Picture perfect
That blank space over your couch driving you crazy? Hang some art over it — not another poster, but an original work by someone who’s yet to be discovered. That’s the allure of the Affordable Art Fair, the resource for folks whose budgets stop far shy of Sotheby’s.
With thousands of prints, photos, etchings and more priced from $100 to $10,000, it’s the Loehmann’s of art sales. This year’s crop, says director Cristina Salmastrelli, is especially promising: “When you look at Richard Heeps’ ‘Candy Floss’ photos — that’s British for cotton candy — you can smell the sugar.”
At $100 each, she says, they’d be great in a kids’ room. But so would William Kingett’s “Post New York,” a silk-screen reinterpretation of one of the most famous logos in the world ($200 unframed). Not only will Salmastrelli act as a personal shopper this weekend, but there’ll be children’s workshops, free talks and a cafe. Through Sunday, at the Metropolitan Pavilion, 125 W. 18th St.; admission free Friday, 6 to 8 p.m.; other times, $15 online, $20 at the door.
— Barbara Hoffman
Still grazing
We asked legendary trumpeter Hugh Masekela, who turns 75 Friday, how long he plans to continue playing and touring.
“As long as I’m able to,” the South African musician laughs. “It’s far more enjoyable than sitting on the porch and watching the sunset!”
This weekend, Masekela looks back on a lengthy career that includes the first-ever African jazz album (as part of the Jazz Epistles); a top pop hit, “Grazing in the Grass”; Paul Simon’s “Graceland” tour; and more than 40 albums with a two-night Jazz at Lincoln Center birthday gala at Rose Hall. The first show features Simon, who “reached people who had never even heard of South African music or apartheid,” says Masekela, exiled from home for 30 years before his triumphant, post-apartheid return. Friday and Saturday, 8 p.m., at Broadway and 60th Street. Tickets start at $30.
— Charlie Heller
It’s clown town
He’s headlined Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey and the Big Apple Circus. Now clown Bello Nock is headlining his own show, “Bello Mania,” at the intimate New Victory Theater. It’s a family affair, written and directed by his wife, Jennifer, and featuring his 19-year-old daughter, Annaleise.
“She’s an eighth-generation circus performer and will be doing things as beautiful and death-defying as splits on a high-wire and an aerial acrobatics act,” says her proud father.
Although the show includes trademark Bello stunts — such as climbing up a swaying 40-foot pole — he promises 50 percent of the act will be new, including guest performer AJ Silver, a Bronx-born cowboy who sometimes rode his horse to school.
Bello’s distinctive visual trademark is his foot-high red hair that resembles a tall stack of wheat. It’s all natural, he says, adding, “Am I allowed to say that I put Viagra in my shampoo?”
Friday through April 20 at 209 W. 42nd St.. Tickets, $14 to $38.
—Frank Scheck
A-muse-ing
The muse in movies has been around for years. Decades before Martin Scorsese teamed up with Leonardo DiCaprio for several films, director Josef von Sternberg found his muse in sometime-lover Marlene Dietrich, whom he made an international superstar in “The Blue Angel’’ (1930).
BAM Cinematek is showing all seven of their collaborations through Thursday. Arguably the best, unreeling Friday at 4 and 8 p.m., is the gorgeously photographed (Lee Garmes won an Oscar) “Shanghai Express’’ (1932), with Marlene’s fallen woman Shanghai Lily traveling through strife-ridden China with Clive Brook, warlord Warner Oland, Anna May Wong, Eugene Pallette and the immortal Gustav von Seyffertitz. Lafayette Avenue at St. Felix Street, Fort Greene. Info:.
— Lou Lumenick
Hello pillow
If you’ve ever wanted to see Batman smack the Joker in the face right in the middle of New York City, you’re in luck this weekend. The weapon of choice in this instance, however, will be a soft pillow and not powerful bat-fists.
National Pillow Fight Day returns to New York City for its ninth year on Saturday, this time with the theme Superheroes versus Villains. Organizers are inviting hundreds of pillow warriors to dress as their favorite comic book character and unleash the soft fury in the middle of Washington Square Park.
The rules are simple: soft, feather-free pillows only; swing lightly; don’t swing at the unarmed; and remove your glasses before going into combat. And of course, pajamas are welcome.
From 2 to 5 p.m. Saturday in Washington Square Park at Fifth Avenue and Washington Square.
— Tim Donnelly
Art’s gentle giant
Diane Arbus met “The World’s Tallest Man” at a flea circus in 1959 — but waited 11 years to shoot him at his parents’ home, his head bowed to keep from hitting the ceiling. The man she called “the Jewish Giant” was Eddie Carmel; though he died two years later, Arbus’ photo made him immortal. The Jewish Museum has now made it the centerpiece of a small but poignant show, opening Friday.
Surrounding that image of Carmel — only 34 but ailing, his parents looking up at him with wonder and concern — are his size 24 shoes and other artifacts testifying to what curator Daniel Palmer calls “the fickleness of the human body.” As family photos show, Carmel was a normal child until age 15, when a hormonal condition made him freakish. He boasted he was 9 feet tall, but no one ever measured him. Alas, it was a living. Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street; thejewishmuseum.org
—Barbara Hoffman
Cagney and Bogie roar
Mark Hellinger, a Broadway columnist for the old New York Daily Mirror who died at the age of 44, co-produced and wrote the introduction for Raoul Walsh’s highly nostalgic gangster classic “The Roaring Twenties’’ (1939), which he claims is based on “people I knew.’’ James Cagney has one of his most iconic roles as a World War I veteran and Big Apple cab driver drawn into a life of crime that unforgettably ends on the steps of a church.
Humphrey Bogart plays his nemesis in a cast that includes Priscilla Lane, Gladys George, Jeffrey Lynn and Frank McHugh. It’s showing Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Museum of Modern Art, 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenue. Info: moma.org
—Lou Lumenick