Art favs, theater and recent discoveries

(11/28/04) At the Performing Art garage, Wooster group staged the Poor Theater. It was great, one of the best shows I've seen in recent history. First part is reanacting the staging of Jerzy Grotowski's Akropolis in Poland, half in Polish, but it didn't matter, and the second part is a study on the work of choreographer William Forsythe.

Ugly Duckling Presse

(11/30/04) Matvei's Ugly Duckling Presse sometimes organizes good readings and parties too!
(11/25/04) Felix's art has been on exhibit in Dabora gallery, little goth salon in Williamsburgh.
(11/20/04) I forgot how much I like Edward Hopper Always the same houses, women by windows, streets, but beautiful, and somehow always different.
(11/17/04) Serbs are cashing in on Broadway, staging Canary Soup in Kraine theater. A somebody said, good actors, bad direction, again I think it would make a lot more sense in serbian.
(11/10/04) Went to the play Risk Everything at St. Ann's Warehouse, some Polish Tarantino wannabe, but not so bad, maybe everything sounds better when it is not in english.
(10/25/04) Went to Affordable art fair, Jacob was having a performance about fictional Chelsea coaster, half the Columbia MFA was exhibiting. Tieh, Ok.
(10/20/04) Saw Temptation of ST.Anthony, at BAM, directed by Robert Wilson. All black cast, gospelly singing, but nicely done and lit. though, I really don't have patience for that whole siniging thing other than opera.
(10/15/04) Been to Slava's Snowshow, russian clown show, sort of cirque de soleil-ish, ah so poetic, the whole sentimental clown thing, but done well.
(9/25/04) Went to Magic Flute, at the Metropolitan, my favourite opera since I was a kid. Julie Taymour(Titus) directed. The modern/samurai/masonic take on the design was kingdo of cool, but as somebody in the audience commented 'what's with all the Flash Gordon shit?'.
(8/02/04) Looked at Joel-Peter Witkin, photographs, very staged, very gothic, carnival freaks.
(6/20/04) Also at the Barbara Gladstone Gallery , there is a n exhibit of Anish Kapoor . He makes these slick, smooth white and mercury objects that screw with your perception of space and make you want to touch them. Though not my style, very elegant and soothing ....
(6/20/04) Also at the Gagosian Gallery , there is a n exhibit of Willem de Koonig . It's a retrospective, I like the older works better, before he got real sick and painted only in pink. I guess he is a legend, not my most favourite one...
(6/20/04) At the David Zwirner Gallery , there is an exhibit of Daniel Richter work. Wayne likes better the psyhodelic, non-representative stuff, while I like the more recent comic, circus theme. 'Child' like paintings with arguably story/allegory, albino gorillas in wheelchairs, clown carnage, horse-acide ...
(5/20/04) At the Jewish Museum, Modigliani, there is a big Modigliani exhibit. They all look the same, but I still love it.
(5/07/04)On my trip to LA I went to the Norton Simon Museum. It's a relatively decent privite collection of run of the mill post/impressionistic and modern stuff. But they have my favourite Modigliani painting Jeanne Habuterne.
(4/30/04) At the Whitney, Whitney Biennial exhibition of recent American art. Whatever, very pretty, colourful, ah so cool, but bloody empty.
(4/01/04) At the Met, Byzantium exhibition, icons and frescos from Balcans, lots of them from ex-Yugo. Most of the usual stuff, but they also have these absurdly fine tiny mosaics.
(3/12/04) Also saw my favourite, Henry Darger, at the Gallerie St. Etienne, amazing to see his stuff live, these are full wall frescoes! If I had 50K to spare this is where it would go.
(3/12/04) Went to the Armory Show, yearly expo of galeries from all over the world, held at the piers. Quite pretty, kind of stuff that sells well.
(3/5/04) Recently seen William Kentridge show at the Marion Goodman Gallery . He makes cartoons by drawing, photographing and redrawing on the same paper, very nice charcoal images...
(2/20) Never thought I would like performance art, Joan Jones at the the Kitchen. When it started I was 'like' huh, hoh, here we go bs all around, but I really got into it. Not too keen on the dialogue, but the music by DJ Spooky was good, video projections really added to actors movin' around on the stage, kind got the dervish feel. Apparently the idea was that Helen never left Troy to go to Egypt, or something....
(2/12)Richard Foreman's Ontological theather . I saw the play this year, King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe and last year it was Panic. He writes and apsurdist play every year and stages it at St. Mark's theater. The nonsensical nature of the plays makes it a bit hard to sit through, hour and a half without any direction, but they leave a good thought hangin', are visually creative ...
(12/20) On a recent visit to MOMAQNS , saw the Kiki Smith show. From a purely amateur view I enjoyed more the dead animals/nature and fairy tales theme than some of the more 3D repetative conceptual stuff, though I'm sure art theorists were having a ball. Especially noted Etc, Etc; Peacock; Two; After Lewis Carroll.
(12/15)So many galleries so few don't suck, the reviews at artnet and artforum
(11/..) I have seen Yoshimoto Nara before, but I saw even more of his prints at the Printer's Fair in Chelsea a few weeks ago. See them at Stephen Friedman Gallery site. Anything that is comic art with a Sonic Youthy feel seems to appeal to me.
(11/03) On a recent trip to Toronto, went to the Toronto International Art Fair, where I discovered a few more random artists I liked, such as Jean Paul Lemieux, Alessandro Papetti and Malcolm Liepke.
(10/...)Exploding Dog drawings, drawings of stickmen, some of them are very dreamy and beautiful, some are quite creepy, either way very good, Sam Brown draws them every day based on the lines people send him, like I'm listening to sad songs
Paul La Farge introduced me to the bizarre world of the naive painter Henry Darger , the guy was a semi crazy janitor who traced trash drawings to create amazing fantasy world that his landlord discovered when he died.
best comics from Moebius and Jodorovsky, finally published on this side of the pond
good old Amadeo Modigliani, I seem to be somewhat obsessed
general reference: Art history links