No one can challenge our art creds. James and I trudged through a northeaster to see some gallery shows in Chelsea yesterday.

We started on 19th Street, which has two great painting shows. The first is Raoul de Keyser at David Zwirner. He is the teacher of Luc Tuymans, which I didn’t know when I first saw the paintings, but I certainly saw an affinity with Tuymans’s work.

The show across the street at Klemens Gasser & Tanja Grunert (no web site, so these are examples) is a group show titled Every Heartbeat is Past and Gone! with four European painters: Siegfried Anzinger, Axel Kasseböhmer, Marie Luise Lebschik, and Andreas Schulze.

On 20th Street we tried to see AES+F’s King of the Forest at Claire Oliver, but I didn’t feel like spending much time with the work, given the reception from the gallery guy working there. We had come in from the snow to check out the show, and given that it’s a highly conceptual show, it seemed reasonable to ask to see the press release or checklist. His response? “Sorry, my friend. The show’s coming down today, and we’ve given out all of the materials.” Ugh. No wonder sometimes people want to go into galleries and say, “Oy, shopgirl!”

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Let’s end on a happy note. Our last stops were at Rare Plus‘s holiday gift store to buy a hankerchief by Orly Cogan and some t-shirts by Emily Noelle Lambert, and then across the street to Massimo Audiello. Massimo had an over-the-top show titled Pantone, curated by David Hunt. We know a number of people in the show, and I would have to say the highlight for me was seeing Emily’s first large painting. She is a young, smart artist, and I’m enjoying watching as her work grows. We picked up a painting by her when she had some works showing at the Mini minimarket in Williamsburg in May.

My other favorite work in the show is the amazing chandelier, titled Shanty Lair created by Jesse Bercowitz and Matt Bua. There is a little ‘zine titled Old Person’s Guide to the World’s of Shanty Lair (Liar) that they did available for free at the gallery. Make sure you pick up one.

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See James for more on our adventures, including images of the two works we picked up at the DUMBO Arts Center benefit.

We first saw Teresa’s work in the Soft Cell show at Foxy in June. I was really struck by the large painting she had in that show, and the gallery already had some works on paper that I liked and thought we might want at some point.

The current show, titled Wildlife has paintings (acrylic on canvas) and works on paper (gouache) of various pieces of furniture. Most of them are floating in space rather than in a recognizable setting. The perspective is often off, and the object often lies off-center in a large field of blank space.

I waited until we had decided what to buy before I posted. We bought three works on paper that are not in the show, but we were able to see at the opening:

We’re headed to d.u.m.b.o. arts center’s winter auction tonight. There are some great works by artists we know in the silent auction – Matthew Callinan, Jenny Scobel, etc.

DUMBO is so nice in the snow…

We may not make it to the opening, as we’ll he headed to BAM for Death of Klinghoffer, but check out Pantone, curated by David Hunt, which opens tonight (6-8) at Massimo Audiello. The show includes works by Emily Lambert, Jesse Bercowetz and Matt Bua, and Nicole Cherubini.

We saw the opening program of Central Station — “a multi-week, multi-venue and multi-city program that will bring East/Central European work into the spotlight in many U.S. communities.”

The evening consisted of La Sonnambula by Galina Borissova (from Bulgaria), Two and Stretching Thighs by Márta Ladjánszki (Hungary), and Serial Paradise by Cosmin Manolescu.

The Borissova, danced by her as a solo, was an excerpt of a larger work. It’s set to various sections of opera recordings, and mixes odd, fascinating movement, humor, and bits of sadness. The entire work consists of solos by 14 women dancers, and I would love to see it.

The piece by Cosmin Manolescu consists of various excerpts from an hour-long work. It includes some great dance making fun of machismo, the boy band phenomenon,

and nationalism. There is an amazing solo danced by Eduard Gabia, who wears earplugs to prevent hearing the Romanian folk music that plays as he dances.

Here is a page with some more images from works by Manolescu.

The events take place at DTW, Danspace, and P.S.122. Go here for more information.

We spent all afternoon walking around Chelsea galleries. The highlights:

Carolyn Swiszcz at M.Y. Art Prospects — an incredibly beautiful show of works on paper using various techniques including collage and painting.

Camelot Cleaner, 15 X 17, acrylic, pencil, and ink on paper, 2003

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Henry Horenstein: Honky Tonk, Portraits of Country Music 1972 – 1981 at Sarah Morthland — getting in touch with my heritage

Playing For Tips
Tootsies Orchid Lounge Nashville, Tennessee, 1974
Gelatin Silver Print, 16 X 20 inches
printed 2003

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I can’t get an image from her site, since it still shows the last show, but Framing Architecture, a show of architecture-related art curated by Daniel Marzona at Elga Wimmer is a great show. I especially liked the paintings and sculpture of Simon Aldridge, the works on paper by Eric Brown, and the styrofoam sculptures by Patrick Meagher. We saw Eric’s work at the Cheap show at White Columns, which was where we picked up our Matthew Callinan piece.

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Nancy Spero: The War Series 1966-70 at Galerie Lelong — it is pretty rare to see such beauty in angry, political work like this

Love, Peace, Glory
1966
Gouache and ink on paper

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Contra/Post at JG Contemporary — luckily the initials all worked out. The former Jay Grimm gallery on 28th Street has been acquired by Madison Avenue stalwart James Graham and Sons. They have a nice show of work by Joe Fyfe, James Hyde, Nancy Shaver, and others.

Nancy Shaver
Yellow and Black Horizontals and Red and Green Verticals
2002
Wooden boxes, plastic blocks, flashe, acrylic and house paint

Yes, i still love all of you. I’m not posting much because I’m feeling flu-ish.

While browsing New Music Box, a web site for contemporary American music — classical isn’t quite the right word — I came across their Quicktime presentation of John Cage’s Complete Music for Carillon, which we were lucky enough to hear on October 26 as part of the “When Morty Met John” festival. James wrote about it here.

Two weeks ago we went to see the Berlin Philharmonic with Simon Rattle at Carnegie Hall. This is the first time they have appeared with him as Music Director in New York. It was dazzling. They started with a commissioned work by Heiner Goebbels, followed by Sibelius’s Seventh Symphony and Schubert’s Ninth Symphony (“The Great”). I like the idea of performing a contemporary work first. It makes one listen to the “classic” works as if they were new again, and the Berlin under Rattle certainly plays them that way.

They are an immensely talented and surprisingly young orchestra who could probably play these works in their sleep, but the point is that they do not play them that way. We could see the players smiling at each other with enthusiasm or even joy as they played. Performances like this remind me why we go to hear works performed live, even when we have almost anything one could hear in a concert on a CD at home.

I read an article in the Chicago Tribune about Simon Rattle. One of things it makes me think about, which is hard to express, is that I’m such a Euro-phile because it is a place where people consider culture an integral part of life, not a luxury for an effete elite. It’s one of the reasons why I’m thinking of leaving the USA for a while at some point. I want to live in a city like Berlin that can mix a vital contemporary arts scene with a respect for classical culture that is part of the social fabric, not just something for a small group of people. Our President thinks he’s talking about culture when he tells people he saw “Cats” on a previous visit to London.

Simon Rattle says it’s not unusual for him to be strolling along one of the bustling streets of ethnically diverse Berlin and have a bunch of kids — just the other week it was three Turkish teenagers — greet him with a high-five and a cheery “Hi, Simon!”

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“The thing that is different is that in Central Europe you don’t have to argue that classical music is important or valid — that is taken for granted,” Rattle said recently from New York. “It’s extraordinary how classical music survives when it isn’t marginalized in people’s consciousness. Over there, politicians believe it’s important. They come to hear concerts and operas. They wouldn’t consider themselves civilized unless they did.”

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And because the Berlin players have no collective fealty to the great classics, he has discovered they are more open to the challenge of performing some of the most difficult contemporary scores. He has already transformed the BPO’s repertory by making his passion for the music of our time his players’ passion too. “What is new for them they have accepted with open arms,” Rattle observes, adding that the orchestra’s new-music programs usually play to sold-out houses of younger listeners.