The George Lindemann Journal by George Lindemann

They do so across the expanse of the museum’s fourth floor, tracing their loops over a surface painted with a blueprint for the building. At one end, opposite the window onto Madison Avenue, hangs a giant neon-tube portrait of Ms. Michelson, glowing green.

Nicole Mannarino is the first to enter and the last to leave. Her blue jumpsuit, slit in a bare V, from neck to waist, has kimono sleeves that suggest wings as she holds her arms out to the side. She circles backward on half-toe, pauses periodically to reset, and continues circling.

Eleanor Hullihan arrives, her legs uncovered — the costumes, by Ms. Michelson and James Kidd, are remarkable for their individualized exposure of flesh — and the two women circle together with a precision that grows more incredible as their paths diverge and overlap. Each lowers an arm to avoid a collision.

One at a time, three other circlers join in; one at a time, all five circlers depart. (This is not counting the character in the horse’s head from Ms. Michelson’s 2009 work “Dover Beach,” who comes and goes inscrutably.)

That’s the gist of the dance, and the dancers’ entrances and exits constitute major events. But so, eventually, do small variations in the circling or quick digressions from it. Very late in the game, a mere torso tilt screams “beauty.” A few leaps forward by Ms. Hullihan seem as shocking as a reversal of gravity.

You might take all of this as a meditation on time, or on minimalism in art and dance. Or you might be bored out of your mind. (James Lo’s score meditates on minimalism in music.) There was significant audience attrition at the Thursday opening, particularly during the middle section, where the dancers stop circling to stand for what seems like eternity.

Meditating, however, is made difficult from the beginning by a conversation in voice-over, stalled and repeated, between Ms. Michelson and the playwright Richard Maxwell. They ask themselves the inane questions artists are often asked, and their inane answers — about how challenging art isn’t popular, etc. — are made more irritating by a purposefully insincere tone. Later, when Ms. Michelson recounts telling her dancers to “make it very beautiful,” it’s like a confession.

Meditation on the movement is thwarted again at the end, when Ms. Michelson’s voice, which has gone quiet, returns to opine about faith amid a ridiculous fable about God’s other child, Marjorie. Religion is also invoked in the program, where Ms. Michelson quotes George Balanchine’s praising comparison of American dancers to angels “who, when they relate a tragic situation, do not themselves suffer.”

But these dancers do suffer. The choreography is punishing, physically and mentally. Ms. Mannarino, her stylish jumpsuit sweat-darkened by the halfway point, endures heroically, but Moriah Evans is saddled with an oversize smock, and Ms. Michelson emphasizes her obvious struggle with the movement by excluding her from the parallel orbits of the others.

“You can get away with murder,” Ms. Michelson says, pretending that she doesn’t care if we agree. The choreographer whose image looks down upon the dancers and who keeps interfering and who demands acts of devotion is a cruel and anxious god.

“Devotion Study #1” continues through Sunday at the Whitney Museum of American Art; (212) 570-3600, whitney.org.

They do so across the expanse of the museum’s fourth floor, tracing their loops over a surface painted with a blueprint for the building. At one end, opposite the window onto Madison Avenue, hangs a giant neon-tube portrait of Ms. Michelson, glowing green.

Nicole Mannarino is the first to enter and the last to leave. Her blue jumpsuit, slit in a bare V, from neck to waist, has kimono sleeves that suggest wings as she holds her arms out to the side. She circles backward on half-toe, pauses periodically to reset, and continues circling.

Eleanor Hullihan arrives, her legs uncovered — the costumes, by Ms. Michelson and James Kidd, are remarkable for their individualized exposure of flesh — and the two women circle together with a precision that grows more incredible as their paths diverge and overlap. Each lowers an arm to avoid a collision.

One at a time, three other circlers join in; one at a time, all five circlers depart. (This is not counting the character in the horse’s head from Ms. Michelson’s 2009 work “Dover Beach,” who comes and goes inscrutably.)

That’s the gist of the dance, and the dancers’ entrances and exits constitute major events. But so, eventually, do small variations in the circling or quick digressions from it. Very late in the game, a mere torso tilt screams “beauty.” A few leaps forward by Ms. Hullihan seem as shocking as a reversal of gravity.

You might take all of this as a meditation on time, or on minimalism in art and dance. Or you might be bored out of your mind. (James Lo’s score meditates on minimalism in music.) There was significant audience attrition at the Thursday opening, particularly during the middle section, where the dancers stop circling to stand for what seems like eternity.

Meditating, however, is made difficult from the beginning by a conversation in voice-over, stalled and repeated, between Ms. Michelson and the playwright Richard Maxwell. They ask themselves the inane questions artists are often asked, and their inane answers — about how challenging art isn’t popular, etc. — are made more irritating by a purposefully insincere tone. Later, when Ms. Michelson recounts telling her dancers to “make it very beautiful,” it’s like a confession.

Meditation on the movement is thwarted again at the end, when Ms. Michelson’s voice, which has gone quiet, returns to opine about faith amid a ridiculous fable about God’s other child, Marjorie. Religion is also invoked in the program, where Ms. Michelson quotes George Balanchine’s praising comparison of American dancers to angels “who, when they relate a tragic situation, do not themselves suffer.”

But these dancers do suffer. The choreography is punishing, physically and mentally. Ms. Mannarino, her stylish jumpsuit sweat-darkened by the halfway point, endures heroically, but Moriah Evans is saddled with an oversize smock, and Ms. Michelson emphasizes her obvious struggle with the movement by excluding her from the parallel orbits of the others.

“You can get away with murder,” Ms. Michelson says, pretending that she doesn’t care if we agree. The choreographer whose image looks down upon the dancers and who keeps interfering and who demands acts of devotion is a cruel and anxious god.

“Devotion Study #1” continues through Sunday at the Whitney Museum of American Art; (212) 570-3600, whitney.org.

 

When people think of famed surrealist Salvador Dalí, more often than not it’s one of his 1,500 paintings that comes to mind. Maybe even Destino, the Disney-animated short the Spanish artist produced in 1945.
Often overlooked, but as significant in understanding Dalí, are the hundreds of sculptures he created before he died in 1989 at age 84 in his birthplace, Figueres, Spain.
“Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality,” Dalí once said. Still, with raised Dalíesque eyebrows, people exclaim, “I did not know Dalí did sculpture.”
With the Wednesday opening of Dalí Miami at the Design District’s Moore Building, perhaps they will.
Along with his glass masterpiece Montre Molle (Melting Clock, 1971) the gouache Spring Rain (1949) and the rare intaglio The Grasshopper Child (1934), the 200 works on view will include 70 sculptures, among them Dalí’s 1964 bronze Venus de Milo with Drawers and the 1972 bronze, Winged Triton.

On Friday, High Line Art, the public art program of the New York park built on a historic elevated rail line, announced its plans for its spring 2012 season. Work on view will include, in April, a new contribution by the Scottish artist David Shrigley to the High Line Billboard series, presented on a 25-by-75-foot billboard next to the park on Tenth Avenue at West 18th Street, and films and videos in the High Line Channel series, an outdoor program featuring projections on a building to the east of the High Line at West 22nd Street after dark.

Also in the spring, High Line Art will present performance art pieces by Alison Knowles (April 22, Earth Day), Channa Horwitz (May 17) and Simone Forti (May 24), on and around the High Line. And the park’s first group exhibition,“Lilliput,” inspired by Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” will assemble sculptures of diminutive scale by various artists, scattered along the High Line.

On Friday, High Line Art, the public art program of the New York park built on a historic elevated rail line, announced its plans for its spring 2012 season. Work on view will include, in April, a new contribution by the Scottish artist David Shrigley to the High Line Billboard series, presented on a 25-by-75-foot billboard next to the park on Tenth Avenue at West 18th Street, and films and videos in the High Line Channel series, an outdoor program featuring projections on a building to the east of the High Line at West 22nd Street after dark.

Also in the spring, High Line Art will present performance art pieces by Alison Knowles (April 22, Earth Day), Channa Horwitz (May 17) and Simone Forti (May 24), on and around the High Line. And the park’s first group exhibition,“Lilliput,” inspired by Jonathan Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels,” will assemble sculptures of diminutive scale by various artists, scattered along the High Line.

In its 10th year of showcasing work from Latin American artists, the arteaméricas fair in Miami Beach that opens Saturday is highlighting something new: work from artists of any origin.

The new FotoAméricas section, which was open to all nationalities, is a reflection of Miami’s increasingly global reputation as an art destination.

Miami’s profile has been raised largely thanks to Art Basel Miami Beach, which marked its 10th year in December, and multiple satellite fairs that draw an international audience each year.

“You have now a much more international crowd of not only Latin Americans but Spaniards, Europeans,” fair president Leslie Pantín said. “You have [an area] that has changed dramatically in the last 10 years with all these international people that live most of the year down here in Miami.”

His own fair represents that shift, Pantín said: In its first year, “only Hispanics came.”

This year, the 52-gallery fair is expected to draw an estimated 15,000 art lovers from all over the Southern part of the state, New York — and, of course, Latin America.

Observers say that while Miami remains a city in artistic flux, its roots in Hispanic culture are deep.

“Miami is a city in search of its cultural artistic identity,” said Reed V. Horth, president and curator of Robin Rile Fine Art and curator of a Salvador Dalí exhibit that opens next week in Miami. “There are many names, shows and styles all vying to become what is quintessential about Miami. While the future remains uncertain, we are slowly becoming to Latin American art what Paris was to impressionism in the 1880s.”

Arteaméricas, which runs through Monday, is the first of three major events that focus on Latin America and its mother country of Spain to open in Miami the space of a week. On Wednesday, the five-day Dalí Miami exhibit, featuring 200 works by the Spanish artist, opens at the Moore Building in the Design District. Thursday brings the opening reception for Cuba: The Natural Beauty by photographer Clyde Butcher at the Center for Visual Communication in Miami.

The events are a testament to the built-in audience that South Florida provides for art with a Latin American or Spanish bent. With high-profile galleries and artists in the community, “it would be hard to argue any other city has had as much of an impact on Latin American art as Miami has,” Horth said.

Gary Nader, an art dealer and gallery owner, began auctioning Latin American art in the early 90s and just recently opened a show featuring masters and contemporary Latin American artists.

“When I opened my first gallery here 25 years ago, I registered ‘Miami, Latin American art capital of the world’ [as a trademark] because it’s where you find the most important things in Latin American art — in Miami,” he said.

Still, Nader said, only about 50 percent of what his gallery shows is Latin American art. And when he resurrected his auction house earlier this year, the pieces he sold were Latin American, modern and contemporary.

The presence of Art Basel Miami Beach has introduced collectors of modern Latin American art to more cutting-edge contemporary artists from the area, said art advisor Lisa Austin. And the growing population of affluent young Latin Americans are proving a solid target for those contemporary artists.

 

The 10 state finalists will be showcased in June 2012.

The 10 state finalists will be showcased in June 2012.

“Since 1977, when Cindy Sherman first exhibited her “untitled film Stills” of fictional B-movie starlets, she has surrendered herself to photographic portraits of nearly every female archetype imaginable. So completely does the artist disappear into her subjects—disheveled fashion victims, art-historical icons, tragic dowagers, manic clowns, Beverly Hills housewives—that it’s hard to believe they are all the same woman.” by Linda Yablonsky for the Wall Street Journal (2/26.2012)