lil’ Pish. All six of the characters — including Little Carl — are about as foul-mouthed as they come. After Adult Carl’s introduction, the first words of the play he’s written flow like poetry from Dotty: “So I says, Go an’ f&*k yourself, ya guinea c*cksucka!” And that’s only the beginning, as everyone gets in on the action, even the kids. “Nobody knows how to f&*in’ talk in this family,” Jeannie says. The Morellis are experiencing tough times, as the church is after them for Little Carl’s past-due tuition, which they don’t have — for reasons that become clear later — but Dotty doesn’t hold back her wrath for the principal, who is a nun. “Not for nothin’ but she’s got some balls callin’ this house,” Dotty declares. “They’re supposed to take a vow of poverty or did she forget? Houndin’ workin’ people for a lousy $150.” Jackie soon enters the fray with a series of curse-laced rants, performed with breathless, showstopping glee by Cantone. With Christmas on the horizon, Little Carl asks Santa for a room of his own, but the Morellis are used to not getting what they want.

Joli Tribuzio, Mario Cantone, and Johnny Tammaro have a f&*kin’ field day in New York-set un-family-friendly comedy (photo by Ben Strothmann)

Set designer Brian Dudkiewicz places the Morellis’ drab, appropriately sloppy apartment within a picture frame, as if it’s a living snapshot of what once was. Macchio, the Karate Kid and My Cousin Vinny star — who still has those teen-idol good looks — is tender and charming as Adult Carl, who desperately tries to be cool, calm, and collected but usually ends up exasperated as the characters stray from the script or miss their cues. He sits on the edge of the stage, walks into the audience, and occasionally heads onto the set to talk to his family, but the only one who can see or hear him is his younger self. “Don’t do it,” Little Carl says. “Don’t do what?” Adult Carl asks. “Don’t write this,” Little Carl replies. “I have to write it,” Adult Carl answers. Messina then adds some real relish to the interaction between the two Carls, which gets to the heart of the story.

Little Carl: You’re gonna end up with a big problem on your hands. This is dangerous. Trust me.
Adult Carl: Trust you? Trust me.
Little Carl: Trust you? I am you.
Adult Carl: So then trust me.
Little Carl: Why should I trust you when you don’t trust me?
Adult Carl: I don’t trust you because I know me.
Little Carl: So what you’re saying is, you don’t trust yourself?
Adult Carl: That’s enough out of you. I’ll write you out of it.
Little Carl: Oh yeah, how ya gonna do that? I’m the main character, stupid!
Adult Carl: Oh, you think so, huh?
Little Carl: I know so!
Adult Carl: Just do this with me. Please. We need to go back, it’s the only way to go forward.
Little Carl: Lemme ask ya something. . . . Are you gonna tell the truth?
Adult Carl: I’m gonna tell my truth, yes.
Little Carl: Are you gonna tell the truth?!
Adult Carl: I’m gonna . . . fix . . . the truth. . . .
Little Carl: Fix my ass! You’re a liar!
Adult Carl: How am I a liar? Don’t ever call me a liar!
Little Carl: Only liars and writers say they’re gonna tell the truth, when deep down they know they’re gonnna change shit!
Adult Carl: Get back in there!
Little Carl: Are you ready?
Adult Carl: Am I ready for what?
Little Carl: Are you ready for the pain?
Adult Carl: I don’t know. . . .
Little Carl: You better be. You better be made outta steel, just like they were.
Adult Carl: Steel?
Little Carl: Steel. F&*kin’. Beams.
Adult Carl: That. F&*kin’. Mouth. Now would you just please go!
Little Carl: Oh, up yours!
Adult Carl: Up mine? Up yours!
Little Carl: Your mother!
Adult Carl: We have the same mother!
Little Carl: I gotta grow up to be this guy?

Adult Carl (Ralph Macchio) and Little Carl (Nico Bustamente) clutch their writing notebooks in Charles Messina’s raucous and touching memory play (photo by Ben Strothmann)

Messina’s (An Honest Woman, The Wanderer) sharp writing is evident throughout A Room of My Own, which he also directs with an electric, nonstop pace. The mostly Italian-American cast is exceptional, dressed in Catherine Siracusa’s fab period clothes (just wait till you see Jackie’s green shirt and Dotty’s brown velour pants). Bronx native Tribuzio and Brooklyn kid Tammaro, both veterans of Tony n’ Tina’s Wedding, clearly are having a great time as they lash out at each other with words you’re not likely to find in any dictionary, English or Italian, while getting every gesture and facial expression just right. Bustamente is a wonder in his stage debut, having acted before only in commercials; his interactions with Macchio could have been gimmicky but instead are gentle and heartfelt, even with the cursing, as they combine the past and the present with an eye to the future. And Cantone (Steve, Sex and the City), who, as it turns out, spent a lot of time when he was younger right across the street on Thompson St., visiting his sister (the building can be seen in the backdrop through a window), is a force of nature as Jackie, celebrating gay culture while fighting the loneliness of his closeted life. Much of the cast has been with the project since its inception, so the actors have developed a real feeling of family that translates beautifully to the stage. It’s a treat to be invited into the Morellis’ frantic world, which is sure at times to remind you of your own relatives, even if you’re not Italian and from New York City.

KINETIC PAINTING: AN ART BOOK SERIES EVENT

carolee schneeman kinetic painting

Who: Carolee Schneemann with Kathy Battista, Jenny Jaskey, and David Levi Strauss
What: Celebration of the release of Carolee Schneeman monograph Kinetic Painting (Prestel, February 2016, $60), edited by Sabine Breitwieser
Where: New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Celeste Auditorium, Fifth Ave. at 42nd St., 917-275-6975
When: Wednesday, March 9, free, 6:00
Why: In Kinetic Painting, editor Sabine Breitwieser writes, “Schneeman’s vital contributions to the establishment of a feminist art practice, her ‘painting constructions,’ her choreography and performances, and her experimental films, whose full significance has not yet been recognized: these are only some facets of her oeuvre, and a thorough review of her prodigious output, which now spans six decades and reflects the period’s social and technological changes in its extraordinary diversity, has been long overdue.” The fully illustrated monograph seeks to rectify that, and on March 9, Schneeman will be at the New York Public Library to talk about her career, joined by Kathy Battista, director of Contemporary Art at Sotheby’s Institute of Art; Jenny Jaskey, director and curator of the Artist’s Institute; and writer, cultural critic, and professor David Levi Strauss. The monograph was published on conjunction with a major retrospective of Schneeman’s work at the Museum der Moderne Salzburg, which was organized by Breitwieser and Branden Joseph. A book signing will follow the discussion.