In the interest of public health concerns regarding COVID-19, this week’s DART Board offers a menu of exhibitions and books to visit and read rather than a list of public events. Many of this week’s events have been canceled or postponed, especially those presented by educational institutions, so the standard offering would be a hit-or-miss mess.

This just in from Printed Matter:  We have been closely monitoring the escalating spread of coronavirus COVID-19 outbreaks in California and globally, and in light of recent news and advisories, it will not be feasible to stage the LA Art Book Fair [scheduled to take place at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA on April 3-5] in a way in which everyone's safety can be assured.  Info Above: Seen at the Independent 2020; photo © Peggy Roalf

Books

Martine Fougeron | Nicolas & Adrian. A World with Two Sons (Steidl 2020). From the press materials: “Nicolas & Adrien. A World with Two Sons is a series of intimate portraits of Fougeron’s two sons and their friends growing up in New York and France. Both tender and distanced, the book is a visual bildungsroman that delves into the intense present of her sons’ adolescent states of mind before they become independent adults. Nicolas & Adrien consists of two interconnected bodies of work, Teen Tribe (2005–10) and The Twenties (2010–18). Composed mostly of photos taken at Fougeron’s New York home and during summers in the south of France, Teen Tribe explores adolescence as an in-between state between childhood and adulthood, and follows the adolescent’s interior quest and development of character. The Twenties captures the period between adolescence and full adulthood, depicting her sons’ college years, trials with vocations and work, new friends and lovers, holidays, and family celebrations. Nicolas & Adrien is a sensual biography of two adolescents and a depiction of the universal processes of growing up.”Info

In The Rest Between Two Notes (Unicorn Publishing 2020), Fran Forman explores those liminal and in-between moments -- of coming and leaving, innocence and experience, shadow and light, night and day, absence and connection, loss and longing, and not quite the past and not yet the future. Portals, both real and metaphorical, frequent her layered, complex and dreamlike images often populated by women and girls and the occasional male figure and animal.

Forman finds inspiration in Caravaggio's light intensive portraits, Edward Hopper's use of light and shadow,  the surrealism of Duane Michaels, the constructed tableaux of Gregory Crewdson, and cinematographers who employ light and shadow to increase tension, such as Michael Haneke, Errol Morris, and Dario Argento. Brandishing her stylus like a paint brush, she draws, paints and manipulates fragments and shards of photographs, trying to make images that are beautiful, mysterious, and revealing of secrets. It is her hope that her work will spark a conversation with the viewer who can come to their own conclusion about how a story ends. Info

Kimber Smith at Cheim & Read. Photo © Peggy Roalf

In  Galleries

After The ADAA Art Show 2020, I made a tour of exhibitions presented by several member galleries on the Upper East Side. Here are the highlights, in geographical order:

Ellen Berkenblit | Sistergarten. Anton Kern Gallery, 16 East 55th Street, NY, NY Info

Baselitz/Basquiat. Skarstedt Gallery, 19 East 64th Street, NY, NY Info

Charles Ross. Franklin Parrasch Gallery, Inc. 53 East 64th Street, NY, NY Info

Sarah Lucas | Honey Pie. Gladstone 64, 130 East 64th Street, NY, Y Info

Kimber Smith | Paintings 1967-1980. Chem & Read, 23 East 67th Street, NY, NY Info

Jack Whitten | Transitional Space. A Drawing Survey. Hauser & Wirth, 32 East 69th Street, NY, NY Info

Roy De Forest. Venus Over Manhattan, 980 Madison Avenue, NY, NY Info

Daniel Buren, Pierre Huyghe. Nahmad Contemporary, 980 Madison Avenue, NY, NY Info

John Marin | Marin + The Critics. Menconi + Schoelkopf, 22 East 80th Street, NY, NY Info

Thursday, March 12-Thursday, March 19

Asia Week New York 2020 | 35 galleries and 15 institutions in New York, Philadelphia, Princeton, and New Haven. 
"Carrying forth a mission to celebrate and promote Asian art in New York City, Asia Week New York is a collaboration of top-tier Asian art specialists, major auction houses, and world-renowned museums and Asian cultural institutions in the metropolitan New York area. The Asia Week New York Association concentrates its efforts on presenting one non-stop, event-filled week in March, drawing collectors and curators from every corner of the United States and an international clientele from across the globe. The annual event fulfills the broader aim of affirming the importance of Asian art in the citywide—and nationwide—cultural scene." Info

Basquiat at Skarstedt Gallery, Photo: © Peggy Roalf

In Museums

Gerhard Richter | Painting After All considers Richter's six-decade-long preoccupation with the dual means of representation and abstraction to explore the material, conceptual and historical implications of painting. Spanning the entirety of Richter's prolific and innovative career, the exhibition presents over one hundred works that focus on his specific commitment to the medium, as well as his related interests in photography, digital reproduction, and sculpture.

Major loans include the series Cage (2006) and Birkenau (2014), twin cores of the exhibition, as well as the recent work House of Cards (2020), all of which are exhibited in the United States for the first time. The Met Breuer, 945 Madison Avenue, NY, NY Info

Photography's Last Century: The Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee Collection celebrates the remarkable ascendancy of photography in the last hundred years through the magnificent promised gift to The Met of more than 60 extraordinary photographs from Museum Trustee Ann Tenenbaum and her husband, Thomas H. Lee, in honor of the Museum's 150th anniversary in 2020. The exhibition will feature masterpieces by a wide range of the medium's greatest practitioners, including Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Ilse Bing, Joseph Cornell, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Andreas Gursky, Helen Levitt, Dora Maar, László Moholy-Nagy, Jack Pierson, Sigmar Polke, Man Ray, Laurie Simmons, Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol, Edward Weston, and Rachel Whiteread. The Met, 1000 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY. Info

Studio 54: Night Magic traces the radiant history, social politics, and trailblazing aesthetics of the most iconic nightclub of all time. Behind the velvet rope, partygoers of all backgrounds and lifestyles could come together for nights of music, dazzling lights, and the popular song and dance “The Hustle.”

Studio 54 Opening Night, 1977. Photo: © Robin Rice

Organized chronologically, Studio 54: Night Magic uses photography, fashion, drawing, and film, as well as never-before-exhibited costume illustrations, set proposals, and designs, to place the nightclub within the wider history of New York, from Prohibition through the 1970s. DART subscriber, gallerist Robin Rice is one of the artists whose work will be in the exhibition. Shot on the dance floor alongside the likes of Grace Jones and Andy Warhol, Robin's early photography of Studio 54’s opening night for Discoworld Magazine will be on display. Using Kodachrome 25 film, Rice used a pin to scratch off the emulsion and handwrote directly on the chromes. Brooklyn Museum, 200 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, NY Info