this week in art

RYAN McNAMARA: MISTY MALARKY YING YANG

Ryan McNamara’s latest performance piece will explore Jimmy Carter’s Malaise Speech (photo courtesy Ryan McNamara)

The High Line, beginning at Gansevoort St.
July 15-17, free, 7:30
www.art.thehighline.org
www.ryanmcnamara.com

On July 15, 1979, President James Earl Carter gave what became known as his Malaise Speech, in which he shook a finger at the American people and said, “I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. I do not mean our political and civil liberties. . . . The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in the growing doubt about the meaning of our own lives and in the loss of a unity of purpose for our nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America.” Arizona-born, Brooklyn-based performance artist Ryan McNamara is using the thirty-fifth anniversary of Carter’s famous speech about energy overconsumption as the starting point of his latest immersive project, “Misty Malarky Ying Yang.” On July 15, 16, and 17, McNamara will begin a choreographed procession on the High Line, beginning at 7:30 pm at the south end at Gansevoort St. and heading north to West Thirtieth St., joined by other performers along the way. “President Carter’s speech is still relevant today, and ‘Misty Malarky Ying Yang’ will provide a stark contrast to the tone of the speech,” explained High Line Art director and curator Cecilia Alemani in a statement. Admission is free, and no advance RSVP is required. The questions Carter asked thirty-five years ago — including “Often you see paralysis and stagnation and drift. You don’t like it, and neither do I. What can we do?” — are still clearly relevant today. It should be fascinating to see how McNamara translates that on the High Line this week.

WARM UP 2014 / HY-FI BY THE LIVING

Expect major crowds at weekly MoMA PS1 Warm Up dance party (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Warm Up: Saturdays through September 6, $18-$20, 3:00 – 9:00
“Hy-Fi”: Thursday – Monday through September 7, suggested admission $10 (free with paid MoMA ticket within fourteen days except during Warm Up), 12 noon – 6:00
718-784-2084
www.momaps1.org/warmup
www.momaps1.org/yap

The summer’s sweatiest dance party takes places every Saturday in Long Island City, as thousands of people gather in MoMA PS1’s courtyard for the weekly Warm Up celebration. Now in its seventeenth year, Warm Up features an international roster of prominent DJs and live performances on Saturdays from 3:00 to 9:00 on the dance floor located between the winning Young Architects Program urban design installation in the courtyard and the entrance to the old school building that became an arena for cutting-edge art back in 1971. During Warm Up, M. Wells Dinette serves alcoholic drinks indoors and hot food and cold drinks outdoors, including fried chicken, grilled mackerel yellow bean salad, a grilled veal heart hero, and maple water. On Saturdays, the exhibitions on the second and third floors close at 3:00, but the first-floor and basement shows (“Maria Lassnig,” “Korakrit Arunanondchai,” “Gavin Kenyon: Reliquary Void”) continue through 6:00. This week boasts one of the best lineups of the summer, with DJ sets by Mister Saturday Night (Eamon Harkin and Justin Carter) and Auntie Flo and live music by Cibo Matto, Archie Pelago, and Gabriel Garzón Montano; July 19 brings together Robert Hood, Objekt, Rrose, Vatican Shadow, Conatiner, and Young Male, while July 26 sees Cashmere Cat, Total Freedom, GoldLink, UNiiQU3, and Suicideyear take the stage at the top of the steps, joined by a rotating series of installations by CONFETTISYSTEM, Nightwood, the Principals, and others. Tickets are available for $18 in advance and $20 at the door; be prepared for some long lines the later you go. It’s incredibly easy to get to MoMA PS1, which is the third stop on the 7 from Grand Central. Once you get off the train, just follow the thumping music, which reverberates throughout the neighborhood.

Environmentally friendly organic towers rise in MoMA PS1 courtyard (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Next to the Warm Up area, in the center of the courtyard, stands “Hy-Fi,” the winner of MoMA PS1’s fifteenth annual Young Architects Program. Created by New York-based firm the Living headed by 2013 New York Foundation for the Arts fellow David Benjamin, the three conjoined towers were made using nearly 100% fully compostable and environmentally sustainable biological technologies in collaboration with Ecovative, 3M, Advanced Metal Coatings, Shabd Simon-Alexander and Audrey Louisere, Build It Green Compost, Brooklyn Digital Foundry, Columbia University (where Benjamin is an assistant professor in the Living Architecture Lab), and others. “Hy-Fi” contains approximately ten thousand remarkably light handmade bricks consisting of such organic waste materials as cornstalks and mushroom mycelium, held together by mortar. The shiny, glittering bricks at the top are actually the molds in which the rest of the bricks were grown. (There are also several vertical wooden beams that hold up the entryways, primarily as protection against strong winds and storms, which came in handy last week.) The small gaps between some of the bricks are strictly artistic, resulting in streams of sunlight and shadows. Construction required no energy (except for human) and almost zero carbon emissions; when the installation, which also provides much-needed cooling, is brought down after September 7, the entire structure will be recycled. Unfortunately, because of the size and unpredictability of the crowds during Warm Up, on Saturdays visitors are not allowed inside the twisting structure, which was influenced by the designs of Barcelona architect Antoni Gaudí, but you can take a break in the small pool and sit in other circular areas while drinking wine, beer, and other cocktails. The Living, which was founded in 2006 with “the mission of creating the architecture of the future,” won the YAP commission this year over Collective-LOK, LAMAS, Pita + Bloom, and Fake Industries Architectural Agonism; you can currently see an exhibition on all five submissions, as well as finalists from similar competitions in Italy, Chile, and South Korea, at MoMA’s midtown location.

MOVIE MEDICINE — A FILM SERIES ABOUT THE HEALING FACTOR IN CINEMA: NIGHT NURSE

Joan Blondell and Barbara Stanwyck play daring nurses in William A. Wellman’s pre-code doozy

CABARET CINEMA: NIGHT NURSE (William A. Wellman, 1931)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, July 11, free with $10 K2 minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rubinmuseum.org/cabaretcinema

It’s hard to believe that the Hays Code, a set of standards initiated by two religious figures and named after chief censor Will H. Hays, was enacted and enforced, to varying degrees, in Hollywood from 1934 all the way up to 1968. One of the best examples of the racier pre-code films is William A. Wellman’s rarely screened 1931 doozy, Night Nurse. The first of five collaborations between Wellman and Barbara Stanwyck, Night Nurse, based on Dora Macy’s 1930 novel, stars Stanwyck as Lora Hart, a young woman determined to become a nurse. She gets a probationary job at a city hospital, where she is taken under the wing of Maloney (Joan Blondell), who likes to break the rules and torture the head nurse, the stodgy Miss Dillon (Vera Lewis). Shortly after treating a bootlegger (Ben Lyon) for a gunshot wound and agreeing not to report it to the police, Lora starts working for a shady doctor (Ralf Harolde) taking care of two sick children (Marcia Mae Jones and Betty Jane Graham) whose proudly dipsomaniac mother (Charlotte Merriam) is being manipulated by her suspicious chauffeur (Clark Gable). Wellman pulls out all the stops, hinting at or simply depicting murder, child endangerment, rape, alcoholism, lesbianism, physical brutality, and Blondell and Stanwyck regularly frolicking around in their undergarments. It’s as if Wellman is thumbing his nose directly at the upcoming Hays Code in scene after scene. Although far from his best film — Wellman directed such classics as Wings (1927), The Public Enemy (1931), A Star Is Born (1937), Nothing Sacred (1937), Beau Geste (1939), and The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) — Night Nurse is an overly melodramatic, dated, but entertaining little tale with quite a surprise ending. Night Nurse is screening July 11 as part of the Rubin Museum’s Cabaret Cinema series “Movie Medicine: A Film Series about the Healing Factor in Cinema,” being held in conjunction with the “Bodies in Balance: The Art of Tibetan Medicine” exhibition, and will be introduced by Edna Igoe of the New York Professional Nurses Union. The series continues July 18 with Woody Allen’s Sleeper, introduced by psychotherapist Maggie Robbins, July 25 with Arthur Hiller’s The Hospital, introduced by Dr. Kenneth Perrine, and August 1 with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus, introduced by award-winning editor Thelma Schoonmaker.

CONTEMPORARY POETRY TOO

Andrew Edlin Gallery
134 Tenth Avenue between 18th & 19th Sts.
Thursday, July 10, free, 6:00
212-206-9723
www.edlingallery.com

On May 10, Sam Gordon curated a marathon poetry reading as part of the NADA New York art fair, presented with BOMB magazine. Gordon, NADA, and BOMB have joined forces again with the follow-up, “Contemporary Poetry Too,” taking place July 10 at Andrew Edlin Gallery in Chelsea. Held in conjunction with the group exhibition “Purple States,” which explores the differences between insiders and outsiders and the merging of blue and red states, and “Café Dancer Pop-Up,” in which Jessie Gold and Elizabeth Hart have turned Edlin’s reception area into a “Gone Fishin’” party space, “Contemporary Poetry Too” will feature approximately eighteen poets reading their works in combination with performance and video art; the participants include Alina Gregorian, Angelo Nikolopoulos, Bianca Stone, Emily Skillings, Jameson Fitzpatrick, Juliana Huxtable, not_I (Ana Boziĉević & Sophia Le Fraga), and Sampson Starkweather. DJs S&M (Shannon Michael Cane and Matt Conners) will provide the music.

DANH VO: WE THE PEOPLE

Danh Vo’s “We the People” offers visitors an alternate view of Lady Liberty’s famed drapery in Brooklyn Bridge Park (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

City Hall Park and City Hall
Brooklyn Bridge Park, Granite Terrace, Pier 3 Uplands
Through December 5, free
www.publicartfund.org
we the people slideshow

Danish installation artist Danh Vo, who was born in Vietnam in 1975 and lives and works in Berlin and Mexico City, deconstructs a treasured American landmark and international symbol of freedom in unique ways in “We the People.” The Public Art Fund project is named after the first three words of the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified on June 25, 1788. Using the same technique nineteenth-century French sculptor Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi employed to construct the 3/32-inch-thick copper drapery that envelops eighty percent of the 305-foot-high, 225-ton “Statue of Liberty Enlightening the World,” Vo, winner of the 2012 Hugo Boss Prize, re-created Lady Liberty’s clothing at scale in Shanghai, dividing it into approximately 250 pieces. Even the fresh copper color is faithful to the original, as the Grand Dame’s well-known green hue is the result of 128 years of weathering in New York Harbor.

Sections of Danh Vo’s “We the People” are scattered throughout City Hall Park and inside City Hall itself (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

A true international affair, “We the People” has been seen in more than fifteen countries over the last few years and now has finally come to America, with select sections on view in City Hall Park and Brooklyn Bridge Park through December 5. The latter installation features three large-scale parts taken from thirteen individual pieces from the sleeve of the Lady on a Pedestal’s torch-raising right arm; as a not-coincidental bonus, the actual statue is visible in the distance. The pieces on display in City Hall Park include various segments on the grass and hidden among the trees; the broken chains and ear are inside City Hall itself, and a flower garden at the southern end further evokes the late-19th-century period in which the statue was built, referencing colonialism and missionary work. Vo has said that the full sculpture will likely never be put together to form a complete whole, metaphorically leaving Liberty naked and fragmented, representing the continuing struggle for freedom throughout the world and the inability of so many nations to unite in peace. The work also has deep personal meaning to Vo, whose family escaped from Vietnam in the late 1970s on a boat his father made, floating toward eventual freedom in Denmark just as so many people still take ships to Ellis Island, passing by the Statue of Liberty on their way to a new life in America.

KARA WALKER AT DOMINO: A SUBTLETY

Kara Walker’s massive public art project features a sphinxlike mammy figure and life-size child slaves (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

KARA WALKER — A SUBTLETY OR THE MARVELOUS SUGAR BABY: AN HOMAGE TO THE UNPAID AND OVERWORKED ARTISANS WHO HAVE REFINED OUR SWEET TASTES FROM THE CANE FIELDS TO THE KITCHENS OF THE NEW WORLD ON THE OCCASION OF THE DEMOLITION OF THE DOMINO SUGAR REFINING PLANT
Domino Sugar Factory
South First St. at Kent Ave.
Saturday, July 5, and Sunday, July 6, free, 11:00 am – 7:00 pm
www.creativetime.org
kara walker at domino slideshow

For more than 150 years, the Domino Sugar Factory has stood tall on the Williamsburg waterfront, the first sugar refinery in Brooklyn and at one time the largest in the world. The pre-Civil War structure was rebuilt in 1882 after a fire, it closed shop in 2004, and the 30,000-square-foot location is slated for demolition in a few months, giving way to luxury housing and commercial space. But it is getting quite a send-off, temporarily home to a spectacular, multilayered public art project that will have people talking for a long time. Forty-four-year-old California-born MacArthur “Genius” Kara Walker, best known for creating black silhouettes that boldly depict the horrors of slavery (“My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love,” “Gone: An Historical Romance of a Civil War as It Occurred between the Dusky Thighs of One Young Negress and Her Heart”), has installed “A Subtlety or the Marvelous Sugar Baby: an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World on the Occasion of the demolition of the Domino Sugar Refining Plant,” which remains on view through July 6. Upon entering the vast, open space, visitors are greeted by more than a dozen “Sugar Babies,” life-size sculptures in resin and molasses of slave children carrying baskets or bananas; some of the figures have melted, turning into what looks like a bloody mess on the floor, as if beaten to death, while also recalling tar. The objects in the baskets are parts of their bodies that essentially dissolved and fell off, as if their true selves have been eviscerated. Meanwhile, the air is filled with an acrid, rotting smell that falls right in line with the bittersweet nature of the installation.

Melting “Sugar Babies” carry remnants of themselves in baskets at the Domino Sugar Factory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Glistening at the end of the large hall is an enormous white sphinx, made of foam and refined white sugar, sitting proudly, a highly sexualized mammy figure that evokes Aunt Jemima, serving as an oracle to the past, present, and future of a culture still dominated by racial tension, discrimination, and violence. A kerchief tied around her head, she stares out, her powerful fists outstretched (one in a gesture that alternately means “good luck” and “fuck you” in different countries), her large breasts both taunting and threatening. The curves of her body lead to giant buttocks and an exposed vulva that both shock and delight, laden in contradiction. The sculpture is yellowing at some points, the sugar crystalizing in the summer heat. When the exhibit ends, some of the slave babies will be able to be shown again, but the sphinx will be destroyed, erased from the annals of history, like so many aspects of slavery — but its memory will live on, a reminder of, among other things, that slavery took place right here in New York City. The controversial piece, totem and caricature, paradox and paradigm, uses stereotypes and racist imagery in referencing the refining of brown sugar into a white substance, the association of sugar with luxury desserts for the wealthy (the word “subtlety” refers to sweet banquet desserts), colonialism, and the exploitation of workers (including child labor, once again an issue on family-owned tobacco farms in America and sugar refineries in the Dominican Republic) in a society dominated by commercialism and corporations, offering an unspoken riddle with no answers. In her preliminary sketches, Walker used such phrases as “Sugar Rules the World,” “Natural processes fueled by industry,” “Production, not-consumption,” and “Refining to achieve desired whiteness which is equated in the modern mind — with purity,” lending crucial insight to her thinking. However, Walker has chosen to give no official artist’s statement about her first large-scale public art installation, preferring that people experience it for themselves, although project sponsor Creative Time has supplemented the work with five “Reports” that explore various aspects of “A Subtlety,” which can be found online: Edwidge Danticat’s “The Price of Sugar,” Tracy K. Smith’s “Photo of Sugar Cane Plantation Workers, Jamaica, 1891,” Jean-Euphèle Milcé’s “To Drink My Sweet Body,” Ricardo Cortés’s “The Act of Whitening,” and Shailja Patel’s “Unpour.”

Bittersweet Kara Walker installation is layered with meaning that is controversial, complex, and purposefully contradictory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Central to the work are viewers’ reactions. Some are in awe of its beauty and scope, while others pose in front of it for touristy photographs. Some consider the history and mystery that literally surround it, while others smile and pretend to put their arms around one of the slave babies as if they are friends or perform silly acts with the sphinx’s backside and genitalia. Many are so obsessed with taking pictures and video that they never pause, process, and contemplate what they are looking at. Yes, it’s spectacle, but it’s spectacle on a grand order, an unforgettable experience that places a powerful mirror on America’s four-hundred-year history, revealing telling elements that many still refuse to accept.

There are only two days left to see “A Subtlety,” which is open 11:00 am to 7:00 pm on Saturday and Sunday, July 5-6. Admission is free, but you can expect the lines to be a lot longer than the previous twenty minutes or so. After that, the piece, along with the Domino Sugar Factory itself, will meet its demise, though it will live on in the minds of those who had the opportunity to partake in its majesty.

FIRST SATURDAYS: BROOKLYN SUMMER

David Hammons, “The Door (Admissions Office),” wood, acrylic sheet, and pigment construction, 1969 (California African American Museum, Los Angeles, Collection of Friends, the Foundation of the California African American Museum / © David Hammons)

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, July 5, free, 5:00 – 11:00 ($10 discounted admission to “Ai Weiwei: According to What?”)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum is throwing a summer party for its July free First Saturdays program, centered by a twenty-fifth-anniversary screening of Spike Lee’s Bed-Stuy classic, Do the Right Thing. In addition, there will be music from Matuto, Blitz the Ambassador, DJ Uhuru, and Nina Sky, a female comedy showcase hosted by Erica Watson, a talk and fashion show led by Afros: A Celebration of Natural Hair author Michael July, a sidewalk chalk drawing project organized by the City Kids, a hula hoop demonstration with Hula Nation, an art workshop in which participants will learn figure drawing with a live model, and an interactive talk with “Brooklyn in 3000 Stills” creators Paul Trillo and Landon Van Soest. In addition, you can check out the current quartet of exhibitions, all of which deal with activism through art: “Ai Weiwei: According to What?,” “Swoon: Submerged Motherlands,” “Chicago in L.A.: Judy Chicago’s Early Works, 1963–74,” and “Witness: Art and Civil Rights in the Sixties.”

Moneta Sleet Jr., “Selma Marchers on road to Montgomery,” gelatin silver photograph, 1965 (courtesy Brooklyn Museum)

The powerful, wide-ranging “Witness,” which has just been extended through July 13 (the other three exhibits continue into August or September), is a traveling show being held in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. More than one hundred paintings, sculptures, photographs, and installations are on view, divided into eight thematic categories: “Integrate Educate,” “American Nightmare,” “Presenting Evidence,” “Politicizing Pop,” “Black Is Beautiful,” “Sisterhood,” “Global Liberation,” and “Beloved Community.” In Bruce Davidson’s “USA. Montgomery, Alabama. 1961,” a black Freedom Rider sits by a window on a bus being escorted by the National Guard. David Hammons’s “The Door (Admissions Office)” is not exactly a welcoming sight. Norman Rockwell’s “New Kids in the Neighborhood (Negro in the Suburbs)” depicts three white children and two black children stopped on a sidewalk, curiously looking at each other. Melvin Edwards’s “Chaino” evokes slavery and lynchings. A trio of cartoonish KKK members drive into town in Philip Guston’s “City Limits.” There are also works by Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Norman Lewis, Jack Whitten, Faith Ringgold, Ben Shahn, Betye Saar, Gordon Parks, Jim Dine, Yoko Ono, Barkley Hendricks, Robert Indiana, Richard Avedon, and others that examine the civil rights movement from multiple angles, displaying America’s continuing shame.