Design Art and Photography

ART

Museums and galleries are in Manhattan unless otherwise noted. Full reviews of recent art shows: nytimes.com/art.

В‘JOEL SHAPIRO: NEW SCULPTUREВ’ Joel ShapiroВ’s latest show is exquisite: a focused, perfect arrangement of just under a dozen sculptures filling Pace Wildenstein in Chelsea. This may well be the artistВ’s best effort in years. The work may look old-fashioned to some, with its attention to relationships between abstraction and representation, its choice of weighty materials (wood and bronze) and its heroic scale. The pieces may even be reminiscent of David SmithВ’s, specifically his final В“CubiВ” series of monumental geometric sculptures made of stainless-steel cubes and prisms. Certainly Mr. Smith opened up a space for abstract sculpture in which Mr. Shapiro works.

But Mr. Shapiro is very much his own artist, with his own style and set of aesthetic concerns, chief among them the striving for a sense of compositional balance between opposites. His sculptures are compact yet fluidly elegant; rapturously open yet contained; full of life yet inert; majestic yet humble. Several seem to defy gravity, with the arrangements of the cubes, prisms and rectangles surging into the air. The works can also be brightly colored or lovingly hand-finished, the surface of the bronze sculptures made to resemble wood. They are like scaffolding crossed with a bouquet of flowers. (Through Jan. 19, Pace Wildenstein, 545 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, 212-989-4258, pacewildenstein.com.) BENJAMIN GENOCCHIO

Museums

AMERICAN FOLK ART MUSEUM: В‘GILDED LIONS AND JEWELED HORSES: THE SYNAGOGUE TO THE CAROUSEL,В’ through March 23. Skills and motifs used in sacred art resurface in a surprisingly secular place: the carousel. In this exhibition, models of elaborate wooden synagogues and photographs of Jewish cemeteries with intricately carved gravestones in Eastern Europe are alongside paper cuts, which look like giant, precision-cut snowflakes mounted on colored paper. The lineage from synagogue to carousel is made explicit in a display that juxtaposes carved Torah arks with carousel horses fashioned in the baroque Coney Island Style. The show reveals a vibrant Jewish visual culture, where Judaism is often seen as text-oriented. It is also a great immigrant story in which skills learned in the shtetls of Europe made their way to the New World and, for a brief moment, flourished. 45 West 53rd Street, (212) 265-1040, folkartmuseum.org. (Martha Schwendener)

★ ASIA SOCIETY: В‘THE ARTS OF KASHMIR,В’, through Jan. 6. Set in the Himalayas amid Afghanistan, China and India, Kashmir underwent constant cultural fermentation, taking influences in, sending them out. Sacred to Hinduism, home to early Buddhism and a favored retreat of Muslim rulers, it was forever either struggling to sustain social balance or heading into conflict. This perpetual play of opposites produced, through molding and friction, some of the most beautiful art in the world. 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org. (Holland Cotter)

ASIA SOCIETY: В‘ZHANG HUAN: ALTERED STATES,В’ through Jan. 20. The Chinese artist Zhang Huan, the subject of this small, midcareer survey, is best known for the early, often poetic, sometimes sensationally masochistic performance work he did in the 1990s, which can only be seen in videos and photographs now. The objects in this show, which include giant fragments of Buddhist sculptures made from copper sheets and incense ash, are products of his new workshop-style studio in Shanghai. 725 Park Avenue, at 70th Street, (212) 288-6400, asiasociety.org. (Cotter)

BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS: В‘THE WORLD OUTSIDE: A SURVEY EXHIBITION 1991-2007,В’ through Jan. 27. A product of the Cuban avant-garde of the late В’80s and now a resident of Santo Domingo, Quisqueya HenrГ­quez has exhibited extensively in solo and group shows in North and South America. In her clever, ideologically pointed sculptures, installations, collages and videos, she aims to deconstruct prejudicial stereotypes about the arts and cultures of Latin America. 1040 Grand Concourse, at 165th Street, Morrisania, (718) 681-6000, bronxmuseum.org. (Ken Johnson)

★ BROOKLYN MUSEUM: В‘INFINITE ISLAND: CONTEMPORARY CARIBBEAN ART,В’ through Jan. 27. This large show, with 45 artists and a collective of designers, photographers and architects from the Dominican Republic adding to the count, fills two floors of temporary exhibition space, and care has been given to the selection. Organized by Tumelo Moshaka, associate curator of exhibitions at Brooklyn, itВ’s an in-house job, a labor of love, though an uneven one. Too much work treads ground already covered by other art over the years. But whatВ’s good is really good, and the very existence of a show about identity politics, out of mainstream fashion in 2007, is cause for serious reflection. 200 Eastern Parkway, at Prospect Park, (718) 638-5000, brooklynmuseum.org. (Cotter)

★ FRICK COLLECTION: GABRIEL DE SAINT-AUBIN, through Jan. 27. One of 18th-century FranceВ’s greatest draftsmen, Gabriel de Saint-Aubin drew all the time and everywhere he went. He usually worked small, and in many cases you need one of the magnifying glasses provided at the museum to fully appreciate the subtlety and detail. Nevertheless, he had tremendous range. Whether conjuring epic visions of Ancient Roman history or recording intimate views of domestic quietude, he produced works of nonstop graphic liveliness, extraordinary sensuousness and hypersensitive alertness to perceptual reality. 1 East 70th Street, (212) 288-0700, frick.org. (Johnson)

GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: В‘FOTO: MODERNITY IN CENTRAL EUROPE, 1918-1945,В’ through Jan. 13. This exhibition is the art historical equivalent of the ultimate real estate dream: You open an unfamiliar door in your apartment and В— voilГ  В— thereВ’s an extra room you never knew about. In this case the room is full of the work of scores of mostly unfamiliar photographers who put the medium through its paces in interwar Central Europe. Learning about them gives modern photography В— up to and including the experiments of the early 1980s В— a whole new layout. 1071 Fifth Avenue, at 89th Street, (212) 423-3500, guggenheim.org. (Roberta Smith)

★ GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM: В‘RICHARD PRINCE: SPIRITUAL AMERICA,В’ through Jan. 9. This retrospective of one of contemporary artВ’s inveterate bad boys looks more beautiful in the museumВ’s rotunda than it probably should. Covering nearly 30 years, it includes photographs of photographs; joke paintings; car hoods; and parodies of de KooningВ’s В“WomenВ” paintings that have undergone a sex change. It shows a body of work in which the supposed end-game of appropriation has fueled a constantly changing and developing aesthetic that exposes and wryly celebrates the dark and tawdry side of this countryВ’s inner life. (See above.) (Smith)

INTERNATIONAL CENTER OF PHOTOGRAPHY: В‘GERDA TAROВ’ AND В‘THIS IS WAR! ROBERT CAPA AT WORK,В’ through Jan. 6. There are a number of narratives running through these shows, from the story of two young people who fled Nazi Germany to the rediscovery of TaroВ’s career and the development of Capa as В“the greatest war photographer in the worldВ” (in the view of Picture Post magazine). Accompanied by a book written by Richard Whelan, the show delves into questions about CapaВ’s famous photograph В“Death of a Loyalist MilitiamanВ” and the tricky relationship between truth and fiction in war photography. The show also examines how technological developments in warfare, photography and magazine printing led to a new era of photojournalism during the 1930s and В’40s. 1133 Avenue of the Americas, at West 43rd Street, (212) 857-0000, icp.org. (Martha Schwendener)

JAPAN SOCIETY: В‘MAKING A HOME: JAPANESE CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS IN NEW YORK,В’ through Jan. 13. This is the first significant group show at Japan Society since Takashi MurakamiВ’s 2005 В“Little Boy: The Arts of JapanВ’s Exploding Subculture.В” While it includes emerging artists like Misaki Kawai and Hiroshi Sunairi, the show carves out room for midcareer and long-established artists. Yayoi Kusama is not in the show, but her influence is especially palpable in a series of connected installations that make the most of Japan SocietyВ’s dark, airless galleries, transforming them into hypnotically introspective environments. 333 East 47th Street, (212) 832-1155, japansociety.org. (Karen Rosenberg)

THE JEWISH MUSEUM: В‘CAMILLE PISSARRO: IMPRESSIONS OF CITY AND COUNTRY,В’ through Feb. 3. This exhibition contains few out-and-out masterpieces, but it does give us a rare look at the radical philosophies behind paintings that to a modern eye appear harmlessly bourgeois. For Pissarro, an anarchist and a Jew (albeit a secular one) in 19th-century France, Impressionism was about much more than the fleeting effects of light. It was about labor, the elimination of hierarchies and an idealized balance between urban and rural life. Pissarro emerges from this exhibition as an artist who never quite resolved the conflict between labor and sensation, but whose subtly anti-authoritarian stance propelled painting into the next century. 1109 Fifth Avenue, at 92nd Street, (212) 423-3200, jewishmuseum.org. (Rosenberg)

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: В‘ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM AND OTHER MODERN WORKS: THE MURIEL KALLIS STEINBERG NEWMAN COLLECTION,В’ through Feb. 3. One of the MetВ’s most significant gifts of midcentury art, promised in 1980 and finalized last year, is taut and rich, reflective of a passionately discerning eye. Nearly everything is a standout, not just the rare de Kooning and the substantial Pollock, or works by Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Claes Oldenburg and Jules Olitski. Max ErnstВ’s portrait of Gala Eluard; sculptures by Giacometti and Jacques Lipchitz; paintings by Alfred Leslie and Mark Tobey; and a collage by Anne Ryan radiate an almost brazen self-sufficiency. (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Smith)

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: В‘THE AGE OF REMBRANDT: DUTCH PAINTING IN THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART,В’ through Jan. 6. The Met has long advertised itself as a grand art multiplex, a cluster of several separate world-class museums under a single roof. And we get a demonstration in this display of its entire 17th-century Dutch painting collection: 228 pictures, of which roughly a third are usually on view at any time, and some never. In addition to the Rembrandts, there are five Vermeers, nearly a dozen Frans Halses, and the list goes on in an inventory of breathtaking scope and depth. How to package it? The Met has come up with a theme, and a perfect one for our time: money. The work has been sorted not by artistsВ’ names or dates, but by the names and dates of the collectors who bought and gave the paintings to the museum. This is the history of the Dutch Golden Age according to the American Gilded Age. (See above.) (Cotter)

★ METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: В‘BRIDGING EAST AND WEST: THE CHINESE DIASPORA AND LIN YUTANG,В’ through Feb. 10. Focused on a single modern family art collection, this show weaves like a DNA strand through the MetВ’s Chinese painting galleries. The 40 examples of painting and calligraphy belonged to the writer and scholar Lin Yutang (1895-1976) and his descendants, who have divided their time between China and the West. Accumulated over years, the collection has the casual logic of a household photo album, with evidence of shared habits, tastes and temperaments, and of personal interchange between generations. (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org. (Cotter)

THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART: В‘DEPTH OF FIELD,В’ through March 23. The MetВ’s recently acquired large-scale photographs finally have some room to breathe in the new Joyce and Robert Menschel Hall for Modern Photography, a high-ceilinged, gray-carpeted sanctuary on the second floor. Curators at MoMA need not worry: The inaugural installation (a sampler rather than a thematic slice) is dominated by white, mostly male Europeans and heavily weighted with references to history and landscape painting. Despite its limitations, В“Depth of FieldВ” is not a bad debut. We can also expect more from future installations, which will explore themes like В“photography about photography.В” (See above.) (Rosenberg)

★ THE MET: В‘ETERNAL ANCESTORS: THE ART OF THE CENTRAL AFRICAN RELIQUARY,В’ through March 2. Sure to be one of the sleepers of the fall art season, this beautiful show has a universal theme: life as a cosmic journey homeward, with parental spirits, embodied in charismatic materials and images, counseling and chiding us every step of the way. European, Asian and African reliquaries sit side by side in the first gallery; then some of the worldВ’s greatest Fang and Kota sculptures take over and sweep through to the end. (See above.) (Cotter)

Source: www.nytimes.com