Love, among other things, is in the air in Chuck Jones classic FOR SCENT-IMENTAL REASONS
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Friday, December 26, and December 29 – January 2, free with museum admission, 1:00
718-777-6800 www.movingimage.us
The Museum of the Moving Image’s celebration of all things Chuck Jones continues with a matinee of eight more of his classic Warner Bros. cartoons, held in conjunction with the endlessly fun exhibit “What’s Up, Doc? The Animation Art of Chuck Jones.” The festivities begin with 1946’s Hair-Raising Hare, in which Bugs Bunny thinks that monsters must lead such interesting lives. In 1949’s For Scent-imental Reasons, Pepè Le Pew thinks he has found true love. Daffy heads into the future and battles Marvin the Martian in 1953’s Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century. Daydreaming eight-year-old Ralph Phillips is introduced in 1954’s From A to Z-Z-Z-Z. Witch Hazel has some dastardly plans for Halloween trick-or-treaters in 1956’s Broom-Stick Bunny. Daffy and Bugs fight over a vast treasure in 1957’s Ali Baba Bunny. Daffy attempts to steal from the poor and give to the rich in 1958’s Robin Hood Daffy. And Wile E. Coyote (as Batman!) and the Delicius-Delicius Road Runner go at it yet again in 1956’s Gee Whiz-z-z. The exhibit runs through January 19; the matinees continue with “Baton Bunny and Other Cartoons” on January 4, “The Rabbit of Seville and Other Cartoons” January 10-11, and “Duck Amuck and Other Cartoons” January 17-18.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
1071 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Friday – Wednesday through January 7, $18-$22 (pay-what-you-wish Saturday 5:45-7:45)
212-423-3587 www.guggenheim.org
The Guggenheim completes its third revelatory group show in a row with “ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–60s,” coming hot on the heels of “Gutai: Splendid Playground” and “Italian Futurism, 1909–1944: Reconstructing the Universe.” Founded in 1957 by German artists Otto Piene and Heinz Mack, Zero brought together European artists who sought a fresh, optimistic start following the devastation of WWII. “From the beginning we looked upon the term [ZERO] not as an expression of nihilism — or as a dada-like gag, but as a word indicating a zone of silence and of pure possibilities for a new beginning as at the countdown when rockets take off — zero is the incommensurable zone in which the old state turns into the new.” Joined by Günther Uecker in 1961, the collective created monochromatic paintings, kinetic sculptures, and action works that explored light, nature, and space, often removing the hand of the artist. Subtle, complex brushstrokes of multiple colors were not on the agenda; instead, Lucio Fontana slashed his canvases, Uecker hammered in nails, and Piene, Yves Klein, Bernard Auberlin, Piero Manzoni, and Henk Peeters used fire and soot. Numerous pieces, including Gianni Colombo’s “Pulsating Structure,” Klein’s “Space Excavator,” Daniel Spoerri’s “Auto-Theater,” Piene’s “Light Ballet,” and Jean Tinguely’s “Butterfly (Two Points of Stability),” contain mechanically powered elements that move, and in the Guggenheim show they are active only at timed intervals, adding an expectant quality to the viewer’s experience, which echoes the group’s hopefulness for the future. Meanwhile, Mack’s “Silver Dynamo,” Almir Mavignier’s “Convex-Concave II,” and Jesús Rafael Soto’s vibration works play with viewers’ perception in engaging ways.
During the early 1960s, Group Zero’s influence spread to Japan, the Americas, and other parts of Europe; the exhibition features more than 180 works by some forty artists from Belgium (Walter Leblanc, Paul Van Hoeydonck), Romania (Spoerri), Brazil (Almir Mavignie), the Netherlands (herman de vries, Jan Schoonhoven), Japan (Yayoi Kusama), America (Robert Breer, George Rickey), Switzerland (Dieter Roth), and other nations. Curator Valerie Hillings bookends “ZERO: Countdown to Tomorrow, 1950s–60s” with two wonderful rooms, beginning in the High Gallery with an examination of the seminal 1959 Antwerp exhibition “Vision in Motion — Motion in Vision,” which serves as a kind of primer for what visitors can expect as they make their way up the Guggenheim’s Rotunda to the very last room, which contains a re-creation of the 1964 Documenta 3 installation “Light Room: Homage to Fontana,” as light-based kinetic works by Mack, Piene, Ueker, and Fontana turn on and off seemingly randomly, casting shadows on the walls and lighting up the darkness. The exhibition closes on January 7 with the panel discussion “ZEROgraphy: Mapping the ZERO Network, 1957–67” ($12, 6:30), with Antoon Melissen, Johan Pas, and Francesca Pola, moderated by Hillings and followed by a reception and a final viewing.
Free smartphone app turns High Line walk into audio adventure
Who: Composers Laine Fefferman, Jascha Narveson, and N. Cameron Britt and software developer Daniel Iglesia What: Make Music Winter festival Where: The High Line, Gansevoort & Washington Sts. to West 30th St. When: Sunday, December 21, free, 5:00 – 6:30 pm Why: Free downloadable app turns walk along the High Line into an unusual soundscape; portable speakers encouraged (first one hundred participants can borrow a wearable speaker for free); among the other free Make Music Winter events on December 21 are Tom Peyton’s “Bell by Bell,” the Nick Horner Family’s “Flat Foot Flatbush,” J. C. King’s “Kalimbascope,” Hiroya Miura’s “Lightmotif,” Malcolm J. Merriweather’s “Pilgrimage,” James Holt’s “Prelude,” Daniel Goode’s “Soho Gamelan Walk,” and Nissim Schaul’s “Wheels”
For years, we’ve been fascinated by Christian Boltanski’s “Monument (Odessa),” which is part of the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum. The wall installation consists of six photos of children, surrounded by wires connected to more than two dozen lights, above three rusted tin boxes. It makes one instantly think of the Holocaust, of lighted Yahrzeit remembrances in synagogues, of the six million. However, Boltanski, who was born in France in 1944, has stated, “My work is about the fact of dying, but it’s not about the Holocaust itself.” On Friday, December 12, at 8:00 in the morning, Boltanski, who built a mountain of clothing at the Park Avenue Armory for “No Man’s Land” in 2010 — an immersive work that also evoked the Holocaust — will discuss art, memory, “Monument (Odessa),” and more during the Jewish Museum’s latest downtown edition of “AM at the JM,” a free morning talk, with free java, at Think Coffee by Union Square, hosted by Jens Hoffmann, deputy director of exhibitions and public programs at the Jewish Museum. “A good work of art can never be read in one way. My work is full of contradictions,” Boltanski told Tamar Garb in 1997. “There are many ways of looking at the work. It has to be ‘unfocused’ somehow so that everyone can recognize something of their own self when viewing it.” This coffee klatch should make for quite a heady way to start the day.
Performance installation transforms the Park Avenue Armory into a multisensory experience (photo by James Ewing)
Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Installation: December 11 – January 4, $15, times vary
Performances: December 9-21, $90, 7:00 or 8:00
212-933-5812 www.armoryonpark.org
As you enter the cavernous Wade Thompson Drill Hall in the Park Avenue Armory to experience Douglas Gordon and Hélène Grimaud’s absolutely wonderful “tears become . . . streams become . . . ,” you encounter a long rectangular space in front of you, several inches below floor level, with two pianos standing on it and groups of chairs on all four sides. Slowly, water begins seeping into the central area. You take your seat and become mesmerized as water continues coming up through the seams of more than eight hundred dark panels of cement-bonded particle board and spreads across the thirty-three thousand square foot space, filling in ever-dampening circles in extremely satisfying individual narratives. Then the French-born, Switzerland-based Grimaud, seated at the larger of the Steinway grands, begins playing water-inspired works by Debussy, Ravel, Liszt, and others as the lighting turns the floor into a breathtaking reflecting pool, the arched ceiling echoed below in such a way that you feel like you can fall right into its spacious depths, as if the pool below is as vast and open as the space above. The large semicircular vaults of the west entrance and the east wall become complete circles with the reflection, the whole entity resembling a kind of submarine; meanwhile, little gurgles of water occasionally pop up on the surface, making quick sounds and small ripples. In addition, occasional currents create shimmers that add an enticingly surreal quality to the proceedings. At the press preview on December 8, the Turner Prize–winning Gordon sat on the piano bench next to Grimaud, occasionally standing up and determinedly waving his hands and arms, signaling the lighting personnel as if conducting an orchestra. One of the most accomplished classical pianists in the world, Grimaud has synesthesia, a sensory condition that causes her to visualize music as colors, which is ironic given the piece’s decidedly monochromatic appearance; also ironic is that Gordon says he is not a very good swimmer — and in his 2012 installation “The End of Civilisation,” he burned a piano onscreen. (Gordon and Grimaud each has a thing for wolves as well.) Doused in magic and mystery, “tears become . . . streams become . . . ” is yet another major triumph for the armory, which has been presenting many of the city’s most dazzling and innovative performance installations since opening as an arts institution in 2007.
Lights and music lead to reflective moments in “tears become . . . streams become . . . ” (photo by James Ewing)
Grimaud will be performing a one-hour program live December 9-21 ($90); there will be an Artist Talk on December 10 ($15) with Gordon and Grimaud, moderated by armory artistic director Alex Poots, who brought the two together for this very special commission, and Family Day takes place Sunday, December 13, from 10:00 am to 12 noon, specifically for families with children ages six to twelve. The must-see “tears become . . . streams become . . . ” — a title Gordon came up with from a memory of having seen a young boy playing the piano with one hand while wiping away tears with the other — will be open afternoons and some evenings December 11 through January 4 ($15, stay as long as you want), during which times a computerized piano will play Grimaud’s music, but the lighting, which is so integral to the piece, will not change. “A field is endless — it goes on, and on, and on, and on,” Gordon states about the project. “And as the water collects, the space it inhabits will never be the same again.” Indeed, after immersing yourself in “tears become . . . streams become . . . ,” you will never see the armory — or hear Debussy, Ravel, and Liszt — quite the same way again.
New Museum ground floor space
231 Bowery between Stanton & Rivington Sts.
Sunday, December 14, free, 1:00 – 6:00 www.bowery.org www.newmuseum.org
For 135 years, the Bowery Mission has been helping hungry and homeless New Yorkers. Now you can help the Bowery Mission by bidding at the first annual L.E.S. Art Drive, a benefit auction for the nonprofit organization whose stated goal is “to be the most effective provider of compassionate care and life transformation for hurting people in New York City.” On Sunday, December 14, the mission’s neighbor, the New Museum will host a fundraising silent auction in its ground-floor space at 231 Bowery from 1:00 to 6:00. Curated by Karline Moeller of the Cy Twombly Foundation, the auction will feature works from $450 to $10,000 donated by more than three dozen Lower East Side galleries and individual artists, including Sperone Westwater (Malcolm Morley), gallery nine5 (Steve Ellis, Jessica Lichtenstein), Patrick McMullan, LMAKprojects (Joan van Barneveld), Robert Aitchison, Invisible-Exports (Philip von Zweck), Maxwell Snow, Wallplay (Luca Chiriani), Rob Wynn, the Keith Haring Foundation (Shepard Fairey), and Cindy Rucker Gallery (Charles Dunn). (You can get a sneak peek at the art here.) In addition, there will be a photography exhibit inside the mission itself, “Through My Lens,” consisting of pictures taken by members of the marginalized local community. Every little bit helps; the Bowery Mission is estimating that a complete Christmas dinner for twelve people costs a mere $19.08 this year.
Citarella has re-created the Fulton Fish Market out of gingerbread for annual City Harvest fundraising display at Le Parker Meridien
Le Parker Meridien, 56th St. atrium lobby
119 West 56th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
Daily through January 4, free ($1 per vote)
212-245-5000 www.giving.cityharvest.org www.parkermeridien.com
Gingerbread dates back thousands of years, to the time of the ancient Greeks and Egyptians; in the 1500s, Queen Elizabeth I had gingerbread cookies decorated to look like visiting guests, and in 1812, the Brothers Grimm published “Hansel and Gretel,” a story of two children who get trapped by a witch in a house made of gingerbread and candy. Wonderfully designed gingerbread cakes and cookies have been a longstanding Christmas tradition in America — and at Le Parker Meridien in Midtown Manhattan as well, where the annual Gingerbread Extravaganza continues through January 4. This year’s theme is “Made in New York,” with such inventive constructions made out of gingerbread as FIKA’s “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” centered by a mirror silhouette of Audrey Hepburn; Crave.It’s “Balancing Justice in NYC,” with Spider-Man battling an evil villain atop the Brooklyn Bridge; Great Performances’ “Katchkie Farm Gingerbread Farmhouse,” a tribute to the organic farm in Kinderhook; Citarella’s “Fulton Fish Market,” which smells a lot better than the real thing; Norma’s “The Great White Gingerbread Way,” celebrating Times Square and Broadway; Silk Cakes’ “Cookie Monster Takes a Bite Out of NY,” in which the Sesame Street favorite munches on Manhattan; Rolling Pin Productions and Sotto Voce Restaurant’s “Saturday Night Before Christmas,” with Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the elves partying at the much-lamented Palladium, Limelight, and Studio 54; Baked Ideas’ “City Harvest Holidays,” with the familiar City Harvest truck collecting food for the hungry; and Sullivan St Bakery’s “Domino Sugar Factory,” a snowy-sweet scene depicting the since-demolished refinery. Unfortunately, Cake Alchemy’s “Going Ape over New York,” with King Kong wearing a Santa hat, came tumbling down the other day and is no more. In addition, you can find Roberta’s “Made in Bushwick” at the pizza place on Moore St., “Lady Liberty & the Seven Year Itch” at Colicchio & Sons on East Nineteenth, and “Industrial Gingerbread in the Jazz Age” at Maialino on Lexington Ave. The event is a fundraiser for City Harvest; visitors are encouraged to vote for their favorite gingerbread display, with individual ballots available for one dollar each, either at Le Parker Meridien or online, with each buck representing four pounds of food. All voters will be eligible to win a five-day trip to the Parker Palm Springs in California.
The Museum of the Moving Image’s celebration of all things Chuck Jones continues with a matinee of eight more of his classic Warner Bros. cartoons, held in conjunction with the endlessly fun exhibit “What’s Up, Doc? The Animation Art of Chuck Jones.” The festivities begin with 1946’s Hair-Raising Hare, in which Bugs Bunny thinks that monsters must lead such interesting lives. In 1949’s For Scent-imental Reasons, Pepè Le Pew thinks he has found true love. Daffy heads into the future and battles Marvin the Martian in 1953’s Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century. Daydreaming eight-year-old Ralph Phillips is introduced in 1954’s From A to Z-Z-Z-Z. Witch Hazel has some dastardly plans for Halloween trick-or-treaters in 1956’s Broom-Stick Bunny. Daffy and Bugs fight over a vast treasure in 1957’s Ali Baba Bunny. Daffy attempts to steal from the poor and give to the rich in 1958’s Robin Hood Daffy. And Wile E. Coyote (as Batman!) and the Delicius-Delicius Road Runner go at it yet again in 1956’s Gee Whiz-z-z. The exhibit runs through January 19; the matinees continue with “Baton Bunny and Other Cartoons” on January 4, “The Rabbit of Seville and Other Cartoons” January 10-11, and “Duck Amuck and Other Cartoons” January 17-18.
