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Robert’s work is often referred to as both Pop Art and Abstract Painting. To reference his sources of imagery we must look at the fact that we are besieged with an astounding number of images every day. Advertising, movies, mail, computers, newspapers, magazines, television, comics, art and graffiti all contribute to this constant barrage of visual information. This onslaught has contributed to and influenced our daily lives and Reitzfeld’s work accepts this fact. He celebrates and uses this imagery to construct his paintings.

The images that reveal themselves in Robert’s paintings are all a part of him, his identity, and history and they are auto-biographical. These elements are the basis for his production. Some recent, some from my past. Some clear, some fragmented, others abstracted. The work combines parts of art historical images with images from popular culture, including cartoon, advertising, art deco and art nouveau passages. Together they meld to create a blend that critics have dubbed pop culture.

“Reitzfeld explores the relationship between the accidental qualities of abstract painting and the precise design aspects of cartoon illustration% Reitzfeld finds ways to keep his painting rich with associations for both painting and popular culture.”
Robert Edleman

“Robert Reitzfeld is a master of Abstract Pop.”
Andrew McDonnell

Reception for the artist on November 10th from 6:00

John Davis Gallery
362 Warren Street
Hudson, New York
Phone: 518 828 5907
Web: www.johndavisgallery.com/

Mainbocher. Evening dress, Black jersey and silk brocade
USA, 1947
Gift of Prince Michel Romonoff, 82.55.2

Paul Poiret, Yves Saint Laurent, Kenzo, Jean Paul Gaultier, Dries van Noten, Ralph Lauren, Issey Miyake, Vivienne Tam, Xuly Bet, Yeohlee, Mainbocher, Oscar de la Renta and Chanel are among the more than 40 modern designers featured in “Exoticism” at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Exquisite fashions and textiles from the 18th- and 19th-century highlight the influence of Japanese, Chinese, Indian and North African styles on Western dress. Held in the museum’s Fashion and Textile History Gallery, the show surveys 250 years of exoticism in fashion, from the age of colonialism to the rise of multiculturalism and globalization.

The Museum at FIT
Fashion Institute of Technology
Seventh Avenue at 27th St.
New York, NY
Telephone:
Web site: www.fitnyc.edu

Closed for the past three years for major renovations, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Ruth and Harold D. Uris Center for Education re-opens on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2007. Available to students of all ages, teachers, families and scholars, the center will provide a range of new, high-tech features to train and educate visitors about art, artists and the museum’s collection. Highlights of the new space are the Met’s first art study room, designed for teaching with original works of art; studio facilities; a lecture hall for lectures, films and other events; classrooms and seminar rooms; areas for welcoming school groups; a greatly expanded library; and a special area dedicated to families.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York, NY
Telephone: (212) 535-7710
Web site: www.metmuseum.org

Postwar modernist housing projects are impossible to avoid and their presence is impossible to ignore, not only in ex-communist countries, but in most cities of Europe and the U.S. “The Other City,” an international exhibition curated by Hajnalka Somogyi and Samu Szemerey, deals with the ideologies that inform public housing projects, the conditions in which their inhabitants live, and the agendas of those who support or criticize them.

Shown in two venues in New York City, the exhibit is guaranteed to provoke thought and debate on public housing issues and quality of life. The gallery at the Romanian Cultural Institute will display works expressing social realities, everyday situations and personal narratives with works by Mircea Cantor, Miklos Erhardt, Mircea Munteanu, Tadej Pogacar, Jozef Robakowski, Sarolta Szabo and others; the Hungarian Cultural Center will offer works that address housing projects from a historical and ideological perspective with works by Zbynek Baladran, Terence Gower, Florin Tudor & Mona Vatamanu, Société Réaliste, Michael Rakowitz, Pia Ronicke, Miklos Mecs and others.

Opening at the Hungarian Cultural Center, Friday, Oct. 19, 7 p.m., Hungarian Cultural Center, 447 Broadway, 5th floor (through Dec. 9)

Opening at the Romanian Cultural Institute, Thursday, Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m. (through Nov. 22)

Talk at the Hungarian Cultural Center, Friday, Oct. 26, 7 p.m., featuring artists Miklos Erhardt, Terence Gower, Mircea Munteanu and Tadej Pogacar.

Romanian Cultural Institute in New York
200 E. 38th St. at Third Ave.
New York, NY
Telephone: (212) 687-0180
Web site: www.icrny.org

Emile Pingat. Dinner dress. France, 1878
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John V. Farwell III

This exhibit displays 50 of the greatest couture treasures from the collection of the Chicago History Museum, which has one of the country’s finest and most extensive collections of fashionable dress. Visitors to Chic Chicago will have an opportunity to see Gilded-Age gowns by Worth, Doucet and Pingat; modernist masterpieces by Chanel, Schiaparelli and Vionnet; and what might be termed postmodernist designs by designers as varied as Balenciaga, Fath and Versace. The show includes important fashions by great designers from the windy city, Charles James and Mainbocher. A mere few individual pieces of couture from the Chicago History Museum have previously been shown in New York City (most recently in the Poiret exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art).

The Museum at FIT
Fashion Institute of Technology
Seventh Avenue at 27th St.
New York, NY
Telephone: 212 217.5970
Web site: www.fitnyc.edu

Tony Matelli, Abadon, 2005, Bronze, brass, stainless steel, and paint,dimensions variable. Collection of Mark Vanmoerkerke; Courtesy Leo Koenig Inc., New York, and Andréhn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm

In Undone, the perceived completeness of form, space, or identity is defined by its own fragmented, unfinished, or unraveling condition. Commissioned for this exhibition, the works subvert viewers’ expectations about medium and exhibition space. By employing often contradictory content, scale, materials, and representation, the artists—Tom Holmes, Tony Matelli, Eileen Quinlan, and Heather Rowe—create work that draws on the context of the Whitney Museum at Altria Gallery and Sculpture Court to construct moments of unexpected transformation and “undoing” of sculpture, photography, and architecture.

The exhibition is organized by Howie Chen, Branch Manager/Senior Curatorial Coordinator, Whitney Museum of America Art at Altria, with Shamim M. Momin, Associate Curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Branch Director and Curator, Whitney Museum of America Art at Altria.

The Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria is funded by Altria Group, Inc.

Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria
120 Park Avenue at 42nd Street
Phone: 1 (800) WHITNEY
Web: www.whitney.org

Artists Tom Holmes, Tony Matelli, and Heather Rowe discuss their work in conjunction with the exhibition Undone.

Moderated by Howie Chen, Branch Manager/Senior Curatorial Coordinator

Admission is free. Reservations are not required; seating is limited and on a first-come, first-served basis

Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria
120 Park Avenue at 42nd Street
Phone: (917)663-2645 / 1 (800) WHITNEY
Web: www.whitney.org

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Janet Biggs, American, born 1959
Water Training, 1997
Acquired with funds from the Herbert F. Johnson Endowment, and from the Warner L. Overton Acquisition Fund

The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University presents Stop. Look. Listen., an exhibition of video works in all temporary exhibition galleries, in the lobby, and projected on the building’s façade. The exhibition marks five years of collecting in the area of video and continues the Museum’s commitment to video as a vital part of its program.

Stop. Look. Listen. seeks to consider the continuities between the two prevalent idioms–feedback and immersion–in video works of the last fifteen years. It focuses on pieces that have a significant relationship between sound and image, such as Salla Tykkä’s and Jesper Just’s works that make use of existing soundtracks, or Mircea Cantor’s Deeparture, that is purposefully silent. Within this treatment of sound and image, artists also address issues related to spectatorship and the represented and viewing body, such as the floating bodies in Janet Biggs’s Water Training, or the stumbling body in Patty Chang’s Losing Ground, or Janine Antoni’s balancing act in Touch.

Using 25 works by 16 international artists, the exhibition illustrates that a multisensory response to the moving image can occur within both practices, feedback and immersion, as long as certain conditions within the image and the installations are fulfilled. Many of the featured works seek to destabilize traditional oppositions between viewer and viewed by emphasizing a more inclusive vision, in which the viewing body becomes a creative agent, thus proposing an emancipated viewer.

Other artists represented in the exhibition are Burt Barr, Johanna Billing, Slater Bradley, Amy Globus, Amy Jenkins, Mads Lynnerup, Christian Marclay, Rodney McMillian, Anri Sala, and Saskia Olde Wolbers.

Herbert F. Johnson
Museum of Art
Cornell University
Central & University Aves.
Ithaca, NY 14853-4001
Telephone: 607-255-6464
Web: www.museum.cornell.edu

A film that gives us a rare glimpse into the mind of the man who created such classic films as Eraserhead, The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Wild at Heart and Mulholland Drive.

Compiled from over two years of footage, the film is an intimate portrait of Lynch’s creative process as he completes his latest film, INLAND EMPIRE. We follow Lynch as he discovers beauty in ideas, leading us on a journey through the abstract, which ultimately unveils his cinematic vision.

The director of the documentary immersed himself in David Lynch’s world, living and working in Lynch’s home, gathering 700 hours of footage over two years. His unobtrusive style has captured a personal side of David Lynch never seen before.

The film reveals Lynch not only as one of the most original and compelling directors of contemporary film, but also as an artist who continues to explore and experiment in countless mediums. We witness his “hands on” approach to painting, sculpting, music and screenwriting. His enthusiasm is infectious; inspiring us to tap into the well of creativity that Lynch believes we all have.

6.30pm; 18th of October 2007; Admission £6

Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre,
Goldsmiths College
University of London
New Cross SE14 6NW
Web: www.lynchdocumentary.com

Nearest tube: New Cross Gate, New Cross

Auguste Rodin, The Thinker, modeled in 1880, reduced in 1903. Cast number and date of cast unknown. Bronze. Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Foundation; promised gift to the North Carolina Museum of Art

This traveling exhibition presents 68 of Rodin’s bronzes, ranging from monumental works to maquettes, along with a selection of photographs, works on paper and documents. The exhibition explores Rodin’s creative and technical processes and offers an interdisciplinary and multi-media approach to in-gallery interpretation. All works in the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collection and Cantor Foundation Collection are original Rodins. Some of them were made during Rodin’s lifetime; others were made after he died to his explicit wishes and instructions to the government of France.

In 1945, just out of the army, B. Gerald Cantor wandered into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where he Rodin’s marble sculpture, The Hand of God, captured his imagination. Soon after, for the equivalent of two months’ rent, he bought his first Rodin, the sculptor’s bronze version of the piece he had fallen in love with at the Met. Subsequently, Cantor put together an impressive collection of the artist’s work.

The William Benton Museum of Art
School of Fine Arts, Univ. of Connecticut
245 Glenbrook Road
Telephone: (860) 486-4520
Web site: www.thebenton.org