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Paintings on Dials


MOCA May Cancel PST Show After Gehry Bails, Saddam's Sculptor Speaks, and More

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MOCA May Cancel PST Show After Gehry Bails, Saddam's Sculptor Speaks, and More

– MOCA's PST Architecture Show on the Brink: Due to the departure of starchitect Frank Gehry and an installation way behind schedule, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles is considering canceling "A New Sculpturalism: Contemporary Architecture from Southern California," which is due to open on June 2 as part of the Getty's "Pacific Standard Time Presents: Modern Architecture in L.A.," according to exhibition curator Christopher Mount. "I am fearful it’s going to be canceled," Mount said, adding that if nothing else, "it’s going to have to be delayed." For his part, Gehry said that Mount, MOCA director Jeffrey Deitch, and Getty officials had all begged him to take part. "I didn’t feel comfortable in it," he explained. "It didn't seem to be a scholarly, well-organized show." [LAT]

– Saddam's Sculptor Speaks Out: From the day Saddam Hussein singled out his work in a student art competition, Natiq al Alousi's career took off, and he made statues and sculptors of the Iraqi dictator, some with him brandishing a sword, others in an equestrian style atop an Arabian horse. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003, the artist's chief patron was on the run and his artworks were torn down and destroyed in streets and palaces all around the country. Al Alousi, however, has no regrets: "There was never a day, for any artist in any form of art, who was forced to work for Saddam Hussein or the country… We were all happily working, and there were competitions that anyone can participate in," he explains. "I do not regret that I once worked for Saddam Hussein… This is history. Only the best artists work for presidents." [CNN]

– Collector Sues Sotheby's for Selling Him Nazi Art: When Old Masters collector Steven Brooks bought Louis-Michel van Loo's 18th-century painting "Allegorical Portrait of a Lady as Diana Wounded by Cupid" from Sotheby's for £57,600, he didn't know that one of its previous owners was Gestapo founder Hermann Goering. When he tried to resell it through Christie's in 2010, however, the auction house uncovered the work's problematic provenance and refused to put it on the block. Now Sotheby's has also refused to sell it or refund Brooks's money, prompting his lawsuit. [TAN]

– The Met Preps New European Painting Galleries: The Metropolitan Museum's European Paintings galleries, which are due to reopen on May 23, have undergone a major revamp and expansion, with roughly one third more space permitting the hanging of an additional 150 or so works in rooms arranged thematically, chronologically, and by region. When they open the museum's holdings will be bolstered by major loans of works by van EyckPoussinRubensBotticelli, and others. "We’ve come to the conclusion that we mount so many important shows that we are in competition only with ourselves," said the head of the museum's European Paintings department, Keith Christiansen. [Bloomberg]

– Van Gogh Museum Reopens in Amsterdam: The third major museum in Amsterdam to reopen in the past year — following the recent unveiling of the new Rijksmuseum after a 10-year makeover and the reopening of the Stedelijk Museum in late 2012 after nine years of construction — is the city's Van Gogh Museum, which emerged from a far less extensive seven-month hiatus and €21-million renovation this week. "Starting today, visitors will be able to see our new exhibition, which shows van Gogh as if you were looking over his shoulder," said the museum's director Axel Rüger. "It really shows how van Gogh trained himself, and visitors can get at the heart of his methods." [AFP]

– UC Davis Picks Art Museum Design: The University of California Davis has selected the Brooklyn-based architecture firm SO-IL — of Frieze tent fame — to design its new Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, a 33,000-square-foot, $30-million institution that will sit beneath a grand canopy covering the entire site. "I'm proud that our design competition reached beyond the usual suspects," said the museum's director Rachel Teagle. "We wanted new voices and thinking about the role and experience of art in the 21st century." [SF Chronicle]

– Performing in the Library, Quietly: As part of the PEN World Voices Festival, and in conjunction with Performance Space 122, artists Ant Hampton and Tim Etchells have created a 55-minute participatory performance art piece in NYU's Bobst Library wherein participants listened to an audio track via headphones while flipping through novels, photography books, empty pages, or conducting thought experiments. "The whole thing made you think about the nature of your sensory experience while reading, the relationship between the voice in your head and the words on the page," said Jessica Harris, a participant. [NYT]

– Late Artist Getting Evicted: The manager of a gallery in New York's Flatiron District that holds the works and art collection of the late painter Merton Simpson has grossly mismanaged the estate she was supposed to be appraising and inventorying, and now the gallery space run by the estate could be evicted, with thousands of objects and artworks worth over $5 million potentially ending up on the curb, according to the artist's son Merton Simpson, Jr. "I was surprised to find it in such a poor state, and so little business being transacted," the gallery's former director Alaina Simone, who started working there in March of 2012, said in a filing. "The guardian was managing the gallery so poorly I had to carry rare pieces of art on my lap to the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, D.C., because she said the gallery lacked the funds to wait for proper shipping." [DNAinfo]

– Swedish Galleries Boycott Art Festival Over "Arbitrary" Theme: Galleries and non-profit spaces in the Swedish city of Malmö have dropped out of the Malmö Nordic festival (running May 3-August 18) over its them, "Nordic," which they deem at best uninteresting and at worst uninteresting. "The theme is boring and risks becoming political," said Johan Berggren, owner of the eponymous gallery. Elene Tzotzi, a curator at the non-profit Signal, added: "The term Nordic has not been discussed, nor clearly defined, [and] is therefore arbitrary." [TAN]

– RIP Conceptualist Channa Horwitz: The Minimalist and Conceptual artist Channa Horwitz, who graduated from CalArts in 1972 and achieved success relatively late in her 50-year career following showcases of her work at the Hammer Museum and the New Museum — and the recently announced inclusion of her work at the 2013 Venice Biennale — passed away at her home in Los Angeles on April 29, a few weeks shy of her 81st birthday. Her intricate grid systems and complex, graph-like line drawings often evoked Op Art, though her work was much closer in spirit to Sol Lewitt. Horwitz once observed: "I experience freedom through the limitations and structure I place on my work." [Press Release]

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For breaking news throughout the day, check our blog IN THE AIR.

VIDEO: Major Salvador Dali Retrospective Opens in Madrid

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VIDEO: Major Salvador Dali Retrospective Opens in Madrid

Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum exhibits more than 200 works by Salvador Dali in one of the largest retrospectives on the Spanish surrealist artist.

The show is organized into 11 sections in chronological order and includes some of his most famous works, such as this painting titled "The Persistence of Memory"of which Dali said was inspired by watching cheese liquify in scorching sun.

This exhibit runs through September 2.

 

Slideshow: Whitney Art Party

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Street Artist Aakash Nihalani's Spatially Arresting Designs Go Indoors

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Street Artist Aakash Nihalani's Spatially Arresting Designs Go Indoors

When Aakash Nihalani walks through the streets of New York City, he notices interesting colors, shapes, and other objects as much as the next person. But instead of taking an Instagram photo or making a mental note, Nihalani outlines that interesting object or shape with using the neon tape that he carries on him at all times, boxed within square or cube patterns. It is an ongoing series of both street art and indoor installations, the latter of which can be seen at his current show “Islands” at Brooklyn’s Signal Gallery through May 14.

This street artist highlights and emphasizes space in a way that’s elegant in its simplicity and form. Out in the world, he uses just his simple household material to make a basic shape that brings attention to contrasting forces in our urban environment, such as tape rectangles around a homeless man begging for change outside of an NYU dorm building, and neon green “bricks” among decaying grey and dull subway walls. Indoors, he uses simple forms that instead seem to pass through surfaces and change their dimensionality, making viewers more conscious of how they ordinarily walk through a space with walls, a floor and ceiling.

The gallery experience of “Islands” is certainly unique and interactive, disorienting his viewers (in a good way). It’s also very different from most of his recent outdoor work, which is known for its eye-popping neon green, pink, and yellow tape choices. This show, instead, is devoid of color. Large black-and-white square and rectangular shapes are taped onto the walls, sometimes spilling out into the floor of the space itself. “Cut outs” or shapes created on a wall with tape, and then filled in with black paint, seem to emphasize negative space more than they might highlight objects, and rectangular shapes seeming to change the dimensions of the floor area have a dizzying effect.

“Outside I’m always using the bright palettes of tapes to emphasize or highlight something. And in this show I really wanted to react to the gallery space in the way that I react outside,” Nihalani recently told ARTINFO. “When you simplify the gallery space, it’s just white walls, a floor, and a ceiling, so I tried to react to that. The black is the most contrasting color and speaks to the form the most.”

The most striking part about “Islands” is the idea of forced perspective, and how the artist used the quirks in the space’s architecture to work to the show’s advantage, and give his audience a unique viewing experience. The gallery is set among a cluster of auto garages on Johnson Avenue in Brooklyn; at first glance, it appears the space was probably also a mechanic’s shop at one point, with five or six metal industrial plates installed around the floor. Rather than seeing these plates as an eyesore, Nihalani saw them as the “islands” or points of perspective where the viewer can stand to engage with the pieces on the opposite wall, moving from island to island to see how the pieces enter and recede from the room from different perspectives. When the viewer moves around, the objects’ optical illusions take shape, tricking your eye to appear as though they’re moving in the way a sundial’s shadow moves across the ground.

“What I found really exciting about these works is there’s this way of walking around the space,” Nihalani explained. “Like this piece [pointing to “Impact,” a row of black-and-white cubes appearing to recede into space] is distorted unless you walk through the show. So there’s the constant shift from being just the passive viewer to being a participant, which I think helps guide the viewer through the gallery.”

Before becoming a tape artist, Nihalani went to New York University to study Political Science, but often painted hats and T-shirts as a hobby, while growing less enthusiastic about his studies. When his friend suggested he switch to the arts program, Nihalani began to develop his style and create work, soon feeling the frustration many artists feel from storing away paintings that are rejected by collectors and galleries. Out of this frustration came Nihalani’s choice of medium: rolls of colored tape.

“It was something that I can go outside with immediately and work with whenever I want to,” Nihalani said. “It was immediate access to the public. When I put something up, people on the street could see it and react to it right away.”

At first glance, you might think the pieces are inspired by 11th-grade math class, but the shapes and colors are actually influenced by the “big minimal boxes” and other square architectural elements of New York. The sometimes dull color palette of the city also played into his choice of neon tape.

“The city is very neutral — it’s like greys and tans and khakis — so it made sense to use these really bright colors,” Nihalani explained. “What I’m basically doing outside is seeing something on the street and wanting to highlight it, so I think the color choice goes hand in hand with the choice to emphasize. It really creates a contrast. The colors don’t exist in nature, so it pops in the environment.”

To see Nihalani's work, click on the slideshow.

Assayas’s “Something in the Air” Revisits '70s Youth Movement in Europe

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Assayas’s “Something in the Air” Revisits '70s Youth Movement in Europe

A youthful movie in more ways than one, Olivier Assayas’s “Something in the Air” evokes an irretrievable past even as it manages to embody the total excitement of a particular historical moment and even, self-reflexively, the trajectory of the French director’s career. This quasi-autobiographical evocation of student politics and European hippie counterculture circa 1971 is also a crypto sequel or perhaps a prequel to “Cold Water,” the extended party movie with which Assayas made his reputation in the mid ’90s.

“Something in the Air” (which opens in New York and Los Angeles on Friday) breaks from the gate with a burst of youthful action. That “something” in the first scene is definitely tear-gas, as militant students confront riot-helmeted, club-wielding cops in the streets of Paris. Violent confrontations segue to chaotic political meetings, guerrilla graffiti blitzes and poster plasterings, as well as further political manifestations — with unexpected consequences. Activity is constant, as is romance: “Something in the Air” spins off enough subplots to stock a TV miniseries or at least a movie as long as Assayas’s previous period piece, “Carlos.” It’s also a virtual museum of sacred talismans, most obviously the casual display of ancient Anglo-American rock LPs.

Despite two love affairs and a stretch of time on the lam, Assayas’s alter-ego (a would-be painter and part-time anarchist) is considerably less vivid than the milieu through which he moves. This quality of being overshadowed by events is one he shares with most of the movie’s other characters, despite the erotic spells they may cast on each other. Individuals are swept away less by their emotions than by the collective energy of the international youth underground, casually dropping acid and earnestly singing Phil Ochs songs, firebombing les flics, casting the I Ching, and then abruptly decamping for Kabul. More than anything else, “Something in the Air” dramatizes the filmmaker’s memories of what the period felt like.

In the course of book-length letter Assayas addressed to Alice Debord (widow of the famed Situationist Guy Debord), recently translated into English and published by the Austrian Film Museum as “A Post-May Adolescence,” the 57-year-old director passionately defends the ideals of his generational cohort, noting that “the absurdities of this era and its fashions, even if they get recycled in stylized versions here and there, are only too obvious, and the world has mocked them ever since, usually in the name of nothing particularly worthy.” And yet:

Those picturesque appearances were nothing but a clear, concise and explicit way of breaking with the dominant social system, of cutting ties with the Old by reflecting back an image, disagreeable to it: long hair, beards, filth, Afghan coats, bells, whatever... It’s difficult to explain to anyone of the same age today that it wasn’t just a look or a fashion, not even a movement. It was an act of rupture involving the whole person: rejection of materialism, rejection of work, rejection of established values, especially the values of education, career, status, success, money, and family.

The great thing about “Something in the Air” is that the movie makes the thrill of that brief but all-encompassing rupture apparent without sentimentality or even (excessive) nostalgia.

 

Read more J. Hoberman at Movie Journal.

PULSE New York

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Marking its eighth New York edition, PULSE New York will present 60 national and international galleries exhibiting a blend of emerging and established artists working in all media from photography, painting, and sculpture to performance, installation, and video art. Through its annual editions in New York and Miami, PULSE provides a platform for diverse galleries to present a progressive blend of renowned and pioneering contemporary artists, alongside an evolving series of original programming. The fair’s distinctive commitment to the art community and visitor experience makes PULSE unique among art fairs, creating a dynamic and inviting art market experience.
I Love You Rose, Jin Li – Courtesy of Pulse New York
Thursday, May 9, 2013 to Sunday, May 12, 2013
Thursday, May 9, 2013
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I Love You Rose, Jin Li – Courtesy of Pulse New York
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Cannes Film Festival

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The Cannes International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres from around the world.

Cannes Film Festival poster – Courtesy of Cannes Film Festival
Wednesday, May 15, 2013 to Sunday, May 26, 2013
Thursday, May 2, 2013
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Michael Mann Braves History Again With "Agincourt"

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Michael Mann Braves History Again With "Agincourt"

Michael Mann’s 1992 “The Last of the Mohicans” transformed James Fenimore Cooper’s stirring but occasionally absurd tale of the French and Indian War into an adult action adventure and military history movie, as bloody and efficient as it was romantic and elegiac.

Having thus proved he’s not just a maestro of urban crime dramas, Mann is now turning to a major battle of the misnamed Hundred Years War, which Britain and France fought from 1337 to 1453 to determine which nation should rule the French. He is to film Bernard Cornwell’s bestselling novel “Azincourt” (published as “Agincourt” in the U.S.), which reimagines the events of October 25, 1415, when Henry V’s vastly outnumbered knights and longbowmen decimated the French ranks, causing between 4,000 and 10,o00 casualties.

Henry’s victory solidified his power in Britain. It also led to the 1420 Treaty of Troyes, which made him the French regent and royal heir and united him in marriage to Catherine of Valois, daughter of the insane French king Charles VI. Both kings died in 1422 and since Henry predeceased Charles, the French king was succeeded by the Dauphin, who became Charles VII. In 1429, Joan of Arc turned the tide of war back in favor of France. The British didn’t formally renounce their claim to the French crown until 1475.

Shakespeare’s recreation of Agincourt in “Henry V” (c. 1599) was, of course, filmed in very different styles by Laurence Olivier and Kenneth Branagh. Olivier’s pristine, stylized 1944 film — with its famous charge of the caparisoned French cavalry and the swarm of English arrows descending on it — was propaganda for the British war effort. Branagh’s muddy, bloody 1989 version obliquely commented on the carnage of the one-sided recent Falklands War.

The first of Branagh’s 13 completed films, it remains his best. His incorporation of Falstaff (Robbie Coltrane), as posthumously recalled by his cronies and Mistress Quickly at the Boar’s Head Tavern, enhanced the play’s feeling for the common man, which Olivier had treated quaintly.

Whereas Shakespeare’s protagonist is the 29-year-old Welsh-born King “Harry” (played by both Olivier and Branagh), Mann’s film will be seen from the perspective of a commoner — the forester and mercenary archer Nicholas Hook, whose bowmanship catches the king’s eye. He has a love interest in the shape of the French nun Melsande, whom he rescues from rape. Cornwell’s depiction of Henry visiting his troops on the night before Agincourt overlaps with the scene in Shakespeare’s play, which Olivier rendered almost existentially.

According to Deadline, British screenwriter Stuart Hazeldine (co-writer of Warner Bros. upcoming Moses film “Gods and Kings”) has been assigned to do a rewrite of the “Agincourt” script, previously worked on by Michael Hirst and Benjamin Ross. The website reports that Mann is currently in pre-production on a cyber crime drama to star Chris Hemsworth and Viola Davis, so the English archers’ deadly arrows won’t be rising and falling anytime soon.

Below: Henry V (Kenneth Branagh) rouses his army with Shakespeare's St. Crispin's Day speech, once known by every English schoolboy.

Whitney's Annual Art Party Turns Out Rising Stars, Young Collectors

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Whitney's Annual Art Party Turns Out Rising Stars, Young Collectors

NEW YORK — A 1,000-strong legion of socialites, celebrities, artists, young collectors, and art enthusiasts stormed Skylight at Moynihan Station, a cavernous venue housed inside a historic Beaux Art-style post office on 33rd street and 9th avenue in Manhattan, at the Whitney’s annual Art Party last night. Sponsored by Max Mara and hosted by the Whitney Contemporaries, the museum’s group of art patrons under 40, the party courted the youth vote with Gen-Y celebrity appearances, a steady playlist of Hot 97 jams, and a party-hardy, haute bar-mitzvah vibe.

Olivia Wilde and Adam Driver, the actor who plays Hannah Horvath’s millennial mystery prince on the HBO viral dramady “Girls,” popped Chandon alongside art world denizens Urs Fischer, Vladimir Restoin Roitfeld, Ambra Medda, Michael Avedon, Lola Schnabel, and fashion insiders Rebecca Minkoff, Hanneli Mustaparta, and Giovanna Battaglia. Seagram’s liquor heiresses and eco-lifestyle it girl Hannah Bronfman— who served as honorary co-chair alongside actress Nichole Galicia and Max Mara scion Maria Giulia Maramotti— danced to Jennifer Lopez’s “We Can Get Right” in green leather Max Mara culottes and matching false eyelashes. “I grew up in New York and the Whitney is a staple,” said Bronfman. “The Whitney is always so generous when it comes to advocating for young contemporary artists. I think the move downtown is an excellent choice and one that I'll be greeting with open arms.”

While finance bros grinded up on socialites to the contemporary sounds of Justin Beiber’s “Boyfriend” and Chris Brown “Yeah 3X” — dutifully throwing their hands in the air when instructed to do so — young collectors perused the silent auction featuring works by rising art stars including Liz Magic Laser, Kadar Brock, KAWS, Nicolas Lobo, and N. Dash. “I think this year we had a very strong group of artists from emerging to well established in a wide range of price points and media. And I’m very glad that friends of the Whitney are coming by to show their support,” said Elisabeth Sherman, who curated the silent auction alongside executive committee members Kyle DeWoody and Adam Abdalla.

For the first time, the Whitney partnered with Art.sy to host a pre-sale preview, selling 19 out of the 63 works in advance. “We made $70,000 before we ever opened the doors tonight,” said Abdalla. “Joanne Casullo had chaired the auction for years. She was kind of the fairy godmother of the Whitney Art Party but she couldn’t do it this year. She bestowed the responsibility onto Kyle and I and we used it as an opportunity to introduce a lot of new talent to this audience of young collectors. Some of them are red hot right now. Sebastian Black, KAWS, Joshua Abelow. We tried to bring it back to the street a little bit.”

This “back to the street” ethos proved to be a lucrative one. The party raised more than $450,000 in support of the Whitney’s Independent Study Program and other education initiatives.

To see photos of the party, click on the slideshow.

Q&A: Director Mira Nair on "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"

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Q&A: Director Mira Nair on "The Reluctant Fundamentalist"

LOS ANGELES — “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is Mira Nair’s most ambitious project to date. The director assembled an international cast of Hollywood, Pakistani, and Indian stars to tell the story of two vastly different worlds and a man caught between them.

The film depicts the tensions that arise between the United States and the Middle East in the wake of 9/11.

Changez (Riz Ahmed) is a young Pakistani Princeton grad chasing his American dream. He’s dating a beautiful girl (Kate Hudson) and working on Wall Street. However, a cultural divide slowly tears his relationship apart in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks and he is transformed into the perceived enemy.

The movie, which opened in theaters last week, is based on the 2007 novel by Mohsin Hamid.  

Nair spoke with BLOUIN ARTINFO about “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and why it was so important for her to make.

You’ve said this film is an exercise in personal healing and reconnecting. Can you explain what you meant by that?

Ever since 9/11 we have received so much information about the war and about the conflict. The movies and newspapers all talk about Islam phobia or creating Islam phobia not knowing the other side. I think it’s about time we made a film that has that dialogue at the heart of it. The dialogue between an American character and a Pakistani man who does love America. The part about personal healing and reconnecting. I am an Indian director making a film about Pakistan. A Pakistan that normally Indians are not allowed to visit because there is so much conflict between these two countries. Also someone who has married into a Muslim family and regarding the family as completely my own. I have a 21-year-old son who at 16 was questioned by immigration with his parents. At 18 he was taken away into a room to be questioned and we waited for him. Now he’s 21 and we wonder what is the next step for people like us. There are so many unfortunate incidents and profiling and harassment that has created fear. I feel a lot of it is based on ignorance. It’s based on what we don’t know about the other. In making ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” I wanted to question who is the other? Is the other our self? Are human beings really the heart of both sides of the planet?

What kind of reaction do you anticipate regarding your choice of shooting a Pakistani story in India?

I have been amazed by the fact that I’ve been completely embraced in that pursuit of shooting Pakistan in India. Anything can happen at any moment… but I was very happy I got the respect and complete openness that was given to me in Delhi to make this film. Also the same in Pakistan. They were reasonably considering me filming there, but the insurance companies couldn’t guarantee our safety. So we went to Pakistan for second unit filming work. It hasn’t been that difficult to film in India. We even filmed bits of Turkey in India.

Your films have a really great balance of social commentary and sophistication. How conscious is this balance for you?

I make films about things that get under my skin and don’t let me go. I want to take you on a ride that has the full appetite of life. I’m someone who deeply believes in laughter and fun and fashion and beauty. I’m as obsessed with photography and each frame of sensuality and the music. These are the elements I feel so privileged to work with as a filmmaker. I think any film is a political act. You chose to tell a part of a story or the whole story, whichever way you want to look at it and I always feel if we don’t tell our own stories, no one else will tell them. When it comes to do with anything with Islam, there is such a schism with the Western world and the Islamic world. I feel like in a way we’re only given one side of the story forever. So it was very important for me to make a film about the other side, but in a way [that allows us to] see ourselves in what has been this other for so long. For me this was very much about the intention of making it, but while still taking you on a journey that will transport you and entertain you.

Talk about the scene where Hudson’s character, Erica, puts on an art exhibit in honor of Changez. It was so interesting because while her intentions were good, her actions and artwork were horribly offensive.

I wanted to reinvent the character of Erica that is different from the book. In the book she gives up on that and disappears. For me, I like to read characters as alive and as complicated as we all are. Erica truly fell in love with Changez and 9/11 has just happened. She’s part of a downtown art scene, which I’ve met a lot of people and I’ve seen believe they’ve created art on what they think they may know, but they really don’t know the depth or the complications of it or the layers of it. Or what even the limelight signifies to the other. That kind of attitude really does exist in the world. That was the fine line we were putting in Erica’s art. The last person Changez expects to be misunderstood by is his lover. She was misguided and it translated into something that would be hard to come back after a hard break up, which does happen in life. It’s not a pretty picture, but life is not always pretty.

This is the first film by an Indian director to open the Venice Film Festival. What has that meant for you?

It was a great honor. It was extraordinary. I had an encounter that night that I will never forget. The only movie in the world I wish I had directed is “The Battle of Algiers” — Gilo Pontecorvo’s classic. I love this movie. It gave me the template to speak of both sides in my film — the American and the Pakistani side with equal intelligence. At the end of the Venice screening, I had this older woman make her way across the tent to me at the banquet that followed. She came and found me and said, “I’m Gilo Pontecorvo’s widow and I’ve come to tell you that Gilo lives in you.” I could have fainted. She had no idea that was the film that has kept me going all these years to make this film. I am so humbled and so moved.

A Frenzied Night in the Arms of Ivana Trump's Neo-Baroque Parallel Art Universe

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A Frenzied Night in the Arms of Ivana Trump's Neo-Baroque Parallel Art Universe

NEW YORK — With enough gold, mirrors, and crystal chandeliers to rival the respective holdings of Fort Knox, Versailles, and the Shahs of Sunset, the Ivana Trump residence stands as a veritable counter-monument to modernism. On Tuesday night, the onetime Olympic athlete and 63-year-old millionaire divorcee — whose realpolitik joie de vivre is immortalized in her great First Wives Club one-liner, “Don’t get Mad. Get Everything!” — transformed her gilded Upper East Side palace into a temporary kunsthalle to showcase paintings by “famed Italian artist” Giovanni Perrone. Although a perfunctory Google search revealed precious little about the elusive Perrone, the press release for the show read like a parody of Vasari-esque reverence: “Growing up in the ‘city of two seas’ Perrone became enamored with the great artists of the Renaissance. He attended art school and studied the colors of Titian, the frescos of Michelangelo, and the shading of Da Vinci…” The show was co-hosted Marcantonio Rota, a 50-something real-estate investor whom the Daily Mail refers to as Trump’s Italian stallion and “toyboy lover.”

A red-carpeted staircase with a Fragonardian trompe l'oeil garden mural lead up to the main salon, where Perrone’s oil paintings fought for the eye’s attention amid the resplendent clusterfuck of putti, gilded boiseries, and phallic centerpieces of fruits and flowers. Some of the walls are pimped out in Italianate curlicues. Others are upholstered with gold damask, like the world’s gaudiest insane asylum. Strategically placed stacks of business cards reading “Rotart America: Art from Italy to the AME,” hint at what is apparently Rota’s new pet project, the art advisory/event planning service behind the Trump event. Perrone is the first artist Rota plans to import to an American audience.

In an art world still haunted by the ghosts Duchampain irony and self-effacing conceptualism, Perrone opts for grandiloquent metaphor and romantic self-expression. His influences — the artist explained in effusive but broken English — are Caravaggio and Francis Bacon. His typical subjects are God, country, and romantic love. Displayed proudly on easels throughout the first and second floors of Trump’s mansion, the brushy neoexpressionist paintings are populated by Madonnas, messiahs, Polykleitan male nudes, and tight-buttocked stallions. Bodies twist and flail around in psychospiritual sturm und drang. The color red, a recurring leitmotif throughout Perrone’s paintings, stands for passion;” and “passion,” the artist is fond of saying, “is life.”

In the painting “Italia,” an androgynous Christ hangs upside-down, donning a crown of thorns against a tricolore background — an allegory, the artist said, for his motherland's economic woes. “The Feast of Herod” is an allegory for the the artist’s heartbreak. The softly blasphemous “Woman with Child” depicts a bare-breasted Madonna and Bambini flecked with gold leaf and AIDS ribbons: an ex-voto, or votive offering, for those afflicted with HIV. The male nude is a recurring trope, it seems as both as marker of homoerotic body culture and as a universal symbol for what the press release calls “a religious Human.” The blue-toned canvas “De-posit-ition” is a self-portrait of the artist as the deposed Christ, with the Saint John and Mary Magdalene replaced by a mourning party of strapping naked men. For Perrone — who splits his time between Florida and Milan and moonlights as an architect — the painterly brushstroke is an autographic marker of the artist’s soul: “Painting is in the moment,” he said. “When I am an architect, I project and I think. When I paint, no. I am very instinctive man, very emotive.”

Perrone’s painting — with its religious allegories and expressionistic bravado — may seem anachronistic to some, but not to Trump. “Giovanni is a friend of ours for many years and he’s really very talented. He does so many works and they are so diverse and it is so fabulous. It’s actually the artistic work of a European artist,” Trump enthused, holding court on her overstuffed divan. As for contemporary art — or really modern art — that's not her bag: “They throw paint [around] and call it ‘modern art.’ I don’t get it and I don’t buy it.”

As guests arrived, the awesome menagerie of unironic kitsch that is Ivana Trump’s place of residence filled to the brim with dermabraized socialites, white-haired financiers, and, eventually, the Trump children Ivanka and Donald Jr. The scene was almost emancipatory in its unhipness. An accompanyist plodded away on a white grand piano, performing smooth jazz interpretations of top 40 hits including Rihanna’s “We Found Love,” Gloria Estefan’s “Conga,” and the Beegees “How Deep is Your Love.” Butlers plied guests with poo-poo platters and champagne as they discussed skiing, shooting, and Broadway musicals. There was a lot of interest in Perrone’s art, which — considering the purchasing power of the crowd — was priced modestly in the $5,000 to $10,000 rage. Painting, God, and the Author are not dead. They just moved in with Ivana. 

Dressed to the elevens in an electric orange Swarkosvi crystal encrusted body-con mini dress, Trump sidled up to Rota at the piano. “This is the song I sang to her in Saint Tropez and she fell in love with me!” Rota told the captive audience before breaking out into the Italian standard “Parole, Parole,” and later, Andrea Bocelli’s famous opera jingle “Con Te Partirò,” and — later still — the Foreigner power ballad “I Wanna Know What Love Is.” Trump bopped and tapped her feet by her lover's side, gesticulating fabulously. As the evening was drawing to a close, Rota busted out Lykke Li’s “I Follow Rivers,” transforming what was a geriatric white wine social into a frenzied bacchanal. The former Mrs. Trump kicked off her stilettos and hit the dance floor, taking the entire party along with her.

Feeling that I had stayed past my welcome, I tried to sneak downstairs, but the gregarious hostess grabbed me by the arm, wrenching the notebook out of my hands. For a surreal and precious 30 seconds, I was dancing with Ivana Trump, before I was absconded by the owner of a chain of Italian baby stores, who repeatedly tried to kiss me on the mouth. It was the best art party I’ve been to, not just a party, but a immersive — though totally accidental — work of art. 

Should NYC Raze Its Wasteful Modernist Skyscrapers to Go Green?

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Should NYC Raze Its Wasteful Modernist Skyscrapers to Go Green?

Last year marked the first year New York City’s commercial buildings were mandated to publicly disclose their energy usage levels, and with that, some of the city’s most esteemed works of architecture were subjected to a new wave of scrutiny. While the recently completed 7 World Trade Center clocked in with an admirable score of 74, the much-admired 1958 Seagram Building scored an abysmal 3, casting midcentury design in a troubling new light. Could certain icons of the built environment be too harmful for the natural environment?

Last month, a research and consulting firm known as Terrapin Bright Green addressed this exact query. With their recently published report “Midcentury (Un)Modern: An Environmental Analysis of the 1958-73 Manhattan Office Building,” the group brought two ethical debates in the field to a head by articulating the long-term environmental benefits of demolishing and replacing the city’s first wave of glass curtain wall office towers — the architectural cohort of Seagram. If the conclusion of the report is accepted, it could uncouple what the it terms the “sister ethics” of environmental sustainability and historic preservation and justify potentially invasive development in some of Manhattan’s most iconic neighborhoods.

For the authors of the report, the initiative most closely linked to the new research is PlaNYC, a Bloomberg administration agenda that lists a 30 percent reduction in the city’s carbon footprint by 2030 among its many long-term goals. “We realized that in 2030, 85 percent of the buildings that will exist then are already here,” Bob Fox of COOKFOX Architects, a design firm deeply involved with Terrapin’s research, explained to ARTINFO. “So if all the new buildings had no carbon footprint, we still couldn’t reach the goal without either seriously retrofitting or dealing with the existing buildings in New York City in a very serious way.” With this challenge in mind, Terrapin Bright Green identified the first generation modern office tower, a typological mainstay in midtown and parts of lower Manhattan, as a candidate for serious reevaluation.

For Terrapin, these iconic buildings provided multiple opportunities for improved energy efficiency. The group, which has historically advocated for the retrofitting of buildings such as the White House, the Pentagon, and the Empire State Building to reach new sustainability goals, concluded that retrofitting the midcentury skyscrapers in question could yield an impressive 44 percent reduction in energy usage. But the report also goes on to explore a second avenue, arguing the advantages of demolishing and replacing midcentury towers with brand new high-performance buildings. There is no disputing that New York’s midcentury office towers cannot compete with most new constructions on the energy savings front. Terrapin’s case studies suggest that even while considering the energy required to raze an existing building and construct a new one, the energy savings of a new skyscraper — if designed properly — could compensate for its initial negative impact on the environment in 16 to 28 years.

What is open to debate, however, is how Terrapin links the two halves of their analysis. “Midcentury (Un)Modern” hangs its argument on several key assumptions that get buried in the stream of charts, graphs, and bullet points: The report prematurely concludes that, under current conditions, deep retrofitting is an impractical option because owners of these office towers have little economic incentive to invest in extensive renovation: The tight column spacing, low ceiling heights, and inefficient structural organizations of these buildings make for undesirable workspaces by contemporary standards, problems no retrofit can resolve. With no potential to increase rent or occupancy, the retrofitting option emerges as a poor investment. In fact, William Browning, a primary author of Terrapin’s report, believes such buildings have not already been replaced because many of them are “overbuilt,” meaning their developers exploited a short-term loophole to construct these buildings in greater bulk — and thus with more rentable floor area — than current zoning will allow.

These assumed economic impediments to retrofitting set the stage for counterarguments to Terrapin’s analysis. For Simeon Bankoff, director of New York City’s Historic Districts Council, another Bloomberg initiative — one that falls outside of PlaNYC’s eco-friendly agenda — paints Terrapin’s rhetoric in a darker way: the proposed rezoning of Midtown East, which offers, as Bankoff explained ARTINFO, to “up-zone the entire area in order to encourage ‘signature architecture’ and to revitalize what has been described by proponents of the plan as obsolete or underperforming buildings. With the emergence of this plan, it became evident that the ground had shifted, and that 17-story buildings could be replaced with 30-story buildings.”

Bankoff points out that by the same logic Terrapin introduces in its report to say that retrofitting is impractical, the high-performance replacement buildings being recommended would have to be significantly larger — exceeding zoning regulations as they stand now — and have significantly more rentable floor area to incentivize developers to invest in razing and rebuilding office towers. “They were taking as one of their principles that they would be able to build much, much bigger,” Bankoff explained. This supposition is based on yet another assumption: that New York needs bigger and more high-profile office towers. “They’re premising what businesses will need in five years based on what businesses needed in hindsight five years ago,” Bankoff added.

The takeaway, then, is that the green element of “Midcentury (Un)Modern” is premised not only on hard-and-fast facts about the environment but also on predictions about something mercurial and manmade: the market economy. Whether or not it is the intent of the report to exploit current environmental concerns to green-light private development, as Bankoff implies, if its research is misinterpreted, it could potentially rationalize the aggressive reorganization of Manhattan at the expense of some important rudiments of the city’s architectural heritage.

While Terrapin is not encouraging the complete erasure of this chapter of architectural history — the Seagram Building, the U.N. Building, and the Lever House are exempt, for instance — authors Browning and Fox have stressed that the towers the report addresses were actually not built to last: “They were all cost-driven. Speed of construction was very important,” Fox said, speaking from his experience as a practitioner during the midcentury era. “I don’t think anyone who was building them then envisioned that they would still be here — we thought they would last for 20 years.” This brings up a new question of whether or not the intent of an architectural design dictates the fate of the architecture once it is realized.

But for Bankoff, the architecture has taken on a life of its own. “Those buildings were mostly built under old zoning,” he explained. “From an urban design and art perspective, it’s a very interesting response to the confines of zoning using modern materials.” He stressed how these provisional solutions have become a part of the enduring imagery of the city, how the signature zigzagging setbacks of these glass-and-steel towers provided the backdrop for countless television shows and movies, becoming an iconic milieu that could stand to disappear if not properly safeguarded. “They were incredibly evocative of what America was doing at the time,” he said, speaking of an era that is slowly gaining currency in contemporary historiographies. “Those buildings are the natural environment of Don Draper.”

Peter Doig's Parole Officer Sues, Nahmad Scandal Scares Off Lenders, and More

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Peter Doig's Parole Officer Sues, Nahmad Scandal Scares Off Lenders, and More

Peter Doig Sued by His Parole Officer: Robert Fletcher is suing the Scottish artist Peter Doig for allegedly refusing to recognize as his own a painting that Fletcher claims he bought from the artist for $100 in 1976. At the time, Fletcher says, Doig was fresh out of a Canadian correctional facility — where he was sent for five months for possession of LSD — and Fletcher served as his parole officer. "Fletcher also encouraged Doig to pursue his artistic talent, and accepted Doig's offer to sell the work to Fletcher for $100," a court complaint explains. "Since that day in or about 1976 and to the present, Fletcher has owned the work." Fletcher added: "Doig has strong motives to deny having painted the work due to the background and place in which it was painted." [Courthouse News]

Nahmad Nixes "Monet Richter" Show: Following its raid by the FBI in connection to an international gambling and money laundering operation with mob ties, the Upper East Side's Helly Nahmad Gallery has postponed its upcoming exhibition "Monet Richter," which was due to open next week to coincide with the Impressionist, modern, and contemporary art auctions in New York. The exhibition was to include GerhardRichter works from the HirshhornMuseum, the Albertina, and the Frieder Burda Museum, all of which have pulled out. "I can’t imagine a museum would be prepared to lend to a gallery that’s not in good standing," Dallas Art Museum director Maxwell Anderson said, "and the indictment of the owner would qualify as not being in good standing." [Bloomberg]

Sotheby's Plans London Gallery: The auction house has signed a lease for a space in a five-story building on George Street facing the rear entrance to its New Bond Street headquarters, where it will open a gallery in which to conduct private sales, an increasingly significant portion of its business. "It’s very smart. I would do the same," New York dealer Christophe van de Weghe said. "Sotheby’s will have the same clientele for both their auctions and their gallery sales." [Bloomberg]

Venetians Tell Charles Ray to Vamoose: "Boy With Frog," the eight-foot-tall Charles Ray sculpture of a nude boy holding up a frog that was unveiled by French collector François Pinault at the 2009 Venice Biennale, will be removed by the city next week and replaced with a replica of a 19th century streetlight that used to occupy the spot and had become a popular romantic meeting place. "I knew things were getting serious when a friend of mine sent me a petition to keep ‘Boy With Frog,’" said Ray. "I never saw it as temporary. I worked so hard at the scale of the sculpture so that it would be embedded in the city. I had hoped ‘The Boy’ would eventually become a citizen of Venice." [NYT]

Newark Nets Nigerian Art Collection: Doctor Simon Ottenberg, a leading scholar and collector of contemporary Nigerian art who is a professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Washington has donated 145 works from his personal collection to the Newark Museum, where they will be showcased in the new exhibition "The Art of Translation: The Simon Ottenberg Gift of Modern and Contemporary Nigerian Art," which opens May 15. "I chose the Newark Museum since it is a first-rate institution of long standing, has an energetic and innovative curator of African art, and is a place where my modern and contemporary art works help strengthen an important section of the collection," Ottenberg said. [Newsday]

MoMA Offering Free Admission in May: In celebration of its new seven-day schedule the Museum of Modern Art will let its first 100 visitors in for free on every Tuesday (the day that it used to be closed) in May. Visitors looking to dodge the institution's $25 admission fee will likely need to turn up quite early on May 7, 14, 21, and 28 to take advantage of the month-long promotion. [LATimes]

Thomas Hirschhorn Heads to the Bronx: For the latest installment in his "Monument" series — whose previous honorees have been Spinoza, Deleuze, and Bataille— and with a little help from the Dia Art Foundation, Thomas Hirschhorn will install "The Gramsci Monument" at the Forest Houses, a housing project in the Bronx's Morrisania neighborhood. Residents of the projects will be paid to build the humble pavilion, and run its café; it will also feature a gallery area, a theater, an internet corner, and a lounge that will host lectures and workshops. Construction is expected to be complete in time for an early-July opening, with the structure due to shutter on September 15. [NYT]

New Head for MoMA's New Hybrid Mega-Department: On July 1 the Museum of Modern Art's department of prints and illustrated books and department of drawings will merge into the department of prints and drawings, which will be headed by ChristopheCherix, who has helmed the department of prints and illustrated books since 2010, and first joined the department in 2007. Meanwhile, longtime curator of drawings ConnieButler has returned to Los Angeles to curate the HammerMuseum's biennial and teach at UCLA. [AiA]

Kemper Museum Founders Leave Board: Crosby and BebeKemper, the founders of Kansas City's Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art have opted to step down from the museum's board, though the quotient of Kempers sitting on it will not diminish: MaryKemperWolf, their daughter, has been made the new chairman of the museum's board of trustees, and Sandy and MarinerKemper have also joined the board. "I am grateful to have had a role in building this institution from its start and know Mary will continue to strengthen its legacy in Kansas City and beyond," Bebe Kemper said. "As a filmmaker herself, Mary will champion the role of the artist at the Kemper Museum for many years to come." [Artdaily]

Irishman Launches Asian Art Prize: The Irish, Hong Kong-based businessman BillCondon has announced the five recipients of his inaugural Multitude Art Prize, which awards prizes totaling $100,000 to contemporary artists from all over the continent. The first set of winners are the Filipino duo of Alfredo and Isabel Aquilizan, the Turkish artist Ha Za Vu Zu, MoonKyungwon and JeonJoonho from Korea, India's Raqs Media Collective, and the Taiwanese artist YaoJui-chung. "We put together a very important international program and we seem to have a hit a chord," Condon said. "I’d like to do something with this in Ireland at some stage." [Irish Times]

ALSO ON ARTINFO

A Frenzied Night in the Arms of Ivana Trump's Neo-Baroque Parallel Art Universe

Should NYC Raze Its Wasteful Modernist Skyscrapers to Go Green?

Street Artist Aakash Nihalani's Spatially Arresting Designs Go Indoors

Whitney's Annual Art Party Turns Out Rising Stars, Young Collectors

Preview Highlights Of First-Time Frieze Week Fairs Cutlog and Wish Meme

On the Value of Molly Crabapple's Curious, Critter-Filled Political Painting

Mount Fuji, Artists' Muse, To Become UNESCO Heritage Site

 

For breaking news throughout the day check our blog IN THE AIR.

Head to Toe (Special Edition): Taylor Tomasi Hill's Irreverent Instincts

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Head to Toe (Special Edition): Taylor Tomasi Hill's Irreverent Instincts

 

Moda Operandi’s Taylor Tomasi Hill weighs in on the current punk craze with these exclusive picks:

1) It’s no secret that Vivienne Westwood is the queen of punk fashion — and this corset proves why. The colors of the tartan are an added bonus to the amazing fit, which, for me, is what makes it irresistible. I would layer it over the Thom Browne shirt for a complete look. Vivienne Westwood Dual-Tartan Corset with Train, $2,725 at Moda Operandi

2) I consider myself an ambassador of the drop-crotch pant, so I was excited to see these as part of our exclusive collection with GivenchyGivenchy Silk Cady Trousers with Skirt, $1,690 at Moda Operandi

3) I’m always a fan of layering. In my opinion, why wear one ring when you can wear 5? Due Ponti Silicone Ring w/ Diamond Inset, $85 at Moda Operandi

4) I love this shirt. It was adapted from a menswear piece from a past collection. It’s clean and classic with a special twist. Thom Browne Oxford Armed Shirt, $625 at Moda Operandi

5) When I first heard that the theme of the Met was “punk,” I immediately thought of how cool it would be to shoot something with Mohawks. NY Vintage customized these for us, and I’ve test-driven this electric blue one a couple of times. New York Vintage Blue Peacock Mohawk, $1,500 at Moda Operandi

6) Victor Fung at Klughaus Gallery in Brooklyn customized these boots exclusively for Moda Operandi — and each pair is one of a kind. Dr. Martens Graffiti Boot, $445 at Moda Operandi


Boléro Bones: Givenchy's Riccardo Tisci Designs Costumes for Paris Opera Ballet

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Boléro Bones: Givenchy's Riccardo Tisci Designs Costumes for Paris Opera Ballet

 

La nuit dernière in France, the Opéra de Paris premiered its 17-minute ballet “Boléro,” a short piece heavy on cross-industry artistic pollination. The production’s set was designed by performance artist Marina Abramovic, and, for fashion fans, its costumes came courtesy of Italian design maestro Riccardo Tisci.

Ballet would seem a fitting spoke for the Tisci wheel — it’s moody, it’s romantic, and it’s classic — much like the designer’s work at the helm of Givenchy. Unsurprisingly, Tisci has received prior offers to create costumes for the performing arts, but never felt the timing was right. That is, until now.

“I wanted the dancers to feel naked somehow,” the designer told VOGUE UK. “The costumes express two sides of me: darkness and romanticism.”

Indeed, the pieces are as diaphanous and frosty as first-layer pond ice, but the motifs appliqued therein are all macabre — ribcages, spines, and jawlines embroidered across tulle, highlighting the dancers’ sinewy musculature underneath. These threaded tattoos, however, aren’t just about the interplay between skeleton and skin — Tisci also imbues a flourished, almost floral air to the glittering designs, highlighting his flair for the theatrical in tandem with his love of the heavy-handed. Graphic, and entirely fitting with his well-known modus operandi, Tisci described his approach succinctly. “[It’s] all about intensity.” 

Slideshow: Carol Bove's Sculpture Show "Caterpillar" on the High Line

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Off the Cuff: Simon Doonan, Will.I.Am, Kristen Stewart

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Off the Cuff: Simon Doonan, Will.I.Am, Kristen Stewart

 

Your daily fashion links... 

British Vogue will launch Miss Vogue, a new title targeted towards younger readers. [WWD]

Barney’s creative ambassador Simon Doonan doesn’t think FLOTUS Michelle Obama is “chic.” [HuffPo]

Music producer and Black Eyed Pea Will.I.Am spoke at a marketing conference yesterday, arguing for an end to “planned obsolescence.” “The modern frontier is how do we make things, when there are more people on the planet and limited resources, [different] from how we did things yesterday?” the “Scream and Shout” singer said. [WWD]

Buzzfeed rounds up the 18 most horrifying pairs of shoes ever made. [Buzzfeed]

Estee Lauder is launching Modern Muse, its first major fragrance in a decade. [WWD]

Despite rumors that her relationship with Balenciaga would end after her best friend Nicolas Ghesquière stepped down, “Twilight” star Kristen Stewart will stay on as the face of their fragrance, Florabotanica [Hollywood Life]

 

Touring Carol Bove's Oddball Sculptures on the High Line's Wild North End

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Touring Carol Bove's Oddball Sculptures on the High Line's Wild North End

NEW YORK — For the past three decades the northernmost stretch of the High Line, between 30th and 34th streets, has remained largely unaltered, growing wilder and more elegantly decrepit every season. Now the Geneva-born, Red Hook-based artist Carol Bove has installed seven of her works atop the elevated industrial railroad, her choices of materials and finishes contrasting with and complimenting the changing cityscape that serves as both setting and backdrop for the exhibition, “Caterpillar.”

Bove created six new pieces for the show, and the one older work — “Monel,” a giant bronze plate nearly a food thick that she exhibited at Documenta 13 last year— has changed dramatically since its previous presentation. When her studio flooded during Hurricane Sandy the bronze block was damaged, its slick surface blooming with patterns of turquoise and red that will continue to change as they undergo a year of New York weather. It will look positively prehistoric surrounded with overgrown grass come summertime. The exhibition's smallest piece, “Visible Things and Colors,” a Tetris-like assemblage of a system of brass grids interlocking with a matching block of concrete, introduces a certain preciousness into the inhospitable post-industrial landscape. Its form and materials also evoke the countless luxury apartment towers rising quickly in the background.

The bulk of the exhibition consists of two series of works, one completely in keeping with the High Line's past, and the other at once sleek and playful in its smooth futurism. Two of the three pieces in the “Glyphs” series were assembled by Bove on-site, their rusty steel I-beams inevitably calling to mind the old train tracks that they straddle. “These are very masculine sculptures,” High Line Art director and curator Cecilia Alemani said during a recent tour of the exhibition's 300-yard-long site. Though they do remind one of the likes of Mark di Suvero or Anthony Caro, there's a certain sharpness, clarity, and Juddian simplicity to their forms that distinguishes Bove's pieces and counterintuitively makes them seem lightweight.

The other series, represented here by a pair of sculptures that includes the piece that gives the exhibition its title — a twirling, coiling, tube-like form finished in glossy white — stand out against the rusted train tracks and wild shrubs like alien objects that dropped from the sky. Their winding forms and shining white surfaces, achieved by triple-layering coats of white powder, have an incredible amount of personality and are surprisingly funny.

The smaller of the two, “Prudence,” is the first sculpture that visitors will encounter on the tour and frames the view toward the rest of the exhibition like a giant telescope. But it also serves as a portal to a place that is simultaneously past, present, and future, with its dilapidated rail line and shimmering river abutting the busy Hudson Yards rail depot, the Orwellian Javits Center, and the glassy condo towers rising in the distance. In such a fundamentally surreal setting, Bove's sculptures are a natural fit.

Carol Bove's Caterpillar” runs on the High Line from May 16, 2013-May 2014. Reservations for free tours can be made here.

To see works from “Caterpillar” click the slideshow.

10 Summer Blockbusters Worth Seeing

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10 Summer Blockbusters Worth Seeing

 

The release of “Iron Man 3” marks the beginning of summer blockbuster season. The next few months will be filled with huge popcorn flicks with even larger budgets, and if we’re lucky, one or two of them might turn out to be more than mindless dreck. Though we’ve been trained to think of mainstream summer fare as nothing more than disposable entertainment, every year or two a genuine good film manages to sneak into the pack. Here’s our pick of the best summer blockbusters of all time.

“Jaws” (1975)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Gross: $470,653,000

The film that made beachgoers scared to go in the water really started the summer blockbuster culture as we know it. It may have had a troubled production, but it would go on to become the highest-grossing film ever at the time. And yes, Spielberg’s name pops up on this list a few times.

“Star Wars” (1975)

Director: George Lucas

Gross: $775,398,007

The film that kicked off the beloved, and seemingly never ending, space epic and spawned one of fandom’s largest communities. As confident as Lucas may have been, it seems unlikely that he could have imagined his work becoming as big as it did — so big that Disney purchased Lucasfilms for $4.05 billion last year.

“Raiders of the Last Ark” (1981)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Gross: $389,925,971

The first, and still best, entry in the Indiana Jones franchise proved that Harrison Ford was an action hero, and that Lucas and Spielberg knew how to grab the imagination of movie audiences the world over.

“E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” (1982)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Gross: $792,910,554

One of the most critically acclaimed films on this list, “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” the story of a boy and his alien friend, went over well with audiences, becoming, yet again for Spielberg, the highest-grossing film ever.

“Back to the Future” (1985)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Gross: $383,874,862

Zemeckis’s film about a loveable, rascally teen (played perfectly by Michael J. Fox) who, with the help of his deranged-looking scientest buddy, travels back in time with a Deloreon almost seems too weird to have been a hit with movie goers. The mixture, which also prominently featured the bizarre Crispin Glover, would prove wildly successful and would lead to two unfortunately inferior sequels.

“Terminator 2: Judgement Day” (1991)

Director: James Cameron

Gross: $519,843,345

“Terminator 2” may not be Cameron’s most successful film, but it might be the most enjoyable. It’s also clearly the peak of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s long and storied action hero career.

“Jurassic Park” (1993)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Gross: $962,967,287

Spielberg and the computer-generated dinosaurs that, for the most part, still look good to this day, sounds like recipe for success, right? Was it ever  the film was the third of the directors movies to become the highest-grossing film of all time.

“Speed” (1994)

Director: Jan de Bont

Gross: $350,448,145

It’s hard to imagine a film like “Speed” being such a huge hit today. It didn’t seem to have much franchise potential, its cast lacked huge star power (this is the film that made Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock box office draws), and it was directed by an unknown. But the film, which ensured that trips to the multiplex would take a toll on your ears for years to come, was a massive success with audiences.

“Saving Private Ryan” (1998)

Director: Steven Spielberg

Gross: $481,840,909

We may equate year end releases with awards, but even blockbusters bring in the honors. Spielberg’s World War II epic may not have won best picture at the Oscars in ’99, but it did garner Spielberg his second Best Director award.

“The Dark Knight” (2008)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Gross: $1,004,558,444

Arguably the greatest superhero movie of all time, Nolan’s second Batman film showed that audiences were willing to believe, and love, a serious take on the Caped Crusader. The performance by the late Heath Ledger might also be the most memorable in blockbuster history.

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