Lincoln Center Artists Who Don’t Dance, Play, or Sing

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The New York Sun

When you think of the worldfamous artists who have appeared at Lincoln Center, you’re more likely to think of performers like Renée Fleming, Mikhail Baryshnikov, or Joshua Bell than visual artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, or Gerhard Richter. In fact, all three painters have produced work for Lincoln Center as part of the List Poster and Print program, which was established in 1962 to bring world-class contemporary poster art to the new performing arts center.

In the almost 45-year history of the program, there have been only two photography commissions: a 1979 Richard Avedon poster paying tribute to the Film Society of Lincoln Center, and now –– at a moment when all eyes are on the Metropolitan Opera, about to open its first season under the new general manager, Peter Gelb –– a photograph taken backstage at the Met by the Cuban-born photographer Abelardo Morell. On Monday evening, the night of the Met’s opening gala, an exhibition of Mr. Morrell’s backstage photography will open at the Gallery at Lincoln Center, which is on the lower level concourse of the Opera House. (The Met, incidentally, recently started its own visual arts gallery, called the Arnold and Marie Schwartz Gallery Met, located in the lobby of the Opera House.)

The director of visual arts at Lincoln Center, Tom Lollar, said he hopes that opera patrons, on their way upstairs from the parking garage, will be drawn by Mr. Morrell’s largescale photographs of the Opera House and will discover the gallery, which he acknowledges is, in its current location, hard to find. Part of Lincoln Center’s redevelopment plans involves moving it to a more prominent, above-ground space.

In 1962, Albert and Vera List made a $1 million gift both to endow the poster and print program and to commission public artworks, like the Jasper Johns painting in the New York State Theater and the Henry Moore sculpture that emerges from the reflecting pool.

The Lists had admired the posters designed by artists for institutions like the Paris Opera, and they wanted Lincoln Center to be graced with as distinguished and distinctive graphic art as its European counterparts, Mr. Lollar said.The first director of the poster program was Delmar Hendricks, who was also the booking manager for Avery Fisher and Alice Tully Halls. Mr. Lollar took over from him in 1988.

Mr. Lollar said that, in contrast to the public artworks, most of which have been in place for decades, the List program has kept Lincoln Center’s collection current. Mr. Lollar commissions four or five artists a year to design posters, most of which are linked to events or venues, like the Mostly Mozart Festival, Jazz at Lincoln Center, or an anniversary. The prints appear in unusually numbered editions, like 54, 72, or 108, because Mrs. List was interested in numerology and wanted the edition numbers to add up to nine.

The artist designs the entire poster, including the typeface. (There is no writing on the signed prints, only the posters.) Sometimes the art makes specific visual references to the program being advertised — a Donald Baechler poster for Mostly Mozart, for example, includes images of Mozart — but in many posters, the connection between text and image is looser. A 2005 Richard Artschwager poster for the Lincoln Center Festival shows an image of conjoined figures (the title of the print is “Liebespaar,” or lovers) that seem to be dancing — thus conveying the dynamism of the festival’s offerings, which include dance.

Mr. Morrell’s photograph, of course, does represent a specific Lincoln Center venue and art form, but from an unusual perspective. His images of the backstage world are ghostly, devoid of people, with the occasional exception of some stagehands. Having grown up in New York City as a working-class kid, Mr. Morrell said in an interview, he’s interested in the unsung heroes who support the great art onstage.

He’s also interested in how the mechanics of stage illusion work. “Photography, like much art, is about portraying a kind of a mystery and magic of the world,” he explained. “Theatrical settings propose to convince you of a certain kind of world. It’s make-believe,” he continued, “but if it’s good, then you buy it. That’s strong stuff.”

Because the program can only afford to pay the artists a small honorarium, the posters are largely a labor of love. Still, many artists have done several posters — like Ms. Frankenthaler, who has done seven. Mr. Olitski, who has done three posters, said that he always feels honored to be asked to participate. “Lincoln Center and the Met are places that I’ve spent a lot of time in and love, so it’s all very personal to me,” he said.

For the public, the program is a way to collect work by top-notch artists at modest prices. The former creative director at Perry Ellis, Jerry Kaye, has a wall of Lincoln Center posters in his New York apartment. “Who Tom gets to do the prints is pretty staggering,” Mr. Kaye said. “To get a Gerhard Richter or a Helen Frankenthaler — really the iconic names in contemporary art today.” The prints also have a significant history of appreciation. One of Mr. Richter’s Lincoln Center prints recently sold in Europe for $30,000, about 10 times its original price.

Through the poster program, as well as its public art commissions, Lincoln Center has cut a not insignificant path through the history of postwar American art. In his office, Mr. Lollar showed a visitor a group of photographs from 1979 of Mr. Hendricks, Mrs. List (a tall, slender woman with short hair), and the artist Larry Rivers overseeing the silk-screening of Mr. Rivers’s poster in honor of Lincoln Center’s 20th anniversary. The poster shows a large, frosted cake in the shape of Lincoln Center and reading, “Happy 20th Birthday, Lincoln Center.” In the pictures, everyone seems to be having fun — as good an image as any of harmony among the art forms.


The New York Sun

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