Albert Oehlen’s “‘Home and Garden’ Annex” is on view at Gagosian’s Park & 75 space (photo by Rob McKeever)
Gagosian Gallery, Park & 75
821 Park Ave. at 75th St.
Through September 4, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.gagosian.com
German painter Albert Oehlen may be displaying his bravura technique and massive talent in the huge “Home and Garden” exhibition at the New Museum, but his best work in New York City right now is uptown in Gagosian’s glassed-in Park & 75 gallery. On the north wall is “Der rosa Salon” (“The Pink Parlor”), a spectacular painting from a man who continually redefines the genre. The large-scale piece, approximately 110 × 118 inches, was painted over a plastic billboard; in fact, some letters are still visible beneath the paint, primarily the word “NO” in the lower left-hand corner, either accidental or some kind of artistic admonition. Combining reality and surrealism, the painting is anchored by several chairs, one on the right, evoking both Francis Bacon and Franz West while resembling a palette, the others at the center, a pair of comfy tannish-brown chairs, one of which is being fondled by a blond woman in shorts, actually part of an advertisement that Oehlen cut out and pasted onto the plastic base. The empty chair in the middle is like an invitation to the viewer to enter the scene. Oehlen, who lives and works in Switzerland, then painted over the advertisement in such a way as to make it meld into the rest of the imagery, the outline of the cutout visible only if you look for it. A breakfront peeks out on the left, while a lighting fixture dangles from above; below, the floor seems to just drop out. There’s so much going on in the painting that the eye doesn’t know what to focus on, flitting about from woman to furniture, from the light pouring in through a window to the far corner where the walls meet, from the squiggly shadows cast by the legs of the front chair to the big letters “NO” opposite. It’s a dramatic painting in both narrative and execution as fiction and nonfiction clash in appealing ways. Also on view in the gallery are five small collage paintings in which Oehlen incorporates images of trees in addition to the multimedia installation “1000 dances (tree),” in which Oehlen took a living tree, added such elements as Styrofoam, a metal rod, and a poster tube, and placed it behind a floor-to-ceiling translucent sheet that he partially painted pinkish red. A spotlight shines on the back, making a silhouette of the tree visible from the front, which also reflects the activity going on outside on Park Ave. Meanwhile, a lo-fi rah-rah soundtrack plays; the spotlight is supposed to flash in tandem with the music, but a technological malfunction has put an end to that.
MoMA’s “Ingrid Bergman: A Centennial Celebration” series includes several classic favorites featuring the immensely popular international star (Gaslight, Casablanca, Notorious), but the key to enjoying this festival lies in numerous lesser-known surprises. One of the most intriguing is the 1956 Jean Renoir “musical fantasy” Elena and Her Men, also known as Paris Does Strange Things. In this small gem of a film, Bergman plays Elena Sokorowska, a splendiferous Polish princess living the high life in fin de siècle Paris, quickly running out of money and strongly advised by her aunt to find a rich husband. After dispatching one lover, composer Lionel Villaret (Jean Claudio), the princess has a trio of suitors: the much older Martin-Michaud (Pierre Bertin), a stuffy, aristocratic shoe mogul; the heroic General François Rollan (Jean Marais, playing a character based on the real-life General Georges Boulanger), who is being celebrated on Bastille Day; and the playboy Count Henri de Chevincourt (Mel Ferrer), who instantly falls madly in love with her — and wishes to take her home the very day he meets her. It’s 1915, and the streets are filled with French men, women, and children singing the praises of General Rollan while wondering what will come next for the government, with talk of a coup and a dictatorship making the rounds. In the middle of it all is Princess Sokorowska, whose lavish charm beguiles nearly everyone she meets, except, of course, the general’s mistress, Paulette Escoffier (Elina Labourdette). As the men fight over her, the princess hands out daisies to bring various people good luck. 
Shortly after the Civil War, bounty hunter Howard Kemp (James Stewart) is determined to bring in wanted murderer Ben Vandergroat (Robert Ryan) and claim the reward. Joined by grizzled old prospector Jesse Tate (Millard Mitchell) and dishonorably discharged Union lieutenant Roy Anderson (Ralph Meeker), Kemp gets his man, along with Ben’s companion, the young Lina Patch (Janet Leigh), the daughter of Ben’s dead best friend. They tie up Ben’s hands, put him on a burro, and head out on the long, arduous trail to turn him over to the federal marshals. But the smug, wisecracking outlaw has other plans, continually planting various seeds to try to set Howard, Roy, and Jesse against one another. Directed by Anthony Mann (Winchester ’73, The Man from Laramie) and shot in the Rocky Mountains, The Naked Spur is not just another Western; it is a multilayered exploration of lust and greed, love and sexuality, with Lina at the center of it all. When Ben needs his sore back rubbed, he asks her, “Can you do me?” Roy thinks he can do anything he wants with any woman. And Howard can’t get over a part of his past, suffering from nightmares that haunt him. Unfortunately, the complex story is dragged down by overly conventional music — “Beautiful Dreamer”? Really? — and some ridiculously staged, hard-to-believe action scenes, but it’s still worth saddling up your horse and going along for the ride. The Naked Spur is screening September 5, 7, and 9 as part of the Anthology Film Archives series “Robert Ryan: An Actor’s Actor,” which continues with such other Ryan flicks as Daniel Mann’s About Mrs. Leslie, Nicholas Ray’s On Dangerous Ground, John Sturges’s Bad Day at Black Rock, Fred Zinnemann’s An Act of Violence, and Mann’s God’s Little Acre. Select screenings will be followed by a discussion with Cheyney Ryan, Robert’s son, and professor J. R. Jones, the author of the new book The Lives of Robert Ryan. A Dartmouth grad who was born in Chicago, Ryan was an outspoken civil rights activist who made more than fifty films during his thirty-plus-year career, which ended when he died of lung cancer in 1973 at the age of sixty-four.
After being blacklisted in Hollywood, American auteur Jules Dassin (The Naked City, Brute Force) headed to France, where he was hired to adapt Du Rififi Chez Les Hommes, a crime novel by Auguste le Breton that he made significant changes to, resulting in one of the all-time-great heist films. After spending five years in prison (perhaps not uncoincidentally, Dassin had not made a film in five years after Edward Dmytryk and Frank Tuttle declared him a communist to the House Un-American Activities Committee), Tony le Stephanois (Jean Servais) gets out and hooks up again with his old protégé, Jo le Suédois (Carl Möhner), who has settled down with his wife (Janine Darcy) and child (Dominique Maurin) for what was supposed to be a life of domestic tranquility. Joined by Mario Farrati (Robert Manuel), a fun-loving bon vivant with a very sexy girlfriend (Claude Sylvain), and cool and calm safecracker César le Milanais (Dassin, using the pseudonym Perlo Vita), the crew plans a heist of a small Mappin & Webb jewelry store on the Rue de Rivoli. Not content with a quick score, Tony lays the groundwork for a major take, but greed, lust, jealousy, and revenge get in the way in Dassin’s masterful film noir. The complex plan gets even more complicated as César falls for Viviane (Magali Noël), a singer who works at the L’Âge d’Or nightclub, which is owned by Pierre Grutter (Marcel Lupovici), who has taken up with Tony’s former squeeze, Mado (Marie Sabouret), and is trying to save his brother, Louis Grutter (Pierre Grasset), from a serious drug habit. (The club is named for Luis Buñuel’s 1930 film, which featured the same production designer as Rififi, Alexandre Trauner.)