this week in lectures, signings, panel discussions, workshops, and Q&As

BRAINWAVE 2014: ON MEDITATION

Giancarlo Esposito might have broken bad as Gus Hermanos on BREAKING BAD, but he’ll discuss meditation with neuroscientist Moran Cerf at the Rubin Museum this weekend

Giancarlo Esposito might have broken bad as Gus Fring on BREAKING BAD, but he’ll discuss meditation with neuroscientist Moran Cerf at the Rubin Museum this weekend

Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
Begins February 8, $20
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org/onmeditation

Need pointers on how to relax in today’s ever-more-crazy world? The Rubin Museum has just the thing, a sidebar to its annual Brainwave programming that focuses on ways to ease the mind, body, and spirit and get on the path to enlightenment. “On Meditation” combines short biographical portraits with talks pairing artists and Zen teachers with scientists. The series begins February 8 with “The Monk,” teaming the Venerable Metteyya with Weill Cornell neurosurgeon Philip E. Steig at 3:00, followed at 6:00 by “The Actor,” with Giancarlo Esposito and neuroscientist Moran Cerf. On February 12, “The TM Teacher” brings together David Lynch Foundation director Bob Roth and NYU experimental psychologist Barry Cohen after a short portrait of Lynch talking about his longtime practice of Transcendental Meditation. On February 19, “The Zen Teacher” focuses on Shinge Roko Sherry Chayat Roshi and Princeton neuroscientist Brent A. Field, spurred by a portrait of Zen Buddhist author Peter Matthiessen. On April 11, Hatha yoga expert Elena Brower and Weill Cornell neuropsychologist Kenneth Perrine will delve into “The Yoga Teacher,” while on May 2 “The Congressman” features Ohio congressman Tim Ryan and cognitive scientist Emma Seppala. Tickets for all events are twenty dollars, and more pairings will be added.

AFTERNOON OF A FAUN: TANAQUIL LE CLERCQ

The tragic career of dancer Tanaquil Le Clercq is examined in documentary about Balanchine and Robbins muse

AFTERNOON OF A FAUN: TANAQUIL LE CLERCQ (Nancy Buirski, 2013)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
February 5-13
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
www.facebook.com/tannyfilm

“Tanny’s body created inspiration for choreographers,” one of the interviewees says in Nancy Buirski’s documentary Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq. “They could do things that they hadn’t seen before.” The American Masters presentation examines the life and career of prima ballerina Tanaquil Le Clercq, affectionately known as Tanny, who took the dance world by storm in the 1940s and ’50s before tragically being struck down by polio in 1956 at the age of twenty-seven. Le Clercq served as muse to both Jerome Robbins, who made Afternoon of a Faun for her, and George Balanchine, who created such seminal works as Western Symphony, La Valse, and Symphony in C for Le Clercq — and married Tanny in 1952. In the documentary, Buirski (The Loving Story) speaks with Arthur Mitchell and Jacques D’Amboise, who both danced with Le Clercq, her childhood friend Pat McBride Lousada, and Barbara Horgan, Balanchine’s longtime assistant, while also including an old interview with Robbins, who deeply loved Le Clercq as well. The film features spectacular, rarely seen archival footage of Le Clercq performing many of the New York City Ballet’s classic works, both onstage and even on The Red Skelton Show. The name Tanaquil relates to the word “omen” — in history, Tanaquil, the wife of the fifth king of Rome, was somewhat of a prophetess who believed in omens — and the film details several shocking omens surrounding her contracting polio. The film would benefit from sharing more information about Le Clercq’s life post-1957 — she died on New Year’s Eve in 2000 at the age of seventy-one — but Afternoon of a Faun is still a lovely, compassionate, and heartbreaking look at a one-of-a-kind performer. A selection of the 2013 New York Film Festival, Afternoon of a Faun returns to the Film Society of Lincoln Center for its official theatrical release February 5-13, with Q&As following the 6:45 screenings on February 5 with D’Amboise and former Alliance of the Arts president Randall Bourscheidt, moderated by producer Ric Burns, on February 7 with Mitchell and Bourscheidt, and on February 8 with Mitchell.

NYC FABMANIA WEEK

On February 7, 1964, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr landed at JFK to a wild welcome as they came to America for the first time to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show. New York City is paying tribute to that seminal moment in the history of the Fab Four with Fabmania Week, featuring a host of special events celebrating this golden anniversary. The centerpiece of it all is the fortieth anniversary of the Fest for Beatles Fans, taking place February 7-9 at the Grand Hyatt in Midtown ($32.50-$225). Among the many guests are Cousin Brucie (broadcasting live), Donovan, Billy J. Kramer, Peter Asher, Chad & Jeremy, Freda Kelly, Bob Guren, and Allan Tannenbaum; the Fest also features a re-creation of the Cavern Club, screenings of Ryan White’s Good Ol’ Freda, a marketplace of memorabilia, look-alike and costume contests, and yoga sessions in an ashram, in addition to book signings, art exhibitions, and other tributes. On February 6, Donovan, Asher, Kramer, Kelly, Vince Calandra, and moderator Martin Lewis will take part in the friends-of-the-Beatles panel discussion “It Was 50 Years Ago Today . . . Celebrating 50 Years of the Beatles in the USA” at the 92nd St. Y ($15-$29, 8:15). The Morrison Hotel Gallery exhibit “50th Anniversary of the Beatles’ First US Tour,” curated by Julian Lennon, opens on February 7 and runs through February 28, consisting of twenty-five images, some never before shown in public, of John, Paul, George, and Ringo taken by such photographers as Ken Regan, Charles Trainor, Curt Gunther, Robert Whitaker, Rowland Scherman, and Terry O’Neill.

Curt Gunther’s photograph of the Beatles playing with slot cars is included in Morrison Hotel Gallery exhibit curated by Julian Lennon (photo © Curt Gunther, 1964)

The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will be home to the multimedia exhibition “Ladies and Gentlemen . . . the Beatles!” from February 6 through May 10, examining the effects Beatlemania had on American pop culture during the mid-1960s, comprising interviews, instruments, posters, music, and an oral history booth where fans can share their own memories; there will also be a free symposium on February 9 in the library’s Bruno Walter Auditorium with presentations by Bruce Spizer (“The Beatles Are Coming! The Birth of Beatlemania in America”), Dennis Elsas (“It Was 50 Years Ago Today — The Beatles Invade America”), Chuck Gunderson (“Some Fun Tonight! The Backstage Story of the 1964 Summer North American Tour”), Allan Kozinn (“Studio Days / Touring Years”), and Russ Lease (“The Drop-T Logo and the Most Significant Drumkit in Popular Music History”), emceed by curator Robert Santelli. On February 8, the Town Hall will hold the “America Celebrates the Beatles’ 50th Anniversary All-Star Concert” ($63-$272, 7:30), with a wide-ranging lineup playing songs by and inspired by the Liverpudlian quartet, including Melissa Manchester, Tommy James, Al Jardine, Danny Aiello, Marshal Crenshaw, Larry Kirwin, Aztec Two-Step, Melanie, along with appearances by such Beatles fans as Dick Cavett, Len Berman, the Amazing Kreskin, and Charles Grodin. And on February 8 & 9 at 1:00, the Paley Center will present “The Beatles Invasion 50-Year Celebration: See the Fab Four on the Big Screen, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah,” with showings of the complete Ed Sullivan Show broadcast from February 9, 1964, and the Maysles brothers’ original What’s Happening! The Beatles in the U.S.A. documentary.

REMASTERED AND RESTORED — TREASURES OF FRENCH CINEMA: BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING

Jean Renoir’s BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING is a very different kind of shaggy dog tale

CINÉSALON: BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING (BOUDU SAUVÉ DÉS EAUX) (Jean Renoir, 1932)
French Institute Alliance Française, Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St. between Madison & Park Aves.
Tuesday, February 4, $13, 4:00 & 7:30
212-355-6100
www.fiaf.org

After his dog runs away, a homeless tramp jumps into the Seine, only to be rescued by a bookseller who brings him home to stay with his family in Jean Renoir’s 1932 masterpiece, Boudu Saved from Drowning. Adapted by Renoir from René Fauchois’s play — the brief opening scene takes place onstage, announcing that what is to follow is essentially a fable — the depression-era social satire centers on the relationship between the wacky, unpredictable bum, Priapus Boudu (Michel Simon, who also played the lead in the play), and Edouard Lestingois (Charles Granval), a bourgeois bookstore owner cheating on his wife, Emma (Marcelle Hainia), with one of their maids, Anne-Marie (Sévérine Lerczinska). Lestingois first spots Boudu while looking through his telescope at the masses on the Pont des Arts, like a filmmaker shooting a documentary; “I’ve never seen such a perfect tramp!” he declares. (Indeed, Renoir regularly comments on the art of filmmaking in Boudu, especially with his use of music, nearly all of which is eventually revealed to be coming from natural sources.) Lestingois helps save the suicidal Boudu, nursing him quickly back to health and letting him stay at the house, much to the chagrin of his wife. Rather than being thankful, Boudu is a whirling dervish of ill manners, breaking dishes, using fancy lingerie to shine his shoes, and daring to eat sardines with his hands. Despite Boudu’s rudeness, Edouard, Emma, and Ann-Marie are all drawn to him in different ways, particularly Edouard, who dresses Boudu in his clothes as if he were a kind of doppelgänger, an alternate version with a completely different set of expectations and responsibilities. But there’s no controlling the bushy-haired Boudu, who reacts to all stimuli like a child who does whatever he wants, not caring about the consequences. One of the keys to the film is that very barrier, the question as to whether Boudu is a conniving tramp who knows exactly what he’s doing or just a pitiable poor soul with no self-control. Boudu — and, therefore, Simon, who gives a towering, spectacular performance, one of the greatest of early cinema — is part Charlie Chaplin, part Buster Keaton, part Little Rascal, and the influence of the character extends to Denis Lavant’s underground creature in Léos Carax’s Merde short in the Tokyo! omnibus and Eddie Murphy’s Billy Ray Valentine in John Landis’s Trading Places. (The film has also been remade twice; Paul Mazursky’s Down and Out in Beverly Hills stars Nick Nolte as the tramp, while Gérard Depardieu plays the role in Gérard Jugnot’s 2005 Boudu.)

Michel Simon gives one of the great performances of early cinema in Jean Renoir’s masterful social satire

Renoir, who had previously worked with Simon on La Chienne and On purge bébé, frames each shot with careful precision, from squeezing in a large group trying to help the unconscious Boudu to a more open scene in which a fancifully dressed couple is picnicking in the park, reminiscent of an Impressionist painting, calling to mind, of course, Renoir’s father, Pierre-Auguste. Indeed, the younger Renoir sets apart his interiors from his exteriors in the film quite distinctly; indoors, Boudu feels closed in, unable to sleep in a bed, while outdoors he seems much more at home. At one point he rests off the ground in the doorway to the bookstore, neither inside nor out, caught in between the two worlds. But he ultimately makes his choice, and it’s really the only one available to him. A new digital restoration of Boudu Saved from Drowning is screening February 4 at 4:00 & 7:30 as part of the FIAF CinéSalon series “Remastered & Restored: Treasures of French Cinema”; the later screening will be introduced by screenwriter and director Henry Bean (Internal Affairs, The Believer), and both shows will be followed by a wine reception. The three-month festival continues with such other recently restored French classics as Max Ophüls’s Lola Montès (introduced by Lola Montes Schnabel), Jacques Demy’s Une chambre en ville (introduced by Adam Gopnik), and Claude Chabrol’s The Color of Lies (introduced by Jacques Gamblin).

THALIA DOCS: THE GREAT FLOOD

THE GREAT FLOOD (Bill Morrison, 2011)
Symphony Space, Leonard Nimoy Thalia
2537 Broadway at 95th St.
Sunday, February 2 (3:00), 9 (8:00), 16 (8:00), $14
212-864-5400
www.symphonyspace.org
www.icarusfilms.com

Sound and image meld together beautifully in Bill Morrison’s meditative, elegiac The Great Flood. Inspired by John M. Barry’s 1997 book Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America, Morrison teamed up with improvisational musician Bill Frisell on the project. The two had previously worked together on a pair of short works, The Mesmerist and The Film of Her, after meeting at the Village Vanguard when Morrison was a dishwasher at the jazz club where Frisell was playing. Morrison, who specializes in using deteriorated and degraded archival footage and experimental scores, scoured the National Archives, the Library of Congress, the Hoover Presidential Library, and other sources to come up with remarkable scenes of the flooding of the Mississippi in 1927. Divided into such chapters as “Sharecroppers,” “Swollen Tributaries,” “Evacuation,” “Aftermath,” and “Watershed,” with snippets of informational text but without narration, the film follows the southern blacks who were most affected by the massive flood, being forced to shore up the levees around white areas, losing their own homes, and ultimately heading north as part of the Great Migration, bringing the Delta blues with them. Guitarist Frisell, joined by Ron Miles on cornet, Tony Scherr on guitar and bass, and Kenny Wollesen on drums and vibes, has composed a gorgeous, moving score, heavily influenced by a trip his band and Morrison took in early 2011 up the Mississippi, with the group playing in multiple cities while the river threatened to flood again. Each chapter, from an overhead view of a computerized map that details the 1927 flood to a fast and furious foray through the Sears Roebuck catalog, from a Baptist church procession to a series of rare clips of such bluesmen as Big Bill Broonzy, Son House, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Robert Lockwood, features a different piece of music, highlighted by Frisell’s always inventive guitar and Miles’s deeply expressive horn. Of course, as the images pass by, it’s impossible not to think of Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and be awed by the devastating power of nature, as well as realize how little has changed with regard to the reaction of politicians and who the victims tend to be. But the film is rarely mournful; instead, there’s often a celebratory quality about it, centered on people’s natural instinct to survive. Following its recent theatrical release at the IFC Center, The Great Flood is next scheduled to run February 2, 9, and 16 as part of the Symphony Space series Thalia Docs, with Morrison, who has also created such other unique cinematic experiences as Spark of Being, Decasia, and The Miners’ Hymns, on hand for a Q&A after the February 9 show.

FIRST SATURDAY: LOOKING BACK TO LOOK FORWARD

Shukree Hassan Tilghman’s MORE THAN A MONTH is part of free Black History Month celebration at Brooklyn Museum on February 1

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 1, free, 5:00 – 11:00 (some events require free tickets distributed in advance at the Visitor Center)
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The February edition of the Brooklyn Museum’s free First Saturdays honors Black History Month with programs related to African American art and culture. The evening will include pop-up gallery talks focused on works by African American artists currently on view at the museum, a camera phone workshop by Instagram activist Ruddy Roye, a Hands-On Art workshop in which participants learn how to hand-color historical photographs, a screening of Shukree Hassan Tilghman’s 2012 documentary More Than a Month about Black History Month, live music by Tysmé, Honey Larochelle, and Chris Faust, a dance performance by Niles Ford Urban Dance Collective, a movement workshop led by the Hip-Hop Dance Conservatory, a fashion show hosted by Global Village, and a talk by transgender activist Janet Mock about her new book, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love and So Much More, moderated by Michaela Angela Davis. In addition, the galleries will be open late, giving visitors plenty of opportunity to check out “Wangechi Mutu: A Fantastic Journey,” “War / Photography: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath,” “Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry’s Letters to ‘The Ladder,’” “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt,” “Life, Death, and Transformation in the Americas,” “Connecting Cultures: A World in Brooklyn,” “The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier: From the Sidewalk to the Catwalk,” and other exhibits.

MIKE KELLEY — SUNDAY SESSIONS: KIM GORDON AND JUTTA KOETHER

Mike Kelley, “Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites,” plush toys sewn over wood and wire frames with styrofoam packing material, nylon rope, pulleys, steel hardware and hanging plates, fiberglass, car paint, and disinfectant, 1991/1999 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

MoMA PS1
22-25 Jackson Ave. at 46th Ave.
Sunday, February 2, $18 in advance, $20 day of show, 4:00
Exhibition continues through February 2, suggested admission $10 (free with paid MoMA ticket
within fourteen days), 12 noon – 6:00 (9:00 on Saturday)
718-784-2084
www.momaps1.org

A few weeks ago, an art-world friend who was at MoMA PS1 posted on Facebook, “OK, sell me on Mike Kelley.” Most of the respondents agreed with her that they just didn’t get all the hullabaloo over the influential multimedia artist who committed suicide on February 1, 2012, while in the midst of participating in his career retrospective, which posthumously took over all of the Long Island City institution on October 13, 2013. The show, the largest at MoMA PS1 since 1976, features more than 250 works by the Detroit-born Kelley, who was an original member of the punk band Destroy All Monsters while at the University of Michigan before moving to Los Angeles and studying at CalArts under such teachers as John Baldessari, Laurie Anderson, Jonathan Borofsky, and Douglas Huebler. On February 2, the last day of the show, Sonic Youth cofounder and visual artist Kim Gordon and German artist, musician, and critic Jutta Koether are creating a special farewell event in the VW Dome that may or may not help sell yet more people on Kelley. The two women have previously collaborated on such projects as “Her Noise”; Kelley created the cover image for Sonic Youth’s Dirty album, while the band contributed music to his “Plato’s Cave, Rothko’s Chapel, Lincoln’s Profile” performance piece. “Mike dug a huge hole, but his sculptures, videos, recordings, writings, and drawings fill it in, heaped so high that they stand like a formidable mountain of gifts, rewards, like a monument to getting out from under,” Gordon, a close friend of Kelley’s, wrote in Artforum a few months after his death.

Kim Gordon and Jutta Koether will bid farewell to Mike Kelley exhibit with special performance at MoMA PS1

The sprawling exhibition contains sculptures, videos, recordings, writings, drawings, and more, offering many different types of rewards. It all begins in the courtyard VW Dome, where Kelley’s nearly-three-hour epic, Day Is Done, screens continuously, a subversive spectacle that sets the tone for the rest of the show, highlighting Kelley’s obsessions with childhood imagery and pop culture, his unique spirituality, his repurposing of found objects, and the low-budget, DIY nature of his work, which can often have an amateurish feel that turns off viewers. Inside the former school, there is art everywhere, from the hallways to the boiler room, displaying Kelley’s vast range. His Kandor series consists of numerous multicolored, glowing versions of the Krypton city from the Superman comics, each one existing in a glass bottle hooked up to a kind-of life-support system, with accompanying video. “Pay for Your Pleasure” is a narrow corridor with banners on either side containing portraits of writers and philosophers, along with a quote from each one about art, crime, law, and civilization; at the end is an artwork by a local murderer.

Mike Kelley, “John Glenn Memorial Detroit River Reclamation Project (Including the Local Culture Pictorial Guide, 1968-1972, Wayne/Westland Eagle),” mixed media, 2001 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

One large gallery space is dedicated to several of Kelley’s “Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction” installations, in which he starts with a photograph from a high school yearbook and turns it into a short film, screened on a set with architectural elements echoing what is happening in the imagined story. (“Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #1 [A Domestic Scene]” is also being shown at MoMA in Midtown.) “John Glenn Memorial Detroit River Reclamation Project” is centered by a tall mosaic statue of astronaut John Glenn made out of broken glass, pottery, plates, ceramic figures, and other detritus, delving into another regular subject of Kelley’s, repressed memory syndrome. In “Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites,” colorful stuffed animals have been formed into orbs that hang from the ceiling like a planetary system as futuristic wall pieces shoot out disinfectant. Two small crawlspaces allow non-claustrophobics to wind their way to a peephole where they can see the famous locker-room peeping scene from Porky’s. And “Horizontal Tracking Shot of a Cross Section of Trauma Rooms” consists of videos of traumatic scenes taken from the internet, then shown on monitors attached to the back of a wall of fence posts of different colors and sizes. Not everything will work for everyone, but there’s bound to be at least a handful that any person would at least find fascinating and intriguing, thought-provoking and challenging. In response to our friend’s Facebook request, we proffered, “The Michigan-born multimedia artist created fantastical worlds using found objects that reexamined mass culture through DIY installations that can be playful and nonsensical as well as cutting and poignant.” At the end of the thread, she readily admitted that having seen the show, she has a greater appreciation for his work. And sometimes, that’s all one can ask for.