Gossip Central

The Art of the Steal

You will scream, “Highway robbery!” as it hits you that the villains in the provocative documentary, The Art of the Steal, to open this week--about the untoward fate of a very special painting and sculpture collection--are some of the most respected arts institutions in America. 

Albert C. Barnes' rise from the poorest slums of Philadelphia to developing an antiseptic drug and buying up with his fortune what is considered the best collection of post-impressionist-early modernist art is on the one hand the American Dream enacted, and on the other, in terms of how his will has been thwarted, a cynical view of how a man's legacy can be manipulated by the greedy and powerful. 

The film ably limns this history, most interestingly as it shows how Barnes' collection grew, defining what was “Barnes worthy”-any old Van Gogh would not do. This man had an extraordinary eye, amassing what is now deemed the work of great masters; moreover, in 1922, he displayed the collection in unusual arrangements in the rooms of a house in suburban Merion, Pa, not far enough away from Philadelphia arts society. Matisse is said to have thought the Barnes Foundation the best place to see art.  

Barnes was as deliberate about his wishes for the collection after his death and planned his estate stipulating that the foundation remain open for educational purposes only, that the collection not tour, and most important, remain intact as is.

Trouble arises soon after Barnes died in a car accident; various factions vie for control of the prestigious and rich collection. The film thrillingly shows how key personnel disregard Barnes' intentions. Through a court system as addled as Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, Barnes' advocates attempt to keep the collection where it is, as institutions like the Pew Charitable Trust seek to administer this art cache now worth an estimated $25 billion. 

You wish to hear how respected museums justify their appropriation, but few agreed to be interviewed.  You wish for justice, that somehow this documentary might have the Errol Morris effect, changing its future: that somehow the dismantling and moving of this valuable collection will not occur, even as construction of a new building on Philadelphia's Benjamin Franklin Parkway is now underway.

The film's premiere last week, appropriately at MoMA and with an afterparty at the midtown Haunch of Venison gallery, with its views overlooking Manhattan was attended by arts and film mavens: Lola Schnabel, Stella Schnabel, Michael Stuhlbarg , Barbara Kopple, Albert Maysles and John McEnroe. Some frustration set in as the filmmakers, director Don Argott, producer Sheena Joyce, and executive producer Lenny Feinberg fielded criticism for not having interviewed the right people. 

Arts journalist David D'Arcy who appears in the film predicts the worst is yet to come for the Barnes collection: some paintings will have to be sold, enacting Albert C. Barnes' worst nightmare.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Who Shot Rock & Roll at the Brooklyn Museum

The iconic and infamous cover the walls at the Brooklyn Museum's fine exhibition (on view till January 31, 2010), “Who Shot Rock & Roll.” Yes you will see many old favorites, like John Lennon wearing a New York City sleeveless tee in Bob Gruen's contact sheet from the familiar 1974 shoot. You will see him again in Richard Avedon's 1967 formal portraits of the Beatles, their mop hair newly coiffed. And again in Allan Tannenbaum's shot of John and Yoko in bed, NYC, 1980 just two weeks before he died. The text explains that Lennon liked Tannenbaum's work: “You really capture Yoko's beauty.” And that sums up the essence of this show's raison d'etre as curated by Gail Buckland who also edited the excellent catalogue, to focus on the photographers, how the subject inspired them and the photographic arts . What fascinates is remembering the B-52's as in George DuBose's 1978 photograph, or Ike and Tina in Memphis in 1962, as in Ernest C. Withers' photo that shows Ike's eagle eye trained on her wailing at the mike, or Amy Arbus' 1983 black & white Madonna in a boxy coat before Kabbalah and before she was buff juxtaposed with the dizzying 2001 “Madonna I” by Andreas Gursky emphasizing the pop star in the marketplace, that is, 15 combined exposures taken over a period of days from the same vantage point at the same moment in a concert with a tiny well-lit  singer to the bottom left, when lights flash, confetti falls, and people hang upside down from scaffolding mechanically lowered from the stage. Epic-scale, monumental, the celestial shot overwhelms.  Buddy Holly on the bus in a 1958 Lew Allen photo, Dennis Hopper's James Brown in 1964, a wistful Elvis at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis by Lloyd Shearer in 1956, David Gahr's 1968 Janis Joplin, Jill Furmanovsky's Joy Division in 1979 and her 1977 Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, Ray Stevenson's Sex Pistols on Carnaby Street in 1976, William “Popsie” Randolph's shot of the Brooklyn Paramount where Alan Freed staged his rock and roll shows in 1955, Godlis' 1976 Patti Smith outside CBGB and Stephanie Chernikowski's 1978 “Debbie Harry CBGB NYC” take you down Memory Lane.  On opening night last Thursday, the museum featured photographer Josh Cheuse DJing, while many of the photographers-Godlis, Marcia Resnick, Bob Gruen, Allan Tannenbaum among them-- milled about with a film crew in tow. Bob Gruen had a birthday party a few nights  before where Bebe Buell performed songs from her new CD “Sugar” with Ronnie Spektor in attendance. On this night, with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame celebrating across the river, the Brooklyn Museum rocked with Blondie:  Debbie Harry in black wig and black satin suit with red glitter, performing her hits: “Call Me,” “Heart of Glass,” and “One Way or Another;” her cover of Michael Jackson's “Don't Stop” was evocative, like the rest of this show, of a rich, remarkable, and resonant music history.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Robert Frank Has Eyes

In his introduction to the iconic book of photographs, The Americans, Jack Kerouac wrote, You Got Eyes, honoring photographer Robert Frank as if he were a jazzman, You Can Play.  Now these words are writ large at the Metropolitan Museum's fine show, Looking In, exhibiting the 83 photos that were published in the original book from the mid-1950's, some contact sheets that reveal much about how this artist made his choices and cropped his work, as well as earlier photo sequences and related essays and correspondence. The result is a thrilling glimpse into the development of Frank's unique sensibility, and a prophetic time capsule. There aren't many works that changed the way people see: this book is one of them.
     The Americans, like Kerouac's On the Road, reflects a cross-country car trip. Its vision is a sad America of individuals caught in a wide expanse of highways, connecting, but not, disenfranchised from the American Dream. Robert Frank, having recently arrived from Switzerland, made the trip on a Guggenheim scholarship in 1955-6, and its look at America is one that you could argue can only be seen by an outsider: An empty chair in a barbershop seen through a screen door in McClellanville, South Carolina. U.S. 285 in New Mexico, the line dividing the road leading to a hazy horizon. Drugstore in Detroit, the black counter woman serving whites with large posters advertising “Orange Whip 10 cents” looming overhead. A movie premiere in Hollywood shows a glamorous blond with a far off gaze, background animated onlookers in focus. Robert Frank's family huddled in the back seat of a car, its headlight beaming.
     The catalogue accompanying the exhibition features excellent essays providing the backstory to Frank's road trip as well as the history of the book's critical reception. Luc Sante relates the vision in The Americans to another Frank/Kerouac collaboration, the film Pull My Daisy. “The intersection of the two men may have lasted less than two years, finally, but it was momentous, with echoes that have persisted ever since. The road they separately traveled and chronicled has done nothing but expand in the popular imagination, becoming the site for a paradigmatic rite of passage.”
     Interestingly enough, the opening of the Met's exhibition coincides with the release of Michael Moore's new satiric opus, “Capitalism: A Love Story,” and the timing could not be more apt, as each reveals an underbelly of America, beatific citizens somehow left behind. With respect to Obama-bashers and their ilk, these are “real Americans,” for anyone with eyes.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

 

PEN World Voices/ Daphne's Depression

What an international mecca New York was last week, with Japanese filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda arriving for the premiere of “Still Walking,” for example, or the Irish playwright Conor McPherson in town-(his play “the Seafarer was all the rage on Broadway last season)-- showing “The Eclipse,” both films part of the Tribeca Film Festival. Dovetailing with the film fest, novelists and poets were celebrated at the fifth annual PEN World Voices Festival. The party started on Monday night when the Cultural Services of the French Embassy hosted cocktails and a photo exhibition by Parisian Gerard Rondeau. An extraordinary portrait of Paul Bowles in his last years of life, hit you first as you entered the elegant Fifth Avenue townhouse. Pictures of Susan Sontag, Louise Bourgeoise, Carla Bruni. Joan Mitchell, Gore Vidal were among those gracing the walls. Salman Rushdie was on hand greeting the likes of Mary McFadden (before she sped off across the park to honor Tom Hanks at Lincoln Center). Daniel Menaker spoke about the Israeli writer Meir Shalev he would interview later in the week. We had not heard of him, but that was the point: to meet the writers and discover something new. And that's the way it went: under the title “Evolution/ Revolution,” a group program featured Edwidge Danticat reading from the Haitian poet Felix Moresseur-Leroy, to Quebecoise poet Nicole Brossard, to French Muriel Barbery, to Palestinian Raja Shehadeh imagining smoking a joint with an Israeli border guard; an appreciation of Kafka's “Amerika” with Colm Toibin (he has a new book called “Brooklyn”), Louis Begley, and Lynne Tillman. 

As to great writers: everyone is talking about New Yorker Daphne Merkin's article on her own depression in Sunday's “New York Times Magazine.” In my darkest moments, thoughts of suicide can easily be dispelled by a slice of cheesecake or some healthy retail therapy. Not so Merkin; even the love of her daughter could not rid her of suicidal episodes.  Easy enough to distance oneself from Plath's bell jar. Merkin, a child of wealth and privilege, seemed to have it all. But following “Enchantment,” a novel revelatory on her relationship with her mother, and her many articles riffing on the taboo-on the secret pleasures of being spanked, for example, or the sexual implications of the purse in a piece about the accessory of choice. These mark the writer in risky territory-not a mere journalist of our time, as I had thought-but an artist.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

The Model as Muse at the Metropolitan Museum

Uber-designer Marc Jacobs, in his signature kilt and Doc Martens, took the podium at the Costume Institute’s opening press conference on Monday morning, winging it, as he said he had not prepared a speech to say how thrilled he was to be honorary chairman of the exhibition celebrating the Model as Muse: Embodying Fashion. According to Harold Koda who co-curated the MET’s show and co-wrote the smart companion catalogue along with Kohle Yohannan who also worked on the excellent Valentina show at The Museum of the City of New York, Marc had one criteria: make the exhibition lively. And they did. The first image: Dovima and the elephants, the Dior gown she wore on a mannequin for Avedon’s iconic photo. Moving historically from room to room, with a soundtrack introducing each era: “C’est Ci Bon,” “Talking ‘Bout My Generation,” the show starts with the 1940’s featuring the photography of Irving Penn, Cecil Beaton, Charles James, and their muses including Lisa Fonssagrives, Suzy Parker, Sunny Harnett. And then moving on to “Youthquake,” with Jean Shrimpton, Twiggy, Marisa Berenson, Veruschka and Peggy Moffit. Even the Sports Illustrated covers get a nod, with Christie Brinkley, Cheryl Tiegs--and then Jerry Hall, Patti Hanson, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington, Linda Evangilista in a photo by Steven Meisel. Kohle Yohannan said he loves what is happening now as a result of the awareness of these models’ role: women of all shapes, sizes, colors are celebrated on the current reality shows. Harold Koda recounted that on Friday night, when the creators saw the exhibit for the first time, Anna Wintour said of the “grunge” room, it’s not grungy. And so the creative team including John Myrhe and Julien d’Y’s spent the weekend painting the walls’ graffiti-like images. Seated in the front row, she was definitely this show’s muse: Anna Wintour

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Homage to Michael Bennett

Once upon a time in early '70's New York, a balding redhead turned from making omelets for Sunday brunch to explain to friends that he was writing the words to a song for a diva-ish character who now needing a job was willing to take a place in the chorus line. That man was Edward Kleban, the lyricist of the legendary “A Chorus Line,” a show that went from The Public Theater under Joe Papp's tutelage to hold the record as the longest running musical on Broadway. Along the way it won a Pulitzer, Tonys. Now, after its NY premiere in Lincoln Center's New Directors/New Film series last month, a documentary opening this Friday, “Every Little Step,” will take you behind the scenes of creating the show's 2006 revival on Broadway, and while this gem offers a rare behind the scenes glimpse of the actual audition process, with lots of song and dance including the show's iconic “What I Did for Love,” “One,” etc, Kleban is mentioned only in a murmur by Marvin Hamlisch, the show's composer. Rather, the film focuses on the work of Michael Bennett (1943-1987) who famously recorded an all night rap session where “gypsies” told their stories. Somewhere in there is a play, he said, and, as they say, the rest is history. Directors James D. Stern and Adam Del Deo went back to this marathon audio track, and convincing Actors Equity to allow them unprecedented access to film the auditions, they created a documentary that gives you what no feature could, the film version of the play.  On Monday night, Andy McDowell, Nora Ephron, Erica Jong, joined Donna McKechnie (the original Cassie), Baayork Lee (the original Connie who also choreographed the revival), Marvin Hamlisch, SONY Picture Classic's Tom Bernard and Michael Barker, the revival's castmembers and filmmakers for a celebratory screening at the Paris Theater. When asked why no Kleban, Adam Del Deo said they wanted to keep the pacing. As soon as they began to put in the history, Kleban's story, for example-he died in 1987-or Michael Bennett's marriage to Donna McKechnie (Bennett was clearly gay), the movie began to sag. Leaving the Paris, McKechnie noted, “Ed Kleban was always the unsung hero of “A Chorus Line.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Gary Snyder's Spontaneous Mind

In beat circles, “third mind” echoes a collaboration between the writers William Burroughs and Brion Gysin, a book entitled “Ouevres croissees” celebrating the union of two, creating a third that is an entity unto itself. To go along with the Guggenheim Museum's inspired exhibition “The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia 1860 -1989,” a visual exploration of the influence of Eastern thought on Western art, the poet Gary Snyder was invited to give a reading on Friday night. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Snyder is famous for having introduced haiku to the beat poets in the early 1950's, especially to Jack Kerouac who recounted his experience in his novel “The Dharma Bums” and wrote his own “Book of Haikus.” After presenting Japanese and Chinese translations and some poems of his own, Gary Snyder signed books. One fan asked him to sign a beautiful old volume of his translations of 24 of the 300 poems the Chinese poet Han Shan is supposed to have written. Han Shan means Cold Mountain. Just then, as Snyder was defining spontaneity as he was signing the book, a man in watch cap broke the line. It was Brice Marden whose drawings from his “Cold Mountain” series is featured in the show spiraling up the Guggenheim's famous ramp. The two men chatted for a while and photos were snapped, and then Snyder turned back to signing and completed his thought: “For real spontaneity, the mind has to be ready, prepared. I always have to explain that to people.”

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Instant Edifice for Chanel

 

It's sleek in white fiberglass, erected in modules and looks like
it's built to last, but Zaha Hadid's moving—in the sense of
transportable-- exhibition space, conceived at the Mercer Hotel with
Karl Lagerfeld as a tribute to Chanel's 2.55 quilted bag will move to
London and Paris after its sold out stint in Central Park. As you
enter, you are given a headset with the French icon Jeanne Moreau
instructing your every move, from space to space, projection to
projection, with sexy-voiced platitudes about art, form, vision,lifestyle.
A corridor where you sit beside a stream with reflections
of Parisian buildings accented with Chanel awnings has Ms. Moreau
telling you she loves seeing things reflected, in pools, in mirrors,
encouraging your reflected narcissism. Projected images of flowers
with pronounced pistils, a naked Asian woman in all manner of legs
akimbo, tied loosely with the leather looped chain of a Chanel 2.55
bag suggests the relation of "purse" with genitalia so well
deconstructed by Daphne Merkin in a New York Times Style magazine
piece several years ago announcing the power purse's ascension to
must-have accessory over power pumps. A set of six packing boxes
contains images: nudes competing for, rafting upon the purse, with Ms.
Moreau suggesting we embrace absurdity.  A large coffin-sized purse
houses a video, horseshoes configured to the Chanel logo—you cannot
miss the product placement, the nexus of art and consumer culture. And
finally, you are invited to empty your purse, write your wish on paper
and tie it to a tree. This being difficult economic times, emptying
one's purse has new meaning: while the coveted Chanel 2.55 is indeed
as classic as Moreau herself, surely a sound investment, it seems an
all the more ironic last luxury. This also being the day before
elections, I wished for Barack Obama's swift and unquestionable
victory, and then in the manner of "Miss Congeniality,"
I wished for World Peace

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Brigid Berlin's Needle Point

 Sometimes known as Brigid Polk because of her “needle” work, Warhol acolyte Brigid Berlin greeted guests at Glenn Horowitz's 64th street gallery for a show of her needlepoint. (See “Chelsea Girls” where she pierces herself and others.) Looking radiant in Sarah Palin red and black, and recently out of rehab, Berlin sat in a flower festooned chair priced at $175,000, posing for photographers as her managers and documentary filmmaker friends Vincent and Shelly Fremont led visitors around her pillows displayed in plexiglass cases. Created mainly from headlines in the New York Post: Tim Russert's death as well as William F. Buckley's, the most sordid were somehow made more outrageous fashioned into these decorative needlepoint pillows. “Read My Lips: Obama Slams Pig Swill” is in the works. Berlin traces the entire front page, pictures and all. She says that sometimes she sews round the clock and sometimes she does nothing for six months. No matter, the pillows are truly a statement of our times. Included also in the exhibition are polaroids and other documents of Berlin's life. Filmmaker and cultural bad boy icon John Waters perused the scene, kissing Bridget hello, and reading letters from her parents on the gallery's first floor. Now that he's had commercial and mainstream success-see “Cry Baby” and  “Hairspray” on Broadway--he says he has a reality television show in the works. What's it called? “Gone Bad,” his pencil thin mustache widens and arches upward into a grin.

Regina Weinreich

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Keith Tyson's Fractal Dice and Andres Serrano's Shit

The sculptures littering the floor of PaceWildenstein's 22 Street Gallery in Lego colored red, yellow, blue, green, black and white have the feel of sophisticated toys. At the crowded opening reception, a visitor could easily knock a block across the room—no big deal! British artist Keith Tyson simply sent Marc Glimcher an equation and the show was set. Read Glimcher's excellent catalogue essay to understand the math, the way the work is assembled using the roll of the dice. The art is no more arbitrary than say that of Bob Ross or Jackson Pollock, governed by the rules of the artists' origination. Arriving late, Keith Tyson, wearing a gray cloth hat, a cross between a baker's cap and an elf's beanie, was easy to spot in a room that included Jeff Goldblum and Chuck Close. In his specially rigged wheel chair that can rise up on its hind wheels so the artist can chat at eye level, Chuck Close asserts, the cool artists always arrive late to their shows. He himself is not cool, he says, preferring to see who shows up. Meantime at Yvon Lambert Gallery, Andres Serrano exhibited state of the art glossies of –yes, shit—lots of it in its infinite variety. In gorgeous, sumptuous saturated colors and hoary shapes, this scatological subject was raised to exalted heights. But for the real spiritual deal, Piss Christ, hung in its own red space. Fortunately, Rudy Guiliani was stuck in St. Paul with the Republicans.

Regina Weinreich 

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura