this week in art

TIM BURTON

Creepy exhibition entrance leads to a treasure trove of Burtonalia (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Modern Art
West 54th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through April 26 (closed Tuesdays; Fridays free from 4:00 to 8:00)
Admission: $20 (includes same-day film screening), advance timed tickets recommended
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.timburton.com
twi-ny slideshow

There are only three weeks left in MoMA’s wildly popular Tim Burton retrospective, so you better hurry over if you want to see this vastly entertaining show. (The museum is even extending its hours over the last three days, staying open until 8:45.) More than seven hundred objects are on view, from early sketchbooks and movie models to watercolors and sculpture, from robots and wild short films (Stainboy gets a corridor all to himself!) to costumes and storyboards. It’s a carnival of excess, a virtual wonderland for fans of Burton’s eclecticism. While Burton’s movies are often hit (SWEENEY TODD, EDWARD SCISSORHANDS, SLEEPY HOLLOW, ED WOOD) or miss (BIG FISH, PLANET OF THE APES, BATMAN RETURNS), he has developed an often dazzling visual style that is evident throughout the exhibit. Raised in Burbank and currently based in London, Burton seems to have saved everything he has ever done, every idea that came his way, and has included it in the survey, from his early fascination with horror and Vincent Price to his foray into his own fractured fairy tales (just wait till you see the Hansel and Gretel show he made for Disney) and his creative reinvention of stop-motion animation. It’s all here, bringing to life the ecstatic imagination of a crazed genius who’s yet to fully grow up. (which is not necessarily a bad thing).

Mackinnon & Saunders, "General Bonesapart puppet," metal, cloth, resin, foam latex, and silicone, 2005 (photo by twi-ny/mdr; courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.)

Mackinnon & Saunders, "General Bonesapart puppet," metal, cloth, resin, foam latex, and silicone, 2005 (photo by twi-ny/mdr, figure courtesy Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc.)

Fans of Burton’s movies will have a field day with original drawings, vitrines filled with favorite characters, and a reel of the auteur’s earliest shorts, dating from when he was a teenager. In addition to the exhibit, the film series “Tim Burton and the Lurid Beauty of Monsters” still has several screenings left, including THE BRAIN THAT WOULDN’T DIE (Joseph Green, 1962) on April 8, Tex Avery cartoons on April 9, INVADERS FROM MARS (William Cameron, 1953) on April 16, and 20 MILLION MILES TO EARTH (Nathan Juran, 1957) on April 25.

THE LAST LOFT SHOW

A CELEBRATION OF 15 YEARS IN SOHO
The Puffin Room
435 Broome St. between Broadway & Crosby St.
Saturday, April 3, $5, 6:00 – 9:00
212-343-2881
www.puffinroom.org

After fifteen years, the Puffin Room will be saying goodbye to SoHo, but not without one last send-off. On Saturday night, their final exhibition, “The Last Loft Show,” which will indeed be the last show in the loft space, kicks off with special events celebrating the history of the alternative performance venue. Using as its guiding theme the Walt Whitman quote “Resist much, obey little,” the show will include photos from the Spanish Civil War, “Shocked and Awed” children’s drawings from Iraq, political posters, Dorothea Lange’s dramatic “Photos of the Japanese American Internment,” and pictures from Allan Tannenbaum’s “John Lennon in NYC” series. There will also be pieces by such loft artists as Barbara Thomas, Gene Thompson, Christa Grauer, Louis Mendez, Marion Pinto, and Puffin Room director and curator Carl Rosenstein. The opening party, on April 3 from 6:00 to 9:00, will feature live performances by Cui Fei, Ilse Schreiber-Noll, Irving Epstein, Margaret Silverman, Miriam Rosenstein, Song Xin, and Yana Schnitzler’s Human Kinetics troupe, which specializes in site-specific dance installations. On April 10, Steve Ben Israel, Michael Schwartz, Ngoma, and others will participate in “The Last Word,” while things promise to get funky on April 17 with “The Last Dance” party the day before the exhibit closes. The three Saturday events are $5 each, with proceeds benefiting Greenpeace. (Above photo by Harry Schnitzler: Human Kinetics will be performing the site-specific movement “Poem #3” at the opening party for the Puffin Room’s closing exhibition)

FIRST SATURDAYS: TO LIVE FOREVER

“Anthropoid Coffin of the Servant of the Great Place, Teti,” Egypt, from Thebes, circa 1339-1307 BCE, wood, painted box with lid in place

“Anthropoid Coffin of the Servant of the Great Place, Teti,” Egypt, from Thebes, wood, painted box with lid in place, circa 1339-1307 BCE

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, April 3, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

In conjunction with the exhibition “To Live Forever: Art and the Afterlife in Ancient Egypt,” the Brooklyn Museum’s free monthly First Saturdays program on April 6 will feature such special events as a discussion with curators Edward Bleiberg and Lisa Bruno, live music by Arab group Zikrayat, a Hands-On Art workshop in which you can create an Egyptian-style amulet, a book talk with Joshua Cohen about his novel A HEAVEN OF OTHERS, a dance party hosted by DJ Nickodemus and the Spy from Cairo, and a screening of the Oscar-winning Japanese film DEPARTURES. In addition, all of the museum’s exhibitions will be open late, including “Kiki Smith: Sojourn,” “Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864,” “Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets,” and the aforementioned “To Live Forever.”

Japanese Oscar winner takes unusual look at death

DEPARTURES (Yojiro Takita, 2008)
Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, April 3, free, 6:30 (free tickets distributed at the Visitor Center at 5:00)
212-864-5400
www.departures-themovie.com

After the orchestra in which he plays cello is dissolved, Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) and his wife, Mika (Ryoko Hirosue) leave Tokyo and head back to his hometown in Yamagata. Seeing a classified ad in the local paper listing a job in “departures,” Daigo schedules an interview, thinking it is a travel agent position. But as it turns out, the boss, Sasaki (Tsutomu Yamazaki), claims it was a typo — it should have read “the departed” — and immediately hires Daigo as his assistant encoffinor. Daigo quickly learns that he and Sasaki attend to the newly dead, picking them up for funeral directors and then preparing the bodies, in front of grieving friends and family, for the coffins and cremation through an elaborate, detailed ceremony. Daigo takes the job out of financial desperation — Sasaki throws money at him to come on board — but doesn’t tell anyone, including Mika, what he is doing, since people who work in businesses involving corpses are shunned in Japan, considered dirty. But as Daigo grows to appreciate the importance of what Sasaki does, everything he has built threatens to fall apart when his secret starts getting out. Winner of the 2008 Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (As well as ten Japan Academy Prizes), DEPARTURES is a moving portrait of life and death, told beautifully by director Yojiro Takita (WHENT THE LAST SWORD IS DRAWN, ONMYOJI) and screenwriter Kundo Koyama. Motoki, who had the original idea for the film, gives a wonderfully subtle performance as a Daigo, while Yamazaki is a riot as the stern boss with a sly sense of humor. Despite an embarrassingly unnecessary montage scene and sappy music by Joe Hisaishi (who’s never met an emotion he couldn’t overexploit), DEPARTURES is a moving portrait of a man searching for his place in the world — and meeting personal and professional obstacles when he thinks he might have found it.

ALDRICH CONTEMPORARY ART MUSEUM

Edward Tufte, “Magritte’s Smile,” aluminum casting, 2009 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

258 Main St., Ridgefield, CT
Tuesday-Sunday 12 noon – 5:00 pm
Sculpture garden tours with Edward Tufte: Saturday, April 3, 2:00 & 3:15
Admission: $7 (Tuesdays free)
203-438-4519
www.aldrichart.org

It’s promising to be a beautiful weekend, so it’s a great opportunity to make a little detour north and see the wonderful Aldrich Contemporary Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. The indoor part of Edward Tufte’s “Seeing Around” exhibition closed January 17, but his show in the outdoor sculpture garden is still up through April 17, although deinstallation will begin April 5. On April 3, Tufte will be on hand to lead tours at 2:00 and 3:15, discussing such intriguing pieces as “Skewed Machine,” “Porta the Dog,” and “Magritte’s Smile.” The group exhibition “Paying a Visit to Mary” (through June 6) examines the perception and interpretation of reality through works by Dexter Sinister, Melissa Gordon, William Oorebeek, Guido van der Werve, and others. “Tom Molloy” (through June 13) is the first museum survey of the work of Irish artist Tom Molloy, who repurposes existing objects and images to make social and political commentary. “Swarm” consists of folded dollar bills placed into the wall (in an unintentional flaglike pattern that echoes the nearby “Flag”). “Globe” is a small, crushed-up map that dangles from the ceiling, encouraging visitors to “blow the world away,” as Molloy told us at the opening. And the blood dripping from “Sweep” is indeed the artist’s own. Also on view is Jo Yarrington’s site-specific color installation “Ocular Visions,” Jeanne C. Finley + John Muse’s multimedia “Sleeping Under Stars, Living Under Satellites,” and Adad Hannah’s video project “Masterpieces in Motion.” The Aldrich is a charming, very manageable museum in a quaint part of town, making for a terrific little excursion from the city.

MoCCA ART FESTIVAL: JIRÔ TANIGUCHI

taniguchi

69th Regiment Armory
68 Lexington Ave. between 25th & 26th Sts.
April 10-11, $10/day, $15-$20/both days
212-254-3511
www.moccany.org
www.ponentmon.com

No, Japanese sensation Jirô Taniguchi will not be at this year’s MoCCA Art Festival, but it’s the best place to find his latest books. For forty years, Taniguchi has been creating some of the most beloved manga series and novels. Now sixty-two, he has been discovered by America, piling up awards as his works get translated into English. We first found out about him a few years ago at the festival and have been devouring his remarkable books ever since. In THE QUEST FOR THE MISSING GIRL, Taniguchi tells the inspiring tale of a man who is determined to find his late friend’s fifteen-year-old daughter, who has suddenly disappeared. The narrative takes readers from the stunning Himalayas to the seedy back alleys of the big city. Taniguchi returns to the Himalayas in THE SUMMIT OF THE GODS, illustrating Yumemakura Baku’s two-part story of photographer Makoto Fukamachi’s search for the body of mountaineer George Mallory, who went up Mount Everest in 1924 and was never seen again. The book opens with a beautiful six-page color spread by Taniguchi. In the two-part A DISTANT NEIGHBORHOOD, written and illustrated by Taniguchi, forty-eight-year-old businessman Hiroshi Nakahara wakes up to find that he’s fourteen again, back home the summer his father mysteriously left the family and was never heard from again. Taniguchi, who seems to have a thing for lost people, has also released such books as THE WALKING MAN and THE ICE WANDERER and, with writer Natsuo Sekikawa, is in the midst of a multivolume retelling of Natsume Soseki’s classic 1904 Japanese novel BOTCHAN. We can’t wait to see what gems Taniguchi’s English-language publisher, Fanfare / Ponent Mon, will be bringing to this year’s MoCCA Art Festival.

mocca art festival 2010

This year’s MoCCA Art Festival runs April 10-11 at the 69th Regiment Armoy, featuring such participants as Kim Deitch, Emily Flake, Jaime Hernandez. Neil Kleid, Peter Kuper, Hope Larson, Frank Miller, Paul Pope, Dash Shaw, Gahan Wilson, and Klein Award recipient David Mazzucchelli. Single tickets are $10 in advance, $12 day of show, with weekend tickets available for $15 in advance and $20 at the door.

ARTEXPO NEW YORK 2010

Stanley Agbontaen’s “Village Market” will be among the thousands of works at Artexpo this weekend

Pier 94 on the Hudson
Twelfth Ave. & 54^th St.
March 26-27, $10-$15
www.artexponewyork.com

After two days open just to the trade, the thirty-second international Artexpo welcomes the public Saturday and Sunday, with more than three hundred exhibitors as well as educational events and special art-related programs. On Saturday morning at 10:00, Free Arts NYC will sponsor a children’s mural painting benefiting underprivileged youths; at noon, Ben Angotti, Marthalicia Matarrita, Andre Trenier, and Julie Freil will fight it out in a live art battle in the sculpture garden; and Michael Pacitti will lead the “In Living Color” seminar at 4:00. On Sunday at 11:00, Eric Smith will moderate a panel discussion on “The Future of the Art World” with Anthony Deljou, Nan Miller, and Robert Reeder, followed at 1:00 with Smith lecturing on “Marketing 101: What They Didn’t Teach You in Art School.”

SEVENTY YEARS GRANDMA MOSES

Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, “Going to Grandma’s,” oil on board, 1944 (© Grandma Moses Properties Co., New York)

A LOAN EXHIBITION CELEBRATING THE 70th ANNIVERSARY OF THE ARTIST’S DISCOVERY
Galerie St. Etienne
24 West 57th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Tuesday-Saturday through April 3
212-245-6734
www.gseart.com

Seventy years ago, Galerie St. Etienne held a solo exhibition of the work of a self-taught painter from upstate New York. The eighty-year-old artist, Anna Mary Robertson Moses, chose not to attend the opening of “What a Farmwife Painted” because she was already familiar with all the canvases. Also known as Grandma Moses, she painted idyllic scenes in a folksy style, Americana as seen through a primitivist lens. One of her earliest champions was Galerie St. Etienne founder Otto Kallir, who collected outsider art in addition to such German Expressionists as Egon Schiele, Käthe Kollwitz, Emil Nolde, and Oskar Kokoschka. Kallir’s granddaughter Jane, who now runs the gallery, is celebrating the seventieth anniversary of Grandma Moses’s entrée into the international art world with a revelatory retrospective that will change everything you ever thought about the famous octagenarian.

Anna Mary Robertson “Grandma” Moses, “When Leaves Turn,” oil on board, 1943 (© Grandma Moses Properties Co., New York)

Nearly seventy works are on view, in addition to archival photographs and some of Moses’s tools. Using oil paint on board or pressed wood, Moses created charming landscapes of her town, horizontal images often with small figures in the foreground, houses and barns in the middle of the canvas, and sky in the upper third. Bathed in spring greens or winter whites, the pictures depict such activities as taking in the laundry, celebrating weddings and holidays, making apple butter, flying a kite, and sledding through the snow. The peaceful settings are interrupted in several works by storms that have hit or are on their way. Two of the most vibrant pieces are “The Quilting Bee,” which features her boldest use of color and is the only painting set indoors, and “When Leaves Turn,” dominated by gorgeous fall hues. The show reveals that Moses was no mere curiosity; she was a skilled painter with a unique visual language. As the excellent exhibition essay concludes, “After seventy years, Grandma Moses’s achievement endures. This, in the end, is the mark of artistic greatness: the ability of the work to survive in multiple shifting contexts and remain forever fresh.”