Art : The New Yorker
MUSEUMS AND LIBRARIES
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. (212-535-7710)—“Vermeer’s Masterpiece ‘The Milkmaid.’ ” Through Nov. 29. | “Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868.” Through Jan. 10. | “Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans.’ ” Through Jan. 3. | “American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915.” Through Jan. 24. | “Watteau, Music, and Theater.” Through Nov. 29. | “Eccentric Visions: The World of Luo Ping (1733-1799).” Through Jan. 10. (Open Tuesdays through Sundays, 9:30 to 5:30, and Friday and Saturday evenings until 9.)
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
11 W. 53rd St. (212-708-9400)—“Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity.” Opens Nov. 8. | “Monet’s Water Lilies.” Through April 12. | “New Photography 2009: Walead Beshty, Daniel Gordon, Leslie Hewitt, Carter Mull, Sterling Ruby, Sara VanDerBeek.” Through Jan. 11. | “Projects 91: Artur Zmijewski.” Through Feb. 1. | “Paul Sietsema.” Through Feb. 15. (Open Wednesdays through Mondays, 10:30 to 5:30, and Friday evenings until 8.)
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 89th St. (212-423-3500)—“Kandinsky.” Through Jan. 13. | “Anish Kapoor: Memory.” Through March 28. | “Paired, Gold: Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Roni Horn.” Through Jan. 6. | “Intervals: Kitty Kraus.” Through Jan. 6. (Open Fridays through Wednesdays, 10 to 5:45, and Saturday evenings until 7:45.)
WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART
Madison Ave. at 75th St. (212-570-3600)—“Roni Horn aka Roni Horn.” Opens Nov. 6. | “Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction.” Through Jan. 17. | “Steve Wolfe on Paper.” Through Nov. 29. (Open Wednesdays, Thursdays, and weekends, 11 to 6, and Fridays, 1 to 9.)
BROOKLYN MUSEUM
200 Eastern Parkway (718-638-5000)—“Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present.” Through Jan. 31. | “James Tissot: ‘The Life of Christ.’ ” Through Jan. 17. (Open Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 to 5, and weekends, 11 to 6.)
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Central Park W. at 79th St. (212-769-5100)—“Extreme Mammals: The Biggest, Smallest, and Most Amazing Mammals of All Time.” Through Jan. 3. | “The Butterfly Conservatory: Tropical Butterflies Alive in Winter.” Through May 31. (Open daily, 10 to 5:45.)
COOPER-HEWITT NATIONAL DESIGN MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 91st St. (212-849-8300)—“Design USA: Contemporary Innovation.” Through April 4. | “Design for a Living World.” Through Jan. 4. (Open Mondays through Thursdays, 10 to 5, Fridays, 10 to 9, Saturdays, 10 to 6, and Sundays, noon to 6.)
DIA AT THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA
Audubon Terrace, Broadway at 155th St. (212-926-2234)—“Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: Chronotopes & Dioramas.” Through April 18. (Open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 to 4:30, and Sundays, 1 to 4.)
FRICK COLLECTION
1 E. 70th St. (212-288-0700)—“Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection.” Through Jan. 10. | “Exuberant Grotesques: Renaissance Maiolica from the Fontana Workshop.” Through Jan. 17. (Open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 to 6, and Sundays, 11 to 5.)
JAPAN SOCIETY
333 E. 47th St. (212-752-3015)—“Serizawa: Master of Japanese Textile Design.” Through Jan. 17. (Open Tuesdays through Thursdays, 11 to 6, Fridays, 11 to 9, and weekends, 11 to 5.)
MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM
225 Madison Ave., at 36th St. (212-685-0008)—“A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy.” Opens Nov. 6. | “William Blake’s World: ‘A New Heaven Is Begun.’ ” Through Jan. 3. | “Rococo and Revolution: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings.” Through Jan. 3. (Open Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10:30 to 5, Fridays, 10:30 to 9, Saturdays, 10 to 6, and Sundays, 11 to 6.)
MUSEO DEL BARRIO
Fifth Ave. at 104th St. (212-831-7272)—“Voces y Visiones: Four Decades Through El Museo del Barrio’s Permanent Collection.” Through Feb. 28. | “Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis.” Through Feb. 28. (Open Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 to 5.)
MUSEUM OF COMIC AND CARTOON ART
594 Broadway, at Houston St. (212-254-3511)—“Peter Kuper: Diario de Oaxaca.” Through Nov. 21. (Open Tuesdays through Sundays, noon to 5.)
NEUE GALERIE
1048 Fifth Ave., at 86th St. (212-628-6200)—“From Klimt to Klee: Masterworks from the Serge Sabarsky Collection.” Through Feb. 15. (Open Thursdays through Mondays, 11 to 6.)
NEW MUSEUM
235 Bowery, at Prince St. (212-219-1222)—“Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty.” Through Feb. 7. (Open Wednesdays and weekends, noon to 6, and Thursdays and Fridays, noon to 10.)
P.S. 1 CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER
22-25 Jackson Ave., at 46th Ave., Long Island City (718-784-2084)—“1969.” Through April 5. | “Between Spaces.” Through April 5. (Open Thursdays through Mondays, noon to 6.)
QUEENS MUSEUM OF ART
Flushing Meadows-Corona Park (718-592-9700)—“O Zhang: Cutting the Blaze to New Frontiers.” Through March 13. | “Duke Riley: Those About to Die Salute You.” Through March 13. | “Daniel Bozhkov: Republic of Perpetual Reconstitution and Rebuild.” Through March 13. (Open Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 to 5, and weekends, noon to 5.)
RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART
150 W. 17th St. (212-620-5000)—“The Red Book of C. G. Jung.” Through Jan. 25. (Open Mondays and Thursdays, 11 to 5, Wednesdays, 11 to 7, Fridays, 11 to 10, and weekends, 11 to 6.)
SCULPTURECENTER
44-19 Purves St., Long Island City (718-361-1750)—“A Voyage of Growth and Discovery: Mike Kelley and Michael Smith.” Through Dec. 30. | “In Practice Fall 2009.” Through Nov. 29. (Open Thursdays through Mondays, 11 to 6.)
GALLERIES—UPTOWN
EVE SONNEMAN
Sonneman brings her trademark style to the Côte d’Azur in a new series of paired color photographs, taken at the same place moments or minutes apart. In some diptychs, this recalls the side-by-side pictures, taken from slightly different vantage points, in old-fashioned stereoscope views. In other pieces, either Sonneman or her subjects (boaters, bathers, strollers by the sea) have moved so significantly that the pairings suggest jump cuts rather than successive frames. There’s a casual quality to the images, many of which are as weightless as a tourist’s snapshot, but the format conveys a leisurely sense of time passing and pleasures indulged. Through Nov. 7. (Haime, 41 E. 57th St. 212-888-3550.)
“SILVER ANNIVERSARY”
The gallery celebrates twenty-five years in business with a remarkable group of mostly nineteenth-century photographs. Among images by Steichen, Stieglitz, Cameron, and Käsebier are several from photography’s earliest years, including a daguerreotype by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey of an Egyptian woman who emerges from a silvery mist like an apparition, and a delicate, foggy fragment by William Henry Fox Talbot, which is shown only on request. Landscapes and architectural views predominate, and none is more arresting than Humphry Lloyd Hime’s picture of a Canadian prairie that’s as modern and minimal as a Sugimoto seascape, save for a skull and a bone in the foreground. Through Nov. 20. (Kraus, 962 Park Ave., at 82nd St. 212-794-2064.)
Short List
PHILIP GUSTON: McKee, 745 Fifth Ave., at 57th St. 212-688-5951. Opens Nov. 5. DAVID HOCKNEY: Pace Wildenstein, 32 E. 57th St. 212-421-3292. Through Dec. 24. GERHARD RICHTER: Marian Goodman, 24 W. 57th St. 212-977-7160. Opens Nov. 7. EGON SCHIELE: Galerie St. Etienne, 24 W. 57th St. 212-245-6734. Through Jan. 23. TOM WESSELMANN: Haunch of Venison, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, at 49th St. 212-259-0000. Opens Nov. 6.
GALLERIES—CHELSEA
PAUL CHAN
The reliably arcane Chan laces sexual frenzy with heady lucubration in work inspired (if that’s the word) by the Marquis de Sade. Projected animations alternate between jittery silhouettes of figures in orgiastic action and drifting abstract geometries in handsome colors. Big drawings intersperse sober alphabet fonts with quotations of Sadean (very) dirty talk. The payoff, for aspirants to Chan’s brand of cool, may be the enjoyment of an antinomian will to power, buffered by aesthetic and intellectual finesse. Less avid viewers may wonder at so much tacit reverence for a creep. Through Dec. 5. (Greene Naftali, 508 W. 26th St. 212-463-7770.)
HOPE GANGLOFF
This young drawing whiz shows large paintings of pretty, languid friends that are mannered and feel trendy, pleasantly. They conflate lapidary facture à la Gustav Klimt and the everyday eros of Elizabeth Peyton, with a dash of Neue Sachlichkeit. Pale-fleshed lads and lasses project second-nature chic, just slightly decadent, in modest circumstances. One subject is a plainly overqualified waitress with a dainty tattoo, lurching to grab a bottle of Tabasco sauce. A clamorous, gravity-free still-life celebrates a world emblematized by beer, soda, and wine bottles; fancy shoes and umbrellas; containers of Chinese food, salt, and matches; and what looks like a Geiger counter. Through Nov. 25. (Inglett, 522 W. 24th St. 212-647-9111.)
JUSTINE KURLAND
Kurland, who has always taken pictures of people adrift in the American wilderness, devotes this terrific show to cross-country trains and the free spirits who hitch rides on them. Many of her landscapes recall the West as the pioneering photographers saw it: awe-inspiringly vast and just plain beautiful. But she calls her pictures “portals into the realm of railroad folklore,” because she’s also documented the subculture that’s sprung up around the trains—gray-bearded hobos, young drifters, and her own little boy, obsessed with the endless line of freight cars in the distance. Kurland understands the American impulse to light out for the country, and her pictures capture both its romance and its tough reality. Through Nov. 14. (Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 534 W. 26th St. 212-744-7400.)
JACK PIERSON
Repetition has leached Pierson’s salvaged junk signage—a romance with American desuetude—of its once poetic charisma. Now each new Pierson evokes mainly old Piersons. Apparently conscious of the problem, the artist goes all out for formal elegance in a show titled “Abstracts.” Suavely composed found sign parts make for gravely monumental reliefs and sculpture, begging admittance to museums and other ceremonial spaces. Pierson’s brand of vernacular beauty proves to have legs. Through Nov. 14. (Cheim & Read, 547 W. 25th St. 212-242-7727.)
MATTHEW RITCHIE
Ritchie’s former science-y espousals of the cosmological sublime, with diagrams of the big bang which invited and defeated comprehension, have given way to sheer entertainment value, in mind-blown, seductive paintings, sculptures, and a projected video animation. A huge steel sculpture and a vast wall painting, which frames the asymmetrical video, are of hyper-complex, crazed-doily design. The aureate, fine-grained moving images, enhanced with avant-garde-ish music and with voices reciting texts that range from “Paradise Lost” to baseball commentary, represent abstractly crashing seas, blizzarding feathers, and other agreeable catastrophes. What’s it all about? Who cares? Through Dec. 2. (Rosen, 525 W. 24th St. 212-627-6000.)
BILL VIOLA
Fans of Viola’s symbolism-besotted, humor-free videos will find lots to love among the many monitors and installations arrayed here, displaying works old and recent. For his chief new trick, in a series called “Transfigurations,” Viola shoots people, clothed or not, dimly approaching what turns out to be a thick curtain of falling water. They emerge, duly soaked, from grainy analog black-and-white into high-def color and ape profound—make that “profound”—emotions, none of which admit the fun or annoyance of having been splooshed. Pass the soap. Through Dec. 19. (James Cohan, 533 W. 26th St. 212-714-9500.)
Short List
ANDREA BOWERS: Kreps, 525 W. 22nd St. 212-741-8849. Through Dec. 5. EMILIE CLARK: Morgan Lehman, 317 Tenth Ave., at 28th St. 212-268-6699. Through Nov. 14. CARROLL DUNHAM: Gladstone, 515 W. 24th St. 212-206-9300. Through Dec. 5. NICOLE EISENMAN: Koenig, 545 W. 23rd St. 212-334-9255. Through Dec. 23. PETER FISCHLI & DAVID WEISS: Marks, 522 W. 22nd St. 212-243-0200. Through Jan. 16. DAN FLAVIN: Zwirner, 533 W. 19th St. 212-727-2070. Opens Nov. 5. WAYNE GONZALES: Cooper, 521 W. 21st St. 212-255-1105. Through Dec. 18. DAVID HOCKNEY: Pace Wildenstein, 534 W. 25th St. 212-929-7000. Through Dec. 24. EMILY JACIR: Alexander and Bonin, 132 Tenth Ave., at 18th St. 212-367-7474. Through Nov. 28. MICHAEL JOO: Kern, 532 W. 20th St. 212-367-9663. Through Dec. 5. SISTER CORITA KENT: Feuer, 530 W. 24th St. 212-989-7700. Through Dec. 5. MARK MANDERS: Bonakdar, 521 W. 21st St. 212-414-4144. Through Dec. 19. SARAH MORRIS: Petzel, 537 W. 22nd St. 212-680-9467. Through Dec. 5. WALID RAAD: Cooper, 534 W. 21st St. 212-255-1105. Opens Nov. 6. PETER SACKS: Rodgers/9W, 529 W. 20th St. 212-414-9810. Through Dec. 12. RICHARD SERRA: Gagosian, 522 W. 21st St. 212-741-1717. Through Dec. 23. SIMON STARLING: Kaplan, 525 W. 21st St. 212-645-7335. Through Dec. 19. “ON TOP OF THE WHALE”: Algus, 511 W. 25th St. 212-242-6242. Through Dec. 5.
GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN
NEIL WINOKUR
Winokur’s portraits of artists and friends, made in the eighties, look even better in retrospect. Forty of the garishly colored photographs are here, many on view for the first time. Among the throng are Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Philip Glass, Mary Boone, and Andy Warhol, most of whom pose before neon-bright backdrops, facing forward, passport-picture style. The results are far from flattering but irresistible even when the subject isn’t famous. Like Thomas Ruff’s eighties portraits (most of which Winokur’s predate), they have a matter-of-fact documentary quality that avoids any pretense of psychological depth while allowing us to absorb every ravishing (or off-putting) detail of the surface. Through Nov. 25. (Borden, 560 Broadway, at Prince St. 212-431-0166.)
Short List
BARRY X BALL: Salon 94 Freemans, 1 Freeman Alley. 212-529-7400. Through Dec. 12. BROCK ENRIGHT: Beauchene, 21 Orchard St. 212-375-8043. Through Nov. 29. R. M. FISCHER: K.S. Art, 73 Leonard St. 212-219-9918. Through Dec. 19. JONAS MEKAS: Fuentes, 35 St. James Pl. 212-577-1201. Through Nov. 25. LAURA OWENS: Brown, 620 Greenwich St. 212-627-5258. Through Nov. 21. ERIN SHIRREFF: Cooley, 34 Orchard St. 212-680-0564. Through Dec. 20. “STUART SHERMAN: NOTHING UP MY SLEEVE”: Participant, Inc., 253 E. Houston St. 212-254-4334. Opens Nov. 8.
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 82nd St. (212-535-7710)—“Vermeer’s Masterpiece ‘The Milkmaid.’ ” Through Nov. 29. | “Art of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor, 1156-1868.” Through Jan. 10. | “Looking In: Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans.’ ” Through Jan. 3. | “American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765-1915.” Through Jan. 24. | “Watteau, Music, and Theater.” Through Nov. 29. | “Eccentric Visions: The World of Luo Ping (1733-1799).” Through Jan. 10. (Open Tuesdays through Sundays, 9:30 to 5:30, and Friday and Saturday evenings until 9.)
MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
11 W. 53rd St. (212-708-9400)—“Bauhaus 1919-1933: Workshops for Modernity.” Opens Nov. 8. | “Monet’s Water Lilies.” Through April 12. | “New Photography 2009: Walead Beshty, Daniel Gordon, Leslie Hewitt, Carter Mull, Sterling Ruby, Sara VanDerBeek.” Through Jan. 11. | “Projects 91: Artur Zmijewski.” Through Feb. 1. | “Paul Sietsema.” Through Feb. 15. (Open Wednesdays through Mondays, 10:30 to 5:30, and Friday evenings until 8.)
GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 89th St. (212-423-3500)—“Kandinsky.” Through Jan. 13. | “Anish Kapoor: Memory.” Through March 28. | “Paired, Gold: Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Roni Horn.” Through Jan. 6. | “Intervals: Kitty Kraus.” Through Jan. 6. (Open Fridays through Wednesdays, 10 to 5:45, and Saturday evenings until 7:45.)
WHITNEY MUSEUM OF AMERICAN ART
Madison Ave. at 75th St. (212-570-3600)—“Roni Horn aka Roni Horn.” Opens Nov. 6. | “Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction.” Through Jan. 17. | “Steve Wolfe on Paper.” Through Nov. 29. (Open Wednesdays, Thursdays, and weekends, 11 to 6, and Fridays, 1 to 9.)
BROOKLYN MUSEUM
200 Eastern Parkway (718-638-5000)—“Who Shot Rock & Roll: A Photographic History, 1955 to the Present.” Through Jan. 31. | “James Tissot: ‘The Life of Christ.’ ” Through Jan. 17. (Open Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 to 5, and weekends, 11 to 6.)
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Central Park W. at 79th St. (212-769-5100)—“Extreme Mammals: The Biggest, Smallest, and Most Amazing Mammals of All Time.” Through Jan. 3. | “The Butterfly Conservatory: Tropical Butterflies Alive in Winter.” Through May 31. (Open daily, 10 to 5:45.)
COOPER-HEWITT NATIONAL DESIGN MUSEUM
Fifth Ave. at 91st St. (212-849-8300)—“Design USA: Contemporary Innovation.” Through April 4. | “Design for a Living World.” Through Jan. 4. (Open Mondays through Thursdays, 10 to 5, Fridays, 10 to 9, Saturdays, 10 to 6, and Sundays, noon to 6.)
DIA AT THE HISPANIC SOCIETY OF AMERICA
Audubon Terrace, Broadway at 155th St. (212-926-2234)—“Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster: Chronotopes & Dioramas.” Through April 18. (Open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 to 4:30, and Sundays, 1 to 4.)
FRICK COLLECTION
1 E. 70th St. (212-288-0700)—“Watteau to Degas: French Drawings from the Frits Lugt Collection.” Through Jan. 10. | “Exuberant Grotesques: Renaissance Maiolica from the Fontana Workshop.” Through Jan. 17. (Open Tuesdays through Saturdays, 10 to 6, and Sundays, 11 to 5.)
JAPAN SOCIETY
333 E. 47th St. (212-752-3015)—“Serizawa: Master of Japanese Textile Design.” Through Jan. 17. (Open Tuesdays through Thursdays, 11 to 6, Fridays, 11 to 9, and weekends, 11 to 5.)
MORGAN LIBRARY & MUSEUM
225 Madison Ave., at 36th St. (212-685-0008)—“A Woman’s Wit: Jane Austen’s Life and Legacy.” Opens Nov. 6. | “William Blake’s World: ‘A New Heaven Is Begun.’ ” Through Jan. 3. | “Rococo and Revolution: Eighteenth-Century French Drawings.” Through Jan. 3. (Open Tuesdays through Thursdays, 10:30 to 5, Fridays, 10:30 to 9, Saturdays, 10 to 6, and Sundays, 11 to 6.)
MUSEO DEL BARRIO
Fifth Ave. at 104th St. (212-831-7272)—“Voces y Visiones: Four Decades Through El Museo del Barrio’s Permanent Collection.” Through Feb. 28. | “Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis.” Through Feb. 28. (Open Wednesdays through Sundays, 11 to 5.)
MUSEUM OF COMIC AND CARTOON ART
594 Broadway, at Houston St. (212-254-3511)—“Peter Kuper: Diario de Oaxaca.” Through Nov. 21. (Open Tuesdays through Sundays, noon to 5.)
NEUE GALERIE
1048 Fifth Ave., at 86th St. (212-628-6200)—“From Klimt to Klee: Masterworks from the Serge Sabarsky Collection.” Through Feb. 15. (Open Thursdays through Mondays, 11 to 6.)
NEW MUSEUM
235 Bowery, at Prince St. (212-219-1222)—“Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty.” Through Feb. 7. (Open Wednesdays and weekends, noon to 6, and Thursdays and Fridays, noon to 10.)
P.S. 1 CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER
22-25 Jackson Ave., at 46th Ave., Long Island City (718-784-2084)—“1969.” Through April 5. | “Between Spaces.” Through April 5. (Open Thursdays through Mondays, noon to 6.)
QUEENS MUSEUM OF ART
Flushing Meadows-Corona Park (718-592-9700)—“O Zhang: Cutting the Blaze to New Frontiers.” Through March 13. | “Duke Riley: Those About to Die Salute You.” Through March 13. | “Daniel Bozhkov: Republic of Perpetual Reconstitution and Rebuild.” Through March 13. (Open Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 to 5, and weekends, noon to 5.)
RUBIN MUSEUM OF ART
150 W. 17th St. (212-620-5000)—“The Red Book of C. G. Jung.” Through Jan. 25. (Open Mondays and Thursdays, 11 to 5, Wednesdays, 11 to 7, Fridays, 11 to 10, and weekends, 11 to 6.)
SCULPTURECENTER
44-19 Purves St., Long Island City (718-361-1750)—“A Voyage of Growth and Discovery: Mike Kelley and Michael Smith.” Through Dec. 30. | “In Practice Fall 2009.” Through Nov. 29. (Open Thursdays through Mondays, 11 to 6.)
GALLERIES—UPTOWN
EVE SONNEMAN
Sonneman brings her trademark style to the Côte d’Azur in a new series of paired color photographs, taken at the same place moments or minutes apart. In some diptychs, this recalls the side-by-side pictures, taken from slightly different vantage points, in old-fashioned stereoscope views. In other pieces, either Sonneman or her subjects (boaters, bathers, strollers by the sea) have moved so significantly that the pairings suggest jump cuts rather than successive frames. There’s a casual quality to the images, many of which are as weightless as a tourist’s snapshot, but the format conveys a leisurely sense of time passing and pleasures indulged. Through Nov. 7. (Haime, 41 E. 57th St. 212-888-3550.)
“SILVER ANNIVERSARY”
The gallery celebrates twenty-five years in business with a remarkable group of mostly nineteenth-century photographs. Among images by Steichen, Stieglitz, Cameron, and Käsebier are several from photography’s earliest years, including a daguerreotype by Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey of an Egyptian woman who emerges from a silvery mist like an apparition, and a delicate, foggy fragment by William Henry Fox Talbot, which is shown only on request. Landscapes and architectural views predominate, and none is more arresting than Humphry Lloyd Hime’s picture of a Canadian prairie that’s as modern and minimal as a Sugimoto seascape, save for a skull and a bone in the foreground. Through Nov. 20. (Kraus, 962 Park Ave., at 82nd St. 212-794-2064.)
Short List
PHILIP GUSTON: McKee, 745 Fifth Ave., at 57th St. 212-688-5951. Opens Nov. 5. DAVID HOCKNEY: Pace Wildenstein, 32 E. 57th St. 212-421-3292. Through Dec. 24. GERHARD RICHTER: Marian Goodman, 24 W. 57th St. 212-977-7160. Opens Nov. 7. EGON SCHIELE: Galerie St. Etienne, 24 W. 57th St. 212-245-6734. Through Jan. 23. TOM WESSELMANN: Haunch of Venison, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, at 49th St. 212-259-0000. Opens Nov. 6.
GALLERIES—CHELSEA
PAUL CHAN
The reliably arcane Chan laces sexual frenzy with heady lucubration in work inspired (if that’s the word) by the Marquis de Sade. Projected animations alternate between jittery silhouettes of figures in orgiastic action and drifting abstract geometries in handsome colors. Big drawings intersperse sober alphabet fonts with quotations of Sadean (very) dirty talk. The payoff, for aspirants to Chan’s brand of cool, may be the enjoyment of an antinomian will to power, buffered by aesthetic and intellectual finesse. Less avid viewers may wonder at so much tacit reverence for a creep. Through Dec. 5. (Greene Naftali, 508 W. 26th St. 212-463-7770.)
HOPE GANGLOFF
This young drawing whiz shows large paintings of pretty, languid friends that are mannered and feel trendy, pleasantly. They conflate lapidary facture à la Gustav Klimt and the everyday eros of Elizabeth Peyton, with a dash of Neue Sachlichkeit. Pale-fleshed lads and lasses project second-nature chic, just slightly decadent, in modest circumstances. One subject is a plainly overqualified waitress with a dainty tattoo, lurching to grab a bottle of Tabasco sauce. A clamorous, gravity-free still-life celebrates a world emblematized by beer, soda, and wine bottles; fancy shoes and umbrellas; containers of Chinese food, salt, and matches; and what looks like a Geiger counter. Through Nov. 25. (Inglett, 522 W. 24th St. 212-647-9111.)
JUSTINE KURLAND
Kurland, who has always taken pictures of people adrift in the American wilderness, devotes this terrific show to cross-country trains and the free spirits who hitch rides on them. Many of her landscapes recall the West as the pioneering photographers saw it: awe-inspiringly vast and just plain beautiful. But she calls her pictures “portals into the realm of railroad folklore,” because she’s also documented the subculture that’s sprung up around the trains—gray-bearded hobos, young drifters, and her own little boy, obsessed with the endless line of freight cars in the distance. Kurland understands the American impulse to light out for the country, and her pictures capture both its romance and its tough reality. Through Nov. 14. (Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 534 W. 26th St. 212-744-7400.)
JACK PIERSON
Repetition has leached Pierson’s salvaged junk signage—a romance with American desuetude—of its once poetic charisma. Now each new Pierson evokes mainly old Piersons. Apparently conscious of the problem, the artist goes all out for formal elegance in a show titled “Abstracts.” Suavely composed found sign parts make for gravely monumental reliefs and sculpture, begging admittance to museums and other ceremonial spaces. Pierson’s brand of vernacular beauty proves to have legs. Through Nov. 14. (Cheim & Read, 547 W. 25th St. 212-242-7727.)
MATTHEW RITCHIE
Ritchie’s former science-y espousals of the cosmological sublime, with diagrams of the big bang which invited and defeated comprehension, have given way to sheer entertainment value, in mind-blown, seductive paintings, sculptures, and a projected video animation. A huge steel sculpture and a vast wall painting, which frames the asymmetrical video, are of hyper-complex, crazed-doily design. The aureate, fine-grained moving images, enhanced with avant-garde-ish music and with voices reciting texts that range from “Paradise Lost” to baseball commentary, represent abstractly crashing seas, blizzarding feathers, and other agreeable catastrophes. What’s it all about? Who cares? Through Dec. 2. (Rosen, 525 W. 24th St. 212-627-6000.)
BILL VIOLA
Fans of Viola’s symbolism-besotted, humor-free videos will find lots to love among the many monitors and installations arrayed here, displaying works old and recent. For his chief new trick, in a series called “Transfigurations,” Viola shoots people, clothed or not, dimly approaching what turns out to be a thick curtain of falling water. They emerge, duly soaked, from grainy analog black-and-white into high-def color and ape profound—make that “profound”—emotions, none of which admit the fun or annoyance of having been splooshed. Pass the soap. Through Dec. 19. (James Cohan, 533 W. 26th St. 212-714-9500.)
Short List
ANDREA BOWERS: Kreps, 525 W. 22nd St. 212-741-8849. Through Dec. 5. EMILIE CLARK: Morgan Lehman, 317 Tenth Ave., at 28th St. 212-268-6699. Through Nov. 14. CARROLL DUNHAM: Gladstone, 515 W. 24th St. 212-206-9300. Through Dec. 5. NICOLE EISENMAN: Koenig, 545 W. 23rd St. 212-334-9255. Through Dec. 23. PETER FISCHLI & DAVID WEISS: Marks, 522 W. 22nd St. 212-243-0200. Through Jan. 16. DAN FLAVIN: Zwirner, 533 W. 19th St. 212-727-2070. Opens Nov. 5. WAYNE GONZALES: Cooper, 521 W. 21st St. 212-255-1105. Through Dec. 18. DAVID HOCKNEY: Pace Wildenstein, 534 W. 25th St. 212-929-7000. Through Dec. 24. EMILY JACIR: Alexander and Bonin, 132 Tenth Ave., at 18th St. 212-367-7474. Through Nov. 28. MICHAEL JOO: Kern, 532 W. 20th St. 212-367-9663. Through Dec. 5. SISTER CORITA KENT: Feuer, 530 W. 24th St. 212-989-7700. Through Dec. 5. MARK MANDERS: Bonakdar, 521 W. 21st St. 212-414-4144. Through Dec. 19. SARAH MORRIS: Petzel, 537 W. 22nd St. 212-680-9467. Through Dec. 5. WALID RAAD: Cooper, 534 W. 21st St. 212-255-1105. Opens Nov. 6. PETER SACKS: Rodgers/9W, 529 W. 20th St. 212-414-9810. Through Dec. 12. RICHARD SERRA: Gagosian, 522 W. 21st St. 212-741-1717. Through Dec. 23. SIMON STARLING: Kaplan, 525 W. 21st St. 212-645-7335. Through Dec. 19. “ON TOP OF THE WHALE”: Algus, 511 W. 25th St. 212-242-6242. Through Dec. 5.
GALLERIES—DOWNTOWN
NEIL WINOKUR
Winokur’s portraits of artists and friends, made in the eighties, look even better in retrospect. Forty of the garishly colored photographs are here, many on view for the first time. Among the throng are Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Philip Glass, Mary Boone, and Andy Warhol, most of whom pose before neon-bright backdrops, facing forward, passport-picture style. The results are far from flattering but irresistible even when the subject isn’t famous. Like Thomas Ruff’s eighties portraits (most of which Winokur’s predate), they have a matter-of-fact documentary quality that avoids any pretense of psychological depth while allowing us to absorb every ravishing (or off-putting) detail of the surface. Through Nov. 25. (Borden, 560 Broadway, at Prince St. 212-431-0166.)
Short List
BARRY X BALL: Salon 94 Freemans, 1 Freeman Alley. 212-529-7400. Through Dec. 12. BROCK ENRIGHT: Beauchene, 21 Orchard St. 212-375-8043. Through Nov. 29. R. M. FISCHER: K.S. Art, 73 Leonard St. 212-219-9918. Through Dec. 19. JONAS MEKAS: Fuentes, 35 St. James Pl. 212-577-1201. Through Nov. 25. LAURA OWENS: Brown, 620 Greenwich St. 212-627-5258. Through Nov. 21. ERIN SHIRREFF: Cooley, 34 Orchard St. 212-680-0564. Through Dec. 20. “STUART SHERMAN: NOTHING UP MY SLEEVE”: Participant, Inc., 253 E. Houston St. 212-254-4334. Opens Nov. 8.
