this week in art

FRANZ XAVER MESSERSCHMIDT 1736-1783: FROM NEOCLASSICISM TO EXPRESSIONISM

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, “The Yawner,” tin cast, 1771–81 (Szépmuvészeti Múzeum, Budapest)

Neue Galerie
1048 Fifth Ave. at 86th St.
Through Monday, January 10, $15
212-628-6200
www.neuegalerie.org

After the death of his leading advocate, Martin van Meytens, and failing to receive a desired position at the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna, Bavarian-born Austrian Franz Xaver Messerschmidt went a bit off the deep end. He returned to his home in the small village of Wiesensteig and devoted the bulk of his remaining years (1771-83) to creating “character heads,” busts based on faces he made in the mirror by pinching himself (although he did continue receiving commissions during this time as well). Many of the heads are on display at the Neue Galerie through Monday, January 10, the first one-man museum show of Messerschmidt’s work ever to be held in the United States and one that next goes to the Louvre in Paris. The exhibit begins with several of Messerschmidt’s early commissioned busts of prominent Viennese figures, Baroque pieces that show off his immense skill at carving out facial characteristics with exacting detail, from the eyes, nose, and mouth to the cheekbones, chin, and hair. But his presumed madness, heightened by a fear of evil spirits around him, soon becomes evident in the second room, which contains a glass case of seven of the character heads, depicted in odd, unusual grimaces, winces, yawns, and other comic and serious poses, every wrinkle, neck muscle, eyebrow, and double chin a glimmer of perfection. Forget about the names of the sculptures — such intentionally silly, banal titles as “Surly Old Soldier,” “Afflicted with Constipation,” and “Just Rescued from Drowning” were assigned by a promoter after Messerschmidt’s death in 1783 (at the age of forty-seven) — and just bask in the glory of the work itself, from the intense beard on “Capuchin” to the rare depiction of teeth and a tongue in “The Yawner” to the beautiful hat of “The Artist as He Imagined Himself Laughing,” all of which predates (and perhaps predicts) German Expressionism but feels as modern as if it were created yesterday. There is also a thirty-minute documentary on Messerschmidt, and classical music fills the third-floor galleries. Also on view at the Neue is the excellent “Postcards of the Wiener Werkstätte: Selections from the Leonard A. Lauder Collection” (through January 17) in addition to the outstanding permanent collection, including exquisite paintings by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele as well as drawings by Klimt, Schiele, Kokoschka, Lubin, and others.

THE BUDDHA IMAGE: OUT OF UDDIYANA

“Large Seated Bodhisattva in Meditation,” Gandhara culture in Pakistan or Afghanistan, grey schist stone, circa ninth century (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tibet House US
22 West 15th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Extended through January 7, free, 12 noon – 5:00 pm
212-807-0563
www.tibethouse.us

Originally scheduled to end October 20 and then November 16, Tibet House’s revelatory five-part exhibition, “The Buddha Image: Out of Uddiyana,” has been extended yet again through January 7, and you should do whatever it takes to make sure you see it before it closes. Investigating the origin of the Buddha image, which some believe began in the Uddiyana (“royal garden”) kingdom of Northern Pakistan, the show includes dozens of remarkable artifacts divided into five sections: Gandharan Stone Sculptures, Stupas and Reliquaries, Gandharan and Swat Metal Buddhas, Pilgrimage, and Silk Road. Accumulated by Nik Douglas for the Buckingham Collection over the course of some forty-four years, the objects date back back more than nineteen centuries. Walking through the many treasures, you’ll wonder why they’re not part of a permanent museum collection. Among the most unusual of the sculptures are bronze and stone depictions of bodhisattvas with mustaches, in addition to fasting, emaciated buddhas, nearly skeletal as they continue to meditate. Glass cases display rock crystal stupas with gold/electrum alloy from the first and second century, while others contain Chinese gilt bronze buddhas from the sixth century. You can almost feel the electricity emanating from several works that depict a buddha and his consort staring deep into each other’s eyes, including the many-armed “Large Chakrasamvara Yabyum (‘Wheel of Becoming’)” and “Large Amitayus Yabyum (‘Buddha of Boundless Life’).” The early-nineteenth-century Sino-Tibetan “Huge Figure of the Kurukulla Dakini” features a central figure surrounded by fire, wearing a necklace of shrunken heads, standing on a woman. One of the most spectacular pieces can be found just to the left of the entrance, nearly hidden away in its own alcove: “Large and Complete Yamantara (‘Remover of the Fear of Death’),” a bull-headed, multi-armed, many-faced bodhisattva surrounded by mysterious, exciting iconography. In his foreword to the exhibition catalog, Tibet House president Robert Thurman writes, “We hope that the manifestations gathered in the exhibition will find their way here and there to continue to inspire individuals to use their precious human lives in the evolutionarily most meaningful way to create real human values in themselves and others.” We feel exactly the same way.

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE 2011

The walls of the CRG Gallery in Chelsea will be filled with affordable postcard art this weekend to benefit Visual AIDS

A BENEFIT FOR VISUAL AIDS
CRG Gallery
548 West 22nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
January 7 preview party: $85 (includes one raffle ticket), 6:00 – 8:00
January 8-9, suggested admission $5
www.thebody.com

The annual Postcards from the Edge benefit for Visual AIDS, the nonprofit organization that uses the arts to continue to fight the disease, is like finding one more present under the tree after the holidays have seemingly come and gone. Now in its thirteenth year, Postcards from the Edge features original postcard-size works of art from more than fifteen hundred established and emerging artists, each one available for only eighty-five dollars. However, you initially will have no idea whether you’ve acquired a one-of-a-kind piece from a famous international art star or an up-and-coming newbie, since attendees can only see the front of the postcard, not the back (until you buy it), where it is signed by the artist. It’s really the purest way to purchase art, selecting something you like instead of just looking for a famous name who might be worth much more than you paid. But the famous names are plenty: Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Wil Barnet, Ross Bleckner, Lesley Dill, Alfredo Jaar, Jeff Koons, Christian Marclay, Marilyn Minter, Yoko Ono, Tom Otterness, Mickalene Thomas, Bill Viola, John Waters, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, and so many more. Of course, at a mere eighty-five bucks, you can’t go wrong no matter whose work you pick out. And as a bonus, if you buy four on Saturday (10:00 am- 6:00 pm), you get a fifth free, while on Sunday (12 noon – 4:00), with the choices dwindling down, you get a third free with the purchase of two. On Friday night there is a two-hour preview cocktail party at which you get an advance look at what’s on the wall but cannot actually buy anything yet; each attendee gets a raffle ticket to see who will select the first postcard, and the top ten bidders at the silent auction of small pieces by Larissa Bates, Nicole Eisenman, Harmony Hammond, David Humphrey, and Marc Swanson will get the next ten spots. In addition, you’ll get to mingle with other collectors, gallerists, many of the artists, and such celebrity guests as Alan Cumming, Trisha Brown, Tony Feher, John Kelly, Burt Barr, Slava Mogutin, Brian Kenny, and Richard Renaldi.

CULTUREMART ’11

Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya's FLOATING POINT WAVES is part of HERE's annual Culturemart festival

HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
January 7-23, $15
212-647-0202
www.here.org

Culturemart, the annual festival of workshop productions by HERE’s resident artists, is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year with another slate of diverse experimental shows incorporating theater, dance, film, music, and audience interaction. Things get under way January 7-8 with Laura Peterson’s GROUND, the second part of her Wooden trilogy, in which a dance quartet performs within living grass and trees. Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya, artistic directors of the New York Butoh Festival, will present the immersive, multimedia FLOATING POINT WAVES. Betty Shamieh makes the murdered Arab from Albert Camus’s THE STRANGER the main character in the mysterious THE STRANGEST. A community of artists — as well as the audience — are all part of the interactive LUSH VALLEY, which seeks to reclaim the American dream. THE VENUS RIFF riffs on the Venus Hottentot. Democracy takes center stage in Aaron Landsman’s participatory CITY COUNCIL MEETING. Deborah Stein and Suli Holum investigate a woman who is her own twin in CHIMERA. Kamala Sankaram’s chamber opera MIRANDA mixes reality television with hip-hop and Hindustani classical music. And Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith uses puppetry to look at the sacred in EPYLLION, among other shows running through January 23, with all tickets a mere $15.

JOHN BALDESSARI: PURE BEAUTY

John Baldessari, “The Duress Series: Person Climbing Exterior Wall of Tall Building / Person on Ledge of Tall Building / Person on Girders of Unfinished Tall Building,” digital prints with acrylic on Sintra, 2003 (Ringier Collection, Switzerland / © John Baldessari)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall, second floor
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Tuesday – Sunday through January 9 (open Monday, September 6)
Recommended admission: $20 adults, children under twelve free
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org

California-based artist and teacher John Baldessari helped put the capital “C” in Conceptual art. For more than half a century, the seventy-nine-year-old Baldessari has been creating a fascinating mélange of visual and text-based imagery, a vaunting vocabulary all his own incorporating paintings, found objects, photographs, videos, and an anarchistic philosophy into collages and installations that examine popular culture, sociopolitical ideology, and the making and perception of art itself. “Pure Beauty,” on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through January 9, is an engaging retrospective of more than one hundred works from throughout Baldessari’s continually evolving career. “Cremation Project” houses the ashes from early paintings that he purposely destroyed in a mortuary. In the short film “I Am Making Art,” Baldessari repeats the title over and over as he rearranges himself in different positions, while in “I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art” he writes the title statement again and again, and the exhibition supports both declarations. He appropriates images from the news and Hollywood and adds unique touches in such pieces as “Violent Space Series: Two Stares Making a Point but Blocked by a Plane (for Malevich),” “Heel,” and “The Duress Series: Person Climbing Exterior Wall of Tall Building / Person on Ledge of Tall Building / Person on Girders of Unfinished Tall Building.” In such works as “Kiss/Panic,” “Man and Woman with Bridge,” and “Pelicans Staring at Woman with Nose Bleeding,” Baldessari juxtaposes images from different sources, resulting in brand-new noirish narratives filled with Hitchcockian delight. He often adds color elements to black-and-white photographs and collages, as in “The Overlap Series: Jogger (with Cosmic Event),” while color becomes the primary subject in such works as “Six Colorful Inside Jobs” and “Prima Facie (Fifth State): Warm Brownie / American Cheese / Carrot Stick / Black Bean Soup / Perky Peach / Leek.” Even when Baldessari comes off as simply cheesy or silly, as in a series of framed pictures intentionally hung unevenly, it’s still fun to look at. “Artists are better at finding a way to kill their time,” Baldessari once said. There are a lot worse ways to kill some time by immersing yourself in this beguiling survey at the Met.

STOP, REPAIR, PREPARE: VARIATIONS ON “ODE TO JOY” FOR A PREPARED PIANO

Evan Shinners is one of six pianists who are performing Allora & Calzadilla’s moving “Stop, Repair, Prepare” in the MoMA atrium through January 10 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

PERFORMANCE 9: ALLORA & CALZADILLA
Museum of Modern Art
The Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium, second floor
Hourly starting at 10:30 or 11:30 am
Through January 10 (closed Tuesdays; Fridays free from 4:00 to 8:00)
Admission: $20 (includes same-day film screening)
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
performance 9 slideshow

Philadelphia native Jennifer Allora and Havana-born Guillermo Calzadilla have been collaborating since 1993 on multidisciplinary conceptual installations that question the very nature of art and authorship. For their latest piece, “Stop, Repair, Prepare,” the ninth in MoMA’s ongoing Performance Exhibition Series, which has previously featured such artists as Yvonne Rainer, Roman Ondák, Fischerspooner, Joan Jonas, and William Kentridge, Allora & Calzadilla have built a rather unique piano that will reside in the second-floor Donald B. and Catherine C. Marron Atrium through January 10. The piano has a hole in its center (with two octaves removed), where one of six pianists, every hour on the half hour, will enter from below and then play the Fourth Movement of Beethoven’s 1824 Ninth Symphony by leaning out over the keyboard, which they approach backward. In addition, the piano is on wheels, so the performer will also push the instrument around the atrium while playing the familiar piece, bearing the heavy weight of a work that comes with quite a history: The Fourth Movement, better known as “Ode to Joy” and based on a 1785 German poem written by Friedrich Schiller, has served as the national anthem for the European Union and Rhodesia, has been featured in such films as CLOCKWORK ORANGE and DIE HARD, was conducted by Leonard Bernstein at the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989, was appropriated by the Nazis in concentration camps during WWII, and has been a longtime staple of New Year’s day concerts. In fact, on New Year’s Day, three of the six pianists — Jun Sun, Amir Khosrowpour, and Evan Shinners — performed the piece (the other three are Midori Yamamura, Mia Elezovic, and Terezija Cukrov), each following a different arrangement chosen especially for them. Juilliard graduate Shinners, who is the host of the online radio show “This Is E.S.,” a published poet, cofounder of the artists collective known as the New Cull, and leader of the band the Suits!, played a kind of classical punk version, banging at the keyboard while the audience surrounded him, taking photos and following him around the space. Afterward he gushed to twi-ny about how excited he is to be part of the project and how he feeds off the adrenaline rush of the crowd. Calzadilla, who with Allora will represent the United States at the fifty-fourth annual Venice Biennale later this year, has called “Stop, Repair, Prepare” a “moving experience,” and indeed it is, on several levels. Don’t get too caught up in trying to capture the performance with your camera; just get lost in the uniqueness of the event and try not to get hit by the piano as it heads right at you.

NEW YEAR’S DAY FREE AT THE COOPER-HEWITT

Admission to the Cooper-Hewitt will be free on New Year’s Day (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum
2 East 91st St. at Fifth Ave.
Saturday, January 1, free, 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
212-849-8400
www.cooperhewitt.org

As we said back around Labor Day weekend, the last time the Cooper-Hewitt offered free admission, we’ve never quite understood why the National Design Museum isn’t free all the time, like the National Museum of the American Indian downtown and all the Smithsonian museums in DC. But we don’t have to worry about that on New Year’s Day, when the institution once again will open its doors for free. (Admission is usually $15.) Currently the Cooper-Hewitt is finishing up its fourth National Design Triennial, “Why Design Now?” which continues through January 9. The exhibit focuses on such themes as energy, mobility, community, health, communication, and simplicity, looking at social housing, charging stations, cargo carriers, LED replacements, tableware, threshers, and the ripple effect. Also on view is “Ted Muehling Selects: Lobmeyr Glass from the Permanent Collection.”