The Raymond Pettibon show closes today at the New Museum. A sprawling but perfectly curated show that displays the images and text of this witty, brilliant polymath is not to be missed. Dialing down on politics, surfing, sex, drugs, the Virgin Mary and baseball with equal candor and a gorgeous palette of water colors, Pettibon turns out to be one of the seers of our time.
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
Matt Tyrnauer and Robert Hammond's new docCitizen Jane: Battle for the City is slightly mislabeled: it could have been called more accurately Citizen Jane and Overlord Moses. Journalist-Activist Jane Jacobs and Urban Planner-Czar Robert Moses are two combative personalities who staked out opposite sides of the urban planning wars of the early sixties. Moses, he of Jones Beach and the Cross Bronx Expressway, and Jacobs, she of Greenwich Village journalist-Mom citizen activism were the perfect antagonists, and I wouldn’t be surprised after all the Feud plays and tv shows we are seeing now that this also could be an effective sequel. Paul Goldberger plays an outsize roll as quasi-narrator who puts the whole relationship in context and tries to answer the age-old question: Should we bulldoze our way to a better life? Jacobs’ seminal text, The Death and Life of Great American Cities was reactive to the I-can-do-bigger-and-better ethic of Le Corbusier, who to be fair, also did the divine Ronchamp Chapel I just visited. Greedy pols also take a hit in the film. The filmmakers say they made this film for the general public who have precious little idea who Moses and Jacobs were, even though they had such powerful influence on the New York—and many other cities—of today. Jacobs fled to Canada after she won her last battle to save the Village from an expressway running through it. The film is excellent from a tech standpoint, seamlessly combining stock footage, voice-over, interviews and Jacobs and Moses voices.
Petra Epperlein’s Simple But Powerful "Karl Marx City"
Petra Epperlein’s quest to find out if her father was an informant in the Stasi, East Germany’s answer to the Thought Police is simple but powerful. Though we’ve seen the story told before in a fictionalized (and apparently, according to Karl Marx City, exaggerated) in the wonderful film The Lives of Others, this film takes one woman’s search for answers in the labyrinthine Stasi archives and makes it very personal. Epperlein is portrayed in third person in voice over and first person on screen with her fuzzy boom microphone and earphones which make her as much of an object to be studied as what she herself is studying, but the affectation actually amplifies and imitates the Stasi methodologies. Cameras, still photographers, even your best friends and neighbors: you could not trust anyone in the post war GDR. Its applicability to today hardly a thought bubble away.
Marisa Merz and Lygia Pape at The Met Breuer
Marisa Merz and Lygia Pape, now on view at The Met Breuer, make the case that "having it all" has been something women artists have been juggling forever. Merz in Italy and Pape in Brazil managed to find a way to combine a domestic life with a life of ground breaking art production by not trying to cleave the two with such vehemence. Merz's little chairs for her daughter Beatrice, Pape's furry table with a lone breast sticking out of it make mincemeat of the idea that a woman at home with a child cannot be productive. Both politically engaged and willing to experiment with form and the whole notion of what "art" is, the two form an interesting juxtaposition with Marsden Hartley who felt he had to obscure his sexuality and separate out his private life. Tucked away in remote Maine, he was able to have more of an integrated life.
Inventing Downtown
Hurry to catch one of the best shows all year which closes April 1: the NYU Grey Art Gallery show, Inventing Downtown. Focusing on artist-run galleries of the sixties, the show is both nostalgic and forward thinking, the art, though smaller scaled than today, seems very contemporary. What shines through: the collegiality of the art world, the kindness with which artists treated each other, the playful, pick-ourselves-up-by-our-bootstraps, can-do mentality. What is sad: so many talented people utterly forgotten by the history books. Many of us do know Red Grooms from his seventies era large scale installations, but here we see his do-it-yourself beginnings.
Africa Modernism at the Center for Architecture (AIANY)
A world away but seriously fascinating is the Africa Modernism show at theCenter for Architecture (AIANY), originally curated by Vitra. In snapshot sized photos, framed and hung like wall art, each building project from the 1960's and 1970's shows how modernist architecture spanned all continents, its fenestrated concrete facades now again in fashion. Also photographed by the now legendary Iwan Baan and Alexia Webster, the exhibition has a francophone feel in that so many of the projects occurred in French Africa. Still, taken as a whole, a wonderful documentation of buildings that often look as if they could be constructed today.
Julliard's Spring Dance Recital
If you want the biggest bang for your buck in NYC performance check out anything at Julliard. Pro level at 1/4 the price.
I always try to catch the spring dance recital. Last night a romantic yet contemporary piece particularly caught my fancy, one that takes its forwards-backwards costuming notion from my favorite ballet The Goldberg Variations by Jerome Robbins.
According to the program notes, "Nacho Duato’s haunting Por Vos Muero (1996) uses contemporary ballet to evoke 16th-century Spain’s artistic revival poetry by Garcilaso de la Vega set to 15th- and 16th-century-style taped music created by early music specialist Jordi Savall."
But this piece is more than that. The choreography is dynamic, the music verging on flamenco or hip hop at times and the dancing is clean and sprightly.
Catch it if you can.
Two Legends of Journalism at Hunter College
Two legends of New Journalism Tom Wolfe (Official) and Gay Talese still going strong at the Hunter College Creative Writing Center dinner honoring Wolfe. A spectacular cake made for the occasion mistakenly gave Thomas Wolfe's middle name and credits to Tom but the intent was still clear: our lit heritage thrives.
RIP Hugh Hardy
Hugh Hardy died today. He loved the theater and created many spaces for all of us so we could love it too. Here he is with Norman Pfeiffer and Malcolm Holzman in 1965 at the beginning of HHPA. RIP Hugh.
New Huffington Post EIC Interviews Ken Roth and George Soros
Lydia Polgreen new The Huffington Post editor-in-chief interviews philanthropist George Soros and Human Rights Watch Ken Roth on the state of the world. Verdict: troubled but not impossible with three advocates like these.
Carlo Mollino House in Torino
The Carlo Mollino house in Torino was never inhabited by him, apparently a neo Egyptian kind of tomb prep. Much of the house is re-fabricated to look as if it was Mollinos, as there is but one manifest to go by. Still the cocoon is quite cozy and evocative of this engineer cum pilot cum skier cum race car driver cum genteel pornographer and on and on. He touched his magic hand to many realms
HQ of Vitra
The HQ of Vitra is well known for its architectural campus. Gehry, Herzog DeMeuron Hadid Grimshaw et al. make for eye popping viewing. But inside, the deep and appealing curation of objects large and small are testament to a vision of owner Rolf Fehlbaum that continues apace. He makes other collectors pale by comparison.
Basel Architecture
Basel has old and new and is worthy away from art fair madness. Here, a topper by Herzog DeMeuron accents the timbered buildings from the Middle Ages.
The Goetheanum
The Goetheanum just outside Basel, designed by Rudolf Steiner in massive brutality, still has a certain charm. A spiritual center, it evokes mystery.
Corbusier's Most Balletic Work
Staying with the nuns at Renzo Piano's controversial addition to Le Corbusier's chapel in Ronchamp felt peaceful, not bumpy. Still, it is entirely outranked by the blessed structure up on the hill, a pilgrimage site for architects who must, upon seeing it, understand there is little hope to meet its brilliance. Corbusier's most balletic work.
The Royal Salines: Arc-en-Senans, France
Coming upon LeDoux's futuristic version of Neo Classicism at the Royal Salines in Arc-en-Senans France (salt factory) and the exhibit about his work was a wondrous thing. In all his architecture, elements like columns, boulders, wooden roofs took on a surreal life of their own.
Balenciaga at the Musée Bourdelle
The new retrospective of Balenciaga fashion at the incantatory Musée Bourdelle focuses on the Noir - and that gave the curators a lot to consider. The show is not as well installed as the previous retro of Madame Gres but the enchanting sculpture and bric a brac of the sculptor whose studio this was make a perfect backdrop for the draping and bias cut of the very contemporary looking dresses and suits.
Paris
I love Paris. Each shop so highly curated. Some things don't change even if the world going to hell in handbasket.
Politics in Paris
Landed in a giant rally for François Fillon who is on the verge of being pushed out of the race for president due to corruption scandal. Massive turnout to save his candidacy. Thousands fear it could instead now be Marine Le Pen, their version of Donald Trump.
Separated at Birth?
Separated at Birth? Rick Owens, Fall 2017, and Pablo Picasso's Parade, 1917.