this week in art

ANDY WARHOL: MOTION PICTURES

“Andy Warhol: Motion Pictures,” installation shot, 16mm film (black and white, silent), © 2010 The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, a museum of Carnegie Institute. All rights reserved (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Modern Art
The International Council of the Museum of Modern Art Gallery, sixth floor
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday – Monday through March 21, $20 (includes admittance to same-day film programs)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

From 1964 to 1966, Andy Warhol attempted to film nearly everyone who entered the Factory, capturing them in four-minute silent black-and-white segments he called “Screen Tests,” with the subjects usually just staring directly into the camera the entire time. MoMA has turned one of its sixth-floor spaces into a moving-portrait gallery, as twelve of the Screen Tests are being shown concurrently, hung on the walls like a series of large-scale paintings, with visitors feeling like they’ve just walked into a (rather introspective) Factory gathering. Shot at twenty-four frames per second but projected at sixteen, the shorts have a beautiful, slow, loving pace to them, but several of them have tragic elements if you are familiar with the person’s ultimate fate. For this rare display, curator Klaus Biesenbach has selected the following Factory celebrities and would-be Superstars: poet-activist Allen Ginsberg; musician Lou Reed; actor and painter Dennis Hopper; Kathe Dees; actress and art collector Baby Jane Holzer (who brushes her teeth); Japanese actress Kyoko Kishida; writer-activist-theorist Susan Sontag; art patron Ethel Scull; actress and socialite Edie Sedgwick, who died of an overdose of prescription medication and alcohol in 1971 at the age of twenty-eight; model-actress Donyale Luna, who died of an overdose in 1979 at the age of thirty-three; actor Paul America, who died in a car accident in 1982 at the age of thirty-eight; actress and Velvet Underground singer Nico, who died from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1988 at the age of forty-nine; and Italian actor and musician Gino Piserchio, who died in 1989 of an AIDS-related infection at the age of forty-four. The Screen Tests are supplemented by several of Warhol’s heavily influential, controversial films, from the same early 1960s period, that deal with humanity’s deepest needs and desires, including BLOW JOB, EAT, SLEEP, and KISS, the latter shown in the seated back screening room. On March 2, the full five-and-a-half-hour SLEEP will be screened in the rear gallery, while the complete eight-hour EMPIRE will be shown on alternate Fridays, February 18 and March 4 and 18. Also, in conjunction with the exhibit, there will be a MoMA Talk on March 3 at 6:00, “Warhol, On Screen, Off Screen,” with writer John Giorno and artist Conrad Ventur, moderated by curator Klaus Biesenbach. And finally, if you visit the above website, you can even make your own Warhol Screen Test.

OUTSIDER ART FAIR 2011

Just Folk will be exhibiting works by Bill Traylor at the nineteenth annual Outsider Art Fair (Bill Traylor, “Yellow Goat,” poster paint and graphite on cardboard, ca. 1939-42)

The Mart
7 West 34th St. off Fifth Ave.
February 11-13, $20 (includes catalog)
www.sanfordsmith.com

The nineteenth annual Outsider Art Fair gets under way tonight with an advance preview benefiting the Creative Growth Art Center, which “serves adult artists with developmental, mental, and physical disabilities,” and the Fountain Gallery, which “provides an environment for artists living and working with mental illness to pursue their personal visions and to challenge the stigma that surrounds mental illness.” The show, held at the Mart at 7 West 34th St., opens to the general public on Friday, featuring more than thirty galleries displaying works by outsider, visionary, and self-taught artists who paint, draw, and sculpt without specific training and education. Among the exhibitors are the Electric Pencil, Ricco/Maresca, Carl Hammer, Just Folk, Yukiko Koide Presents, Marcia Weber Art Objects, and Maxwell Projects. Special events include a Friday-night after-party ($50), a presentation by Dr. Thomas Röske of the Prinzhorn Collection on Saturday at 1:30 ($25), and a panel discussion on the role of artists with disabilities in outsider and contemporary art on Sunday at 2:00 ($25). Outsider Art Week continues at the American Folk Art Museum, with Anna Panszczyk delivering the Nathan Lerner Annual Lecture, “Reading Ephemera (and Fairies) in the Artworks of Henry Darger,” Friday at 4:30 (free with museum admission), followed Sunday at 10:00 by the Anne Hill Blanchard Symposium, “Uncommon Artists XIX: A Series of Cameo Talks,” with Laurel Gitlen speaking on Michael Patterson-Carver, Brett Littman on Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Kendall Messick on Gordon Brinckle, and Tom Whitehead on Clementine Hunter connoisseurship ($35), and a 1:00 screening of Kendall Messick’s 2003 film, THE PROJECTIONIST, followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker (free with museum admission).

SUE DE BEER: THE GHOSTS

Sue de Beer’s hypnotic multimedia installation “The Ghosts” finishes its brief run at the Park Ave. Armory at 3:00 and 4:00 on Sunday

Park Avenue Armory
643 Park Ave. at 67th St.
Sunday, February 6, free, 3:00 & 4:00
347-463-5143
www.armoryonpark.org
www.suedebeer.com

Three years in the making following an elongated creative drought, Sue de Beer’s latest site-specific multimedia installation takes viewers on a mystical journey through the psychic corridors of dream, memory, and reflection. On view through Sunday at the Park Ave. Armory, the work includes several sculptures that supplement the centerpiece, “The Ghosts,” a two-channel video screened in the Veterans Room, complete with a large throw rug and eight silver bean-bag cushions (recalling her 2005 Whitney Altria piece, “Black Sun”) for people to lay on. The thirty-minute film follows a money manager (Jon Spencer of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) who is obsessed with an occult hypnotist (painter and musician Jutta Koether), inspired by Italian giallo films, who practices “material recollection,” which “allows a patient to literally call forth a past event, to repeat a lost length of time, to revisit those things and people lost to absence, death.” The man feels he never achieved satisfying closure with an old girlfriend (Marissa Mickelberg), so he is attempting to reconnect with her through the hypnotist. The hypnotic, emotionally nuanced work features “persistence of vision” effects in which characters are ghosted and linger on-screen, kaleidoscopic images that echo the historic room’s stained-glass windows, text by frequent de Beer collaborator Alissa Bennett, a soundtrack with songs by Paul Simon, the Cure, Leonard Cohen, and John Lennon, and a rainbow and the fluffy white cat Snoebelle, both of which appeared in de Beer’s 2009 video “Sister.” De Beer, a Parsons and Columbia grad and NYU assistant professor who was raised in Salem, Massachusetts, and until recently shuttled back and forth between Berlin and New York, has also designed a praxinoscope that resides at the center of the armory’s Silver Room, showing an Antarctic glacier referenced in the film, while a large-scale painted plywood and steel sculpture casts eerie shadows in the Field & Staff Room. The final two screenings of the physically and psychologically satisfying “The Ghosts,” a project of the Art Production Fund, take place on Super Bowl Sunday at 3:00 and 4:00, to be followed shortly thereafter by de Beer’s “Depiction of a Star Obscured by Another Figure,” a solo exhibition running at Marianne Boesky’s Chelsea gallery from February 18 through March 19.

LUNAR NEW YEAR FESTIVAL

Qi Baishi, “Two Rabbits,” hanging scroll, ink and color on paper, twentieth century (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Gift of Robert Hatfield Ellsworth, in memory of La Ferne Hatfield Ellsworth, 1986)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
February 4-6, most events free with recommended admission of $20 adults (children under twelve free)
212-570-3828
www.metmuseum.org

The celebration of the Year of the Rabbit heads uptown for the Met’s three-day Lunar New Year Festival, beginning tonight at 6:00 with “The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Its Survival and Conservation,” a lecture by Henry Tzu Ng held in conjunction with the exhibition “The Emperor’s Private Paradise: Treasures from the Forbidden City.” At 8:00, David Rakoff hosts “Gilded Ink: Write like an Emperor,” an evening of prizewinning short stories by college students, preceded by a tour of “The Emperor’s Private Paradise” at 6:30. Tomorrow the Year of the Rabbit hops all over the museum, with a Sesame Street puppet show at 11:00, Storytime in Nolen Library at 11:45, a lion dance procession at 12:15, a fan and ribbon dance, calligraphy and face painting, a costume demonstration, and a drawing workshop at 1:00, a youth orchestra concert at 1:30, a tea ceremony at 2:15, and Peking Opera performances of LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD at 3:00 (one hour children’s show, $15) and 7:00 (full concert with acrobatics, live music and dance, martial arts, and more, $30). The festivities conclude on Sunday with a special look at “The Emperor’s Private Paradise,” featuring a series of lectures beginning at 2:00, including Maxwell K. Hearn’s “Art, Artifice, and Identity—The World of the Qianlong Emperor,” Nancy Berliner’s “A Chinese Garden in Space and over Time,” and Ben Wang’s “The Musicality of Chinese Poetry and Calligraphy in the World of the Qianlong Emperor.”

FIRST SATURDAYS: FRAMING OUR HISTORY

Hank Willis Thomas will discuss his long-term installation, “Unbranded,” at the Brooklyn Museum on Saturday night (Hank Willis Thomas, “Why wait another day to be adorable? Tell your beautician ‘Relax me,’” chromogenic photograph, 1968/2007)

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

For its February First Saturdays free program, the Brooklyn Museum is honoring Black History Month with its usual wide-ranging schedule of events. Kicking things off at 5:00 will be the Fat Cat Big Band, with Jade Synstelien leading a group of up to sixteen musicians through jazz and bebop. At 5:30, Denzel Washington’s THE GREAT DEBATERS (2007) will be shown, introduced by author Trey Ells (RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW), who will also participate in a Q&A following the screening. At 6:00, curator and writer Kalia Brooks will discuss the exhibition “Lorna Simpson: Gathered”: Simpson’s photographs will also be the focus of the 6:30 Hands-On Art workshop, and people are encouraged to bring their own photos to add to a collaborative interactive project as well. At 7:00, curator Sharon Matt Atkins will take visitors on a tour of “Norman Rockwell: Behind the Camera,” while at 8:00 a student guide will give a Young Voices gallery talk on the installation “American Identities: A New Look.” The always hot dance party gets under way at 8:00, hosted by DJ Stormin’ Norman, who will be playing hip-hop and soul tunes. And at 9:00, Hank Willis Thomas will discuss his long-term installation, “Unbranded,” while at the same time the Smalls Jazz Club All-Stars will take listeners back to the Golden Age of music.

CHRISTIAN MARCLAY: THE CLOCK

Christian Marclay’s twenty-four-hour masterpiece unfolds in real time in Chelsea

Paula Cooper Gallery
534 West 21st St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Thursday, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Friday at 10:00 am – Saturday at 6:00 pm
Through February 19, free
212-255-1105
www.paulacoopergallery.com

Last summer, the Whitney presented “Festival,” a thrilling interactive retrospective of the work of Christian Marclay, featuring multiple site-specific installations and live performances. The New York-based multidisciplinary artist has followed that up with a supreme work of utter brilliance, the captivating twenty-four-hour video THE CLOCK. Screened in a large, dark gallery with roomy, comfortable seats, the film unfolds in real time, composed of thousands of clips from movies and television that feature all kinds of clocks and watches 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. 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, so THE CLOCK is also a wry though loving commentary on what we choose to do with our leisure time as well. Although it is not necessarily meant to be viewed in one massive gulp, THE CLOCK will be shown in its entirety on Fridays this month, February 4, 11, and 18, beginning at 10:00 am. 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.

TWI-NY TALK: BUTT JOHNSON

Butt Johnson, “Starchitects,” ballpoint pen on 2ply Bristol, 2009-10

BUTT JOHNSON: THE NAME OF THE ROSE
CRG Gallery
548 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Tuesday – Saturday through February 19, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-229-2766
www.crggallery.com
www.buttjohnson.com

As we made our way last Saturday through Butt Johnson’s exquisite display of remarkably detailed drawings at CRG Gallery in Chelsea, an older couple was marveling at the show, using the gallery-supplied magnifying glasses to peer deeply into such enchanting and engaging ballpoint-pen-on-paper works as “Starchitects,” “Various Controllers, Maps, and a Robotic Accessory,” “The Ambassadors,” and a series of roses. The woman then wondered aloud, “What kind of name is Butt Johnson?” Indeed, what kind of name is Butt Johnson? The title of the RISD graduate’s first solo show, “The Name of the Rose,” was inspired by the last line of Umberto Eco’s 1980 novel: “Yesterday’s rose endures in its name; we hold empty names,” which Eco explains in the postscript means that “in this imperfect world, the only imperishable things are ideas.” The pseudonymous artist, who is also a graphic designer, gallery owner, and recipient of a 2010 Pollock-Krasner Fellowship, agreed to talk to twi-ny about his name and his imperishable ideas under one condition — that we keep his real name a mystery, at least for now.

twi-ny: Your first solo show features stunning works that mix historical motifs and pop-culture references, evoking old master drawings, obsessive outsider art, and modern technology. What specifically attracts you to to the ballpoint-pen-on-paper format? Would you consider yourself an obsessive artist, given the amount of detail that appears in your work, which takes years to complete?

Butt Johnson: I’ve been drawing with ballpoint pens since I was a kid, mostly in the margins of school notebooks . . . but in my last year in college I reached a kind of threshold with the material where I realized if I handled the ink right I could actually mimic the language of old master drawings/engravings. Since then I have been honing the craft and learning how to draw from some of my favorite old (and new) masters. I think I’m getting better, but every time I see a Dürer or a Piranesi engraving I know I have a lifetime more of learning ahead of me. I have tried ballpoint on other surfaces besides paper, such as Mylar and Formica; it does interesting things and warrants further exploration, I think, but paper contextualizes the work within a tradition, which is nice.

As for obsessiveness, I actually don’t consider myself obsessive and may take issue with the term. While the drawings do take a good amount of time to complete, I think they are very focused on specific themes and arrangements. For me the term obsessive connotes a kind of naïveté (and not necessarily in a negative way), but I think if I compare my drawings to the kind of language that I am aping, it doesn’t even hold a candle to the amount of skill and concentration that existed in previous eras. Maybe in our lightning-speed contemporary culture it may seem like it would take obsession to make this kind of work, but honestly I spend much of my day dicking around on the internet just like everyone else.

Butt Johnson could have called his show “A Rose by Any Other Name…”

twi-ny: On the CRG website, your face is blurred out, and your name is clearly a pseudonym. Why have you decided to keep your identity in the dark? And why choose such a humorous name for such ostensibly serious work?

BJ: My identity is kind of only half in the dark. . . . I don’t try to keep it absolutely hidden, but at the same time I enjoy the anonymity that both the pseudonym and the blurred-out face afford. The name Butt Johnson was a joke I pulled out of the air back in undergrad, but I found it useful in terms of how I see both the idea of authorship and the branding of works of art, so I decided to keep it.

twi-ny: In another part of your life, you run a New York City gallery. What are some of the main differences in how you approach art from those two varying perspectives?

BJ: Ha! I do indeed run an art gallery (with two wonderful partners), and approach it in a very different manner than the ways in which I produce my own work. I love doing studio visits with other artists, and the gallery helps me leave behind my drawings as a filter through which to view other works of art. In this way I can keep my mind open and curious and engage in a very direct level with artists whom I support and can work towards furthering their careers. And as a bonus, it gets me out of the house.

“The Name of the Rose” continues at the CRG Gallery through February 19. Johnson is also part of the group show “Cover Version LP” at BAM through March 20, a collection of reimagined album covers by more than two dozen artists, including Johnson’s take on Terry Snyder and the All Stars’ 1960 smash, PERSUASIVE PERCUSSION VOLUME 2.