Blog
Maurice Prendergast Paris Scene Unearthed at Clarke Auction
While sifting through a large box lot of art dropped off at the Larchmont, N.Y., gallery by what is known in the trade as a “picker,” Nelia Moore, art specialist/auctioneer at Clarke Auction spotted a beautifully executed but very dirty painting on panel of a woman in a veil. After dusting it off and studying...
Joe Bendik on the Scene: Gang and Melville at Salon
Chez Cary’s Salon is set in a beautiful, historical building, perched on West 110th Street off of Amsterdam Avenue. It’s almost like a hideaway. I could feel the ghosts. George Gershwin lived there and wrote “Rhapsody in Blue” at this spot. The atmosphere enhanced not only the artworks at this exhibition, but the whole opening...
Joe Bendik on the Scene: Bob Dylan at Gagosian
There is a lot of talk on the web about how Bob Dylan’s latest exhibition, The Asia Series, is disingenuous. Dylan painted from photos from over a hundred years ago through the 1960s. In his press release, Larry Gagosian stated that Dylan painted them during his last tour. That may actually be true, but Gagosian...
Graham Caldwell’s ‘The Exploding View’
Through Saturday, catch Graham Caldwell’s The Exploding View at Martos Gallery. By manipulating brightly colored glass to its limits, Caldwell has created distorted, crumpled surfaces reminiscent of sea creatures.
October Is Free Night of Theater Month
As media sponsor of 2011’s Free Night of Theater NYC, CityArts sent our publisher, Kate Walsh, to a press conference at City Hall Sept. 27, where October was declared Free Night of Theater Month.
Book Review: The Language of Flowers
The Language of Flowers is a bit like a perfectly manicured flowerbed: the symmetry and colors are breathtaking, but the work shows. In Vanessa Diffenbaugh’s debut novel, recently emancipated foster child Victoria strikes out on her own with almost no skills, interpersonal or otherwise, except for a deep connection to the Victorian language of flowers...
To Everything There Is a Season
Artist Alison Saar, Madison Square Park and the four seasons Fall is the season of change—and for Madison Square Park, that means new art. Jaume Plensa’s “Echo,” the haunting sculpture of a massive head, has just been taken down and Sept. 22 Alison Saar’s aptly themed “Feallan and Fallow” will be installed.
Memories of Art
Georgia Wall, her audiences of one and their memories The most recent installment of her Unseen Performance series, Georgia Wall’s “And so I Left” opens Sept. 15 at Skylight Projects (551 W. 21st St., 4th Fl., by appointment).
Record-Breaking Freeman’s Auction
Saturday afternoon, Sept. 10, Freeman’s sold an imported Chinese imperial-style “double dragon” white jade Qing Dynasty seal at its Asian Arts Auction in Philadelphia. The seal was sold for a record-breaking $3.5 million—the most successful sale in the company’s history—bringing the auction’s combined total to over $7 million. Auctioneer and Asian Art department head Robert...
Book Review: Mule
Mule, by Tony D’Souza What’s a freelance writer to do when the economy crashes and the glossy mags stop returning his calls? In Tony D’Souza’s gripping, ultimately thin novel Mule, the freelancer turns to drug running, with typically adrenaline-pumping results.
Book Review: Blueprints for Building Better Girls
Imagine, if you will, a Mary Gaitskill story collection in which the author casts a fond eye on the foibles and bad behavior of her characters. That book is Elissa Schappell’s Blueprints for Building Better Girls, a collection of eight sharp, meticulously etched and tenuously linked tales of female archetypes.
No Labor Day Plans? Try the Woodstock-New Paltz Art & Craft Fairs
Treat yourself to a day trip this Labor Day weekend with the 2011 Woodstock-New Paltz Arts & Craft Fair, featuring ’60s psychedelics icon artist Isaac Abrams. Since 1964, Abrams has never taken a vocational break from his greatest passion, painting.
2011 Annenberg Prize Announced
Creative Time announced today that Dutch artist Jeanne van Heeswijk is the third winner of the annual Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, to be presented at the third annual Creative Time Summit conference at NYU Skirball Center Sept. 23. Van Heeswijk, known for her intensive, long-term commitment to community organizing and social...
Daedalus String Quartet at Music Mountain
Postponed by Hurricane Irene, the acclaimed Daedalus String Quartet, with award-winning pianist Soyeon Lee, will wrap up Music Mountain’s 2011-2012 season at 3 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 11, rather than the previously announced Aug. 28.
West Harlem Art Fund at Governors Island
What better way to celebrate Hurricane Irene mercifully sparing New York City her wrath than taking an end-of-summer trip out to Governors Island? The best New York City day trip that you’re not taking, Governors Island comes to life every summer with art, music and just about anything else you could imagine. Until Sept....
TV Review: BBC America’s The Hour
The Hour, the latest British import being aired by BBC-America, has cast a wide net when it comes to potential audiences. The biggest draw is the 1950s time period; set at the BBC in 1956, The Hour follows three brash employees of the titular news show. But there is also an espionage plot, a...
Pianist Fuzjko Hemming Returns to NYC
Fuzjko Hemming brings her concert tour to NYC for two performances For the first time since 2009, “legend of the piano” Fuzjko Hemming will be returning to Alice Tully Hall as part of her Piano Solo Concert USA Tour.
Book Review: City of Promise
When was the last time your heart started pounding as you read a novel? Or learned something you didn’t know about Manhattan’s history? If you can’t remember, run, don’t walk, to purchase a copy of Beverly Swerling’s compulsively readable City of Promise. Set in the Manhattan of the 1870s and ’80s, when elevated subways...
Philip Glass to Publish Memoir
Minimalist forefather Philip Glass has signed a contract with W.W. Norton & Company to write a memoir detailing his life and musical experiences. There’s no set release date yet as the text is still in progress, but Norton’s Liveright & Company division will handle the publication.
Record-Breaking McQueen Exhibit
Were you one of the 661,509 visitors to the Alexander McQueen exhibit? The retrospective was among the Met’s top ten most visited exhibitions in its 141-year history (#8 overall). Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty featured over a hundred ensembles and seventy accessories beginning with the designer’s first collection as a Central St. Martin’s postgraduate in 1992...
Don Giovanni at Mostly Mozart
Two things mesmerized at the Lincoln Center’s Rose Theater the other night. This first-ever production of Don Giovanni at the venerable Mostly Mozart festival featured some of the loveliest, soaring, velvety voices imaginable, and strikingly innovative staging with the chorus members spray painted silver, and assuming poses as props and extras against a plain black...
