It’s a strange thing to reach adulthood and see, for the very first time, a film everyone else saw before they hit puberty. For me that film is PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE. I’m not going to lie; When I was a kid, Pee-wee really freaked me out. I thought he was creepy and weird and unnecessarily loud. But as part of Tim Burton’s retrospective, MoMA is screening all of his films, starting last night with PEE-WEE, his 1985 feature film debut. After Paul Reubens saw FRANKENWEENIE (a full-length remake is due out in 2011) he chose Burton to direct PEE-WEE’S BIG ADVENTURE, which had, until that point, been a stage-show at the Roxy in L.A. and of course, an HBO special.

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Tim Burton fans came out in droves to the opening of his retrospective yesterday at MoMA. Dressed in red and black stripes and lace and crazy hats – even painted on stitches – they were hard to miss. And with the massive collection of drawings, set pieces and video I doubt they left disappointed. To get to the actual exhibit you have to walk through the mouth of one of Burton’s classic freak show creations, down a hallway lit only by TV screens playing his animated series “The World of Stainboy.” At the end of the hallway is a dark room lit by black-lights where some of his glow-in-the-dark pieces are on display.

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A lot of things separate Bauhaus from other art movements. It’s the only one (that I can think of anyhow) that values control, precision and rigor as necessary qualities in both the art and its maker, perhaps because it began as an actual, physical institution. But it’s also one of the few movements that changed so quickly in so short a time. In 1919 the students’ projects were less about function and more about form: paintings by artists (and professors) like Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, textiles woven into patterns reminiscent of Native American blankets and pottery crafted by artisans that did not conform to 90 degree angles. These works served no other purpose than to be hung on a wall or put on a shelf to be looked at.

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From the archives, check out this letter dated October 19, 1956 by the first director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art to Andy Warhol informing the pop artist that the museum was regretfully rejecting his generously free gift of his drawing entitled “Shoe.” The letter is currently part of the Andy Warhol Museum’s archives located in Pittsburgh. I wonder how the museum today would respond to an unsolicited gift.

Swingeing London 67, Richard Hamilton

1969 was a big year; so big, in fact, that people like me, who weren’t alive at the time, have vicarious memories of what it was like. Things like Vietnam, Civil Rights, sexual revolution, and the moon landing spring to mind. To commemorate not only the year itself, but its lasting impact on artists today, P.S.1 has devoted its entire 2nd floor to what it meant to live in 1969. “By juxtaposing the meditative space of the white cube gallery of the transplanted MoMA exhibition with the tumult of the outside world, 1969 reflects the expansive concerns held by artists of the time” like Lee Friedlander, Gary Winogrand, Robert Irwin, Joseph Beuys, Robert Morris and Sol LeWitt, including brand new work from Bruce Nauman, Mel Bochner and Robert Barry.

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Spike Jonze planned his upcoming release of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE very well. He seems to be all around us. For starters, the latest issue of Wholphin includes three short Maurice Sendak-based pieces he directed. They’re very DIY (as in not very good) but they’re cute and kooky and serve a purpose, namely, to get us all amped up for the real, long-awaited, much-anticipated thing itself, in theaters Friday.

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Gilbert and George

Conceptual art can be funny, poignant and clever, but overall, with a few exceptions, I find it to be one of the most visually underwhelming schools of art. I suppose that’s bound to happen when the artist lays out the framework or provides only the idea (the concept) and leaves the rest of the work – in some cases the entire visual element of a piece – to the viewer. It’s curious then that the artist I like best out of the bunch is Lawrence Weiner. It has a lot to do with our mutual love of the letterform, but I also genuinely enjoy thinking (conceptualizing) about the concrete thing his words describe.

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This November MoMA will house a major retrospective of Tim Burton’s work. The show, Tim Burton, will showcase his career as a  ”director, producer, writer, and concept artist for live-action and animated films, along with his work as a fiction writer, photographer and illustrator.” It will feature his drawings from early childhood through his most current work, Alice in Wonderland.

Tim Burton runs from November 22, 2009-April 26, 2010 at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art.

MoMA will be showing the first ever  major retrospective of designer Ron Arad in the United States starting August 2, 2009. The show will run through October 9, 2009 and will feature the Israeli industrial designer’s furniture, sculpture, and chandeliers for Swarovski, which display text messages from strangers that are sent to the lamps by incorporating light-emitting diodes.

Regardless of material, which include crystal, metals and plastics, Arad’s work always has a humor and charm. And the work almost always plays with proportions to dramatic effect. You should check it out

As artists continue to draw inspiration from childhood fears and fairy tales, it comes as no surprise that classic stories like Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (more commonly known as Alice in Wonderland) are being tapped. Coming up on the 2010 film lineup is Tim Burton’s much anticipated ALICE IN WONDERLAND with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter (who else?), Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. But Burton is hardly the first to put a unique spin on Carroll’s tale. With the first official photographs of WONDERLAND released last week, photographer-extraordinaire Annie Leibovitz’s editorial for Vogue US December 2003 have “resurfaced,” thanks to the efforts of bloggers everywhere.

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On the fourth floor of the MoMA is a roomful of objects that fit the bill of being both surreal and erotic. Some are obvious, like Giacometti’s smooth, bulging, wooden “Disagreeable Object” (a refreshing departure from his withered little alien people), and some are less so, like Dali’s “Retrospective Bust of a Woman” (That’s the one with an inkwell on top of a baguette on top of a woman’s head). But there was only one object that I was instantly, insatiably attracted to: Meret Oppenheim’s fur-covered cup.

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