Category: Art

  • Exhibitions featuring the life and art of women abound in New York at this time, a happy coincidence. Especially fine is the Brooklyn Museum’s “Living Modern,” devoted to the oeuvre and style of Georgia O’Keeffe. The artist had her first solo exhibition at the museum in 1927, organized by Alfred Stieglitz and featuring 15 paintings.…

  • Don’t you want to paint a giant picture now? Laurie Anderson asked the audience at a post Tribeca Film Festival screening Q&A following the premiere of the documentary, Julian Schnabel: A Private Portrait about the artist well known for his work on outsized canvases and plate paintings. An art star for decades, Schnabel is also…

  • Perhaps Frida Kahlo, a singular artist, could only be portrayed in a one-woman show. Voices of her parents, Diego Rivera, Nelson Rockefeller, Georgia O’Keeffe, and others supply the illusion of an outside world. Playing with her dolls and stuffed monkey, or her paints, Brazilian actress and Flamenco dancer Andrea Dantas, who also wrote Fragmented Frida, inhabits…

  • Introducing her friend Daniele Thompson’s new film Cezanne et moi at a special screening at the Whitby Hotel last week, Diane von Furstenberg noted the painterly look, the sheer beauty of this movie. The audience of artists in all media could not have been more fitting: Marina Abramovic, Eric Fishl, Ahn Duong, Bennett Miller, Ellen…

  • If you are going to honor Susan Stroman for her achievement in performing arts, as Guild Hall did this week at their annual gala at the Rainbow Room, you may expect, aside from the usual clip reel, some real live Broadway stars. Laura Osnes, a sublime Cinderella, now preparing for the opening of Bandstand, sang…

  • A photo exhibit at the Film Society of Lincoln Center features color stills from the set of Fellini’s 8 1/2, the maestro’s last film in black & white. Photographer Paul Ronald shot them as an aside while he was shooting black & white production stills, and of course, as these things go, the cache was…

  • At a wall-to-wall packed opening at the Grey Art Gallery, photographer/ filmmaker / musician John Cohen held court in front of a video installation of some vintage photographs he took at the heyday of artist owned galleries on 10th Street. Talk about a fascinating pocket of art history! “Inventing Downtown: Artist-Run Galleries in New York…

  • For Guild Hall curator Christina Strassfield, a show on minimalism was a no brainer. Currently on view in two large galleries, stark works in sand colors, geometrics, in brown felt material, in bright neon, the exhibition displays art from the collection of Bridgehampton resident Leonard Ruggio, whose passion is minimalism, a midcentury movement that challenges…

  • Against a wall proclaiming “Make America Great Again” in blood red, an electric chair did not seem out of place. Not for nothing was the Watermill Center’s annual gala called “Fada: House of Madness.” Created by Pussy Riot, the work augured the ironies of installations throughout Robert Wilson’s foundation’s ample grounds. Even though rain threatened…

  • Jack Lenor Larsen’s LongHouse Reserve, home to a spectacular sculpture garden including Yoko Ono’s “Wishing Tree,” became the site of great music, food, and art, in “serious moonlight,” its 25th year celebration. As maidens in midnight flowy frocks danced around a reflecting pool, partiers slurped oysters and sipped peach bellinis, gathering for a piano recital by…

  • What is beat? From down and out through saintly beatitudes, beat is an attitude. As a literary movement, the Beat Generation is an American phenomenon, but every geographic area that experienced it, takes ownership, and the French are no different. In Paris, at Centre Pompidou’s 6th floor neighboring a retrospective of Paul Klee, a vast…

  • Peter Beard occupies the last house on the East End, and from his perch the expanse of the Atlantic Ocean is compelling. Having made art, collages and photography for decades, both here and on exotic travels, and featuring an array of celebrities including Mick Jagger, Jerry Hall, Bianca Jagger, Lee Radzivill, the two Edie Beales,…

  • Depending on what era formed you, you can relate to a piece of Gloria Vanderbilt. If you are old enough, it’s the “Poor Little Rich Girl” headlines, or maybe it’s her dating Frank Sinatra, or the designer jeans with the swan logo. Women wore her name across their derrieres. She’s lived every era fully, and…

  • The subtitle of the unflinching documentary, Robert Mapplethorpe: Look at the Pictures, comes from Senator Jesse Helms, enemy of free expression, hallmark of our democracy. Bookending the movie about the photographer who came of age in the ‘60’s and died at age 42 of AIDS in 1989, the senator’s words are meant to denigrate the art of…

  • In the fall of 2012, the French-born photographer Frederic Brenner took me to a swimming hole in the Bet Shean valley in Israel. Crowds sat on the edge of rocks waiting to jump in. Brenner exulted in the place, where the Romans, he told me, came in ancient times, a site I “dare not miss.”…

  • A master storyteller in the tradition of medieval balladeers, Sting recounted a childhood experience at a celebration this week of his The Last Ship from the River of the Northern City, a handcrafted boxed edition of his Last Ship lyrics with woodcuts by “luminist” painter Stephen Hannock, published by Two Ponds Press. Growing up in…

  • Last week, at a special screening at Guild Hall, Michael Shannon spoke about his work on 99 Homes, a feature directed by Ramin Bahrani about the housing crash, specifically dramatizing the horror to families as their homes are reclaimed by those from whom they were offered home loans in the housing boom. Michael Shannon plays…

  • “We don’t do rows,” exclaimed Dr. Alexandra Munroe, curator of Asian Art at the Guggenheim, during a preview of the upcoming Guild Hall Garden as Art tour.  The Munroe/ Rosenkranz site features nine garden “rooms.” Your eye may focus on the expansive croquet or tennis courts, but guiding visitors past a basket of today’s crop,…

  • Even before we got to the Osteria Salina on route 27 in Wainscot, the reincarnation of the Italian restaurant from School Street in Bridgehampton, the word was owners Tim and Cinzia Gaglia (she is also chef) put in a barroom baby grand for Billy Joel, just in case he popped by for some pasta, as…

  • Just prior to the Arthamptons opening, I met with Ruth Appelhof, Executive Director of Guild Hall, who will receive the Arthamptons Lifetime Achievement Award on July 5. Over eggs Benedict at the Maidstone in East Hampton, we talked about her background in the arts, accomplishments at Guild Hall over her 16-year tenure, how things get…

  • “How’s my German?,” asked British actor Allan Corduner who plays Gustav Bloch-Bauer in the film Woman in Gold. He’s Maria Altmann’s father, in flashback to pre-war and Nazi occupied Vienna, when she was a young woman who managed to escape. Helen Mirren plays Maria’s older version, and they had only one scene together, when Maria,…

  • Perhaps the most recognizable poster created by Paul Rand is the one he made for IBM, with its clean iconic triad, the eye, the bee, with the alphabet letter M, striped to match the body of the bee, to complete the rhebus. The graphic designer Paul Rand (1914-1996) is acknowledged as the artist who lifted…

  • As galas go, Guild Hall’s is one of the best, a chance for city and country to meet up over art, cocktails, and dinner. On Monday, Hamptonites left their snowy driveways behind, hopped on a jitney, greeted the Manhattan crowd at Sotheby’s, mingled over cocktails and viewed Guild Hall's recent acquisitions at the annual winter love fest.…

  • The parting shot as we left Miami for Cuba last week was NBC’s Brian Williams reporting from Havana. Talks were under way, and news crews were on it. Andrea Mitchell was spotted crossing the Hotel Nacional’s grand lobby. Everyone wanted to know how President Obama’s move to finesse diplomacy would land. Already the word was…

  • No surprise: the Museum of Modern Art has extended its exhibition of Matisse’s cut outs as a result of popular demand. The same happened when the show featuring the master’s late in life career debuted in London’s Tate. But viewers in 350 American cities as of this week do not have to travel to get…