Arguably Japan's best-known contemporary artist and recipient of a major retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum last summer, Takashi Murakami returns with three new works for a solo show that's shrouded in mystery. Gagosian Gallery proffers neither a press release nor preview images, but the mystique of the show's offbeat title and Murakami's celeb factor should be enough to reel you in.
via flavorpill.com
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
6:30 pm
FREE
Aperture Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, New York
(212) 505-5555
Join master photographer Joel Meyerowitz
for a talk and book signing and discover the hidden pockets of
wilderness that still exist within the urban environs of New York City.
This event takes place on the occasion of the publication of Legacy: The Preservation of Wilderness in New York City Parks
(Aperture, October 2009). This compelling body of work is the result of
a unique commission Meyerowitz received from the New York City
Department of Parks & Recreation to document, interpret, and
celebrate one of the city's greatest legacies: nearly nine thousand
acres of parks in the five boroughs that still exist close to their
original pristine state, as well as areas within parks that have been
left to revert to wilderness.
An exhibition of this series will be on view at the Museum of the City of New York, October 9, 2009-March 7, 2010.
via www.aperture.org
Vanessa Beecroft (Genoa, Italy, 1969) is an Italian contemporary artist living in Los Angeles.
Beecroft's work is a fusion of conceptual issues and aesthetic concerns, focusing on large-scale performance art,
usually involving live female models (often nude).
At her performances,
video recordings and photographs are made, to be exhibited as
documentation of the performances, but also as separate works of art.
Kanye West has lately been collaborating with Beecroft producing these movies. See her work VB55 from 2005 below:
The work and her conceptual approach is neither performance nor
documentary, but something in between, and closer to Renaissance
painting. She sets up a structure for the participants in her live
events to create their own ephemeral composition.
The performances are existential encounters between models and
audience, their shame and their expectations. Each performance is made
for a specific location and often references the political, historical,
or social associations of the place where it is held.
Beecroft’s work
is deceptively simple in its execution, provoking questions around
identity politics and voyeurism in the complex relationship between
viewer, model and context.
Her latest work VB64 opened last night at Deitch Projects in Queens - it was an eclectic crowd than wandered around the steamingly hot gallery space peering at the naked reclining models talcum powdered up to mingle with the white plaster cast statues - a grecian panalopy.
Deitch Projects (LIC)
Long Island City
4-40 44th Drive, 212-343-7300
March 6 - March 29, 2009
Opening: Friday, March 6, 7 - 10PM
Last night's madness outside the Broadhurst theater after the first night of Equus.You can just see us two back from the barricades on the other side. The street was packed with at least a thousand or so fans - most of whom hadnt been to see the show itself.
Radcliffes performance on stage was breathtaking. His range of emotions and control was electric. His generousity and friendliness outside to the fans was gracious. The star of the show was however Griffiths - he deserves another TONY Best Actor award for this. The actual play has not dated even after 30 years. It's themes of passion, lost opportunities, and disapppointments are timeless. The staging is brilliant - the actors playing the horses and the steel masks are messmerising. The theater was packed - it was 1/2 hour late starting as the lines to get in still stretched around the block at 8pm. The sold out crowd was totally engaged through out the performance - and the curtain call was a standing ovation almost immmediately.
Last night Peter Schaffer himself attended and came out to spend some brief time with the fans at the stage door - he's getting on but with his cane and cheeky smile was the true artist obviously pleased with what he had witnessed.
Radcliffe is minute - he cant be much more than 4 foot tall. He had a scruffy light beard and dressed in true hipster style and his handshake was firm as he accepted my congratulations. It appeared that his parents were also there to see his Broadway debut as a cute couple where shuffled into the SUV.
Finally if you can get a ticket to this show at any price - grab it.You will see a true star in the making.
I now believe that Thursday is the new Saturday. You can get around the city with ease. The taxi rides are quicker, the streets aren't as clogged. The pavements aren't as jammed with fanny packed tourists gawking at the neon. And you can just cope with the bar crowds. Sure those kakhi panted I-bankers ordering espresso martini's for their legal intern betties aren;t much fun, but at least you're not being frustrated by the generally loud and obnoxiously perfumed Jersey / Brooklyn crowds. I've claimed Thursday as my night.
Leaving the DVR on for Survivor - China, it was off to Soho with JR to the Eleanor Ettinger Gallery opening of the new show by Steve Huston.
The artist is a former boxer and his knowledge of musculature shows in his fine work here of male workmen captured mostly bare chested in various manual work situations - pulling large largely unseen objects or heaving heavy loads. Her has moved on from his boxer series and has developed an understanding of architectural elements that now form the background to his principal male subjects.
The champagne was quite nice as well.
Here's Amanda Lear!
Courtesy of Gen Art attended an opening of a new exhibit at Envoy featuring the art of Amanda Lear and interpretations and inspiration by other international artists (many of whom attended.
Amanda Lear's life is one of the most amazing one of this century. As the "Sunday Times Magazine " wrote it in 1985 about her : "It's a dream come true by her unique will."
Born in 1946 in Hong Kong from an English/French father who served in the French army in Indochina (Vietnam) and an Asian/Russian mother, Amanda was raised in the south of France and in Switzerland.
Her passion has always been Art and at 16 she went to Paris to study painting before joining in 1964 the renowned St Martins School London.
She fell in with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and became a wild child of the London nights. 
Her stunning Eurasian features attracted attention of Catherine Harlé, head of the then most famous European model agency and began a long and very successful modelling career.
In 1965 she returned to Paris to catwalk for Paco Rabanne and Yves St Laurent.
During this time she met Salvador Dali who wanted her as a model. She became his muse, closest friend for over 15 years and it is said Dali's greatest creation - in that he paid for her transgender operations.
In 1973 while highly successful model (covers for Marie France and Elle magazines but just pages in Vogue because of the transgender murmors), her long time fan Bryan Ferry asked her to pose for the cover of Roxy Music's record "For Your Pleasure". The cover became as famous as the record itself.
Superstar David Bowie sought her out after seeing the Roxy Music record cover and they live together for over a year. Bowie wanted her to sing. She did actually participate in his 1974 NBC "Midnight Special" show and Bowie's producer De Fries signed her but nothing eventuated. She left Bowie when she found out he was already married and has never spoken to him since.
In 1975 she signed with Strum production and released her 1st single on legendary UK record company: Creole Records. "Trouble" was a cover of the Presley song. The "B" side was co-written by Amand The record was an unexpected Disco hit in Europe. She read the signs and from her 1977 record contract produced her first album specifically aimed at the huge Disco market.
I Am A Photograph, a tongue in cheek reference to her days as a model with the Zoli Model Agency, produced a line of hit singles such as "Blood And Honey", "Alphabet", "Tomorrow", "La Bagarre" (The Fight), "These Boots Were Made For Walking" (a cover of the Nancy Sinatra classic) and one of her more well-known and bigger hits from the album, "The Queen of Chinatown".
To date Amanda has released over 10 albums and has also released
40-50 singles. She has sold 8-10 million albums and 25-30 million
singles worldwide.
She still ocassionally modelled.
Amanda Lear is not only a singer, but also a real multi-talent: in 1981 she started to exhibit her own paintings very successfully and in 1982 Italian TV magnate Berlusconi offered her a chance to host a prime time variety show, making her a star in Italy.
She now resides in Southern France.
What a life.
Anyway the exhibition features some of her works - good but not as good as some of the interpretive stuff from the younger american artists. After a few too many free chardonnays it was off to enjoy the rest of the city on a thursday night, pondering how dull my life is in comparison to Amanda's
Tonight at 6pm..the emerging Japanese action painter Ryoga Katsuma challenges the grand-champion of Boxing Painting, Ushio Shinohara.
At age 74, Mr. Shinohara is the legendary Boxing Painter and was a core member of Neo Dada (initially "Neo Dadaism Organizers"), one of the most radical avant-garde collectives in postwar Japan.
Shinohara's motifs are everyday objects, such as junk, motorcycle, mass media-related objects and all symbols of modern society. In 1963, Shinohara created the series of "Imitation Art," in which he "imitated" the Neo-Dada and Pop Art masterpieces, such as Jasper Johns' Three Flags and Robert Rauschenberg's Coca-Cola Plan.
Shinohara first performed his Boxing Painting in1959, and William Klein was among the first photographers to document Boxing Painting performances. Since 1969, Shinohara has been based in DUMBO in Brooklyn, New York.
In "Action Painting Street Battle!" the young challenger Katsuma freely draws and paints on canvas It is Katsuma's special talent to have both a child's free spirit and an accomplished painter's hand.
"Action Painting Battle!" will be held on Jay Street in TriBeCa, blocked for the occasion, and the guest judges, including Dr. Alexandra Munroe, Senior Curator from Guggenheim Museum, and Juan Puntes, the Founding Director of White Box, will judge the battle and name the champion of Action Painting!
During this performance and exhibition, the recent works by Shinohara and Katsuma will be exhibited.
The exhibition will also include a selection of the Tokyo-based photographer Minoru Hirata's works that documented Ushio Shinohara's early performances. With this segment of the exhibition, Ethan Cohen Fine Arts launches the "Art Archeology Project," a long-term archival project which aims to preserve ephemeral art works documented by photography, and to foster the understanding of the diverse and rich history of Japanese avant-garde performances in the 1960s. The project was conceived and proposed by Dr. Reiko Tomii, an independent art historian who specializes in post-1945 Japanese art and a co-founder of PoNJA-GenKon, a scholarly listserv group.
I don't often head down to Macy's - its a nasty rat house palatble really only during its Spring Flower Show.
However our recent rather elderly visitor needed company so we trecked downtown. It seems Macys has truly caught the merchandise bug...there was an entire section devoted to own branded goods - mostly tacky knick knacks, including some pretty scary Statue's of Liberty.
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Change is good
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