Commissioned by MoMA in conjunction with the 9 Screens exhibition series, Frolic and Detour takes its title from a legal term referring to “employee conduct that is outside the scope of employment and is undertaken purely for the employee’s own benefit.” The video employs both documentary and hallucinatory observations to describe one man’s daily routines and departures as punctuated by a kaleidoscopic mixture of painting, sculpture, cinema, and architecture. Shifting atmospheres ranging from offices, bedrooms, tennis courts, psychiatrist couches, forests, nightclubs, and hospitals provide the backdrops for days in the life of its “lion-in-winter” protagonist, native New Yorker and Attorney-at-Law Arnold Mandell.

20 Million Miles to Earth. 1957. USA. Directed by Nathan Juran. Film Stills Archive, The Museum of Modern Art, New York

It was love at first sight for Tim Burton and stop-motion animation. At an early age, Burton was drawn to films such as Nathan Juran’s 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957) and Don Chaffey’s Jason and the Argonauts (1963), which featured innovative animation by special effects master Ray Harryhausen. Burton responded to the sense of wonder the technique conjured in its audiences and was inspired to create his own stop-motion animated films, such as a 1971 super-8mm short featuring cavemen and dinosaur figures (on view in the MoMA gallery exhibition) that invokes When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970, directed by Val Guest, and animated by Jim Danforth).

In this clip from the CD (as discussed in a previous post) that accompanies the catalogue of Marina Abramović’s current retrospective, The Artist Is Present, Marina discusses her performance Art Must Be Beautiful, Artist Must Be Beautiful (1975) and shares with the reader her thoughts about the work and its creation. This is complemented by a discussion of the performance in one of the essays featured in the catalogue, “The Art of Marina Abramović: Leaving the Balkans, Entering the Other Side,” by art historian and critic Jovana Stokić.

The Passion of Joan of Arc. 1928. France. Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer

These notes accompany the screening of </i>The Passion of Joan of Arc, April 8, 9, and 10 in Theater 3.</p>

Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889–1968) made eight quality but unspectacular features between 1919 and 1926. In the ensuing four decades, he made only six more films—one of which he disowned. Yet he is always near the top of any informed list of the greatest film artists.

Ad Reinhardt. Walt Nettie Walt Nettie Walt Nettie Merry Xmas Happy New Year 55! Best Wishes. Postcard, 1954. Courtesy Anna Reinhardt.

At the MoMA Library we recently unearthed an intriguing box of ephemera by artist Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967). The material was gifted to the Library by Walter and Nettie Wittman, who were friends of the artist. The letters, photographs, tear sheets, and some original commercial illustrations form a vignette of the artist’s professional and personal life, glimpsed from the perspective of Mr. Wittman, a lawyer residing in New Jersey.

Reinhardt and Walter Wittman met as students at Columbia University. We get a taste of their initial friendship with a 1931 notebook page documenting Reinhardt’s translation efforts in freshman German class (“In paradise what have I to do win?”)

Installation view of 100 Years at P.S.1. Photo by Matthew Septimus

Performance art is in the middle of an extraordinary resurgence in popularity right now, with groundbreaking performance exhibitions at several institutions in the New York area, including the recent Tino Sehgal show at the Guggenheim Museum, the current Tania Bruguera exhibition at the Neuberger Museum, and of course, The Museum of Modern Art’s Marina Abramović exhibition, The Artist is Present. Performance programming is on the rise at biennials and art fairs around the world, and departments devoted to performance art—such as those at MoMA, Tate Modern, and Centre Georges Pompidou—are increasingly being incorporated into the contemporary art museum.

There is no better way to understand this remarkable material, and the reasons behind its current boom, than to visit 100 Years (version #2, ps1, nov 2009), an exhibition on view now through the end of April at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Queens.

How well do you know your MoMA? Above are images of works from the MoMA collection that are currently on view in the galleries. If you think you can identify the artist, title, and location of each work, please submit your answers by leaving a comment on this post.  We’ll provide the answers—along with some information about each work—next Friday, along with the next Do You Know Your MoMA? challenge.

ANSWERS TO LAST WEEK’S CHALLENGE:

Screenshot of the Picasso: Themes and Variations website

When you think about printmaking, the Web may not be the first thing that comes to mind. You may envision instead old etching presses, or heavy lithographic stones, or stacks of paper waiting to hit the press. But in fact, MoMA’s Prints Department has long been interested in using the Web as a way of sharing information: using animated, interactive multimedia components as a way to make the material come alive. Our online projects are all available on MoMA.org, from our earliest experiments all the way back in 1998 with Miró’s Black and Red Series…

Though I’m still a believer, I’m a bit too old to send a want list to Santa each year. But if I did, at the top of that list would be a Joseph Cornell box. Any box would do. Even one of the later collages from the 1960s would be just fine by me. But since Santa bestows linens and cooking utensils upon me these days, I keep my nose pressed against the glass on the Cornell boxes on exhibition at MoMA. (No, not really!)

Left: Joseph Cornell in his backyard in Flushing, New York, 1969. Right: Joseph Cornell’s home at 3708 Utopia Parkway, 1976

So imagine my excitement in 1995 when The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation donated a comprehensive gift of film materials made and collected by Joseph Cornell to MoMA’s Department of Film. In this collection are films made by Société Lumière, Georges Méliès, and Pathé Frères. These early film pioneers imbued their inventive cinematic efforts with magic, whimsy, fairies, and other-worldly adventures. Cornell—a sometimes mysterious figure in the New York art world who is best known for his collages, box constructions, and experimental films—was drawn to the escape that these enchanting moments of cinematic exploration afforded him while he remained firmly rooted to the middle-class landscape of Utopia Parkway in Flushing, Queens. If film-going was a treasured diversion for Cornell—who was also a frequent visitor to the Museum’s Library, Archives, and galleries and who engaged in lively, revealing, and surprisingly humorous correspondence with Museum personnel—then just imagine his delight in corresponding with Iris Barry, the first curator of the MoMA Film Library and one of the most influential personalities in the world of film as art.

Carol Goodden and Gordon Matta-Clark opened Food, on the corner of Prince and Wooster, in the early 1970s. The restaurant, one of the first in Soho, was run by artists and served mostly artists, with the cooking itself becoming a performance of sorts.

The other day I caught up with Joan Jonas at her studio, around the corner from where she first performed Mirage—Anthology Film Archives’ former Soho location. Forty years ago Soho was inhospitable, even dangerous, with zero amenities. Surrounded by what were then inexpensive, down-and-dirty lofts, Anthology film and video screenings were integral to neighborhood artists’ daily lives. Jonas performed for several nights over a number of weeks in 1976. Her audience included many locals—artist, musician, and dancer friends. They all dined at Food, Gordon Matta-Clark’s wholesome restaurant. Nearby, Richard Foreman presented his Ontologic Hysteric Theater, Jack Smith carried out his midnight events, and Alanna Heiss hosted other happenings on Bleecker Street and at the Clocktower.

Leo Castelli and Ileana Sonnabend had recently launched their Soho galleries at 420 West Broadway, and Jonas later performed at each. Joyce Nereaux directed Castelli-Sonnabend Tapes and Films, and distributed Jonas’s and other visual artists’ media works to museums and art schools. These works leaned towards narrativity. Two blocks away a different media faction congregated at The Kitchen, the alternative space founded by Woody and Steina Vasulka. Artists there knew how to put technical things together.