this week in art

LUNAR NEW YEAR AT MOCA: YEAR OF THE RABBIT

Artist, musician, storyteller, and novelist Mingmei Yip will lead a calligraphy demonstration as part of Lunar New Year Festival Family Day at MOCA on January 30

Museum of Chinese in America
215 Centre St. between Howard & Grand Sts.
Thursday – Monday, $7 (free Thursdays 11:00 am – 9:00 pm)
Reservations required for most Lunar New Year events
212-619-4785
www.mocanyc.org

The celebration of the Year of the Rabbit, 4709, is under way, with special programs and events scheduled for the next few weeks throughout Chinatown, honoring affectionate, pleasant, cautious, sentimental, obliging, superficial people born in 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, and 2011. At the Museum of Chinese in America, the talk “Decoding the Chinese Almanac’s Predictions for 2011” is scheduled for today at 2:30 ($15), with New Year Walking Tours taking place January 30 and February 5 ($18, 1:00). Tomorrow is Lunar New Year Festival Family Day, with storyteller Kam Mak, a noodle-making workshop, a gallery talk of the exhibition “Chinese Puzzles: Games for the Hands and Minds,” arts and crafts, a lion dance, a calligraphy demonstration with Mingmei Yip, and more ($10, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm). And on February 4, the Chinese Cinema Club will present Liu Jiayin’s 2009 sequel OXHIDE II, followed by a discussion on dumplings and the New Year with chef and writer Kian Lam Kho ($10, 7:00).

FILMS ABOUT NOTHING: RAN

The Fool (Peter) sticks by Hidetaro (Tatsuya Nakadai) as the aging lord descends into madness in Kurosawa masterpiece RAN

RAN (Akira Kurosawa, 1985)
Cabaret Cinema
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Friday, January 28, free with $7 bar minimum, 9:30
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org

Inspired by the story of feudal lord Mori Motonari and Shakespeare’s KING LEAR, Akira Kurosawa’s RAN is an epic masterpiece about the decline and fall of the Ichimonji clan. Aging Lord Hidetora (Tatsuya Nakadai) is ready to hand over his land and leadership to his three sons, Taro (Akira Terao), Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), and Saburo (Daisuke Ryû). But jealousy, misunderstandings, and outright deceit and treachery result in Saburo’s banishment and a violent power struggle between the weak eldest, Taro, and the warrior Jiro. Hidetaro soon finds himself rejected by his children and wandering the vast, empty landscape with his wise, sarcastic fool, Kyoami (Peter), as the once-proud king descends into madness. Dressed in white robes and with wild white hair, Nakadai (THE HUMAN CONDITION), in his early fifties at the time, portrays Hidetaro, one of the great characters of cinema history, with an unforgettable, Noh-like precision. Kurosawa, cinematographers Asakazu Nakai, Takao Saitô, and Masaharu Ueda, and Oscar-winning costume designer Emi Wada bathe the film in lush greens, brash blues, and bold reds and yellows that marvelously offset the white Hidetaro. Kurosawa shoots the first dazzling battle scene in an elongated period of near silence, with only Tôru Takemitsu’s classically based score playing on the soundtrack, turning the film into a thrilling, blood-drenched opera. RAN is a spectacular achievement, the last great major work by one of the twentieth century’s most important and influential filmmakers.

RAN is screening January 28 as part of the Rubin Museum’s Films About Nothing series, being held in conjunction with the exhibition “Grain of Emptiness: Buddhism-Inspired Contemporary Art” and will be introduced by British writer Anthony Gottlieb. The series continues February 4 with Antonio Monda introducing John Ford’s THE SEARCHERS, February 11 with Baz Lurhmann introducing FELLINI’S 8 1/2, and February 18 with Francine DuPlessix Gray introducing the 1938 period drama MARIE ANTOINETTE.

COUSIN CORINNE’S REMINDER: ISSUE NUMBER TWO PARTY

BookCourt
163 Court St. between Dean & Pacific Sts.
Wednesday, January 26, free, 7:00
718-875-3677
www.bookcourt.org
www.cousincorinne.com

In April 2010, the inaugural issue of the oversized trade paperback Cousin Corinne’s Reminder was published, released by an independent Brooklyn-based publishing group in conjunction with the Cobble Hill store BookCourt, whose manager, Zack Zook, served as executive editor. The biannual journal’s stated mission “is to widen the scope of artistic representation within the printed world by combining literary and visual presences.” The first issue included contributions from such notables as Charles Bock, Anne Waldman, Jonathan Letham & Dean Haspiel, Mark Borthwick, Kimiko Yoshida, Donald Moss, and James Frey. The second issue has just been released, bigger and better than the first, a compendium of fiction, poetry, comics, photography, art, and other ramblings from authors and artists who mostly hail from Brooklyn. Beautifully designed by Michael Fusco, Issue Number Two opens with, appropriately enough, George Emilio Sanchez’s “Shalom,” a brief story about his heritage, and includes such other highlights as David Hollander’s absurdist, futuristic “The Limits of Bioinformatics and the Problematic of Meaninglessness: A Case Study”; Stanley Crouch’s “A Darkie French Princess,” about a young man fighting the expectations that come with art, athletics, the quest for knowledge, and skin tone; and Stephen Elliott’s sex diary, “Selections from the Daily Rumpus.” Tierney Gearon’s “The Haircut” creates a touching narrative through a suite of six photographs of a naked mother giving her young son a haircut with a stunning vista behind them, while Anthony Barboza’s “Black Dreams / White Sheets” consists of ten photos in which ten black men, women, and a child are shown lying in different positions on a mattress, shot from directly above. Amelie Mancini’s talk about her newfound love of baseball is accompanied by her David Hockney-inspired paintings of such Hall of Famers as Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Tom Seaver. And the Comix Blox, curated by Haspiel, includes tasty tidbits from Michel Fiffe, Tim Hamilton, and Haspiel himself.

The release of the second issue of Cousin Corinne’s Reminder will be celebrated at BookCourt on January 26 with a special program that includes an opening performance by Sanchez, readings by Crouch, Priscilla Becker, Todd Colby, Catherine Lacey, and Adam Wilson, a comix presentation by Haspiel and Joan Reilly, signings by comix contributors Jen Ferguson, Hamilton, and Fiffe, a painting by Mancini, free drinks, and other guests.

WILL RYMAN: THE ROSES

Will Ryman’s colorful, large-scale roses are blossoming on Park Ave. (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Park Ave. Mall from 57th to 67th Sts.
January 25 – May 31
Admission: free
www.willryman.com
twi-ny slideshow

Amid the doom and gloom of a gray and slushy January, a beautiful bunch of enormous pink and red roses have sprouted on the Park Ave. Mall between 57th & 67th Sts. The hand-painted blossoms, which rise as high as twenty-five feet in the air, are a surprisingly cheerful installation by Will Ryman, who is more well known for his theater-of-the-absurd papier-mâché creations featuring a collection of tall, gangly, dour figures and a bevy of small people trapped in the base of a deep pit. (Ryman, the son of minimalist painter Robert Ryman and abstract artist Merrill Wagner, tried his hand at playwrighting before deciding to take his characters from paper to papier-mâché.) In September 2009, inspired by the beginning of David Lynch’s 1984 cult film BLUE VELVET, Ryman unveiled “A New Beginning” at the Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea, an engaging environment populated by huge roses accompanied by giant insects and oversized trash. For the Park Ave. exhibit, a joint venture of the Fund for Park Ave., the Paul Kasmin Gallery, and the New York City Parks Dept. that officially opens on Tuesday, there are ladybugs, aphids, beetles, ants, and bees buzzing around the flowers and thorn-laden stems, but no garbage, as bright green stems lift the roses toward the heights of the surrounding buildings. Individual rose petals will occupy 63rd to 65th Sts. The pieces, which are composed of yacht-grade fiberglass resin, stainless steel, automotive paint, and brass, will remain on view through May 31, so it will be fascinating to see how the installation seemingly changes as winter turns into spring and summer beckons. “In my work I always try to combine fantasy with reality,” Ryman said in a statement. “In the case of ‘The Roses,’ I tried to convey New York City’s larger-than-life qualities through scale, creating blossoms which are imposing, humorous, and hopefully beautiful.” As it turns out, this expert of the absurd has done all of that and more.

LIVING IN AMERICA: BRAIN AND THE TIBETAN CREATIVE MIND

Creation of sand mandala is part of Global Weekend program at AMNH (photo copyright Kitt Teed)

GLOBAL WEEKENDS
American Museum of Natural History
Central Park West at 79th St.
January 25-30, free with suggested museum admission of $9-$16
212-769-5200
www.amnh.org

To inaugurate the exhibition “Body and Spirit: Tibetan Medical Paintings,” Kehn Rinpoche Geshe Kachen Lobzang Tsetan of Tashi Lhunpo Monastery and monks from Drepang Loseling Monastery will lead a procession and prayer ritual through the American Museum of Natural History on January 25 beginning at 10:30 am. The celebration also kicks off the institution’s latest Global Weekends program, which will extend over six days and feature monastic cham dances, art exchanges, the creation of a Medicine Buddha sand mandala, and public meditation that is being held in conjunction with the interactive exhibit “Brain: The Inside Story” as well. On January 29 at 1:30, Richard J. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Center for Investigating Healthy Minds will present “Change Your Brain by Transforming Your Mind,” followed by a Q&A. Other speakers include Barnard term assistant professor Annabella Pitkin and Joseph Loizzo of the Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science. The meditation sessions, which require advance RSVP, are being held January 25 at 8:00 am in the Milstein Hall of Ocean Life, January 26 at 7:30 pm in the Hayden Planetarium Space Theatre, January 28 at 7:00 pm in the Audubon Gallery, and January 29 at 3:00 pm in the Linder Theater.

EUROPEAN MASTERS

Luca Carlevarijs’s “View of the Molo, Venice, Looking West” is one of the highlights of Christie’s first major auction of 2011

OLD MASTER & 19th CENTURY PAINTINGS, DRAWINGS & WATERCOLORS
Christie’s
20 Rockefeller Plaza
Free viewing: January 22-26, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm (Sunday 1:00 – 5:00)
Auction: Wednesday, January 26, 10:00 am, 2:00 & 4:30 pm
212-636-2126
www.christies.com

It’s European Masters Week in New York, and the centerpiece is a major two-part auction at Christie’s on January 26, with more than three hundred works dating from the fourteenth to nineteenth centuries on the block. The museum-quality exhibition, free and open to the public, goes on view today, featuring a number of extremely exciting paintings, from private collections, that were initially acquired during the Grand Tour in Italy during the eighteenth century. Highlights include Luca Carlevarijs’s lush, dramatic “View of the Molo, Venice, Looking West” ($3.5-$4.5 million), Giovanni Antonio Canal’s (il Canaletto) “View of Mestre” ($2.5-$3.5 million), Jean-François Millet’s “La fin de la journée; effet du soir” (“L’Homme à la veste”) ($800,000-$1.2 million), William Adolphe Bouguereau’s “Portrait of Eva and Frances Johnston” ($800,000-$1.2 million), Jean-Leon Gérôme’s “Master of the hounds” ($700,000-$1 million), and Giovanni Paolo Panini’s “An architectural capriccio with figures among Roman ruins” ($600,000-$800,000). The auction also includes more affordable paintings, drawings, and studies by Fragonard, Boucher, Lhermitte, Corot, Tiepolo, Gericault, and Rubens, ranging from $5,000 to $150,000 (for the latter’s exquisite “An écorché study of a male nude, with a subsidiary study of the right leg”). European Masters Week continues all over the city, with such exhibitions as “Master Paintings” at Jack Kilgore & Co., “From Gallery Canesso, Paris — The Master of the Blue Jeans and a Selection of Paintings” at Didier Aaron, “Past Reflections, Old Master Paintings from the 17th and 19th Century” at Lawrence Steigrad Fine Arts, and more Master Drawings shows at Shepherd and Derom Galleries, French and Company, Robert Simon Fine Art, and other locations.

THE CONTENDERS 2010: EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP

Banksy reveals only so much of himself in new documentary

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP (Banksy, 2010)
MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, January 22, 8:00
Tickets: $10, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.banksyfilm.com

In 1999, L.A.-based French shopkeeper and amateur videographer Thierry Guetta discovered that he was related to street artist Invader and began filming his cousin putting up his tile works. Guetta, who did not know much about art, soon found himself immersed in the underground graffiti scene. On adventures with such famed street artists as Shepard Fairey, Swoon, Ron English, and Borf, Guetta took thousands of hours of much-sought-after video. The amateur videographer was determined to meet Banksy, the anarchic satirist who has been confounding authorities around the world with his striking, politically sensitive works perpetrated right under their noses, from England to New Orleans to the West Bank. Guetta finally gets his wish and begins filming the seemingly unfilmable as Banksy, whose identity has been a source of controversy for more than a decade, allows Guetta to follow him on the streets and invites him into his studio. But as he states at the beginning of his brilliant documentary, EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP, Banksy—who hides his face from the camera in new interviews and blurs it in older footage—turns the tables on Guetta, making him the subject of this wildly entertaining film.

Guetta is a hysterical character, a hairy man with a thick accent who plays the jester in Banksy’s insightful comedy of errors. Billed as “the world’s first Street Art disaster movie,” EXIT, which is narrated by Welsh actor Rhys Ifans (DANNY DECKCHAIR) and features a soundtrack by Portishead’s Geoff Barrow sandwiched in between Richard Hawley’s declaratory “Tonight the Streets Are Ours,” is all the more exciting and intriguing because the audience doesn’t know what is actually true and what might be staged; although the film could be one hundred percent real and utterly authentic, significant parts of it could also be completely made up. Who’s to say that’s even Banksy underneath the black hood, talking about Guetta, who absurdly rechristens himself Mr. Brainwash? It could very well be Banksy’s F FOR FAKE, Orson Welles’s marvelous 1974 pseudo-documentary, or it could be on the straight and narrow from start to finish. No matter. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP is riotously funny, regardless of how you feel about street art, Banksy, and especially the art market itself (as the title so wryly implies).

EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP is being screened at the Museum of Modern Art on January 22 as the conclusion to the series “The Contenders 2010,” a collection of influential and innovative international movies the institution believes will stand the test of time. Previous films in the series included Luca Guadagnino’s I AM LOVE, Christopher Nolan’s INCEPTION, Roman Polanski’s THE GHOST WRITER, David Fincher’s THE SOCIAL NETWORK, Tom Hooper’s THE KING’S SPEECH, Debra Granik’s WINTER’S BONE, Lixin Fan’s LAST TRAIN HOME, and Lisa Cholodenko’s THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT.