8 THENEWYORKER, NOVEMBER 4, 2019
ILLUSTRATION BY AUDE VAN RYN
In 1936, at the age of twenty-three, the Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim made
one of the most perverse and pleasing sculptures of the twentieth century
when she lined a teacup, a spoon, and a saucer in fur. You can see that piece
now, on the fifth floor of the new MOMA—and you can meet its unruly
offspring in “Fur Cup,” an excellent show of sculptural objects at Underdonk,
an artist-run space in Brooklyn (open weekends through Nov. 17). Ceramic
dominates, but most of the thirty artists tapped by the show’s discerning
curator, Elisa Soliven, forgo function in favor of wild form (Gabriela Vain-
sencher’s alluringly reptilian porcelains; Anna Sew Hoy’s Gordian knot of
denim, stoneware, and string) or total absurdity (Rachel Domm’s colossal
farfalle). But even works of ornamental utility—memorably, Roxanne Jack-
son’s dark comedy of a candlestick, in which a black taper rises from the index
finger of a glazed ceramic hand—make a strong case that art, as Oppenheim
herself put it, “has to do with spirit, not with decoration.”—Andrea K. ScottAT THE GALLERIES
1
NIGHT LIFE
Musicians and night-club proprietors lead
complicated lives; it’s advisable to check in
advance to confirm engagements.Mare Winningham
Café Carlyle
With the Brat Pack days of the eighties long
past, Mare Winningham has spent the ensuing
decades transforming herself into a folk- and
country-inspired recording artist, in addition
to growing into an acclaimed actress. Recently
seen in the Dylan-informed musical “Girl
from the North Country,” she appears here
with Tim Crouch, a whiz on both the fiddle
and the mandolin.—Steve Futterman (Oct. 29-
Nov. 2.)New Masada Quartet
Village Vanguard
John Zorn’s long-running Masada project is a
Hydra-headed endeavor that allows the com-metaphysical and umbilical binding) embellish
her exquisitely painted works, which are inspired
by Persian miniatures; they’re also laced with
such contemporary details as sweatpants, bubble
gum, and an Apple watch. “Architecture of a
Moment,” from 2018-19, depicts a palace under
siege; a large woman, with her eyes closed and
a turtleneck pulled over her mouth, emerges
from the structure’s center. Her arms are up in
an evocative, ambiguous pose, equal parts phys-
ical surrender and spiritual ascension.—Johanna
Fateman (Through Nov. 10.)
Richard Serra
Gagosian
CHELSEA Great sculptors are rare and strange. In
Western art, whole eras have gone by without
one. Their effects partake in a variant of the
sublime that I experience as, roughly, beauty
combined with something unpleasant. Richard
Serra, with current shows at three branches of
the Gagosian gallery, is our great sculptor, like it
or not. I say relax and like it. On West Twenty-
first Street, a nearly hundred-foot-long elon-
gated S shape of two-inch-thick weatherproof
steel is sealed by a patina of softly textured
rust. On West Twenty-fourth, standing steel
cylinders, weighing fifty tons apiece, differ in
proportion of height to breadth. On Madison
Avenue, there are “drawings,” rather a frail word
for diptychs and triptychs of large sheets of
heavy paper bearing thick black shapes in paint
stick, ink, and silica—hardly pictorial, they
are about as amiable as the front ends of on-
coming trucks. There’s something profoundly
satisfying—gravity as gravitas—about keeping
company with all these new Serras, as of being
entrusted with a home truth of your and, for
that matter, anything’s earthly existence. The
sensation might be a tuning fork to gauge the
degree of fact in other aspects of a world awash
in pixelated illusions. How real is real? How
real are we?—Peter Schjeldahl (Through Feb. 1.)“What About the Human Figure?”
Firestone
DOWNTOWN Figurative paintings by three
Americans reflect the shifting social andsexual mores of the nineteen-sixties and sev-
enties in this wonderful show, whose title is
borrowed from a 1962 essay by Dore Ashton.
Among Martha Edelheit’s nervy works is a
frank reimagining of Manet’s “Le Déjeuner
sur l’Herbe,” set in Central Park. Marcia Mar-
cus’s “Frieze: The Studio,” from 1964, is also
an art-historically minded group portrait,
depicting a diverse group of friends including
the critic Jill Johnston, the filmmaker Ray-
mond Saroff, and the artist herself. Shirley
Gorelick’s work stands out as moody and rav-
ishing. Her “Double Libby II,” from 1971-72,
which shows a middle-aged woman in the
blazing décor of a red living room, offers a
particularly confident answer to the exhibition
title’s question—although each artist makes
a strong case for her own passionate strain of
figuration.—J.F. (Through Dec. 16.)Sarah Zapata
Performance Space New York
DOWNTOWN For her lush environments, this
Brooklyn-based artist, the daughter of a Peru-
vian immigrant, draws upon South American
textile traditions—particularly that of arpille-
ras, appliquéd narrative scenes that originated
as a subversive form in Chile under Pinochet.
In Zapata’s new installation, a patchwork pro-
fusion of shaggy, hand-tufted yarn shapes
crawl across the gallery’s walls and cover a
series of freestanding rectangular forms,
which visitors may sit or lean on. Although
she favors a mode of immersive abstraction
quite unlike the arpillera compositions she
references,her red-and-green color fields are
occasionally punctuated by representational
moments. On the back wall, a monstrous,
upside-down face grimaces behind bars, as
if peering through a prison window. It’s a
half-playful, slightly menacing image, at odds
with the festive, Christmassy excess that
dominates the show. “A Famine of Hearing,”
as the installation is titled, is a feast for the
eyes, though it’s not without an edge.— J. F.
(Through Jan. 19.)