this week in art

THE NIB & PICK SOCIETY: FISTICUFFS!

92YTribeca
200 Hudson St. at Canal St.
Thursday, November 18, $15, 9:00
212-415-5500
www.92y.org

Everyone seems to want to get into the ring these days, as chefs, architects, filmmakers, artists, musicians, comedians, and others battle it out for professional supremacy, so why not a bunch of cartoonists? On Thursday night, seven cartoonists will compete in a draw-off at 92YTribeca, with the audience supplying the topics, creating an improv-type environment. The diverse group of contestants include David Sipress, Michael Kupperman, Emily Flake, Paul Noth, Matthew Diffee, Zach Kanin, and Drew Dernavich. Unleash the pencils!

ANNE MORGAN’S WAR: REBUILDING DEVASTATED FRANCE 1917-1924

Anne Morgan and Anne Murray Dike, founders of the American Committee for Devastated France Blérancourt, ca. 1919–1921, sulfur-toned silver print (courtesy Franco-American Museum, Château de Blérancourt)

Morgan Library
225 Madison Ave. at 36th St.
Tuesday – Sunday through November 21
Admission: $8-$12 (free Friday nights from 7:00 to 9:00
212-685-0008
www.themorgan.org

War can bring out the worst in people, but it can also bring out their best. Deeply affected by the devastation suffered by France during World War I, Anne Tracy Morgan, daughter of the late financier J. Pierpont Morgan, led the American Committee for Devastated France from 1917 to 1924, as some 350 women, living in barracks in Blérancourt not far from the front, raised funds and provided food, clothing, medical care, and education to the French people, particularly children. The civilian wing of the American Fund for French Wounded, which was founded by Morgan and Isabel Lathrop in 1915, the organization also published weekly bulletins and commissioned photographs and film, much of which is on view at the Morgan Library through Sunday in the exhibition “Anne Morgan’s War: Rebuilding Devastated France 1917-1924,” which tells a remarkable story of French-American cooperation that continues today at the Franco-American Museum of the Château of Blérancourt.

One of seven photographic portraits of Mark Twain, each inscribed by Twain, gelatin silver prints on card, 1906

It’s a terrific time to visit the Morgan, which has several other excellent shows up through the new year. “Mark Twain: A Skeptic’s Progress” includes more than 120 of Samuel Clemens’s original manuscripts, photographs, diaries, rare books and letters, and other fascinating paraphernalia, held in honor of the 175th anniversary of his birth. As part of the Morgan’s free Friday night programming, Declan Kiely will lead a tour of the exhibit at 7:00. In addition, December 5’s Winter Family Day Celebration will feature live performances by characters from Twain’s work as well as Charles Dickens’s, whose A CHRISTMAS CAROL will also be on view. And on December 7, Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin will deliver the lecture “Originally of Missouri, Now of the Universe: Mark Twain and the World.” The wonderful “Roy Lichtenstein: The Black-and-White Drawings, 1961-1968” comprises fifty-five large-scale drawings that reveal Lichtenstein beginning to incorporate pop-culture imagery into his work, which would explode into bright, bold comic-book colors in the 1970s. On Saturday afternoon, the symposium “Lichtenstein in Context: Drawing in the 1960s” will examine the techniques used by Lichtenstein and his contemporaries. And the excellent but small “Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks” includes twenty of the French artist’s beautiful drawings along with two sketchbooks.

403 PRESENTS: VIVA LOISAIDA

Photographer Marlis Momber will look back on her thirty-five years documenting the Loisaida at 403 cultural salon (photo © Marlis Momber)

Sun Terrace Room
450 West 17th St.
Monday, November 15, $35-$40, 7:00
Admission includes light dinner and cocktails
www.facebook.com
www.vivaloisaida.org

Lelaine Lau cofounded 403 five years ago as “a cultural salon and community celebrating the exchange of ideas through presentations on the arts, culture and humanitarian concerns.” Lau gathers together a diverse group of individuals to discuss cutting-edge issues and fascinating subjects while enjoying a light dinner and cocktails, encouraging participation in an intimate, invigorating atmosphere. Previous evenings have featured photojournalists, painters, multirmedia artists, environmental activists, fashion designers, writers, and filmmakers. On Monday, November 15, Lau will present Berlin-born photographer Marlis Momber, who has been documenting the changing scope of the Lower East Side since the 1970s, focusing on the Latino community. A onetime homesteader who has lived in the neighborhood since 1975 and also worked as a fashion photographer taking glamour shots of major celebrities, Momber will discuss the area’s Puerto Rican community, her 1978 documentary, VIVA LOISAIDA, and other aspects of her life and career at the latest 403 salon.

ZERO FILM FESTIVAL

November 13 & 20, Nutroaster Studios, 120 Ingraham St., Brooklyn, $12-$15, 7:00
November 14-19, Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen St., $5 donation
November 13-20
www.zerofilmfest.com

The Zero Film Festival was founded by Richard Hooban as a platform to show truly independent, self-financed works. Now in its third year, the festival gets under way tonight with an opening party that includes two blocks of short films, four cinematic installations, visually enhanced live performances by Oberhofer, Sherlock’s Daughter, and Asobi Seksu, and a dance party with DJ Dmitry and free booze. The festival then continues at the Invisible Dog Art Center November 14-19, with screenings of international shorts, features, and special installations that the programmers promise “you will not see anywhere else.” The November 18 slate includes visually enhanced performances by Dirty Churches, Paradise Band, and Contradia. The festival concludes on November 20 with an awards ceremony, a DJ set by Bear in Heaven, a dance party with DJ Morsy and DJ Scallywag, and visually enhanced performances by Natureboy and School of Seven Bells. Admission to the opening and closing parties are $12 in advance, $15 at the door, while all other screenings request a $5 donation. This is a great opportunity to see lots of fascinating films as well as see some hot up-and-coming bands in one-of-a-kind settings.

ARTIST TALK: DJ SPOOKY

DJ Spooky will discuss his latest project, set on the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu, at Google on November 11

Digital Art @ Google
Google, Inc.
75 Ninth Ave., second floor
Thursday, November 11, 6:00
Exhibit runs through December 31
Admission: free with RSVP to rsvp@chelseaartmuseum.org
www.chelseaartmuseum.org
www.theprojectroom.org/digitalartatgoogle

Paul D. Miller, also known as multimedia artist DJ Spooky, will be at Google tonight to discuss his latest project, “artTEKtech Tanna,” which brings digital technology to the village of Tanna on the South Pacific archipelago of Vanuatu. The installation is part of “Ancient Stories with Modern Technology,” which is on view at Google through December 31. The exhibit also features work by National Geographic explorer and photographer Chris Rainier, who will be giving a lecture on December 9, and Google speech recognition researcher Andrew Senior. The talks begin at 6:00 (advance RSVP required), but doors open at 5:30 to give attendees the opportunity to view the exhibit first.

DOC WATCHERS PRESENTS JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD

Tamra Davis examines the life of her friend Jean-Michel Basquiat in revealing documentary (photo courtesy of Lee Jaffe)

JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD (Tamra Davis, 2010)
Maysles Cinema
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
November 11-14, $10, 7:30
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
www.jean-michelbasquiattheradiantchild.com

Director Tamra Davis (GUNCRAZY) transports viewers back to the 1980s New York art scene in the intimate documentary JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD. In 1986, just as the career of street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat was exploding, Davis filmed him being interviewed by designer Becky Johnson, a revealing portrait that she put away in a drawer for more than twenty years. Davis finally brings out that footage, making it the centerpiece of this new examination of the ambitious, influential artist and musician who experienced massive success before falling hard and fast and dying of a drug overdose at the age of twenty-seven in 1988. Davis, a friend of Basquiat’s, conducts new interviews with many of the people from his inner circle, including art dealers Jeffrey Deitch, Larry Gagosian, Annina Nosei, Tony Shafrazi, and Bruno Bischofberger; Basquiat’s girlfriends Suzanne Mallouk and Kelle Inman; close Basquiat friends Diego Cortez and Fab 5 Freddy; NEW YORK BEAT cable TV host Glenn O’Brien; and fellow artist Julian Schnabel, who directed Basquiat in DOWNTOWN 81. Davis has also dug up amazing footage from the 1980s of Basquiat that shows him to be a unique, driven figure who used whatever he could — from broken windowframes and doors he’d find on the street to immense canvases — to spread his art and world view, which began with drawings in which he identified himself as Samo, criticizing contemporary art as “the same old shit.” Ultimately, though, it was his relationship with Andy Warhol that was the beginning of the end. JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT: THE RADIANT CHILD is a dazzling document of a fascinating time and a cautionary tale of success that comes too fast, too soon. The film is screening November 11-14 as part of the Maysles Institute’s Doc Watchers Presents series.

OTHER ISRAEL FILM FESTIVAL

Havin Yaim’s ID BLUES — JEWISH AND DEMOCRATIC examines Jewish and Arab identity in Israel

JCC in Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Ave. at West 76th St.
Cinema Village, 22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
November 11-21, $11
www.otherisrael.org

The Other Israel Film Festival was founded in 2007 by Carole Zabar as “a vehicle for cultural change and social insights into the nature of Israel as a democracy and the complex condition of the lives of its minorities that are living in the Jewish State.” The fourth annual festival runs November 11-21 at the JCC in Manhattan and Cinema Village, comprising feature-length works, a photography exhibit, panel discussions, and other gatherings that focus on Arab society in Israel. Mohammad Bakri fights to save his family’s land in Rani Bleier’s ADAMA, a fourteen-year-old girl leaves her home in Galilee and marries a Muslim in a refugee camp in Noa Ben Hagaii’s BLOOD RELATION, a Filipino worker adopts a blind Israeli child in Anat Tel’s I’M NOT FILIPINA, and Haim Yavin completes his trilogy about Arabs living in Israel with ID BLUES — JEWISH AND DEMOCRATIC. Other highlights include the U.S. premiere of the Israeli version of Ricky Gervais’s THE OFFICE (HA’MISRAD), the New York premiere of episodes from the second season of Sayed Kashua’s ARAB LABOR, and selections from the Israeli SESAME STREET (RECHOV SUMSUM). Each screening will be followed by a Q&A with the writer, director, producer, and/or star, including Sofi Tzdaka, Bakri, Tel, Edna Kowarsky, Uri Rosenwaks, and Shlomi Eldar. Among the special events — many of which are free but require advance registration — are “The Search for Justice” with Naomi Ragen, “Hot Off the Press” with Amy Goodman, Gideon Levy, and Khalil Rinnawi, a conversation about ARAB LABOR with Debra Winger, Danny Paran, and Kashua, a coffee tasting with Saul Zabar, a screening of Yaron Shani and Scandar Copti’s Oscar-nominated AJAMI, and “Crossover,” a concert by Mira Awad and Tamar Muskal. In addition, Natan Dvir’s photography exhibit, “18,” consisting of pictures of eighteen-year-old Arabs who live in Israel, will be on view through November 18 at Columbia University’s Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life on 115th St.