this week in art

GERTRUDE’S PARIS FESTIVAL

Symphony Space will celebrate American ex-pat Gertrude Stein and Paris with springtime festival

Symphony Space
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
April 1 – May 5, free – $95
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org

“America is my country and Paris is my hometown,” Gertrude Stein famously said about the City of Lights. Symphony Space is celebrating the Lost Generation writer’s longtime love affair with the romantic French city with five weeks of special programming, including film screenings, jazz concerts, literary discussions, wine tastings, and dancing. Held in conjunction with the Met’s current exhibit “The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde” (running through June 3), “Gertrude’s Paris” begins on April 1 with Vincente Minnelli’s An American in Paris, a free reception for the “My Paris!” and “La Revue Nègre” photo exhibitions, a free jazz cabaret with the Nick Finzer Trio, and Perry Miller Adato’s documentary Paris: The Luminous Years. The festival continues with such events as “Wearing the Lost Generation: A Musical/Sartorial Salon” on April 5, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s The Mystery of Picasso on April 8, “Great Taste! Red Wines of France” on April 10, “Tin Hat Takes on E. E. Cummings” on April 13, Arne Glimcher’s Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies on April 22, “Josephine Baker/Archival Footage” on April 29, and the free, all-day “Wall to Wall: Gertrude’s Paris” party on May 5. The series also offers a great chance to catch up on the work of Jean Renoir, with Sunday screenings of Beauty and the Beast (April 8), Boudu Saved from Drowning (April 15), and The Rules of the Game (April 22).

JOSEPHINE MECKSEPER: MANHATTAN OIL PROJECT

Josephine Meckseper’s oil rigs drill, baby, drill in the Theater District (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Eighth Ave. at West 46th St.
Through May 6, free
artproductionfund.org
manhattan oil project slideshow

Born in Germany and based in New York City for many years, multimedia artist Josephine Meckseper examines consumer culture in her painting, photography, sculpture, video, and installation. Last year she turned the ninth floor of Chelsea’s FLAG Art Foundation into a kind of glitzy, high-end department store. Now she has installed two of her giant oil rigs on a vacant lot at the corner of Eighth Ave. and 46th St., where they apparently drill for buried treasure. The pair of red-and-black steel oil pumpjacks, which reach twenty-five feet high and weigh three tons each, have been placed within the caged-in area known as the Last Lot, a site the Art Production Fund and Times Square Alliance are using for public art projects in conjunction with owners the Shubert Organization. Inspired by abandoned old rigs Meckseper encountered in Electra, Texas, “Manhattan Oil Project” references politics and the state of the U.S. economy as it drills, baby, drills in the Theater District, an area where men, women, and children have been coming for more than a hundred years to be entertained as well as to strike it rich. As families lose their houses to the mortgage crisis as well as an increasing stream of natural disasters, there is more displacement than ever before across America, as well as an ever-widening gap between the wealthy and the poor, the one percent and the ninety-nine percent; Meckseper’s installation evokes this dichotomy while calling into question environmental concerns and, of course, the impossibility of it all, as no one is likely to find oil under Eighth Ave. Then again, miracles have been known to happen; shortly after “Manhattan Oil Project” was installed, a billboard for Jesus Christ Superstar rose over the lot, providing yet another angle through which to view the work.

THE REVIEW PANEL: WHITNEY BIENNIAL 2012

The National Academy will examine the Whitney Biennial on March 30

National Academy Museum
1083 Fifth Ave. at 89th St.
Friday, March 30, $12, 6:30
212-369-4880 ext201
www.nationalacademy.org
whitney.org

We know what we think of this year’s Whitney Biennial — and we’ll be letting you know soon — but in the meantime you can find out others’ thoughts on the 2012 exhibit at the next meeting of the Review Panel, being held March 30 at 6:00 at the National Academy. The National Academy regularly invites a small group of art critics and writers to discuss current exhibitions going on around the city, but this time they’ll focus only on the biennial, for which curators Elisabeth Sussman and Jay Sanders have added some different elements. David Cohen of artcritical.com will moderate the discussion, with participants Bill Berkson (artcritical.com, Art in America), Will Heinrich (The New York Observer), and Karen Wilkin (The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal). The National Academy is in the midst of its own annual exhibition right now, which we’ll also be telling you more about shortly. The next Review Panel is scheduled for April 27 with Cohen, Lance Esplund, Maddie Phinney, and Barry Schwabsky examining several shows taking place around town.

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS: CITIZEN KANE

Rubin Museum screening of Orson Welles masterpiece focuses on memory

CITIZEN KANE (Orson Welles, 1941
Cabaret Cinema, Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, March 30, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org/cabaretcinema
www2.warnerbros.com/citizenkane

Citizen Kane is the best-made film we have ever had the pleasure to watch — again and again and again — and it is even more brilliant on the big screen. A young, brash, determined Orson Welles created a masterpiece unlike anything seen before or since — a beautifully woven complex narrative with a stunning visual style (compliments of director of photography Gregg Toland) and a fabulous cast of veterans from his Mercury radio days, including Everett Sloane, Joseph Cotten, Ray Collins, Paul Stewart, and Agnes Moorehead. Each moment in the film is unforgettable, not a word or shot out of place as Welles details the rise and fall of a self-obsessed media mogul. The film is prophetic in many ways; at one point Kane utters, “The news goes on for twenty-four hours a day,” foreseeing today’s 24/7 news overload. And it doesn’t matter if you’ve never seen it and you know what Rosebud refers to; the film is about a whole lot more than just that minor mystery. Like every film Welles made, Citizen Kane was fraught with controversy, not the least of which was a very unhappy William Randolph Hearst seeking to destroy the negative of a film he thought ridiculed him. Kane won only one Oscar, for writing — which also resulted in controversy when Herman J. Mankiewicz claimed that he was the primary scribe, not Welles. The film lost the Oscar for Best Picture to John Ford’s How Green Was My Valley, but it has topped nearly every greatest-films-of-all-time list ever since. Citizen Kane will be screening March 30 at 9:30 as part of the Rubin Museum series “You Must Remember This,” focusing on memory in conjunction with its current Brainwave series and will be introduced by Israeli journalist Rula Jebreal. Admission to the Rubin is free on Friday nights, so you should also check out the exhibitions “Hero, Villain, Yeti,” “Modernist Art from India,” and the outstanding “Casting the Divine.”

THE AIPAD PHOTOGRAPHY SHOW

Andrew Moore, “Room 348, Hermitage Museum,” from the series “Russia,” 2003 (courtesy Yancey Richardson Gallery)

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
March 29 – April 1, $25 for one day, $40 for all four days
202-367-1158
www.aipad.com
www.armoryonpark.org

These days everyone seems to think they’re a photographer, taking picture after picture after picture with their digital phones and other electronic devices, then posting the results all over social media and blogs. So we always like when the AIPAD Photography Show New York comes to town, reminding us that there’s actually a whole lotta skill that goes with capturing images of the world at large. The thirty-second gathering sponsored by the Association of International Photography Art Dealers takes place March 29 through April 1 at the Park Avenue Armory, featuring exhibits from seventy-five galleries as well as a series of special events, beginning March 28 with the gala kickoff benefiting inMotion, an organization that provides “justice for all women.” Exhibitors from Beijing, Munich, Toronto, Osaka, Paris, Buenos Aires, and London will join American galleries from across the country at the show, including such New York faves as Howard Greenberg, Nailya Alexander, Bonni Benrubi (which will be displaying photographs by Linda McCartney), Steven Kasher (Weegee, Vivian Meier), Danziger (Karen Knorr), Sasha Wolf (Elinor Carucci), Laurence Miller, Julie Saul (Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao), Bryce Wolkowitz, Yancey Richardson (Laura Letinsky, Rachel Perry Welty), Yossi Milo (Alejandro Chaskielberg), and David Zwirner (Philip-Lorca diCorcia). As you wind your way through the armory, you’ll also find works by Ansel Adams, Man Ray, André Kertész, Flip Schulke, and many others. The panel discussions ($10 in advance) will take place Saturday at Hunter College’s Hunter West Building, beginning at 10:00 am with “A Conversation with Rineke Dijkstra,” who will be interviewed by Guggenheim curator Jennifer Blessing, and will continue at 12 noon with “Curator’s Choice: Emerging Artists in Photography,” with Sarah Meister, Christopher Phillips, and Joshua Chuang, moderated by Lindsay Pollock; “How to Collect Photographs: What Collectors Need to Know Now” at 2:00, with Kenneth Montague and Joseph Baio, moderated by Steven Kasher; “A Celebration of Francesca Woodman” at 4:00 with Julia Bryan-Wilson, Sloan Keck, and Elisabeth Subrin, moderated by Robert Klein; and “Italian Contemporary Photography” at 6:00, with Maria Antonella Pelizzari, Yancey Richardson, Julie Saul, and Olivo Barbieri, moderated by Sandra Phillips.

SAKURA — SPRING RENEWS, BEAUTY BLOOMS: KABUKI DANCE

Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
March 29-31,
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

For more than five hundred years, Japan has been telling stories using the art form known as kabuki, a highly stylized dance play that features ornate costumes, intricately choreographed movement, heavy makeup, and extreme facial gestures. As part of Japan Society’s “Sakura — Spring Renews, Beauty Blooms” festival, nihon buyo (Japanese classical dance) master Bando Kotoji will lead his troupe through four kabuki works March 29-31. Accompanied by live music, the program includes Sanbaso, Cho no Michiyuki (“The Last Journey of Two Butterflies”), Tamatori Ama (“The Pearl Diver”), and Yoshino-yama (“Yoshino Mountain”). All performances will be preceded by a lecture on shamisen music and kabuki dance by Dr. Sachiyo Ito. Japan Society will also be hosting a kabuki workshop on Saturday morning at 10:15 led by Bando; although participant tickets are sold out, you can still attend as an observer for eight dollars. Japan Society’s spring festival continues through April 14 with such films as Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Hana: The Tale of a Reluctant Samurai, a haiku workshop led by Sho Otaka and John Stevenson, and “J-Cation 2012,” an all-day event that includes live music, dance, art, film, food, storytelling, demonstrations, and more.

NORBERT BRUNNER: SMILING BROADLY

Norbert Brunner, “Contemplate the Possible,” digital print on plexi, Swarovski crystals, LEDs, mirror (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Claire Oliver
513 West 36th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through March 24, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-929-5949
www.claireoliver.com

Austrian artist Norbert Brunner follows up his 2010 American debut, “Fuck Luck,” with his second show at Claire Oliver, “Smiling Broadly,” a collection of self-actualizations spelled out in Swarovski crystal on mirrors with LED lights. Each mirror features a pair of eyes, and sometimes two, gazing back at the viewer, who can see themselves in the reflection at certain angles. Such phrases as “Visualize the Extraordinary,” “You Are Fantastic,” “Anticipate Greatness,” and “You Are Exceptional” can only be read when standing directly in front of the piece, as if those statements can come true for you only if you are on the right path. The exhibit can’t help but have a Stuart Smalley feel to it, the SNL character played by Al Franken who would look in the mirror and make such daily affirmations as “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.” Of course, look what happened to Franken, who is now a U.S. senator. Be sure to head downstairs to see a leftover piece from “Fuck Luck.”