Art Views: Exhibitions in New York, February, 2019
The title says this is about February, but without much exception, this is really a post about shows I missed over the past few months, yet are still open… Most will be around for months to come, but not all. Check the dates before you head out.
edit 2/9/2019: added a few shows down at the bottom
Implicit Tensions: Mapplethorpe Now | Guggenheim {archived}
Part 1: January 25–July 10, 2019
Part 2: July 24, 2019–January 5, 2020
In 1993, the Guggenheim received a generous gift of approximately two hundred photographs and unique objects from the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation, initiating the museum’s photography collection. Today, the Guggenheim celebrates the sustained legacy of the artist’s work with a yearlong exhibition program conceived in two sequential parts and presented in the museum’s Mapplethorpe Gallery on Tower Level 4.
The first part of Implicit Tensions (January 25–July 10, 2019) features highlights from the Guggenheim’s in-depth Mapplethorpe holdings, including early Polaroids, collages, and mixed-media constructions; iconic, classicizing photographs of male and female nudes; floral still lifes; portraits of artists, celebrities, and acquaintances; explicit depictions of New York’s underground S&M scene; and searingly honest self-portraits.
The second part of Implicit Tensions (July 24, 2019–January 5, 2020) will address Mapplethorpe’s complex legacy in the field of contemporary art. A focused selection of his photographs will be on view alongside works by artists in the Guggenheim’s collection, including Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Lyle Ashton Harris, Glenn Ligon, Zanele Muholi, Catherine Opie, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya.
Punk Lust: Raw Provocation 1971–1985 | Museum of Sex {archived}
November 29, 2018 — November, 2019
Obviously I missed this back in the fall, but it’s up for a year, so we’ve all got plenty of time to see it.
The Museum of Sex presents Punk Lust: Raw Provocation 1971–1985, a survey looking at the way Punk culture used the language of sexuality–both visually and lyrically–to transgress and defy, whether in the service of political provocation, raw desire, or just to break through the stifling gender norms and social expectations that punks refused to let define them. The exhibition is co-curated by cultural critic Carlo McCormick, journalist, writer and musician Vivien Goldman and Lissa Rivera of the Museum of Sex, among other supporters and will be on view through November 30th 2019.
Featuring over 300 artifacts, including ephemera, original artworks, film, and garments worn by punk legends — the exhibition includes a wide selection from archives and private collections set within an immersive installation and soundscape. Punk lust was an expression of revolt, representing both an upheaval of what youth, beauty, and fun should look like and a more personal abnegation of self. Punk sexuality played with stereotypes, upended expectations, and confronted the latent repressive and puritanical morality within the society of spectacle. Influenced and often supported by the 1970s’ booming sex industry, Punk incubated in abandoned cities like New York, London, Detroit, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, where youth culture was left unattended and given license to explore the forbidden boundaries of casual contact in an era before AIDS. The young women born from punk were fearless and fierce; while the men were at once averse to the clichés of cock-rock and inflected by the prior expressions of Glam and the emergence of a radical queer culture. Punk lust was urgent, necessary, born as much from boredom as desire. Or in the words of Johnny Rotten, lead singer of The Sex Pistols: “Love is two minutes and fifty-two seconds of squelching noises.”
Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth | The Morgan Library {archived}
January 25 through May 12, 2019
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.” With these words the Oxford professor J.R.R. Tolkien ignited a fervid spark in generations of readers. From the children’s classic The Hobbit to the epic The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien’s adventurous tales of hobbits and elves, dwarves and wizards have introduced millions to the rich history of Middle-earth. Going beyond literature, Tolkien’s Middle-earth is a world complete with its own languages and histories. Tolkien: Maker of Middle-earth celebrates the man and his creation. The exhibition will be the most extensive public display of original Tolkien material for several generations. Drawn from the collections of the Tolkien Archive at the Bodleian Library (Oxford), Marquette University Libraries (Milwaukee), the Morgan, and private lenders, the exhibition will include family photographs and memorabilia, Tolkien’s original illustrations, maps, draft manuscripts, and designs related to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.
Beautiful Youths: Dandies from the Read Persian Album | The Morgan Library {archived}
October 30, 2018 through February 17, 2019
The leaves of a magnificent album compiled for Husain Khan Shamlu, governor of Herat (r. 1598–1618) and one of the most powerful rulers in Persia in the early seventeenth century, are now on view on the Lower Level. Known as muraqqa’s, such albums were assembled by mounting work from various artists, calligraphers, and time periods onto standard-sized sheets, which were then framed with highly ornamented paper.
During the sixteenth and seventh centuries in Safavid Iran, innovative painters began to move away from the traditional format of illuminated manuscripts toward single-page compositions created specifically for albums. Particularly popular were paintings of idealized youths, usually depicted as languorous, carefree, and elegantly dressed. As embodiments of beauty and objects of desire, these youths evoke the rapturous descriptions of the beloved that were a favorite subject of lyric poets at the time.
Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving | Brooklyn Museum {archived}
February 8–May 12, 2019
Mexican artist Frida Kahlo’s unique and immediately recognizable style was an integral part of her identity. Kahlo came to define herself through her ethnicity, disability, and politics, all of which were at the heart of her work. Frida Kahlo: Appearances Can Be Deceiving is the largest U.S. exhibition in ten years devoted to the iconic painter and the first in the United States to display a collection of her clothing and other personal possessions, which were rediscovered and inventoried in 2004 after being locked away since Kahlo’s death, in 1954. They are displayed alongside important paintings, drawings, and photographs from the celebrated Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection of 20th Century Mexican Art, as well as related historical film and ephemera. To highlight the collecting interests of Kahlo and her husband, muralist Diego Rivera, works from our extensive holdings of Mesoamerican art are also included.
Kahlo’s personal artifacts — which range from noteworthy examples of Kahlo’s Tehuana clothing, contemporary and pre-Colonial jewelry, and some of the many hand-painted corsets and prosthetics used by the artist during her lifetime — had been stored in the Casa Azul (Blue House), the longtime Mexico City home of Kahlo and Rivera, who had stipulated that their possessions not be disclosed until 15 years after Rivera’s death. The objects shed new light on how Kahlo crafted her appearance and shaped her personal and public identity to reflect her cultural heritage and political beliefs, while also addressing and incorporating her physical disabilities.
Porkchop solo show | 212 Arts
January 31, — February 12, 2019
Exhibitionism: 50 Years of The Museum at FIT {archived}
Special Exhibitions Gallery
February 8, 2019 — April 20, 2019
Remember so many years ago, the museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology had an exhibition on Goth fashion? Yeah, well, this museum has been blowing us away ever since. This show celebrates it’s history, and it’s free to enter.
Exhibitionism: 50 Years of The Museum at FIT celebrates the 50th anniversary of what Michael Kors calls “the fashion insider’s fashion museum” by bringing back 33 of the most influential exhibitions produced since the first one was staged in 1971. Taken entirely from the museum’s permanent holdings, more than 80 looks will be on display. From Fashion and Surrealism to The Corset to A Queer History of Fashion, the exhibitions are known for being “intelligent, innovative, and independent,” says MFIT Director Valerie Steele. “The museum has been in the forefront of fashion curation, with more than 200 fashion exhibitions over the past half century, many accompanied by scholarly books and symposia.”
On Paper | Paul Booth Gallery and Last Rites Gallery {archived}
February 8th — March 2nd, 2019
Works on view by Casey Baugh, Paul Cristina, George Dawnay, Jesse Draxler, Victor Grasso, Miles Johnston, Eric Lacombe, Darby Lahger, Daniel Maidman, Alex Merritt, Reisha Perlmutter, Joel Daniel Phillips, Horacio Quiroz, Edmond Rochat, Nick Runge, David Stoupakis, and Barnaby Whitfield.
