Whitney Museum: Biennial 2012

Went to the Whitney's Biennial 2012. Some might call this a Hodge-Podge as sculpture, painting, installations, and photography (as well as dance, theater, music, and film) fill the entire Whitney Museum of American Art in the 2012 edition of the Whitney Biennial.

 I call it a mess.

The 2012 Biennial takes over most of the Whitney from March 1 through May 27, with portions of the exhibition and some programs continuing through June 10. The 2012 Biennial is in constant flux, with artists, works, and experiences varying over the course of the exhibition.

So it's an ever-changing mess.

The participating artists were selected by Elisabeth Sussman, Sondra Gilman and Jay Sanders, a freelance curator and writer who has spent the past decade in the gallery world as well as on independent curatorial projects.

... All three should be ashamed of themselves.

If you want to read more about the Whitney Biennial 2012. Though I don't know why you would.

Saturday Chatterbox

"A 65-year-old man who's angry is a loser. A 20-year-old angry man is a sexy leader. Nothing makes me angry anymore". -- John Waters in The Wall Street Journal

Speaking of my Baltimore roots, Your blogger is greatly anticipating having his relative or childhood friend, schoolmate, or neighbor from Baltimore County spend a tiny portion of their new Mega Million winnings to buy him a nice lunch... And maybe a new apartment?

 Goodbye Keith Olbermann... Actually I gave up on you after your first tantrum at Current TV. Too many "issues".

John Waters on Neurosis: "Routine is not the enemy of creativity. I'm very organized. I go out to get the paper within 20 seconds of the same time each day; my hangovers are scheduled a year in advance. I don't have time to be nuts. If I was retired, I might be completely out of my mind, because I'd have time to give in to neurotic thinking. Now I just have to work it into a schedule. That neurotic behavior has to produce". from the WSJ.

Celebrities spotted (and chatted up) in Manhattan this week: Danny Aiello, Richard Kind, Chip Zien

 Manhattan pizza slices down to 75-cents per slice as part of a pizza war reports today's New York Times.

Note to Self: Look out for artist John Currin. John Waters sez he's interesting.

Rest in peace, Anthony Razzano. You'll be missed by so many (including for your Activist efforts on behalf of your neighbors and doormen)... The laughs... Your big eyes... Your great spirit, Tony. Tragic loss.

39 degrees as I write this... Seasonably cool, for a change...

 Less than a full work week to Spring Break. Am so ready!

Am once again on a modified self-styled vegetarian version of  Phase One of the South Beach Diet... I want to drop 10-15 lbs of winter weight...

And now... I gotta go clean this apartment... Cleaning burns calories, you see...

Thursday: Handling It All...

March 8th! NYC temperature at 4:45pm? 70 °F. This is just wrong!

WNBC is too foolish to oust anchor Sue Simmons. She is a local TV News Goddess... These stupid consultants... They want new, hip, cutting edge... But, local audiences prefer their hometown feel. WNBC is done.

One month only... newly restored Keith Haring bathroom is open to the public til March 31. Details of the Keith Haring Mural at the LGBT Center.

According to the NYTimes, new gay club XL is up and running with different themes... "At the moment, Friday is popular with clean-cut young professionals, while Saturday draws an older, well-muscled crowd from Chelsea. Sunday is Latino night. Earlier in the week, there are also occasional cabaret shows featuring drag queens and other acts. And starting today is a new party called 20-Something Thursday". So far, I don't see a theme for me... lol.

I've been groovin on some Stevie Nicks lately... Here's Stevie Nicks official You Tube channel... I especially dig her other worldly stuff...

I can tell you that Eric R. Kandel is a brainiac. "I have no difficulty about enhancing memory. Removing memory is more complicated. If it’s to reduce the impact of a particular trauma, I have no difficulty with that, but there are other ways to deal with it — cognitive behavior therapy, exposure therapy, drugs. To go into your head and pluck out a memory of an unfortunate love experience, that’s a bad idea... You know, in the end, we are who we are. We’re all part of what we’ve experienced... It shapes you."

Don't forget... Clocks spring forward on Sunday!

New mantra from the book Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway by Susan Jeffers: "I can handle it"...

Lonely Narcissism Skewered By Cindy Sherman

Saw a preview of Cindy Sherman exhibit this past week at MoMA...

Sherman is considered one of the greatest Modern artists of the last 40 years... Essentially, she makes self portraits in various characterizations that make statements about feminism, aging, sexuality, pornography, youth, aristocracy, pop culture and lonely Narcissism.

The New York Times review of Cindy Sherman informs: "she is famous for working solo in her studio, without assistants. Part of the power of her images is their home-alone quality. We know that everything we see in a Sherman image she put there, deliberately, decisively."

MoMA's Cindy Sherman is great fun...

A great deal of it is the big gaudy colorful stuff...

I found the smaller early works the most fascinating and insighful to what made the artist tick...

Print/Out at MoMA

Just got back from the Member Preview for the following exhibition at MoMA...

Print/Out
February 19–May 14, 2012
At MoMA.

This exhibition examines the evolution of artistic practices related to the print medium, from the resurgence of traditional printmaking techniques—often used alongside digital technologies—to the proliferation of self-published artists’ projects.

... Examines the many roles that prints play in artistic practices today, embracing the versatile and global nature of contemporary art in the last two decades. On view from February 19 to May 14, 2012, in The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art Exhibition Gallery, Print/Out brings together approximately 70 series or projects drawn from MoMA's extensive collection of more than 50,000 prints and illustrated books, while also including several important loans from private and public collections.

Print/Out is part of a series of large-scale print surveys periodically organized by the Museum's Department of Prints and Illustrated Books in order to assess the current state of the medium. The last two exhibitions were Printed Art: A View of Two Decades, organized by Riva Castleman in 1980, and Thinking Print: Books to Billboards: 1980-1995, organized by Deborah Wye in 1996. Part of Print/Out takes place on the Museum's second floor with the exhibition Printin', co-organized by the artist Ellen Gallagher and Associate Curator Sarah Suzuki, and centered around Gallagher's major portfolio DeLuxe (2004-05). The Museum is also hosting Print Studio, an interactive space that explores the evolution of artistic practices relating to the medium of print. -- Dexigner


Print/Out review by Ken Johnson in The New York Times: "Abounding in blatant verbiage, it has a hectoring, noisy feeling, as if you were being yelled at for the duration of your visit".

Ouch!

Reflections on Paul Cadmus

I went out to see the following three events/exhibits (and a few old friends) at the Brooklyn Museum yesterday...

Discussion: "Reflections on Paul Cadmus"

Jon Andersson, longtime partner of Paul Cadmus, whose work is included in the exhibition HIDE/SEEK: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, spoke to scholar and author Philip Eliasoph about Cadmus’s life and work.

Jon recalled meeting Cadmus for the first time in Nantucket and how their relationship developed over the 35 years that they were in partnership.

Afterward I visited the following exhibitions at the museum:

Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties

HIDE/SEEK: Difference in Desire and American Portraiture

(Luigi Lucioni (American, 1900–1988). Paul Cadmus, 1928. Oil on canvas, 16 x 12 1/8 in. (40.6 x 30.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 2007.28)

Caught up with many old friends that were in attendance including: Jon Andersson, Philis Raskind, Sue Renee Bernstein and Eric Stephen Jacobs.

Below is one of the Cadmus drawings of Jon that was discussed in the afternoon interview:

Kandinsky at the Guggenheim

If you're a purist who found the Cattelan exhibition to be hollow and garish...

Then be sure to check out the side galleries there at the Guggenheim.

My favorite show there?

Kandinsky's Painting with White Border

Vasily Kandinsky’s canvas, Painting with White Border (Bild mit weissem Rand, May 1913) was inspired by a trip the artist took to Moscow in fall 1912. Upon his return to Munich, where he had been living intermittently since 1896, Kandinsky searched for a way to visually record the “extremely powerful impressions” of his native Russia that lingered in his memory. Over a period of five months, he explored various motifs and compositions in study after study, moving freely between pencil, pen and ink, watercolor, and oil. After he produced at least 16 studies, Kandinsky finally arrived at the pictorial solution to the painting: the white border. In his seminal 1911 treatise Über das Geistige in der Kunst. Insbesondere in der Malerei (On the Spiritual in Art: And Painting in Particular), Kandinsky wrote that the color white expresses a “harmony of silence . . . pregnant with possibilities.”


This focused exhibition, co-organized with the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., brings the Guggenheim’s final version of the painting from May 1913 together with twelve related drawings and watercolors and one major oil sketch, and features the results of an extensive conservation study of the Guggenheim and Phillips paintings. The study unearthed a previously unknown landscape painting beneath the surface of the Phillips’s Sketch I for Painting with White Border (Moscow) (Skizze für Bild mit weissem Rand [Moskau], 1913). A rare glimpse into Kandinsky’s creative process, Kandinsky’s Painting with White Border reveals the gradual and deliberate way the artist sought to translate his ideas into a bold new language of abstraction.


Until January 15th, 2012.

Maurizio Cattelan: All at the Guggenheim

I got over to see the fun show at the Guggenheim...

Maurizio Cattelan: All.

Quite striking to see all this stuff hanging in the atrium there...

Very Warhol-ish...

Sort of a mobile... Sort of collage... Sort of an assemblage...

Taxidermy, mannequins, statues, waxworks, paintings... you name it...

Only until January 22nd, 2012.

Diego Rivera at MoMA

I went to a Member Preview this long weekend to see Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art at MoMA.

Very interesting show. On the second floor of the museum...

For me, Indian Warrior is a showstopper... (At left)

Although, the most interesting mural panel is Frozen Assets...

... Be sure to check out the key that identifies the buildings along the 1930's NYC skyline... This panel was quite controversial in it's day as Rivera made a strong statement against Capitalism...

No doubt he would have completed a helluva mural around the banking industry debacles of recent years...

Here's their press release on this exhibition:

Diego Rivera was the subject of MoMA’s second monographic exhibition (the first was Henri Matisse), which set new attendance records in its five-week run from December 22, 1931, to January 27, 1932. MoMA brought Rivera to New York six weeks before the exhibition’s opening and gave him studio space within the Museum, a strategy intended to solve the problem of how to present the work of this famous muralist when murals were by definition made and fixed on site. Working around the clock with two assistants, Rivera produced five “portable murals”—large blocks of frescoed plaster, slaked lime, and wood that feature bold images drawn from Mexican subject matter and address themes of revolution and class inequity. After the opening, to great publicity, Rivera added three more murals, now taking on New York subjects through monumental images of the urban working class and the social stratification of the city during the Great Depression. All eight were on display for the rest of the show’s run. The first of these panels, Agrarian Leader Zapata, is an icon in the Museum’s collection.
This exhibition will bring together key works made for Rivera’s 1931 exhibition, presenting them at MoMA for the first time in nearly 80 years. Along with mural panels, the show will include full-scale drawings, smaller working drawings, archival materials related to the commission and production of these works, and designs for Rivera’s famous Rockefeller Center mural, which he also produced while he was working at the Museum. Focused specifically on works created during the artist’s stay in New York, this exhibition will draw a succinct portrait of Rivera as a highly cosmopolitan figure who moved between Russia, Mexico, and the United States, and will offer a fresh look at the intersection of art making and radical politics in the 1930s. MoMA will be the exhibition’s sole venue.

Treasures at the Met

I'd never heard about these two artists at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until recently. Well, I had heard of them, of course... But I didn't know much about them...

Goya (1784-1792) and Jacques Louis David (1748-1825).

You really need many hours to explore the Met...

One of New York's great landmarks and treasure troves...

Open late on Saturday Nights... Who knew...?

The Max Ginsburg Retrospective

Realist painters earn extra points from me for... well... realism...

Max Ginsburg does extraordinary work and I was grateful to see his retrospective Exhibition at the Salmagundi Club before it closed in early August...

There's a beauty of a book available here or here.

Salmagundi Club, 47 Fisth Avenue always has great shows open to the public...

If I lived in that area I would definitely consider membership...

Here's another great shot I took of another Max Ginsberg masterpiece.

Here's a shot I took of Max Ginsberg The Friends.

MoMA: Figures in the Garden

Twas a beautiful day yesterday to spend some time in the MoMA Sculpture Garden...

Seems the last couple of times I was at MoMA, the weather wasn't so good for a proper Sculpture Garden visit...

Below is some text from their press release on what treasures are currently on display out there...

This summer’s Sculpture Garden installation brings together figurative works from the late 19th century to the present day. Making its debut in the Sculpture Garden is Figurengruppe/Group of Figures, by contemporary German artist Katharina Fritsch (b. 1956). Conceived in 2006–08, the work features nine life-size sculptures of, among other figures, St. Michael, a Madonna, a giant, and a snake, all rendered in precise detail and finished in bold colors. Religious symbolism and references to mythology abound, yet any fixed meaning remains open and elusive.


Group of Figures is joined by earlier works such as Auguste Rodin’s heroic St. John the Baptist Preaching (1878–80) and Aristide Maillol’s pensive Mediterranean (1902–05). Striking a casual pose in his derby hat is Elie Nadelman’s Man in the Open Air (c. 1915), and perched atop a tall pedestal is Gaston Lachaise’s open-armed, voluptuous Floating Figure (1927). Perennial favorites like Picasso’s She-Goat (1950) and Miró’s Moonbird (1966) are on view as well, in addition to works by Renée Sintenis, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore, and Tom Otterness.

All photos by me. And are viewable in more detail on the Todd Hellskitchen Flickr Page.

It's a nice perk of MoMA Membership with the added benefit of   MoMA's proximity to Hell's Kitchen... That dropping by the MoMA Sculpture Garden for a morning read, some quiet time, or a session to just sit and catch up on Smartphone emails is so easily doable!

It's all good...

Here's an article on Katharina Fritsch, written by Eleonore Hugendubel and posted on the MoMA blog.

The Other Gorgeous Day in Tweets...

Just now catching up with a a few days ago... Using Twitter's microblog as my template. Adding a few words and hyperlinks... But do read these in reverse order to get the chronology of it all...

Cold Stone Creamery's Peanut Butter Cup Perfection with dark chocolate ice cream in a waffle cup... Soooo gooood.

Outdoor public space at Worldwide Plaza was pretty damned jammed at 2pm on this gorgeous afternoon... And why not?

Olive Garden five cheese penne was good. Rich and filling. Salad too, of course with dressing on the side... (Hold the breadsticks!)

Lion King takes the stage at Broadway in Bryant Park... "Circle of Life"...

Bryant park lawn is pretty crowded. Not a chair at a table to be found at the back. People circling w/ bagged lunches looking for a chair.

Awesome weather for "Broadway in Bryant Park" today. Jersey Boy's cast asks "Who Loves You?" as I tweet...

NYPL main branch has a good Centennial Exhibit. Nicomar would like this. So would the Queens Librarian Lady. Worth checking out...

Watching Jersey Boys singing Big Girls Don't Cry at Bryant Park...

Saw more Aug Art: Nancy Grossman: Combustion Scapes (PS1) at Michael Rosenfeld Gallery and more Elliott Erwitt @ Edwynn Houk where famed New York 1974 chihuahua signed print can be had for $5,500...

Beautiful morning in Midtown East.

Art Gallery day for me. Saw Lever House's sexy David LaChapelle exhibit From Darkness to Light

Also saw Pace-MacGill's Diane Arbus, Robert Rauchenberg, Garry Winnogrand, Duanne Michals, Robert Frank, and Lee Friedlander... Want to See My Portfolio?

Hell's Kitchen at 11AM: Scattered Clouds, Temperature 73 °F, Humidity 86%... Partly sunny. Highs in the lower 80s. East winds 5 to 10 mph.

Art Meets Reality : MoMA's Talk to Me

Went to a Member preview of Talk to Me at MoMA over the weekend...

Here's MoMA's press release:

Whether openly and actively or in subtle, subliminal ways, things talk to us. Tangible and intangible, and at all scales—from the spoon to the city, the government, and the Web, and from buildings to communities, social networks, systems, and artificial worlds—things communicate. They do not all speak up: some use text, diagrams, visual interfaces, or even scent and temperature: others just keep us company in eloquent silence.

Talk to Me at MoMATalk to Me explores this new terrain, featuring a variety of designs that enhance communicative possibilities and embody a new balance between technology and people, bringing technological breakthroughs up or down to a comfortable, understandable human scale. Designers are using the whole world to communicate, transforming it into a live stage for an information parkour and enriching our lives with emotion, motion, direction, depth, and freedom.

And I also refilled my Metrocard at a real working Metrocard machine on exhibit at MoMA without a line...

Art met my reality...

More photos on My Flickr page.

MoMA's P.S. 1 Summer 2011 is Not for Everyone

Scooted over to MoMA's PS 1 today to see what they have going for the summer...

The most striking addition? The cheery young red shirt young people were scattered throughout and were happy to discuss art with the patrons. This seems like a promising new program....

However... I was completely disappointed and unfulfilled by the curation choices which were heavy on multi-media and conceptual showings.

I think it's nice that they attempt to showcase young new artists... I do.

But I prefer a wider range of artistic voices and more choices for the viewer to admire...

This stuff all seemed pretentious and obtuse to me...

In other words, showcase MORE young artists, all at once, instead of these artsy installations that take up entire rooms or floors with tv screens or a single minute piece of art...

Nothing really spoke to me with the exception except of one show by Nancy Grossman:

"Nancy Grossman: Heads"... On view until August 15, 2011.

"Nancy Grossman has been making art for more than fifty years and is best known for her leather-wrapped sculptures of heads, which the artist made from the late 1960s through to the 1980s. This exhibition brings together fourteen sculptures, highlighting the formal and expressive range within the series.

While Grossman regularly refers to the heads as self-portraits, they are not made to resemble the artist herself."


Unfortunately, that single exhibition is not worth the trip or the price of admission alone...

Even the new too low, rock like seating in the cafe has been made uncomfortable and ineffective...

This entire MoMA annex desperately needs a new vision and leadership in order to thrive and to engage the museum visitor...

Right now, it's all just a mess...

Happy Flag Day 2011

Flag. 1954–55
Encaustic, oil, and collage on fabric mounted on plywood (three panels)
42 1/4 x 60 5/8" (107.3 x 154 cm)
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Gift of Philip Johnson in honor of Alfred H. Barr, Jr.
© 1996 Jasper Johns/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

The Photography of Roy Blakey

For many years, when I was in the business of show, Roy Blakey did all my promotional photography...

Needless to say my publicity pictures were *nothing* like these artistic shots now posted on the Artistry of Male Gallery...

As a lady cabaret performer pointed out to me when I first booked a session with Roy... "He's like a little elf jumping all around".

His studio was up a steep stairwell in Chelsea and he would virtually run down the stairs to let one in and then dash back up the hill like a little leprechaun ahead of you...

He was great fun to work with and so the shots he got were always fun looking...

But not as fun as these shots shown here, I'm afraid... LOL!

I wonder whatever happened to Roy Blakey? I know he sold his NYC studio and moved out West many years ago. I think of him often and fondly... And especially when I'm in the area where his studio used to be... Near 24th Street next to what was once Billy's Stopless, a treasured Manhattan landmark for many years.

Both Roy and his colleague Kenn Duncan were famous for show business photography for After Dark magazine

Elliott Erwitt: Personal Best

The photography of Elliott Erwitt is on view at the International Center of Photography through August 28, 2011.

Erwitt's celebrated work straddles documentary and commercial photography...

His 2008 book Elliott Erwitt's New York is a respected classic in the field of black and white photography... Many shots from the book are featured in this exhibition.

1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York, NY 10036
Phone: 212.857.0000
Email: visit@icp.org


Hours
Tuesday–Thursday: 10:00 am–6:00 pm
Friday: 10:00 am–8:00 pm
Saturday–Sunday: 10:00 am–6:00 pm
Closed: Mondays
Closed: New Year's Day, January 1;
Independence Day, July 4; Thanksgiving Day; Christmas Day, December 25.


Admission
General Admission: $12
Students and Seniors (with valid ID): $8
ICP Members: Free
Children under 12: Free
Voluntary Contribution Fridays 5:00–8:00 pm


Free Friday night programs in the Museum are made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Council and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.

Memorial Day Weekend 2011 Stuff

Had some dental work done on Friday to start the weekend with a smile...

Also caught the current exhibitions at American Folk Art Museum... (American Folk Art Museum 45 West 53rd St. at 6th Ave.) They are going to lose that location soon. MoMA bought the building... Current shows include Quilts, and More Quilts, and still another quilt. Robin of Ma et Ra would love this. Me? Not so much.

But I did enjoy the Eugene Von Bruenchenhein show and the Perspectives: Forming the Figure show had it's puppet like creations (pictured by Anton Brookes)...


Caught Lady Gaga's Central Park GMA concert on the DVR. Somebody should get fired for the lousy direction of that... Especially for blowing Lady G's entrance...! I guess ABC is fully staffed with Summer Interns?... Including the Director? LOL...

Had a Junior's "Little Fella" chocolate cheesecake on the walk home... ($4.25)

Todd Robbins will be playing the piano next Monday through Friday at the Piano in Bryant Park... I caught him last year...

Wishing you a memorable Memorial Day weekend... And say "Thank you, Troops"!

Happy Armageddon Day!

Some whacked 89 year old fool with money to burn thinks the world will end at 6pm today... Not sure what time zone that is exactly...

He had previously predicted that the Rapture would occur in September 1994.

"According to familyradio.com, on Saturday an earthquake will open all graves, allowing believers to be "transformed into glorified spiritual bodies to be forever with God.... Non-believers who survive Camping's predicted earthquake will exist in a world of "horror and chaos beyond description" until October 21, 2011 when the earth will be completely destroyed". (Source here)

What do I need to do before doomsday?

My bed will be unmade at doomsday. Actually I only ever made the bed about three times a year during my whole lifetime... It's in a separate room... So, who cares? I guess I never got around to dusting the curio cabinet and the kitchen could have used another deep cleaning...

Oh, I want to hurry up and place an order on Amazon.com for this book... Don't tell Keith because he'll be disgusted... I'll have to eat vegan as my last meal... LOL...

I'm so glad I added Keith Haring Sketchbooks 1978 to my library this past week before the end of the world... Published by Gladstone Gallery, it features reproductions of the sketches included in their current exhibition. Copies are available for $25 at Gladstone Gallery West 21st Street and West 24th Street.

Also glad I got to see the Mapplethorpe Exhibit : 50 Americans last week at Sean Kelly... (See image at left)

"Sean Kelly Gallery presents 50 Americans, an exhibition that features fifty works by legendary American artist Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989) as selected by fifty Americans of diverse occupations, ages, races, and backgrounds. Fifty people, one from each state in the Union, were invited to select a single artwork from over 2,000 images in Mapplethorpe’s oeuvre that resonated with them personally. While some participants may have already been familiar with Mapplethorpe’s work, some were not. Each image included in the exhibition is accompanied by a text that explains why the participant who selected it found it to be meaningful".


Not sure what happened to my Google Mail yesterday... Now there's a new column before each subject field with a + or a - sign... That reminds me that I want to zero the Inbox before the Rapture...

I guess Judgement Day will happen before we know the verdicts of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dominique Strauss-Kahn and Rick Santorum

Oh, and I definitely need a haircut, too, this morning... Before the end of the world...