this week in art

POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE

Silent auction will feature works by Jack Pierson, Marcus Linnenbrink, and Aaron Cobbett

A BENEFIT FOR VISUAL AIDS
ZieherSmith
516 West 20th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
January 8 preview party $75, 6:00 – 8:00
January 9-10, suggested admission $5
www.thebody.com

The twelfth annual Postcards from the Edge benefit is being held at ZieherSmith’s new Chelsea location, featuring more than 1,600 works available for $75 apiece, with the proceeds going to Visual AIDS, a nonprofit organization that uses art to promote AIDS awareness and HIV prevention. The postcard-size works will line the walls of the gallery space, but you can only find out who each is by if you actually purchase the piece; they are signed on the back but otherwise not specifically identified. Among the emerging and established participating artists are John Baldessari, Ross Bleckner, Patty Chang, Lesley Dill, Maria Elena Gonzalez, Arturo Herrera, Jim Hodges, Alfredo Jaar, Jeff Koons, Louise Lawler, Glenn Ligon, Robert Longo, and Whitney Lovell as well as Sarah McEneaney, Julie Mehretu, Marilyn Minter, Yoko Ono, Catherine Opie, Tom Otterness, Paul Pfeiffer, William Pope.L, and Ed Ruscha and Kiki Smith, Pat Steir, Adrian Tomine, Bill Viola, John Waters, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner, so if you do your homework, you might be able to figure out who is responsible for some of the postcards, although it’s a no-lose situation no matter which one you take home. But you might want to shell out an extra $75 to go to the January 8 evening preview, where the most obvious ones are sure to be scarfed up quickly. It’s all first-come, first-served, and there will be a silent auction as well.

WEARING WHITMAN’S WORDS

Jennifer Heuer, "This Is the City & I Am One of the Citizens," 2009

A TYPOGRAPHIC EXPLORATION
Lucky Gallery
176 Richards St., Red Hook
Open Saturdays & Sundays 1:00 – 6:00 through January 10
Closing party: Saturday, January 9, 6:00 – 9:00
Admission: free
www.luckygallery.com

The Lucky Gallery celebrates the written word, the commercial image, and the T-shirt in a rather poetic exhibition curated by Ben Peterson. Nine artists (Ed Nacional, Friends of Type, Jennifer Heuer, Jessica Hische, Justin Thomas Kay, Meg Paradise, Pablo A. Medina, Pillow Fort, and Travis Simon) created new pieces for the show, selecting and designing quotes from Walt Whitman’s LEAVES OF GRASS and turning them into T-shirts that were given out at the December 5 opening. While the front of each shirt was colorfully designed by the artist, the back contains the same quote in Slate and Egyptian Slate typefaces, demonstrating the visual language of words, especially in an era when more people than ever before know about font usage because of the computer. Whitman himself trained as a printer’s devil and a typesetter in his early years, when he lived and worked in Brooklyn. There will be a closing party on January 9 at 6:00 featuring the artists, special guests, readings, and a performance by Boston band Voyager.

THREE KINGS DAY PARADE

Three Kings Day Parade is an annual tradition at el Museo del Barrio

El Museo del Barrio
1230 Fifth Ave. at 104th St.
Wednesday, January 6, free, 11:00 am
212-831-7272
www.elmuseo.org

El Museo del Barrio will once again be hosting the Three Kings Day Parade, its thirty-third annual celebration of the Epiphany, beginning at 11:00 in the morning at 106th St. near Park Ave., winding down Third and Lexington, then heading for the museum at 106th and Fifth.

MANHATTAN BRIDGE TURNS 100

The Manhattan Bridge will be celebrating its one hundredth birthday on New Year's Eve (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MANHATTAN BRIDGE ARCH & COLONNADE
Bowery & Canal St.
Admission: free
www.nyc.gov

On New Year’s Eve, the underrated Manhattan Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge’s baby brother, turns one hundred. While the festivities honoring the centennial took place back in October, you might still want to pass by today and wish the bridge, which usually gets short shrift, a happy birthday while also checking out some of its very impressive architecture. The Manhattan Bridge approach on the Manhattan side is simply spectacular. Designed in the early twentieth century by Carrère & Hastings — who were trained as draftsmen at McKim, Mead & White and also designed the New York Public Library — the massive Beaux-Arts structure, which was based on the Porte St. Denis arch in Paris, towers over Chinatown, impressive in its detail. Looking out from the top is a row of six lion heads. Beneath that, a frieze features four Native Americans tracking down buffalo; on either side of the frieze are pyramids of coats of arms spreading out into two magnificent sculptures. On the south side, Winged Mercury, standing atop a globe, holds a caduceus, a topless Native American woman to his right, a pilgrim with a bundle on his left. On the north side Winged Victory lifts out her arm, also flanked by a man and a woman. At the peak of the rounded arch itself, a buffalo head looks down Canal St. The colonnade contains seven columns on each side, with more coats of arms and images with various fish. The other side of the arch, facing Brooklyn, is much simpler, though it is guarded on each side by a lion with its paw placed firmly on a globe. The suspension bridge itself, which opened to traffic on December 31, 1909, measures 6,855 feet long and cost $30 million. Happy birthday!

THE ART OF STOP-MOTION

“The Mayor,” pastel and pencil on board, on view and for sale at Animazing Gallery in SoHo

Animazing Gallery
54 Greene St. at Broome St.
Through December 31
Admission: free
212-226-7374
www.animazing.com

In addition to visiting the Tim Burton film program and exhibition retrospective at MoMA, completists and collectors still have one last chance to make their way to the Animazing Gallery in SoHo, which is displaying – and selling – storyboards, props, and other paraphernalia from THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS, CORALINE, and CORPSE BRIDE. Also on view through December 31 is a handful of select pieces from this fall’s “Sendak in SoHo” exhibition, which featured select published and conceptual illustrations from the children’s classic WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE.

TIM BURTON

Johnny Depp looks for answers in Tim Burton's haunted fairy tale SLEEPY HOLLOW

MoMA Film
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Through January 31
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.timburton.com

Writer, director, producer, and animator Tim Burton is a spectacular visual stylist with an unending imagination that began when he was a child and continues now into his fifties. He burst onto the cinematic scene in 1985 with the charming PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE and followed that up with such gems as BATMAN (1989), EDWARD SCISSORHANDS (1990), ED WOOD (1994), SLEEPY HOLLOW (1999), and SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET (2007) as well as with such hit-or-miss films as MARS ATTACKS! (1996), BIG FISH (2003), and CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (2005). His name actually became part of the title in the cult classic TIM BURTON’S THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS (1993), the stop-motion animated movie directed by Henry Selick, who also helmed Burton’s production of JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH (1996). And Burton found his onscreen alter ego in Johnny Depp, who has starred in a half dozen features made by the Burbank-born filmmaker and will be playing the Mad Hatter in next year’s highly anticipated ALICE IN WONDERLAND. In conjunction with MoMA’s exciting retrospective of Burton’s work, a fantastic collection of models, shorts, costumes, storyboards, paintings, drawings, notebooks, school projects, and other paraphernalia, the museum is screening his entire oeuvre through January 31.

Michael Keaton closes out Burton retrospective in BEETLEJUICE on New Year's Eve

The upcoming schedule features the excellent SLEEPY HOLLOW on December 27 at 5:30, the dreadful PLANET OF THE APES (2001) remake on January 1 at 4:30, the great ED WOOD on January 2 at 5:30, the inconsistent MARS ATTACKS! on January 4 at 4:30, and the charming PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE on January 11 at 4:30 before finishing up with the fine BATMAN on January 23 (5:00), the up-and-down CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (4:30) and the bloody good SWEENEY TODD (8:00) on January 27, the nearly unwatchable BATMAN RETURNS (1992) on January 28, and the very funny BEETLEJUICE (1988) on January 31 (6:00). Tickets for the screenings are $10 and are available the day of the show, but they are free if you go the same day you visit the timed-ticked exhibition, which is a splendid way to experience Burton’s chaotic genius.

FIRST SATURDAYS: TRANSFORMATION

Cordero will get Saturday night party started at Brooklyn Museum on January 2 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Brooklyn Museum of Art
200 Eastern Parkway
Saturday, January 2, free after 5:00 (some events require advance free tickets available an hour or two before showtime)
718-638-5000
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum’s monthly First Saturdays program rings in the new year with its monthly array of free activities, beginning at 5:00 with Cordero, a rousing live band formed by Ani Cordero in Tucson in 1999 with members of Calexico and Giant Sand and based in New York City since 2000; Cordero plays smooth, surprisingly subtle Latin pop that is always on the verge of busting loose. At 6:00, Daphne Brooks will talk about funk rock and James Brown. At 6:30, the Midnight Checkout Queens will play live along with a screening of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001). At 7:00, Venus Ensembles will headline the annual Winter Masquerade Ball, so be sure to come in costume. At 9:00, John Sellers will talk about his book PERFECT FROM NOW ON: HOW INDIE ROCK SAVED MY LIFE. Also at 9:00, Expressway Music hosts a karaoke contest for free FELA! tickets, and Jonathan Toubin spins tunes during the always hot dance party. And as always, the evening includes a gallery talk, a hands-on art workshop, and admission to all of the current exhibitions: “Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present,” “James Tissot: ‘The Life of Christ,’” “Body Parts: Ancient Egyptian Fragments and Amulets,” “Reflections on the Electric Mirror: New Feminist Video,” “Patricia Cronin: ‘Harriet Hosmer, Lost and Found,’” and “From the Village to the Vogue: The Modernist Jewelry of Art Smith.”