There is something especially fitting in acknowledging Alain Kirili at the Vision Festival. (Drummer Andrew Cyrille is the musical awardee in the 24th annual event.) While there is too much talk of so-called “artist’s artists”, the world can always use a musician’s artist. Understand that Kirili is 100% a sculptor. But his work is, at this stage, almost impossible to conceive divorced from music, so intimately connected is music with his modus operandi in the plastic arts. Music is no mere “violon d’Ingres” in Kirili’s case. First thing to state: Kirili himself is not a musician, unless one counts the now silent rhythmic hammering of metal evident along the surfaces of his sculpted lines and forms as some kind of frozen music. But one can “make” music by invitation, and Kirili and his wife and fellow artist Ariane Lopez-Huici have turned their Tribeca loft into a legendary venue for new music over the last four decades. Predominantly devoted to free improvisation, the musical idiom of Visions Festival, Kirili’s guests are not just performers but truly collaborators. Music is made in direct response to the visual art with which it is juxtaposed.

For years this was Kirili’s own work, but true to the ever expanding field of his artistic generosity, more recently guest artists have been invited to install a work for the occasion. Fellow visual artists showcased in this way with newfound musical peers have included Laura Newman, Thomas Nozkowski, Jeanne Silverthorne and Christopher Wool. Whenever he has been given a museum exhibition – which is often, especially in Europe – Kirili has made sure that music and dance play a crucial role in programing.  But the kinship to music runs more deeply than any of this could suggest. The lesson of free jazz for Kirili the sculptor (or, perhaps, not so much lesson as enduring point of commonality) is the example, ubiquitous amongst music-makers but in recent centuries an increasing rarity among painters and sculptors, of symbiosis. That collaborations and dialogues and interchanges are greater than the sum of the individual artists participating. Whether it is his interactions with traditional smiths and forgers in rural settings away from the usual artistic centers of New York or Paris, or his dialogues across time with historic figures like Auguste Rodin, Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, David Smith and Julio Gonzalez, each of whom has been the shared focus of a museum exhibition, or indeed his collaborations with musicians and dancers, the outcomes are by their nature open-ended. The events and exhibitions are truly jam sessions, the sparks beyond predictability. Everything his makes is jazz.

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Proclaiming, gesticulating, cajoling and even flailing, poet Pamela Sneed chanted a litany of fear, strength and tragedy, but ultimately admonished the cheering crowd to act with the words “Always Uprising.” The J20 event at the Whitney Museum, organized by Occupy Museums and Megan Heuer, Director of Public Programs and Public Engagement at the museum, offered a passionate alternative to the morbid events taking place simultaneously on the steps of the capitol on what Noah Fisher of Occupy Museums referred repeatedly to as “this Horrible day.” On a gray morning with intermittent showers, the Whitney became a wide umbrella shielding a vibrant and motley crew of cultural actors and activists in what is becoming an ever widening definition of art and artistic practice including environmentalists, low-income housing activists and community organizers, and advocates for the differently-abled who stood for a few minutes each to speak to the standing-room only crowd in the Hess Family Theater. Some plans were laid, narratives of both betrayal and progress were related, and a forward momentum and the groundwork for action through artistic channels were laid in amorphous but possibly practicable terms.

While the initial intent of J20 was a strike in which all museums would close in a nationwide demonstration of defiance against a bigoted, sexist and anti-intellectual administration taking power, the Whitney offered pay-what-you-wish entry and a venue for what could only really be called a group-therapy session to deal with a surreal transition in American and world politics. The speakers fell into roughly three categories, all co-mingled. The first were speakers who sought to verbalize the collective sense of anxiety and anger and by expressing it artfully, to expiate it and move the crowd briskly along the stops of denial, anger, bargaining, depression to acceptance (and then change). Pamela Sneed fell into this group with her plaintive and desperate petition to the crown not to allow this political set-back to reach catastrophic proportions, while Martha Rosler spoke of struggle to regain mental composure after being “just a little thunderstruck by an orange comet” and Aruna D’Souza plainly stated “everything we fear has already happened.”

A second varietal were activists who presented firm data, often describing successful collective action taken as well as cautionary anecdotes of failures precipitated by the status quo, which will become de rigeur in this new regime. Alicia Boyd of Movement to Protect the People described her ongoing battle to keep Crown Heights and the areas around Prospect Park accessible to low income Brooklynites and maintain a decent standard of living by requiring height restrictions on housing built around the park. She called out the Brooklyn Museum for its real estate entanglements and demanded that all museums be responsive to the need of local communities irrespective of median income. Kim Fraczek of the Sane Energy Project provided the most cringeworthy moment of the event, looking defiantly into the crowd and challenging the Whitney to divest itself of patronage from the fossil fuel industry. She explained the campaign she had participated in raising awareness of the dangerous natural gas pipeline running directly under the museum’s front steps which had been the target of local residents and activists alike. Their requests for dialogue had been flatly rejected by the museum administration. As she stood in the auditorium, listing the museum’s intransigencies, there was a satisfying sense of arrival, ironically caused by the Inauguration.

Avram Finkelstein and Dread Scott, who were among the planners of the event, characterized the third subset of speakers by suggesting ways forward. Scott immediately drew acclamation by walking to the front of the room carrying a poster with the words “BY READING THIS, YOU AGREE TO OVERTHROW DICTATORS”, implying there is no alternative at this point. Reminding those present that Nixon was re-elected by a landslide and still was removed from power within a year-and-a-half of that show of public support, he ended with “don’t wait until 2020.” Finkelstein talked about his own philosophy as a founding member of Silence=Death Collective and the artists’ collective Gran Fury: to avoid goals and instead pursue activism as a life-long occupation. This would prevent the normalization of dangerous, censorious, and exclusionary practices and generate a corps of activists always nimble and prepared to deal with the curve-balls tossed by an unpredictable despot. Leading the chorus of the group Black Women Artists for Black Lives Matter who recited the names of police-murdered black women, Simone Lee made a simple but effective request of the crowd—simply start trusting black women.

Martha Rosler’s pronouncement “Thank you Whitney, fuck you Whitney,” were the final words, highlighting the contradictory nature of the presence of museum and artist in the context of activist politics. Many of the speakers decried the presence of patronage from wealthy individuals and corporations in the art world, a contradiction of philosophies for many artists that will be very difficult to change and has been the norm for the production of art objects for millennia. Laura Raicovich, President of the Queens Museum, and Carin Kuoni, Director of the Vera List Center, opening the program of speakers, pledged to support, promote and encourage the increased politicization of art, and the production of political art, but as with the entire political system, it is not the good intentions of galleries and curators in the art world that will effect any lasting change, it is the need to disseminate the ideas beyond the choir that was being preached to in a room on a rainy Friday afternoon at the Whitney Museum. A paradigm shift in the practices of artists and institutions away from capital will be the only way to generate truly collective art and promote a collective society, but even at this dreadful juncture in American history, after all the lessons of the 20th Century, is that what we want either?

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Siri Berg: In Color, the retrospective of the Swedish-born veteran of hard-edge abstraction curated by Peter Hionas, opens November 17 at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center at Borough of Manhattan Community College. Berg, who is a thriving and active artist now in her mid-90s, will also be the subject of a documentary set to premiere at Sundance Film Festival next Spring.

Like many artists, Berg tells me that she knew she wanted to be a painter when she was six years old. She attended the School of Art and Architecture at the University of Brussels before deciding, at 19, that she would move to New York. She has occupied her SoHo loft since 1981.

The artist likens her process to “a child playing with blocks.” This apt comparison doesn’t tell the whole story, however, as her working method is anything but childlike. She follows a regimented practice in which she might produce ten studies before approaching a canvas. She still mixes her own colors. When looking at Berg’s paintings, one sees that there is an underlying algebra, which the artist applies using equations of her own invention, forging new territory within her resolute geometric vocabulary.

To try and understand how Berg arrives at her compositions is a strenuous mental challenge. She admits it took her three months to solve one multi-paneled work. Yet the formal relationships in her work appeal immediately and intuitively to viewers.

Her “La Ronde” series from 1972 is the earliest example of how Berg began to apply what she learned from Josef Albers color theory, which she taught at Parsons for over 30 years. The title of the series is taken from the 1897 play by Arthur Schnitzler. But when asked about this, Berg says that when it comes to her inspiration, literature is “not necessarily the only thing. It can depend on anything.” She admits that in at least one work she took imagery from a BMW commercial as the source material.

Good luck trying to figure out which painting that was. Berg’s investigations are highly idiosyncratic. Even when she claims high-concept material as her source, the artist’s methodical, precise use of color, shape, and form always remain the focus.

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BOS, a volunteer-driven, “non-hierarchical” organization, enjoys its ninth annual event.  It is also the second year of NEWD, the “counterpoint to the existing art fair model” in which “strong local curatorial voices” of the sub-borough, whether collectives, galleries, non-profits or artist-run ventures, lay out their wares in an art fair-like environment in the 7000 square feet of the 1896, a stunning 19th-century warehouse space at 592 Johnson Avenue close to the Jefferson Street L. Look out of the two person curated booth of works by artists Rachel Garrard and Filipe Cortez at the imaginatively titled venture, Department of Sign and Symbols, a Vinegar Hill-based gallery, residency program and arts club.

Bushwick is a cultural notion that encroaches well into Queens, as one of the sub-borough’s more imaginatively titled galleries, Rex Regina (since decamped to Manhattan with its cheaper rents!) acknowledged. The gallery pays a return visit to the old hood as participants in NEWD. Rex Regina, named for the Latinized official names of Kings and Queens counties, was initially an offshoot of shared studio space of ex-Chicago graduates who formed a peer group in New York,

Art Helix, the sprawling gallery at the raw industrial space of 299 Meserole Street and now a cultural mainstay in the area, offers a couple of shows opening this busy weekend, and are also hosting a group show beyond its own premises, curated by Wilson Duggan and Julie McKim, and fittingly titled “La Gioconda” as it takes place at Mona Liza Fine Furniture.  A line-up of dozens of artists includes Amanda Millet-Sorsa, Beata Chrzanowska, Claudia Chaseling, Ehren Clodfelter, and, pictured above, Patricia Fabricant who also has work included in another group show in the neighborhood running through the BOS weekend, Thrice Legendary, or Forever Thens at Centotto at 250 Moore Street, #108.  This is a venue usually open only by appointment so the weekend is a good chance to catch up with works by the likes of Fran O’Neill,  Todd Bienvenu, Lawrence Swan, Lori Ellison, Ben La Rocco, Paul Behnke, Anne Russinof, Enrico Gomez, Riad Miah, and Barbara Friedman amongst the dozens of mostly painters selected for this exhibition. The title is also pretty intriguing, but in the department of wacky monikers the prize this year must go to Westernized, Watered-Down Zen Philosophies, a nine-person sculpture, sound and motion show at 18-66 Troutman Street.

Where can artcritical start in singling out studios to visit amongst the hundreds whose doors are open and walls are spruced up for our delectation?  Why not with our own people: artcritical writers and editors participating include our digital arts correspondent Carla Gannis who has work on view at Studio 303 at 41 Varick Avenue, and longtime editorial associate Nancy Elsamanoudi (see image) whose Ridgewood studio is at 63 Woodward Ave # 2409b.

For a full list of studios and other events, visit artsinbushwick.org

The post Bushwick Means Business: Open Studios Weekend, June 5 to 7 appeared first on artcritical.

This weekend sees a significant expansion in the stunning and sprawling annual three-day festival, Bushwick Open Studios, put together by the volunteer Arts in Bushwick organization.  In addition to the 677 shows on offer, some in labyrinthine studio complexes, others in storefronts and private dwellings around the eastern Brooklyn neighborhood, this year sees the launch of a new art fair in conjunction with the festival, one that promises the literal opposite of business as usual.

NEWD brings together artist collective, project spaces, nonprofits and artist-run galleries in a show sharing 7000 square feet of industrial space.  As befits its acronym, the fair strives for a new level of transparency.  Besides bringing collectors into less mediated contact with artists, NEWD is introducing “negotiated resale royalty agreements” with the sales that take place under its roof.  The event takes place at the 1896, an historic warehouse space at 592 Johnson Avenue close to the Jefferson Street L.

Participants in NEWD are naturally open for business in their own premises, too, over the weekend.  At 56 Bogart Street, for instance, hub of such galleries and alternative spaces as Momenta Art, NURTUREart, and Life on Mars, THEODORE:Art, the latest gallery incarnation of Soho veteran Stephanie Theodore, continues a sensational show of sculptor Joyce Robins that emphasizes her roots in painting—by actually including stunning early 2D works alongside her pigmented clay reliefs.  Upstairs from these galleries, meanwhile, are good old-fashioned open studios by individual practicing artists.  Check out luminous abstractionist Delfina Nahrgang,.

Another sculptor active since the 1970s, Paris- and New York-based Alain Kirili,  inaugurates splendid new premises of ArtHelix at 299 Meserole Street, near the Montrose Avenue L.  Describing Kirili’s new steel wire and rubber tubing drawing-in-space sculptures in the brochure accompanying this show, artcritical’s David Cohen detects “an almost fugue-like relationship between elements chasing and embracing each other like lovers.”

Cutting edge new media artists Man Bartlett and Carla Gannis are part of a five-person open studio at Studio 303 at 41 Varick Avenue.  While their work engages in literally splicing together traditional and innovative techniques and protocols, a group show with an emphasis on painting draws on splice as its organizational metaphor. MIXTAPE, curated by Sophia Alexandrov and Todd Bienvenu, draws a parallel between curatorial efforts and the making of a good party compilation.  Their show, at 195 Morgan Avenue, No. 4 Studio, brings together the likes of Katherine Bradford, Margrit Lewczuk, Gili Levy, Sangram Majumdar and Kyle Staver.

And talking of parties: Twenty-Three Artists From In and Around, in the garage at 386 Jefferson Street, which includes Paula DeLuccia, Lori Ellison, Lawrence Swan and Richard Timperio in their number, has an opening Friday sponsored by Hendrick’s Gin, as if such company weren’t sufficient guarantee of a wild time!

The post Big in Bushwick: Bushwick Open Studios is this Weekend appeared first on artcritical.

But residents are fighting back, many artists among them . With the aid of Tribeca Trust, they are now petitioning for landmark protection with MoveOn.org.  They already have over 1500 signatures.  And they have organized as weare67vestry.com, with strong presence on social media.

The historic building Rosen proposes to demolish was one of the first large purpose-built warehouses in New York, its defenders argue. Built in 1896 for A&P, a related A&P warehouse in New Jersey by the same architect,  Frederick P. Dinkelberg, is already landmarked. Frank Helmle, architect of the Bush Terminal Sales Building, added the two top stories in 1910. Honoring it as a landmark supports Washington Street and Washington Market historic preservation.

Rosen has a mixed reputation among art lovers. As the New York Times wrote of him in 2006, “Unlike many New York real estate moguls, who simply tear down the old to build the new, [he] has established a track record of acquiring architectural touchstones like Lever House, the Seagram Building and the Gramercy Park Hotel and renovating them, at considerable effort and expense.”  His Vestry Street project would seem to contradict the impression of a faithful steward of artistic heritage, argues Roland Gebhardt, a conceptual and minimal artist who has lived at 67 Vestry since 1974.  “If [Rosen] really was interested in doing something iconic,” he says, referring to a statement by the developer in The Architect’s Newspaper where he speaks of adding an iconic tower to the Tribeca skyline, “the iconic thing to do would be to preserve this iconic buildings that created an iconic neighborhood.”

Currently, 12 of the tenants at 67 Vestry Street are visual artists, writers, designers, architects and musicians. Artists who live or have lived there over the years include Jack Beal, John Chamberlain, Mark di Suvero, Marisol Escobar, and Dan Flavin.  Warhol had a studio on the second floor for a year, and his assistant and chief painter at The Factory Ronnie Cutrone was a longtime resident.  Other illustrative creative types associated with the building include the gallerists Miguel Abreu, Heiner Friedrick and Tim Nye, musicians Lennie Kravitz and Howard Johnson, and dancer, Lucinda Childs. Wim Wenders filmed inside and outside the building in The American Friend  and Robert Wilson collaborated with Phillip Glass on Einstein on the Beach on the 8th floor.

When painter Paul Pagk,  resident since 1988,  moved to Tribeca, with Chinatown and Pearl Paint on his doorstep,  Paula Cooper and Leo Castelli were still within walking distance, he tells artcritical.com. “Most of 67 Vestry was rent stabilized in 1977, and the second and third floors came under Loft Law as Interim Multiple Dwellings (IMD) in 1992.  By 2012 the entire building was rent stabilized and the landlord was granted a Certificate of Occupancy. Now Rosen may ask for building permits and permission to demolish the building, which he couldn’t do when we were loft tenants under IMD.” The tenants are being timed out by laws that protect owners but ignore the tenants’ investment of time and money and their cultural network that has lasted nearly 50 years.

Another resident, the writer, architect and urbanist Jacqueline Miro, recounts that “in the 1970s, when David Ellis acquired 67 Vestry for very little money, he encouraged artists to move in and placed ads in The Village Voice to attract them. Artists were able to have large, well-lit studio spaces to work in all kinds of mediums; they made the lofts livable at their own expense, increasing the property values with a minimum of expense to the owners. City government agendas for downtown renewal center around CULTURE and the lure of the artistic persona.”

For Aby Rosen, art collector and philanthropist  whose RFR also holds the Seagram Building, Lever House, and Gramercy Park Hotel, this is not his first brush with cultural conservancy issues.  In early April, The New York Landmarks Conservancy won a temporary restraining order to prevent Rosen from removing Le Tricorne, the fragile Picasso curtain, from the lobby of the Four Seasons Restaurant. The Four Seasons and the Seagram Building in which it is located were landmarked in 1989, but while the NYLC owns the Picasso curtain, permanent protection for the piece has yet to be decided.

Lever House, landmarked in 1982, showcases Rosen’s and Alberto Mugrabi’s art collection (Jeff Koons, Tom Sachs, Damien Hirst et al.)  with installations that often mock consumerism, power and entitlement, taking full advantage of the expensive and glassy Park Avenue setting. The Bruce High Quality Foundation, for instance, installed a twelve-foot-high, bronze union rat in 2012 while Barbara Kruger wallpapered the walls in the same year with “You make history when you do business,” and “A rich man’s jokes are always funny”

And there is a connection between Lever House and Vestry Street.  John Chamberlain’s giant, recycled-car-metal piece, Hedge,was exhibited and included in the Lever House Collection in 2013 after his death. Chamberlain lived on the 6th floor of 67 Vestry Street in the ‘70s. The New York State Council for the Arts mission statement reads: “Sustaining a vital ecosystem of individual artists and cultural organizations that supports the creation, presentation, critical review, and distribution of the arts and culture.”

By that criterion, landmarking  67 Vestry Street would help keep art innovation within the footprint of New York even as artists leave for Detroit, Pittsburgh, and other more affordable cities.

The post The Battle of Vestry Street: Art Collector and Philanthropist versus Working Artists Past and Present appeared first on artcritical.

The Pearlstein show will feature in the lecture program on February 19 in a panel with Storr, artist Byron Kim and art historian Irving Sandler, who has championed Pearlstein throughout his career, coining the phrase “new perceptual realism” with him and others in mind.  Other panels this season include a discussion of the process of developing meaningful imagery, moderated by Xico Greenwald with guests Jules de Balincourt, Julie Heffernan and Kyle Staver, this Wednesday, February 12; a discussion moderated by Willaim Bailey with the Studio School gallery’s next exhibitors, Elisa Jensen and Ruth Miller on March 4; a discussion with David Carrier and Joachim Pissarro, authors of a new book on “wild art”, moderated by Barry Schwabsky on February 26; and a roundtable on Robert Smithson with Jack Flam, Phyllis Tuchman and Yasmil Raymond on March 12.

Other contemporary artists talking about their work this season include Beverly McIver (March 11), Rackstraw Downes (April 8) and Mary Heilman (March 26).  Art of the past also gets a look in: Renaissance scholar Alexander Nagel talks on April 2 on the medievalism of modern art while artcritical editor David Cohen offers a talk titled “What to wear for a martyrdom: Fashion Tips for Executioners from late quattro-/early cinquecentro masters” on April 1.

The post James Siena Launches Lecture Season at New York Studio School appeared first on artcritical.

The Arts Writers Grant Program run by the Andy Warhol Foundation in association with Creative Capital announced its grant recipients for 2013.  In its eighth year, the program, which was “ founded in recognition of both the financially precarious situation of arts writers and their indispensable contribution to a vital artistic culture,” is dispensing $619,000 this year to twenty writers in four categories: articles, blogs, books and short-form writing.

Among the bloggers are the veteran commentator Sharon Butler, whose Two Coats of Paint was launched in 2007, and Andrew Horwitz who, on the proceeds of his grant, will launch a blog with the catchy title “Art Criticism for the Post-Material World”.  Since 2003 he has published Culturebot.org, a blog about performance.

Monica Amor, who is a professor of modern and contemporary art at MICA, is one of eight grantees in the book category.  She is preparing a monograph on the Latin American artist Gego (Gertrude Goldschmidt.  Other subjects supported in this category show concentrations in post-colonialism, photography and conceptual art.

Robert Berlind, the painter and critic, is one of the seven short-form writing grantees – the top prize in cash terms at $50,000.  He is the only New York City-based critic in this category; others work in rural New York, Beirut, Berlin, Los Angeles and Nashville, TN.  (The prizes are restricted to US citizens or permanent residents.)  Berlind – whose writings are familiar to readers of Art in America and the Brooklyn Rail, intends to travel to around America, Europe and Japan in search of subjects.

Berlind appeared on The Review Panel in 2006 and Amor is slated for The Review Panel Philadelphia in 2014.

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It’s been almost a year since Hurricane Sandy wrecked havoc on New York City and much of the East Coast. Artists were effected in a number of devastating ways: from water-clogged homes and studios in Red Hook, Brooklyn, to decades-worth of work lost in flooded Chelsea galleries. Phong Bui, artist and publisher of The Brooklyn Rail is recognizing this anniversary with Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year 1, a benefit exhibition that is more in the spirit of celebration and solidarity than somber remembrance. Conceived in partnership with the Dedalus Foundation and Industry City, the show features more than 300 artists, roughly half of whom were directly affected by the storm, across a remarkable range of disciplines and career levels. Bui himself lost years of work and much of the Rail’s archive in his flooded Greenpoint studio. The two-month exhibition will also be the site of  poetry readings, film screenings,  musical performances, talks with conservators, and other cultural events.

Exhibiting artists include: Marina Adams, Susan Bee, Katherine Bradford, Mike Cloud, Cora Cohen, Tamara Gonzales, Ron Gorchov, Josephine Halvorson, EJ Hauser, Michael Joo, Alex Katz, Ronnie Landfield, Chris Martin, Carrie Moyer, Nari Ward, Wendy White, Richard Serra, and newer faces such as Becky Brown, Allison Ginsberg, Heidi Howard, Osamu Kobayashi, Brie Ruais, Gabriela Salazar and Nicole Wittenberg.

The opening of Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year 1 is Sunday, October 20 from 4 PM to 8 PM.

Industry City is located at 220 36th Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The exhibition is open Thursday through Sunday, from 2:00 PM to 6:00 PM , and will run from October 20 to December 15, 2013

For more information and a full schedule of events, please  visit: www.cometogethersandy.com, or email: info@dedalusfoundation.org

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Lectureland is truly under way in New York City in museums, galleries and art schools and college departments as the academic year plays catch up with the Fall art season.  artcritical.com’s LECTURES/PANELS/EVENTS https://www.artcritical.com/calendar/?tab=events column in our extensive listings department remains the most comprehensive place to keep track of them all.

And of particular significance to gallerygoers is any chance to hear directly from makers: “From the horse’s mouth” as the saying goes.

Last week at Vogt Gallery, for instance, British-born sculptor Garth Evans launched the first comprehensive monograph on his work, “Garth Evans Sculpture: Beneath the Skin,” in his show at that gallery.  The book, edited by Ann Compton with contributions from various hands, include a thoughtful and obviously very personal set of observations by the artist’s wife, Leila Philip, is published by PWP with assistance from the Henry Moore Foundation.  Evans will be in conversation this evening, from 6.30pm, with artcritical Publisher/Editor David Cohen.  (525 West 26th Street, Suite 205.) [ARTICLE UPDATED]

Pratt Institute’s Visiting Lecture Series kicked off September 30 with maverick provocateur Tom Sachs on his work.  Other speakers in this series this fall on the Brooklyn campus are Aura Satz (October 7), Leigh Ledar (November 18), and Judith Bernstein (December 9).  (7PM Memorial Hall, 200 Willoughby Avenue.)

And the New York Studio School Evening Lecture Series opened Tuesday, October 1, with a conversation between Svetlana Alpers and Alexi Worth in a discussion focused on Alper’s new book, on the art historian’s new adventures in seeing the world since moving to New York City, titled “Roof Life.”  The next day sculptor Alain Kirili discusses Matisse’s sacred work at Saint-Paul de Vence in southern France and his own forays into the theme of crucifixion with Father Paul Anel, a priest whose special devotion to art was expressed through his celebrating his first mass in the Matisse chapel. Other artists speaking this season at the School include Louise Fishman (October 8), Lisa Yuskavage (in conversation with Phong Bui, October 15), Hilary Harkness (November 5), Paul Resika (in conversation with Jennifer Samet, November 12), Robert Taplin (December 3) and Tina Barney (December 10).  (8 West 8 Street at 6.30PM).

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