Divine Dante

Dante Ferretti has designed productions for Fellini and Scorcese and scores of movie opera, and theatre directors. Two things I notice and loved when strolling through the Ferretti exhibit at MoMA:

1. Talent and craft. Ferretti can sure draw and paint to "sell" his vision to a director.
2. Sly wit. Ferretti's "studio bohème" set for La Bohème includes an homage to one of my heroes, A. M. Cassandre.

Top image: furtive shot from the MoMA exhibit. Bottom image: Screenshot of Cassandre poster snagged from artyfactory site.

You've Come a Long Way Baby

At the MoMA exhibit of historically-interesting Diego Rivera murals, I was struck by the scrapbook entry with the caption noting the New York presence of "Diego Rivera, with his wife and A. Conger Goodyear, president of the Museum of Art." The wife: Frida Kahlo. Unnamed, undescribed, unthinkable nowadays. The curator was very sly to show this particular page.
***
"You've Come a Long Way Baby" is from an advertising campaign for Benson and Hedges. The ads come fully-packed with their own baggage. Below is the copy for a 1969 ad. Idiotic? Patronizing? Well-meaning? Commoditizing a movement?

Virginia Slims: 1969
"You've come a long way, baby."
"In 1912, Lucille Watkins had to sneak out to the chicken coop to smoke a cigarette. You don't have to play hide and smoke anymore. Now there's even a cigarette for women only."

Brava

Holland Cotter's wrap up—although I'm sure it's not anyone's last word.

(I didn't take the chair.

Marina Redux

So I finally made it up to MoMA to see the Marina Abramovic installation/exhibition, and I have to say that I walked away from the show feeling kind of...assaulted.

I had the afternoon free, and planned on seeing the Abramovic show and then checking out the William Kentridge AND the Henri Cartier-Bresson, all stuff I really wanted to see. But I found, after viewing all of the pieces in the Abramovic show, and simply just feeling that she was downstairs, that I just was emotionally exhausted and could not, would not, look at another piece of art. I was distracted and unfocused. I felt like I had endured walking, crucifixion, screaming, dancing, pointing, staring, being tied together, nudity, holding a mirror, holding a bowl of milk, running into columns, breathing each other's air, laying on ice, washing bones, nudity, self-mortification, whipping, smashing into each other, slapping, driving in circles, and a breakup.

I did walk through the 2 nude people in the doorway (making sure to face the guy, since you had mentioned that most people face the woman). I thought after doing it that it's more sensible to face the shorter person so you have more face space, maybe that's why people face the woman?) I watched the changing of the guard of the crucified woman, and I laid down on the "Green Dragon", a bed made of copper with a green quartz "pillow" and tried to get my energy to align (note: the back of my head still hurts from that ersatz pillow, and I'm not sure if I achieved any enlightenment or inspiration).

Photo from opednews.com


The only other time I've ever felt like this as a result of an art exhibit was at the Bruce Nauman show at MoMA in 1995. It was filled with solitary squares for sitting in loneliness, a video of a clown laughing and crying, ropes tied like defiant arms, a video of someone slapping themselves (or was it 2 people slapping each other? I can't remember), a violin that played the notes D-E-A-D over and over (and could be heard throughout the exhibition over the sound of the crying/laughing clown and the slapping), and overall, the sound of metal taxidermied animal forms that were tied by their necks from a spinning frame that dragged on the floor. I think I walked all the way home from that show and cried on my couch. At the time I thought it was just me.

But the artist being present (and downstairs) and looking so tired and enduring, made this show more disturbing and more powerful. But I found that I didn't want to participate in the staring contest...I didn't want to be a part of the show at all, not even to take photographs (which people were doing like crazy). All in all...??? more pondering is in order. Surprisingly, I didn't dream about any of it that night.

Maybe, overall, I felt like I had endured something.

On a related note, I love this post by Paddy Johnson on Art Fag City (a great art blog/column) that references a 2004 article by Robert Schorr discussing how only good looking artists get naked (except for Vito Acconci!). Agreed. I think I had this thought sometime last year when I saw a Carolee Schneeman show in Chelsea...glad to be validated.

Marking Time

A quick zip through MoMA to see William Kentridge yielded a side show (almost literally) of Marina Abramovic staring down a few intrepid museum-goers. White shirt red sneakers lasted a while. Green shoes didn't last very long at all. And white shirt with black and white scarf seemed to have staying power. The guards told my friend Kay and me that the longest Mano à Marina has lasted for seven hours (as of Sunday aft, March 28); he wouldn't divulge how the artist deals with the call of nature. Kay, whose eagle-eye serves her well in many capacities, noted that the tag to Ms. Abramovic's shirt was showing, but we dared not dash up to helpfully tuck it in. Just as I finished saying, "I don't see any 'No Photos' signs," a different guard busted me. Here are my shh-don't-tell shotss of a well-recorded performance piece.

Different but the same

So this is nowhere near Nathan Hall, but the fish trivet by Donato D'Urbino and Paolo Lomazzi (at the MoMA Store) is a great way to make a whole out of parts.

Into the Sunset

There's nothing like a deadline. On its very last night, Pat and I saw MoMA's exhibition "Into the Sunset: Photography's Image of the American West." I loved it. I loved: the classic images by Edward Curtis; some surprises by Timothy O'Sullivan, who documented the 19th century West before dying at the age of 42; Ed Ruscha's much-seen Every Building on the Sunset Strip"; Cindy Sherman's poses; everything by Robert Frank; Dennis Hopper's intersection; and David Hockney's dizzying image of the decidedly non-blossomed Pearlblossom Highway, created with wacky perseverance out of manyMANY polaroid images (online, in reproduction, the polaroids read almost as brushstrokes). I certainly got the difference between the spare expanses of the land versus the violational expansions of alleged civilization. I guess you might call this one a show for Boomers if not a Boomer show.

BUT the biggest discovery of last night wasn't "Into the Sunset" or even the performance group Stars Like Fleas; instead, it was an appliance.
The MoMA restrooms have the most extraordinary Dyson Airblade hand dryers, complete with odd little icons and numbered instructions telling you to 1. Insert hands and 2. Draw out slowly.

There are commercials on You Tube as well as a healthy discussion by detractors. I was too taken by the hygienic maw to objectively analyze the machine. We got "Into the Sunset" and into the hand dryer on the same night.