An Arty Home for Jazzy Sets

Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

By BEN RATLIFF
Published: November 22, 2013
Music, as subject or spirit, doesn’t leap out of Christopher Wool’s wordy, designy, process-oriented paintings and silk-screen works. But sometimes it lives as a reference in the text and titles. One black-and-white stencil painting in his retrospective exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum says “You Make Me,” which is the incomplete outburst written in felt-tip pen on Richard Hell’s chest on the cover of the album “Blank Generation.”

Another is called “Nation Time.” And that’s the title of a jazz record by the saxophonist and trumpeter Joe McPhee from 1971, with aggressive free improvisation, funk and shuffle rhythm and black-liberation subtext. (An Amiri Baraka book from 1970 was called “It’s Nation Time”; so was an incredible album Mr. Baraka made shortly thereafter, reading over free jazz.)

Mr. Wool knows the record. He likes music. How, otherwise, would we know this? The exhibition’s text affirms that the No Wave scene in New York in the late ’70s and early ’80s meant a lot to him. Another piece in the show is called “Minor Mishap,” the name of a jazz tune written by Tommy Flanagan. Mr. Wool collaborated with Mr. Hell on a book, though long after Mr. Hell gave up music for poetry.

There’s more to say on that score, but “Nation Time,” an event presented on Wednesday night in conjunction with the Wool show and staged in the Peter B. Lewis Theater under the Guggenheim, was more about Mr. Wool’s enthusiasms than his art. It started with Mr. Hell reading in front of projections of Mr. Wool’s work. Then it pushed on to music, with a wise and nearly heroic solo performance by the singer and guitarist Arto Lindsay, once of the No Wave band DNA, and a heavy-gauge set by Mr. McPhee, now 74, collaborating with the Scandinavian free-jazz trio the Thing.

All members of the Thing are in their late 30s and 40s; they’re generationally wired with postpunk immediacy and attack. The baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson typically proceeds from zero to all-out very quickly, reddening in the face, rocking from the waist, bending on one knee; his sound was rude and emphatic, yet integrated with the bassist Ingebrigt Haker Flaten and the drummer Paal Nilssen-Love.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/23/arts/music/the-thing-arto-lindsay-and-joe-mcphee-at-the-guggenheim.html?_r=0