You are invited to visit the studios of 2010-11 Studio Museum artists in residence Simone Leigh, Kamau Amu Patton, and Paul Mpagi Sepuya as they prepare for their upcoming summer
exhibition! This is a rare opportunity to meet the artists and get an advance look at their newest work. Conceived at the formation of the Museum nearly 40 years ago, the Artists-in-Residence Program remains central to the Museum’s mission.
The Artists-in-Residence Open Studios event is free and open to all.
“Through the Night”: Daniel Beaty in this solo show at Riverside Theater. By ANITA GATES
NYTimes.com
Photo by: Sherry Rubel
“Run, black man, run,” Daniel Beaty says fiercely. “Run to your children — hold them tight.”
It’s not surprising that Bill Cosby is a fan of Mr. Beaty’s work. It brings to life everything that Mr. Cosby has spoken out about in recent years in terms of African-Americans’ taking responsibility for their own lives. And when Mr. Beaty takes up the topic, it’s not a speech. It’s a poem.
“Through the Night,” which Mr. Beaty is performing with his signature wit, grit and piercing lyricism, is a thing of beauty. Now in a limited run at the Riverside Theater in Morningside Heights, this drama has been described as a look at what it means to be black and male in the United States today, but its deepest meanings transcend race and gender.
Mr. Beaty’s work could be compared to many solo shows in which a performer portrays multiple characters, but his method is different, at least in this play. “Through the Night” has a clear-cut, linear plot that takes shape smoothly and artfully, and builds to a real-life crisis with a jolt of magic realism.
The black men in “Through the Night” are striving, and that is taking its toll, even on 10-year-old Eric, who is determined to develop a magic formula for his herbal iced tea. His father, Mr. Rogers (whose neighborhood is Harlem), is trying desperately to make a go of his health-food store, but people, it seems, would rather clog their arteries with so-called soul food.
Mr. Rogers’s one employee, Dre, is fighting the temptation to use drugs again while he waits for his first child to be born, praying that the baby will, unlike its parents, be H.I.V.-free. Eric’s pal ’Twon has won one battle — he is graduating from high school — but is struggling for the courage to go away to college in Atlanta, to a world that is foreign to him.
’Twon’s mentor, Isaac, a music-industry executive, works long, stress-filled hours, but puts almost as much energy into hiding the reason he’s 40 and unmarried. His father, a successful minister with a congregation of 10,000, is fighting for his life. He weighs 300 pounds, is diabetic and joins Overeaters Anonymous, but still wants creamy, chocolaty HoHos in the middle of the night.
Women are not seen that often, but they are a vital, cherished part of the men’s lives: Mr. Rogers’s long-gone mother, who cleaned offices to support her children (“I never saw you dance”), for instance, and his wife, who toils at a salaried job so her husband can keep his store going. And Mr. Beaty’s gifts are such that when female characters do speak through him, his demeanor and posture change in astonishing ways. I could swear he suddenly has breasts, but maybe that’s a trick of Jacqueline Reid’s lighting design.
“Through the Night” continues through May 23 at the Riverside Theater, in Riverside Church, 91 Claremont Avenue, at 120th Street, Morningside Heights; (212) 870-6784; www.theriversidetheatre.org.
Throughout a career that brought international acclaim, the showbiz legend never softened her firm stance against racism.
If she could have swallowed her pride, Lena Horne could have had an easy life. Born into a middle-class African-American family in New York in 1917, she was beautiful, talented and ambitious. At the age of 16, much to her family's disapproval, she auditioned as a chorus dancer at the famous Cotton Club, and got the job. She followed this up by taking voice lessons, sang with the black "society" band of Noble Sissle and appeared on Broadway in Blackbirds of 1939 and 1940.
At the same time, she was blossoming into a star. She appeared in several films, most famously Stormy Weather (where she sang the title song) and Cabin In The Sky (along with Louis Armstrong and Ethel Waters). Throughout the second world war she was the black GIs' number-one pinup. She refused to take demeaning parts or to wear special makeup to darken her naturally light-toned complexion.
In 1947 she married her musical director, Lennie Hayton, but they were forced to keep their marriage a secret for three years because of racist threats. The marriage lasted until Hayton's death in 1971.
At the age of 74 Lena Horne starred in her own Broadway show, The Lady And Her Music. It ran for 14 months, after which she took it on tour around the US for a further year. At 80 she gave a concert at the JVC jazz festival in New York, where she received a lifetime achievement award. Until the very end, she never once softened her firm stance against racism or missed an opportunity to advance the cause she believed in. She will be missed.
Kehinde Wiley is a New York based painter from Los Angeles who has situated himself firmly within art history's tradition of portrait painting. Wiley, as the contemporary descendent of a long line of portraitists including Reynolds, Gainsborough, Titian, Ingres, and others, appropriates the signs and visual rhetoric of the heroic, powerful, opulent, majestic, and sublime in his representations of young, urban, black men.
The subjects and stylistic references for his paintings are juxtaposed inversions of each other, forcing ambiguity and provocative perplexity to pervade his imagery. By applying the visual vocabulary and conventions of glorification, history, wealth, power, and prestige to subject matter drawn from the urban fabric in which he is embedded, Wiley presents his young men as both heroic and pathetic, aestheticized and reified, autonomous and manipulated. Ultimately, Wiley's practice disturbs and interrupts tropes of portrait painting to locate, in his words, "class struggle at the level of sign". Wiley’s paintings often blur the boundaries between traditional and contemporary modes of representation. Rendered in a realistic mode –– while making references to specific old master paintings –– Wiley creates a fusion of period styles, ranging from French rococo, Islamic architecture and West African textile design to urban hip–hop and the "Sea Foam Green" of a Martha Stewart Interiors color swatch. Wiley’s slightly larger than life size figures are depicted in a heroic manner, as their poses connote power and spiritual awakening. Wiley’s portrayal of masculinity is filtered through these poses of power and spirituality.
His portraits are based on photographs of young men who Wiley sees on the street, begun last year with men mostly from Harlem’s 125th Street, the series now includes models from the South Central neighborhood where he was born. Dressed in street clothes, they are asked to assume poses from the paintings of Renaissance masters, such as Titian and Tiepolo. Wiley also embraces French rococo ornamentation; his references to this style compliment his embrace of hip–hop culture. Similarly, the poses of his figures appear to derive as much from contemporary hip–hop culture as from Renaissance paintings.
The artist describes his approach as "interrogating the notion of the master painter, at once critical and complicit." Wiley’s figurative paintings "quote historical sources and position young black men within that field of power.” In this manner, Wiley’s paintings fuse history and style in a unique and contemporary manner.
Sunday is the day that Harlem truly comes alive, and the day that many make time to visit The Studio Museum in Harlem. To make sure that the Museum is accessible to all, we would like to introduce Target Free Sundays at the Studio Museum, thanks to generous support from Target.
The program, which will offer free Museum admission every Sunday between 12 and 6 PM, reflects a shared commitment to engage the community and offer a vital cultural experience to all.
In addition to free Museum admission on Sundays, the Education and Public Programs Department has organized free programs and events geared to all our different audiences. From hands-on family workshops to theater performances, whatever their age or interest, visitors will find something to love at Target Free Sundays at the Studio Museum.
Join us, as we explore how art and visual communication can ignite the imagination, engage the mind and reflect our human experience-past, present and future.
Born in Saint Louis, Missouri and raised in Los Angeles, California, Ricky Day is an emerging artist who lives and works in Harlem, New York. His art practice includes painting, collage, photography and recorded music and releasing. He began incorporating video, installation and sculpture into his art practice.
“I often appropriate iconic imagery from canonical art movements and artists. I sometimes merge these histories with distinctly African-American cultural content and perspective. My intent is to expose the blindness of traditional art history and pop culture, while reflecting on the complexity and malleability of the African-American experience. The work is also an examination of the effects of the fear of change on art history, the African-American experience and society at large. I use photography, painting, collage, graphic-art, and other current technology to create my work. I feel that it is important to incorporate the tools of the time into my art practice because they too are characters in the story.” says Day
In addition to brisk sales of his work to private collectors, Ricky exhibited in multiple group shows in NYC; the Obama: Art and Politics at H & F Fine Arts Gallery in Mt. Ranier, Maryland January 15, 2009 – January 31, 2009; White Lies: Black Noise at Rush Arts Gallery November 14, 2009 – January 24, 2009; Art Gotham’s Square Foot Show June 7t through July 12, 2008; Night of 1000 Drawings at the Artists Space (2006/2007) in SoHo as well as the 2006 Harlem Open Artist Studio Tour and Reality Gallery at NY Studio Gallery (January 2008) and at Bus Boys and Poets in Washington DC (Jan/February 2008) was his first solo show. Currently, Ricky Day as a blog called Urban Pop Life and is working on a portrait series called This is The Life which is an examination of the African-American Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community. His photography series Beautiful Decay and American Photographer are set to be exhibited in late 2009.
