this week in art

PAULA HAYES: GAZING GLOBES

Paula Hayes’s “Gazing Globes” offers a different way to look at Madison Square Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MAD. SQ. ART
Madison Square Park
23rd to 24th Sts. between Madison & Fifth Aves.
Daily through April 19, free
www.madisonsquarepark.org
www.paulahayes.com
gazing globes slideshow

In exhibits such as “Nocturne of the Limax maximus” at MoMA and “Land Mind” at Lever House, visual artist and landscape designer Paula Hayes created living botanical environments, terrariums that held plants and fish while emphasizing the relationship between humanity and nature. Now Hayes, who was born in Massachusetts and is based in New York City, has incorporated outdated technology into the mix with “Gazing Globes,” an illuminating site-specific display in the southwest gravel section of Madison Square Park. Eighteen glass orbs, sixteen, eighteen, or twenty-four inches in diameter, sit on fiberglass pedestals of varying heights between two and four feet, filled with detritus from analog radios, electronic transistors, vacuum tubes, rubber tires, and other technological and industrial waste, along with crystals, forming futuristic miniature postapocalyptic cities of blue, green, purple, gold, and black, layered with dust made from crushed CDs. The spheres change with the weather and the time of day, morphing from snow globes to colorful crystal balls to enchanting glowing orbs at night as they also reflect the surrounding architecture of the Flatiron District. As spring heats up and Teresita Fernández’s massive, five-hundred-foot-long “Fata Morgana” goes up in the park, “Gazing Globes” will mutate yet again, offering yet more fascinating glimpses into our past, present, and future.

FLOYDADA

Sisters Dalia (Nomi Tichman) and Ada (Catherine Porter) reconnect in FLOYDADA (photo by Dan Lane Williams)

Peculiar Works Project
Merchants Square Building
40 Worth St. between Church St. & West Broadway
Wednesday – Saturday through April 11, $12-$18, 7:00
www.peculiarworks.org

When you think of the revolutionary art movement known as Dada, West Texas is not generally one of the first things that comes to mind. But in the early 1990s, playwright Barry Rowell was driving to Lubbock when he saw a sign for the small town of Floydada, Texas, and decided right then and there that he was going to write a play that involved Dadaism. The result is Floydada, a two-character show running through April 11 in a large, empty storefront in the Merchants Square Building on Worth St. The premise is a bit thin, as well as somewhat random — which, of course, is a key element of Dada. But you don’t have to know anything about Dada — the experimental movement, based on readymade objects and chance, that developed from a disgust with the death and destruction of WWI — to understand the play; after all, “Dada does not mean anything,” Tristan Tzara wrote in his 1918 manifesto. It’s March 1927, and Dalia (Nomi Tichman) is ill, so she has returned home to be with her sister, Ada (Catherine Porter), in the small town of Floydada. Dalia has spent the last several decades primarily in New York, Berlin, and Paris — France, not Texas — writing poetry, giving performances, and hanging out with the cultural elite, including the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, a close friend with whom she continues to exchange letters. Elsa has also given Dalia one of her most famous sculptures, “Portrait of Marcel Duchamp,” an avant-garde work that mystifies Ada almost as much as her sister’s activities do. Over the course of ten months, the sisters reconnect, the city girl and the country girl learning from each other and even performing together, turning the family’s dry goods store into a cabaret where they sing and recite poetry for the close-knit local community.

FLOYDADA features unusual characters in an unusual space (photo by Dan Lane Williams)

When Dalia first suggests that they perform, she tells Ada, “All we need is an empty space.” The same can be said for Peculiar Works Project, the Obie-winning company, cofounded by Porter, Rowell, and Ralph Lewis in 1993, that specializes in experimental productions in unusual spaces. In 2013, they presented Rowell’s Manna-Hatta in multiple rooms upstairs in the James A. Farley Post Office. Floydada takes place on the ground floor of the Merchants Square Building, which was built in 1928, right around the time in which the play is set. One side of the long, horizontal room, which boasts large pillars, a cement floor, and an open ceiling revealing pipes, wires, and insulation, has been filled with new Dada-inspired art by Carlo Adinolfi, Michelle Beshaw, Myrel Chernick, Norman Chernick-Zeitlin, Anna Kiraly, Ray Neufeld, and Francesco Vizzini. A makeshift box-office area features a urinal tip jar and a slideshow of Dada artists. The play itself unfolds in an open area with some furniture, as the two actors wander from living room to outside road to dry goods store, using sound to indicate their coming and going. Porter and Tichman portray Ada and Dalia with an oddball eccentricity that is reminiscent of the mother and daughter Bouvier Beales from Grey Gardens, though not nearly as off the wall. “People think you’re strange, you know,” Ada says, to which Dalia replies, “I am.” Director David Vining (Cracked, The Blue Puppies Cycle) makes creative use of the space, though a lot of the movement grows repetitive; at times you’ll just wish the characters just stayed put for a few moments instead of constantly getting up and down and moving back and forth on Casey McLain’s set. Yoonmi Lee adds fine piano and percussion, while Lianne Arnold’s projections and Leila Ghaznavi’s live manipulations (and sound effects) are colorful but confusing. The overall aesthetic has a sweetly innocent DIY charm, as well as plenty of strangeness, but it’s probably about twenty minutes too long, which, in its own way, is rather Dada itself. It’s also extremely cold in the space, with no heating, so be prepared to leave your coat and hat on if the weather remains so bitter. Floydada runs Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays through April 11; there will be a “Dada (Re)Creation” benefit on April 6 with dance, music, art, and poetry, and the April 9-11 shows will be followed by a DadaDialogue with Pratt professor Dr. Dorothea Dietrich and other panelists.

FIRST SATURDAY: BASQUIAT

The opening of “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks” will be celebrated at free First Saturday program at the Brooklyn Museum

The opening of “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks” will be celebrated at free First Saturdays program at the Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, April 4, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The April edition of the Brooklyn Museum’s First Saturdays program celebrates the opening of its latest exhibit on Jean-Michel Basquiat, “Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks,” a collection of 160 pages from his never-before-shown notebooks, focusing on his use of text and image, along with works on paper and large-scale paintings. The free evening will feature live musical performances by the James Francies Trio and Lion Babe and a DJ set by Natasha Diggs; a curator talk by Tricia Laughlin Bloom about the new exhibition; a Basquiat crown-making workshop; a Basquiat-inspired writing workshop led by Tom La Farge and Wendy Walker; Cave Canem “Poetry Meets Art” readings from LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and Roger Reeves; a children’s book presentation with illustrator Javaka Steptoe discussing Radiant Child: The Story of Young Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat; a screening of Tamra Davis’s 2010 documentary Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child; a performance of Dark Swan by Urban Bush Women; and an interactive performance and dance workshop with W.A.F.F.L.E. (We Are Family for Life Entertainment). In addition, you can check out such exhibitions as “Revolution! Works from the Black Arts Movement,” “Kehinde Wiley: A New Republic,” “The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago,” and “Chitra Ganesh: Eyes of Time.”

HEBREW ILLUMINATION FOR OUR TIME: THE ART OF BARBARA WOLFF

Barbara Wolff, “The Rose Haggadah,” detail, p. 19, illuminated manuscript, 2011-13 (artwork © 2014 Barbara Wolff / digital photography by Rudi Wolff)

Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through May 3, $12-$18 (free Fridays 7:00 to 9:00)
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org
www.artofbarbarawolff.com

Passover doesn’t begin until April 3, but you can get a head start on the holiday, in which Jews around the world retell the story of the exodus from Egypt, by visiting the Morgan Library and checking out its lovely exhibition “Hebrew Illumination for Our Time: The Art of Barbara Wolff,” comprising the first two illuminated Hebrew texts to join the Morgan’s celebrated collection of illuminated manuscripts, as well as its very first Haggadah. In 2011, New York artist Barbara Wolff was commissioned by the Rose family to create an illuminated Haggadah, the book used at the Passover seder that contains prayers, hymns, historical tales, biblical scenes, and other elements that expand upon the Jews’ enslavement and their battle with the Pharaoh more than three thousand years ago. Working with her unique blend of silver, gold, and platinum foils on vellum, Wolff designed beautiful artwork to accompany Izzy Pludwinski’s Ashkenazic Hebrew calligraphy and Karen Gorst’s English captions, incorporating flora and fauna native to the Middle East along with the standard elements of the Passover seder, including such symbolic food as the Paschal lamb, matzah, and bitter herbs. Each page is exquisitely designed: A large eye oversees a pyramid in which slaves are shown hard at work, more than twenty colorful ancient Egyptian gods are gathered together in the desert, and the ten plagues are depicted above and below a lush gold area featuring silver Kiddush cups spilling drops of red wine. The Rose Haggadah is a far cry from the familiar, old-fashioned blue-and-white Maxwell House Haggadah that was so prevalent throughout much of the twentieth century. Wolff’s remarkable sixty-four-page book honors Jewish tradition in a format more associated with Christianity, bringing new life to an annual ritual that honors the past while projecting hope for the future.

Barbara Wolff, “Among the Branches They Sing” from “You Renew the Face of the Earth: Psalm 104,” illuminated manuscript, MS M.1190, fol. 3 (artwork © 2015 Barbara Wolff / photography by Rudi Wolff)

The exhibit also includes Wolff’s illuminated version of Psalm 104, “You Renew the Face of the Earth,” ten elegant works in which she uses platinum, silver, and gold leaf on goatskin parchment. “This great hymn to the divine in nature directs our awareness to the miracle of the world,” Wolff writes in the free exhibition handout. “The sentiments expressed in this psalm have particular relevance for our own era, a time of growing consciousness of the profound effect of human enterprise on nature, and of questioning our role as steward of our planet.” The ten illuminations include the signs of the zodiac, which represent the twelve tribes of Israel; golden Hokusai-like waves above rising mountains; a silver leviathan encapsulating smaller sea creatures; and twenty-eight Israeli birds in and around a Tabor oak, with every animal specifically identified. Wolff adds commentary about each folio; for example, in “To Bring Forth Bread,” which shows grains growing, she writes, “Wild grass, ancestor of man’s most ancient cultivated crop, became the foundation of civilization. . . . Shining fields of wheat and filled granaries are symbols of security, peace, and plenty.” The exhibition is supplemented by illuminated manuscripts from the Morgan’s collection that influenced Wolff, as well as a twenty-two-minute film that highlights her intricate, intensely dedicated working process. In conjunction with the exhibition, Vassar professor Marc Michael Epstein will deliver the talk “Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Barbara Wolff and her Place in the History of Jewish Manuscript Illumination” on April 1 at 6:30; on April 12 at 2:00, Wolff will lead the workshop “The Midas Touch”; on April 15 at 7:00, composer and accordionist Merima Ključo, artist Bart Woodstrup, and pianist Seth Knopp will team up for the multimedia presentation “The Sarajevo Haggadah: Music of the Book”; and on April 18 at 2:00, Stephanie Krauss will lead the workshop “My Very Own Illuminated Manuscript — Part 2: Putting It Together” for children eight and older.

ART OFF THE WALL — CHITRA GANESH: EYES OF TIME

Chitra Ganesh, “Eyes of Time,” detail, mixed-media wall mural, 2015 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brooklyn Museum
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, Herstory Gallery, fourth floor
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Thursday, March 26, free with museum admission, 6:00-9:30
Exhibition continues through July 12
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org
www.chitraganesh.com
eyes of time online slideshow

In her exceptional new site-specific installation, “Eyes of Time,” in the Brooklyn Museum’s Herstory Gallery, multimedia artist Chitra Ganesh investigates female divinity, multiplicity, and power, inspired by the goddess Kali, one of the women honored with a place setting in Judy Chicago’s seminal work “The Dinner Party,” the centerpiece of the museum’s Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, home to the Herstory Gallery. Ganesh, a lifelong Brooklynite, supplements her wall sculpture with selections from the museum’s collection, comprising contemporary works by Kiki Smith, Shoichi Ida, and Barbara Jones-Hogu as well as a small seventeenth-century Indian bronze of a standing Kali and an ancient Egyptian bronze of a seated Sekhmet. “In mythic tales both Sekhmet and Kali are connected to blood, death, destruction, and protection, and to fierce animals such as lions and tigers,” Ganesh writes in a wall label. “These qualities contrast with characteristics typically idealized in women today and point to the formidable roles played by the ancient goddesses.” About Louise Bourgeois’s 1996 drypoint, “Eyes,” Ganesh adds, “The third eye, as seen on Kali, has often been associated with supernatural powers in Indian mythology and continues to appear in contemporary imagery. The act of gazing into numerous eyes might also recall the practice of darshan, a dialectical and spiritual way of looking that considers the object as both image and living being, providing an experience of seeing that informs South Asian culture.”

Those explanations also offer just the right way to approach “Eyes of Time,” a sprawling mural of three women that covers one wall of the gallery. At the left is a contemporary figure holding a jagged, starlike piece of the universe over one eye while the other eye looks directly at the viewer. In the middle is a figure based on Kali, the goddess of time, change, and destruction, who has six arms, three legs, three breasts, and a skirt of severed arms of different colors. Words emerge from her long hair, including “quicksand,” “rainbows,” and “knowing.” One hand has an eyeball in its palm, one holds a whip, while another wields a blood-dripping scythe with an eye on it. Instead of a head, on her neck is the Grand Central clock, without its hands. And on the right is a science-fiction woman made out of such machine parts as gears and speakers laid out in a kind of architectural rendering. All three women, representing the past, the present, and the future, have shiny jewels embedded into their being, while two rows of decorated flags hang above them. In some ways, it’s like the three figures have escaped from Ganesh’s comic book Tales of Amnesia, which is also on view, giving three-dimensional life to these superhero characters. “These narrative devices allude to the power of multiple forms of femininity that coexist within the same frame and, at times, within a single being, as well as to darker aspects of Kali,” Ganesh writes about her 2002 book. On March 26, the Brooklyn Museum’s next edition of “Art Off the Wall” will celebrate “Eyes of Time” with an evening of special activities, consisting of an artist and curator talk with Ganesh and Saisha Grayson, a zine library inspired by Tales of Amnesia, screenings of three of Ganesh’s short films (Rabbithole; What Remains; My dreams, my works must wait till after hell…), a movement workshop with Ajna Dance Company, and a Bhangra dance party with DJ Rekha.

HELENA RUBINSTEIN: BEAUTY IS POWER

“Beauty Is Power” exhibition includes a wall of portraits of Madame Rubinstein (© The Jewish Museum, NY. Photo by: David Heald)

The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.,
Thursday – Sunday, $12-$15 (pay-what-you-wish Thursdays from 5:00 to 8:00, Saturdays free 11:00 to 5:45),
212-423-3200
thejewishmuseum.org

“Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power” is more than just a bountiful look into the art collection of the legendary entrepreneur; it’s a wonderfully curated examination of an Eastern European immigrant who lived the American dream — and was determined to share it with as many women as she could. “When Helena Rubinstein died in 1965, age 92, she was still in sole command of her global cosmetics empire and still very much a force in the world of fashion, style, and image,” curator Mason Klein writes in the exhibition catalog. “By the time of her death, she had salons in cities worldwide and homes in London, Paris, New York, the south of France, and Greenwich, Connecticut, all but the last functioning as showcases for her decorative fantasies, replete with swelling and rotating collections. She had influenced generations of women, not only in terms of self-image, but also as a role model of individuality.” Born in Poland on Christmas Day, 1872, Rubinstein, the oldest child of a Kraków shopkeeper and a housewife, built a massively successful business that spread around the world, selling cosmetics that showed women of all means that they could be beautiful — an inner and outer beauty they could use to better their place in life.

The exhibit consists of approximately two hundred objects, from paintings, drawings, and sculptures Madame, as she was known, collected in addition to photographs, print advertisements, promotional film clips, excerpts from television interviews, jewelry, cosmetics, and personal paraphernalia that reveal her impact as an international tastemaker. On view are works by Elie Nadelman, Frida Kahlo, Max Ernst, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, and others, highlighted by a series of drawings of Madame done by Pablo Picasso and a wall of portraits of her through the years by such artists as Marie Laurencin and Andy Warhol. There’s also an ample display of her love of African and Oceanic sculpture, as well as exquisite, elegant miniature rooms. Rubinstein’s salons were not just a place of physical transformation but also a welcoming space where women could come and discuss art, literature, fashion, and the modern world, putting them on a par with men. “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones,” Rubinstein famously said. She also claimed, “Beauty is power,” a way of life for her, as this exhibition so thoroughly proves.

HAGIGAH IVRIT

Who: Assaf Gavron, Shira Averbuch, Yuval Hamevulbal, Roy Noy, Tal Mosseri, the Power Girls (Tuti and Naama), Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Mesiba Ivrit, Reuven (Ruby) Namdar, and more
What: Hagigah Ivrit (חגיגה עברית)
Where: JCC in Manhattan, B’nai Jeshurun, Israeli-American Council (IAC), Symphony Space, the Highline Ballroom, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Park Avenue Synagogue, Yeshiva University Museum, and other locations
When: March 14-30
Why: The first-ever North American cultural festival celebrating the Hebrew language features a book talk with Assaf Gavron, author of The Hilltop; an interactive educational performance of Peter and the Wolf; the Festifun2 musical production with Israeli child stars; a talk by Rabbi Eliezer Ben-Yehuda on “The Importance of the Hebrew Tongue to the Rebirth of the People in Their Land — and the Continued Existence of Judaism in the Future”; a dance party with live music; Hebrew classes for beginners; Shabbat dinner; a Passover family workshop; a conversation with Sapir Prize for Literature winner Ruby Namdar; a screening of Sharon Maymon and Tal Granit’s The Farewell Party; and other special and ongoing events.