Gossip Central

“Camp” at the Metropolitan Museum: Susan Sontag as Metaphor

The sound of typewriter clicks permeates “Camp: Notes on Fashion” the Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute’s extravaganza exhibition, relieved only by a recording of Judy Garland singing “Over the Rainbow,” from The Wizard of Oz. The MET gala, its yearly benefit this week, may only exist as a distraction from all that the “Camp” show shows, with un-wearable art on celebrities devised to do and outdo the “camp” theme, dressing up itself as camp. But the exhibition, taken from Susan Sontag, the twentieth century diva of cultural dialogues, is a cerebral tour de force.

Leonard Cohen: A Crack in Everything at the Jewish Museum: A Way to Say Goodbye

The Jewish Museum opens a dynamic homage to Canadian poet/ songman/ novelist/ cultural icon Leonard Cohen this week, focused on his art, and work from others inspired by his life and oeuvre. Staring up at an image of myself reclined comfortably, I experienced his “Famous Blue Raincoat” with words projected on the walls as well as images inspired by the song. This was Ari Folman’s contribution, “Depression Chamber,” an installation, like a therapy session, that must be experienced one person at a time. I anticipate lines, even with a timed reservation. It is just one piece from artists such as Christophe Chassol and Tacita Dean occupying three floors of the museum. Taryn Simon’s “New York Times, Friday, November 11, 2016,” the newspaper displayed in plexiglass illustrates the timing of Cohen’s death just a few days before our current president’s election to office. There is some symbolism there, especially in the juxtaposition of Obama and Trump’s first meeting, and an advertisement for Bernie Sanders’ book, Our Revolution.

Warhol at the Whitney, Epic Abstraction at the MET

Back in the day, at the height of abstract expressionism, Warhol was the enemy. When subjectivity in art was all the rage—i.e. Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings-- Warhol was commodifying soup cans, world leaders, and other celebrities. Such artists as de Kooning and Kline would enjoy more than their 15 minutes of fame, and Warhol with his production line productivity, his commercial factory considered an antithesis to fine art. Now with the current exhibitions at New York’s Whitney Museum (Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again) and Metropolitan Museum of Art (Epic Abstraction: Pollock to Herrera), it’s a good time to reevaluate the mid-century’s art.

The Price of Everything: Poons, Koons, and Balloons

“Contemporary art is a luxury brand,” declared HBO’s Richard Plepler, introducing Nathaniel Kahn’s excellent, entertaining documentary, The Price of Everything, at a posh premiere at MoMA last week. “And the artist is our last best hope.” These words were not lost on a crowd that included artists like George Condo, Marilyn Minter, Larry Poons and Jeff Koons, all featured in the film. In addition, museum curators, private collectors, and auction house personnel were all part of the mix celebrating a movie about a market that keeps its prices up. After all, “you can’t have a golden age without gold,” as someone wisely put it. All the while, the work created on camera, as some question what makes art art, or good art, seems to ignore the vagaries of commerce, allowing the money minded to thrive.

The Times of Bill Cunningham Premieres at the New York Film Festival

When New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham would train his camera on you—whether at a posh opening or on the street—it made your day. Anna Wintour --Cunningham photographed the Vogue editor since she was a teen—famously used to say, “One dresses for Bill.” His discerning eye assessed celebrities and civilians alike, snapping those with elan, style, joie de vivre. His attention would say, You had “IT.” This beloved New York icon, who died in 2016 at age 88, is revived in a new documentary, The Times of Bill Cunningham, Mark Bozek’s loving tribute. Featuring an interview with Cunningham at its center, this entertaining documentary premiered at Alice Tully Hall this week, one of several stellar non-fiction selections at this year’s New York Film Festival.

Guild Hall’s Quiet Revolution: Alec Baldwin, What are you doing tonight?

 

Stealth operations are hardly associated with Guild Hall, the premiere arts institution of East Hampton, but as artistic director Andrea Grover announced at the summer gala this week, on a horse farm in Amagansett, more and more, Guild Hall is commissioning the work of emerging artists, “a quiet revolution,” as it were.

Established artists are not overlooked, of course. The evening was a celebration of a new exhibition of Ellsworth Kelly’s art and the political career of Judith Hope Twomey. Alec Baldwin introduced Twomey noting that much is said about the lack of women in politics, and that is true, but “I wish there were more like her.” Twomey spoke about first coming to East Hampton from Arkansas, and notables such as Chuck Close and Saul Steinberg assisting with her campaign. When Baldwin offered to help, he went to speak in towns in upstate NY and the women turned out in droves to hear him. “They are still talking about it,” said Twomey amusing the crowd. Politically speaking, let’s hope for a bigger revolution.

Love, Cecil: Picturing the Queen

In his memoir, Without Stopping, the American writer and composer Paul Bowles describes a party held on the beach in North Africa’s Caves of Hercules, with one grotto that had been decorated by Cecil Beaton. Truman Capote, fearful of scorpions, had to be carried down the face of the cliff by a group of Moroccans. Guests lay in the moonlight among cushions in the sand sipping champagne and smoking hashish, serenaded by an Andaluz orchestra. If Lisa Immordino Vreeland’s documentary, Love, Cecil, about the life and times of Beaton, a singular British photographer and illustrator for Vogue and Tony and Academy Award winning scenic and costume designer—for the films Gigi and My Fair Lady-- omits mention of this gathering, she must be forgiven, because the detail she does provide—especially of Beaton’s art-- is truly illuminating. As she said in a recent phone chat, “Making the film was a pleasure to me.”

Laurie Anderson at Guild Hall: No Fear of Flying

When Laurie Anderson talks about carrying no baggage in her new book, All the Things I Lost in the Flood, a tome literally about loss, of precious objects and dross, of anything that weighs you down, take her seriously. At her current one-woman exhibition at Guild Hall, comprised of large scale paintings of her dog Lolabelle, now deceased, in the Bardo, and films, including “Heart of a Dog,” an Academy Award nominated documentary, plus two extraordinary works of Virtual Reality, let’s just say, she gives the label multimedia new meaning. While all of this work is impressive, the two trips through Anderson’s virtual “looking glass” completely knocked me out.

Heavenly Bodies: The Metropolitan Museum’s Religious Commitment

To say the latest MET Costume Institute exhibition, “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,” is up there, as gorgeous, generous, and sumptuous as these yearly shows get, is to flirt with the ethereal. The Catholic imagination, as His Eminence Timothy Michael Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York, stated in his remarks at the MET’s Temple of Dendur, where divine cookies and coffee approached the sacrament, is testament to Christ’s art. The church is about truth, good, and beauty in praise of God, he said. One part Vatican, and another Versace, with gem-stones and jewels, capes threaded in gold juxtaposed with modest peplum monk-styled couture and almost no skin-revealing gowns and wedding dresses, the fashion inspired by Catholicism is a revelation.

Waiting for Alec Baldwin at the Guild Hall Gala

Yes, G. E. Smith previewed Guild Hall’s first annual guitar masters festival, to take place in July, but that was not the only music at this year’s winter celebration of Guild Hall. Honored for her career in the visual arts, Audrey Flack, brought her History of Art band to The Rainbow Room to perform her tribute to Jackson Pollock on banjo and spoons. Her feminist take on the iconic painter dovetails with the current Me Too movement, and as she is quick to tell you, “he came on but nothing happened. He was way too drunk.”