Anselm Kiefer at Gagosian Gallery in Chelsea, NY.
Der Morgenthau Plan, Anselm Kiefer’s show at Gagosian, is completely arresting. Expressive, imposing, somewhat menacing, and intensely, darkly vibrant, these massive paintings are named after US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, who in 1944 proposed converting “post-war Germany into a pre-industrial, agricultural nation, allegedly in order to limit the country’s ability to wage war” (according to the gallery’s press release). Kiefer’s pastoral scenes are bleak yet stormy, filled with ashy greys, inky blacks, murky greens, and the occasional streak of electric color. The whole show is epic, a breathtaking, lovely post-apocalyptic fantasy. — Jeremy Zitter
Sharon Olds has always been guts on the table. Now she bares her entrails after her husband’s defection, chronicling all she regrets and resents and misses, speculating how she might have driven him away with sex or blindness or poetic oversharing. Raw as ever, she scrapes the skin off her pain till her surgeon’s eye refills with tears. Details too intimate for a friendship become comfort from a stranger, reassurance all we feel is human. — Stephanie Wells
Peking Duck at Shang Palace, Shangri-La Hotel, Abu Dhabi
Two courses for the price of, well, two courses, but totally worth it for the feast. Round one, your server carves the bird table-side, filling twenty mu shu pancakes with duck and julienned veggies. Then the carcass is carted away only to return — round two — as “the bones,” which are meatier than you’d imagine, square hunks of duck deep fried with a light salt and pepper batter covering the flaky, twice-crisped skin. — BW [photo via]
Is it kosher to add a weekend rec in comments? Mine is for The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I hated teen movies that came out during my teen years (could I identify with John Hughes characters less?) so it’s funny that this one, watched in the shadow of 40, has stuck with me so much. It’s so exquisitely sad in parts, you may need to watch it in half-hour doses. The acting is terrific, and yes, the one with the pink hair is Mae Whitman, known to you as Egg, I mean Ann Veal.
Thanks for playing, Smearcase. There is no kosher or unkosher here, of course, but if you — or anyone else — wants to send a 75-word weekend rec get them to me via email by Thurs night and I’ll post them Friday morning. Molly liked Perks this year and I’ve been meaning to watch it w/ here, even though I’m going to have to google Egg & Ann Veal now to know exactly what you’re talking abt. We were just about to watch Ramona’s Warm Bodies rec from last week but wound up watching Close Encounters instead because nobody was getting my jokes about mashed potatoes.
Hey, Swells. Thanks for reminding me to get that book, which I’ll do as soon as I’m back in NY next week. And thanks, JZ, for all the art Instagramming the other day and this one in particular. Certainly looking fwd to galleries/museums over the summer. Gearing up for Oldenburg at MoMA in particular.