this week in art

VINTAGE THEATER ON A MODERN STAGE: THE GOLDEN BRIDE

MCNY event will go behind the scenes of the making of classic Yiddish musical THE GOLDEN BRIDE (photo by Ben Moody Cameron Johnson)

Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd St.
Wednesday, May 4, $25, 6:30
212-534-1672
www.mcny.org
nytf.org

This past December, we raved about National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s utterly delightful revival of the long-lost 1923 operetta The Golden Bride (“Di Goldnene Kale”) at the company’s new home at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The production is back by popular demand this summer, running July 4 through August 28. You can get a behind-the-scenes sneak peek at the show on May 4 when the Museum of the City of New York presents “Vintage Theater on a Modern Stage: The Golden Bride,” being held in conjunction with the exhibition “New York’s Yiddish Theater: From the Bowery to Broadway,” which continues through July 31. The event features a discussion with musical archaeologist Michael Ochs, codirectors Bryna Wasserman and Motl Didner, musical director Zalmen Mlotek, costume designer Izzy Fields, and NYTF executive producer Chris Massimine as well as select songs performed by Rachel Policar, who stars as Goldele, Glenn Seven Allen (Jerome), Jillian Gottlieb (Khanele), and other cast members, followed by an exhibition viewing and reception. The Golden Bride has many similarities to Fidder on the Roof, which is currently playing at the Broadway Theatre; in a fun coincidence, both shows have been nominated for Outstanding Revival of a Musical by the Drama Desk. In addition, Wasserman and Didner are up for Outstanding Director, battling it out against Spring Awakening’s Michael Arden, The Color Purple’s John Doyle, American Psycho’s Rupert Goold, and Fiddler’s Bartlett Sher. (On June 19, MJH is hosting a Fiddler on the Roof sing-along, consisting of a screening of the Oscar-winning 1971 film and appearances by members of the current Broadway cast; attendees are encouraged to come dressed as their favorite character.) If you register for “Vintage Theater on a Modern Stage: The Golden Bride,” you will also receive a free ticket to a preview of The Golden Bride.

OPEN PLAN: STEVE McQUEEN PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Steve McQueen, “End Credits,” sequence of digitally scanned files, sound, continuous projection, 2012 (courtesy of the artist; Thomas Dane Gallery, London; and Marian Goodman Gallery)

Who: Steve McQueen and Donna De Salvo, Harry Belafonte and Dr. Cornel West
What: Two public programs in conjunction with the exhibition “Open Plan: Steve McQueen”
Where: Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort St., 212-570-3600
When: Friday, April 29, Steve McQueen in Conversation with Donna De Salvo, $15, 6:30; Sunday, May 1, Harry Belafonte and Dr. Cornel West Discuss Paul Robeson, $20, 5:00
Why: The Whitney’s five-part “Open Plan” series, which previously featured installations by Andrea Fraser, Lucy Dodd, Michael Heizer, and Cecil Taylor, concludes with a project by visual artist Steve McQueen that expands on his 2012 work, “End Credits,” an exploration of the FBI’s investigation into the political activities of actor, singer, athlete, lawyer, and civil rights activist Paul Robeson. McQueen, who began his career as an experimental short filmmaker (his 2004 exhibition at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College was an eye opener), wrote and directed Hunger and Shame before directing 2013’s 12 Years a Slave, which won the Best Picture Oscar. In conjunction with the multimedia show, the Whitney will be hosting two talks. On April 29, McQueen will discuss his career with senior curator Donna De Salvo, who organized the show with curatorial assistant Christie Mitchell. And on May 1 — not coincidentally May Day — actor, singer, songwriter, and activist Harry Belafonte and philosopher, professor, author, activist, and self-described “prominent and provocative democratic intellectual” Dr. Cornel West will team up to explore Robeson’s life and legacy. End Credits will be on view in the expansive Neil Bluhm Family Galleries through May 14; in addition, the Whitney is presenting the U.S. debut of McQueen’s “Moonlit” sculpture in the adjacent Kaufman Gallery.

OPEN STUDIOS WITH WORKSPACE ARTISTS-IN-RESIDENCE

Workspace Artist-in-Residence Tamar Ettun rehearses at LMCC’s Studios at 28 Liberty (photo by Jonathan Patkowski for LMCC)

Who: Sarah Anderson, Mirene Arsanios, Chloë Bass, Jesse Bonnell, Esteban Cabeza De Baca, Glendaliz Camacho, Adriane Connerton, Nick Doyle, Tamar Ettun, Joel W. Fisher, Nadja Frank, Susan Karwoska, Amy Khoshbin, Lisa Ko, Courtney Krantz, Tora Lopez, Melanie McLain, Rangi McNeil, Irini Miga, Trokon Nagbe, Meredith Nickie, New Saloon, Christina Olivares, Piehole, Ronny Quevedo, Maria Rapoport, Keisha Scarville, Pascual Sisto, Stacy Spence, Yuliya Tsukerman, Jessica Vaughn
What: LMCC Open Studios
Where: LMCC’s Studios at 28 Liberty, 28 Liberty St. between Pine, Liberty, Nassau, & William Sts.
When: Friday, April 29, 6:00–9:00, and Saturday, April 30, 1:00–6:00 (Open Texts 6:00–8:00), free with advance RSVP
Why: The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, which “empowers artists by providing them with networks, resources, and support, to create vibrant, sustainable communities in Lower Manhattan and beyond,” is kicking off its annual Open Studios by welcoming visitors on Friday night, April 29, and Saturday afternoon and evening, April 30, to wander through its Financial District space and check out works-in-progress by thirty-one artists artists who have been busy since September immersed in paintings, sketches, photographs, sculptures, videos, poetry, dances, plays, and more. The event is free with advance RSVP; the studios will close Saturday at 6:00 for two hours of spoken-word performances. The Open Studios program continues through October with presentations at 28 Liberty and 125 Maiden Lane and on Governors Island with such performers and choreographers as Okwui Okpokwasili, the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre, Faye Driscoll, Netta Yerushalmy, Amber Hawk Swanson, Ephrat Asherie, Jodi Melnick, and YACKEZ (Larissa and Jon Velez-Jackson).

LAURA POITRAS: ASTRO NOISE

Laura Poitras examines the War on Terror from various intriguing angles in immersive Whitney exhibition (photo by Ronald Amstutz)

Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Through May 1, $18-$22
212-570-3600
whitney.org

Award-winning documentarian, journalist, and former chef Laura Poitras has opened a lot of eyes around the world with such films as Citizenfour, The Oath, and My Country, My Country and her investigative reporting for such outlets as the Guardian, the Washington Post, and the website she started with Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Cahill, the Intercept. The New School graduate is now sharing highly sensitive information about surveillance, drones, Guantánamo Bay Prison, the NSA, and more in a fascinating new way in “Astro Noise,” a five-room immersive installation on view at the Whitney. Poitras, whose Oscar-winning Citizenfour featured whistleblower Edward Snowden, invites viewers into a frightening world that is all too real. In the catalog, Astro Noise: A Survival Guide for Living under Total Surveillance, curator Jay Sanders notes that the title “echoes with associations. Discovered accidentally by astronomers in 1964 and initially thought to be a technical error, astro noise refers to the faint background disturbance of thermal radiation left over after the big bang. . . . More pointedly, Astro Noise is the name Edward Snowden gave to an encrypted file containing evidence of NSA mass surveillance that he shared with Poitras in 2012.” The exhibition begins with selections from her “Anarchist” series, consisting of full-color, large-scale prints of images Poitras created based on documents Snowden gave her of descrambled signals from the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters, including “Israeli Drone Feed (Intercepted February 24, 2009)” and “Power Spectrum Display of Doppler Tracks from a Satellite (Intercepted May 27, 2009).” In the middle of the second room is a thick two-sided screen on which two different films are projected on opposite sides; for O’Say Can You See, Poitras filmed people coming to Ground Zero and looking at the destruction wrought by the 9/11 terrorist attacks, while on the other side is U.S. military footage of 9/11-related interrogations of Said Boujaaida and Salim Hamdan, who both ended up at Guantánamo. In the third room, “Bed Down Location” visitors can lie down on a carpeted raised platform and gaze up at a screen on the ceiling that shows night skies in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan, where drone attacks have taken place, as well as the sky at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, where drones are tested and flown.

Laura Poitras (b. 1964), ANARCHIST: Israeli Drone Feed (Intercepted February 24, 2009), 2016. Pigmented inkjet print mounted on aluminum, 45 × 64 3/4 in. (114.3 × 164.5 cm). Courtesy the artist

Laura Poitras, “ANARCHIST: Israeli Drone Feed (Intercepted February 24, 2009), pigmented inkjet print mounted on aluminum, 2016 (courtesy of the artist)

For “Disposition Matrix,” Poitras situates narrow, rectangular viewing peepholes at different heights in six walls; inside are official documents, video interviews, cell-phone footage, screenshots from intercepted drone feeds, and diagrams that deal with various aspects of the War on Terror, including Abu Ghraib prison, definitions of such phrases as “clandestine collection” and “covert action,” and home video of a town in Yemen on two successive days in August 2012, one depicting a wedding, the second the aftermath of a U.S. drone strike. Because of the way the peepholes are arranged, it is difficult to get the full picture of what is inside each slot, evoking how hard it is to get the full story from the government. In the fifth room, Poitras, who participated in the 2012 Whitney Biennial, makes herself the subject, something she specifically avoids in her documentaries, detailing how the U.S. government put her on a secret watchlist, continues to track her, keeps detaining and interrogating her at airports, and considers legal action to arrest her under the Espionage Act. (Meanwhile, she has sued the government.) Poitras adds a little surprise at the end, revealing how any one of us could be next. In a catalog interview with Sanders, Poitras states, “I very much like the idea of creating a space that challenges the viewer as to whether to venture in or not. . . . We live life not knowing what will happen next. What do people do when they’re confronted with choices and risks?” Poitras’s debut art installation does just that, confronting visitors with ideas and information that, unfortunately, might no longer be shocking but still come with alarming choices and risks.

PETER FISCHLI DAVID WEISS: HOW TO WORK BETTER

Museum survey juxtaposes the work of Fischli and Weiss to form new dialogues (photo by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation)

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Through April 27, $25
Peter Fischli New School talk: Monday, April 25, $10, 6:30
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org
events.newschool.edu

Peter Fischli and David Weiss’s engaging, subversive DIY style is on full display in their first major museum retrospective, “How to Work Better,” on view at the Guggenheim through April 27. Known as Fischli/Weiss, the Zürich-born artists began their long collaboration in the late 1970s, continuing through Weiss’s death in 2012 at the age of sixty-five. The duo specialized in reimagining everyday objects, using synthetic rubber, unfired clay, and polyurethane, with a kitschy sense of humor. The exhibition pairs series from throughout their career, bringing together disparate elements to create a dialogue that gets to the heart of their method and process as they investigate form and structure. The sculptures of “Walls, Corners, and Tubes” are seen with “Kanalvideo,” a psychedelic trip through the sewers of Zürich. “Cars” and “Hostesses” turn the titles into miniature representations in white plaster. One floor is dedicated to “Suddenly This Overview,” a collection of hundreds of unfired clay miniatures that they called “The Subjective Tableaux,” exploring the whole of human existence, featuring such works as “Mick Jagger and Brian Jones Going Home Satisfied after Composing ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,’” “Panic in the Audience When Lumière Shows His Film,” and “The Russians Launch the First Rocket into Space.” Fischli and Weiss essentially re-created their studio in numerous polyurethane installations, crafting art materials, soda cans, cleaning supplies, jars of food, and other objects out of polyurethane, forcing viewers to questions everything they see.

Fischli and Weiss’s polyurethane installations re-create their studio environment while questioning what is real (photo by David Heald © Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation)

The duo asks its own questions in “Question Projections,” in which a seemingly endless stream of inquiries are projected onto a dark wall, asking, among other things, “Is it more important for the world or for me to be doing well?,” “Why does nothing never happen?,” “Where are all those rats coming from?,” and “Is hunger an emotion?” The survey also highlights Fischli and Weiss’s films starring their alter egos, Rat and Bear — Order and Cleanliness, The Least Resistance, and The Right Way — in addition to their most popular work, The Way Things Go, a thirty-one-minute video in which everyday objects, from tires, bottles, and balloons to ladders, candles, and garbage bags, form a supposedly seamless chain reaction that is actually made up of twenty-three shots. Among the other series and installations accumulated in “How to Work Better,” which was initiated while Weiss was still alive, are “Visible World,” “The Raft,” “Sausage Series,” and “Fotografías,” celebrating the full range of the artists’ oeuvre. “Fischli and Weiss deliberately drew attention to the intersection of art and manual labor throughout their practice,” curator Nancy Spector writes in the catalog. “Even though they consistently presented themselves as carefree observers of the world at large . . . the artists also slyly exposed the concerted effort behind their artmaking.” But most of all, “How to Work Better” is fun. In conjunction with the show, the text-based wall mural “How to Work Better” can be seen on the corner of Houston and Mott Streets through May 1; the Public Art Fund project offers ten pieces of advice, including “Do one thing at a time,” “Learn to ask questions,” and “Accept change as inevitable.” On Monday, April 25, Fischli, who will turn sixty-four in June, will deliver a talk at the New School about his and Weiss’s public works, one of which stands outside the Guggenheim: “Haus,” an inviting structure that offers no way inside.

HOCKNEY

Documentary celebrates the life and career of British artist David Hockney

HOCKNEY (Randall Wright, 2015)
Metrograph, 7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts., 212-660-0312
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Francesca Beale Theater, Walter Reade Theater,
West 65th St. between Amsterdam Ave. & Broadway
Opens Friday, April 22
hockneyfilm.tumblr.com

“Why are you popular?” artist David Hockney is asked in an old interview in the 2014 documentary Hockney. “I’m not that sure,” the painter and photographer answers with a laugh. “I’m interested in ways of looking, because people will respond. Everybody does look; it’s just a question of how hard.” Award-winning director Randall Wright, who in 2002 made David Hockney: Secret Knowledge, examining the artist’s theories about the use of cameras and photographic-like visualization techniques in art going back centuries, this time takes a loving, more wide-ranging look at Hockney’s professional and personal worlds. Combining new interviews with old footage and home movies and photographs from Hockney’s private archives — which have never been made public before — Wright reveals Hockney to be an absolutely charming and engaging man with a genuine passion for life but not without his demons. “The paintings all related, whether superficially or intensely, on his life, and his trying to deal with his homosexuality, and trying to deal with his fantasies, and trying to deal with the issues of a sexual identity,” fellow British artist and longtime Hockney friend Mark Berger explains. “And he used wit to play with these identities. He was really like a little high school girl about it.” Wright and cinematographer Patrick Duval insert beautiful shots of many of Hockney’s paintings, slowly moving over the canvases as Hockney and, often, the subjects being depicted discuss them. Among the glorious works shown, from portraits and realistic paintings to more experimental, surreal, and abstract pieces, are “A Bigger Splash,” “Portrait of My Father,” “Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy,” “We Two Boys Together Clinging Together,” “Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool,” “Beverly Hills Housewife,” “Celia with a Foot on a Chair,” and such Polaroid composites as “Still Life Blue Guitar 4th April 1982.”

David Hockney opens up his personal archives for illuminating documentary

The film reveals Hockney to be a Warholian-like figure with a much more open and fun-loving personality — complete with odd glasses, bottle-blonde hair with bangs, and a love of photography — enjoying the party life as he goes from his hometown, “dingy Bradford” in England, to New York and Los Angeles; he currently lives in England and California and still paints seven days a week at the age of seventy-eight. It’s quite a thrill to see Hockney at work in his studios, putting brush to canvas. “I paint what I like and when I like” is one of numerous Hockney quotes that Wright uses on title cards, setting them on different monochrome backgrounds and interspersing them throughout the film. Wright (Lucian Freud: A Painted Life) also explores in-depth Hockney’s relationships with such friends and/or lovers as Peter Schlesinger and Henry Geldzahler. One drawback is that the director identifies his interview subjects, Hockney’s friends, colleagues, and relatives, only by name, so it is not always clear what their relationship to the artist is; most viewers are not likely to know who Bachardy, Arthur Lambert, Tchaik Chassay, Melissa North, Wayne Sleep, John Kasmin, or even Ed Ruscha and Jack Larson are or how Margaret Hockney is related to David. (Larson is the recently deceased actor who played Jimmy Olsen on the Superman television series and became a collector of Hockney’s work, while Margaret is David’s sister.) But that’s only a minor quibble in a wonderful documentary that celebrates not only the artist but his work and process, which comes alive on the screen, digital technology allowing the paintings and photographs to pop with their brilliant colors. If you didn’t appreciate Hockney’s talent before, this documentary will change your mind about it. And if you already were a fan of him and his work, this film will make you love him even more.

AMANDA PARER: INTRUDE

Amanda Parer has filled Brookfield Place with supersized rabbits that glow in the dark (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brookfield Place
250 Vesey St.
Daily through April 30, free, 12 noon – 9:00 pm (7:00 on Sundays)
212-945-0505
www.artsbrookfield.com
intrude slideshow

No, it’s not Night of the Lepus come to life, a pack of giant bunnies come to decimate humanity. Instead, in some ways, it’s the exact opposite. In 1788, the First Fleet introduced rabbits to Australia, but the real trouble began after a man named Thomas Austin brought two dozen wild rabbits into the country for sport. It wasn’t long before they multiplied to such levels that they became an invasive, unsustainable ecological hazard, destroying crops and contributing to soil erosion. Australian artist Amanda Parer references these problems in her installation “Intrude,” continuing at Brookfield Place through April 30.

“Intrude” highlights invasive species through April 30 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Five large-scale white blow-up rabbits, made of 210D Nylon and reaching as tall and long as thirty-nine feet, have come across the seas; as bunnies do, they have grown in number, to seven, with four having taken root on Brookfield Place’s outside deck along the river and three more, two made specifically for New York City, inside the old Winter Garden. If you don’t speak with the people watching over each rabbit, you might not learn about the havoc the feral creatures are really causing, instead just seeing it as an adorable collection of picture-taking moments. But Parer, who is originally from Sydney but is now based in Tasmania, is very serious about spreading her message; “Intrude” has previously hopped into nineteen cities, including London, Paris, and Boston, with future migrations scheduled for Houston, Los Angeles, and Denver. Although the rabbits are cute during the day, they light up at night, becoming more than a bit ominous while adding to the ultimate cool factor, illuminating visitors in more ways than one.

There’s more than meets the eye in new installation in Battery Park City (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“I look forward to seeing the rabbits come to life at Brookfield’s properties throughout the United States,” Parer said in a statement. “I expect people will be drawn to the rabbits’ playful appearance, and I hope they will also take the time to understand the deeper meaning in the work and discuss how our actions impact the environment.” There are very specific rules for this warren of giant of rabbits: You can gently touch, kiss, pet, and hug them, but there is no kicking, punching, running, jumping, rolling, smoking, or feeding. Just remember to heed what Grace Slick once warned: “And if you go chasing rabbits / And you know you’re going to fall / Tell ’em a hookah-smoking caterpillar / Has given you the call / Call Alice / When she was just small.” And beware the Night of the Lepus