this week in art

MATTHEW BARNEY: THE CREMASTER CYCLE

Marti Domination squeezes into a tight space in CREMASTER 1

THE CREMASTER CYCLE (Matthew Barney, 1994-2002)
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Saturday, July 11, August 8, and September 5, free with museum admission, 10:30 am – 7:40 pm
212-423-3587
www.guggenheim.org
www.cremaster.net

Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle is so much more than five essentially incomprehensible films totaling nearly seven hours made over the course of eight years out of chronological order; it’s a state of mind, a whole other level of consciousness. The complete series, which is shown at art houses and museums and will never, according to Barney, be available on DVD or any other salable personal format, has only been shown in its entirety in New York City twice this century, in October 2003, when it screened at Anthology Film Archives shortly after the exciting Matthew Barney survey held at the Guggenheim earlier that year, then at the IFC Center in the spring of 2010, in three programs of either one or two films. But now you can experience it all in one marathon sitting on July 11, August 8, and September 5 at the Guggenheim, where one of the films was made. (The full cycle was also shown there on June 6.) Ostensibly following the ascension and descension of the cremaster muscle, which raises and lowers the testicles as sexual differentiation takes place inside the human body, the films feature strange characters in odd metaphorical situations that are rarely immediately apparent; you may want to continually refer to Cremaster Fanatic, which offers excellent meta-descriptions of each work, breaking down each bizarre symbol. But that doesn’t mean the narrative is impossible to follow or overly convoluted; instead, part of the fun is trying to figure out just what the heck is going on.

Artist Richard Serra plays the Architect in CREMASTER 3

In Cremaster 1 (1995), the Goodyear blimp hovers over a stadium where the young Barney, a former quarterback, played football. Bright colors dominate as four flight attendants peer out the window, unaware that beneath a table topped with a Vaseline centerpiece a platinum blonde (Marti Domination) is stealing grapes. A beautifully choreographed Busby Berkeley–like dance ensues. In Cremaster 2 (1999), Barney plays Gary Gilmore, re-creating the murder of Mormon gas station employee Max Jensen. There’s also a séance led by Baby Fay La Foe, graphic sex, a queen bee and her drones, the Bonneville Salt Flats, the Mormon Tabernacle, and Norman Mailer, who wrote The Executioner’s Song about Gilmore, as Harry Houdini at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893. At three hours, Cremaster 3 (2002) is the longest and easiest to follow of the series. It details the heated 1929 fight between the Chrysler Building and the Bank of Manhattan (40 Wall St.) to be the tallest structure in New York, framed by the Irish legend of Fionn and Fingal and the Giant’s Causeway. The cast features Barney as the Entered Apprentice climbing up the Guggenheim’s spiral walls, conceptual artist Richard Serra as the Architect (Hiram Abiff) and himself (melting Vaseline that drips down the length of the museum), amputee Aimee Mullins as the Entered Novitiate, singer Paul Brady as the Cloud Club maitre d’ serving a small group of gangster-like Masons, Terry Gillespie as a bartender with a bit of a Guinness problem (in the series’ funniest scene), and punk bands Agnostic Front and Murphy’s Law engaged in a musical battle. In Cremaster 4 (1994), the Ascending and Descending motorcycle sidecar teams race for the Tourist Trophy on the Isle of Man while the Loughton Candidate (Barney) carefully combs his hair (he has four potential horns on his head) and tap-dances as a trio of faeries bandy about. And in Cremaster 5 (1997), the Queen of Chain (Ursula Andress) belts out a Hungarian opera above the Gellert Baths, where Fudor Sprites swim and Jacobin pigeons are prepared for a special purpose, with Barney (Drawing Restraint, River of Fundament) appearing as the Queen’s Diva, the Queen’s Magician, and the Queen’s Giant.

Matthew Barney plays multiple roles in his experimental epic THE CREMASTER CYCLE

Watching the Cremaster Cycle is an unforgettable experience, a thrilling foray into experimental film at its finest. It’s both mind-blowing and infuriatingly confusing, stunningly gorgeous and utterly ridiculous. Everything in it is laden with meaning, though you’ll be hard-pressed to know what much of it is about. And there are more references to male genitalia than in any teen sex comedy ever made. The Guggenheim will be showing the films in the order in which they were made, so audiences can follow Barney’s creative process, beginning at 10:30 in the morning with Cremaster 4 and continuing with Cremaster 1 at 11:15, Cremaster 5 at 12:15, Cremaster 2 at 2:45, and, for the big finale, Cremaster 3 at 4:30. The screenings are free with museum admission, and you can come and go as you please as long as there are available seats. But you might as well settle in for the whole thing. The Cremaster Cycle is more than just a cinematic art project; it’s an event that has to be seen to be believed.

DRIFTING IN DAYLIGHT: ART IN CENTRAL PARK

Ragnar Kjartansson’s “S.S. Hangover” sails around Harlem Meer with members of the Metropolis Ensemble (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Central Park
Begin at Charles A. Dana Discovery Center
Enter at 110th St. & Fifth Ave.
Friday, June 19, and Saturday, June 20, free, 12 noon – 6:00 pm
creativetime.org
www.centralparknyc.org
drifting in daylight slideshow

While making my way through the wonderful “Drifting in Daylight” exhibition in Central Park, comprising eight site-specific projects commissioned by the nonprofit arts organization Creative Time and the Central Park Conservancy, I heard some beautiful music coming out of the North Woods. Believing I had found number 5B on the map, which promised “a migratory performance of contemplative movement through the North Woods,” I wandered down a path until I came upon a man and a woman playing Bach on violins. There were a few other people there, so I walked over and started taking some photos and enjoying the performance. “Excuse me,” a young man said to me as the music continued, “this is a private gathering.” Not sure whether he was being serious or that was part of the installation — you can’t always tell with contemporary art, of course — I told him that this was where the map indicated the next stop was. “It’s over there,” he said with a determined annoyance, pointing to the nearby overpass. So off I went, shortly to discover a group of dancers moving silently on the asphalt road and the grass. This time, I was where I was supposed to be, watching Lauri Stallings + Glo’s “And All Directions, I Come to You,” but as I followed them through the trees by the Pool, there were two people rehearsing Shakespeare, members of New York Classical Theatre’s free outdoor production of The Taming of the Shrew. And then two other actors passed by, a man and a woman, re-creating a scene from Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums in which former spouses Royal (Gene Hackman) and Etheline Tenenbaum (Anjelica Huston) discuss how they raised their crazy kids; it is part of David Levine’s “Private Moments,” one of eight such scenes occurring throughout the park, where they were originally filmed. I suddenly didn’t know where to turn, what to see next, surrounded by a surfeit of art, yet wondering what was public and what was private. “Nothing can be written on the subject in which extreme care is not taken to discriminate between what is meant in common use of the words garden, gardening, gardener, and the art which I try to pursue,” Central Park architect Frederick Law Olmsted wrote, and indeed, there is plenty of art to pursue among the gardens in Central Park, whether part of “Drifting in Daylight” or not.

Alicia Framis’s “Cartas al Cielo” gives visitors a chance to send a message to someone not of this earth any longer (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The centerpiece of the Central Park Conservancy’s thirty-fifth anniversary celebration, “Drifting in Daylight,” a kind of art scavenger hunt, begins behind the Charles A. Dana Discovery Center, where Ragnar Kjartansson’s “S.S. Hangover” starts its musical journey around Harlem Meer, its Pegasus flag swirling in the wind, with a brass sextet from the Metropolitan Ensemble on board, playing a dirgelike composition by Kjartan Sveinsson. The 1934 wooden fishing boat has been refashioned into a boat from James Whale’s 1935 film, Remember Last Night?, which was based on the Adam Hobhouse novel The Hangover Murders about a group of characters too drunk to recall a killing. The winding path next leads to Karyn Olivier’s “Here and Now/Glacier, Shard, Rock,” a triptych lenticular billboard that evokes the history of Central Park by shifting between shots of a glacier, a broken piece of pottery from Seneca Village, and rocks, bringing them all together as they appear and disappear. As you approach Conservatory Garden, which is now in beautiful full bloom, you can stop at Spencer Finch’s “Sunset (Central Park),” a solar-powered painted ice-cream truck that offers free soft-serve ice cream that changes colors matching the setting sun. Finch, who also currently has hue-based artworks at the Morgan Library and on the High Line, calls is an “edible monochrome.” But more important, it’s rather soothing on a hot summer’s day.

Lauri Stallings + Glo’s “And All Directions, I Come to You” gracefully and dramatically moves through the north end of Central Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

On the south side of Conservatory Garden, Alicia Framis’s “Cartas al Cielo” sits atop a hill, a large, reflective silver orb that glitters in the sunlight. Meaning “letters to the sky,” the participatory sculpture, which is like a doorway to a more ethereal kind of Central Park, invites people to fill out a postcard to someone not on this earth and slip it into one of the globe’s mail slots. You can send a missive to a lost loved one or even an alien, as it boasts otherworldly qualities. Heading toward the Ravine, you’ll soon see nine women — Anicka Zaneta Austin, Kristina Marie Brown, Jennifer Cara Clark, Mary Virginia Coleman, Ashley I Daye, Christina Kelly, Mary Jane Pennington, Cailan Orn, and Katherine Maxwell — performing Atlanta-based choreographer Stallings “And All Directions, I Come to You,” in which the dancers, wearing long dresses of different solid colors forming a unique rainbow, fall on the grass, sit on the path, weave around trees, and invite the audience to join a group circle. Also taking place by the North Woods and the Loch, it’s fast-paced and unpredictable, especially to people who are in the area but have no idea what’s going on, just spending an afternoon in the park. Meanwhile, along North End Drive, three of Nina Katchadourian’s handwoven bird nests, collectively known as “The Lamppost Weavers,” hang from streetlamps, including one consisting of repurposed sneakers that evoke the runners passing by but don’t offer the birds much of a place to set up house. The lampposts are not exactly easy to find; nor are all eight of Levine’s “Private Moments,” which are scattered throughout the park and also feature actors re-creating scenes from Bullets Over Broadway, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm, Six Degrees of Separation, Portrait of Jennie, The Out-of-Towners, Cruel Intentions, and Marathon Man, in which one brave soul spends all afternoon jogging around the Reservoir.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s “Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos” provides a powerful conclusion to park project (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The eighth and final project, Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s “Black Joy in the Hour of Chaos,” is the most powerful. On the Great Hill, taking place on a parachute in colors evoking the flags of Africa and with multiple translations of the phrase “black joy” running around its perimeter, five actors, a violinist, and a cellist, all wearing fatigue pants and red hoodies, mix dance, music, theater, and spoken word as they provide a full-frontal assault on the race war dominating the country, asserting their individual and group identity as they invoke such names as Michael Stewart, Sean Bell, and Freddie Gray. At the end of the riveting performance, people are asked to help lift the parachute, but once it’s raised, it’s dropped again, not remaining up, as we still has quite a way to go before inviting everyone inside the big tent. It’s a compelling experience, and one that puts a provocative cap on a thoroughly engaging exhibition that highlights the diverse nature of Central Park and of New York City and recalls what the Olmsted brothers wrote in 1903 in a report on parks in Portland, Oregon: “All agree that parks not only add to the beauty of a city and to the pleasure of living in it, but are exceedingly important factors in developing the healthfulness, morality, intelligence, and business prosperity of its residents. Indeed it is not too much to say that a liberal provision of parks in a city is one of the surest manifestations of the intelligence, degree of civilization, and progressiveness of its citizens.”

ANYWHERE IN TIME: A CONLON NANCARROW FESTIVAL

The life and career of one-of-a-kind composer Conlon Nancarrow will be celebrated at twelve-day fest at the new Whitney (photo courtesy Charles Amirkhanian)

Whitney Museum of American Art
Susan and John Hess Family Theater, third floor
99 Gansevoort St.
June 17-28, $22 (includes admission to galleries)
212-570-3600
whitney.org

In a 1981 letter to Charles Amirkhanian, György Ligeti wrote, “This music is the greatest discovery since Webern and Ives . . . something great and important for all music history! His music is so utterly original, enjoyable, perfectly constructed but at the same time emotional . . . for me it’s the best of any composer living today.” Ligeti was referring to the little-known Conlon Nancarrow, an American-born composer who had become a Mexican citizen and had done extraordinary work with the player piano. The recipient of a MacArthur genius grant, Nancarrow, who passed away in 1997 at the age of eighty-four, will be celebrated at the new Whitney Museum of American Art with “Anywhere in Time: A Conlon Nancarrow Festival,” twelve days of special live performances, talks, and films paying tribute to Nancarrow’s influential career. Among those taking the stage in the Susan and John Hess Family Theater will be Steve Coleman and Five Elements, dancers from the Merce Cunningham Trust Fellowship Program performing Crises (1960) (reconstructed and staged by Jennifer Goggans), percussionist Chris Froh, Alarm Will Sound, and Henry Kaiser and Lukas Ligeti with Charles Amirkhanian. Cocurated by Dominic Murcott and Jay Sanders, “Anywhere in Time” also features screenings of James Greeson’s 2012 documentary Conlon Nancarrow: Virtuoso of the Player Piano, the panel discussion “Nancarrow Deconstructed” with Froh and Murcott, and a 1921 Marshall and Wendell Ampico upright player piano on view on the veranda with Nancarrow’s “Study #36” piano roll, which will occasionally play. “Conlon Nancarrow had perhaps the most single-minded career of any great American composer, devoting his life to exploring the rhythmic possibilities of juxtaposing multiple simultaneous tempos,” notes Alarm Will Sound conductor and artistic director Alan Pierson. “The combination of Nancarrow’s catchy materials and the complex way he deals with them puts his work in a sweet spot of immediacy and complexity occupied by much of the music we love. And the challenge of performing music not meant to be played by human beings is a stimulating one.” The festival comes to a close on June 28 with the eight-hour “Complete Studies for Player Piano: A Marathon Concert Event,” presented in numerical order from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm and including appearances by Nancarrow’s wife, Yoko, and their son, Mako. Most of the events require ticketing, and it’s best if you get them in advance; the cost is the same as museum admission, and the ticket gets you into all the galleries.

MUSEUM MILE FESTIVAL 2015

Uptown institutions stay open late and open their doors for free for Museum Mile Festival

Multiple locations on Fifth Ave. between 82nd & 105th Sts.
Tuesday, June 9, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Admission: free
www.museummilefestival.org

There’s really only one main problem with the annual Museum Mile Festival: It’s too short. On Tuesday, June 9, from 6:00 to 9:00, nine uptown art and cultural institutions will open their doors for free and fill Fifth Ave. between 82nd & 105th Sts. with family-friendly activities for the thirty-sixth year. There will be live outdoor performances by Calpulli Mexican Dance Company, Paul Miller aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, Evolfo, Kim David Smith, the Martha Graham Dance Company, Sammie & Trudie’s Imagination Playhouse, Silly Billy the Very Funny Clown, and Magic Brian, in addition to face painting, art workshops, chalk drawing, and more. The participating museums (with at least one of their current shows listed here) are El Museo del Barrio (“Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa — Art and Film”), the Museum of the City of New York (“Saving Place: 50 Years of New York City Landmarks”), the Jewish Museum (“Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television,” “Laurie Simmons: How We See”), the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (“How Posters Work,” “Making Design”), the National Academy (“The Annual 2015: The Depth of the Surface”), the Guggenheim (“Storylines: Contemporary Art at the Guggenheim”), the Neue Galerie (“Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer: The Woman in Gold”), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (“Van Gogh: Irises and Roses,” “Robert Motherwell: Lyric Suite”), along with the Africa Center (which is building a new home). Don’t try to do too much, because it can get rather crowded; just pick one or two exhibitions in one or two museums and enjoy.

CARLOS ESTRADA-VEGA: SUITE COLOR

Carlos Estrada-Vega, “Jacoba,” wax, limestone dust, oil, olepasto, pigments on wood, 2015

Carlos Estrada-Vega, “Jacoba,” wax, limestone dust, oil, oleopasto, pigments on wood, 2015

Who: Carlos Estrada-Vega
What: “Suite Color”
Where: Margaret Thatcher Projects, 539 West 23rd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., 212-675-0222
When: Through June 6, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Why: Carlos Estrada-Vega has titled his latest exhibition at Margaret Thatcher Projects “Suite Color,” and his use of color is sweet indeed. Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and living and working in Las Cruces, New Mexico, Estrada-Vega has created a series of three-dimensional eight-inch-by-eight-inch sculpture-paintings, each one consisting of more than three hundred tiny rectangular wooden boxes that jut out of an unseen metal plate at different levels, resulting in a colorful topography grid that bursts with childlike imagination. Each block is hand-painted in pigments made of wax, limestone dust, oil, and oleopasto, laid out in color schemes inspired by Estrada-Vega’s Mexican heritage, and featuring such names as “Jacinta,” “Jordana,” “Jimena,” “Judina,” and “Jorgina,” honoring the women in his culture. “My work is like a mantra that relies on discipline, intuition, and process,” Estrada-Vega notes in his artist statement. “The path of my work is systematically determined by the physical execution and my daily experience with life. Simplicity and repetition are the vehicles of form. The physical existence of the work is meant to open and reflect.” It is easy to open and reflect while looking at these engaging grids that also recall maps, pixels, and complex data representation as well as the simpler art materials of children, such as Play-Doh and Lego blocks.

FIRST SATURDAY: INTERNATIONAL LGBTQ PRIDE

Zanele Muholi (South African, b. 1972). Faces and Phases installed at dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany, 2012. (Photo: © Anders Sune Berg)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, June 6, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The June installment of the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturday program celebrates LGBTQ Pride, with live performances by the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, Aye Nako, DJ Lynnee Denise, DJ Ilsa, and Junglepussy with DJ Joey Labeija; an exhibition talk by Jess Wilcox on “Zanele Muholi: Isibonelo/Evidence” and ten-minute pop-up gallery talks about “Diverse Works: Director’s Choice, 1997–2015”; a flag-making workshop; a poetry performance by Dark Matter (Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian); a literary workshop with bklyn boihood, focusing on its upcoming publication, Outside the XY; screenings of Seyi Adebanjo’s 2013 documentary, Trans Lives Matter! Justice for Islan Nettles, followed by a talkback with the director, and Dan Sickles & Antonio Santini’s 2014 film, Mala Mala, followed by a talkback with the directors and cast memebers Paxx and Joyce Puty; and a tribute to retiring museum director Arnold Lehman, with reflections and performances by DapperQ, Visual Aids, Harriett’s Apothecary, Haiti Cultural Exchange, CaribBEING, Afrika 21/Harriet’s Alter Ego, and Balmir Latin Dance. In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” “Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” “Kara Walker: ‘African Boy Attendant Curio (Bananas),’” and “Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time.”

LIFE OF CATS: SELECTIONS FROM THE HIRAKI UKIYO-E COLLECTION

Takahashi Hiroaki (Shotei), “Nude Playing with a Cat,” color woodblock print, ca. 1927-30 (courtesy Private Collection, New York and Tokyo)

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Through Sunday, June 7, $12 (free Friday 6:00 – 9:00)
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

“Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose),” Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami said in an interview about his 2002 book, Kafka on the Shore, which features a character who has a rather unique rapport with felines. (It’s not a coincidence that we named one of our cats Haruki.) Japan’s relationship with cats goes back some fifteen hundred years, when it is believed that cats came to the islands on ships carrying Buddhist scriptures from China. Cats do more than just naturally slip in in the Japan Society exhibit “Life of Cats: Selections from the Hiraki Ukiyo-e Collection,” a claw-some gathering of more than 120 color woodblock prints, hanging scrolls, paintings, and sculptures. Each work contains a cat in one form or another, sometimes hovering in the background, other times front and center, for both good and evil purposes. Dating from the Edo Period (1615-1867), the works are divided into five groups: “Cats and People,” “Cats as People,” “Cats versus People,” “Cats Transformed,” and “Cats and Play,” depicting the diverse relationship between humans and felines. “A cat is just a cat, but the cat motif contains many nuances and connotations,” the catalog points out, and indeed, the nuances and connotations are many in the exhibition. Sometimes the cat is hovering in the background, barely visible, or on the pattern of a kimono, while at other times it’s front and center, providing loving warmth or performing a dastardly dance of death. People become anthropomorphized cats, with claws, whiskers, and not-so-cute ears. Housecats turn into demonic figures, while tigers and lions lurk threateningly. A cat sits on a man’s back or cuddles at a woman’s neck. Some works are tantalizing and sexy, like Takashi Hiroaki’s “Nude Playing with a Cat,” while others, known as omocha-e, or “toy pictures,” provide moral lessons for children, like “Newly Published Scenes of Good and Evil Cats,” by an unknown artist. There are works by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Kanagaki Robun, Utagawa Hiroshige, Kitagawa Utamaro, Utagawa Kunisada, Katsushika Hokusai, and even Édouard Manet, depicting cats in a multitude of ways, not always as adorable as they are in online videos. (If you saw the show prior to the end of April, you might want to go back, as nearly fifty pieces were rotated in on April 29.) Essentially, the exhibition reveals what we already know: that cats rule, and there’s nothing you can do about it.