Dona Nelson Line Street 2007 acrylic and acrylic mediums on canvas 79″ x 70″
[detail]
Dona Nelson Hag’s Song 2008 cheesecloth and acrylic mediums on canvas 30.25″ x 20″
Dona Nelson No Title 1977 oil on canvas 24″ x 40″
Dona Nelson My Home IV 2001 cheesecloth and acrylic mediums on canvas 90″ x 60″
I’m thinking Dona Nelson’s work is looking better and better, but I’m sure the reasons are simple: I’m seeing more and more of it and Thomas Erben is such a great curator. Like the last show he mounted for the artist this one is something of a closely-edited mini-retrospective. The current installation, “in situ: paintings 1973 – present”, remains on 26th Street through May 31.
Author: jameswagner
down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass [DUMBO]
sorta unlovely, compared to the Brooklyn, but still pretty majestic
With ordinary views like this from 19th-century streets paved with Belgian-blocks it’s no wonder DUMBO has become such hot real estate, but how do the tenants of all those new “luxury apartments”, including all those little kids bumping around in strollers, survive the continual 24-hour racket of the Q train?
good dinners at home
do it yourself
Those who know us are already aware that Barry and I like to eat well. Okay, I know this may sound absurd these days, but we actually dine, at least on most evenings. We often go out to performances and such, so those evening meal times would not seem strange to most Madrileños.
But, for any number of reasons, those hours being one of them, we don’t dine often enough with friends. Fortunately I like to cook, I like thinking about and planning meals, and shopping for the food. Most surprising (even to me), I even like cleaning up afterward. All of that can take up a larger part of the day than most people can spare: We know we’re lucky we can enjoy the time I have for both of us since I was able to “retire” almost a decade ago. Since I’m also distracted by so many other interests I can’t blame my insufficiently-frequent blogging on our eating habits alone, but maybe I can use that connection to help justify this particular post.
We eat very well, meaning we sit down for a leisurely meal and use real napkins. There’s great music, amazing conversation and sometimes exceptional (but usually inexpensive) wine. Of course everything in the room has to look really good. Sometimes there are birds singing out in the garden, even very late at night. Wow. That does sound good, and it’s only about 6 o’clock right now.
There’s no fast or junk food (unless occasionally ordering good pizza or Mexican dishes from trusted neighborhood sources counts), the ingredients vary hugely, and all their sources as natural, organic, seasonal and local as I can find. We don’t include meat of any kind very often, and then it’s in pretty small amounts. Cooking fairly regularly these days, I find I’m able to incorporate any extra any amounts of fresh ingredients and condiments, and any leftovers, in succeeding meals, so very little is wasted. I’m also getting better at letting what I find in our local Greenmarkets, and even in daily visits to the several decent food stores near our apartment, determine what the evening meal is going to be. I look for sales from meat and fish vendors. I’m improvising more.
I know I’m talking about habits and opportunities which are unimaginable luxuries for most New Yorkers today – and perhaps for most Americans anywhere, even the wealthy. We try to invite friends over as often as we can, but it’s never often enough as far as we’re concerned. Part of the problem, at least for me, has always been my difficulty in visiting with anyone while I’m busy in a small kitchen not set up so guests could hang out. We tend to concentrate on any number of baked pastas prepared ahead of time when friends sit down with us in our home the first time, but I have to feel that’s pretty restrictive in spite of how good those recipes are.
I thought sharing in this space what some of the more successful (and particularly simple and easily-prepared) one-course meals we’ve enjoyed alone recently might not do any harm, and it could conceivably encourage me to expand my range as host. Of course not every meal’s a winner; I jotted these notes down after meals we liked especially over the past month or so:
Saturday, April 12
Sicilian-sautéed swordfish steaks
Boiled parslied red new potatoes with olive oil
Grilled ramps
Sicilian Munir Bianco 2006
Thursday, April 17
Grilled marjoram-stuffed baby squid with a sauce of lemon, hot chilies and olive oil
Boiled new potatoes with olive oil and thyme
Boiled and sautéed spring green beans from Georgia
Galician Albarino, Rias Baixas Salneval 2006
Friday, May 1
Ligurian baked Cod with potatoes
Grilled spring scallions
Vermentino di Sardegna
Monday, May 6
Lemon-and white-wine-braised pork chops,
finished with fingerling potatoes and Marjoram
Grilled spring scallions
Spanish Rueda (Naia)
Sunday, May 18
Small marinated eye-of-round steaks
Oven-roasted potato chips (wedges) with rosemary, finished with parsley
Roasted whole carrots, finished with thyme
Cotes du Rhone (Estezargues Grandes Vignes 2006)
Wednesday, May 21
Grilled duck sausages
Rosemary-roasted fingerling potatoes finished with spring garlic
Grilled ramps
Austrian (Burgenland) Blauer Zweigelt Nittnaus 2006
[images, starting at the top, from esterlange; room 9; deep sea news; wildeducation; encore editions; oceansbridge; tunisia info
Momenta Art Benefit 2008
just four of the works available at the Momenta Art raffle
an Olav Westphalen acrylic on paper, one of the works being auctioned
Tomorrow night is the Momenta Art annual benefit party, which includes a raffle and a live auction. The event will be in Manhattan, at White Columns (320 West 13th Street, entrance on Horatio Street). The live auction starts at 5pm. The raffle begins at 7.
This artist-run non-profit space is absolutely as good as they come; they totally deserve and definitely can use our support, and after having stopped by today I can’t say enough about the curatorial quality of the art available to those who will be able to rise to the occasion.
A $225 ticket gets two people in for free food and drink, and you get to go home with a work of art as well!
The number of tickets is limited by the number of works available (approximately 140), and as of this writing at least, there are still slots available. Go on line here to get one or more tickets, or call the gallery at 718-218-8058.
To attend the party and auction without participating in the raffle, entrance for two is $100 and tickets can be purchased here.
Even if you can’t make it to the scene inside the White Columns space, where the works are now on display all day tomorrow and where the event is being held, you can still order tickets and arrange for a proxy to make your selection from among the items in the raffle.
[image from Momenta Art]
Rauschenberg was gay? How was anyone to know?
Robert Rauschenberg Bed 1955 mixed mediums 75″ x 32″ x 8″
Yes, the great man was queer. I had thought I made it pretty clear in my own post on March 14, but today I note that Tyler Green’s Modern Art Notes has gone and shoved it down the prissy throats of both members of the “regular” media and the art world’s own sophisticated pundits. Almost all of them seem not to have ever noticed, or, much more likely, were convinced it was too shameful a condition with which they could risk frightening the horses – or asses.
Green’s post, “Hetero-normalizing Robert Rauschenberg”, is totally on target, and bursting with links to his references and sources (there’s even a link to his links on the subject).
Bravo, Tyler!
[image from MoMA]
cutups or mashups flourish as New York street art
I may never be able to ignore a street or subway poster again; I might not even feel I have to bring a book with me when I head for the train. It seems there’s a current (and possibly snowballing) genre of street art which involves the alteration of commercial posters by making them into collages assembled from their own materials or paper cut from neighboring posters.
They’re potentially so much more elegant than the Sharpie alterations we’ve been seeing on these boards for years, even if they have to sacrifice that form’s occasional textual sophistication.
I spotted these examples and a number of others all near and inside the Morgan stop of the L train late Tuesday. The first image represents almost the complete framed poster as I found it, fully obscured or removed and converted into a rather delicate friendly greeting. The second two are details of separate works, but the third shows every square inch of a framed advertisement which has been converted into some serious political commentary.
This stuff can be quite beautiful, lots of fun or very provocative, and sometimes all at once. I called it “slash art” when I saw it this week, although this name probably plays into the hands of the police, who must already be pretty serious antagonists for these artists. “Cutups” or “cutup art” would seem to work too, but the form seems to have already acquired the moniker “mashup” while I wasn’t paying attention.
More examples, from Poster Boy, here.
why cities
I love New York
you now
It was just past midnight, midweek, and three excited friends were returning to Manhattan from Bushwick. I looked up from our conversation for a moment and spotted this bank of passengers sitting across from us. They were as wonderful, intriguing, smart, colorful and beautiful as every other group on the train I saw that night, or on any other night.
I love the subway; I love Brooklyn; I love New York.
when bigger prisons are built, we’ll build them – anywhere
Wait, wait, are you kidding me? Is this real? Where does the U.S. get off building big prisons in other people’s countries just willy-nilly? We already have less than 5 percent of the world’s population but something like a quarter of the world’s prisoners inside our own borders, and now tonight I’ve just come across this NYTimes report:
WASHINGTON The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.
The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
40 acres, no mules – and no exit.
[image from jsfbooks.com]
Matt Wolf’s Arthur Russell bio: “Wild Combination”
two stills from “Wild Combination”
I saw the New York premier of Matt Wolf‘s first feature-length film, “Wild Combination“, at the Kitchen last night. It’s an amazing documentary on the life and music of Arthur Russell, the innovative downtown musical composer/performer who just couldn’t stand still and wouldn’t be pinned down, even for his own visions of his art.
Unable to be really understood by most of his contemporaries, perhaps partly because of his own inadequacy with conventional communication, Russel’s cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary music never had a large audience, before his early death from AIDS complications in 1992. But twenty years later his music sounds as modern as today – or tomorrow. It now appears to be moving from an honored place in the memory of his fans and collaborators (and on thousands of reels on dusty storage locker shelves) into something like cult status among a new generation of listeners and artists which, like Russell, routinely ignores the false separation of genres and thrives on the offspring of musical cross-fertilization.
Wolf, an artist and filmmaker barely in his mid-twenties now, began his career in 2002 with “Golden Gums”. It was the first in a series of three relatively short experimental films, the others being “Smalltown Boys” in 2003 and “I Feel Love” in 2004. Their subjects were, in order, the young auteur’s own plaster dental cast offered to boyfriend as love token, a young teenage girl who seems to be the daughter of David Wojnarowicz, and the strange story of Andrew Cunanan’s hotel maid’s sudden celebrity. Only after “Wild Combination” could I imagine that each of these might be its own unique and perverse twist of the traditional documentary form. I’m not sure however if I might be able to read this into the filmmaker’s history only because his latest creation is clearly a documentary. But it’s certainly much more; it’s an imposing accomplishment and an exceptionally beautiful film in which one artist’s demonstrated imagination and fancy is directed toward showing the compelling musical beauty created by another.
But it doesn’t really matter, since all of these works do very well standing on their own. I only know for sure that I’ll be looking forward to wherever Wolf decides to go next.
“Wild Combination” will be screened elsewhere in New York later this year.
The Kitchen has organized a tribute to the music of Arthur Russell this weekend with performances tonight and tomorrow. The blurb on Time Out New York‘s site includes this on the performances:
On records such as 1986s World of Echo and the posthumous Another Thought, Russell married joyous pop to muted, inward reflection. But this Buddhist bubblegum (much of which has been reissued this decade by Audika) will make up just a fraction of this three-day program, which also offers a rare chance to hear his large ensemble instrumental pieces played live. On Friday, Russell colleague Bill Ruyle conducts Tower of Meaning, a minimalist work for brass and strings. Saturday will find Ruyle, trombonist Peter Zummo and bassist Ernie Brooks participating in The Singing Tractors, an ensemble trance work that incorporates improvisation.
Here’s an Amazon widget which will let you sample some of his music:
More:
John Schaefer’s WNYC Soundcheck program interview with Matt Wolf
Sascha Frere-Jones writing about Russell in The New Yorker in 2004
Andy Beta’s piece on Wolf’s film in the current The Village Voice
Audika Records Arthur Russell catalog
Amazon’s Arthur Russell listings
Schedule of festival screenings
[images, the first from “Terrace of Unintelligibility” by Phil Niblock, courtesy of Audika Records, are both stills from the film and courtesy of Matt Wolf]