Arts

    Spoiler alert: At the end of this picaresque romp, “Lucky Bruce,” the author, playwright, and screenwriter Bruce Jay Friedman (author of “Stern” and “The Lonely Guy’s Book of Life” and screenwriter of “Splash”) admits: “And always — no matter how weak the knees and frail the bank account — there has been the pleasure at Customs of filling in the blank for Occupation with the single word that has always felt treasured and benighted: writer.”

“Lucky Bruce”

Bruce Jay Friedman

Biblioasis, $26.95

    Bring two artists together, both sculptural and structural in their approaches, and unleash them on an unusual and open space, giving them few limitations except that their materials must be locally sourced and no more than $40 in cost. It’s an interesting recipe and one that could have resulted in bedlam or, worse, boredom.

Focus on Materials

    The Southampton Cultural Center’s fall exhibit, which opens today, will turn a spotlight on materials in the work of several artists, whether they have created those materials or repurposed them for their art.

    “Material Matters” brings together the sculpture of artists such as James DeMartis, Don Saco, Eric Ernst, Margaret Kerr, James Gemake, and Robert Skinner. Arnold Hoffmann Jr., who is known more for his printmaking, is represented here with two balsa wood constructions he made in the 1960s.

    Those who like their ballet and opera over coffee and a muffin will appreciate the live gala reopening of the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow presented at 10 a.m. tomorrow at the Parrish Art Museum in Southampton.

    The simulcast will include performances by the ballet troupe as well as some of opera’s finest artists performing for the theater and the world during the historic event.

    It’s common knowledge that Andy Warhol was an enigma. David Bailey’s 1973 documentary mediation on him for the BBC, shown on Friday at the Hamptons International Film Festival, does not change that perception and yet it does manage to further our understanding of his world and reveals some glimpses of his humanity.

    Matthew Broderick and even his interviewer, Alec Baldwin, revealed much about themselves and their careers in a freewheeling discussion on Saturday at Guild Hall that included some surprises and surprisingly candid insights on hits, flops, directors, and Marlon Brando. The talk was part of the Hamptons International Film Festival Conversations series.

Design Awards in Southampton

    The American Institute of Architects’ Peconic Chapter will present an exhibit of architecture and an architectural design awards program at the Southampton Cultural Center on Saturday.

    The presentation of the Daniel Rowen F.A.I.A. Memorial Design Awards will be followed by a symposium led by the jurors and a discussion of the projects with the audience. The jury for the awards consists of John Belle, Mark Simon, and Carl Stein, all fellows of the institute

    It’s unusual that a photograph can make a painting come alive more than the painting itself, but that is often the case with the images in “Roy Lichtenstein in His Studio,” a book of photographs by Laurie Lambrecht of the artist’s studio in Southampton and him at work in it. Monacelli Press, an imprint of Random House, will publish the book on Tuesday.

    John Pomianowski does not pose as a painter. In talking about his work on Saturday at the Out East Gallery in Montauk, his speech was as refreshingly free of opaque jargon as his paintings are free of schooled artifice.

A visitor to the gallery attempted to lure him into a discussion of the light the East End was famous for among plein-air painters past and, presumably, present. The oils and watercolors large and small, mostly seascapes, now hanging at the gallery are full of light. The oils were done in the late 1990s.  

    “American Portraits,” the latest in a series of shows from the Parrish Art Museum’s permanent collection, will open to the public on Sunday.

    The exhibit will spotlight tradition and innovation in  about 75 portraits, dating from as early as 1833, with a William Sidney Mount painting of Mrs. Manice, an American dignitary. Mount was based in Setauket and was part of the Hudson River School.

Carter Burwell chalks up his career to a series of fortunate accidents. Formally trained as a computer scientist, he studied animation and electronic music at Harvard, then wended his way to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he was the chief computer scientist for a few years. He has gone on — somewhat to his own surprise — to score more than 80 motion pictures, ranging from box-office biggies (“Twilight,” “Rob Roy,” “True Grit,” “Fargo”) to cult classics (“The Big Lebowski,” “Being John Malkovich,” “Gods and Monsters”) to darker works (“Howl,” “No Country For Old Men”).

    The Hamptons International Film Festival always provides a lively time for attendees and an intense creative atmosphere for filmmakers. With lots of chatter and endless parties to attend, it is surprising more filmmakers don’t fall in love.

 The Bird Is the Word

   The seventh annual Artists Birdhouse Auction to benefit the Coalition for Women’s Cancer at Southampton Hospital will be held on Saturday from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at 4 North Main Gallery in Southampton.

    More than 60 artists have designed birdhouses to be auctioned to raise money for the coalition’s cancer-patient support programs. The honorary chairwomen this year are Renee Zellweger, Betsey Johnson, and Karyn Mannix. Some of the birdhouses will be auctioned silently, others will be in a live auction.

The Irish director and screenwriter Terry George, known for powerful films like “Hotel Rwanda” and “In the Name of the Father,” co-written with and directed by Jim Sheridan, has been a recurring presence at the Hamptons International Film Festival since his directorial debut, “Some Mother’s Son,” opened the festival in 1996. This year, Mr. George, who has a house in Noyac, is back with his first short film, “The Shore.”

Members of the metropolitan area media donned hard hats last Thursday to catch up with the progress of the new Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill.

On the morning of the 16th, a mentally unstable student named Seung-Hui Cho strode through the campus armed with a handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

   The Playhouse Project, a program that provides master classes for high school music students on the South Fork and a chance for award winners to play with  professionals, is offering an open jazz workshop tomorrow and Saturday, and an "all star" concert on Saturday evening.

More and more I think it is the effort of the pruner that makes the garden.

While the focus of a film festival might be its opening, centerpiece, and closing films, four days is a long time to fill with programming.

    By every indication, it would appear that Steve Haweeli always had a fulfilling life and career. Those who follow his comings and goings on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and foursquare envy even his table-hopping and ocean-plunging posts. He’s somewhat tightly wound, but his easy smile is evidence of a busy man who is obviously having a very good time.

Susan D’Alessio’s painting “Pine on Dune” will be part of “Plein Air Peconic VI” at Ashawagh Hall this weekend.

Plein Democracy

    Alyce Peifer, of the Wednesday Group of plein-air painters, has organized a show of its members’ work that will be at Ashawagh Hall in Springs tomorrow through Sunday. The Wednesday Group is about a dozen artists who live and work on the East End, often meeting together in the outdoors with their easels in locations that are apparently selected by a vote among those planning to attend.

    Tickets will go on sale Friday for the 19th Hamptons International Film Festival and once again film aficionados will wonder how and where they will ever fit in everything they want to see, as the screenings and events will expand from their base in East Hampton to include almost every village or hamlet that has a theater from Montauk to Westhampton, including Sag Harbor and Southampton, and even Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center. The festival runs Oct. 13 to 17.

Abstract Expressionism fans and admirers of Willem de Kooning have a chance to see the first full-scale retrospective of his work in some three decades, which opened on Sunday at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. The show, which marks the first time an exhibit has taken up an entire floor of MoMA’s new building, contains close to 200 works spanning about 70 years.

Click to see more images.

    “Of Mice and Men,” a theater masterpiece by John Steinbeck — the Nobel Prize-winning writer who wended his way from Northern California eventually to make his home in Sag Harbor — opened last Thursday at the Levitas Center for the Arts at the Southampton Cultural Center.

    This seminal work, set against the backdrop of post-Depression-era California, tells the now archetypal tale of two transient workers, George and Lennie: George, the small, quick-thinking one, and Lennie, with the mind of a child and the physical strength that both helps and hinders his every move.

Jakob’s Garden Notes

    Through Oct. 31, the Drawing Room in East Hampton is showing “Robert Jakob: Garden Notes,” paintings on paper of flowers he has planted in his Springs garden over the past three decades. The work is naturalistic yet gestural in its evocation of poppies, salvia, fennel, and daylilies.

Tracy Davis at the Eagle

    The Golden Eagle art supply shop in East Hampton is showing work by Tracy Davis this month. Ms. Davis is a writer as well as an artist; her novel “My Husband Ran Off With the Nanny and God Do I Miss Her” was published in 2009.

    If it seems as though there are a lot of opportunities to bid on art at events this year, it could very well be. There is a long history of commissioning East End artists to contribute works to charitable endeavors, but this year established benefits have been revitalized and newer events that have not had such components have adopted them.