Thanks to Eyjafjallajokull, that damn Icelandic volcano with the name nobody can pronounce, not only was I grounded last week, but a couple of friends from Berlin were unable to visit NYC as well. As a result, they kindly forwarded me their tickets for the Tim Burton exhibit at MoMA. Thanks, A & H!!!
While I love many of Burton's films, Frankenweenie (1984), Pee-wee's Big Adventure (1985), Beetlejuice (1988), Edward Scissorhands (1990), The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), and Corpse Bride (2005), I was reluctant to go to the exhibit because I'd heard what an absolute clusterfuck it has been. As predicted, it was a total mob scene, but a worthwhile ordeal for die-hard fans of the filmmaker. The exhibit surveys Burton's work, starting off with childhood drawings, sketches he made while attending Cal Arts, early publishing projects including The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy & Other Stories (1997) and Stainboy (2000), and "over seven hundred examples of rarely or never-before-seen drawings, paintings, photographs, moving image works, concept art, storyboards, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera," (from MoMA's website).
It was nice to see a director who rejects the norms of mainstream Hollywood and who delightfully revels in the odd, melancholy and macabre get so much love. Learn more here. Ends today, April 26th!
The wonderful animated films by South African artist William Kentridge are on view in Five Themes. Kentridge's "political" and "poetic" works which deal "with subjects as sobering as apartheid, colonialism, and totalitarianism" are "often imbued with dreamy, lyrical undertones or comedic bits of self-deprecation that render his powerful messages both alluring and ambivalent." Five Themes screens Kentridge's stop-animation films composed from his charcoal drawings and "explores five primary themes" in the artist's work from the 1980s to today including: Ubu and the Procession; Soho and Felix; Artist in the Studio; The Magic Flute; and The Nose. Learn more here. Through May 17th.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) was the original street photographer. He possessed an amazing talent for shooting a candid, unstaged scene just at the right moment and elegantly capturing its essence. Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century is the first US retrospective of the photographer's career in 30 years (!) and features approximately 300 photos including Cartier-Bresson's incredibly in-depth photo essays on "India and Indonesia at the time of independence, China during the revolution, the Soviet Union after Stalin’s death, the United States during the postwar boom, and Europe as its old cultures confronted modern realities." As the MoMa website states, "For more than twenty-five years, he was the keenest observer of the global theater of human affairs—and one of the great portraitists of the twentieth century." Don't miss it! Learn more here. Through June 28th.
Marina Abramović: The Artist is Present is a retrospective of the Yugoslav-born performance artist's works spanning the past forty years and featuring approximately fifty of "her early interventions and sound pieces, video works, installations, photographs, solo performances, and collaborative performances made with Ulay (Uwe Laysiepen)." Along with the new piece, The Artist is Present, in which Abramović, dressed in a long, red robe, sits across a small wooden table from a willing museum visitor and engages in an intense staring contest, the exhibition also includes "the first live re-performances of Abramović’s works by other people ever to be undertaken in a museum setting." The re-performances are the ones featuring live nude models that have set tongues a-wagging since the show's opening.
Imponderabilia, originally staged by Abramović and Ulay in 1977, consists of two naked models facing each other in a narrow doorway. Visitors are encouraged to squeeze through the two bodies to get to the next room. Being a fan of personal space, I declined the offer, but not before nearly being trampled by a trio of young tourists only too eager to slide between the naked pair. I was also rear-ended by another fellow who couldn't take his eyes off of a nude male model lying with a skeleton resting on top of him. The bare models with their vacant expressions along with the echo-y soundtrack of voices, moaning, and music, gave the unsettling feeling of an asylum.
Rhythm O is an early work of Abramović's composed of a long table containing items ranging from cosmetics, condoms, razor blades, whips, knives, a saw, a gun, and a note from the artist bravely stating, "Instructions. There are 72 objects on the table that one can use on me as desired." Admittedly not being a fan of performance art, Rhythm O along with the videos of Abramović violently brushing her hair over and over, exchanging face slaps with Ulay over and over, and flogging herself over and over with a pentagram carved onto her belly all felt somewhat overwrought and contrived to me. Check out The Artist is Present and decide for yourself. Learn more here. Through May 31st.
A Tim Burton balloon in the lobby of MoMA
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