Tag Archives: MoMA

MoMA NIGHTS

There will be legs everywhere on Saturday night as MoMA stays open until ten to celebrate the holiday season (photo of Robert Gober’s “Untitled Leg” courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, © 2014 Robert Gober)

There will be legs everywhere on Saturday night as MoMA stays open until ten to celebrate the coming holiday season (photo of Robert Gober’s “Untitled Leg” courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art, © 2014 Robert Gober)

MoMA, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, November 8, $25, 5:30 – 10:00 pm
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

It seems that everyone is getting into the act of celebrating the holiday season earlier and earlier, and the Museum of Modern Art joins the party on November 8 with a special late-night slate of activities. The museum will stay open until 10:00 with pop-up gallery talks, a cash bar, DJ Diggy Lloyd spinning tunes, a screening of Louis de Witt’s Joe Bullet, and more. The current exhibitions include “Robert Gober: The Heart Is Not a Metaphor,” “The Paris of Toulouse-Lautrec: Prints and Posters,” “Analog Network: Mail Art, 1960-1999,” “A Collection of Ideas,” “Cut to Swipe,” “Jean Dubuffet: Soul of the Underground,” “Bill Morrison: Re-Compositions,” and “Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs,” which requires advance timed tickets.

AN AUTEURIST HISTORY OF FILM: BONNIE AND CLYDE

Faye Dunaway and Clyde Barrow glamorize bank robbery in Arthur Penn classic

BONNIE AND CLYDE (Arthur Penn, 1967)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
April 9-11, 1:30
Tickets: $12, 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 beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Arthur Penn changed the course of Hollywood — and world cinema — in 1967 with Bonnie and Clyde, a film previously offered to such Nouvelle Vague luminaries as François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. Cowritten by David Newman (Superman I-III) and Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer), the film mythologizes the true story of depression-era bank robbers Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, played magnificently by Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. At its heart, Bonnie and Clyde is a passionate yet unusual love story, filled with close-ups of the gorgeous Dunaway, who is first seen naked, running to her bedroom window confident and carefree, more a modern 1960s woman than a poor 1930s small-town waitress. Meanwhile, Barrow might know how to shoot a gun, but he’s a dud in bed; “I ain’t much of a lover boy,” he tells Bonnie early on, so their passion plays out in fast-moving car chases and shootouts rather than under the covers (while also playing off of Beatty’s already well-deserved reputation as a ladies’ man). They pick up an accomplice in gas-station attendant C. W. Moss (Michael J. Pollard) and are soon joined by Clyde’s brother, Buck (Gene Hackman), and his wife, Blanche (Estelle Parsons), and continue their rampage as heroic, happy-go-lucky hold-up artists, leading up to one of the most influential and controversial endings ever put on celluloid, an unforgettable finale of violent and poetic beauty. Penn, editor Dede Allen, and cinematographer Burnett Guffey redefined the gangster picture with their creative use of slow motion, long takes, and crowded shots, defying Hollywood conventions in favor of unique and innovative storytelling devices, allowing the film to work on multiple levels. Bonnie and Clyde is screening April 9-11 at 1:30 as part of MoMA’s ongoing series “An Auteurist History of Film,” which continues April 16-18 with John Boorman’s Point Blank and April 23-25 with Luis Buñuel’s Belle de Jour.

AMERICAN REALNESS 2014

Adrienne Truscott moves from her day job at the Kitchen to live performance at Abrons Arts Center in …TOO FREEDOM…

Abrons Arts Center and other venues
466 Grand St. at Pitt St.
January 9-19, $20
212-598-0400
www.americanrealness.com
www.abronsartscenter.org

January in New York City is a veritable feast of live performance festivals, including PS 122’s Coil, the Public’s Under the Radar, Here’s Prototype, and Winter Jazzfest. Over at Abrons Art Center, American Realness will be celebrating its fifth anniversary with seventeen new movement-based shows and encore presentations as well as several off-site events. Tina Satter’s House of Dance (also part of Coil) follows a tense tap-dance competition. Ishmael Houston-Jones and Emily Wexler team up for the world premiere of 13 Love Songs: dot dot dot, which involves deconstructing romantic lyrics by Bryan Adams, Mary J. Blige, Ja Rule, Stephen Merritt, Nina Simone, Madonna, and others. Miguel Gutierrez explores gay sex and lost love in the intimate myendlesslove. Eleanor Bauer combines text, music, and movement in Midday and Eternity (The Time Piece); she’ll also lead the “Dancing, not the Dancer” class and host the anything goes Bauer Hour on January 19. Choreographer Juliana F. May and dancers Benjamin Asriel, Talya Epstein, and Kayvon Pourazar explore the physical and emotional naked body in Commentary=not thing. The Kitchen house manager Adrienne Truscott delves into day jobs and artistic creativity in . . . Too Freedom . . . , which also features Neal Medlyn, Gillian Walsh, Laura Sheedy, and Mickey Mahar. Lucy Sexton (the Factress), Anne Iobst (the Naked Lady), Scott Heron, and DANCENOISE join forces for Prodigal Heroes: An Evening of Legendary New York. Moriah Evans and Sarah Beth Percival play with human-connection tropes in Out of and Into (8/8): Stuff. Medlyn’s King concludes his seven-part foray into iconic stars, this time taking on Michael Jackson. And Melinda Ring’s Forgetful Snow and Roseanne Spradlin’s Indelible Disappearance — A Thought not a Title will be presented together for free on January 12.

Moriah Evans and Sarah Beth Percival team up in OUT OF AND INTO (8/8): STUFF for American Realness festival

Also on the schedule are Adam Linder’s Cult to the Built on What, Michelle Boulé’s Wonder (Boulé will also lead a “Persona & Performance” class on January 17), Rebecca Patek’s ineter(a)nal f/ear, Jillian Peña’s Polly Pocket, and Dana Michel’s Yellow Towel. The festival heads to MoMA PS1 on January 10-12 for Mårten Spångberg’s four-and-a-half-hour La Substance, but in English and to MoMA’s main Midtown location on January 15-16 for Eszter Salamon’s Dance for Nothing, based on John Cage’s Lecture on Nothing. In addition, there will be art exhibits throughout Abrons (Sarah Maxfield’s “Nonlinear Lineage: Over/Heard,” Ian Douglas’s “Instant Realness,” Medlyn and Fawn Krieger’s “The POP-MEDLYN Hall of Fame,” and Ann Liv Young’s interactive “Sherry Art Fair”), and Coil, Under the Radar, Prototype, and American Realness will be copresenting free live concerts every night from January 9 to 19 in the Lounge at the Public Theater, including Invincible, Christeene, Ethan Lipton, Heather Christian & the Arbonauts, Sky-Pony, Timur and the Dime Museum, the Middle Church Jerriesse Johnson Gospel Choir, M.A.K.U. Sound System, DJ Acidophilus, and Nick Hallett, Space Palace, and Woahmone DJs.

THE CONTENDERS 2013: A TOUCH OF SIN

Zhao San (Wang Baoqiang) is one of four protagonists who break out into sudden acts of shocking violence in Jia Zhangke’s A TOUCH OF SIN

A TOUCH OF SIN (TIAN ZHU DING) (Jia Zhangke, 2013)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, December 7, 7:00
Series continues through January 16
Tickets: $12, 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 beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org www.filmlinc.com

During his sixteen-year career, Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke has made both narrative works (The World, Platform, Still Life) and documentaries (Useless, I Wish I Knew), with his fiction films containing elements of nonfiction and vice versa. Such is the case with his latest film, the powerful A Touch of Sin, which explores four based-on-fact outbreaks of shocking violence in four different regions of China. In Shanxi, outspoken miner Dahai (Jiang Wu) won’t stay quiet about the rampant corruption of the village elders. In Chongqing, married migrant worker and father Zhao San (Wang Baoqiang) obtains a handgun and is not afraid to use it. In Hubei, brothel receptionist Ziao Yu (Zhao Tao, Jia’s longtime muse and now wife) can no longer take the abuse and assumptions of the male clientele. And in Dongguan, young Xiao Hui (Luo Lanshan) tries to make a life for himself but is soon overwhelmed by his lack of success. Inspired by King Hu’s 1971 wuxia film A Touch of Zen, Jia also owes a debt to Max Ophüls’s 1950 bittersweet romance La Ronde, in which a character from one segment continues into the next, linking the stories. In A Touch of Sin, there is also a character connection in each successive tale, though not as overt, as Jia makes a wry, understated comment on the changing ways that people connect in modern society. In depicting these four acts of violence, Jia also exposes the widening economic gap between the rich and the poor and the social injustice that is prevalent all over contemporary China — as well as the rest of the world — leading to dissatisfied individuals fighting for their dignity in extreme ways. A gripping, frightening film that earned Jia the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes this year, A Touch of Sin is screening December 7 at 7:00 as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” which consists of exemplary films that MoMA believes will stand the test of time, continuing with such works as Spike Jonze’s Her, Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha, and J. C. Chandor’s All Is Lost.

THE CONTENDERS 2013: BEFORE MIDNIGHT

Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) are back together again in Richard Linklater’s BEFORE MIDNIGHT

BEFORE MIDNIGHT (Richard Linklater, 2013)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Wednesday, November 27, 7:00
Series continues through January 16
Tickets: $12, 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 beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
www.sonyclassics.com/beforemidnight

Unable to resist revisiting the characters who first fell in love in 1995’s Before Sunrise and again in 2004’s Before Sunset, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy reprise their roles as Jesse and Celine, respectively, in Richard Linklater’s absolutely wonderful Before Midnight. The couple first met on a train to Vienna in 1994, talking at length about their hopes and desires and planning on getting together in six months’ time, but they don’t reconnect for another nine years, when Celine comes to one of Jesse’s book signings in Paris. In real time, they walk around the City of Light, catching up on what has happened in their lives as Jesse prepares to take a plane back home to his wife and son. And now another nine years have passed, and Jesse and Celine are living together, the parents of twins (Charlotte and Jennifer Prior). As the film opens, the divorced Jesse is putting his teenage son, Hank (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), on a plane after having spent the summer together in Greece. What follows is a marvelous fourteen-minute scene of Jesse driving down a mountain road as he and Celine essentially let the audience know what has occurred over the last nine years: They have twin girls (sleeping in the back), Celine has been offered an important environmental job, and Jesse is considering moving to Chicago to be closer to Hank. They return to a country estate owned by Patrick (award-winning cinematographer Walter Lassally, making his acting debut at the age of eighty-six), who is hosting an outdoor lunch with a group of friends (including French actress Ariane Labed, coproducer and filmmaker Athina Rachel Tsangari, and Xenia Kalogeropoulou, who came out of retirement to appear in her first picture since 1985). They all talk of life and love, with Celine being particularly charming. But when Jesse and Celine go off to a hotel room for what is supposed to be a romantic rendezvous, some things are said and truths revealed that complicate things.

Cowriters Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke explore life and love in Greece in third film about Celine and Jesse

As with the first two films, Before Midnight consists of long takes of Jesse and Celine discussing their past, present, and future as cowriters Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused), Delpy, and Hawke, who were nominated for an Oscar for their script for Before Sunset, continue to explore these engaging characters; both the dialogue and the acting have matured with an intelligent grace and elegance that are captivating. The couple wanders around Messinia examining their lives as only fortysomethings can, trying to figure out whether what they have is what they want. The central focus, though, once again is time, whether it is the years Jesse and Celine have spent together, the time they have left, time as a concept in Jesse’s semiautobiographical novels, or Jesse making a joke about being a time traveler. It’s been eighteen years since we first met Jesse and Celine, and we’ve grown eighteen years older too, lending fascinating perspectives that can’t help but force us to take a look at our own lives as well. The trilogy is America’s version of François Truffaut’s Antoine Doinel series, filled with humor, lyricism, and an inherent understanding of twenty-first-century realities. Will there be a fourth film in nine years? As of now, the principals aren’t saying because they just don’t know, but Before Midnight ends on just about the perfect ambiguous note. Before Midnight is screening November 27 at 7:00 as part of MoMA’s annual series “The Contenders,” which consists of exemplary films that MoMA believes will stand the test of time, continuing with such films as Jem Cohen’s Museum Hours, Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin, Spike Jonze’s Her, and Noah Baumbach’s Frances Ha.

PUBLIC WALKS: CAROL BOVE’S “CATERPILLAR” ON THE HIGH LINE

(photo by Juan Valentin / courtesy of Friends of the High Line)

Free public walk will take ticket holders to wild part of High Line to see Carol Bove’s “Caterpillar” installation (photo by Juan Valentin / courtesy of Friends of the High Line)

High Line at the Rail Yards
Saturdays & Sundays, November – December, free with advance RSVP, 10:00 am, 11:00, 12 noon, 2:00, 3:00
December RSVPs start November 12 at 4:00 pm
“Caterpillar” remains on view through May 2014
www.art.thehighline.org

Red Hook–based artist Carol Bove has installed a specially commissioned series of large-scale sculptures across a three-hundred-yard section of the High Line that is still in its wild, self-seeded state, scheduled to become the third part of the park’s miraculous renovation project next year. Bove, who was born in Geneva and raised in Berkeley, has presented the site-specific “Caterpillar,” seven pieces that alternate between white powder-coated twisting steel (“Celeste,” “Prudence”), a silicon bronze and stainless-steel platform (“Monel”), a brass and concrete vertical object (“Visible Things and Colors”), and rigid, rusted steel beam constructions (“14,” “Cow Watched by Argus”). A kind of contemporary Zen garden on the West Side of Manhattan, “Caterpillar” can only be seen up close as part of public walks being held on Saturdays and Sundays at 10:00, 11:00, 12 noon, 2:00, and 3:00. Tickets are free but must be obtained in advance; RSVPs for the December walks can be made beginning at 4:00 on November 12. To go on the forty-five-minute walk, you’ll have to sign a safety waiver, and it is recommended that you wear sturdy shoes, because you’ll be going over uneven terrain. No one under eighteen will be allowed on the tour. The High Line has been transformed into a glorious outdoor elevated park with wonderful views, cutting-edge art, live performances, food and drink stations, and more, but this is a rare opportunity to experience what it was like before the change. The walks fill up quickly, so don’t hesitate to reserve your spot. (Through January 2014, you can also catch Bove’s indoor installation “The Equinox” on the fourth floor of MoMA.)

ABBY ALDRICH ROCKEFELLER SCULPTURE GARDEN: THE MODERN MONUMENT

Katharina Fritsch’s “Group of Figures” is back in MoMA’s Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden, which is now open for free every morning from 9:00 to 10:30 (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Museum of Modern Art
The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden
West 54th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Early hours: open daily 9:00 – 10:30 am, free
www.moma.org

Designed in 1953 by architect Philip Johnson, the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden resides on the site that was once the town-house home of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art. A socialite and philanthropist who married John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1901, Aldrich was the mother of Abby, John III, Nelson, Laurance, Winthrop, and David Rockefeller. The garden has been one of the great, peaceful respites of New York City for sixty years, its multiple levels and reflecting pools, which Johnson called “canals,” along with its birches and beeches, offering visitors a beautiful space to commune with both art and nature en plein air. Beginning September 9, the sculpture garden will be open for free starting at 9:00 each morning, ninety minutes before the rest of the museum opens to paying customers. Early risers can buy coffee and other drinks and enjoy the garden’s current arrangement of sculptures, “The Modern Monument,” which consists of old favorites as well as newer delights. Walking around the garden, one will encounter Alberto Giacometti’s “Tall Figure, III,” Jenny Holzer’s “Granite Bench,” Joan Miró’s “Moonbird,” Barnett Newman’s “Broken Obelisk,” and Pablo Picasso’s “She-Goat.” Aristide Maillol’s “The River” still dangles over one of the pools, while Hector Guimard’s “Entrance Gate to Paris Subway (Métropolitain) Station, Paris, France” stands in its longtime space at the far east end and Henri Matisse’s stunning quartet, “The Back,” lines its usual wall, celebrating the human body. Also on view are Mark di Suvero’s “For Roebling,” Tony Smith’s “Die,” Claes Oldenburg’s “Geometric Mouse, Scale A,” Picasso’s “Monument,” and Katharina Fritsch’s colorful “Group of Figures.” The most recent addition to the garden is Stephen Vitiello’s audiovisual installation “A Bell for Every Minute,” which was created for the High Line and now resides outside at MoMA, a collection of different bells from around the city chiming minute after minute. In 2004, when the museum returned to Midtown after a major renovation and expansion (and temporary move to Queens), architect Yoshio Taniguchi restored the garden to its original dimensions, explaining that it is “perhaps the most distinctive single element of the museum today.” And now entrance to this most distinctive element is free every morning from 9:00 to 10:30.