this week in art

CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN AT MoMA

Carolee Schneemann’s early paintings and sculptures are a revelation at MoMA PS1 retrospective (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Doc Fortnight 2018: George (Jeffrey Perkins, 2017) and Carolee, Barbara, and Gunvor, (Lynne Sachs, 2018), MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves., 212-708-9400, Wednesday, February 21, $12, 7:30
“Art and Practice with Carolee Schneemann,” MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave., 718-784-2084, Thursday, February 22, free with advance RSVP, 6:00
Exhibition continues at MoMA PS1 Thursday – Monday through March 11, suggested admission $5-$10, free for NYC residents
www.moma.org
www.caroleeschneemann.com

MoMA PS1’s “Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting” is a revelatory exploration of the career of the immensely influential multidisciplinary artist. The seventy-eight-year-old Pennsylvania-born Schneemann will reveal yet more this week during two special programs. On February 21 at 7:30, she will be at MoMA for the world premiere screening of Lynne Sachs’s Carolee, Barbara, and Gunvor, a nine-minute short about Schneemann, Barbara Hammer, and Gunvor Nelson, which is screening with Jeffrey Perkins’s George, about George Maciunas and Fluxus, as part of “Doc Fortnight 2018: MoMA’s International Festival of Nonfiction Film and Media.” Schneemann, Perkins, and Sachs will participate in a discussion after the films; in addition, Alison Knowles will re-create her interactive 1963 piece Shoes of Your Choice. (MoMA PS1 will also be hosting “An Evening in Honor of Carolee Schneemann,” a screening and discussion on March 5 with Melissa Ragona, Jenny Jaskey, Branden W. Joseph, and the artist.) “Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting” continues through March 11, an expansive two-floor survey that shines a light not only on Schneemann’s well-known feminist video and performance pieces but her exceptional paintings and sculptures. Superbly curated by Sabine Breitwieser with consulting curator Branden W. Joseph and organized at MoMA PS1 by Erica Papernik-Shimizu with Oliver Shultz, the show takes deep looks at such Schneemann works as Meat Joy, in which a group of people roll around with raw beef, chicken, and fish; Interior Scroll, in which Schneemann pulls a long strip of paper from her vagina and reads the contents; and Up to and Including Her Limits, for which she strapped herself in a harness and used her body to draw on a surface. In 1993, Schneemann declared, “I’m a painter. I’m still a painter and I will die a painter. Everything that I have developed has to do with extending visual principles off the canvas.” For the Abstract Expressionist Pinwheel, a white-gloved staff member will spin the painting upon request. Like Joseph Cornell, she made shadowbox-type works, and her collections of sharp, often aggressive detritus hang on the walls like three dimensional paintings. Colorado House is a “failed” painting turned into a freestanding sculpture. Magnetic audio tape falls out of the bottom of One Window Is Clear — Notes to Lou Andreas Salomé, a tribute to the Russian-German psychoanalyst and writer.

Carolee Schneemann’s Flange 6rpm consists of seven foundry-poured aluminum sculptures that move at six revolutions per minute (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

“My work can take substance from the materials I find,” Schneemann wrote to French poet and activist Jean-Jacques Lebel in 1964, which helps explain Blood Work Diary, a visual document of her menstrual flow. For Body Collage, a naked Schneemann, coated in wallpaper paste and molasses, rolls around in paper shreds. Her body is also one of the main subjects in Fuses, a film in which she makes love with her then-partner, James Tunney, while her beloved cat, Kitch, hangs around nearby. Kitch can be found in several works, but it’s Cluny (and later Vesper) who Schneemann gets perhaps a little too close to in Infinity Kisses. Meanwhile, Vulva’s Morphia is so hot that Schneemann includes four electric fans to cool off the thirty-five vaginal depictions, with such text as “Vulva decodes feminist constructivist semiotics and realizes she has no authentic feelings at all; even her erotic sensations are constructed by patriarchal projections, impositions, and conditioning.” That statement gets to the heart of Schneemann’s six-decade oeuvre, taking back the female body, and the power that comes with that, and redefining it, with no limits. Particularly in the era of #MeToo, “Carolee Schneemann: Kinetic Painting” is an extraordinary exhibition by an extraordinary artist who has never been afraid to make the private public, and political.

DAVID HOCKNEY

David Hockney, “A Bigger Splash,” acrylic on canvas, 1967 (Tate, purchased 1980 / © David Hockney; photo © Tate, London 2017)

Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Through February 25, $25 suggested admission
212-535-7710
www.metmuseum.org

There’s something very pure about the paintings of English artist David Hockney, so directly enchanting that Randall Wright’s 2015 documentary about him was simply called Hockney and the Met’s grand retrospective, which closes February 25, is titled David Hockney, no further description needed. I called the film “a wonderful documentary that celebrates not only the artist but his work and process, which comes alive on the screen, digital technology allowing the paintings and photographs to pop with their brilliant colors. If you didn’t appreciate Hockney’s talent before, this documentary will change your mind about it. And if you already were a fan of him and his work, this film will make you love him even more.” The same can be said of the Met show, including the digital aspect; the first major survey of Hockney in New York City in thirty years features the digital triptych “View through the Artist’s Bedroom Window, Bridlington” that reveals the development of a trio of images made on an iPad. Celebrating his eightieth birthday, the show comprises more than eighty painting, drawing, photographs, and video works as Hockney, over the course of nearly sixty years, goes from abstraction to realism, from portraits to landscapes, from 1960’s “Love Painting,” when he was still at the Royal College of Art, to 2017’s “Interior with Blue Terrace and Garden.”

David Hockney, “Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy,” acrylic on canvas, 1968 (private collection / © David Hockney)

David Hockney, “Man in Shower in Beverly Hills,” acrylic on canvas, 1964 (Tate, purchased 1980 / © David Hockney; photo © Tate, London 2017)

Hockney was born in Bradford, England and has lived on the Yorkshire Coast and in the Hollywood Hills. He still paints every day, with a sparkling control of color, form, and space that instantly engages viewers making their way through the galleries, divided into “Early Works,” “Los Angeles,” “Pair Portraits,” “Sketches & Photocollages,” “Assembled Views,” “Roads & Landscapes,” and “Blue Terraces.” He didn’t hide from his sexual identity in his paintings, even though homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom until the Sexual Offences Act of 1967. Many of his classic works are on view: 1967’s “A Bigger Splash,” a spectacularly rendered backyard pool with a small home, part of a diving board, and two tall palm trees set against a blue sky, a bravura example of his use of line and geometric shapes; 1964’s homoerotic “Man in Shower in Beverly Hills”; 1980’s swirling, mazelike “Nichols Canyon”; and 1986’s chromogenic print “Pearblossom Hwy., 11-18th April 1986, #1,” which focuses our gaze on the word “stop” three times, an instruction that we, and Hockney, have no intention of obeying.

David Hockney "Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy" 1968 Acrylic on canvas 83 1/2 x 119 1/2" © David Hockney

David Hockney, “Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy,” acrylic on canvas, 1968 (private collection / © David Hockney)

But the show goes much deeper. “One of the surprises for me is how varying he was,” curator Ian Alteveer says in a Met video. “He, at a very young age, was expressing themes of queerness and of difference and displaying them very proudly in his work.” This is perhaps best exemplified by 1963’s “Domestic Scene,” in which a nearly naked man washes the back of a fully naked man taking a shower in a bucket, and 1960’s “The Third Love Painting,” which includes a large phallic object and a quote from Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard at the Close of the Day,” among other text. Meanwhile, the gems keep coming, from such double portraits as “American Collectors (Fred and Marcia Weisman),” “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy,” “My Parents,” and “Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy” to the Matisse/Picasso-inspired “V.N.” paintings and depictions of the Grand Canyon, art dealer John Kasmin, onetime lover Peter Schlesinger, artist Ron Kitaj, and his longtime manager and former companion Gregory Evans. You’ll leave the show feeling gleeful and chipper, ready to bask in the glow of the world outside while excitedly wondering what Hockney will come up with next.

CATS ON GLASS

Cats seek forever homes in Chelsea pop-up exhibit (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

524 West 26th St. at Tenth Ave.
February 15-19, free with advance RSVP, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
www.freshstep.com/cat-love
cats on glass slideshow

Fresh Step’s Cats on Glass pop-up show, continuing in Robert Miller Gallery’s Chelsea space through Presidents Day, is a sweet-natured celebration of all things feline, a tribute to our whiskered friends who essentially rule the world, all in the name of a new kitty litter. Not only are you encouraged to take lots of pictures, but if you post a photo or story on Instagram, you will receive a pair of cat sunglasses.

A giant cat surveys his territory (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

The “Larger than Life” room honors the historical power of cats in “Larger than Life,” consisting of several large-scale pussies standing on small podiums so you may “Treasure the Monumental” and bow at their majesty.

Meditating to purrs is good for the soul (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Feline fanciers can take a break by sitting on a furry seat, putting on cat-ear headphones, and finding “purr-vana” in the Me-owm Meditation Room, which welcomes visitors with a neon “Meowmaste” sign and offers everyone a chance to meditate alongside an imaginary cat in their mind.

Pom Pom Room is a colorful display of cat toys (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Everyone is invited to get on all fours and “Revel in a Cat Daydream” in the Pom Pom Room, an area filled with colorful pom pom garlands and balls hanging from above and reaching toward the comfy floor carpet, where there are objects to bat at like playful kitties.

You can get a cat’s-eye view at interactive show (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

In the lobby are small cat paintings and mirrors that lead to the mane event, the Live Cats on Glass Playhouse, where you are given the opportunity to “Admire Cats from a Totally New Purr-spective.” On the walls are large-scale photographs of cats that are available for adoption. In one corner, you can put giant kitty heads on and see the world through a cat’s eyes.

Cuteness abounds at unique cat exhibition (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

But the centerpiece is the deluxe Live Cats on Glass Playhouse, a series of rooms, encased in Plexiglass, about six to seven feet off the ground, where cats can run around, play with other cats, hide in corners, and mew away. Visitors are able to walk under the structure and watch the cats from beneath, looking up at their toe beans pushed against the glass, see them being taken out of and put back into their carriers, or slightly pet them through small holes and slits.

Craig and Roberto are happy to be back together in playhouse (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Roberto was not happy until he was joined by his brother, Craig. Geisha ruled from a spot that was clearly just for him. And Twinkle wasn’t sure what to do and where to go.

Meet-and-greets with potential adoptees are available (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

And finally, people can interact with some of the animals in a separate room, with the possibility of giving one of them a forever home. Once the Chelsea exhibit ends, it is likely that Fresh Step will take the show on the road, sharing feline joy around the country.

FREE TICKET ALERT: SALONS@NATIONALACADEMY

national academy salons

Who: Judith Bernstein, Mickalene Thomas, Odili Donald Odita, David Reed
What: Conversations between National Academicians
Where: National Academy of Design, 5 East 89th St. at Fifth Ave., 212-369-4880
When: Thursday, March 15 & 29, free with advance RSVP, 6:30
Why: Exhibits and classes at the National Academy of Design, situated in the Huntington Mansion on Eighty-Ninth St. and Fifth Ave., have been on hiatus as the institution seeks to sell its buildings and find a new home. But the organization, which was founded in 1825 to promote the fine arts in America, is still hosting special programs. In March, the salons@nationalacademy series continues with what should be two fascinating conversations between National Academicians. On March 15 at 6:30, two New Jersey natives who live and work in New York, Judith Bernstein, known for her explicit sexual imagery, and Mickalene Thomas, a multimedia artist who explores feminine desire and power through glittering works, will get together for a conversation that has the potential to be explosive given what is happening in the country today and in the art world specifically. Two weeks later, on March 29 at 6:30, California multimedia artist, lecturer, historian, and curator David Reed will be joined by Nigerian-born abstract painter Odili Donald Odita, who lives and works in Philadelphia and specializes in large-scale, ornately colorful wall installations. Admission is free, but there is limited seating, so advance reservations are strongly suggested.

NEVER BUILT NEW YORK

A model of Eliot Noyes’s never-built Westinghouse Pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair is turned into a bouncy castle for kids as part of Queens Museum exhibit (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Queens Museum
New York City Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park
Through February 18, $8 adults, $4 seniors, free for children eighteen and under
718-592-9700
www.queensmuseum.org

Oh, what might have been. There are only a few more days left to get a gander at a Gotham that just was not meant to be in the sensational exhibit “Never Built New York,” which on February 18 will go the way of all the projects that comprise it. Curators Sam Lubell and Greg Goldin have brought together paraphernalia from nearly eighty structures, including newspaper clippings, computer renderings, models, architectural drawings, sketches, blueprints, watercolors, photographs, and more, that, for one reason or another — money, safety, graft, time, politics, war — never took form. The would-be projects range from John Rink’s 1858 Plan of the Central Park, Richard Morris Hunt’s 1866 New-York Historical Society, Alfred Ely Beach’s 1870 Beach Pneumatic Railway, and Rufus Gilbert’s 1871 Elevated Railway to several possibilities to replace the World Trade Center, Zaha Hadid’s 2012 425 Park Ave., and Work AC’s 2015 Guggenheim Collection Center. Among the familiar names who attempted and failed to reshape parts of the city are Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Kahn, Daniel Libeskind, Robert Moses, R. Buckminster Fuller, Isamu Noguchi, Frank Gehry, I. M. Pei, Marcel Breuer, Michael Graves, Santiago Calatrava, and McKim, Mead & White.

The Panorama of the City of New York at the Queens Museum temporarily includes a series of projects that were never built (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Moses wanted to construct the elevated Lower Manhattan Expressway from the Holland Tunnel to the Manhattan and Williamsburg Bridges. Fuller wanted to put up a pair of enormous domes, including one for a stadium for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Norman Sper was going to fill in the Hudson River to connect Manhattan with New Jersey. Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates included the world’s largest clock in their design for the Whitehall Ferry Terminal. Norman Bel Geddes’s “Rotary Airport” floated eight hundred feet off the Battery. In 1925, Harvey Wiley Corbett’s “How You May Live and Travel in the City of 1950” featured half-mile-high skyscrapers and four levels of streets for automobile traffic. There are also proposals for the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, Times Square, the Metropolitan Opera, Rockefeller Center, Grand Central Terminal, Lincoln Center, Battery Park, Columbus Circle, the Brooklyn Museum, the New York Botanical Garden, and an Olympic Village. The show is capped off by the genius idea of temporarily adding many of the projects to the museum’s glorious Panorama of the City of New York, a 1:1200 model of every street and building in the five boroughs that is kept up-to-date; be sure to use the virtual reality headsets to learn more about some of the projects and see what they might have really looked like in relation to the actually built city around them.

“Patty Chang: The Wandering Lake” includes two related videos dealing with ritual mourning and cleansing (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Also at the Queens Museum is “Patty Chang: The Wandering Lake,” a multimedia exhibit by the California artist that features a unique exploration of water and relieving oneself in China as well as a pair of videos involving ritualistic mourning and cleansing, one of a grounded ship, the other of a beached whale; “Sable Elyse Smith: Ordinary Violence,” a complex journey into incarceration and trauma; “Julia Weist with Nestor Siré: 17.(SEPT) [By WeistSiréPC]™,” dealing with internet connectivity and file sharing in Cuba; and “Anna K.E.: Profound Approach and Easy Outcome,” in which the Georgian-born artist, who lives and works in New York City and Germany, has created a site-specific wall commission for which, in two of the pieces, she reenacts paintings by Otto Dix and Balthus at the Met, dominated by her feminine gaze.

LUNAR NEW YEAR 4716: THE YEAR OF THE DOG

china institute new year family festival

Sara D. Roosevelt Park and other locations
East Houston St. between Forsythe & Chrystie Sts.
February 16-25
www.betterchinatown.com
www.explorechinatown.com

Gōng xǐ fā cái! New York City is ready to celebrate the Year of the Dog, or, more specifically, the Earth Dog, this month with special events all over town. People born in the Year of the Dog are honest, loyal, reliable, and responsible. Below are some of the highlights happening here in the five boroughs during the next several weeks of Chinese New Year.

Friday, February 16
Lunar New Year for Kids, with storytelling, crafts, snacks, games, and a Chinese acrobat, China Institute, 40 Rector St., 10:00 am – 4:00 pm

New Year’s Day Firecracker Ceremony & Cultural Festival, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, Grand Street at Chrystie St., free, 11:00 am – 3:30 pm

Saturday, February 17
Lunar New Year Family Festival, with “The Mane Event: A Lion Dance Performance” by the Nai-Ni Chen Dance Company, “Sounds of the New Year” featuring the pipa and the gong, “Whirling, Twirling Ribbons: A Ribbon Dance Workshop” with Mei-Yin Ng, folk arts, food sampling, storytelling, a gallery hunt, lion mask and paper dog workshops, and more, Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre St., $12, 11:00 am – 4:00 pm

Lunar New Year Celebration, with family-friendly arts and crafts, a lion dance, a paper-cutting workshop, zodiac face painting (for an additional fee), a taekwondo demonstration, a plant sale, and live performances, Queens Botanical Garden, 43-50 Main St., free, 12 noon – 4:00

Lunar New Year, with a lion dance, Shaolin Kung Fu demonstrations, Chinese drumming, Chinese acrobatics, traditional Chinese music and dance, and master of ceremonies Cary Chow, New York Chinese Cultural Center at Arts Brookfield, 230 Vesey St., free, 2:00 – 3:15

Tuesday, February 20
Lunar New Year Concert, with the New York Philharmonic performing works by Li Huanzhi, Andy Akiho, Beethoven, and more, with Ping-Pong players Ariel Hsing and Michael Landers, Elizabeth Zeltser on violin, David Cossin on percussion, Serena Wang on piano, Alex Rosen on bass, sopranos Heather Phillips and Vanessa Vasquez, mezzo-soprano Sarah Mesko, tenors Marco Cammarota and Chad Johnson, and the Farmers’ Chorus of the Yunnan Province, conducted by Long Yu, David Geffen Hall, 10 Lincoln Center Plaza, $35-$110, 7:30

Saturday, February 24
Lunar New Year Celebration 4716: Year of the Dog, with costume contest, riddles, martial arts, live music and dance, arts and crafts, games, and more, P.S.310, 942 62nd St., free, 11:00 am – 2:30

Lunar New Year Festival: Year of the Dog, featuring a Japanese shakuhachi soloist, Balinese music by Gamelan Dharma Swara, the Met Quartet in Residence: Aizuri Quartet playing “Japan Across the World,” fan painting, “Put Your Stamp on It” with Kam Mak, “Double Dog Dare You!,” a fire-breathing dragon mask, good luck puzzles, Wayang: Indonesian shadow puppet making, zodiac puppets, a hand drum and fan dance workshop, Wu-Wo tea ceremony and bubble tea gatherings, a hand-pulled noodle demonstration, a “What Your Nose Knows” scent tour, “My Chinatown” with Kam Mak, and more, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St., free with suggested museum admission, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm

Sunday, February 25
Chinese New Year Family Festival, with workshops, dumpling making, storytelling, lion dance, live music, a puppet show, and more, workshops $5-$20, party and performance $10-$20, China Institute, 40 Rector St., 11:00 am – 3:00 pm

Nineteenth annual New York City Lunar New Year Parade & Festival, with cultural booths in the park and a parade with floats, antique cars, live performances, and much more from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, and other nations, Chinatown, Sara D. Roosevelt Park, and Columbus Park, free, 1:00

Lunar New Year Celebration, with live performance and paper-cutting workshop sponsored by the New York Chinese Cultural Center, Staten Island Children’s Museum, 1000 Richmond Terr., $8, 2:00 – 4:00

PERFORMANCE SPACE NEW YORK EAST VILLAGE SERIES: AVANT-GARDE-ARAMA

Performance Space New York is reborn in the East Village

Performance Space New York
150 First Ave. at East Ninth St.
Sunday, February 18, free, 6:00 pm – 1:00 am
212-352-3101
performancespacenewyork.org

After a major renovation, one of downtown’s best and most diverse venues is back, as Performance Space New York, formerly known as PS122, celebrates its return with a free event on Sunday night, “Avant-Garde-Arama.” Kicking off the East Village Series, the festivities will feature live performances from six to nine on several stages by a vast array of creators, including Adrienne Truscott, Erin Markey, Hamm, Holly Hughes, John Kelly, John Zorn, La Bruja of Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Penny Arcade, Pharmakon, Reggie Watts, and Sister Jean Ra Horror, among many others. At nine, a dance party takes over, with JD Samson, Justin Strauss, and more. The evening’s hosts are the Factress (Lucy Sexton), Carmelita Tropicana, and Ikechukwu Ufomadu. On its website, the venue declares, “Performance Space New York was born in the East Village in 1980 as Performance Space 122 when a group of local artists occupied the empty building that had been home to Public School 122 and started making performance work as a passionate rejection of corporate mainstream culture. Today, almost forty years later, Performance Space New York is faced with a radically transformed neighborhood unaffordable for young artists and a national political climate that feeds off social inequity more than ever. Moving back into our newly renovated spaces, the inaugural East Village Series asks what kind of art organization we need to become in light of this ever-more-exclusionary social and political context.” The East Village Series continues through June with such presentations as “Focus on Kathy Acker,” “Women’s History Museum,” Diamanda Galás and Davide Pepe’s Schrei 27, a world premiere by Sarah Michelson, Tiona Nekkia McClodden’s CLUB, Penny Arcade’s Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!, and Chris Cochrane, Dennis Cooper, and Ishmael Houston-Jones’s Them.