FYI - THE BRITISH ARE COMING

Just got our advance notice for booking Spring events at BAM and guess whose coming? Fiona Shaw in Deborah Warner's production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days! We tried to see this on our last visit over the pond, but the run was completely sold out! Having seen Ms. Shaw in Ms. Warner's production of Medea at BAM a few years back, there's no way we intend to miss it here. The run will be from January 8 until February 2 at the Harvey Theater, so there should be ample opportunity!!

This has bumped out of our previous 1st Place "not to miss" event of the new year, another British import, the Menier Chocolate Factory production of Sunday in the Park With George. This five time Olivier Award winner begins previews at the Roundabout's Studio 54 on January 18, 2008 and officially open on February 14th with Daniel Evans and Jenna Russell reprising their roles as George and Dot. We saw this production in London last year with great trepidation, but were completely won over by it. Mr. Evans' has a lovely tenor voice and brings a touching emotional life to George that Mandy Patinkin (its originator) could never muster. Even the highly flawed second act comes off much more smoothly than its original Broadway production. Kudos to the set and lighting designers as well, who make this show truly magical!!

EVERY DAY A LITTLE DEATH - Takacs String Quartet @ Zankel Hall

Attended a PR extravaganza masked as a concert Tuesday night at Zankel Hall. This classical music performance event was a slight meditation on death featuring the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman reading excerpts from Philip Roth's new novel Everyman. Breaking up the actor's morose intonations of the text was music by Arvo Part (Psalom, Summa, & Fratres) and Philip Glass (String Quartet No.2 "Company") expertly performed by the Quartet. Part's music was a mix of Eastern drone harmonics with a slice of cantorial fervor on the side. Glass' music (done for a production of Samuel Beckett's "Company") had a nervous edginess which showed the composer at his best: concise, brilliant, light. The quartet gave thoughful, delicate performances of these works. We wish we could say the same for Mr. Hoffman. Sounding at times like he was on the verge of tears, the actors delivery was far too monotonous for these ears. He could have been reading from the Tibetan Book of the Dead or On Death and Dying and been as effective. Mr. Roth's text strives for poetry but fails miserably. What does everyone love about this writer? We can't finish a single book of his!! Are we supposed to 'ooo' and 'ahh' because he's finally coming to grips with his mortality? Writers like Claude Simon and Jim Crace have done it more effectively, creatively, and lyrically.

The second half of the evening began with a (thankfully) brief, off-stage reading by Mr. Hoffman of Matthias Claudius' poem Death and the Maiden, which launched the Takacs into Schubert's String Quartet in D minor, which bears the same name. Here the quartet really shone, showing a vibrancy of musicianship and attack not seen in New York halls often. Judging from the rousing standing ovation the group received, we hope they return to grace our halls again soon.

JOSEPH IN THE BOX: Hotel Cassiopeia @ BAM

Last night we went to BAM to see Charles L. Mee's Hotel Cassiopeia performed by Anne Bogart's SITI Company, a theatrical piece loosely based on the life of Joseph Cornell. Cornell's box constructions are delicate balancing acts, magical microcosms emerging from mundane objects that delight the viewer.
This work presents Cornell's life in a dreamy, collage-like way that could have used some magic; there is no story line here, just pastiche and impression. The script is more of an act of dramaturgy than playwriting. The set by Neil Patel uses elements familiar to Cornell's boxes: a ladder, a horizontal line upon which rests a golden sphere, the floor and rear wall of the Harvey Theater lined with a romantic, deep blue star map. Brian H. Scott's lighting added to the otherworldliness of the piece, though many of the projects on the rear wall were hard to decipher. The cast of seven featured Barney O'Hanlon as a touchingly sweet Joseph. The remaining six shape-shifted through different characters: from ballerina to Lauren Bacall, from pharmacist to the artist Matta. Though some of the performances were very good, the piece itself never quite gelled for us and we walked away feeling rather cold about the whole thing. We've never felt that way about Joseph Cornell before. Pity.

SAY IT LOUD, SAY IT PROUD: Voices of Ascension @ Zankel Hall

We attended the Tuesday evening performance by the vocal ensemble VOICES OF ASCENSION under the direction of Dennis Keene. The performance was presented by the Sorel Foundation, with the ultimate goal of the evening being the presentation of the foundation's Sorel Medallion Competition for Women Composers. One should admire the foundation for its striving to bring women composers to the forée, and the three pieces presented, Lamentations for a City by Lisa Bielawa, Meciendo by Leanna Kirchoff, and Choral des Bêtes by Christina Whitten, showed an interesting and promising range of new choral music. At least as best as one could deduce from the performances that night, which did not serve any of the composers of the evening, alive or dead, very well.
My favorite piece of the evening (and winner of the gold medal prize) was Ms. Kirchoff's Meciendo, or Rocking in English. One would think the conductor might have tried to produce the kind of soothing, rocking motion a mother would provide her upset child. Instead Mr Keene set a speedy tempo that brought to mind a nanny being chased through Central Park while pushing her pram!!
In fact, the entire evening was lacking in subtlety. By the end of the first half of the concert, I felt the group only had two settings: soft and loud. Then Mr. Keene surprised us all by showing in the second half that they could also do REALLY LOUD!! If one was hoping that this group of fine professional singers might be able to produce a bit more color and variety to their performance, they were deeply dismayed. One also has to fault them for their sloppy diction of the texts: they were more than two thirds of the way through Ms. Bielawa's Lamentation for a City before I realized they were singing in English! It sounded exactly like everything they had sung before that moment: Mendelssohn, Schumann and Schubert. The evening ended with a raucous version of JS Bach's Motet VI: Lober den Herrn, alle Heiden. By this point the choir was joined by organ, viola, and cello and everyone puffed away at their own speed; violist tapping away to some erratic distant rhythm, chorus noses down into their music, and Mr Keene like some Hollywood swashbuckler jabbing away at some imaginary enemy. Poor Johann. Poor everyone! They deserve better!!

A THURSDAY AFTERNOON STROLL THRU CHELSEA

Finding ourselves over on the West Side today we paid a visit to several noteworthy exhibits:



1) SOL LEWITT @ PAULA COOPER

This memorial exhibit to the artist (who died in April 2007) is an elegy to a master of optical pleasure. The main gallery is filled with a HUGE cube, each side having black to white banding created by compressing and expanding circular pencil marks. The effect is a simulation of corrugated fiberglass in gray, with the bands alternating vertical, diagonal, horizontal, diagonal on the four exposed sides. As with so many of the artist's later works, it was executed by a team of artists following his written instruction. With the artist's death so recent, the cube seems like a mausoleum for the artist, a marriage of his later wall drawings with his first formal influence, the Cube. A series of early etchings remind us all of what a master of the Line he was. Adio Caro!!



2) KEITH TYSON @ PACE WILDERSTEIN

LARGE FIELD ARRAY is a monumental modular work that combines over 230 separate sculptural forms into a single Field Array work designed to operate as a gigantic experiential lens for viewing some of the fundamental forces that make up reality. Or so the press release says. I found it more of a grand circus sideshow, full of the commonplace and the creepy. Each module of the installation is two-feet squared and arranged at four-foot intervals in a roughly cubic array on the floor and walls of the gallery. High and low culture nestle up against each other creating odd visual "compare and contrast" views. Notable modules include a small model of a grand pipe organ, a white cube displaying stock and news reports from Reuters, a sculpture of a man spanking a boy's bare rear with a belt, a stuffed tabby cat curled up on a rug in front of a gas home hearth, and an eternally spinning roulette wheel. This item also adds a nice aural quality to the installation, as do several other modules, like the low percolating mud bath near the entrance. It's a lot to take in but worth a visit.
Be advised: Due to the nature of the installation only 30 people are allowed in the gallery at a time, so a weekday visit is advisable.

3) UGO RONDINONE @ MATTHEW MARKS
BIG MIND SKY is the name of this installation of works, which consists of twelve enormous cartoonish heads, each nearly nine feet tall displayed on pedestals of cobbled old wood, numerous small precise paintings done with graphite on gessoed linen canvas of "mundane" views which include doors, windows, and items in the artist's studio, and faint "poem drawings" dispersed on the walls of the gallery. There is also a large keyhole mounted to the rear wall of the gallery that dispenses warm air. The "drawings" consist of short poetic aphorisms like "I'm tired of having hands I want wings", with each faint word cascading vertically down the wall. Rondinone "date paintings" have a wonderfully exact delicacy that reminded me of Lyonel Feininger. And his gigantic "Moonrise" sculptures are incredibly silly and sweet. The whole effect is playfully melancholic: are we haunted by memories of our past or by the fear of an unknown future? Rondinone creates an interesting space to explore these questions.

4) PAUL NOBLE @ GAGOSIAN
Another weird alien landscaper, this time the drawings are bigger and the sculptures are smaller. Entitled “dot to dot” it's comprised of drawings, ceramic sculptures, rugs, sound, and various other installation elements. Time and space are addressed best in the artist's large graphite drawings. Piles of primordial blobs create timeless landscapes of decay: are we looking at Incan ruins or the remains of a long lost moon colony? A display of small glazed ceramic works, each sitting on an elaborate wood pedestal, have a comic globular quality to them, a cross between a Smurf and a bong! They do work as three dimensional objects, although I found a lot of the glaze choices muddy. Least successful is the sound installation which requires you to take off your shoes and to stand on an artist's rug and listen to a Reichian tape loop of someone saying "dot to dot". The message is overly simplistic and the effect doesn't vary much as you move around the space. Dig those great beaded curtains though!!

5) DEBORAH KASS @ PAUL KASMIN
I love Deb Kass!! There I said it!
This exhibit entitled "feel good paintings for feel bad times" continues this artist's exploration of the intersection of art, culture and self. She combines references to post-war art history with hooks from pop culture to create smart works that always make us smile. This is her first major exhibition in New York in twelve years. Check it out!!

ALSO SEEN:

ROBERT ADAMS: QUESTIONS FOR AN OVERCAST DAY @ MATTHEW MARKS - If you see Rondinone, then check out this small suite of exquisite photographs next door. A meditation on a weather-beaten tree, many of the later images in the series are otherworldly and ethereal. Worth a look.

CANDIDA HOFER "IN PORTUGAL" @ SONNABEND - More large documentary photos of gorgeous private and public interiors. Done with the artist's usual eye for formality and lighting, many prove to be interesting studies of the meeting of Muslim and Christian cultures. Others are just simply sumptuous. Check out Teatro de Sao Carlo, Lisboa I in the first gallery!

DAVID STEPHENSON & TANYA MARCUSE @ JULIE SAUL - Him: Pictures of vaulted ceilings lit well and shot straight up creating very geometric-patterned prints. When successful they remind you of a set for Blade Runner or 12 Monkeys. Pretty and mindless. Her: Entitled "Fruitless", platinum print portraits of orchard trees destined to fall to development. Ho-hum.

KUNIE SUGIURA @ LESLIE TONKONOW - More photographs: early large prints and photograms from her Artists Paper series. So what are you doing these days Kunie?

T. J. WILCOX @ METRO PICTURES - Fun film narratives with accompanying prints. The prints are product but the films are the art here. Definitely stay for "The Jerry Hall Story"!! A+

LASZLO MOHOLY-NAGY @ ANDREA ROSEN - check out the Friedrich Kunath installation in Gallery One if you must; I'd head straight to the back gallery for this small exhibit of color photographs and sculptures! Parfait!!

Help Save Snug Harbor, Staten Island

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.

Abstract Expressionism and Other Modern Works: The Muriel Kallis Steinberg Newman Collection

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!!

ONCE IN LOVE WITH AMY

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?

RIGHT THERE IN BLACK AND WHITE

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!!

THE FATHER OF US ALL

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.