I am exhausted; which is why I am in bed, surrounded by art. It is where I will be this month, watching Twin Peaks, Veep, and House of Cards, unless someone calls me to do something…or would you like to join me in bed?
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Art
Gagosian uptown has a good show of Ed Ruscha text drawings, rendered in pastel and…vegetables: lettuce stain, spinach stain, and carrot juice. Downstairs, in one of the viewing rooms, is a fantastic Lichtenstein, Modern Painting with Yellow Interweave. As usual with the viewing room shows, there is no press release. One assumes these are works are hung to attract random Saturday shoppers (also on view are Chuck Close, Donald Judd, and Dan Flavin). Since photography was not allowed, I had to Google it, and when I did I discovered it was used in a money-laundering scheme in Brazil, back in 2010. For seven years an unknown number of slick-haired owners have passed it around the globe, and now it has found its way back to New York City, and to us. The article says it is worth “more than $1 million,” but of course this hot potato is worth much more: the scale, the composition, the colors, the concept, the provenance—even the title!—are perfection; and indeed, two years ago it sold at Sotheby’s for $3.43 million (up from $590,400 in 2003). Also in the room is another nice Lichtenstein from the Entablatures series.
Roy Lichtenstein, Modern Painting with Yellow Interweave, 1967
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I recently bought a Jeff Grant collage from LMAK, part of his show, Parts together make. It is a book page cutout of Bosch’s The Creation of the World on a photograph of wet pavement. In it a newly created earth is suspended in a firmament of rocks that have been pulverized and stuck together with bitumen for the purpose of travel, trampling, commerce, and assignations. How old are the rocks we walk on? How old is the pitch that binds them? At least as old as the oldest profession. Also in the show are some great little sculptures made from trash and detritus accumulated from street gleanings and storage rooms, several portraits of human heads that might also be galaxies, and some photographs of anuses as seen through Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. The circle, the hole, the void are, in Grant’s world, full of content and possibilities. Through June 18.
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If you are lacking in art for your walls, there are five Felix Gonzalez-Torres posters available in the city right now. Four are at David Zwirner in Chelsea, in a beautiful show up until July 14. And another at MoMA, in Louise Lawler’s retrospective, Why Pictures Now, through July 30. Bring a poster tube.
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I recommend…
- Mary Manning, Trees is as good as anything, at Cleopatra’s, in Greenpoint, through June 26
- Louise Lawler, Why Pictures Now, MoMA, through July 30
- Giorgio De Chirico / Giulio Paolini, Center for Italian Modern Art, in SoHo, through June 24
- Anselm Kiefer, Transition from Cool to Warm, at Gagosian Chelsea through July 14
- Cameron Jamie, Domestic Arenas: Massage the History, BB, Kranky Klaus, at Barbara Gladstone on 21st St., in Chelsea, through June 17. Great music video of hot guys humping suburban furniture to Sonic Youth’s Massage the History.
- Pope.L, Proto-Skin Set, at Mitchell-Innis & Nash, uptown, through June 30
- Monochrome, at Nahmad Contemporary, uptown, with Alberto Burri, Rudolph Stingel, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, and Lucio Fontana. I haven’t seen many Fontanas in person. Here are three very good ones: a gold one with a single slash, a white one with two, and a large horizontal red one with several. Standing in front of them, I noticed, for the first time really, how the slashes open up the physical space around the painting as well as the pictorial space of the painting. Especially in the white painting, the three-dimensional shapes the slashes create seemed to float in the monochrome void. It’s a fantastic trick, and I wondered how much the gallery’s lighting played a role in my experience. With the gold painting, the slash becomes something else, a kind of defacement of a “kitschy,” and beautiful, surface. Through June 10
- Mathias Poledna is showing a very chic music video of a watch ticking, and some other conceptual bits and pieces, at Galerie Buchholz, uptown. Near the door is a card you can pick up that is, essentially, an artwork. From the press release: “With an invitation card sent out alongside the exhibition announcement card, the artist invites viewers to visit a pair of rowel spurs (iron, c. 1650) in the Arms and Armor wing of the [Metropolitan] museum (Gallery 376, 1st Floor).” Through June 17
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Film & Dance
The Mummy, with Tom Cruise? Clubs after?
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Music
Wednesday, June 7
St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble
Ying Fang, soprano
Henry Kramer, pianist
Schubert: Selected songs
Schubert: Introduction and Variations on “Trockne Blumen” for flute and piano
Schubert: Piano Quintet in A Major, “Trout”
7:30 p.m. Morgan Library
Thursday, June 8
Ensemble Connect
Esa-Pekka Salonen, Shulamit Ran, Anna Clyne, et al
8 p.m. Roulette
Saturday, June 10
Vertical Player Repertory
Britten: Phaedra
Judith Barnes, mezzo-soprano
8 p.m. CAVE at LEIMAY
Free admission with reservation
New York Festival Orchestra; Hideaki Hirai, conductor; guest violinists are prodigies Fiona and Hina Khuong-Huu (ages 10 and 12)
Mozart (1756-1791) Eine Kleine Nachtmusik (1787)
J.S. Bach (1685-1750) Concerto for Two Violins in D minor, BWV 1043 (1723)
Hampson Sisler Millennials’ Tribute to Strings (World Premiere)
Sibelius (1865-1957) Andante Festivo (1938)
Grieg (1843-1907) Holberg Suite (1884)
Takeichiro Hirai Rhapsody on Japanese Folktunes
Good Shepherd-Faith Presbyterian Church
152 West 66 Street, 7:30 p.m., $20 (Free with RSVP)
Sunday, June 11
St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble; Ying Fang, soprano; Henry Kramer, piano
Selected songs including “Trockne Blumen” and “Die Forelle”
Introduction and Variations on “Trockne Blumen” for flute and piano (1824)
Piano Quintet in A Major, “Trout” (1819)
2:00 p.m., (Free with RSVP)
Monday, June 12
Met Opera Free Outdoor Recital
Rumsey Playfield, Central Park, 8 p.m.
Tuesday, June 13
Mivos Quartet
George Lewis: String Quartet 2.5, “Playing with Seeds”
Cenk Ergün: Use
Brian Ferneyhough: String Quartet No. 2
6 p.m. Miller Theatre
Free admission
The Festival Chamber Orchestra and Mélanie Genin, harp soloist
Peter von Winter: Sinfonia Concertante for violin, clarinet, horn and bassoon
W.A. Mozart Concerto for Harp and Flute K.298/297 (oboe arrangement) Gerard Reuters, oboe
Gabriel Fauré Impromptu for harp op 86
Maurice Ravel: Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet, string quartet
Washington Square Park, 8:00 p.m.
Wednesday, June 14
St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble
Schubert: “Quartettsatz” in C minor
Schubert: String Quintet in C Major
7:30 p.m. Morgan Library
New York Philharmonic
Dvořák Symphony No. 9, From the New World
Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Gershwin An American in Paris
Alan Gilbert, Conductor
Central Park, Great Lawn, 8:00, Free
Friday, June 16
New York Philharmonic
Dvořák Symphony No. 9, From the New World
Bernstein Symphonic Dances from West Side Story
Gershwin An American in Paris
Alan Gilbert, Conductor
Prospect Park, 8:00, Free
St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble
Schubert: “Quartettsatz” in C minor
Schubert: String Quintet in C Major
7:30 p.m. Morgan Library
Loft Opera
Pergolesi: Stabat Mater
Vivaldi: selections
8 p.m. The Muse, Brooklyn
Saturday, June 17
Loft Opera
Pergolesi: Stabat Mater
Vivaldi: selections
8 p.m. The Muse, Brooklyn
Sunday, June 18
American Modern Ensemble
”THREE WAY—A trio of comic operas”
Robert Paterson: The Companion
Robert Paterson: Safe Word
Robert Paterson: Masquerade
Danielle Pastin, Samuel Levine, Wes Mason, Eliza Bonet, Matthew Trevino
Dean Williamson, conductor
2 p.m. BAM Fisher
Wednesday, June 21
St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble
Adam Gopnik, speaker
Schubert: Octet in F Major
7:30 p.m. Morgan Library
Friday, June 23
Met Opera Free Outdoor Recital
Jackie Robinson Park, Manhattan, 7 p.m.
American Composers Orchestra
George Manahan, conductor
Underwood New Music Readings
James Diaz: From Infinity
Nick DiBerardino Mercury-Redstone 3
Martin Kennedy: Siren, blind
Hilary Purrington: Likely Pictures in the Haphazard Sky
Alexander Timofeev: Fantasme
Yucong (Zoe) Wang: Blackbird
7:30 p.m. DiMenna Center
Free admission
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