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The War Chest of Otto Dix
In the exhibition of work by Otto Dix that opened this week at Neue Galerie, themes of war and sexuality literally fill the air. Memory of the Halls of Mirrors in Brussels (1920), a Dadaist painting of a leering officer and a prostitute, is suffused with Guerlain perfume and soundtracked to 1920s jazz. In the room containing Dix's etchings inspired by the first World War, there's a faint, loamy smell; for this, Neue's scent specialist sniffed out a special combination of grass and earth. Crickets chirp in the background.Read More
New York's Satellite Fairs: Bling, String, and Subversive Things
Bling, string and subversive things were among the highlights at Pulse Contemporary and Scope International, just two of the at least seven satellite art fairs that set up shop in New York the same time as the Armory Show.
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Lena Dunham's Open House
Filmmaker Lena Dunham treads the turbid shallows of post-college fallout. In her latest, Tiny Furniture, the artist turns the camera on herself and her immediate family. Dunham favors a sort of hybrid of allegory and docudrama, evidenced in her collaborative shorts Delusional Downtown Divas (in which childhood friends Joana Avillez, Isabel Halley and Gabriel Held play childhood friends). In her first full-length feature, Dunham again casts her own ambitions and insecurities as the star of the show. Tiny Furniture depicts a girl adrift and attempting to moor herself; the film is that moor that rescues Dunham from the ennui of a directionless year after college.
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Bloomberg Not Buying at the ADAA, But Others Are
A sigh of relief seems to be sounding out across the booths of The Art Show, the 22nd Art Dealers Association of America, invite-only art fair held in the Park Avenue Armory building. And while Mayor Bloomberg may have quipped in his opening speech that he wasn't there to buy art but to discuss New York's cultural community, others certainly were, since sales had already been made. 55 New York galleries and 15 national dealers weathered the storm, as one gallerist expressed when discussing the last 14 months: "We made it through. We even managed to keep hold of all of our staff."
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Before They Were Winners: TVTV in New York
There are people who make a living of critiquing spectacle, who pump unspectacular phenomena with predictable criticisms of their meanings, consequences, or perceived lacks thereof. Virtually immune to this practice is the life of the Academy Awards, the pure spectacle that falls to earth in the form of kaleidoscopic critique: the most superficial, the most banal, and, perhaps the most interesting, impressions and speculations by the honored stars themselves. However it's usually only the less interesting, over-choreographed red carpet interviews and acceptance speeches that are seen and heard, rather than the shrewd, juicy obsessing that must go on in private.Read More
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Butt Johnson's "Untitled Floral Pastiche" series consists of four drawings, each of which is organized around a different flower. Johnsons had long co
