MoMA: Permanent Collection

Christina's World, Andrew Wyeth, 1948

The Royal Family

Ben Brantley reviews The Royal Family.

And he likes it. Well done!

Image via The New York Times

Hamlet: Jude Law

Recent opening: Hamlet starring Jude Law at the Broadhurst Theatre.

This image is absolutely perfect:

Images via New York Times and Travel+Leisure

Presidential Paintings

Berkeley, No. 52 by Richard Diebenkorn

The first thing you see when you visit nytimes.com today is the bold, painterly, expressionist work of Richard Diebenkorn. And this is, perhaps, the first thing the Obama’s will now see each day… in their own home.

The Obama’s have picked forty-five pieces of art that are on loan from various Washington D.C. museums to hang in their private residence of the White House.

The New York Times article, “A Bold and Modern White House” mentioned that there existed some limitations—they could only pick from pieces that were not currently on display, and pieces that would not likely go on display soon. In other words, they were choosing from storage: from the basement of the museums rather than the gallery of the museums.

This struck me as fair. This struck me as downright nice. This struck me as a reminder that art should not be exclusive—it should be out there for the public to view, think upon, and react towards. They picked pieces without disrupting what the museums have to offer.

Yet something tells me that down the road, the pieces they picked won’t end up back in the basement; they’ll find their way to the galleries.

I think I’ll… by Ed Ruscha

Black Like Me No. 2 by Glenn Ligon

Sky Light by Alma Thomas

Part II: Kandinsky: Curator's Eye

This coming Friday, you can tour the Kandinsky exhibit with the Curator of Collections and Exhibits at the Guggenheim Museum.

I really want to do this. And then steal that job.

Part I: Kandinsky: Overview

What: KANDINSKY Retrospective

Where: Guggenheim Museum

When: 9.18.09-1.13.10

Why: Kandinsky is a genius.

Images via Guggenheim Museum

Mornings with Monet

Claude Monet. Water Lilies. 1914–26

Browsing through the Museum of Modern Art’s website, I found this tour that I am absolutely, positively signing up for:

“Skip the crowds and enjoy Monet's Water Lilies with an art historian as your guide. On selected Sundays throughout the duration of the exhibition—October 18, November 8, November 29, and December 20—MoMA is offering group tours before the Museum is open to the public. The one-hour tours examine the life and work of Claude Monet with a close study of the exhibition and a look at related works in MoMA’s collection.”

Coffee. Croissants. Claude.

Count me in.

Image via MoMA.org

Superior Donuts

Superior Donuts—a new play by Tracy Letts—opens tonight at the Music Box Theatre. It features Michael McKean (a Christopher Guest cult film regular and undeniable funnyman) as a “sad-sack Chicago doughnut-shop owner” (NYMag).

Click here to read more on Michael McKean in his current role.

Image via NYMag

Part II: A Steady Rain [of profits]

Apparently the boys are doing quite a job with those ticket sales:

‘A Steady Rain’ Sets a Broadway Sales Record

Part I: A Steady Rain [of superstars]

Last night was opening night for A Steady Rain, a two-character cop drama by Keith Huff, written years and years ago. So why is it on Broadway now? Simple. Because of the two cops: Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig.

Ben Brantley (of The New York Times) writes a review—‘A Sentimental Journey Over Brutal Terrain’—that unapologetically emphasizes the point that the two stars of the screen are in this play solely to sell tickets, to make money. And as we all can guess, they will do that job just fine.

On Jackman and Craig, Brantley tells it how it is: “…had they chosen to recite the alphabet in counterpoint (which might have been more fun), their joint appearance would still generate ticket sales.”

Image via Just Jared

MoMA Store

Sunburst Clock / $385

Warhol: Shot Blue Marilyn / $125

Louis Ghost Armchair / $410

Images via the MoMA Store

Coco Before Chanel: Reviews

Links to reviews of Coco Before Chanel:

• 'Dressing Up' (The New Yorker)
• 'The Unsentimental Education that Preceded a Life of Fashion' (NYTimes)
• 'Coco Before Chanel' (Variety)

Image via The New Yorker

Theatre: Top Shows

Here is the latest on the top money-makers in the theatre world.

Image via The New York Times

Coco Before Chanel & Paris

Très Chic vs. Très Cheap:

There are many ways to have an evening à la mode without heading across the Atlantic—tonight take your pick between ‘Très Chic’ (Upper East Side meets Coco Chanel) or ‘Très Cheap’ (Indie Film meets $4 crepes)…

Très Chic: Coco Before Chanel, starring Audrey Tautou. Opens tonight. The Paris Theatre.

Start the evening strolling up Madison Ave and peeking into the small vintage stores that dot the tree-lined cross-streets. You might be able to spot a Chanel or two. Après, meet your date of choice at Le Charlot on 69^th between Madison and Park for Moules Provençale and a bottle of crisp white wine. Catch a cab down to 58^th and Fifth, pick up your tickets at the Paris Theatre, and get ready for some subtitles… The night is young and if you’re up for a splurge post-cinema, head to the Oak Bar—the Plaza’s wood-paneled salon—for the $30 glass of champagne. Pretend you are a Parisienne merely visiting NYC for a bit of an escape.

Très Cheap: Paris starring Juliette Binoche. Opened 9.18.09. IFC Center.

Hop on the subway and land at the W 4^th St. stop—prime West Village locale. Walk southwest to Bedford St. and end up at Café Henri, sitting at the bar and having a carafe of house wine. Linger here until you realize you’re in need of a cheap eat and head to the hole-in-the-wall creperie ‘Crepe Café’ on MacDougal (between 3^rd and Bleecker). Ten bucks cash will you get the crêpe Sucre and the crêpe au chocolat with change to spare (or perhaps a second helping). Make your way to the IFC Center for Paris and settle into your seat—happy, fat, and full of buttered crepes.

DISCLAIMER: I’ve heard mixed reviews for Paris, so choose wisely. For better Binoche options, check out BAM’s film calendar here.

DISCLAIMER #2: As a New Yorker, it feels strange to use the words ‘cheap’ and ‘West Village’ anywhere near each other. But you get creative and find ways to make it work…

Images via Travel+Leisure and Keri Herer Photography

Streetcar: Tickets

Tickets just went on sale this week for Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire starring Cate Blanchett at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

Get. Tickets. Now.

It only runs from Novemeber 27th-December 20th and will be a hard ticket to come by once the show starts running. Certainly worth the subway ride out to Brooklyn.

Check out BAM's website for more info.

Image via BAM

Spotlight On: 59E59

59E59 is an Off-Broadway venue that focuses on bringing new and innovative works to its New York audience. 59E59 is a Drama Desk Award-winning theatre—even its bar is award-winning (who knows what bar awards are called?). The culmination of these accolades is a lively scene filled with a curious and engaged audience.

The three spaces here are small and simple—and rightly so. The emphasis is on the text, on the work, on the ideas. Each year, there is a festival of new British plays (Brits Off Broadway), a workshop of shows heading to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival (East to Edinburgh), and currently they are hosting their first Irish Festival.

Closing this past weekend was Spinning the Times, a collection of five monologues written by Irish female playwrights. It was story telling at its essence and the miniscule space brought intimacy and realism to each monologue. Oh. And the Irish accents didn’t hurt…

Keep in mind these current and upcoming shows:

• The Night Watcher (through 10.31.09)
• The Pride of Parnell Street (through 10.4.09)
• Luck (through 10.11.09)
• Good Bobby (10.8.09-11.8.09)
• Ghost Light (10.14.09-10.31.09)

The pick I’m most anticipating is Good Bobby, by Brian Lee Franklin—a piece about Robert F. Kennedy as a young adult finding his own place in his family.

Image via 59E59

In Season

Quick note: I was at The Met yesterday for the opening of the Robert Frank exhibit and ended up wandering through the rest of the museum afterwards. I was just strolling through and only sat down to take my time with one painting—a Jackson Pollock piece. I was sitting there for a good five minutes when I started to wonder the title of it. ‘Autumn Rhythm’ (1950). Then I realized: it was the first day of fall.

Robert Frank: The Americans

Copyright © Robert Frank

Here’s an analogy to start the day: Robert Frank is to photos what Jack Kerouac is to words. In the 1950’s, Frank hit the open road to document America. What he came up with was absolute realism; what he came up with was an honest depiction of the world around him; what he came up with was The Americans.

Opening today at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans, an extensive exhibit of the black & white photos that Frank published in 1959. Fifty years on we are able to slip back in time, get a glimpse of the “cool and colorful stares” (The New Yorker) that permeate his subjects—and stare back.

Copyright © Robert Frank

Images via The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Part I: Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction

Georgia O'Keeffe, Blue black and Gray, 1960

Georgia O’Keeffe, Above the Clouds 1, 1962/63

Georgia O’Keeffe conjures images of a desert landscape—the Santa Fe sky, an abandoned skull. Recognizable objects and depictions. Yet the current exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art challenges this preconception of who Georgia O’Keeffe is and what she is capable of.

Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction presents works from the late artist which stand alone as organic forms, free-flowing shapes and—as the exhibit title suggests—pure abstractions. In 1915, O’Keeffe blazed onto the art scene with a group of radical abstract charcoal drawings (on view at the exhibit) that gave her career its start. In this sense, “It was with abstraction that O’Keeffe entered the art world and first became celebrated as an artist” (Whitney Museum, exhibit caption). No small thing! For the lengthy, substantial, and influential career that O’Keeffe cultivated, it’s almost a surprise that the very beginning—the birth itself—of her journey and style has not yet been highlighted the way it is at the Whitney.

I went to the exhibit expecting to see the pieces of O’Keeffe’s that I already knew about; I left the exhibit satisfied that I was wrong.

PS-Don’t miss the small room, set off in a corner, of Alfred Stieglitz’s photographs of O’Keeffe. Good grief. What gym did she belong to?...

Alfreid Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, 1919

Images via the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum

Part II: Georgia O’Keeffe, The Movie

A bit of a Georgia-centric week it’s been, considering that the made-for-TV movie Georgia O’Keeffe premiered this past Saturday on Lifetime, starring Joan Allen as O’Keeffe and Jeremy Irons as Alfred Stieglitz. The movie opens with O’Keeffe (Allen) stating, “I don’t trust words. Words and I are not good friends at all.”

Good opener.

I thought to myself, This could be good. This could actually be a good movie. I might actually not be embarrassed that I’m a twenty-something sitting down with a cup of tea to a Lifetime original movie. Yet by the end of the movie, I had a stack of magazines on my lap and my teacup was full of gin.

Okay, kidding about the gin. But the movie was a bit lacking—I found myself distracted and uninvolved. I think what it comes down to is that you cannot sum up Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz’s relationship in a two-hour film. You can’t even highlight it, hint at it, hack at it. It was a turbulent ride they took together and the complexity of their relationship was upstaged by words that often seemed forced and false.

So yes, Georgia. I have to agree. “I don’t trust words.” Especially when they’re coming from a Lifetime original movie.