this week in art

SEYMOUR CHWAST: THE DIVINE COMEDY

Designer and illustrator Seymour Chwast reinterprets Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY in new graphic novel

Society of Illustrators
138 East 63rd St.
Friday, September 24, $10-$20, 6:30
www.societyillustrators.org
www.pushpininc.com

Longtime commercial designer and illustrator Seymour Chwast enters the world of the graphic novel with his original take on a complex classic, DANTE’S DIVINE COMEDY (Bloomsbury, September 2010, $20). Adapted from Dante Alighieri’s fourteenth-century foray into the nine circles of hell, Chwast’s black-and-white tale follows Dante, depicted as a tall, thin, pipe-smoking noir writer in hat, trenchcoat, and sunglasses, and Virgil, a short, stout, mustached man in dark suit and hat who walks with a cane. As the pair make their way through thirty-three cantos of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise, they come upon Captain Charon, who ferries the dead across the River Acheron; souls boiling in tar; an angel that carves peccatums on Dante’s forehead; sinners engulfed in flames; and sowers of discord who are repeatedly stabbed by a devil. Also among the punished are falsifiers of metals, blasphemers, thieves, the unshriven, the avaricious, the gluttons, and the lustful. Chwast’s interpretation of Dante is indeed divine and comic, a playful retelling filled with humor and light horror. Chwast, who is seventy-nine and known as the Left-Handed Designer, will be at the Society of Illustrators on September 24 for a lecture, book launch, and reception celebrating the release of this delightfully devilish hardcover.

SUKKAH CITY: NEW YORK CITY

Dale Suttle, So Sugita, and Gina Nguyen’s “Gathering” is one of twelve sukkahs on view in Union Square Park on Sunday and Monday

Union Square Park
14th to 17th St. between Broadway & Park Ave.
Sunday, September 19, and Monday, September 21, dawn until dusk
Admission: free
www.sukkahcity.com
www.unionsquarenyc.org

With Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur over, Jews now turn their attention to Sukkot, the fall harvest festival that remembers the temporary dwellings their ancestors built during their forty-year journey through the desert on their way to the Holy Land. Today and tomorrow, twelve such structures will be set up in Union Square Park, a dozen artistic renderings chosen from more than six hundred entries. The winners, selected by a fourteen-person jury that included Ron Arad, Matias Corea, Paul Goldberger, Steven Heller, and Maira Kalman, are fanciful reimaginings of the sukkah, which means “booth,” from Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello’s “Sukkah of the Signs” and Matthias Karch’s “Repetition meets Difference / Stability meets Volatileness” to Volkan Alkanoglu’s “Star Cocoon” and Henry Grosman and Babak Bryan’s “Fractured Bubbble.” The twelve sukkahs are being auctioned off to benefit Housing Works, the nonprofit organization that battles AIDS and homelessness, making the sale of these temporary structures particularly relevant; the bidding start at $5,000 and ends on Monday at 5:00.

JCC OPEN HOUSE: THE LOTTERY AND MORE

Screening of THE LOTTERY is part of all-day open house at the JCC



THE LOTTERY (Madeleine Sackler, 2010)
JCC in Manhattan
334 Amsterdam Ave. at 76th St.
Sunday, September 19, free, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm (film screens at 3:30)
646-505-4444
www.jccmanhattan.org
www.thelotteryfilm.com

After celebrating the Jewish New Year, the JCC in Manhattan is holding its annual open house, a free day to get to know the very busy Upper West Side institution. The myriad activities include a Kidzapalooza concert, a children’s sports expo, a postnatal Pilates boot camp, a video contest, skin cancer screenings, and workouts, demonstrations, and lessons in yoga, meditation, self-defense, Gypsy dance, indoor cycling, life coaching, Hebrew, low-flying trapeze, sand art, time management, cooking, dating, salsa, and much more, with special classes for kids, new mothers, and seniors, along with prizes and membership discounts. The afternoon ends with a screening of the eye-opening film THE LOTTERY.

The debate over charter schools reaches a fever pitch in Madeleine Sackler’s heart-wrenching documentary, THE LOTTERY. Sackler follows the hopes and dreams of four families who have entered their children in the annual lottery for placement in Harlem Success Academy, a free public elementary school founded by former city councilmember Eva Moskowitz. Some three thousand kids are vying for 475 coveted spots at the institution, which has an outstanding track record while doing things its own way, including not playing by the complex rules of the powerful teachers union. Sackler speaks with Moskowitz, Newark mayor Cory Booker, Harlem Children’s Zone president and CEO Geoffrey Canada, New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein, and several Harlem Success Academy parents, principals, and teachers, who have only glowing things to say about the charter school, especially as it fights to open another location inside PS 194, leading to an angry battle with the community that is simply mind-blowing. Also mind-blowing are many of the statistics Sackler shares about the sorry state of public education in New York City and across the country, specifically in regard to blacks and Latinos. The final scene, in which the families sit inside the Fort Washington Armory, praying that their child’s name will be called as if their entire future is dependent upon it, is not only heartbreaking but also beyond frustrating, revealing how difficult it can be for parents to find quality schooling in certain parts of the city and offer their children opportunities that they never had.

PUBLIC ART FUND TALKS: RYAN GANDER

Ryan Gander’s “The Happy Prince” will tantalize passersby through April 2011 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The New School, Tishman Auditorium
66 West 12th St. between University Pl. & Sixth Ave.
Thursday, September 16, $10, 6:30
212-223-7805
www.publicartfund.org
“the happy prince” opening slideshow

In describing British artist Ryan Gander and his “Passengers: 1.3” 2007 exhibit at the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, CCA director Jens Hoffman wrote, “Gander’s works are uncommonly hard to decipher. He sends us on a journey that is less about trying to arrive at an intellectual understanding and more about engaging in a form of detective work, which is often linked to the history of larger social structures and their relationships to the human condition. He lays out the evidence and asks us to study it carefully, connecting the different elements and forming our own personal relationship with them.” Hoffman’s perfect summation can also be applied to Gander’s latest piece, his first commissioned public sculpture, “The Happy Prince,” which went on view yesterday at Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the beginning of Central Park on 60th St. & Fifth Ave.

Ryan Gander will be giving one of his “Loose Associations” PowerPoint performance-lectures at the New School on September 16 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Using glass-reinforced concrete, Gander has brought to life the end of Oscar Wilde’s 1888 absurdist fairy tale about a gilded statue of the Happy Prince, which goes from being “as beautiful as a weathercock” to “little better than a beggar” after a severe frost. Ever the visual storyteller, Gander incorporates many elements of the tale into his sculpture, including the Swallow, the prince’s crown, and his heart, all of which can be found within the rubble with some detective work. The sculpture not only comments on public art and monuments but also relates to Central Park and New York itself, a proud city that has more than its fair share of princes and beggars. Gander, whose “Intervals” site-specific installation opens at the Guggenheim on October 1, will be presenting one of his famed “Loose Associations” illustrated performance-lectures at the New School on September 16 as part of the Public Art Fund Talks series, in which he combines text and images in unique ways via PowerPoint.

NEW LANGUAGE

Yael Kanarek, “Wavelength range of roughly 630-740 nm#2,” silicone on wood, 2010 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Ogilvy & Mather
The Chocolate Factory, floors 4 and 8-11
636 11th Ave. between 46th & 47th Sts.
Monday – Thursday, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm, through October 14
Admission: free with RSVP to curator Jun Lee at jun.lee@ogilvy.com

www.ogilvy.com

For the third exhibition held in Ogilvy & Mather’s new offices in the Chocolate Factory on the Far West Side (following “Re-Creation,” which consisted of art using recycled and repurposed manufactured materials), curator Jun Lee has turned to the written word for inspiration. Combining text and image not unlike how the famed advertising company does in coming up with ad campaigns for its clients, “New Language” features intriguing and involving work from fifteen established and emerging artists spread out across five floors, depicting words as images, abstract concepts, and, well, words themselves. Lisa Anne Auerbach designs wool sweaters with such sayings as “I Love My Feral Cat,” “This Lane Is Your Lane,” and “Everything I Touch Turns to Mold.” Seong Chun sews hard-to-read text on crocheted paper in “Untitled (Systemic 164).” In the digital video “The Five Classic Typefaces,” Kyeung Yeom pays tribute to Helvetica and other famous fonts. Glenda León incorporates Braille, a kind of physical language, into her “Mundo Interpretado V” motorized music boxes. Yael Kanarek’s “Wavelength range of roughly 630-740 nm#2” is made up of multiple repetitions of the word “red” in English, Hebrew, Arabic, Yiddish, and Spanish, rendered in red silicone on wood, the words spinning on top of one another like an experimental Tower of Babel. A. J. Bocchino color codes “New York Times Headlines” from 1929, 1930, and 2008 to create a visual comparison of the Great Depression and the current recession. (Meanwhile, outside the nearby windows one can see billboards and signs for a car wash and a lumberyard, other ways in which word and image are used to make a point.)

Kyeung Yeom, still from “The Five Classic Typefaces,” digital video, 2007 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In “Karaoke Wrong Number,” Rachel Perry Welty lip-synchs messages left on her answering machine meant for someone else, adding verbal language to the mix. (She goes back to the written word for “Rachel Is,” making use of her Facebook status updates.) For his “Amnesia” steel wall sculpture, Iván Capote twists and turns letters until they are virtually unrecognizable, playing with memory as well as such learning disorders as dyslexia. The most fun piece is also the most interactive; for Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar’s “We Feel Fine,” visitors can navigate a screen of some fifteen hundred tiny particles, each single dot representing an emotion that someone posted on the Internet beginning with the words “I feel” or “I am feeling.” Although “New Language” is open to the public by RSVP to Lee at jun.lee@ogilvy.com, it is also meant for the employees. In a press release announcing the exhibition, Tham Khai Meng, Ogilvy & Mather’s worldwide creative director, said, “We are a company of artists, writers, designers, and creative people who use creativity to drive commerce. Our employees need to always be looking for inspiration, and art is the ultimate medium for new forms of expression.”

NEW YORKER FESTIVAL

Justin Timberlake and Jesse Eisenberg will kick off the New Yorker Festival with a screening of their new film THE SOCIAL NETWORK, which will be followed by a Q&A with the two stars and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin

Multiple venues
October 1-3
Tickets: $25-$150 (most events $25-$35)
www.newyorker.com/festival

And they’re off! The race to get the hottest tickets to this year’s New Yorker Festival will begin September 10 at 12 noon, as literary snobs, wanna-be writers, and the glitterati battle it out to see conversations, lectures, book readings, live music, panel discussions, film screenings, and other events featuring such stars as Steve Carell, James Taylor, Justin Timberlake, Lorrie Moore, Yo-Yo Ma, Stephen King, Regina Spektor, Paul Goldberger, Ian Frazier, Neil Gaiman, Patricia Clarkson, Michael Chabon and Zadie Smith, David Simon, mumblecore masters Andrew Bujalski, Greta Gerwig, and Joe Swanberg, and many others. Good luck getting tickets for “Living History,” in which Peter Carey, E. L. Doctorow, and Annie Proulx share their thoughts with moderator Simon Schama; Paul Reubens talking about life, with Susan Morrison; Werner Herzog telling tales with Judith Thurman; Calvin Trillin’s annual tasting walk from Greenwich Village to Chinatown; a private tour of the Frick with Peter Schjeldahl; and “The Cartoon Caption Game,” in which audience members participate in a live caption-writing contest in the Condé Nast executive dining room.

HOWL! FESTIVAL 2010

Live painting surrounds Tompkins Square Park during Howl! Festival (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Tompkins Square Park
Ave. A between Seventh & Tenth Sts.
September 10-12
Admission: free
www.howlfestival.com

The on-and-off Howl! Festival, celebrating the seminal work by Allen Ginsberg, is back in Tompkins Square Park this weekend, with free events September 10-12 on two stages, beginning with the group reading of “Howl” on Friday at 5:00, featuring Anne Waldman, John Giorno, Jennifer Blowdryer, Steve Dalachinsky, Mariposa, and many more, emceed by Bob Holman. Saturday and Sunday will include live art installations, yoga, a circus, Butoh dance, performance art, a musical tribute to Arthur Russell, poetry readings, and other very cool events, culminating with the “House of Howl!” variety show and “Low Life 4: Beat Girl.”