This week: Storm King Art Center, Emma Ortiz, Vaughan Williams, classicized architecture & more from the world of culture.
Free admission day at Storm King Art Center (August 4): The scenic preserves of the Storm King Art Center in New Windsor have been a haven for large-scale modern sculpture and installations for more than half a century. This Friday, August 4, the five-hundred-acre outdoor museum will offer the last of its free-admission days for the summer, tempting even the most stubborn urbanites out of the sweltering city. Those without wheels can take the free hourly shuttle from nearby Newburgh, accessible from New York by train. —RE
“Emma Ortiz: Obsession,” at ATM Gallery, New York (through August 7): The dog days of summer and their stagnating heat might be tyrannizing much of New York, but oasis can be found at “Emma Ortiz: Obsession” at ATM Gallery. Semi-abstract and reliably captivating, these are generous paintings. Each composition presents the viewer with sweeping expanses of opulent color—expanses that would grow intimidating if not for the mature and subtle mark-making details to be found throughout each piece. What arises from the interplay between these details and each canvas’s field of floral and jewel-like colors is a developed narrative that rewards close attention. “Obsession” is a show of vitality and voice. See it before it closes next week. —LL
“Bard Music Festival: Vaughan Williams and His World,” at Fisher Center at Bard College (August 4–6 & 10–13): Ralph Vaughan Williams is a fascinating biographical study: a “cheerful agnostic” (and a member of the Wedgwood–Darwin family), he brought the modern English Hymnal into being and composed two of his most ambitious works on Bunyan and the Book of Job; a well-heeled Cambridge man, he wore holes in those heels walking the countryside to gather the folksong of the working poor. Throughout his life, Vaughan Williams synthesized contrasts, marrying an early-modernist technique he honed under the tutelage of Ravel with the melodies and modes of his beloved English folk music. The two-week Bard Music Festival begins this Friday and offers an exhaustive look into the composer’s world, including the ballet Job, the opera Sir John in Love, and much music from contemporaries obscure and well-known. —IS
“Classicism in the Sky: The Return of the Elegant Skyscraper,” presented by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (August 2): Tall buildings, both old and new, can give New York a bad name. Think of the old 3 Park Avenue and the new 432 Park, neither of which can be described as edifying to look at. But it wasn’t always thus: think instead of the pioneering work of J. E. R. Carpenter and Rosario Candela, the latter of whom I wrote about in our September 2018 issue. And there is hope in our time too: a new generation of architects is minding the past while building in the present. On Wednesday the ICAA will present a virtual screening of “Classicism in the Sky,” which features discussions with some of today’s top classicizing architects, including Peter Pennoyer, on the new tall buildings that could be mistaken for glorious old ones. —BR
Dispatch:
“Landmines,” by Jay Nordinger. On musical titles and words.
“Lady Macbeth gets her revenge,” by Paul du Quenoy. On Verdi’s Macbeth at La Scala, starring Anna Netrebko.
From the Archives:
“The good German,” by Jeffrey Meyers (March 2003). A review of Thomas Mann: Life as a Work of Art: a Biography, by Hermann Kurzke.