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The Topless Cellist Earns Her

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The Topless Cellist Earns Her 28 THE ART NEWSPAPER Number 275, January 2016 Exhibitions US and Americas A beautiful feeling New York design exhibition makes beauty a virtue Afreaks (2015) by the Haas Brothers was made in collaboaration with The topless cellist South African beaders earns her due Retrospective throws light on an avant-garde performer who has been largely missing from the history of 20th-century art New York. The fifth design triennial at in which we experience an object,” she the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design says, adding that beauty “very much fell Museum opens next month in New out of favour in the 20th century” but York. It is the first iteration of the event that the situation is changing today. PERFORMANCE ART since the museum’s three-year, $91m Seven themes, including extrava- renovation was completed in Decem- gance and intricacy, will anchor seven Evanston. The American artist Charlotte ber 2014. The show focuses on a simple galleries. One space, which focuses on Moorman, who achieved notoriety as the theme: beauty. “transgressive” work, includes Afreaks “topless cellist”, will have her first career It is organised by the in-house cura- (2015), a group of creatures made by the retrospective in concurrent exhibitions tors Ellen Lupton and Andrea Lipps and Haas Brothers with beaders from outside organised in part by Northwestern Univer- is a contrast to the previous edition in Cape Town, South Africa. Also included sity. The two shows include interviews, pho- 2010, which emphasised the way design- is a new commission: a knitted work by tographs, films, rare footage of the avant- ers have dealt with environmental issues Jenny Sabin that will serve as an entry R & COMPANY. HASSABI R & COMPANY. © 2015 THE MUSEUM OF MODERNNEW YORK. PHOTO: ART, JULIETA CERVANTES garde festival she directed between 1963 and the growing demand for sustainable point into one of the galleries. / and 1980 and the handwritten notes she design. Aesthetics have always been a The exhibition is funded primarily by exchanged with her husband from a New contested issue. “Some of the designers Edward and Helen Hintz. York holding cell after she was arrested on would say that beauty was very much a Pac Pobric, with reporting by Victoria charges of indecent exposure. byproduct of their work,” Lipps says of Stapley-Brown Yoko Ono has lent the exhibition’s most conversations she had while organising • Beauty: Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial, anticipated piece, which depicts Moorman the forthcoming exhibition. “Nonethe- Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, performing Ono’s Cut Piece (1964) in 1982 less, it still is an outcome, and it’s a way New York, 12 February-21 August from the roof of her Manhattan loft three years after she was diagnosed with cancer. It shows a recognisable audience of artists, art critics and even a young Sean Lennon kissing Moorman on the cheek after cutting Falling down of a piece of her garment. Moorman died in 1991 still largely absent at MoMA, from the narrative of 20th century art, but Lisa Corrin, one of the show’s organisers, says she “challenged the idea that art should but gracefully be confined in museums and concert halls”. The shows are sponsored primarily by the New York. If you see someone sprawled Terra Foundation for American Art, the Andy across a staircase next month at the Warhol Foundation and the National Endow- Museum of Modern Art in New York SIK NEWTON, NEIL TONGUE, BILL NYELAND, ISLE BE BACK, AND FUNGULLIVER, FROM THE AFREAKS SERIES, 2015, © JOE KRAMM ment for the Arts. (MoMA), don’t panic. It is part of a work - Gabriella Angeleti by the New York-based, Cyprus-born GORILLA, EYE • A Feast of Astonishments: Charlotte Moorman choreographer and artist Maria Hassabi. - and the Avant-Garde, 1960s-1980s Plastic, which comes to MoMA from the • Don’t Throw Anything Out, Mary Leigh Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, Evanston, Illinois, 16 January-17 July features a rotating cast of eight dancers moving at a glacial pace through the museum’s atrium and two stairwells. The work, which the artist describes as Rehearsal for Maria Hassabi’s Plastic, Charlotte a “live installation”, will run in a chore- The Museum of Modern Art, New York Moorman ographed loop during opening hours. performed work Hassabi’s work forces people to slow next to us and start praying. One woman by Nam June down. In Premiere (2013), which debuted told us we needed a therapist.” Paik (above), at the Kitchen, five dancers did nothing Do Hassabi and her fellow dancers LICENSED THE HAAS BY NY. VAGA, BROTHERS WITH THE HAAS SISTERS: AL Giuseppe Chiari but rotate 180 degrees. The performance ever reply to their interlocutors? “We / (far left) and lasted 75 minutes. Translating her work don’t say anything,” Hassabi says. Yoko Ono (right) to a museum context has brought chal- Funding for the performance is pro- lenges. “People don’t really know how vided by the Junior Associates of The to react,” Hassabi says. When Plastic Museum of Modern Art. debuted in Los Angeles and Amsterdam, Julia Halperin “almost every day, people called 9-1-1”, • Maria Hassabi: Plastic, Museum of Modern she says. “There are people who kneel Art, New York, 21 February-20 March MOORMAN PERFORMS NAM JUNE PAIK’S TV CELLO © TAKAHIKO IIMURA. MOORMAN PERFORMS GIUSEPPE CHIARI’S PER ARCO, PHOTOGRAPH BY MARIO PAROLIN,CUT COURTESY PIECE, OF PHOTOGRAPH CHARLOTTE © BARBARAMOORMAN MOOREARCHIVE, CHARLES DEERING MCCORMICK LIBRARY OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY CHARLOTTE LIBRARY. MOORMAN PERFORMS ONO’SYOKO Winter Storm, 1958, 79" x 66", oil on canvas 2016 Celebrating the Centenary of JON SCHUELER 1916–1992 FINE ART, DESIGN & ANTIQUES DUKE OF YORK SQUARE, KING’S ROAD, LONDON SW3 4LY For a listing of exhibitions visit jonschueler.com BADAFAIR.COM BADAFair_ArtNewsPaper_8x4_2016.indd 1 04/12/2015 10:57.
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