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Finally found a moment in our busy schedule to check out this fellow blog.WOW!!Snug Harbor is a cultural center in Staten Island, New York, set within an 83-acre National Historic Landmark containing the finest collection of Greek Revival buildings in the United States, plus Beaux Arts, Italianate and Victorian style architecture. Visitors are always wowed by the magnificence of the grounds.As SHCC moves forward, many (including ourselves), are concerned about its future; once a home to many varied Staten Island arts groups and events, it has made a concerted effort to discontinue programs and allow art-used spaces to fall in to disrepair. Once a home for aged and decrepit sailors, itself now falling victim to its own dissolution. Its President and CEO Frances X. Paulo Huber seems more interested in making connections with the Smithsonian Institute, the stalwart American bastion of artifact, then supporting a local thriving community of artists, not to mention the general public who goes there to enjoy and learn from that community.What could be a gorgeous diadem in the crown jewels of city-owned CIG groups is being squandered away through acts of political nepotism and a general lack of knowledge about ANYTHING cultural.Please follow the link at the header of this blog to learn more. Then voice your opinion to the SHCC Board, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and to Mayor Mike Bloomberg.
Went to the preview of the new exhibit Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art last night. Which raised the questions: Who is Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman and where did she get all that money from? (note to self: next time round, marry money often.)
This bequest to the museum is a veritable who's who of modern and post-war art: Ernest, Arp, Leger, Dove, Wols, Matta, Giacometti, DeKooning, Motherwell, Rothko, Kline, Pollock, Stills, Louis, Calder, Frankenthaler, Noland, Oldenburg, Artschwager.......
It's runs shotgun shack-style through galleries in the Met's Modern Wing with a display copy of the catalogue screwed to the wall at waist height (it's at the end between the Louis and the Noland). And if she really lived with all this stuff that must be some Lake Drive apartment she's got there!
Highlights: Although the title stresses the Abstract Expressionist works in the collection, its was primarily the "other modern works" that stood out. The Ernst portrait of Gala Eluard, the Schwitter collage, and the two dreamy Joseph Cornell boxes, kept me returning to the early section of the installation during the evening. Post- AbEx artists are also well represented. A large lazy Morris Louis stained canvas made me dream of having a wall in my home big enough to accommodate it. This worked nicely with its two nearby companions, a large Noland bull's-eye and the more cushioned ovoid shapes of a colorful Olitski. An Oldenberg soft-sculpture calendar page and a small Artschwager painting of a bean help bid the viewers a fond farewell to post-war AbEx excess and high-brow aesthetics for more low-brow, Pop ones without torturing us with more Warhols.
Thank you for that Muriel!!
Can anyone save Amy Winehouse?
It's a question I ask myself at least once a day.
I, for one, certainly hope someone can.... to a certain extent anyway.
After being introduced to this Brit "retro-soul" singer on a back porch in Burlington, Vermont, I admit to falling in love with this gravely-voiced singer/songwriter. I rarely listen to Pop Radio, so I haven't been as inundated with "Rehab" as other more "serious" on-line aficionado. But if it is being played to death, it's because it IS catchy; the hook is GREAT!! I find it interesting to see an artist embrace her addictions so blatantly. Bad habits and love gone bad have been themes of popular music for quite sometime, but I'm not familiar with anyone confronting that total image of self-loathing that the addict has quite like her.
I like "Rehab" a lot (I love singing it while grocery shopping), but what I really respond to on the album are the riffs and licks from soul and R&B hits from the 50's and 60's. "Back to Black" has a wonderful minor riff on the driving chords of The Supremes' "Baby Love". The driving rhythm of "My Tears Dry On Their Own" derives itself from the Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell version of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough". What's not to love?
Besides the Motown sound, I love the influences of a variety of soul sounds: those Phil Spector "Wall of Sound" chimes, early Etta James rockin' blues, Dusty Springfield lushness on "Love is a Losing Game". This songs transports me to some morbid senior prom where the boys finally get to slow dance with their dates, as Amy chastises the girls about what it all leads to!
I wish there were more string arrangements on the album, like those found on "Love is a Losing Game". "Just Friends", with its funky-reggae rhythm seems misplaced with the singer and its lyrics. Here she swoops through her pain and insecurity like a young Aretha Franklin in her Columbia record period; I think it would be sensational with a quieter arrangement with more strings. It would push the remorse of the song up to the front.
Let's hope that after Amy resurfaces, rehabbed or not, that she's still able to channel her emotions into more soulful serenades. I see her debut album "Frank" is being released soon here in the States. Does the title refer to "Old Blue Eyes"? Hard drinking, smoking, emotional "screw-it-all" Rat Packers are few and far between these days. But does anyone really notice that void these days? or care?
Let's just hope a lot of her recent "negative press" is just silly media hype! After all, she's brought to use by Universal Music, the same folks who released Kanye West's and Fifty Cent's new "rock'em - sock'em" records on September 11, 2007! Who got paid for that idea?
Attended a private viewing of LISETTE MODEL & HER SUCCESSORS at the Aperture Foundation last night. This over sized and, for the most part, mediocre show is up in the Foundation's gallery until November 1st and coordinates with the re-issue of two large Model catalogues.
The first thing one is struck by is the monochromatic presentation: black and white photos on grey walls. The only color pictures are two muddyish, over sized head portraits by Gary Schneider (does any other artist these days struggle so hard at showing us just how ugly we humans are?). Who really comes out shining in this show is Peter Hujar: These photos just gain more grace and beauty as they themselves begin to age. The other standout to me were Larry Finks pictures. Its taken me some time to be won over by this photographer, but as I studied the varied selection of prints taking up a whole wall, I couldn't help but notice the strong sense of humanity that runs throughout his work; no matter where he is shooting, we get a sense of our fragility as humans and our dependency on each other. And how often does that happen these days?
Don't forget to check out the lovely little Model photo of Billie Holiday in her coffin!!
I attended a performance last night at the Woodstock Fringe Theater of a work-in-progress entitled "O, Virgil! A Musical Portrait" A quasi-biographical theater work on the life of Virgil Thompson, one of America's most formidable composers and critics, it intermingles imaginary moments in the artist's life with selected songs and musical portraits.
There appears to be a kernel of something interesting in there. Let's hope the writer Wallace Norman and his collaborator Larry Alan Smith can flesh it out into something real and relevant. They might pay more attention to the lyrics of "English Usage", an art song by Thompson with lyrics by Marianne Moore. In it Moore dissects the English language with her usual New England thoroughness, and it was decidedly delivered by Watson Heinz. A bit more attention to what works on the stage and what doesn't seems needed.
The music was the star of the evening (even with the score being misplaced and forcing the singers to stand BEHIND the piano while the musical director, Jeff Middleton, banged away on it). i admit to being a long-time Thompson fan and it was wonderful to hear the portraits and song done so well. Mark Duer's rendition of the Thompson/Blake song "The Little Black Boy" was the one moment of truth in a workshop production.
