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Photograph: National Gallery of Victoria; Melbourne; © Balthus “Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations”
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Wed 25–Jan 12
Balthus (né Balthasar Klossowski, 1908–2001) was one of the most controversial figurative painters of the 20th century, an artist notorious for frankly erotic (if not somewhat pervy) full-length renderings of Lolita-esque subjects. His obsession with preteen female sexuality translated into to vaguely unnerving images, which were more redolent of thanatos than of eros. This show, the first major Balthus exhibition in the U.S. in 30 years, features 35 canvases, dating from the mid-1930s to the 1950s.
Photograph: Courtesy the artist and Whitney Museum of American Art “T.J. Wilcox: In the Air”
Whitney Museum of American Art, Thu 19–Feb 9
The artist fills the Whitney’s second-floor gallery with a panoramic film installation, depicting the entire New York skyline as seen from the artist’s Union Square studio—which has a 360-degree view. The film also relates different narratives associated with the specific landmarks, such as the story of the architect who designed the dirigible dock for the top of the Empire State Building, which proved impossible to use because of the winds at that elevation.
Photograph: Brooklyn Museum “Behind Closed Doors: Art in the Spanish American Home, 1492–1898”
Brooklyn Museum, Fri 20–Dec 31
The good life as led by the elites in Spain's New World colonial empire is the subject of this roundup of fine-art objects and furnishings. Painted landscapes and portraits are just part of the mix, which also includes furniture, religious artifacts and items for the home.
Photograph: Guillaume Ziccarelli; Courtesy Galerie Perrotin Paola Pivi, “Ok, you are better than me, so what?”
Galerie Perrotin, through Oct 26
Pivi, an Italian multimedia artist best known here for her public art project near Central Park featuring a continuously looping airplane, inaugurates the Parisian powerhouse gallery’s New York branch with a group of life-size polar bear sculptures covered with “fur” made of turkey feathers. Assuming various fanciful poses, each critter is dyed a single bright color—suggesting that protective coloration in a white cube space is very different than in the arctic.
Photograph: © Zhang Huan Studio; courtesy Pace Gallery Zhang Huan, “Poppy Fields”
Pace Gallery, Fri 20–Oct 26
Although based on Buddhist masks and other motifs, the Chinese artist’s densely painted allover compositions are meant to evoke a hallucinatory state of mind that he associates with two developments in his country’s history: foreigner-imposed opium consumption during the 19th century, and Mao’s Cultural Revolution of the 1960s.
Top five shows: Sept 19–25, 2013
The best of the week in art.
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