this week in art

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.

REELABILITIES: NY DISABILITIES FILM FESTIVAL

Rory Culkin will be among the special guests at the ReelAbilities film festival, discussing his starring role in GABRIEL

Multiple venues
March 12-18, free – $50 (most film screenings $12-$13)
newyork.reelabilities.org

The seventh annual ReelAbilities film festival will feature more than two dozen programs, focusing on “promoting awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories, and artistic expressions of people with different disabilities.” This year’s festival, running March 12-18, will take place at more than three dozen locations in all five boroughs in addition to Westchester and Long Island. The Finishers, Nils Tavernier’s drama about a teenager with cerebral palsy who is convinced by his father that the two should compete together in an Ironman triathlon in France, is the opening-night selection, with a gala screening at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, while the closing-night film is Carlo Zoratti’s The Special Need, about a twenty-nine-year-old autistic man who is determined to lose his virginity, being shown March 18 at the JCC in Manhattan and followed by a reception. Among the other films are Adam Kahan’s The Case of the Three Sided Dream, a documentary about blind and paralyzed jazzman Rahsaan Roland Kirk; Troy Kotsur’s mockumentary No Ordinary Hero: The SuperDeafy Movie; Richard Kane’s Jon Imber’s Left Hand, which tells the story of the artist who had to switch the hand he paints with because of ALS; and Lou Howe’s Gabriel, which stars Rory Culkin as a teenager dealing with mental illness. (Many of the screenings will be followed by discussions and Q&As with the filmmakers, actors, protagonists, and health professionals.) There will also be such special events as “(In)Visible,” a conversation between blind Michigan Supreme Court justice Richard Bernstein and Jason’s Connections cofounder Jason Harris; a multimedia exhibit at the JCC in Manhattan by the Jack and Shirley Silver Center for Special Needs; the ReelAbilities Comedy Night at the JCC with Anita Hollander, Mary Archbold, Pat Shay, Shannon DeVido, and David Harrell; and a Shabbat Dinner celebrating the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, with film screenings and a panel discussion with historian Warren Shaw, Justice Bernstein, photographer Rick Guidotti, and others, moderated by Lawrence Carter-Long.

PHOENIX: XU BING AT THE CATHEDRAL

Xu Bing’s “Phoenix” will soar out of St. John the Divine on March 15 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine
1047 Amsterdam Ave. at 112th St.
Daily through March 15, suggested donation $10
212-316-7540
www.stjohndivine.org

After more than a year spent hovering over the nave at the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, Huang and Feng are getting ready to take off on the next part of a journey that has seen them go from Beijing to Shanghai to Massachusetts. In January 2014, Chinese artist Xu Bing, who lives and works in Beijing and New York, installed two giant phoenixes, the ninety-foot-long male Feng and the hundred-foot-long female Huang, the two totaling more than twelve tons, at the cathedral. Originally commissioned for the World Financial Center in Beijing, “Phoenix” was ultimately rejected when Xu, a member of the ’85 New Wave Movement who went through “reeducation” as a child and whose father spent time in jail as a political prisoner, decided to use detritus from construction sites to build the two birds as a statement emphasizing the widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, capital and labor in China, where peasant communities are torn down to make way for high-end commercial ventures. It would be easy to see “Phoenix” as a metaphor for the mythological creatures rising from the ashes, especially at St. John the Divine, evoking not only the resurrection of Jesus but the cathedral’s seven-year restoration following a devastating 2001 six-alarm fire, but in Chinese legend the phoenix, known as the fenghuang, represents the combination of yin and yang, the sun and the moon, made up of elements from different animals and celestial bodies, filled with the promise of good fortune, loyalty, dignity, and compassion.

Xu, whose other recent New York projects include “The Living Word” at the Morgan, “Where Does the Dust Itself Collect?” in the Spinning Wheel Building, and “The Character of Characters” animated video at the Met, did not build Feng and Huang with random debris, instead carefully constructing each body part with specific objects; for example, the heads are made from the nose of industrial jackhammers, depicting strength and power, while feathers are built from shovelheads. Working with a team of primarily migrant workers, Xu also incorporates bamboo, girders, tools, hard hats, rebar, wheels, and other waste materials found at Beijing construction sites. “With this, there’s a kind of internal logic that produces beauty. You also produce a sense of humor,” Xu said through a translator in an artist talk he gave at MASS MoCA, where “Phoenix” made its U.S. debut in 2013. He then compared his process to Chinese folk art. “The method of Chinese folk art is to use the most inexpensive, the cheapest materials to express [people’s] hopes for the future and for their lives.” He also added LED lights to Feng and Huang, turning them into mysterious constellations in the dark. Facing away from the altar, the phoenixes are imbued with an engaging spirituality, especially when the cathedral’s church organ is being played, the music echoing throughout the vast space. The birds look very much at home inside this self-described “house of prayer for all people and a unifying center of intellectual light and leadership,” companions to Greg Wyatt’s outdoor Peace Fountain, but on March 15 they will be migrating once again, off on the next stop of their amazing journey.

MADAME CÉZANNE

Paul Cézanne, “Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress,” oil on canvas, 1888-90 (The Mr. and Mrs. Henry Ittleson Jr. Purchase Fund, 1962)

Metropolitan Museum of Art, Galleries 955 & 961–962
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Daily through March 15, recommended admission $12-$25
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org

Not much is known about the relationship between French artist Paul Cézanne and his wife, former artist’s model Marie-Hortense Fiquet, other than that they met in 1869, had a son in 1872, were married in 1886, and, when Paul died in 1906, had long lived apart, and he left her nothing in his will. However, he did leave behind twenty-nine known portraits of her, twenty-five of which are on display at the Met in the intriguing exhibition “Madame Cézanne,” continuing through March 15. The show features paintings, drawings, and watercolors, ranging from a page of 1871-74 graphite studies to the ca. 1895-1900 oil sketch “Portrait of a Woman (Madame Cézanne).” The centerpiece of the exhibit is the quartet of portraits of Madame Cézanne in a red dress, each one very different, highlighted by the 1888-90 canvas with the most detailed surroundings. The four paintings have not been seen together for many years, and the group, now side by side, is both breathtaking and provoking in the insights it offers and questions it generates about Cezanne’s choices on the canvas. The paintings do not add insight into the couple’s love, or lack thereof, for each other, however, as Cézanne nearly always depicts his wife as dour and matronly, rarely smiling. In the unfinished 1891 oil painting “Madame Cézanne” in the Conservatory,” Hortense Fiquet sits on a chair, her hands on her lap, tree branches and fruit in the background; she gazes directly at the viewer, her eyes open, her mouth closed, appearing neither sad nor happy, just resigned to her fate. “If these quietly powerful paintings of Hortense Fiquet came to be acknowledged as a testing ground for Cézanne’s innovation and experimentation with paint on canvas, their subject and her vital partnership as model, mistress, wife, and mother have been willfully overlooked,” curator Dita Amory writes in the preface to the exhibition catalog. “Their story is a deeply compelling one, perhaps even more so for the very absence of its particulars.” What isn’t absent in this show are some very beautiful works, which add yet more mystery to this curious artistic relationship. (As a bonus, the Met is showing “Paul Cézanne: Drawings and Watercolors” in Gallery 960 in the Robert Lehman Wing, also through March 15.)