Sculptor Joel Shapiro will be at the National Academy on November 4 to discuss the evolution of his work
Who: Joel Shapiro
What: An Evening with Joel Shapiro
Where: Assembly Hall, National Academy Museum & School, 1083 Fifth Ave. at 5 East 89th St., 212-369-4880
When: Wednesday, November 4, free with advance RSVP, 6:00
Why: National Academician and sculptor supreme Joel Shapiro will be at the National Academy on November 4, discussing the evolution of his extensive and impressive career, “focusing on the development of form, its possible meaning, and the relationship between sculpture and drawing to the plane.” The New York native is represented in the current “On the Square Part II” group show at Pace on East Fifty-Seventh St., and his work can also be found in museums, galleries, lobbies, and public spaces around the world, including the Sony Building at 550 Madison Ave. “I was always interested in art, but I didn’t pursue it. I mean, I had this sort of idea that I was supposed to become a physician,” Shapiro told Lewis Kachur in a 1988 interview for the Archives of American Art Oral History Program. “It was tough to come to the realization that in fact what I really was good at, and what interested me, and what satisfied me, was doing art work. That came much later.” (Oral history interview with Joel Shapiro, 1988 July 15 – December 14, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.) The talk will be followed by a reception in the Sonia Gechtoff Gallery.
“Sometimes, reality is too complex for oral communication. But legend embodies it in a form which enables it to spread all over the world,” a growly, disembodied, mechanical-like voice says at the beginning of Jean-Luc Godard’s futuristic sci-fi noir thriller, Alphaville: Une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution. Godard’s 1965 black-and-white masterpiece takes place in an unidentified time period in a dark, unadorned, special-effects-free Paris. A tough-as-nails man in hat and trench coat named Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) has arrived in Alphaville from the Outlands, claiming to be journalist Ivan Johnson, on assignment from the Figaro-Pravda newspaper. But his real mission is to first find fellow agent Henry Dickson (Akim Tamiroff), then capture or kill Alphaville leader and death-ray inventor Professor Vonbraun (Howard Vernon), the former Leonard Nosferatu. A Guadalcanal veteran who drives a Ford Galaxie, Caution — a character Constantine played in a series of films based on the novels of Peter Cheyney, including This Man Is Dangerous, Dames Get Along, and Your Turn, Darling — is a no-nonsense guy who takes nothing for granted. “All things weird are normal in this whore of cities,” he tells a blond seductress third class, who apparently comes with his hotel room. Documenting everything he sees with an Instamatic flash camera, Caution (perhaps a stand-in for Godard himself?) is soon visited by Natasha Vonbraun (Anna Karina), the professor’s daughter, setting off on an Orwellian journey through a grim city where poetry and emotion, and such words as “love,” “why,” and “conscience,” are banned in favor of “because” and “Silence. Logic. Security. Prudence,” where the hotel Bible is actually an ever-changing dictionary and enemies of the state are killed in swimming pools and pulled out by clones of Esther Williams, all overseen by a computer known as Alpha 60 (whose text, based on writings by Jorge Luis Borges, is eerily spoken by a man without a larynx, using a mechanized voice box). 
When filmmaker Alex Sichel was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer a few years ago, she turned to her stock in trade: making movies. But Sichel, the writer-director of the indie gem All Over Me and an episode of HBO’s If These Walls Could Talk 2 starring Michelle Williams and Chloë Sevigny, decided to share her situation in an unusual way, combining documentary with fiction in the intimate, moving A Woman Like Me. In the film, which she codirected with Elizabeth Giamatti, Sichel shows herself going through chemotherapy, meeting with holistic healers, and dealing with family issues with her husband, Erich Hahn, who is not exactly thrilled with many of his wife’s choices and constantly being on camera himself; their seven-year-old daughter, Anastasia, with whom they have chosen not to share the details of Sichel’s illness; and Sichel’s parents and sisters, who have their own opinions about how she should be facing her cancer, which doctors say is terminal. As the film opens, Sichel’s voice floats over a black screen, talking about the Buddhist meditation on death. “The point is, we’re all going to die, and it sounds so obvious, but that’s the point that I don’t accept,” she says. “Somehow I’m going to be the exception. It’s crazy.”