this week in art

T. J. WILCOX: IN THE AIR

T. J. Wilcox’s “In the Air” gives visitors a panoramic view of New York City both past and present (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Whitney Museum of American Art
Mildred and Herbert Lee Galleries, second floor
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Through Sunday, February 9, $16-$20 (pay-what-you-wish Fridays, 6:00 – 9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org

In his Whitney installation “In the Air,” Seattle-born, New York-based artist T. J. Wilcox invites visitors into his Union Square rooftop studio for a swirling look at his view of the city, past and present. Upon entering the second floor galleries, people can duck into a 360-degree panorama of the city composed of shots from six projectors. Over the course of one day compressed into thirty-five minutes, the film breaks into half a dozen short narratives on individual panels, each of which explores a part of New York history associated with that area. The short documentaries look at heiress and jeans designer Gloria Vanderbilt, the plan to have zeppelins dock on top of the Empire State Building, Andy Warhol preparing silver Mylar balloons to greet Pope Paul VI’s motorcade passing by the Factory, Manhattanhenge glowing in the distance, fashion illustrator Antonio Lopez, and Wilcox’s building super describing in detail how he watched 9/11 unfold from the roof. In the short pieces, Wilcox, a pop-culture junkie who has previously made short films about Marie Antoinette, Jerry Hall, and Marlene Dietrich, relates how the subject influenced him as an artist and a human being. “I became really interested in this idea that I was seeing the view in the present tense as I was looking at the New York City scape but that I was also looking across time,” Wilcox says in a video about the piece on the Whitney website. Part of the fun of “In the Air” is spinning around, wondering where the next of the six documentaries is going to appear; it also makes viewers create their own narratives, peering out at a section of the city and being hit with a personal memory. Wilcox supplements the installation with fifteen works selected from the Whitney’s permanent collection that all involve ways of looking (in general and at New York specifically), including videos, assemblages, photographs, and paintings by Charles Atlas, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Helen Levitt, Joseph Cornell, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Joan Jonas, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, and Gordon Matta-Clark.

NYC FABMANIA WEEK

On February 7, 1964, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr landed at JFK to a wild welcome as they came to America for the first time to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. New York City is paying tribute to that seminal moment in the history of the Fab Four with Fabmania Week, featuring a host of special events celebrating this golden anniversary. The centerpiece of it all is the fortieth anniversary of the Fest for Beatles Fans, taking place February 7-9 at the Grand Hyatt in Midtown ($32.50-$225). Among the many guests are Cousin Brucie (broadcasting live), Donovan, Billy J. Kramer, Peter Asher, Chad & Jeremy, Freda Kelly, Bob Guren, and Allan Tannenbaum; the Fest also features a re-creation of the Cavern Club, screenings of Ryan White’s Good Ol’ Freda, a marketplace of memorabilia, look-alike and costume contests, and yoga sessions in an ashram, in addition to book signings, art exhibitions, and other tributes. On February 6, Donovan, Asher, Kramer, Kelly, Vince Calandra, and moderator Martin Lewis will take part in the friends-of-the-Beatles panel discussion “It Was 50 Years Ago Today . . . Celebrating 50 Years of the Beatles in the USA” at the 92nd St. Y ($15-$29, 8:15). The Morrison Hotel Gallery exhibit “50th Anniversary of the Beatles’ First US Tour,” curated by Julian Lennon, opens on February 7 and runs through February 28, consisting of twenty-five images, some never before shown in public, of John, Paul, George, and Ringo taken by such photographers as Ken Regan, Charles Trainor, Curt Gunther, Robert Whitaker, Rowland Scherman, and Terry O’Neill.

Curt Gunther’s photograph of the Beatles playing with slot cars is included in Morrison Hotel Gallery exhibit curated by Julian Lennon (photo © Curt Gunther, 1964)

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will be home to the multimedia exhibition “Ladies and Gentlemen . . . the Beatles!” from February 6 through May 10, examining the effects Beatlemania had on American pop culture during the mid-1960s, comprising interviews, instruments, posters, music, and an oral history booth where fans can share their own memories; there will also be a free symposium on February 9 in the library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium with presentations by Bruce Spizer (“The Beatles Are Coming! The Birth of Beatlemania in America”), Dennis Elsas (“It Was 50 Years Ago Today — The Beatles Invade America”), Chuck Gunderson (“Some Fun Tonight! The Backstage Story of the 1964 Summer North American Tour”), Allan Kozinn (“Studio Days / Touring Years”), and Russ Lease (“The Drop-T Logo and the Most Significant Drumkit in Popular Music History”), emceed by curator Robert Santelli. On February 8, the Town Hall will hold the “America Celebrates the Beatles’ 50th Anniversary All-Star Concert” ($63-$272, 7:30), with a wide-ranging lineup playing songs by and inspired by the Liverpudlian quartet, including Melissa Manchester, Tommy James, Al Jardine, Danny Aiello, Marshal Crenshaw, Larry Kirwin, Aztec Two-Step, Melanie, along with appearances by such Beatles fans as Dick Cavett, Len Berman, the Amazing Kreskin, and Charles Grodin. And on February 8 & 9 at 1:00, the Paley Center will present “The Beatles Invasion 50-Year Celebration: See the Fab Four on the Big Screen, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,” with showings of the complete Ed Sullivan Show broadcast from February 9, 1964, and the Maysles brothers’ original What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. documentary.

FIRST SATURDAY: LOOKING BACK TO LOOK FORWARD

Shukree Hassan Tilghman’s MORE THAN A MONTH is part of free Black History Month celebration at Brooklyn Museum on February 1

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 1, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The February edition of the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturdays honors Black History Month with programs related to African American art and culture. The evening will include pop-up gallery talks focused on works by African American artists currently on view at the museum, a camera phone workshop by Instagram activist Ruddy Roye, a Hands-On Art workshop in which participants learn how to hand-color historical photographs, a screening of Shukree Hassan Tilghman’s 2012 documentary More Than a Month about Black History Month, live music by Tysmé, Honey Larochelle, and Chris Faust, a dance performance by Niles Ford Urban Dance Collective, a movement workshop led by the Hip-Hop Dance Conservatory, a fashion show hosted by Global Village, and a talk by transgender activist Janet Mock about her new book, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love and So Much More, moderated by Michaela Angela Davis. In addition, the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey,” “War / Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath,” “Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry’s Letters to ‘The Ladder,’” “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn,” “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” and other exhibits.

MIKE KELLEY — SUNDAY SESSIONS: KIM GORDON AND JUTTA KOETHER

Mike Kelley, “Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites,” plush toys sewn over wood and wire frames with styrofoam packing material, nylon rope, pulleys, steel hardware and hanging plates, fiberglass, car paint, and disinfectant, 1991/1999 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Sunday, February 2, $18 in advance, $20 day of show, 4:00
Exhibition continues through February 2, suggested admission $10 (free with paid MoMA ticket
within fourteen days), 12 noon – 6:00 (9:00 on Saturday)
718-784-2084
www.momaps1.org

A few weeks ago, an art-world friend who was at MoMA PS1 posted on Facebook, “OK, sell me on Mike Kelley.” Most of the respondents agreed with her that they just didn’t get all the hullabaloo over the influential multimedia artist who committed suicide on February 1, 2012, while in the midst of participating in his career retrospective, which posthumously took over all of the Long Island City institution on October 13, 2013. The show, the largest at MoMA PS1 since 1976, features more than 250 works by the Detroit-born Kelley, who was an original member of the punk band Destroy All Monsters while at the University of Michigan before moving to Los Angeles and studying at CalArts under such teachers as John Baldessari, Laurie Anderson, Jonathan Borofsky, and Douglas Huebler. On February 2, the last day of the show, Sonic Youth cofounder and visual artist Kim Gordon and German artist, musician, and critic Jutta Koether are creating a special farewell event in the VW Dome that may or may not help sell yet more people on Kelley. The two women have previously collaborated on such projects as “Her Noise”; Kelley created the cover image for Sonic Youth’s Dirty album, while the band contributed music to his “Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile” performance piece. “Mike dug a huge hole, but his sculptures, videos, recordings, writings, and drawings fill it in, heaped so high that they stand like a formidable mountain of gifts, rewards, like a monument to getting out from under,” Gordon, a close friend of Kelley’s, wrote in Artforum a few months after his death.

Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether will bid farewell to Mike Kelley exhibit with special performance at MoMA PS1

The sprawling exhibition contains sculptures, videos, recordings, writings, drawings, and more, offering many different types of rewards. It all begins in the courtyard VW Dome, where Kelley’s nearly-three-hour epic, Day Is Done, screens continuously, a subversive spectacle that sets the tone for the rest of the show, highlighting Kelley’s obsessions with childhood imagery and pop culture, his unique spirituality, his repurposing of found objects, and the low-budget, DIY nature of his work, which can often have an amateurish feel that turns off viewers. Inside the former school, there is art everywhere, from the hallways to the boiler room, displaying Kelley’s vast range. His Kandor series consists of numerous multicolored, glowing versions of the Krypton city from the Superman comics, each one existing in a glass bottle hooked up to a kind-of life-support system, with accompanying video. “Pay for Your Pleasure” is a narrow corridor with banners on either side containing portraits of writers and philosophers, along with a quote from each one about art, crime, law, and civilization; at the end is an artwork by a local murderer.

Mike Kelley, “John Glenn Memorial Detroit River Reclamation Project (Including the Local Culture Pictorial Guide, 1968-1972, Wayne/Westland Eagle),” mixed media, 2001 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

One large gallery space is dedicated to several of Kelley’s “Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction” installations, in which he starts with a photograph from a high school yearbook and turns it into a short film, screened on a set with architectural elements echoing what is happening in the imagined story. (“Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #1 [A Domestic Scene]” is also being shown at MoMA in Midtown.) “John Glenn Memorial Detroit River Reclamation Project” is centered by a tall mosaic statue of astronaut John Glenn made out of broken glass, pottery, plates, ceramic figures, and other detritus, delving into another regular subject of Kelley’s, repressed memory syndrome. In “Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites,” colorful stuffed animals have been formed into orbs that hang from the ceiling like a planetary system as futuristic wall pieces shoot out disinfectant. Two small crawlspaces allow non-claustrophobics to wind their way to a peephole where they can see the famous locker-room peeping scene from Porky’s. And “Horizontal Tracking Shot of a Cross Section of Trauma Rooms” consists of videos of traumatic scenes taken from the internet, then shown on monitors attached to the back of a wall of fence posts of different colors and sizes. Not everything will work for everyone, but there’s bound to be at least a handful that any person would at least find fascinating and intriguing, thought-provoking and challenging. In response to our friend’s Facebook request, we proffered, “The Michigan-born multimedia artist created fantastical worlds using found objects that reexamined mass culture through DIY installations that can be playful and nonsensical as well as cutting and poignant.” At the end of the thread, she readily admitted that having seen the show, she has a greater appreciation for his work. And sometimes, that’s all one can ask for.

THE WIND UP: BRIGHT WINTER NIGHT

Marc Chagall, “Exodus,” oil on canvas, 1952-66 (Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou)

The Jewish Museum
1109 Fifth Ave. at 92nd St.
Thursday, January 30, $13-$18, 8:00
Chagall and threeASFOUR exhibitions continue through February 2, $15 (free on Saturday)
212-423-3200
www.thejewishmuseum.org

“Should I paint the earth, the sky, my heart? / The cities burning, my brothers fleeing? / My eyes in tears. / Where should I run and fly, to whom?” So wrote Russian painter Marc Chagall in a poem when considering what subjects he should explore on canvas. That poem, among others written by the artist, appear high on the walls of the powerful, deeply personal Jewish Museum exhibit “Chagall: Love, War, and Exile.” People have been lining up outside in the freezing cold to experience the intimate show, which zeroes in on the period just before, during, and immediately following WWII, when Chagall and his beloved wife, Bella, were forced to first leave their home in Russia, then flee France for the United States as German power spread across Europe. The exhibition ends on February 2, and because of its popularity, the museum will be open on Wednesday, when it’s usually closed. In addition, the Chagall show, along with the small, sparkly fashion exhibit “threeASFOUR: MER KA BA,” will get an official public farewell Thursday evening in the special program “The Wind Up: Bright Winter Night,” which will include guided tours, an international beer tasting, and a live performance by Philly-born, Brooklyn-based indie singer-songwriter Mirah (Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn), who will soon be releasing her follow-up to such previous records as You Think It’s Like This But Really It’s Like This, Advisory Committee, and C’mon.

Marc Chagall, “Self-Portrait with Clock,” oil on canvas, 1947 (private collection)

“Chagall: Love, War, and Exile” consists of thirty-one paintings, twenty-two works on paper, and vitrines of photographs, illustrated books, letters, and other ephemera. The show is divided into four parts: “Time Is a River,” “War and Exile,” “The Jewish Jesus,” and “The Colors of Love,” in which Chagall incorporates his unique iconography and color palette — religious men holdings Torahs, a cow playing the violin, a glowing moon, mothers holding babies, angels floating in the sky, pendulums swinging on clocks — on canvases filled with pain, fear, and dread as he first watched the horror of the Nazis, then lost Bella to a sudden illness in 1944. “The Fall of the Angel” encapsulates Chagall’s oeuvre of the time, a painting that he began in 1923 and reworked in 1933 and 1947, centered by an angel in red, looking like a twisting fire, spiraling uncontrollably toward earth. In the right background is Christ on the cross; the crucifixion is seen in many of these works as Chagall, who was raised in an Orthodox family, uses the figure to represent Jewish suffering not only during the Holocaust but throughout time, as well as relating it to his own tortured soul, first tortured by guilt for having been able to escape the Nazis while his brethren were murdered, then by grief upon losing his wife on the eve of their starting a new life together. In “Exodus” (1952-66), a haloed, crucified Jesus looks over a mass of men, women, and children running from a burning shtetl, linking the escape from Egypt with the pogroms and the Holocaust. And in “Self-Portrait with Clock,” Chagall’s second wife, Virginia, bathed in blue, is leaning on the artist, who portrays himself as a red goat working on a canvas of a crucified Jesus being sorrowfully embraced by Bella in ghostly white as a winged clock flies away in the distance. It’s a haunting image, one of many in this haunting show.

SEE IT LOUD: SEVEN POST-WAR AMERICAN PAINTERS

Albert Kresch, “Conversation,” oil on panel, 1994 (Collection of the Center for Figurative Painting, New York)

National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Through Sunday, January 26, $15, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-369-4880
www.nationalacademy.org

“You can’t escape your time,” Paul Resilka says in a promotional video for the National Academy exhibit “See It Loud: Seven Post-War American Painters,” continuing, “Some embrace it. Some fight it. As for myself, I suppose I had a contrarian streak in me.” The show, hung throughout the entire museum, consists of nearly eighty landscapes, portraits, still-lifes, and other paintings by Leland Bell (1922-91), Paul Georges (1923-2002), Neil Welliver (1929-2005), Peter Heinemann (1931-2010), Albert Kresch (1922-), Stanley Lewis (1941-), and Resika (1928-), dating from 1963 to 2011. The seven men broke away from the Abstract expressionists and turned toward a more representational style, resulting is dazzling canvases with bold use of line and color, inspired by such artists as Hans Hoffmann, Piet Mondrian, Joan Miró, Jean Helion, and Pierre Bonnard. Eight works by Bell, who was married to fellow painter and National Academician Louisa Matthiasdottir, combine figuration and abstraction, particularly two versions of “Figure Group with Bird,” as geometric patterns give way to men, women, and animals. Paul Georges’s “The Mugging of the Muse,” a cartoonlike rendering of a street-corner attack, led to a libel suit brought by two men who believe they were the ones being maligned in the work; however, Georges’s “Artist in Studio” is a more impressive canvas, the artist standing defiant in the center, brush in his left hand, a seated nude in the right foreground. Ten self-portraits by a never-smiling Heinemann feature unique framing devices except for the final one, in which he wears sunglasses and a hat and is accompanied by a cat.

Leland Bell, “Croquet Party,” oil on canvas, 1965 (Collection of the Center for Figurative Painting, New York)

Welliver concentrates on rocky areas, woods, and winding rivers; his “Blueberries in Fissures” gives a dizzying sense of space. The baby of the group, Lewis incorporates his sculpture background into canvases rich with texture, in addition to several splendid drawings on paper. New York City native Resika’s peaceful works often include the moon and small houses in gorgeous coloration, while “Dark Lady” begs for meditative moments. But Kresch nearly steals the show with his mostly small, horizontal landscapes with glowing patches of sunlight and faceless figures; you can practically hear what the two women are saying to each other in “Conversation,” while “Landscape with House” couldn’t be more inviting. Painting, especially figurative, may have been declared dead many times during the twentieth century, but these seven men — several of whom are still at work in this new century — kept it alive with bold, daring works that knowingly spit in the face of the Abstract Expressionists.

VISUAL AIDS: POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE 2014

Art lovers and collectors crowd in and take notes at VIP preview for sixteenth annual Postcards from the Edge benefit (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Luhring Augustine
531 West 24th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
January 24 preview party: $50 (includes two raffle tickets), 5:00 – 8:00
January 25-26, suggested admission $5 (all works $85)
www.visualaids.org

On your mark, get set . . . The sixteenth annual Visual AIDS Postcards from the Edge benefit sale takes place this weekend, offering art connoisseurs, beginning collectors, and just about anyone else the opportunity to purchase an original piece of art by a major, internationally renowned artist — for a mere eighty-five dineros. On Saturday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm and Sunday from 12 noon to 4:00, folks will be lining up to get into Luhring Augustine in Chelsea, where upwards of 1,500 postcard-size works of art are expected to be available. The only catch is that you find out who the artist is after you buy the 4×6 drawing, painting, photograph, collage, sculpture, print, etc., as the creator signs the back, not the front, and you need to pay for it before seeing which artist you got. On Saturday, if you buy four, you get a fifth free; on Sunday, every two purchases gain you a free third postcard. Admission is a suggested five dollars on Saturday and Sunday; you can get a sneak peek at the art on Friday night at the VIP Preview, where for fifty bucks you can check out the works on display, write down the numbers of the ones you want, and make a beeline straight to the cashier on Saturday while everyone else is surveying the merchandise and making their choices. (Stay away from #1000, as that one’s ours.) You also get raffle tickets that could get you first pick or allow you to ask one question about any work of art on the wall. (There’s a silent online auction going on right now as well.) Of course, it’s hard to go wrong when the participating artists include Vito Acconci, Catherine Opie, Glenn Ligon, Justin Vivian Bond, Ed Ruscha, Zarina Hashmi, Lorraine O’Grady, Trevor Winkfield, Fred Wilson, Sarah McEneaney, Robert Longo, Penelope Umbrico, Joel Shapiro, Julie Mehretu, John Baldessari, Roger Hiorns, Rob Wynne, Lesley Dill, John Kelly, Kerry James Marshall, William Wegman, Guido Van Der Werve, Matthew Buckingham, Donald Baechler, Jim Hodges, John Waters, Maria Elena Gonzalez, Marcel Dzama, Kiki Smith, Ernesto Pujol, Milton Glaser, Kay Rosen, Lawrence Weiner, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Harmony Hammond, Danh Vo, and Barbara Takenaga. All proceeds go to Visual AIDS, whose mission for more than twenty-five years has been to “utilize art to fight AIDS by provoking dialogue, supporting HIV+ artists, and preserving a legacy, because AIDS is not over.”