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NYFW Preview: Designers' Art Inspirations for FW14


NYFW Preview: Designer's Art Inspirations for FW14

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It's two days to the unveiling of the Fall 2014 collections at New York Fashion Week, and several designers have been too excited to keep their art inspirations under wraps, choosing to reveal them to fashion daily WWD before the runways have even been waxed.

From the Bauhaus to DeStijl, cribbing from paintings by Paul Klee and Johannes Vermeer to Ferran Adrià's innovative plates, here are BLOUIN Artinfo's picks for art references worth watching for when designers shortly send their collections to the catwalk.

"The work of Bauhaus artist Paul Klee." — Jordana Warmflash, Novis

"The visual artists that favored geometric principles of design, setting the way for the modernism of the 20th century." — Odile Benjamin, Raoul

"Robert Morris' architecture with strokes of Dutch art by Vermeer in rich, textured fabrics and yarns." — Aron Rose

"Graphic texture." — Richard Chai, Richard Chai Love

"De Stijl, the architecture of Theo van Doesburg and paintings by Bart van der Leck..." — Yeohlee Teng, Yeohlee

"Scandinavian graphic." — Whitney Pozgay, Whit

"Chromatic clashes." — Lubov Azria, BCBG Max Azria

"The extraordinarily moving oeuvre of artist Shirin Neshat (Iranian) and her interest in singer Oum Kalthoum (Egyptian)." — Ryan Lobo and Ramon Martin, Tome

"To appreciate the beauty of winter, I collaborated with artist Morgan Stuart to create a print of a winter motif that I resonated with and acknowledged before: the carnivorous winter." — Heather Lawton

"Rough terrain." — Nicole and Michael Colovos, Helmut Lang

"As a nod to Chef Ferran Adrià's masterful creations at El Bulli, I combined textural, playful and experimental ideas into this collection. Pearls and crystals are refined and softened by architectural and modern silhouettes, respectively." — Lela Rose

NYFW Preview: Designer's Art Inspirations for FW14
Composition XI, by Theo van Doesburg (1918)

"What Is a Photograph?" at the ICP [VIDEO]

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“What is a photograph?,” one of the International Center of Photography’s latest exhibitions,  brings together photographic works by 21 artists that in one way or another challenge the definition of the medium. The show, which opened Thursday and was organized by ICP curator Carol Squiers, features plenty of work by established names like Gerhard Richter, Lucas Samaras, Floris Neussus, and Sigmar Polke — some of whom have been experimenting with photography as far back as the 1970s and ’80s.

But a newer generation is also represented, one that has pushed photography in entirely new directions. “I was interested in people who were taking ideas form conceptual art and bringing them into energetic interaction with photography,” said Squiers. And for the most part, it’s the younger artists who seem to be creating the most progressive work. Unlike their more established counterparts here, they don’t necessarily have backgrounds in photography or see their work fitting squarely into the photographic tradition — or even, in some cases, that of fine art. Here are four emerging artists who exemplify the diversity of backgrounds, practices, and motivations behind what is being called “photography” today.

Travess Smalley

Inspired by painters like Lee Krasner and Henri Matisse, but using digital tools associated with photography, New York-based Travess Smalley, 27, explores the boundary between the two mediums. He made the works in the show, from his series “Capture Physical Presence” (2013), by creating “digital paintings” in Photoshop, printing them, cutting them up, creating collages, and then scanning the collages and further manipulating them digitally.

“I think with Travess he’s really using the scanner as a negative,” said Kim Bourus of Higher Pictures, where Smalley had his first solo New York show last year. “To that end, he’s definitely speaking towards a very specific and traditional vocabulary within the medium of photography.”

Squiers sees the fact that no camera is actually used in the creation of the work as irrelevant. “The history of photography is full of examples like that,” she said, “like photograms, where no camera was used. So new digital technology, like scanners, are just a new way to do that.”

Smalley’s inclusion in the show seems apt for other reasons, including artistic influences. The manipulated Polaroids taken in the 1970s by artist Lucas Samaras were one of the first experiences of art he ever had.

“Seeing these before I had any kind of context of what art, or a photograph as art, was, or anything like that made a big impression," he said. He still “vividly remember[s] looking through that book and seeing that photograph where he lifts his shirt and his stomach’s all like scratched or stretched where he pulled the emulsion around, completely abstract blues and greens. To go from that to being on the wall next to him gave me goose bumps.”

Artie Vierkant

“The essential reason why this question ‘What is a photograph?’ interests me is the very direct relationship of [my ‘Image Objects’ series] to the realm of documentation,” said Artie Vierkant, a 27-Year old New York artist.

The works in the series, of which there are a couple of examples from 2013 in the show at the ICP, take on both a digital life and a physical one. Each begins as a digital file of abstract color forms that he builds in Photoshop, which is then transferred onto Dibond, a type of aluminum panel, which is in turn cut into geometric shapes, resulting in a work that ends up flat, like a photograph, but has a suggestion of sculptural dimensionality. Each time the work is documented, it takes on a new life in the form of the documentation photos, which can be altered by viewers of his Tumblr feed and so give rise new derivative works based on the original.

“We have a primary viewing experience, encountering an object in space, and a secondary [one], viewing an object or work through documentation, and that often times is through photography,” Vierkant said. Through “photographing that work and then intervening, the work is questioning what a photograph is.”

Vierkant, who did study photography (as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania) but “broke out of it early,” doesn’t seem to see himself falling within a photographic tradition or indeed any particular artistic tradition. When asked for an inspiration, he was hard pressed to come up with a single name, but eventually settled on the poet Kenneth Goldsmith, with whom he studied as an undergraduate. “My work has lent itself to different interpretations,” he said. “I’ve been referred to as a digital artist, a photographer, a painter, which doesn’t make sense because I don’t paint.” Ultimately, it doesn’t really matter to Vierkant what others call him. “I’m actually interested in this interplay.”

Kate Steciw

Kate Steciw’s large, abstract, painterly digital collages — which themselves are cut into odd shapes and showcased in unconventionally shaped frames, with small stickers on them and around them — look like they belong to the same digitally manipulated family as Smalley’s or Vierkant’s works. But the motivations behind them are very different. All of the images used by the Pennsylvania-born, New York-based Steciw, 35, who worked for a long time as a commercial photo retoucher and has a master’s in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, are licensed stock images. “In that way I connect with the history of photography and its highly collaborative nature,” she said, adding that she feels a closer kinship to the appropriationist practice of Richard Prince than she does to artists who are interested in the creative potential inherent in dissemination — like, perhaps, Vierkant.

While each of her works is unique, she does like to play with the idea of a series or an edition. The two at ICP, for example, both from 2013, are a pair “of infinite possibilities, putting a high emphasis on the stickers as the only identifying, unique element.”

 

Mariah Robertson

A bright and splashy ribbon of paper hanging from the ceiling and, in places, nearly touching the floor at the entrance of the exhibition, Mariah Robertson’s “154 [detail]” (2010) is a unique color print on metallic paper. Though Robertson mainly works in photography, her final pieces are generally installations like this one, moving the photograph well outside of the pictorial frame.

Robertson, 38 and based in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, takes cues from the experimentation and “alternative historical processes” of precursors like the Victorian chemical hobbyists. She makes photograms and seeks out photographic accidents like solarizations and irregular chemical reactions to create work that feels both spontaneous and highly controlled, mostly abstract but sometimes with figurative elements.

Robertson’s one-of-a-kind works are created the old-fashioned way, by hand-processing color photographs in a dark room with a variety of methods. For one image she might use filters, enlarge negatives, and create handmade patterns by placing objects directly on the paper. She develops the photos with chemicals she sprays onto the surface of photographic paper, controlling their reactions by manipulating temperatures. And because she uses discontinued materials, some of her series may soon come to an end — meaning that her work engages traditional photographic practices and processes while navigating their imminent obsolescence.

"What Is a Photograph?" at the ICP [VIDEO]
ICP, What Is A Photograph?

Tony Bennett Art to Be Tribeca Trophy, Gago Will Face Fraud, and More

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Tony Bennett Art to Be Tribeca Trophy, Gago Will Face Fraud, and More

— Tony Bennett Painting at Tribeca: As part of a Tribeca Film Festival tradition, original works of art are given to filmmakers who win in the juried competitions. This year crooner Tony Bennett’s expressionistic painting of a scene in Central Park will be among the awards booty. Seven other works, including pieces by James NaresClifford Ross, and Catherine Murphy, will also be handed out to award winners. [Variety]

— Petty Business: Despite Larry Gagosian’s efforts to have Ronald Perelman’s case against him dismissed, New York State Supreme Justice Barbara Kapnick has allowed Perelman’s claim of fraud against Gagosian to go forward. The dispute started in September 2012 when Gagosian sued Perelman for allegedly reneging on an agreement and Perelman sued him back the same day for purportedly trying to force him into buying a $4 million Jeff Koons “Popeye” sculpture. Although Kapnick dropped other claims of breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, unjust enrichment, and deceptive business practices, she ordered Gago to face the fraud claim. [Bloomberg]

— Rosen Allegedly Removing Picasso: Some suspect that mega collector Aby Rosen is behind a plan to remove an extremely fragile 19-foot Picasso tapestry from the Four Seasons RestaurantRFR Holding, the company that owns the Seagram Building and counts Rosen as a founder, ordered the tapestry to be removed February 9 because the wall on which it hangs is allegedly at risk of collapsing. A lot of people aren’t buying that explanation and think Rosen has plans to get rid of the tapestry in favor of installing some contemporary art. [NYT]

— RIP Joan of Art: Former Second Lady Joan Mondale, who was nicknamed “Joan of Art” for her devotion to arts patronage, has died at age 83. [NYT]

— Presidio Denies George Lucas Museum: The Presidio Trust in San Francisco has rejected all three museum proposals for Crissy Field, including George Lucas’s Cultural Arts Museum, which might cause the “Star Wars” creator to take Rahm Emanuel up on his offer to put the museum in Chicago. [SF Examiner]

— Chicago Museum Attendance Down: Then again, Lucas might be deterred by new numbers that calculate that Chicago museum attendance was down in 2013. Meanwhile, a new series of scratch-off bus stop ads conceived by MCA Chicago could improve the 2014 numbers. [Chicago TribuneGizmodo]

— The Franklin School in Washington, D.C., will be converted into a contemporary art kunsthalle, according to city economic development officials. [WP]

— The Keir Collection of Islamic art has been pledged to the Dallas Museum of Art on a renewable 15-year loan. [NYT]

— Prominent art collecting hedge funder Adam Sender’s firm Exis Capital Management will shut down. [WSJ]

ALSO ON ARTINFO

Kim Gordon’s Sonic Send-Off for MoMA PS1’s Mike Kelley Retrospective

“What Is a Photograph?” at the ICP [VIDEO]

After First Year Controversy, Hammer Museum Changes “Made in L.A.” Biennial Awards

New App “Street Art NYC” Points New Yorkers to Graffiti Hot Spots

Check out our blog IN THE AIR for breaking news throughout the day.

Tony Bennett

Japan's Design Greats in One Pop-Up Store

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Much of the fun of New York Fashion Week (which starts this Thursday) happens outside of the Lincoln Center tents. This time, some of it involves the best of Japanese design under one roof — atNipponista,a pop-up shop in SoHo to exclusively showcase Japanese designers and brands while the shows are ongoing.

The best of Japanese fashion, art, food, lifestyle and craftsmanship, will all be on offer here, including Sachie Muramatsu's light fixtures; clothes by Yohji Yamamoto, Kansai Yamamoto, and Anrealage; shoes by Plantica; and earrings by Siri Siri.

There’s also furniture — such as the 'bean stool' by Ogata, safety pin wood work by Hiroshi Kanzaki, and glazed porcelain goods by Yuka Muta; technology –like Robo Garage's 'Robi' robot, a uniquely crafted bicycle from tokyobike.

Particularly engaging, however, is a colorful, eye-popping balloon sculpture by Daisy Balloon— a duo comprising balloon artist Rie Hosokai and art director/graphic designer Takashi Kawada that has fashioned couture-like dresses out of the little latex toys — that will be displayed in a specially sealed window designed to reduce balloon shrinkage.

The pop-up is the brainchild of Japanese department store Isetan Mitsukoshi Holdings, with the aim of highlighting the best in Japanese craftsmanship whose objective is 'Making Japan Cheerful'.

To see a slideshow of some highlights at the pop-up store, click here.

Nipponista, 47 Greene Street, New York. Open from February 6 to 13, 12pm to 8pm daily.

 

Japan's Design Greats in One Pop-Up Store
Daisy Balloon

Slideshow: Preview artworks from Zona Maco 2014

Metropolitan Opera Takes a Risk With New Production of "Prince Igor"

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Metropolitan Opera Takes a Risk With New Production of "Prince Igor"

“Prince Igor,” a defining work of Russian opera, will make its first appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in nearly 100 years, beginning on February 6. Written and composed by Alexander Borodin, it was left unfinished when the composer died in 1887 and was completed in 1888 by the composers Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov. The new production at the Met, directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, stars bass-baritone Ildar Abdrazakov in the title role, with Gianandrea Noseda conducting.

Borodin led an unusual life. The illegitimate son of a prince, he was born into serfdom although he received a better education due to his connection to royalty. He became enamored with music in his teens, but took a detour through his early life to study chemistry. He continued to write music in his spare hours, but it wasn’t until he met the composer Mily Balakirev that he began focusing more seriously on what was until that point just a side project. Together, with others, they formed a group called “The Five,” whose aim was to make distinctively Russian music that was removed from German influence. But even as Borodin’s work gained recognition, chemistry was still his first priority. During his career he helped found the School of Medicine for Women in St. Petersburg, no easy task in Tsarist Russia, and was a vocal advocate for education. Music remained a hobby, even if he was more famous for it.

The new production of “Prince Igor” arrives at the Met with some baggage. Tcherniakov is known as a director who takes risks, not all of them favorably received. His production of Verdi’s “La Traviata,” which opened the season at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan late last year, was met with jeers from the audience. In 2006, his production of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” at the Bolshoi Theater was so widely disliked that famous Russian soprano Galina Vishnevskayaboycotted the theater as a sign of protest.

“I think, really, in many ways, this is one of the most important pieces that we will have attempted to put on here,” Peter Gelb, the Met Opera’s general director, recently told the New York Times. The Met should be applauded for taking on challenging collaborators, even when they are rejected by other, more conservative, companies. The question now is how will the audiences at the Met accept Tcherniakov’s non-traditional ideas. Will “Prince Igor” receive a standing ovation? Or will this prove to be a massive misstep for the famed institution? 

Ildar Abdrazakov as Prince Igor Svyatoslavich and Oksana Dyka as Yaroslavna

Zona Maco Heats Up Mexico City Art Scene

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Zona Maco Mexico Arte Contemporaneo, the most prominent contemporary art fair in Mexico, now in its 11th edition, will run February 5-9 at Centro Banamex.

Fair organizers are hoping to top last year’s attendance of 40,000 with an ambitious schedule of events at nearby galleries and museums, as well as onsite conferences and seminars on architecture and contemporary art. The fair itself features five sections: the main area, “New Proposals,” “Zona Maco Sur,” “Design,” and “Modern Art.” Events include visits to art galleries, museums, and private spaces such as the JUMEX Collection.

This year, Zona Maco’s iconic “skull” logo got a makeover from Cadena+Asociados Branding, which took its inspiration from Huichol art as reflected in the new, vivid color pattern and ornamental style.

Another feature of the fair that will continue for the third consecutive year is a program aimed at newer collectors, “Menos de 2,500 dólares,” through which all of the fair’s participating galleries offer art for under $2,500 (30,000 Mexican pesos). Beginning this year, all such pieces will be marked with a distinctive burgundy tag. Fair director Zélika Garcia spearheaded the section in 2012.

A new fair making its debut this year is Material Art Fair (February 6-9), which will focus on emerging art and will be held at the Hilton Mexico City Reforma in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico. Material will feature 40 invited galleries, project spaces, bookstores, and non-profits.

Click on the slideshow to see images of work that will be featured at Zona Maco. 

Zona Maco Heats Up Mexico City Art Scene
Sergio Belinchón, "Adiós Amigo!," 2011 (detail)

It's Diane von Furstenberg, It's a Dress, It's a Wrap

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Few designers can claim to have their name synonymous with a single product, but Diane von Furstenberg is frequently — and deservedly — interchangeable with “the wrap dress,” which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year.

Discovered by former Vogue editor Diana Vreeland— who reportedly described it as “genius” when she set eyes upon it— and propelled to fame by celebrity fans, the dress’ most extraordinary quality is its timelessness and ability to make a statement. It’s been worn by women in power, such as First Lady Michelle Obama and Columbian activist Ingrid Betancourt, and celebrities like Madonna and Amy Winehouse— and has even had starring roles in films.

Cybill Shepherd donned one in "Taxi Driver," (1975) while getting chatted up by Robert De Niro. More recently, Amy Adams’ character in “American Hustle” (2013) rocked three different vintage specimens, echoing one of von Furstenberg's famous mantras: “Feel like a woman, wear a dress.”

As most iconic designs do, this one happened by accident, according to its creator, who had initially set out to make a ballerina-inspired wrap top and matching skirt. It morphed into a dress rather resembling a bathrobe, but oh, what a frock it turned out to be.

Through the years, the dress has been near-endlessly updated with variations in fabric and print — animal, geometric, you name it.  And now, a retrospective called “Journey of a Dress” showcases 200 of her best work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, along with a gallery of portraits of her by Andy Warhol, Chuck Close, Helmut Newton and Annie Leibovitz, as well as contemporary art works by the likes of Anh Duong and Zhang Huan from her personal collection.

“I make dresses that women get laid in,” von Furstenberg has told reporters, which helps explain how her fashion empire has grown to 1,500 points of sale in 55 countries and 85 branded boutiques worldwide.

The designer, notwithstanding her previous status as the German Princess Diane zu Fürstenberg, further noted: “This dress has paid for all my bills and my children’s educations.”

"Journey of a Dress" is on at the LACMA from now till April 1, 2014. To see highlights of the exhibition, click on the slideshow.

It's Diane von Furstenberg, It's a Dress, It's a Wrap
A general view of "Journey Of A Dress"

Slideshow: Highlights from Christie's Imp/Mod Evening Sale - February 4, 2014

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Slideshow: Wael Shawky at London's Serpentine Galleries

See film stills from "The Monuments Men," in Theaters Feb. 7

Slideshow: The Living's "Hy-Fi" Centerpiece for PS1's Summer Dance Parties

Green Party: Young Architects Winner to Bring Biotech to PS1 Courtyard

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Hy-Fi, an experimental, biodegradable pavilion designed by New York-based architectural firm The Living, has won MoMA PS1’s prestigiousYoung Architects Program competition this year, the museum announced on Wednesday. The structure, to be built this summer, will serve simultaneously as a high-visibility advertisement for its designers and the centerpiece of PS1’s outdoor Warm Up dance parties.

The firm’s name nods to its penchant for biotech-derived materials and its approach to urban spaces as living ecosystems — as does the design for the pavilion, which The Living says will be virtually carbon neutral. The structure, a tower comprised of cylindrical forms that split or merge at their bases and tops, will feature two new technologies that will be employed on an architectural scale for the first time ever at PS1. The bricks of its walls will be made from mushroom roots and discarded corn stalks processed, shaped, and dried into blocks by Ecovative, the Green Island, New York-based biomaterials lab that invented the process. The lower section will be the natural rust color of the bricks, in keeping with the colors of PS1’s brick walls. Higher up, the bricks will take on a luminous silver sheen, thanks to daylight-simulating mirror film, now in early development by 3M, that is designed to bounce light toward the ground (even after the sun goes down on the DJ sets).

“It combined two very important aspects for us,” said MoMA architecture curator Pedro Gadanho, who runs the Young Architects Program, speaking of the project. “Obviously, it operates as an exciting background for the party, but on the other hand, there’s the fact that it represents new ideas coming up in the architectural field. I think the way that they did this research on new materials in biotech is really exciting, and may represent a transformation for the construction industry.”

Hy-Fi has a relatively small physical footprint in relation to previous YAP winners, which should ease circulation at the Warm Up parties, which now attract about 5,000 guests. To keep them cool, the pavilion also includes a wading pool adjacent to the brick tower. But what about the squirting jets of water of designs past that would douse unsuspecting partygoers throughout the day? “Not this year,” Gadanho said.

The Living was founded in 2006 by GSAPP Living Architecture Lab director David Benjamin, who has in the past designed luminous floating water quality sensors for New York’s rivers, a lighted pavilion that texts pedestrians in Seoul, and a confidential project for Kanye West. The Living’s competition submission, along with those by its competitors — Collective-LOK, LAMAS, Pita + Bloom, and Fake Industries Architectural Agonism — will be on view at MoMA this summer in an exhibition organized by Gadanho and architecture department assistant Leah Barreras.  

A version of this story originally appeared on Object Lessons

 

Green Party: Young Architects Winner to Bring Biotech to PS1 Courtyard
Rendering of The Living’s "Hy-Fi"

Slideshow: Alice Sach Zimet's Photography Collection

Q&A: Anna D. Shapiro On “Of Mice and Men" and American Manhood

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Q&A: Anna D. Shapiro On “Of Mice and Men" and American Manhood

When the news hit that there would be a Broadway revival of “Of Mice and Men” this spring, the buzz centered around the New York debut of its star, James Franco. But what made this production so promising to many insiders was that Anna D.Shapiro would be directing the 1937 John Steinbeck play which the writer himself adapted from his novella published earlier that year. The Yale graduate cut her teeth in Chicago theater, most notably with the Steppenwolf Theatre where she developed Tracy Letts’s “August: Osage County,” the corrosive family drama that would win her the Tony Award when it transferred to Broadway.

Bloodlines do not connect the two migrant ranch hands in “Of Mice and Men”: the flinty dreamer George Milton, played by Franco, and Lennie Small, the gentle giant with a limited mental capacity, played by Chris O’Dowd. But that makes the play even more haunting and tragic, said Shapiro. “It’s essentially a choice,” said the director of George’s alliance with Lennie as they are buffeted by the harsh winds of rural California during the Depression. The fact that George at one point tries to slough off his relationship with Lennie as not bound by blood is a fallacy, said Shapiro. He’s even more tied to him because the two have chosen a partnership not only to dispel loneliness but also to share the dream of having their own farm one day — a goal that proves heartbreakingly elusive.

Shapiro recently spoke with ARTINFO about the particular challenges and burdens of American manhood that the play explores and which are as timely today as they were when it was first written. 

How did the production come about?

It was a project that I’ve wanted to do forever and some years ago it was in the process of being developed and James was the first person I thought of to play George. But he got very busy, which is not surprising, James being James, and the production fell apart. I was heartbroken. So it was a stroke of luck when it came back around and James was already attached to it.

What made you think of Franco for George?

George is a complicated character and James had always read complicated to me, even when he’s doing stoner comedies. The question is always, “Who is he? What does he really want?” And that’s a great quality. I also suspected that the guy was super smart, and getting to know him and working with him and becoming friends with him, he is super smart. And there’s nothing more fun than working with actors who are super smart.

Why did you cast Chris O’Dowd [the Irish actor who broke through in “Bridesmaids”] as Lennie?

I thought Lennie needed to be someone who is at his core strangely charming, which is different from childlike. It’s different from damaged, where there is this inevitability of, “Well this guy is a big scary guy. Of course bad things happen to this guy.” Chris has been a big guy since sixth grade, and when he and I talked, one of the things he said to me was, “I’ve been hurting people accidentally my whole life.” And I thought, “Fan-fucking-tastic!”

These characters were created in the depth of the Depression. How does that translate in 2014 America? 

The one thing that never changes in America is that the white straight male is born with a promise. Women are not promised very much and we embody our disappointment from the beginning. But what do you do when the world has made you a promise and you believe as you come into middle age that it is just not coming to fruition, as many of the men in my world do, even the unbelievably successful ones?  There is just not enough to give the dream to everyone and I do think that becomes more acute at different times historically. People have lost their jobs, more people are encountering a kind of difficulty because they thought they were going to have a different kind of life than they’re having. I think what’s constant is the collision between what success means to a straight white American male and what he’s given. That was true then and it’s true now.

During the Depression, men thought it was their fault that they were failures. Is there the same shame and guilt today or are the feelings born out of a feeling of frustrated entitlement?  

That’s a really important and fascinating idea. To be reductive to make a point, if we’re talking about the spine of American realism in theater-making, then we’re talking about the failure of the patriarchy.  In the plays of Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams or Clifford Odets, the father has made a promise and has fucked up somehow, leaving the son to deal with the fallout. This play is a little different because there’s no structural familial unit. This is a world of extreme utility. The only thing that matters is your function. And if you aren’t functioning then you’re talking about being taken out back and shot in the head because you’re like a dog that can’t hunt. What can you accomplish and what do you not accomplish? So I do feel that straight American men, they get short shrift in this area. I think they feel guilt and shame a lot about what they don’t accomplish. It’s a terrible burden in my opinion and I’m fascinated by it.

Why does George choose to make a social contract with Lennie?

I have many feelings about this but I’m hesitant to answer because we’re just starting rehearsals and I feel in a way that James gets to find that out. James will figure out why he’s chosen this relationship, but I will say this: I think it will be as baffling to George why we love anyone as it is baffling to us.

Some critics have faulted the novella and play for being melodramatic. Is that one of the dangers?

Yeah, I think about this a lot. It’s a tragedy and tragedies are inevitable. I don’t think many people who are coming to see the play will not know essentially what happens. But plays are not about what happens. Plays are about understanding what happens, what it means.  If we just leaned into the story, for lack of a better word, it would still be a powerful story but, like delight, it might disappear an hour after you saw it. You cried really hard and then it’s over, just like you laugh really hard and it’s over. The essential themes of the play really have nothing to do with what happens but how what happens echoes in our own lives, in our choices and in our own heartbreak and in our own wishes. 

James Franco and Chris O'Dowd in the upcoming "Of Mice and Men" on Broadway.

Slideshow: "David Altmejd: Juices" at Andrea Rosen Gallery

"Collectors Can't Stop": Alice Sachs Zimet on What Photo Collecting Has Taught Her

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Alice Sachs Zimet has always been something of an innovator—it was she who, as the director of Chase Manhattan’s cultural affairs marketing group in the 1980s and ’90s, practically invented a now ubiquitous corporate role. So it is little surprise that as a collector, she is attracted to the medium of photography. Although her beloved trove—some 200 works strong—is mostly black-and-white, color roars through in the subjects: Robert Capa’s revered 1948 image of Pablo Picasso shielding a promenading Françoise Gilot with a parasol; late 19th-century Edward Steichen portraits of himself, Auguste Rodin, and vivacious Belle Epoque stage performer Yvette Guilbert; Berenice Abbott’s 1927 Jean Cocteau et le masque d’Antigone; and a 1969 picture of David Hockney and Henry Geldzahler by Cecil Beaton are but a very few examples of the images that deck her walls. Zimet’s Art Deco apartment, perfectly triangulated on Madison Avenue between the Metropolitan and the Guggenheim museums, maintains the black-and-white scheme, with the exception of a small guest room off the kitchen.

That room is green—technically Palladian Blue, the wall color of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.— and in it hang Zimet’s first acquisitions. Contemporary Conceptualist Andrew Bush’s Columbines and Studio Kitchen, both 1982, were purchased a year or so after they were made when Zimet took a field trip to Southampton’s Parrish Art Museum with Sam Wagstaff, the lover of Robert Mapplethorpe (whose pieces grace Zimet’s living room). The painterly, softly lit interior shots with lush flora and fauna are reminiscent of a Renoir dream and somewhat antithetical to the collector’s taste for portraiture. Her mother, however, “was a great gardener,” notes Zimet, and personal connections to each work have guided all her acquisitions since. But she “couldn’t buy one, I had to buy two,” she recounts. “I didn’t realize that collectors can’t stop.”

The revelation came despite an art-informed upbringing. Her parents, Nadine and Dr. Ralph Zimet, were avid supporters of the arts and collectors of French modern masters. Growing up, Nadine was influenced by her uncle Paul Sachs, patron and associate director of the Fogg Museum at Harvard and successor to the Goldman Sachs financial empire. Nadine became the custodian of family owned works by Bonnard, Vuillard, Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Picasso, and Delacroix, which populated the Zimets’ Scarsdale, New York, home. “When we were born, my parents bought art to celebrate each birth,” says Zimet of herself and her two sisters. Thirteen Bonnards from the 1899 series “Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris,” purchased for Zimet’s arrival, hang in her apartment today.

A dedicated Francophile who travels to Paris at least once a year, Zimet sometimes runs her own place as a salon in the fashion of Mesdames Geoffrin or Récamier, with curators, museum directors, and gallerists buzzing in and out. She hosts dinners for the many boards on which she sits and is actively involved with the collections committees of the International Center of Photography and the Harvard Art Museums. “I know she’s a descendant of Paul Sachs, but it wasn’t until about a year ago that I found that out,” says Thomas Lentz, director of the Harvard Art Museums, who has consulted with Zimet as the museum’s current expansion plans unfold. “It’s safe to say that photography will play a much larger role in this new museum, and she’s an advanced thinker when it comes to the field.”

Students from the International Center of Photography, the Camera Club of New York, and the graduate program in visual arts administration at New York University, who know her as a faculty member, are invited to observe how a serious collection is managed. Lessons begin with the works hanging outside Zimet’s front door, including Albrecht Tübke’s 2010 portrait of the patron herself, and continue throughout the residence, where works are hung salon style. The collection’s professional archive is conveniently outlined in a room-by-room checklist, and Zimet prefers to allow guests to peruse pieces alone, encouraging them to return with questions.

Among the mostly vintage works are a fair number of contemporary exceptions, notably Vik Muniz’s Jackie (in ketchup), 1999, currently on loan to ICP, and three largescale black-and-white portraits of South African lesbians by Zanele Muholi, who considers her work to be a project of visual activism. Muholi won the 2013 Carnegie International Fine Prize and will soon have a show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. But it’s neither accolades nor method to which the collector responds when acquiring work. “I saw the one on the left,” Zimet says, pointing toward Lumke Stemela, 2011, showing a shorn-haired woman with a steady gaze, “and thought, my god, what a portrait.” Humanistic portrayals of people living their lives—such as Lisette Model’s Coney Island, 1939–41, a shot of an overweight woman bent over and laughing on the beach—are what characterize the collection. “Alice’s tenacity to have that print she couldn’t quite afford but really loved made me want to find a way to get it into her collection,” says New York dealer Howard Greenberg.

As one of the few in her family who didn’t attend Harvard, Zimet sees herself as a pioneer. “I’m a redhead,” she declares. During a postgraduate internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she was drawn to the education department rather than to curatorial endeavors, and her proclivities for humanism flourished. Her interest led to stints at NYU’s Grey Art Gallery and the ICP, but after a grant from the NEA ran out, she realized her business acumen and social consciousness made her perfect for a job in philanthropy.

“I go in for an interview dressed as an art person—long skirt, glasses, a lot of hair,” she recalls of her 1979 introduction to Chase Manhattan Bank. “Never in a million years will they hire me, I thought. I wasn’t wearing a suit or an Hermès scarf.” She was offered a job on the spot. She sees “opportunities most people would probably miss,” says Aubrey Hawes, her former boss, who remains one of her closest friends. “She loves having ideas and affecting other people with those ideas, which are somewhat infectious.”

At Chase, Zimet thrived. She began in the philanthropy office, where she secured more than a million dollars for arts funding. In 1984 or ’85, the head of corporate communications, the aforementioned Hawes, “was looking for a volunteer to cross-pollinate,” Zimet says. The mission was to mine resources from other departments to maximize philanthropic dollars by creating sponsorship programs. Soon Zimet was traveling the globe—Asia, South America, Europe—setting up lucrative donor opportunities “to do good and to do business for the bank.” There were Halloween performances in Paris with Martha Graham, events with Twyla Tharp and Paul Taylor. Anyone who received a free ticket to the Guggenheim as a result of faithfully using his or her Chase credit card back in the late 1980s has Zimet to thank. Her growing department was a rainmaker, earning “a billion or so for the private bank and a billion scattered around the other businesses.” The projects she managed “became a model for what sponsorship is today,” says the collector of her nearly 20-year tenure in the field of crossover marketing and philanthropy. With her bonuses (a pittance compared with the earnings of those making headlines today), she began her own art collection.

Zimet left the bank in 1999 and established Arts + Business Partners, the arts-consulting business she still runs today. Being her own boss allowed her to return to her roots as an educator. “She’s immersed in the field and has established strong connections,” says Suzanne Nichols, associate director of education at ICP. “Alice builds a community around her and provides a lot of information to steer her students in the right direction.”

Zimet stresses that collecting requires due diligence. “If you want to be a collector, you have to create a circle of friends, a circle of trust,” she explains. She has many stories about acquiring pieces by big artists for small sums. Pointing to her six works from Hiroshi Sugimoto’s “Time Exposed” series, Zimet says, “I got them for $800. When I met him, he told me, ‘You probably paid less than what I made them for.’ ” She patronizes organizations such as the aids Community Research Initiative of America, Friends Without Borders, and the Aperture and Magnum foundations. “I bought a Cindy Sherman at the Artists Space benefit for $500. These events are a fabulous place for collectors to go and for emerging artists to give their pieces to get their names known.” Another tip is to attend auction after-sales. At Sotheby’s in 2012, Zimet snagged Chien-Chi Chang’s The Chain #14, 1988, which was bought in on an estimate of $5,000 to $7,000. “I made a post-sale bid for $2,200, which was accepted with no negotiation,” she says. An updated appraisal rendered a $9,000 valuation after one year.

Much of Zimet’s collection has followed a similar path: bought on instinct, appreciated in value, and always acquired out of passion. As a woman who will continue to collect for many years to come, Zimet has already promised her collection to a museum she won’t disclose. She is also passing her collecting philosophy on to her students. “I get overwhelmed easily,” Zimet admits. “One reason I gravitated toward photography is because of the small community of galleries and artists.” Much like where her eye leads her, humanity is what most enraptures Zimet: “It’s in my soul.”

"Collectors Can't Stop": Alice Sachs Zimet on What Photo Collecting Has Taught Her
Alice Sachs Zimet

Slideshow: Highlights from Sotheby's Impressionist, Modern & Surrealist Art Evening Sale- February 5, 2014

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