Tenzing Rigdol at work on Biography of a Thought (photo courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art)
MANDALAS: MAPPING THE BUDDHIST ART OF TIBET
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Met Fifth Ave.
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Through January 12, $30 (NY, NJ, CT residents pay-what-you-wish)
212-535-7710 www.metmuseum.org biography of a thought online slideshow
This is the last weekend to see the Met’s “Mandalas: Mapping the Buddhist Art of Tibet,” a stunning collection of mandalas, symbolic geometric diagrams of the universe that relate spiritual stories of unity, balance, and inner harmony, so it is appropriate that the exhibit is in the downstairs octagonal galleries of the Robert Lehman Wing. The works go back as far as a thousand years, ranging from portraits of masters to manuscripts and manuscript covers, from fragmentary leaves of sutras to small statues of bodhisattvas, from glittering crown ornaments to dance robes and stage masks.
Highlights include the “Thousand-Armed Chenresi, a Cosmic Form of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara,” a gilt copper alloy statue with multiple arms and heads; the dizzying “Vajradhatu (Diamond Realm) Mandala,” in which the Buddha Vairochana is surrounded by celestial realms; a Bhutanese skeleton mask placed atop a Tibetan dance costume; and “Chest with Scenes of Tantric Offerings,” populated by gory depictions of animals and skeletons amid hellish violence.
In the center of the exhibit, in the atrium, is Tenzing Rigdol’s Biography of a Thought, an installation with no beginning or end that invites visitors to place themselves in the center, like a buddha in the middle of a thangka. Commissioned specifically for the exhibition, the immersive, colorful work features four walls of murals in addition to a box exploring interdependency and handwoven carpeting with symbolic imagery.
Rigdol, who was born in Kathmandu in 1982, calls it “the journey of a single thought that gathers momentum and produces many thoughts that cluster and form ideas.” Among those ideas are climate change (roiling seas, a lone polar bear), environmental pollution (smokestacks), social injustice (George Floyd), government whistleblowers (a Mount Rushmore–style depiction of Frances Haugen, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden, and Julian Assange that resembles a country rock band), terrorism (the Twin Towers), and Western art (Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon reimagined as five taras representing the five sensory faculties). Rigdol also puts himself in the work, in a series of figures with a wrapped head, carrying burdens and expressing his ignorance.
In addition, Rigdol incorporates ASL mudras and poetry in Braille that are not translated, part of the artist’s mission to communicate “without belonging to any nation, race, class, group, tribe, club, or creed.”
The Braille poem sums up Rigdol’s vision: “I see the sun / I see cloud / I see river / I see soil / I see the universe / within interdependency.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
FRANZ KAFKA: PROGRAMS
Morgan Library & Museum
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 13, $13-$25 www.themorgan.org
There are not a lot of authors whose name has been acknowledged as a legitimate adjective in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, and even fewer of those adjectives have been used as the name of a musical. In fact, the only one might be Kafkaesque, which is used for anything that relates to Czech-born German-language writer Franz Kafka and has “a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality.”
Last fall, James Harvey’s musical comedy Kafkaesque! opened off-off-Broadway at Theatre 154 in the West Village, about one American family experiencing predicaments inspired by Kafka’s writings. The first song gets right to the point when Kafka sings, “By age forty I was dead / never had kids and I never wed / the words I wrote were hardly read / but now I’m an adjective.”
Kafka and his work have grown in stature since his passing in June 1924 at the age of forty from tuberculosis, leaving behind a literary legacy that includes the novels The Castle,The Trial, and Amerika and such influential stories as “The Judgment,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “The Metamorphosis.”
The Morgan Library is celebrating that legacy with the simply titled exhibition “Franz Kafka,” continuing through April 13. The show features original notebooks and manuscripts, letters about vegetarianism and his first hemorrhage, postcards, illustrated pages, family photos, handwritten aphorisms, first editions, architectural models, a diary, and other ephemera, primarily from the Bodleian Library, organized into such sections as “Life and Times: Health and Illness,” “Life and Times: Jewishness,” “Journeys: Around Europe,” and “Journeys: Of the Imagination.”
In his catalogue essay “Kafka’s Life and World,” British editor Ritchie Robertson writes, “Even during his final illness he kept writing. In March 1924 he wrote his last story, ‘Josefine, the Singer or The Mouse-People,’ and on his death-bed he corrected the proofs of the volume, A Hunger Artist: Four Stories, in which the story was included. ‘Josefine’ is a masterpiece of Kafka’s gentle, self-deprecating humour, and ends with the unexplained disappearance of the heroine and the narrator’s reflection that she will not be much missed. She ‘will lose herself happily in the numberless host of our people’s heroes, and, since we don’t go in for history, she will soon, redeemed and transfigured, be forgotten, like all her brethren.’”
Kafka often wrote about the unexplained, but he never disappeared from the public consciousness and will not soon be forgotten. The Morgan exhibition, held in conjunction with the centennial of Kafka’s death, is supplemented by a series of programs that delve further into Kafka’s life and world, ranging from panel discussions to special tours, workshops, lectures, and live music; below is the complete schedule.
Thursday, January 9 Kafkaesque: Creative Responses to Kafka, with Joshua Cohen, Maira Kalman, and Josh Luxenberg, Gilder Lehrman Hall, $25, 7:00
Friday, January 10
Virtual Spotlight Tour | Franz Kafka: The Making of an Icon, Zoom, sold out, 12:30
Wednesday, February 5
Virtual Lecture | Benjamin Balint: Kafka’s Last Trial, with author Benjamin Balint, Zoom, free with advance RSVP, noon
Gallery Tour | Franz Kafka with Benjamin Balint, Engelhard Gallery, free with museum admission, 2:00
Wednesday February 19
Winter Break Family Program | Franz Kafka Storytime and Artmaking, with readings of author Larissa Theule and illustrator Rebecca Green’s Kafka and the Doll, free with museum admission, 2:00
Thursday, March 6
Concert | Philip Glass’s “Metamorphosis,” with pianist Jenny Lin, actor Saroi Tsukada, and bassist Lindsay Rosenberg, followed by a discussion with music publisher Richard Guerin, Gilder Lehrman Hall, $40, 7:00
Friday, March 14
Lecture | “Daylight at the Exit”: Women Translating Kafka, with Michelle Woods, Gilder Lehrman Hall, free (advance RSVP recommended), 6:00
Wednesday, April 9
Lecture | Nahma Sandrow: Kafka and the Vagabonds, with playwright and Yiddish theater scholar Dr. Nahma Sandrow, J. Pierpont Morgan’s Library, $20, 6:00
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
The Vivid Unknown uses generative AI and immersive sound to reimagine Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
TECHNE: THE VIVID UNKNOWN
Under the Radar Festival / BAM Next Wave
BAM Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
January 4-7, $10
Series continues through January 19 utrfest.org www.bam.org
“I like people to break things. I’m always interested in how kids interact with things because they’re going to do things that someone else might not do,” artist John Fitzgerald told me at the inaugural presentation of TECHNE: The Vivid Unknown at BAM’s Fishman Space, a multimedia reimagining of Godfrey Reggio’s 1982 documentary Koyaanisqatsi, which means “life out of balance,” “life disintegrating,” and “a state of life that calls for another way of living” in the Hopi language.
Fitzgerald was not referring to the hardware but “the rules of engagement” that he’s designed with an expert team. “Anyone can bring their own story to it. That’s something I learned from Godfrey, who calls it the autodidactic experience of watching Koyaanisqatsi,” he said. “He’s not telling you, ‘technology bad, humans good — the natural world is safe.’ He’s giving you the opportunity to have thoughts about things, to experience things. Everyone will always watch it differently. I’ve seen that movie dozens and dozens of times; there are a lot of different ways that you can interpret it. So I’m excited to see how this evolves and unfolds. People might want to come in here and sit down on the floor, they might want to go out and get some fresh air and come back in; it’s an open experience.”
There are numerous ways to experience The Vivid Unknown, and it’s left up to each individual to decide, mimicking how we approach life. AI-generated images speed across three large screens as immersive AI sound envelops the room. You can sit on the floor right in front, move around, or take a regular seat in the back. If you decide to participate — and I highly recommend you do — you will discover that when you are in an oval of light, the shape of your body will be picked up by sensors behind you and your onscreen silhouette will eventually be filled by an image different from what is already being projected.
For example, amid slow-motion and time-lapse shots of beachgoers, mountains, metropolitan cities, airplanes, waterfalls, clouds, traffic, the demolition of a housing project, and other scenes, a rocket taking off fit into my outline and followed me onscreen as I walked across the room. Meanwhile, a woman stood near the middle, moving like a dancer. Couples posed together. A few kids jumped up and down. Humanity fused together with technology and the environment as some of us participated and others merely watched from the back.
Almost all the young boys and girls chose to become involved with the art, which brought out the child in the adults who got up from their seats and interacted with it as well. Noticing that, Fitzgerald, who has a five-year-old and a four-month-old, said that the older one is “the best product tester out there. He’s the first to be, like, ‘That’s too long,’ or ‘I want to see more of that.’ He speaks without a filter.”
Curated by Onassis ONX, TECHNE consists of four digital installations that are part of BAM’s Next Wave Festival and Under the Radar; it begins January 4-7 with The Vivid Unknown and continues January 8-11 with Marc Da Costa and Matthew Niederhauser’s The Golden Key, January 12-15 with Margarita Athanasiou’s Voices, and January 16-19 with Stephanie Dinkins’s Secret Garden. (Tickets for each is $10; a series pass is $35.) BAM Rose Cinemas will be showing Koyaanisqatsi on January 7 at 7:30, with Fitzgerald and Vivid Unknown codirector Reggio on hand for the conversation “Terra techno firma” afterward.
Onassis ONX NY program director Jazia Hammoudi shared information with me about how it all works, but I opted to discover much of The Vivid Unknown on my own, which was extremely satisfying. In the program, she writes, “The refined interactivity of the work’s music and visuals subverts the source material’s linear minimalism and subtly engages the body in epic vistas from mountainscapes to oil fields. Within The Vivid Unknown’s zone of immersion, the connection between individual and collective action reflects the complex relationships between human agency and planetary outcomes.” In addition to TECHNE, Onassis ONX is presenting Christiana Kosiar’s RUNWAY and Viola He’s A {room} of one’s own January 10-14 at the Olympic Tower on Fifth Ave. as part of Under the Radar’s Under Construction series.
Fitzgerald met Reggio about two years ago, when he went out to Santa Fe to visit the now-eighty-four-year-old filmmaker, who also made the sequels Powaqqatsi in 1988 and Naqoyqatsi in 2002; all three films in the series feature original soundtracks by Philip Glass.
Audience participation enhances experience of multimedia The Vivid Unknown by John Fitzgerald and Godfrey Reggio (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Since this was the first public presentation of the work at BAM, I asked Fitzgerald what he thought about the audience’s response.
“It’s exceeding expectations on all levels,” he said. “We’ve never had this many people in it. One of the things about making creative technology art is that it’s always half broken until it’s not, until you have to press play and make sure everything comes together. The idea was that Koyaanisqatsi is a depiction of the state of the world in the latter half of the twentieth century as chaos unfolded. So I was just playing around with this idea of how you don’t really control anything but you do have an impact on this.”
That concept is also represented by a video sculpture off to one side, a refurbished slot machine that was transformed into an interactive artwork by the fabrication studio Chateau Brooklyn. When you pull down the S2000 lever, images speed by a trio of small monitors; it offers an additional moment of connection, but it has no effect on the film. It exists on its own, but it offers a sense of power and involvement even though the results are random. One boy was having a blast with it, pulling the lever a few dozen times, too young to consider the metaphor of how we gamble in life, taking or avoiding risk.
At several points, the barrage of images dropped out and the screens went dark; only the shapes of the audience members standing in the oval of light could be seen. “I want people to feel like they’re making an impact on the images,” Fitzgerald said. “That’s why the last state is left this way; the film disappears, and it’s fuel to give a reflection of your presence.”
He was also quick to share credit. “This is a project made by a dozen artists; it’s truly a collaborative effort,” Fitzgerald explained. “Everyone is unified behind Godfrey and his vision to show humans where we are right now. It’s like a mirror into ourselves.”
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
The Light and the Dark looks at the life and times of Italian painter Artemisia Gentileschi (photo by James Leynse)
THE LIGHT AND THE DARK (THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI)
Primary Stages, 59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St, between Park & Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 15, $66-$131 www.59e59.org
After seeing Kate Hamill’s The Light and the Dark (the life and times of Artemisia Gentileschi) and Jessica Goldberg’s Babe on the same day, I was hard-pressed to figure out why every woman doesn’t just go all Judith on their own Holofernes. While both plays explore misogyny, sexism, control of a woman’s body, and the dominant patriarchy in the arts, one does so much better than the other, although neither is ultimately successful.
At 59E59, Primary Stages is presenting The Light and the Dark, about Artemisia Gentileschi, the early Italian Baroque painter whose career was temporarily derailed by sexual assault and gender discrimination. Hamill’s previous feminist-driven works include stirring adaptations of Little Women,Pride and Prejudice,Sense and Sensibility,Vanity Fair, and Dracula. She has portrayed such characters as Becky Sharp, Elizabeth Bennet, Meg March, Renfield, and Marianne Dashwood; in The Light and the Dark she inhabits the title role with a tender ferociousness as Artemisia matures from a precocious seven-year-old girl to one of the most talented and important artists of her era, even as she’s held back by men and social mores every step of the way.
Artemisia knows what she wants from a young age. Her Tuscan-born father, Orazio (Wynn Harmon), is a naturalistic, technically skillful painter who delivers precisely what his patrons desire. Admitting he doesn’t know how to raise a girl on his own, he decides to send her to a nunnery for her education, telling his daughter, “Think, if I build a big enough fortune and you mark the sisters well enough, you may be a fine lady — the wife or the mother of the great artist of tomorrow!” Misia, as he calls her, responds, “I don’t want to be a lady! I am I, your Artemisia. And I want to be a painter!”
When she is nine, Orazio lets Misia begin working in his studio, and six years later she is allowed to start painting alongside Agostino Tassi (Matthew Saldívar) and Cosimo Quorli (Jason O’Connell), which could be considered scandalous, especially when Orazio brings in a nude model, a sex worker named Maria (Joey Parsons). Soon the arrogant Agostino takes a personal interest in Artemisia, who is proving to be an exceptional artist with a unique perspective on traditional biblical scenes, and scandal does indeed ensue, against Artemisia’s will.
Artemisia Gentileschi has been undergoing a renaissance of her own this century, a heroic figure for the current time, spurred on by the 2002 Met exhibit “Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy,” such books as Mary D. Garrard’s Artemisia Gentileschi and Feminism in Early Modern Europe and Gina Siciliano’s I Know What I Am: The Life and Times of Artemisia Gentileschi, and such plays as Sara Fellini’s NEC SPE / NEC METU and Howard Barker’s Scenes from an Execution. Artemisia often repeats “I, I, I” when talking about herself, trying to establish an identity that her father and his friends will not allow her to have because she is a woman, and she is prone to cursing like a sailor, dropping F-bombs again and again.
“Before Caravaggio, painters / Started with the light. / Blank canvas, blank fresco, / And painted layers upon that blankness — / But Caravaggio starts in the darkness / And carves his way out from the shadows,” she says in a way that refers to her own situation. She also declares, as if for all women, “Why should I suffer for nothing? / If I cannot undo it — and I cannot undo it. . . . / I can make it right. / I can control it.”
The show is visually beautiful, from Brittany Vasta’s alluring studio set to Jen Caprio’s lovely period costumes, Seth Reiser’s lighting, and Kylee Loera’s projections of such masterworks by Artemisia as Judith and Holofernes,Susanna and the Elders,The Allegory of Inclination, and Madonna and Child. The cast is effective, but Hamill and director Jade King Carroll too often get caught up in overly earnest monologues and preachy explications; Artemesia speaks at the audience instead of to them. Several didactic art lectures could have been cut or shortened — the play is too long at two and a half hours with intermission — in favor of the narrative itself, which can be compelling.
However, Carroll and Hamill do make The Light and the Dark feel relevant to what is happening today, particularly in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Both female actors, Hamill as Artemisia and Parsons as Maria, ultimately take ownership of their bodies away from the men while subverting the male gaze; each gets fully nude, standing boldly onstage, not mere naked subjects to be depicted on canvas but real women shouting out their independence. They might not be holding daggers, preparing to cut off a perpetrator’s head, but you can see and feel their weapons nonetheless.
Gus (Arliss Howard) and Abby (Marisa Tomei) wonder about a new employee in Babe (photo by Monique Carboni)
BABE
The New Group at the Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between between Ninth & Tenth Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through December 22, $99-$119 thenewgroup.org
Jessica Goldberg’s Babe has much in common with Kate Hamill’s The Light and the Dark (the life and times of Artemisia Gentileschi); instead of taking place in the world of Baroque painting, it is set in the contemporary music industry, where an old-school record producer, Gus (Arliss Howard), spews sexism and misogyny in his search for artists with a soul. He gives short shrift to his longtime right-hand person, Abby (Marisa Tomei), who discovered 1990s sensation Kat Wonder (Gracie McGraw) but has never received the recognition she deserves.
When a young Gen Z woman, Katherine Becker (McGraw), comes in for a job interview and ultimately gets hired, each character’s flaws become exposed, as well as their strengths, but it is hard to care in this lackluster story searching for its own purpose, never filling in the blank canvas it started with.
Comparisons abound between the two shows. “I don’t want to make people feel great, I want to destroy shit! I want the girls in the front, moshing the fuck out of each other!” Kat declares in a way Gentileschi never would have. Abby, who is gay, explains, “People think if you’re a certain age without a partner, you’re alone. But it’s not true,” evoking Artemisia saying, “I have no interest — in marrying,” but with less conviction. While Hamill empowers Artemisia, having her stand onstage naked, using her body as a model for the self-portrait Allegory of Inclination, Goldberg makes Abby sexless, having had a double mastectomy as a result of cancer. “So it doesn’t really make me feel —” she tells Katherine, implying she lacks physical and emotional desire and confidence. While The Light and the Dark references Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Donatelli, and Botticelli, Babe brings up Liz Phair, Bob Dylan, Joan Jett, and Kathleen Hannah.
At one point in The Light and the Dark, men assume that Artemisia did not actually paint anything, that a woman is incapable of creating high-quality art and that someone else must be behind it all, which is one of the reasons Artemisia signs her name on her canvases “in bold type . . . And wait for my accolades to roll in!” In Babe, a New Group production at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Abby eventually asserts, “I want my NAME. On the record.” As women in fields run by men, neither receives those accolades, but Abby has settled for compromising where Artemisia keeps up the fight.
Marisa Tomei, Arliss Howard, and Gracie McGraw star in the New Group’s Babe (photo by Monique Carboni)
During the job interview, amid outdated questions that would drive a human resources department to drink, Gus asks Katherine, “Do you have a soul?” Unfortunately, it’s Babe itself that lacks heart and soul. Even at only eighty-five minutes it drags on, like side two of an old record that doesn’t live to up to the flip side.
Derek McLane’s office set is attractive and BETTY’s original music is fine, but the narrative and time shifts are bumpy; director Scott Elliott never gets a handle on the rhythm. Interestingly, although Gus has a disdain for groups, preferring solo artists performing songs written by others, he wears a Killers T-shirt, the Las Vegas band led by lead singer and chief songwriter Brandon Flowers. The costumes, which never change, are by Jeff Mahshie.
Whereas it is obvious why Hamill made The Light and the Dark, celebrating a woman who faced tremendous obstacles in order to express herself through her remarkable art, it is decidedly unclear what points Goldberg (Refuge,Good Thing) is trying to make in Babe; it’s like a concept album without a concept. It purports to be about “the American spirit of individualism,” as Abby says, as well as the resistance to the DEI movement, but it’s as flat as an LP that is not going to go gold or platinum anytime soon, instead gathering dust on a shelf.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Christian Marclay’s twenty-four-hour masterpiece, The Clock, unfolds in real time (photo courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery and White Cube)
CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: THE CLOCK
MoMA, the Museum of Modern Art
11 West Fifty-Third St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through February 17, $17-$30 www.moma.org
In 2010, the Whitney presented “Festival,” a thrilling interactive retrospective of the work of Christian Marclay, featuring multiple multimedia site-specific installations and live performances. The New York–based multidisciplinary artist followed that up with a supreme work of utter brilliance, the captivating twenty-four-hour video The Clock, which premiered at White Cube in London, then won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. Over the years in New York it has screened at the Paula Cooper Gallery, the David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, and in 2012–13 at the Museum of Modern Art; it is now back at MoMA, where this must-see experience will be on view through February 19. “I can’t believe a decade has gone by since The Clock was last shown at MoMA,” Marclay said in a statement. “We’ve all aged except the actors on the screen, who never age. They may die but on the screen they live forever.”
Time is of the essence in Christian Marclay’s dazzling film The Clock (photo courtesy Paula Cooper Gallery and White Cube)
The film, always presented in a large, dark space with roomy, comfortable seats, unfolds in real time, composed of approximately twelve thousand clips from movies and television that feature all kinds of timepieces showing the minutes ticking away. Masterfully edited so that it creates its own fluid narrative, The Clock seamlessly cuts from romantic comedies with birds emerging from cuckoo clocks to action films in which protagonists synchronize their watches, from thrillers with characters battling it out in clock towers to dramas with convicted murderers facing execution and sci-fi programs with mad masterminds attempting to freeze time. Marclay mixes in iconic images with excerpts from little-known foreign works so audiences are kept on the edge of their seats, wondering what will come next, laughing knowingly at recognizable scenes and gawking at strange, unfamiliar bits.
Christian Marclay’s The Clock premiered at White Cube Mason’s Yard in London in 2010 (photo by Todd-White Photography)
Part of the beauty of The Clock is that while time is often central to many of the clips, it is merely incidental in others, someone casually checking their watch or a clock visible in the background, emphasizing how pervasive time is — both on-screen and in real life. Americans spend an enormous amount of time watching movies and television — and now addictively glued to social media platforms and videos on their phones — so The Clock is also a wry though loving commentary on what we choose to do with our leisure time as well.
The Clock is open during MoMA’s regular hours, with members getting priority. It is not necessarily meant to be viewed in one massive gulp, but it will be shown in its entirety on December 21 at 7:00, in conjunction with the Winter Solstice, and again on New Year’s Eve; ticketing will be announced soon. Since the film corresponds to the actual time, midnight should offer some fascinating moments, although you might be surprised how exciting even three o’clock in the morning can be. Expect huge crowds whenever you go — capacity is limited, on a first-come, first-served basis, and you can stay as long as you want — so be prepared to do something with all that valuable time spent on the digital line. But wait you should — it’s well worth every second.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
JeCE! THE JEWISH COMIC EXPERIENCE CONVENTION
Center for Jewish History
15 West Sixteenth St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Sunday, November 10, $15-$25, 9:00 am – 8:00 pm jewce.org www.cjh.org
Jews played key roles in the development of the comic book industry in the United States, as artists, illustrators, editors, and publishers. In 2006-7, the Jewish Museum presented with the Newark Museum the outstanding exhibit “Masters of American Comics,” which explored the work of fourteen artists, several of whom were Jewish.
On November 10, the Center for Jewish History is hosting the second annual “JewCE! The Jewish Comic Experience Convention,” focusing on Jewish history, culture, and identity as depicted in comic books. There is a full slate of lectures, panel discussions, workshops, artist booths, and more, and awards (the jewcies!) will be handed out Sunday night in such categories as Jewish Tradition and Folklore, Diverse Representation, Historical Narrative, Autobiographical/Biographical Content, Contemporary Topics, and Combatting Prejudice, hosted by Roy Schwartz, Danny Fingeroth, Miriam Mora, and Fabrice Sapolsk. There will also be a special tribute to Trina Robbins, winner of the 2023 inaugural JewCE Award for Career Achievement who passed away in April at the age of eighty-five.
“In its second year, JewCE is more than just a superpowered celebration of Jewish comics and culture — it’s a beacon of resilience and unity,” Center for Jewish History president Dr. Gavriel Rosenfeld said in a statement. “With the troubling rise in antisemitism, it’s never been more crucial to tell our stories. Comics have always been a medium for the underdog, and JewCEshowcases the triumph of Jewish creativity over adversity.”
The impressive roster of speakers, awards judges, and artist alley participants include Chari Pere, Josh Edelglass, Fabrice Sapolsky, Tony Kim, Amit Tishler, Dean Haspiel, Emily Bowen Cohen, Paul Levitz, Miriam Mora, Danny Fingeroth, Koren Shadmi, Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Ben and Max Berkowitz, Roy Schwartz, Neil Kleid, Barbara Willy Mendes, Mathew Klickstein, Barbara Slate, Athena Finger, Cheryl Rubin, Mike Reiss, Josh Neufeld, Terry LaBan, Chris Claremont, Arie Kaplan, Ari Richter, Uri Fink, Amy Hungerford, Sholly Fisch, Omri Rose, Dr. Sean Wise, Hilary Price, Peter Kuper, Jeff Newelt, Heidi MacDonald, Jenny Caplan, and Lillian Laserson.
Among the special events are “American (Jewish) Splendor: Celebrating Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner,” “Jewish Mythology and Fantasy in Adventure Comics,” “DC Comics in the 80s — A Magic Moment,” “Exploring Jewish Humor in Comics,” and “Israeli Graphic Novels After October 7.” Below is the full schedule.
The Best-Known Comedy Writer You’ve Never Heard Of, with Mike Reiss, moderated by Mathew Klickstein, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 10:00
Drawing from Memory: From Archive to Graphic Novel, with Ari Richter, moderated by Amy Hungerford, Kovno-Shavl Room, 10:00
Jump into Drawing Comics!, with Josh Edelglass, Rennert Chapel, 10:00
American (Jewish) Splendor: Celebrating Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner, with Dean Haspiel, Josh Neufeld, Jeff Newel, Peter Kuper, and Arie Kaplan, moderated by Danny Fingeroth, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 11:30
Jewish Mythology and Fantasy in Adventure Comics, with the Berkowitz Brothers and Amit Tishler, moderated by Neil Kleid, Kovno-Shavl Room, 11:30
Comic Strip Workshop, with Chari Pere, Rennert Chapel, 11:30
DC Comics in the 80s — A Magic Moment, with Cheryl Rubin, Lillian Laserson, and Barbara Slate, moderated by Paul Levitz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 1:00
Exploring Jewish Humor in Comics, with Arie Kaplan, Chari Pere, Hilary Price, Terry LaBan, and Uri Fink, moderated by Jenny Caplan, Kovno-Shavl Room, 1:00
Jewish Comics Trivia Game, with Sholly Fisch, Rennert Chapel, 1:00
Batman at 85, with Jordan B. Gorfinkel, Athena Finger, Danny Fingeroth, and N. C. Christopher Couch, moderated by Roy Schwartz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 2:30
Leadership and Legacy: Trina Robbins Tribute, with Barbara “Willy” Mendes, and Barbara Slate, moderated by Heidi MacDonald, Kovno-Shavl Room, 2:30
JewCE: The Jewish Comics Experience Documentary Special and Q&A, with Miriam Mora, Tony Kim, and Danny Fingeroth, Rennert Chapel, 3:00
An Xciting Conversation with Chris Claremont, moderated by Roy Schwartz, Leo and Julia Forchheimer Auditorium, 4:00
Israeli Graphic Novels After October 7, with Uri Fink, Koren Shadmi, and Omri Rose, moderated by Sean Wise, Kovno-Shavl Room, 4:00
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
Carmen de Lavallade performs with Alvin Ailey at Jacob’s Pillow in 1961 (photo by John Lindquist)
EDGES OF AILEY
Whitney Museum of American Art
99 Gansevoort St.
Wednesday – Tuesday through February 9, $24-$30 (eighteen and under free; Friday nights and second Sundays free)
212-570-3600 whitney.org
“I’m trying to hold up a mirror to our society so they can see how beautiful they are, Black people, you know?” Alvin Ailey once said.
When I was in junior high, we were visited by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. I had never seen anything like it, certainly not in my all-white class on Long Island. It opened my eyes to a world of possibilities, now highlighted at the end of every year when I go see AAADT in their annual season at City Center. I was even pulled onstage once by Ailey dancer Belén Pereyra to join her and others for an audience participation section of Ohad Naharin’s Minus 16.
The continuing legacy of Alvin Ailey himself and his company is celebrated in the exhilarating exhibition “Edges of Ailey,” on view at the Whitney through February 9. The dazzling multimedia show features painting, sculpture, drawings, photography, postcards and letters, video, notebooks, posters, and more, along with a multichannel loop of rare archival footage of the troupe’s remarkable history, circling around the top of the gallery in an awe-inspiring video installation. The artworks are divided into such categories as “Blackness in Dance,” “Black Spirituality,” “Black Liberation,” “Ailey’s Collaborators/Nightlife,” and “After Ailey,” arranged in sections that encourage fluid but random movement; you can wander through at your own pace, following your own path.
The exhibit is supplemented by several vitrines filled with wonderful ephemera, from family photos, programs, and research notes to epistolary exchanges with Dudley Williams, Langston Hughes, and Ailey’s mother, Lula Cooper. The notebooks are utterly fascinating, with exciting and revealing notations, early drafts, intricately detailed schedules, and such quotes as “One must discover what the music is about + visualize it if possible.” and “Very important: The choreographer as storyteller / story inventor.”
Exhibit includes notebooks filled with intimate and intricate details of Alvin Ailey’s life and career (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
A handful of the pieces were created specifically for the show, while others date back to the 1860s. Among the artists represented are Carrie Mae Weems, Jacob Lawrence, Lorna Simpson, James Van Der Zee, Alma Thomas, Kevin Beasley, Elizabeth Catlett, Jean-Michel Basquiat, David Driskell, Purvis Young, Horace Pippin, Theaster Gates, and Lyle Ashton Harris. A poem by Nikki Giovanni, “Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars),” hangs on a long, narrow vertical panel. Three stark 1970 woodcuts by Aaron Douglas are titled Bravado,Flight, and Surrender.
In the center of the space is a daring untitled sculpture by David Hammons made of human hair, wire, metallic mylar, a sledge hammer, plastic beads, string, a metal food tin, panty hose, leather, tea bags, and feathers. Faith Ringgold’s United States of Attica map is in the red, black, and green colors of the Pan-African flag. One of the most poignant sections is “Black Women,” a gathering of such works as Emma Amos’s 1985 Judith Jamison as Josephine Baker, Elizabeth Catlett’s 1947 I Am the Negro Woman, Beauford Delaney’s 1965 Marian Anderson, Geoffrey Holder’s 1976 Portrait of Carmen de Lavallade, Kara Walker’s 1998 African/American, Mickalene Thomas’s 2024 Katherine Dunham: Revelation, and Karon Davis’s 2024 Dear Mama, paying tribute to Black women artists and performers — and, particularly, longtime Ailey dancer and artistic director Judith Jamison, on whom Ailey choreographed the 1971 solo Cry, a birthday present for his mother that he dedicated “to all Black women everywhere — especially our mothers.”
Ailey collaborator Romare Bearden’s “Bayou Fever” series is a colorful depiction of joy and movement. Choreographer and visual artist Ralph Lemon’s Untitled (On Black Music) consists of forty-one ink and watercolor on paper drawings, leaving one slot empty at the lower right. Video stations show performances by Jack Cole, the Katherine Dunham Company, Martha Graham, Duke Ellington, Lester Horton, Pearl Primus, and Ailey himself, including in the three-minute black-and-white A Study in Choreography for Camera, directed by Maya Deren and Talley Beatty.
Ailey was born in Texas in 1931 and died from an AIDS-related illness in New York City in 1989, at the age of fifty-four. He left behind a thrilling legacy of movement and music honoring the African American experience and supporting civil rights and social justice. It’s evident not only in the exhibition itself but in the accompanying program of live performances, which has already featured Ronald K. Brown and Matthew Rushing and continues November 7-9 with Yusha-Marie Sorzano’s This World Anew, November 16 with Bill T. Jones’s Memory Piece: Mr. Ailey, Alvin… the un-Ailey?, December 13-15 with Will Rawls’s Parable of the Guest, January 17-19 with Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Solo Voyages, January 24-26 with Excerpts from New Works, February 6-8 with Okwui Okpokwasili and Peter Born’s let slip, hold sway, and Ailey II: Harmonic Echo November 20-24, December 21-22, and January 22-26.
Hope Boykin’s Finding Free makes its debut at Ailey season at City Center (photo by Paul Kolnik)
ALVIN AILEY AMERICAN DANCE THEATER
New York City Center
131 West 55th St. between Sixth & Seventh Aves.
December 4 – January 5, $42-$172 www.alvinailey.org www.nycitycenter.org
Before or after visiting “Edges of Ailey,” you must see the real thing, taking in a a show or two at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s five-week season, its sixty-sixth, at New York City Center, running December 4 through January 5. As always, it’s a combination of world and company premieres, classic favorites by Ailey and other choreographers, and presentations with live music; many programs conclude with the AAADT’s masterpiece, the thirty-six-minute multipart Revelations.
“This season we celebrate the lineage and legacy of Mr. Ailey, highlighting his acclaimed works as well as new ballets by choreographers for whom he paved the way,” interim artistic director Matthew Rushing said in a statement. “As I look at the repertory for our season, I am reminded that dance is both a reflection of our past and a guide to our future. We are excited to welcome audiences this holiday season to be inspired by Ailey’s extraordinary artistry and rich story, as it continues to be written.”
“All New” evenings feature former Ailey dancer Jamar Roberts’s Al-Andalus Blues, set to music by Roberta Flack and Miles Davis; former company member Hope Boykin’s Finding Free, with an original jazz and gospel score by pianist Matthew Whitaker that he will perform live at several shows; Lar Lubovitch’s Ailey debut, Many Angels, which explores St. Thomas Aquinas’s question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?,” set to Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 5; and Rushing’s Sacred Songs, built around music from the original 1960 version of Revelations that was eventually edited out because of length.
There will also be new productions of Elisa Monte’s twelve-minute duet, Treading, and Ronald K. Brown’s spectacular Grace, which premiered at City Center twenty-five years ago. The opening night gala honors dance educator Jody Gottfried Arnhold with presentations of Grace with Leslie Odom Jr. and Revelations with a live choir.
Other highlights are Dancing Spirit, Brown’s tribute to Jamison; Roberts’s 2019 Ode; Elizabeth Roxas-Dobrish’s Me, Myself and You; Amy Hall Garner’s CENTURY; Hans van Manen’s Solo; Alonzo King’s Following the Subtle Current Upstream; and Kyle Abraham’s Are You in Your Feelings? Among the Ailey classics on the schedule are Memoria,A Song for You,Cry, and Night Creature. Saturday matinees are followed by Q&As with the dancers, which this year welcome newcomers Leonardo Brito, Jesse Obremski, Kali Marie Oliver, and Dandara Veiga and the return of Jessica Amber Pinkett; closing night will celebrate what would have been Alvin Ailey’s ninety-third birthday.
And to keep your Ailey fix rolling, you can stream the eight-part Ailey PBS documentary Portrait of Aileyhere.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]
