Tag: drawings

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David Byrne’s ‘How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic’ Exhibit Opens at Pace Gallery

David Byrne's How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic exhibition runs at Pace Gallery Feb. 2-March 19.

David Byrne’s How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic exhibition runs at Pace Gallery Feb. 2-March 19.On the wall, Human Content.

David Byrne, lead singer/songwriter for The Talking Heads, and currently starring on Broadway in the smash musical American Utopia, continues to keep busy, exploring different art mediums. During the pandemic, Byrne created a series of drawings, that are featured in a new book out Feb. 16, A History of the World (in Dingbats): Drawings and Words (co-authored with Alex Kalman) . In conjunction with the book release, Pace Gallery presents a collection of Byrne’s work in a new exhibit, How I Learned About Non-Rational Logic, open Feb. 2-March 19.

David Byrne, Hot Bread Delivery, 2020.

The exhibit incorporates Byrne’s pandemic doodles, along with a collection of playful, thematic tree drawings from the early 2000s, and a selection of chair drawings from 2004-2007. The ‘dingbat’ doodles made during quarantine, were a means for Byrne to cope with boredom, anxiety, and isolation, offering a way to express hope, desire for connection, a bit of wicked sense of humor, and the power of community.

Of his tree drawings, Byrne has described them as ” faux science, automatic writing, self-analysis, satire, and maybe even a serious attempt at finding connections where none were to exist. And an excuse to draw plant-like forms and diagrams.”

David Byrne’s Girl Head Chair drawing.

Of his surreal chair drawings, Byrne has said, “Maybe they are portraits, maybe self-portraits, maybe portraits of my interior state. Maybe they are also possible practical furniture design. Maybe all of the above at once.”

On Monday, Feb. 7, at 7pm, Byrne with speak with documentary filmmaker John Wilson at Pace Gallery. The conversation will later be shown on HBO. Tickets to the event are sold out, but it will be live streamed.  See more details about the program here: https://www.pacegallery.com/events/how-we-learned-about-non-rational-logic/.

Pace Gallery is located at 540 W. 25th Street. For more information, visit pacegallery.com.

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Culture Entertainment News

Elie Hirschfeld Celebrates Old and New Line Kings

Elie Hirschfeld and Dr. Sarah Schlesinger brought to life by the magic of Matt Hirschfeld’s second-generation talent.

For decades, the iconic faces of Broadway were brought to life through the iconic animated caricatures unmistakably drawn by Al Hirschfeld.

Hirschfeld, the subject of the award-winning documentary, “The Line King,” created portraits of many of the most famous New York actors and personalities throughout his life, adding his unique and distinguishable style to each portrait.

His art career spanned decades, historical milestones and artistic movements. But his technique always remained much the same – capturing the personality of his subject in simple and instantly recognizable illustrations that bring a smile to the eye of the beholder.

Sadly, the great New York artist and distant cousin of New York developer and philanthropist, Elie Hirschfeld, passed away on in 2003.

But miraculously, his work is carried on today by young Matt Hirschfeld —another relative of the cartoonist extraordinaire!

Matt Hirschfeld grew up in St. Louis, where Al lived before moving at age 10 to New York. Matt began drawing at an early age and was constantly exposed to Al’s drawings — and to reminders from relatives that he had the Hirschfeld art gene.

“There’s a scene in ‘The Line King’ when Al is on a computer and he says that it would take another lifetime to learn how to use the computer to do what he does. That’s when my eyes lit up, and I thought it’d be interesting to do just that. He drew the whole 20th century, and I want to draw a chunk of the 21st.”

Elie recognized the brilliance of Matt’s work and commissioned him to create a portrait of himself and his wife, the distinguished Dr. Sarah Schlesinger Hirschfeld M.D. who is a Senior Attending Physician and Associate Professor of Clinical Investigation at The Rockefeller University.

“Al was not only a relative, but a dear friend and I admired his work greatly,” Elie Hirschfeld said. “Finding Matt was unbelievably fortuitous and if I can expose his work to others, I’m thrilled to do it.”

“Al was the consummate documentarian of the faces of the 20th Century,” Elie Hirschfeld says. “Matt‘s work is a stunning and appropriate continuation of the legacy he created.”

See more of Matt’s exceptional work on his website.

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Entertainment Events

The Passions of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean Baptiste

The newest exhibit coming to the Metropolitan Museum of Art within the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Exhibition Hall is The Passions of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux.

It explores the life and work of an artist who helped define the period of France’s luminour Second Empire from 1852 to 1870. The exhibition begins on March 1 and will be on display until May 26.

This will be the first full scale exhibition in 38 years of the celebrated artist’s work and will feature 160 pieces that include paintings, sculptures and drawings. The works are being loaned to the museum from other respected museums such as the Musee d’ Orsay, Musee des Beaux-Arts, the Louvre, Valenciennes (birthplace of Carpeaux) and other prestigious institutions. For some of these loans it will be their first time returning to the United States in decades and for some their very first.

MET
Great Hall of Metropolitan Museum of Art

Carpeaux is best known today for his masterpiece, “Ugolino and His Sons” which is part of the collection at the Metropolitan Museum.  But he was a multifaceted and prolific artist. A sculptor of emotion, both grand and intimate, he was drawn to extremes from Michelangelo to Watteau while retaining respectful admiration for his peers in French sculpture.

The Passions of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux will certainly evoke a spectrum of emotions from the public. Dramatic, highly independent paintings, barely known during his lifetime, will also be on display. The exhibition will probe overlooked works that reveal the darkness and despair of Carpeaux’s life. (The artist was plagued by serious physical maladies and violent mood swings and was only 48 when he died.)

Despite all this, he was extraordinarily productive, producing a vast body of work of the highest quality.

For information you can visit the MET website  http://www.metmuseum.org/en/exhibitions/listings/2014/carpeaux

—Alejandro Ramos

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Culture Entertainment

Gloria Vanderbilt Exhibit: The Left Hand Is The Dreamer

Gloria Vanderbilt has been many things in her lifetime: a mother (to Anderson Cooper), a wife, a lover (rumored affairs with Roald Dahl, Howard Hughes, Frank Sinatra, and Marlon Brando), a designer, an actress, a writer, a muse, an heiress, and more. Most recently, just after celebrating her 90th birthday, the icon has taken upon the role of an artist.

Gloria Vanderbilt and her son, Anderson Cooper, at the opening of her exhibit
Gloria Vanderbilt and her son, Anderson Cooper, at the opening of her exhibit

A collection of her drawings, paintings, and collages are now on display in the 1stdibs Gallery at New York Design Center. More than 50 pieces, which she created in a span of eight months, are on view to the public and simultaneously on sale through 1stdibs. The exhibit is called “The Left Hand Is The Dreamer.” In an interview with W, she commented on this choice:

“In mythology and palmistry, the left hand is called the dreamer because the ring finger on the left hand leads directly to the heart. I find it a very poetic idea. And that’s why I only wear nail polish on my left ring finger.”

Ms. Vanderbilt studied art at the Art Students’ League in New York and with Robert Beverly Hale, a former Metropolitan Museum of Art curator. Her first solo exhibit took place in 1952, when she showed a collection of paintings. She has lent her paper works to the Hammer Gallery in New York and the Southern Vermont Arts Center in Manchester. The pieces on display right now are mostly playful, imaginative drawings done in plenty of color. The title work, “The Left Hand Is The Dreamer,” is reminiscent of a child-like Chagall.

“The Left Hand Is The Dreamer” 2013, pastel and collage on board

The exhibit is a fascinating look inside the mind of the matriarch of one of America’s oldest and richest families.

“The Left Hand Is The Dreamer” is at the 1stdibs Gallery on the 10th floor of the New York Design Center, from February 27th until March 28th. The works are available for purchase at 1stdibs.com.

–Charlotte Bryant