Postmodern Velázquez, New York Times, Dec 11 2014
In Michel Foucault’s essay on Velázquez’s baroque masterpiece “Las Meninas,” he comments on Velázquez’s decision to insert his self-portrait into the painting’s narrative, planting a seed that would bloom into postmodernism.
That blossom continues to flower. “Las Meninas Renacen de Noche (Las Meninas Reborn in the Night),” a new exhibition of photographs by Yasumasa Morimura at the Luhring Augustine Gallery, sees the artist restaging, even remixing, Velázquez’s picture, using the actual canvas, as it hangs in the Prado in Madrid, as the focal point for a series of self-portraits in which Mr. Morimura inhabits different characters from the painting. Foucault clearly didn’t know the half of it.
You can get a first glimpse by attending the opening reception Friday night [19 Dec 2014] from 6 to 8; the show runs from Saturday through Jan. 24.
(Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; 531 West 24th Street, Chelsea; 212-206-9100; luhringaugustine.com.)
Starting in 1974, not long after Foucault’s book “The Order of Things” — which begins with the Velázquez essay — first appeared in English, you could study postmodern painting in earnest at the New York Studio School, an institution in Greenwich Village that offered an alternative to the kind of traditional academic training that Velázquez would have received. On Saturday afternoon, the Steven Kasher Gallery will host a free symposium exploring the school’s influence, featuring the artists and critics Mira Schor, Barry Schwabsky, Robert Bordo, David Reed and Andrea Belag, in conjunction with the exhibition “12 Painters: The Studio School, 1974/2014,” which runs at the gallery through Jan. 10.
(Saturday at 2 p.m.; 515 West 26th Street, Chelsea; 212-966-3978; stevenkasher.com.)
Foucault News 
Reblogged this on Progressive Geographies and commented:
Having just been to Madrid, and the Prado, for the first time, this is particularly interesting.
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