Armory Week: Moma Opening Party

Last week was Armory week and I have to admit that it was so enormous that I had trouble getting through the whole thing.  That said, the highlight of my week was definitely the opening night benefit at the MoMA.  Why you ask?  MoMA always throws a good party, especially when they include amazing music by the Walkmen, Human Rights and DJ Justin Miller and “video wallpaper” by Sean Capone of Supernature.  This time there was an added bonus: William Kentridge: Five Themes, the large-scale retrospective of nearly three decades of the master’s work.

Kentridge is probably one of my favorite visual artists.  An extremely cultured man hailing from South Africa, Kentridge’s medium is mostly charcoal and animation with stints in video and opera.  To me, someone who grew up around classical music, the highlight of the exhibition was “Sarastro and the Master’s Voice: The Magic Flute”, a final maquette used for testing the large scale projections created for his production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute in 2005 in Belgium.  The maquette is a 1:10 scale model of the set and includes projections and models of figures on a miniature scale.  For more on the work here is a very informative interview done when it was commissioned for the Deutsche Guggenheim in 2006.

Another must see is the third theme “Parcours d’Atelier: Artist in the Studio” where Kentridge films his process of creating works with charcoal and then combines live action and animation to show the process.

For more on the Kentridge exhibition at MoMA visit: http://moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/964 and for a full review of the Armory Show see NYT: Ahoy From Nudes, a Pirate and Scrooge McDuck

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