Spend a Couple Hours »Tim Burton Exhibit

tim burton moma
at the MoMA, 11 West 53rd Street

In what must be the museum’s most talked about exhibit of 2009, the life’s work of the darkly comic and inventive Tim Burton is on vibrant and thrilling display now through April 26th. The scope of the work, from his teenage short stories about evil doctors to his latest sketches for the yet to be released Alice in Wonderland, is impressive and truly inspiring.

The exhibit opens with a kooky black and white walkway playing some of his Stain Boy cartoons, which makes you feel like you’ve walked onto one of his sets (you’ll also feel a strong urge to re-watch Beetlejuice). Next comes the circusy black-light room with a moving carousel Burton made especially for the exhibit – all of the sculptures, including this one are fantastic (I especially love the crazed Campbell soup kids singed by fire) and be sure to look up as some are hung quite high. Many of the sculptures were created by Rick Heinrichs and Neal Scanlan Studios.

Just as cool as the huge 3-dimensional works are the simple and whimsical sketches. Among my favorite are The Teenager, Little Dead Riding Hood, and the monster drawings.  It’s also very awesome to see some of the iconic costumes and props from his films, including the Ed Wood’s angora sweater, Cat Woman’s get up, the Edward Scissorhands costume, and a crazy-in-person textured headless horseman cape.

As a fan of Burton for years, I was particularly tickled, but even coworkers who were not familiar with his work became enamored of his amazing imagination.

Click here for the rest of Tim Burton Exhibit

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Posted on December 26, 2009

Spend a Couple Hours »Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty

urs fischerat The New Museum through Feb. 7th, 2010

The Urs Fischer exhibit currently taking over three floors of the New Museum is wonderfully unusual; every time the elevator doors opened, I was taken aback. The first floor is cluttered, to a collage-like effect, with large, mirrored boxes screen printed with non-scaled objects like cupcakes, meat, VHS tapes, CD cleaners, telephone booths, running shoes, high heels, photography books and (most oddly) an Ashanti cardboard cut out. I wrote down some of the books titles (Schweizer Sagen, Marius Pictor fotografo) to get an idea of why he picked these particular objects to display together, but I think that maybe the objects themselves are irrelevant and he’s more in awe that all these objects coexist in our world… but you’d have to ask him.

The second floor whisks you to an entirely different environment and mood. The walls, seemingly sterile and gray are actually wallpapered with photographs of the room itself. Whether through lighting or the tints in the photos, the walls offer amazing shades of color the longer you look at them – the perfect backdrop for a candy purple melting grand piano – and as you peruse the room, a few moments of unexpected humor. It’s rare to see so many gallery goers actually laughing out loud in an exhibit.

The third floor again, takes you to another world, this one full of gigantic metal sculptures made from tiny pieces of clay he pinched together then sent away to be replicated many, many times larger. Within these twirling, hulking, silvery shapes is a bright pink melting lamp post, a skeleton covered in dirt, muck, and lint, and the one piece I just did not “get” at all: a cake and travel bag floating above a subway seat with ceramic slugs.

In fact, what any of it all means escapes me entirely – but I felt transformed, like I was walking into an environment like none I had ever experienced before, and I found the whole thing fantastic.

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Posted on November 22, 2009

Web Sites »Digibarn Computer Museum

Digibarn Computer Museum is an old timey computer nerd's dream! And even though I'm not an old timey computer nerd (though I do get excited thinking back on afternoons spent playing Zork), I do love their collection of Byte Magazine covers from the 1970's, so much so that I put a few favorites up over on RC.

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Posted on October 5, 2009

Spend a Couple Hours »The Quilts of Paula Nadelstern and the Treasures of Ulysses Davis

quilts folk art museumThe quilts of Paula Nadelstern make for a dazzling exhibit of exceptional craftsmanship at the American Folk Art Museum. You are greeted with a huge creation on the lobby level that boggles the mind. Upstairs, more vibrant quilts using different techniques are on display. The labor intensive art is even more impressive when you learn that Nadelstern, a Bronx native makes all her quilts in a small apartment as she says on her own site:

“Historians have suggested that the block-style method of quilt-making evolved in response to the cramped quarters of early American life. My family's living arrangement in an urban environment created similar considerations which, unwittingly, I resolved in much the same way. For over twenty years, my work space in our two bedroom apartment was the forty-inch round kitchen table”.

The most interesting look into the artist's craft is the segment along the hallway that shows the reverse side of the quilting, the literal toil to make such geometrically perfect images on the front. Be sure to peek into the kaleidoscopes by various artists too.

Upstairs is a much smaller, but equally fascinating, collection of hand carved wood sculptures by Southern barber Ulysses Davis. He not only captured historical and religious figures but created mythical creatures some of which would make Father Lankester Merrin tremble if he dug them up in Iraq.

Davis, who (like many folk and outsider artists) rarely sold his work,?never looked to his craft for financial gain. As he once said “They're my treasure. If I sold these, I'd be really poor.”

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Posted on June 29, 2009

Spend a Couple Hours »Francis Bacon Exhibit

francis bacon metThe Francis Bacon show at the Met is an overwhelming experience. Having never seen his work in person, seeing so much of it is visceral, intense and brutal. It's not often you can get lost in the detail of a painting thinking about tearing limbs, exposed bones, and dripping flesh.

Having grown up a gay man when it was a criminal act, living a life fueled by alcohol and violent relationships, punctuated by the loss of lovers, it's not hard to understand why the work is so tormented.

My favorite pieces are earlier in his career, including the portraits of monkeys, business men, and popes. Later, though I am not as enamored with the work, I do love that he started using swaths of neon.

Another favorite is the champagne flute set that you can purchase in the gift shop (very rare to be thrilled with the shill at a museum) they?”feature the phrase that Bacon was famous for uttering while regularly ordering rounds of champagne for his wide circle of friends and followers in London drinking clubs: “Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends.”

The most intriguing part of the exhibit is the room with personal, partially destroyed photographs and a large mural depicting the chaotic and stimulating work space of the artist. It's a humanizing display that only adds to the emotional depth of the work.

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Posted on June 22, 2009

Drinks »Met Rooftop

met roof top martinis

? Why do I mention it now?

Because you really have to have one drink up here once a summer and summer will be over before you know it.

Here's what I said back on 9/11/06:

The view: divine. The crowd: civilized. The drinks: well made. Grabbing a drink after work with friends on the lovely rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum is a certain must before it closes for the season. Equally fun is the nearly empty walk through the museum on the way out.

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Posted on June 15, 2009

Spend a Couple Minutes »Socrates Sculpture Park

socrates sculpture parkSocrates Sculpture Park is a testament to inventive urban reclamation and revitalization.

“Socrates Sculpture Park was an abandoned riverside landfill and illegal dumpsite until 1986 when a coalition of artists and community members, under the leadership of artist Mark di Suvero, transformed it into an open studio and exhibition space for artists and a neighborhood park for local residents”.

While it may not be the nation's most impressive park, it's a wonderful use of a once dismal plot of land and it also features workshops, great views of the city, and ever changing exhibitions. The city can only wish more projects like this set up in other areas.

The current sculpture exhibition is called State Fair and features some stuff I liked (my favorites were an unusual piece by Dana Sherwood and the Black Forrest Fancies and the huge metal barn by Bernard Williams) and some I didn't (for lack of a better word I found the Big Apple Show Down by Risa Puno – a put put golf caliber obstacle course with feat like “No Reservation Rally” to be dumb, and ditto for unnecessary inclusion of the word “herstory” on the otherwise fine Jeanine Oleson piece).

But hey, to each his own, and over all it's just a nice place to get some sun, take in the fragrance of the many flowers planted there, and scope out lots of strange individuals that seem particularly attracted to the park.

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Posted on June 8, 2009

Places to Visit »Swarovski Kristalweltan

Swarovski KristalweltanMike and Shaun recently returned from their big European vacation, we were looking at their beautiful photos the other night and I just could not get over the Swarovski museum. Shaun graciously agreed to blog about his experiences:

OK, so Stermer and I recently went on a trip to Munich, Innsbruck and Venice and instead of writing on the typical beer halls of Munich or the Canals and decay of Venice, I'm writing a little on the city of Innsbruck and what might be the strangest tourist attraction I've ever been too.

Innsbruck is a small college town nestled high up in the alps in a region known as Tyrol and Innsbruck is it's capital. ?nnsbruck known for hosting the winter Olympic games in 1964 & 1976 and more famously as the helm of the Swarovski Crystal Empire. ?ince the Olympics have not come back to the Innsbruck area in quite some time the city had to turn to other resources to bring in Tourists and what was decided upon was building a museum to the Swarovski Crystal called Swarovski Kristallwelten.
I had heard about this place on the Samantha Brown show Passport to Europe on the Travel Channel and one look at it on her show and I had to go! ?irst off, the museum is about 20 minutes north of the City of Innsbruck set aside a hillside…The entrance is a head with water spitting out of it's mouth. ?s soon as you enter, you realize you are in a very special place, something that would never happen anywhere but Austria. ?he first room has a giant horse with a crystal saddle and bridle. ?nd room is this completely Beetlejuice robot sound installation, the 3rd room is right out of Superman. ?t goes on from room to room with sound installations done by Brian Eno, with art installations by Alexander McQueen, Tord Boontje, Andre Heller, Susanne Schmogner, Chris Levine, etc, then empties out into the largest Swarovski store on the planet where you can by everything from loose crystals to giant crystal parrots for thousands of Euros. ?ll in all it's quote magical and if you find yourself in the Tyrol area of Austria it is worth the stop.

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Posted on June 8, 2009

Spend a Couple Hours »Richard Avedon at ICP

richard avedon at icpThe Richard Avedon show at ICP will inspire you to add some glamor into your life with the parade of enviable cinched waists, hats by Paulette and Lilly Dache, arm candy like Gardner McKay and Mike Nichols, and of course gowns, suits, and coats by decades of the worlds best designers like Dior, Gres, Fath, Balmain, Patou, Carnegie, Cardin, and Galliano.

The photos of familiar names like Audrey Hepburn, Suzy Parker – who poses on one of my favorite photos with Chanel, and Lauren Hutton – also in a favorite shot, smoking a joint on the beaches of the Bahamas – sit next to a long list of new names, at least to me that I have had tons of fun researching since: China Machado (our first non-Caucasian covergirl), Sunny Harnett (a statuesque blond that managed to look high class 1980s in 1954), Henrietta Tiarks (one of “the best known debutantes of the 50s”), and Emilien Bouglione (the beginning of a long line of circus performers).

Also on view are neat wire miniatures in costumes photographed by David Seidner, it was in this corner that we saw gray haired grand dame (who we all fell in love with in Unzipped) Polly Mellen, who disappeared as quickly and surely as she came.

A gorgeous, huge book accompanies the show and includes more photos but has a hefty price tag ($85). Sarafina and I settled instead for the $2 winking eye of Jean Shrimpton button.

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Posted on June 1, 2009

Spend a Couple Minutes »Giant Robot Gallery

giant robot gallery nycA sliver of a gallery and shop, Giant Robot NY is currently hosting Printed Matter Five, a collection of one offs and prints from over thirty young artists. Priced from $15 up, you are in luck if your searching for something bright and hip for your walls. The show ends July 3rd, though, and prints are limited, so hurry on over in case your favorite sells out like mine did.

Still, the staff is extreemely friendly and helpful and will even put a request in for artists to deliver more prints if possible if there's something you really want. I may be back this week to grab a frowning hamburger by Justine Fines and this lovely piece by Chris Bettig. If you're not in the area, you can also purchase remaining pieces from their website.

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Posted on May 25, 2009