Tops in 2012

Favorite stuff from 2012. 

ART
Ann Hamilton's The event of a thread at Park Avenue Armory
Sheer exhilaration, from the impressive use of scale to the pure fun of swinging, and if you choose, can be parsed ad infinitum.

Picasso: Black & White at the Guggenheim
Deservingly rehabilitates the long, overly-hyped reputation of an innovative artist in a bracing exhibition.

DANCE
Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, Rian
Why didn't this get more attention? A life-affirming evening of music and dance drawing from, but not limited to, Irish folk traditions.

Performer—Silas Riener
His gut-wrenching performances in Rashaun Mitchell's Nox and Tere O'Connor's Poem miraculously elevated his high-wire reputation after his Bessie Award-winning solo in Merce Cunningham Company's BAM send-off, Split Sides.

Choreographers: Pam Tanowitz, Dusan Tynek, Justin Peck
Three talented choreographers who should get more commissions from larger companies so in need of fresh voices and material. All skilled with the nitty-gritty construction of formal work that requires skilled technique. Peck, a corps member with NYCB, will have another premiere soon, and the others should as well.

BOOKS
This Bright River, Patrick Somerville
A novel that drew me, unexpectedly, through a personal story into a breathtaking thriller.

Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson
I know everybody says to read this book, but it may change your life the way Apple has changed your life. An unsparing depiction of a brilliant and ruthless creative genius.

The Round House, Louise Erdrich
Her writing is simple, funny, and earthy. About a crime on or near an Indian reservation that is light, dark, and slyly observes the complexity of the founding of our nation.  

MAGAZINES
New York Magazine
This magazine is what a weekly cultural, general interest magazine should be, reflecting the best of culture and food, with graphics that can transform ideas into visually stunning images, and at heart, excellent writing.

As opposed to the worst: Time Out New York, which now looks like it doesn't have a designer overseeing it, and features hideous fashion, homes, and lame features that read more like advertorials. On its way to irrelevancy.

FILM
Moonlight Kingdom, Wes Anderson
A complete artistic vision, from story to every amazing visual detail. 

I know there are more, but these are what spring to mind. Yours?

Happy new year!

Ann Hamilton's Thrilling Event of a Thread

Experiencing Ann Hamilton's The Event of a Thread at the Park Avenue Armory is both exhilarating and humbling. Kind of like visiting the vast Armory itself, which makes you simultaneously consider humankind's ambition and peon-like size.

It's exhilarating, because even if you aren't much into audience participation (ahem), you'll probably be giddy with delight (double ahem) when you sit on one of the 42 broad wooden swings and begin to sail back and forth. The sheer joy of this simple action recalls all that is good about being a kid. The swings are suspended from the rafters by 75' chains, which are loosely tethered together near the top and attached to a vast silky cloth that divides the Drill Hall in half, Christo style. The "membrane" billows and shimmers in reaction to, as Hamilton so poetically put it, "the weather" of the installation. 

If you're on a swing, your flight trajectory neatly illuminated by a rectangle, by now you've passed two "readers" (members of SITI Company) who sit at a table stacked with 42 homing pigeons in cages. They read text that follows the graphic structure of a concordance, which essentially organizes variously sourced phrases by common words which align in "spines." This concept of the weaving of fabric permeates the installation; it is found here in the spoken text, which is transmitted to radios in neatly-wrapped paper bags that are scattered throughout the hall and are meant to be carried and passed along to others while feeling the breath—the vibration of the noise—of the speaker. You with me?

On the Lexington end of the hall sits a "writer," who writes with a pencil on a carbonized form in response to the read text and the goings-on in the hall. Nearby is a record lathe which will record a daily song sung by a soloist and chorus, from a balcony, to the fat homing pigeons, which are traditionally used as a means of communication. Recurring instances of action and documentation form a sort of metaphorical dialogue, or weaving, of the duration of the performance and installation. The desk set-ups are reminiscent of previous Hamilton scenarios—repetitive labor and language are trademarks—but the sheer visceral and emotional impact of the large-scale dramas are nothing short of thrilling.

Clearly there are infinite ideas in Hamilton's work, which reaffirms the power and potential of art, but there is also nothing quite like the simple thrill of sailing through the air on a swing. It's on view through January 6 (and free this Saturday, December 8).