Skip to content

Thirty Seven East

A communication and business development agency based in New York City with networks in Brazil, France and Mexico

  • Home
  • About
    • 37EAST
    • JC Agid
    • Memory Lane
  • Women’s Conferences
    • Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society
      • Amazing Women
      • Business Development | Media | 2007 – 2017
      • Brazilian Delegation | 2011
      • Brazil | 2012
      • Brazil | 2013
      • Brazil | 2014
      • CEO Champions
      • Myanmar 2013 | 2014
      • New York
      • Mexican Delegation | 2014
      • Mexico | 2016
      • Mexico | 2017
      • Seven | 2008
    • Women in Africa Summit 2019
    • Women in Africa Summit 2020
  • Culture
    • American Friends of
    • Art and Culture | Gallery
  • Hospitality, Travel and Wellbeing
    • AIR FRANCE | KLM
    • L’Avion | Openskies
    • Hotel Plaza Athénée New York
    • Valmont
  • News
  • Marion Naufal Illustrations
  • Blog
  • Testimonials
  • Contact

Tag: COVID19

Post-Covid Spring Beauty

Posted on May 7, 2022July 7, 2022by JC AgidLeave a comment

POST-COVID SPRING BEAUTY
The More You Look The More You See
A solo exhibition of new work by Judith Seligson on view at Galerie Mourlot through June 26, 2022.

Galerie Mourlot
16 East 79th Street, Suite 21
Between 5th and Madison Avenue

New York City

When I entered Galerie Mourlot on E. 79th Street two days ahead of Judith Seligson’s new solo exhibition, the more I looked around, the more I saw boxes everywhere, each containing either a painting, a pigment print, or a sculpture Seligson, a geometric abstract artist, created during the pandemic. On one wall, John—the installer—was carefully calculating the distance between two frames: on top, a series of photographs of flowers painted over—snapshots of nature blooming and blossoming despite the pandemic, aptly titled “Covid Spring”—and below a selection of bold striped paintings, or intervals paintings, as Seligson described them to me. 

In the center of the room, the artist was busy unpacking and deciding how she wanted the body of work to come together at her second solo exhibition of Galerie Mourlot, a name more associated with the print making for the likes of Picasso and Miro, but which also has a strong contemporary art program. Her daughter—journalist and author Hannah Seligson—was dispensing advice. She became her mother’s unofficial “art agent,” or manager, five years ago. 

Hannah marveled at the exhibition slowly taking shape, the new series of what she describes as “hard-edged, geometric abstract paintings,” in which her mother, Judith, explores “her interest in the interactions of colors, patterns, and space that all push the boundaries of the pictorial plane and create a sense of spatial tension.” “The Washington Post once decided it was ‘reminiscent of Stella and Albers,’” Hannah explained. 

As I found my way to gallery owner Eric Mourlot’s desk by the tall windows overlooking 79th street, to sit down and take my recorder out of my bag, I marveled at the artistic poetry of the pieces. “It is a musical composition, almost a rhythmic movement,” the 72-year-old artist and author who studied with Flora Natapoff, Philip Guston, Leo Manso, and Victor Candell explained to me. Some of the paintings are small, discreet, miniature even, “a feminist statement,” Hanna said, quoting her mother. 

I have always been told people are born artists, so I asked Judith Seligson when she first realized she was an artist and no one else. Before she could utter a word, Hannah interjected: “Mom, tell the story of when you were drawing…”

Continue reading “Post-Covid Spring Beauty”

Posted in Amazing Women, ART, Byline JC Agid, Culture, Fire Chat With
Tagged Albers, Art, COVID19, Eric Mourlot, Flora Natapoff, Galerie Mourlot, Hannah Seligson, Judith Seligson, Leo Manso, Mourlot Editions, Philip Guston, Stella, Victor Candell

Let’s Make New York Sexy Again

Posted on June 18, 2021June 19, 2021by JC Agid1 Comment

Let’s Make New York Sexy Again
A French Version of this article was published by Le Petit Journal | Click Here

It felt like a never-ending story. We lived in cramped apartments, unsuited to a life of confinement, kids went to school in their bedrooms while adults adapted to remote working (how often with roommates in the next room?), exercising in our living rooms, sometimes if it only meant pushing around the sofas and other furniture. If we were lucky enough to have internet access, we could shop for our groceries online. And through the windows, as the city skies grew lighter each day, out on the streets, the cars became scarce. An unusual silence descended on New York.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed all the flaws of the urban model, says Saint-Gobain Chairman Pierre-André de Chalendar in his book The Urban Challenge (Odile Jacob).

Continue reading “Let’s Make New York Sexy Again”

Posted in Architecture, Byline JC Agid, Covid-19, New York, Politics, Society, Well Being
Tagged Anne Hidalgo, Carlos Moreno, Covid-19, COVID19, Enkidu, French American Foundation, Green gas emissions, Jerry Seinfeld, Kathryn Wylde, Le Défi Urbain, Michael Bloomberg, New York City, New York Times, Odile Jacob, Paris, Partnership for New York City, Pierre-André de Chalendar, Saint-Gobain, Shamat, Smalls Jazz Club, So you think New York is dead, The Urban Challenge, Uruk

At Your Home, Without Me: Ramatuelle, Jacqueline Franjou’s Essential Festival

Posted on August 1, 2020August 2, 2020by JC Agid1 Comment

At Your Home, Without Me: Ramatuelle, Jacqueline Franjou’s Essential Festival

Tonight, August 1st, 2020–and until August 10th. If you are in Ramatuelle, a little village above the Mediterranean Sea near Saint Tropez in the South of France, you might be among the luckiest people. While almost all summer cultural events have been canceled in France, Jacqueline Franjou is opening the 2020 Festival of Ramatuelle, a series of plays, stand-up comedies, and concerts under the stars and the songs of crickets. A must attend annual event, a rarity this year.

This summery feast  has been scheduled every August since 1985. But with movies, theaters, operas and museums still closed in most places around the world because of containment and a very much still present covid19 pandemic, the mere possibility to see comedians and musicians on a stage has become an extraordinary experience. This year’s Festival is an act of audacity and resistance, against all odds, a small, yet safe step to keep us on the pace of being humans, together. 

I was fortunate to attend last summer and I remember fondly the performance of French actor Gérard Depardieu (Golden Globe 1991 for Peter Weir’s movie Green Card) sing Barbara’s most iconic songs in a soft and elusive voice.

I cannot go this summer but will have a special thought for Franjou, the co-founder and President of this Festival, a woman I was lucky enough to work with for a few years and who has never been afraid to be disruptive to keep all of us thinking beyond the obvious. We need this festival, we need culture to fill our hopes and dreams, we need words and scores and stories to pave our immediate future.

Next is the translation from a French interview I did with Franjou while I was still confined in New York and she was already planning this week’s performances (published in Le Petit Journal).

Continue reading “At Your Home, Without Me: Ramatuelle, Jacqueline Franjou’s Essential Festival”

Posted in Amazing Women, ART, Byline JC Agid, Covid-19, Culture, Fire Chat With, Not At Home With, Women can have it all
Tagged Barbara, Christophe, Covid-19, COVID19, Gérard Philipe, Gerard Depardieu, Green Card, Guy Bedos, Jacqueline Franjou, Jean-Claude Brialy, Jean-Laurent Cochet, Michel Boujenah, Peter Weir, Pierre Desproges, Ramatuelle, Saint Tropez, Women's Forum, Women's Forum Brazil, Women's Forum for the Economy and Society, Women's Forum Mexico, Women's Forum Myanmar

At Leah Pisar Home Without Me: Donald Trump, Ambushed or Unmasked?

Posted on June 16, 2020June 18, 2020by JC AgidLeave a comment

At Your Home Without Me with Leah Pisar
Donald Trump, Ambushed or Unmasked?

[Translated from French]

Over the last few weeks, the health crisis has morphed into a full-fledged socio-political crisis within the United States. An inevitable explosion in unemployment, resulting from these extra-ordinary circumstances, paired with the anti-racist protests and riots sweeping not only the nation, but the world, in the wake of George Floyd’s death, are proof that this is a turbulent period indeed.

In addition to the pandemic and the protests, the White House’s reaction to the upheaval has set the tone for the upcoming presidential election–it is a climate with which the American people have become very familiar over the past three months of quarantine. That is: utterly out of the ordinary. 

It still remains difficult to determine whether Donald Trump has cannily taken advantage of a violent political situation mirroring a divided America, one which he does not seem interested in reconciling; or if he has gone too far and, finally, crossed a line. With declining approval ratings, some cracks in the heretofore seamless Republican support he used to enjoy, and disagreement seeping within his own administration, has Donald Trump begun to jeopardize his chances for re-election on Nov. 3rd? The 2020 presidential election will offer voters a stark choice between a divided, individualistic society; and a united America that is open to the world.

It is a struggle between “two visions of America,” in which “the soul of this country and the balance of the world” are at stake, explains Franco-American writer and former advisor to President Clinton Leah Pisar. Current President of the Aladdin Project—a NGO that works for intercultural rapprochement and the rejection of Holocaust denial, racism and anti-Semitism, Leah Pisar naturally sides with openness, humanity, and a shared world.

Continue reading “At Leah Pisar Home Without Me: Donald Trump, Ambushed or Unmasked?”

Posted in Amazing Women, Byline JC Agid, Covid-19, Fire Chat With, Gender Issues, New York, Not At Home With
Tagged At Home Without Me, COVID19, Leah Pisar, Politics, Samuel pisar, The Aladdin project

At Your Home Without Me: The Artistic Mankind of Betsabeé Romero

Posted on May 11, 2020June 16, 2020by JC Agid1 Comment

At Your Home Without Me: The Artistic Mankind of Betsabeé Romero

“Art needs to express itself to safeguard humanity.” These are the words of Betsabeé Romero, a Mexican fixture, sculptor, and a generous, greedy painter who is exhibited around the world. She is a poet and activist too. This humanity—a damaged, confused and self-reflecting humanity—was not prepared to face the brutal consequences of the Covid19 pandemic.

Betsabeé Romero is now listening to the suddenly silent streets of Mexico City, North America’s largest city.

From her little street house in the Villa de Cortés district, the artist is on the lookout for the sadness that invades the world faster than the disease. The absence of funerals. the hidden violence against the women and children in her country. And of course, her own personal fight fight for female artists. 

Confined, she writes, draws, and reads, mostly philosophy at the moment. She is thinking about art installations to illustrate the staggered mourning that many people will experience. Incidentally, she has been invited to create and speak on this topic at the Frieze in London this Fall, as well as in Sydney and Rome.

Continue reading “At Your Home Without Me: The Artistic Mankind of Betsabeé Romero”

19.4326077-99.133208
Posted in Amazing Women, ART, Byline JC Agid, Covid-19, Culture, Fire Chat With, Gender Issues, Mexico, Mexico City, Mujeres, Not At Home With, Women can have it all, Women in Mexico
Tagged Agustín Lara, Agustín Lara Veracruz, AMLO, André Breton, André Comte-Sponville, Art Paris, Betsabee Romero, Calavera Catrina, casa azul, Catrina, Colonia Condesa, Condesa, Condesa df, Confinement, Conquistadors, Covid-19, COVID19, CSIS, Día de Muertos, Diego rivera, Dora Maar, Elena Reygadas, feminicide, FRIDAKAHLO, Frieze London, Grand Palais, H1N1, infanticide, Jackson Pollock, Jacqueline Lamba, jaracandas, Jose Guadalupe Posada, Jose Posada, Julian Levy, Kandisky, La Condesa, Lardo, Le Louvre, Marcel Duchamp, Marea Verde, Mary Reynolds, Mexico, Mexico City, Miró, Museo Frida Kahlo, Octavio Paz, Parque España, Picasso, Toña La Negra, trajineras, Trotsky, Veracruz, Yves Tanguy, Zocalo

Posts navigation

Older posts

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

2023 Thirty Seven East
  • Home
  • About
  • Women’s Conferences
  • Culture
  • Hospitality, Travel and Wellbeing
  • News
  • Marion Naufal Illustrations
  • Blog
  • Testimonials
  • Contact
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Youtube
Thirty Seven East
Proudly powered by WordPress Theme: Venture.
 

Loading Comments...