"Art For Opera" ... (Or "Vissi d'Arte") ... (Or "When Zeno Met Renee")

""Art for Opera," the Metropolitan Opera's benefit auction of new works by major living artists, is the latest effort to renew the Met's historical connection to the visual arts. The big news for art collectors is that specially commissioned works, as well as a few existing pieces, will be on the market for the first time. The pieces are by 12 acclaimed artists, including John Chamberlain, Chuck Close, Barnaby Furnas, William Kentridge, Richard Prince, David Salle, Cindy Sherman, William Wegman. The auction is the centerpiece of a gala dinner, on Sunday, May 6 [2007]. The event will raise money for new Met productions and fund future collaborations with visual artists.

The opening last September of the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met featured an exhibition of works by some of contemporary art's most innovative and provocative figures.The new space was a first step in fostering what Dodie Kazanjian, director of the gallery and one of the co-chairs of the May 6 auction, calls "cross-cultural excitement between two of the most vibrant art forms in New York. We are saying to artists, ‘We want to hear your voices, and we want you to see what we're doing.' "

Kazanjian calls the collaboration a "laboratory—not just for the gallery, but for the stage." Literally so, in the case of soprano Renée Fleming, the subject of two pieces in the auction. One is a portrait by Close in the artist's new tapestry-ground technique, the other a video portrait by Robert Wilson." ...

Auction House: The Stage of the Metropolitan is the setting for an auction of important contemporary works. Article by Bill Goldstein originally appearing in Playbill.

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Photo Journal: William Kentridge's Magic Flute at BAM by Matthew Westphal and Matt Blank. PlaybillArts April 10, 2007











William Kentridge "Birdcatcher/Papageno," 2007,
diptych, watercolor on Misumi Kozo paper, each 39 x 39 in,
Courtesy of the Marian Goodman Gallery

[Click on image for enlargement.]

Image credit: (c) William Kentridge and Marian Goodman Gallery. With thanks.