Offstage, a Love for Two Dimensions

By Phoebe Hoban

Dec. 3, 2012 9:00 pm ET

Mikhail Baryshnikov with some of his collected artworks at ABA Gallery.

NATALIE KEYSSAR FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

On a dark, rainy autumn day last week, Mikhail Baryshnikov arrived at ABA Gallery on East 17th Street like a bolt of lightning. Intense and elegant in a vintage hat and black suit, he was there to talk about his latest exploit: unveiling for the first time the art collection that has embellished the walls of his various homes (in upstate New York, Paris and the Dominican Republic) as well as the Midtown office of the Baryshnikov Arts Center.

"I never thought of it as a coherent collection," he said modestly. "But the director of the Pushkin Museum," where the exhibit will travel next year, "saw the work in my office and thought I should honor the artists." Then Anatol Bekkerman, ABA's owner and a longtime friend, "suggested showing the work in his gallery."

Mr. Baryshnikov has, of course, spent much of the past 40 years putting himself and his interests on exhibit—as one of the premier dancers of the 20th century, as an actor on stages and screens (to a younger audience, he may be best-known as Carrie Bradshaw's paramour during a season of "Sex and the City"), and as an impresario with his Baryshnikov Arts Center on 37th Street. Along the way, he has also managed to moonlight as a photographer, with several solo exhibits and three books, including "Merce, My Way" (2008).

"Well I am showing my photographs, which is already kind of a chutzpah, and I am still going and performing onstage, which is really kind of exhibitionism, if you want," he said.

On Tuesday, ABA, which specializes in Russian art, will open "The Art I've Lived With," a collection of the pieces that Mr. Baryshnikov began acquiring shortly after he defected from the Soviet Union in 1974. Running through Dec. 15, it ranges from delicate drawings by Raul Dufy to sketches by the celebrated costume designers Alexandre Benois and Christian Bérard, to pieces made by colleagues and friends, including Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham and David Salle.

"This is the strangest experience, revealing something which was utterly private all my life, at least for the last 35-something years." said Mr. Baryshnikov, who is 64, gesturing at the 106 works crowding the walls. "It's like allowing a journalist in your bedroom because, like somebody said, 'If only pictures could talk.' Every piece, there is a story behind it."

Take the spare but expressive drawing of Sergei Diaghilev, done by Jean Cocteau in 1917. It was Mr. Baryshnikov's first purchase, made in Paris in 1975. "I was something like 27 years old. I still get excited that I own it. Diaghilev is for us a legendary figure, and suddenly it was available for a grab. It's a glorious and very simple drawing. Cocteau is a master of economy and gesture and wit."

Next to it hung a blue-green image of Vaslav Nijinsky in "Le Spectre de la Rose," which Mr. Baryshnikov acquired by pure serendipity. "I was somewhere in Louisiana and a gentleman in his late-70s said, 'Do you know who Valentine Gross is?' And I said, 'Well she was a Parisian artist who was a friend of Diaghilev and Satie.' The next day he said, 'This is yours, this is yours.' It's an incredible study. The top is phenomenal, just beautiful."

Mikhail Baryshnikov at ABA Gallery, where the art he has collected since defecting from the Soviet Union will be on display through Dec. 15.

On the opposite wall, a drawing of fanciful, insect-like birds revealed more than just its subject—it was a gift from its creator, dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham. "Merce gave this to me when we danced together at the New York State Theater on his 80th birthday," Mr. Baryshnikov said of the piece, which was signed, "To Misha with Love, Merce Cunningham." "In the last years of his life, he used to draw for a few hours every morning, with colored pencils, those kind of fantastical creatures."

Although most of his own career has been spectacularly three-dimensional, Mr. Baryshnikov prefers to collect work made in two dimensions. "I am less about the three-dimensional and less about the sculpture," he said. "I would rather see the body in space, alive! I cannot draw to save my miserable life, so I look at these with a little bit of envy and admiration at the same time. Drawings are the most revealing. It's like for a composer a prelude. You can really recognize a prelude of Shostakovich compared to a prelude by Chopin. Because it's a language."

Sometimes literally: The show includes a group of detailed Benois costume sketches for such ballets as "Giselle" and "The Nutcracker" that are annotated in pencil. "It's an extraordinary jolt of inspiration," he said, "because when you realize how much effort a designer puts into the little sketch, and how much craft an energy and patience there are in those little few inches, and all those descriptions and suggestions, you have a lesson on how to make art."

Not surprisingly, then, when it comes to his own photography, which focuses on dancers, Mr. Baryshnikov takes "a painterly approach."

"In some instances I'm looking for a distortion of the body, a Francis Bacon kind of bear-like scary and totally arresting image, or the kind of Picasso-ish angle and format and the way he deconstructed bodies. In 'Merce, My Way,' I was looking for that kind of awkward in-between moment in dance which reminds me very much of some people's paintings."

In the end, though, Mr. Baryshnikov still gets the biggest kick from performing for an audience. "There's nothing like it, the nerves before the show and the live audience. It's completely irreplaceable."

That's why he continues to pound the boards, recently performing in Seattle with Mark Morris in "The Wooden Tree," set to Ivan Cutler songs, which will come to his center in the spring. Currently he's in rehearsals for a play, with Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar of Big Dance Theater, based on two short stories of Anton Chekhov which will be on the Hartford Stage in February.

"I have to reinvent or rather open the horizon of what I can do, and that's what keeps me on my toes."