As dire economic straits trigger institutions to sell big-ticket items in order to raise cash*, The Totam recommends a selection of thrifty events for frugal New Yorkers to attend during the week ahead. There may even be a few items worth dropping some hard-earned dollars upon….

Bradley Peters, Untitled, (mother and son with shopping cart), 2008. c. Bradley Peters

TONIGHT: Bradley Peters‘ Home Theater opens @ Melanie Flood Projects, a salon-style project space doubling as the tasteful Brooklyn apartment of Melanie Flood. Peters, a recent graduate of the Yale School of Art, documents his suburban Nebraskan hometown life in a series of fraught photographic moments reminiscent of Philip Lorca-DiCorcia’s staged images, with the added emotional weight of Peters’ personal connection to his subjects. Curated by Amani Olu. FREE, 7-10pm, RSVP required.

Left, Irene Dunne and Robert Taylor in John M. Stahl’s film of the 1929 novel “Magnificent Obsession” (1935); Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman in Douglas Sirk’s remake (1954). (Criterion Collection)

Thursday, January 29th: Stahl vs. Sirk @ the Anthology Film Archives. Anthology presents some of celebrated director Douglas Sirk’s finest melodramas alongside John M. Stahl’s seldom-seen, and arguably masterful originals; Universal Pictures had given both filmmakers the same source material to adapt from over a span of two decades- see the NY Times review of the differences in Sirk vs. Stahl’s version of The Magnificent Obsession, which screens tonight at 6:45 and 9pm. $9

left: c. Eric Hairabedian, 2008. right: c. Peter Mallo, 2008. Courtesy Kris Graves Projects

• Friday, January 30th: Opening reception for the inaugural exhibit of Kris Graves Projects in DUMBO; featuring the work of photographer Eric Hairabedian and artist Peter Mallo. Like Peters, Hairabedian’s photographs are set in unidealized middle-class environs, but his stark examination of his subjects, mostly members of his family, comes closer to the iconographic, subtly bleak portraiture of photographers like Gillian Laub. The shapes and shades in Mallo’s new Soft Black drawing series recalls the delicate, enigmatic pencilwork recently seen in Gino De Dominicis’ survey at PS 1. 6-9pm. FREE

(The gallery will have excellently priced (we are talking $10-$40 here!) 11×14″ and postcard-portfolio limited editions on hand for the budget-minded collector.)

• Saturday, January 31st: Pulitizer-winning poet Gary Snyder, called “‘the Thoreau of the Beat Generation’” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, reads and talks about his influences @ the New York Public Library, 3-5pm, Fifth Avenue & 42nd Street; Enter at Fifth Avenue- South Court Auditorium. FREE, first come, first served.
• Sunday, February 1st: Catch the last weeks of Keith Haring’s monumental Ten Commandments at Deitch Studios in Long Island City. FREE

Installation view, Keith Haring, The Ten Commandments, 1985, Deitch Studios

• Also: See Dan Hurlin’s Disfarmer @ St. Ann’s Warehouse, a haunting biographic work about American rural portrait photographer Mike Disfarmer, done with puppets and a wonderful dust-bowl banjo score by Dan Moses Schreier. 4pm.

• Tuesday, February 3rd: Joy Dragland with St. Cloud @ Pete’s Candy Store, 9pm. Don’t miss St. Cloud’s monthlong residency every Tuesday night in February; Dragland’s enveloping, always-sympathetic voice carries her listeners along a winding journey of musings on subjects as varied as the Mona Lisa, sisters, homesickness, and cocaine escapism. FREE

Tags: Amani Olu, Anthology Film Archives, Beat Generation, Bradley Peters, collector, Dan Hurlin, Dan Moses Schreier, Deitch, Disfarmer, documentary, drawing, DUMBO, Eric Hairabedian, Gary Snyder, Home Theater, Joy Dragland, Keith Haring, Kris Graves Projects, limited editions, Magnificent Obsession, Melanie Flood Projects, murals, New York Public Library, New York Times, Pete's Candy Store, Peter Mallo, photographs, portraiture, Rose Museum, Sirk, St. Ann's Warehouse, St. CLoud, Stahl, Ten Commandments, Universal.

I remember my first encounter with James Castle’s handmade books in college, at the AIGA gallery on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The carefully printed, often reversed alphabets and illustrated block panels on found paper, ads and magazines gave the sense that I was looking at rare artifacts from a universe parallel to our own. They seemed like personal journals, graphic novels recorded by an alien scribe observing our world from a distance, and in a sense, this was the case. Deaf since birth, Castle chose imagery over speech as the primary method of understanding and communicating with the world around him.

James Castle, Untitled, 20th c. (calendar/double sided). 8.5 x 10" Courtesy Greg Kucera Gallery

The documentary film, James Castle: Portrait of an Artist, by writer-director Jeffrey Wolf, produced by the Foundation for Self-Taught American Artists, is one of the highlights of the artist’s recently-opened  retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Wolf’s documentary gives an insightful introduction into Castle’s life, and a well-organized overview of his work. The film includes interviews with Castle’s relatives, and wonderful commentary by John Yau and Robert Storr. A DVD of the documentary is enclosed with every copy of the exhibition catalog, which I highly suggest you run out and buy in addition to seeing the retrospective.

The hundreds of drawings, collages and assemblages exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum are only a fraction of the works that Castle created in his lifetime, and are inspiring on many levels. Castle’s inventive compositions and constructions, and his constant rethinking of the familiar spaces in his life are apparent in his work, taking it beyond what we have come to think of as the work of an untrained “outsider.”

James Castle, Untitled, Not dated. Found paper, soot, string, graphite. 15.5 x 14.5". Courtesy J Crist Gallery

James Castle, Untitled (Shed Interior with Drawings, Constructions, Books, and Objects), n.d. Soot and spit on found paper Sheet (irregular): 8.5 x 10". Collection of Philadelphia Museum of Art: Gift of Ann and John Ollman in memory of Maurice and Kathryn Hammond, 1998. Photo by Lynn Rosenthal and Andrea Simon

James Castle, Untitled (Morton Salt Girl), n.d. found paper, color of unknown origin. 7.5 x 6" Collection of Susan Chereskin. Photo courtesy J Crist Gallery, Boise

October 14, 2008 - January 4, 2009
www.philamuseum.org

Tags: AIGA, assemblage, books, collage, documentary, drawing, Foundation for Self-Taught American Artists, James Castle, Jeffrey Wolf, John Yau, New York, outsider art, paper, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, retrospective, Robert Storr, soot.