Danielle Gold + the art of NYC

Sol LeWitt was an American Artist whose geometric, large scale art became popular during the 1960’s. LeWitt had both modern and classical influences. What appears to be simple geometric patterns in his work are often intense linear studies in pattern and texture. He is widely regarded as a leader in both minimalism and conceptual art. He was also amongst the first artist to consider the art  planning process and ideas to be more important than construction, which in his case usually required extensive assistance.

Fred Tomaselli is also an American Artist who worked on a larger scale. His works usually resemble collages, and involve wood panels and a heavy epoxy coating through which other unorthodox materials, like leaves, feathers and marijuana, are attached. He wants the viewer to be absorbed by these multi-dimensional, surreal pieces, which are an externalization of his inner absurdities.

This is especially true in New York City, which has an abnormally large Jewish population. As a result, there is more interest in works that describe the Jewish Experience.

I first became aware of this when I went to the Jewish Museum and we saw Kentridge’s short plays. His films focuses on South African Jews who lived comparatively well during the Apartheid. His photography of the struggling victims of the affair is reminiscent of the many works about  the Holocaust that fill the halls above him. I was also fascinated by the exhibit there celebrating feminist Jewish thought. Although women are  respected in Jewish culture, traditionally they do not live lives that are parallel to men. It was interesting to see so much progressive Jewish thought.

The city is also home to more traditional and less, or more depending on your views on organized religion, controversial Judaica. This weekend on a Hillel outing, I was fortunate enough to spend shabbos with Rabbi Klasko, a wealthy and generous Rabbi. He displayed oil painting of modern day American children playing Dreidel amongst a lit up stained glass featuring biblical stories and a tapestry from Russia.

The diversity of available Jewish artwork in the city shows the influence of both minority groups and individuals in New York City.

Few people born in the  1990’s, or the last 50 years for that matter, escaped the pervasive influence of educational television. This was especially true for me, as I grew up in a household without Cable TV. Watching Elmo, Barney, Lamb Chop  and Mr. Rodgers taught me valuable life lessons that have furthered my understanding of my surroundings and given me a sense of “purpose.”

Or has it really just given my whole generation a massive  sense of entitlement and made us unable to cope with real world problems? This is the argument posed in the Off-Broadway puppet-musical Avenue Q, which I saw with my friends two weekends ago. The musical was post-modern and toyed with numerous features of the classic Children’s Show Sesame Street, especially in creating a strong sense of Lyric-Tune divergence.

It wasn’t a light musical. But as for my childhood, I don’t miss it. The music was strong and the show was absolutely hilarious. Of course it probably helped that we went to the box office early, and got rush tickets. Our $25 seats were front and center, putting us in a great position to enjoy the show. Its just one of the many great artisitic opportunities in Manhattan.

On Friday nights, the Morgan Library and Museum is free to the public. About a month ago, I went with my friend to go see the Mark Twain Exhibit. While we were there, we also spent a substantial amount of time in the Roy Lichtenstein and Post WWI French Recovery Project Exhibits. On our way out, we also found a small area with drawings by Edgar Degas.

I really enjoyed the atmosphere created by the Morgan Library. It was big enough to warrant a coat check and hold large pieces of art, but still somewhat intimate, with its harpists playing in the cafe. We did not have access to the library, but even in the galleries, general history and art converged.

“Marc Twain: A Skeptic’s Progress”  consisted of primary sources relating to Mark Twain’s major writings. Literature is an important art form. Yet, I particularity enjoyed the large, lively  original illustrations that were used in the magazine serializations Twain’s works, racial insensitivities aside. I wish such pictures were included within today’s novels. They captured both the youthful spirit of Twain’s writing and the troubles surrounding characters and the author.

Liechtenstein’s work has a great presence in this Arts and Culture of New York. As a group, we saw his work in a Fall for Dance Backdrop and public art in the Subways. I had also”Roy Lichtenstein: The Black And White Drawings” promoted in advertising before seeing it in person at the Morgan Library. It featured some of his earlier work, which I saw gradually evolved from line drawings into his familiar comic book style.

“Anne Morgans War: Rebuilding Devastated France, 1917-1924” was a series of moving photographs that educated me about the troubles that occurred after WWI in France and the brave American volunteers that labored to make things better for their allies. The way that each piece combined portraits with the war torn landscape reminded me of William Kentridge’s South African Photography, which I saw at the Jewish Museum.

“Degas: Drawings and Sketchbooks”  were in a very small gallery to the side. They showed how he began working with Dancers and the progression between realistic and expressionistic works and between 2-D and 3-D artwork.

A major aspect of New York City seems to be the theater. New York City Theater seems almost synonymous with big name Broadway Musicals, which I adore. However, not all stages in the city are on Broadway. Not all working actors are successful. Although I have no  theatrical aspirations, I felt like a artist-in-the-making as a director in the Macaulay Theater Club’s 24-hour Play Festival.

I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.  The Macaulay Short-term Play Festival was really the adoption of an existing program completely run by professional actors. I have made numerous Odyssey of  the Mind Skits on a small time frame, but acting is usually not a judged component of the performances. OotM also gave us time to construct a set and costume to further empathize the our skits message. In high school, as Odyssey of the Mind Club President, I directed and acted simultaneously and it was no more complicated than telling the freshman to speak louder and face the judges and making sure everyone walked in in a manner that kept the cardboard scenery from falling apart. I barely knew what a director did.

Luckily, my aunt’s best friend Olga is a successful actress, but more importantly very kind. (You may have  heard of Olga Merediz. She’s a Tony Nominated Actress, best known for her long-running ongoing role as Abuela Claudia in the Broadway Production of “In The Heights.”) My aunt gave me her phone number and the week before the show, I spoke to her about acting, staging and direction. It was extremely helpful. I could tell that she was extremely passionate and knowledgeable about her craft.

So were the other people I encountered while working on my play. One of the actors I worked with happened to be an old friend of my dad’s from college. Although I was skeptical at 8:00 on a Friday night when I also learned that our 10 minute play would start with the line “3:45 a.m. That’s absurd.,” and must include the line “Stop what you’re doing and look at me.” and feature an Obama mask, the script that my teammate wrote overnight incorporated everything brilliantly.  My Sunday could not have been better spent than working on  hilariously clever dark comedy about circus workers plotting their escape.

That’s a question, my father examined all through my childhood. I adore Herman Naptali Hyneman’s paintings, and have grown up surrounded by this little-known, but talented artists work.

This all started not long before I was born, when my dad purchased three paintings at the bottom of a bin at a Brooklyn bookstore. They were of good quality but crappy condition. He assumed it was something great. but when he went to the library to do research, there was no information. But there was something within these very traditional “pretty young woman” pictures that resonated with him.

My fathers’ research has removed the element of mystery from some of Hyneman’s work. We know that he was born in Philadelphia a few decades prior to the turn of the century to a wealthy and  established Jewish family. He studied in Paris and painted mostly of Paris, New York City and his native Philadelphia. He painted classical and Shakespearean subjects, but his greatest muse was his contemporary, a fellow artist Juliette Joliet Hyneman. Although she did not share his faith, and they married after a long courtship, the husband and wife were inseparable. She often posed for him and is visible in much of his art, albeit with changed hair colors.

Although the biggest collections of Hyneman are on Long Island and in Texas, he was very much a New York City artist having made dozens of Hassam-esque city snow scapes. He was a major contributor to how I see art in Manhattan, before I even got to the city.

Below is his picture “A Sensation on Wall Street.” It, like many other pieces of H.N Hyneman’s work, was  the subject of reproduction in his time, and I am fortunate to own it in postcard form.

(7/20/2013)

Due to the sparsity of information on this painter and the fact that its hosted on a .edu domain, I’ve noticed that it is amongst the top google responses for the inquiry “H.N Hyneman.” Thus I feel as though I have a responsibility to inform the public that in recent years, Geoffrey Fleming, a historian and writer who is the director of the Southold Historical Society,  has re-discovered  this artists’ works, and written a book and a magazine article in conjunction with an exhibition of this artist works. For more information see: http://southoldhistoricalsociety.org/Hyneman%20Exhibit.htm

This is a photograph of the Evolution Store in Soho as it appeared in 1993. It is considered by the photographer ,curuba at flicker.com, to be a modern day wunderkammer. I found it at oobject.com, which in a way is also a modern day wunderkammer. I think it interesting that the concept has traveled outside of 17^th century Germany to a truly diverse place like modern day America, specifically Manhattan.

After spending my entire weekend at Comic-Con, I was too exhausted to go anywhere special or borrow a decent camera. My pictures came from an area that I usually travel en-route to school, although I was going to Penn Station to see friends from home at the time.

I feel like the bus stop is kind of a cliche but I like how the reflection and the image warp. Its how I feel as I go to school. It’s as real as anything, but I often pass it by. I forget passing it within 15 minutes and the world warps around me.

Over Columbus Day Weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend New York Comic Con, which recently merged with New York  Anime Festival, at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.

I have attended I-Con, which is a similarly focused “geek” convention hosted by Stoney Brook University. Both Conventions had panels lead by enthusiasts, vendors and artists selling their wares and numerous people dressed up in costume.

However, New York City is a far bigger city. It is truly an entertainment capital. I was glad that I did not have to travel back and forth on the Long Island Railroad or pay for a hotel. Others felt that such expense was well worth it. I was one of 80,000 attendees and one of 60,000 that purchased a multi-day pass. It attracted some of the biggest names in media, all who shared a passion for “low culture.” How democratic!

With such a large audience, I found that Comic Con was more than just a simple nerd-fest, but a celebration of popular culture as a whole.  While I did attend a Young Justice movie premiere, a obscure video game panel and the press conference held by American Manhwa Publisher Yen Press, I also saw the debut of Blockbuster Mainstream Movie Trailer Premieres, a MTV Horror Movie Panel, a Panel featuring James Franco, a discussion on the archeology behind Indiana Jones and Puppeteer Panel with “Children’s Television Heroes,” amongst other things. I could see how niche interests influences big media and visa versa. (One of the most popular booths in the Grand Hall was a demonstration of Ubisoft’s Michael Jackson Themed Dance Video Game.)

My first major Comic Convention was exciting and fun. I can not wait to go back next year and see how constantly evolving low media changes over time.

I attended a special premiere for a documentary called “Ahead of Time” at Cinema 2 on 59th Street with friends from the Hunter Hillel (who’s open house I attended the night before) and the Macaulay Honors College. “Ahead of Time” was directed by Robert Richman of “An Inconvenient Truth” and “September Issue” fame and it profiles the life of Ruth Gruber. Both director and his 97-year-old star were in attendance and participated in a question-and-answer session afterward. I was so stoked to be introduced to Ruth Gruber by the event coordinator upon walking in.

A Jewish resident of Brooklyn, she was the youngest person to receive a PHD and traveled the world as a diplomat and foreign correspondent. She was among the first to write on the Soviet Artic and Alaska. She welcomed refugees to America in a secret mission during World War 2 and covered the story of refugees on the Exodus 3 years later. Her words changed world politics in a time where few women had public voices. She was as sharp (and hilarious) today as she was then. It was a truly inspirational night.

From a film aspect, it was very well made. I almost forgot it was a documentary. The creator did not hire actors to reenact the important moments in Ms. Grubers’ life, preferring to g retouch older footage which was superimposed over interview dialogue. I thought this was a good way to represent a living person. A classical theme connected elements of the film that bubbled up in a “snowball effect.”

I wonder if anybody’s life could be art with the right editing and public relations build up. For now, I’d like to think that in order for a project “Ahead of Time” to work the subject would have to be someone special.