GLENN LONEY'S ARTS RAMBLES
Week of October 31 to November 6, 2011
THIS WAS THE WEEK THAT WAS…
This past week, lots
of Local Children were putting on Garish Masks to
go Trick or Treating--some accompanied by their Parents,
also masked & costumed--with the presumed object of Getting
Something for Nothing.
But, even before Hallowe'en,
Ricky's & other Party Costume establishments
were offering Price Slashings of up to 50%!
It's the Economy,
Stupid…
Bergdorf Goodman
also got into the Holiday Spirit by filling its 58th
Street windows--opposite the Plaza Hotel--with scores of different
Fright Masks. Was one of them Joan Rivers…
In Bergdorf's Fifth
Avenue windows, the Masks were larger, fronted by Witches
in High Styles!
In Our Nation's Capital,
however, Republican Leaders--determined to destroy President
Obama's chances for a Second Term--did not need Horrific
Masks: Their own Natural Hate Filled Expressions required
no help from a Costume Shop.
But--now that Halloween
is written without the eliding apostrophe--have
most of us forgotten what this word used to mean?
Originally written as
Hallow Even, it is the Eve of All Hallows,
that fateful midnight when all the graves open to let the Dead
Walk Among Us!
No, No! That cannot
be Right.
The Morally Dead
are regularly walking among us: they are the Un indicted Criminals
who gave us Vietnam, Iraq, & Afghanistan…
Traditionally, All Hallows--or
All Saints Day--is the Day for the Vatican Sanctioned
Holy to stroll among us, scattering Blessings as they
pass by…
In Mexico, however,
if you are a Muchacho or Muchacha, you may be given
a Sugar Skull, to remind you of the Dia de los Muertos,
or the Day of the Dead!
Ay, Papi! This sugar
jaw bone really tastes good!
PASSING GLANCES
AT SCENES SEEN:
•In the Depths of
The Great Depression, Lefty Lenses at Work in the NY
Photo League…
•Which Is Worse:
To Be a Foster Child or To Be Adopted? How About
A Charity Case?
•Stunning Auction
Catalogues at Phillips de Pury: Own Your Own Art Gallery
for Only $35!
•Giant White Ghosts
on Chicken Footed Stilts Save Shackleton Puppets at BAM!
•Swedenborgian
Angels Dance Once Again: Not at BAM, But at LaMaMa's Ellen
Stewart…
•Print Fair at Park
Ave Armory: Penny Plain/Tuppence Colored Not So Cheap
Anymore!
•The Good Old Days
at Judson Hall Live Again: Queen of the Mist Subtly
Sings…
•Sam Waterston
Bravely Climbs That Final Actors Mountain: KING LEAR.
•Around the Corner
from Ladurée/Paris: Mental Earth Growths & Smears
at Knoedler!
•Other Desert
Cities, Reborn from Lincoln Center, Now in the Tiny Little
Booth Theatre!
•Brits Off Broadway
at 59E59: Hop on Over To See Bunny!
End of Week Rambles
Summary:
Evocative Depression
& War Era Photos at Jewish Museum: Red Scare Destroys
Photo League!
Great Depression Era
Photographers like Berenice Abbott, Lisette Model,
Aaron Siskind & even the Legendary On the Spot Tabloid
Lensman Weegee were not working in a vacuum.
They were all members
of the Photo League, whose varied members rejoiced in chronicling
the daily lives of Ordinary New Yorkers.
Initially, many of their
often stark black & white photos captured the fabric
of City Life with an almost Documentary Clarity.
Later, images became more Suggestive, implying,
perhaps, rather than Showing.
But, long before there
was such a Politically Charged term as Class Warfare
being used by the Rich & Powerful, it was clear from many
Photo Leaguer images that there was much in the City that was
not Right & not Fair.
This, in itself, was
disturbing to Keepers of the Public Morals, but the often
openly avowed interest of some Photo League members in serious
Social Reforms made them targets for Red Hunters.
Finally, the Witch
Hunts of HUAC & Joseph McCarthy did them
in. The Photo League was forced to disband in 1951…
If you want to see what
"Commie Photos" looked like, visit the Jewish Museum before
25 March 2012!
Abandoned by Birth
Mother, It's No Fun To Be a Charity Case Adoption Either…
Your Roving Arts Reporter
knows what it is to be Adopted.
Especially if you were
chosen, not because you were loved & filled an Empty Place
in someone's Heart & Home, but because you could
Work on the Farm & take care of Your Parents when they
were Old…
Wendy Beckett's
Charity Case tells a different tale…
A sensitive young Girl,
coming of age, is trapped in a small apartment with a lonely,
alcoholic, & randy dress maker Adoptive Mother.
Her Birth Mother
was a Hippie, who could not take responsibility.
Eventually, the three
come together…
Well. OK. I guess the
Girl will be all right?
My own Mother--who used
to threaten to send me back to the Orphanage or to actually
put me out on California's Tahoe Ukiah Highway: "See if
anyone wants a little Adopted Boy who doesn't know how to behave!"--when
very old, said to me: "Your Father & I have always been very
grateful that you never tried to find your Real Mother."
Having one Mother like
her was quite enough for me, I told her.
Wendy Beckett's Charity
Case was presented in Theatre Row's Clurman Theatre,
just across the lobby from the Beckett Theatre…
Alison Fraser, Alysia
Reiner, & Jill Shackner were the anguished women
in this Case.
Guggenheim Gala,
Contemporary Art, & More: Have It All in Phillips de
Pury Catalogues!
Discovery!
The Auction Catalogues
of Phillips de Pury are so handsomely designed that they could
well be the most striking additions to your Coffee Table Collection!
Quite unlike the business
like auction catalogues of Sotheby's, Christies, Bonham's,
& Heritage, those of Phillips de Pury are presented
in Large Format, with such excellent photographs of the
Art Works on offer, that they often make the Actual Works look
better, more striking, more interesting than they really are,
just hanging there on the bare, sterile, white walls of the Galleries
at 450 Park Avenue @ 57th.
The Cover of
the 7 November Auction Catalogue for the 2011 Guggenheim International
Gala Contemporary Art Benefit Auction shows a row of black/blue
Pigeons roosting on a lower level of the Guggenheim
Rotunda, with the spirals of this Frank Lloyd Wright
Masterpiece rising above them to the great Atrium Window
above…
Details of the
Art Works, so sharply photographed, seem even more arresting
than the larger works themselves.
The two Contemporary
Art Catalogues--much larger than the Guggenheim Extravaganza--even
have two fold pages, opening out to reveal even more sharp
details. For some works, these details often seem more powerful
than the Artists' Original Conceptions!
For Important Nordic
Design--a 17 November Auction in London--Details of
the Joinery in outstanding furniture designs are also minor
artworks…
But not all the photos
depict Objects or Artworks on sale: Some feature
Major Architectural Achievements in Sweden, Norway, Denmark,
& Finland.
Here's the gleaming,
glowing white Modernist rotundity of Gunnar Asplund's Public
Library in Stockholm.
In Finland, what
was Jugendstil in Germany & Austria, emerged as a kind
of "Nationalist Style," celebrating distinctive Finnish Themes
& Images.
If you are in London,
at this auction, you won't be able to bid on the Façade
of Helsinki's Central Railroad Station, designed
by Eliel Saarinen. But it is wonderfully presented, in
details, in this handsome catalogue.
What is almost more
amazing than the stunning design & photography in the Phillips
de Pury catalogues is the fact that each costs only $35!
Auctions & Catalogues
are divided into six categories: Themes, Design, Photographs,
Jewelry, Contemporary Art, & Editions.
If you cannot come to
the Park Avenue Galleries to view artworks & buy catalogues
there, you can Subscribe Annually.
Annual Prices vary,
as you may choose only New York Auctions. Or only London…
Or Both! Some categories
cost more than others: More Auctions in that category? Or thicker
catalogues?
My favorite category
is Design. This is because, for some years, I created,
wrote, & edited The Art Deco News & its
successor, The Modernist.
An Annual Subscription
to New York Design Auctions is $190. London Auction catalogues
cost $75.
Combined New York/London
Subscriptions cost $240 annually…
A Subscription might
be a welcome Holiday Gift for a Collector Friend!
For more Info: Catalogues@PhillipsdePury.com
Additional Catalogue
Info:
Heritage Auctions
also has handsome catalogues, although on smaller scale than Phillips
de Pury.
Occasionally, they will
have exhibitions of Auction Goodies in Manhattan at the
Ukrainian Institute, but their Auctions are also in Dallas--where
they are HQed--as well as in Beverly Hills &
On Line.
They keep me posted
about future auctions via E Mail, but they do have catalogues
available in New York. In fact, just across the Avenue from
Phillips de Pury!
In Dallas, on 5 November,
Art of the American West was on offer. The catalogue is
a Keeper!
As is the Illustration
Art catalogue for the October Auction in New York. Lots of
semi nude Lovelies…
Antarctica Research
Adds Depth To Phantom Limb's Evocation of Shackleton &
Crew's Survival!
The Horrific Epic of
the Survival of Ernest Shackleton & his Crew--after
their Expedition Ship, the Endurance, sank in Antarctic
Waters--fascinated Jessica Grindstaff, of Phantom Limb.
She began to dream about
that Icy Continent & her Dreams became the Visual
Content of 69ºS--where the Endurance dove down
to icy watery Death--recently at BAM.
Designer & Ideationist
Grindstaff & her co creator & Puppet Maker Erik Santo
won a National Science Foundation Grant that took them
to Antarctica, where they were able to Deepen Their Knowledge
& Understanding of that White Continent:
"This was a Life
Altering Experience that changed the Face of the Project Sonically,
Aesthetically, & Thematically." [Emphases
added…]
Sonically, at
BAM's Harvey Theatre, we heard the Kronos Quartet on tape,
augmented by two guitars & two sets of drums & other percussions.
There were black &
white projections of moving Ice Masses & other Antarctic
Artifacts, as well as three Glacial Ice Peaks that rose
from the floor, as six Giant Ghostly Figures on chicken
footed stilts manipulated Papier Maché Puppets
representing Shackleton & his hapless, helpless Crew.
These were directly
from Jessica's Dream!
Phantom Limb would have
had quite a Different Story to tell, had they chosen Scott
of the Antarctic! They ate their sled dogs, but they
died anyway…
At least this was not
Happy Feet II: Penguins on the March, again…
Six Hundred Pounds
of White Feathers! Heaven for Swedenborg's Angels
in Ping Chong's Vision!
Celebrating Fifty Years
of LaMaMa, the Late Ellen Stewart's Great Jones
Repertory Theatre revived Ping Chong's Angels
of Swedenborg in the newly re named Ellen Stewart Theatre.
Formerly, the LaMaMa Annex…
Your Roving Arts Reporter--who
was working with & reporting on Ellen from the beginnings
of LaMaMa--had the sense of Dejá Vu all over again,
in seeing Swedenborg's Angels…
No Wonder! This was
shown way back in 1986 over at BAM.
Ping Chong created Angels
for Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art in 1985, after
which it widely toured.
I saw it both in Chicago
& on tour, as well as at BAM.
At that time, I was
most transfixed by all those Angles moving so gracefully
through that field of snowy white Feathers!
Six Hundred Pounds
of them!
Just think of what Touring
with all those feathers must have entailed: Cramming them into
sacks again & again, just like stuffing Duvets in some
French Goose Feather Bed Factory…
I've never talked with
any actual Swedenborgians--the Visionary Musings
of Emanuel Swedenborg transformed themselves into a kind
of Scandinavian Religio Philosophical Cult--to ascertain
what they think of Ping Chong's re imaginings of Swedenborg's
Visions of Heaven & Hell, to which he was transported
& lived to write about those Journeys.
To see Swedenborg as
a Troubled Handsome Young Blond Man, in an all white
Modernist Office, drinking, phoning, & Having Visions
is Ping Chong's way of illuminating Our Modern Dilemma.
My guest at this sedate
LaMaMa production, the distinguished Artist/Designer, Peter
Harvey--Balanchine's Jewels, Dames at Sea--thought
the Repetitions of the Angelic Rituals went on way
too long…
Nonetheless, it is good
to remember how many famed avant garde artists--from Abroad
& at Home--got their first New York Show Case at Ellen
Stewart's LaMaMa:
Tadeuz Kantor,
with his Krakovian Dead Class; Liviu Ciulei from
Romania, Andreij Serban, Tom O'Horgan…
The List is almost Endless…
Annual Park Avenue
Armory Print Fair Offers Much More Than Mere Prints: How
About Posters?
In the US Mail--not
the E Mail--recently arrived a large, handsome card, with
a misty image of a vintage walkway on the Brooklyn Bridge.
On the verso
was an invitation from Chicago's Frederick Baker Galleries
to attend The Print Fair at the Park Avenue Armory.
I assume this Keeper
Card--which I certainly intend to preserve in my Album
of Cards--was sent because I mentioned the attractive wares
shown by Baker last year…
So I was looking forward
to another round of admiring Prints, Engravings, Etchings, Lithographs,
Posters, & even Photos--well, they are usually printed
on paper--in various dealers' booths this year as well.
As a longtime Collector
of historic wood block prints, 17th & 18th
century engravings, & old maps--some of them hand colored--I
don't need to acquire more of them.
But it is interesting
to see what Dealers are now asking for rare & impressive works
on paper, similar to those in my own holdings.
Alas, I had stapled
this invitation to one from Sanford L. Smith--mistakenly
thinking it was for the same show--which had Friday through Monday
time span on it.
This last weekend was
hectic, so I put off visiting the Print Fair until Monday. When
I arrived at the Armory--whose façade is now being restored--I
found the staff carting away all the booth structures…
The Print Fair had closed
the day before.
Next weekend, Sanford
L. Smith is presenting Pavilion of Art & Design New York
at the Armory. It will run from Friday, 11 November, through Monday,
14 November. From 11 am to 8 pm…
Not Quite a Judson
Church Happening, But Queen of the Mist Certainly
Recalls Better Days…
Once upon a 1960s time,
Judson Memorial Church was the scene of the most Avant
Garde of new Theatre Experimentation.
Think of Happenings…
Think of the Rev. Al Carmines… Think of Robert Rauschenberg…
Now, in the Church's
Basement Gym, the Past is being Renewed!
Queen of the Mist--the
new musical by Michael John Lachiusa--is an ingenious Work
of Genius!
Using the standard set
pieces of old fashioned Broadway Musicals, Queen tells
the sad story of Annie Edson Taylor, the only person
to go over Niagara Falls in a Barrel & live
to tell the tale.
Wonderfully embodied
by Mary Testa, the proud & self destructive Annie tells
her tale, however, to ever decreasing audiences. Postcard &
Pamphlet sales lag…
The Buffalo World's
Fair was a Bust & the Assassination of President
McKinley didn't help…
The late Lehman Engel--who
founded the BMI Workshop for creating new Musicals--would
certainly admire what Lachiusa has wrought!
Quite aside from the
brilliance of Lachiusa's theatrical organization &
orchestration of the Saga of Annie, the Research
he has done--not only about Annie & those around her, but
also about the Challenge of the Falls & all
those who fatally failed--is astonishing, especially in the artful
way he has interwoven this History into the dramatic fabric, without
making Queen of the Mist seem some kind of Historical
Exercise.
In a way, by making
Queen a kind of fast paced Revue, he allies it with
the concept of telling the story of the Scottsboro Boys
as a Minstrel Show.
Queen is not
a happy story. There is no Happy Ending.
But, at the last, Annie
has a kind of ennobling Tragic Recognition of what her
Life meant. Of what she missed… Of what she might
have done…
Wisdom Through Suffering,
as Aristotle might have told her.
Mary Testa is surrounded
& ably supported by a charming & very talented Cast. [Ably
staged by Jack Cummings III!]
All of them should soon
be transported to a handsome Off Broadway Venue where this excellent
show can move many more spectators than can be squeezed into the
stands down in the Judson Church Gym!
Every Aspiring Actor
Has To Climb the Shakespeare Mountains: Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear!
The Public Theatre's
new mounting of King Lear, starring Sam Waterston,
is set into a kind of Peter Brookian White Box "Empty Space."
The Problem about Empty
Spaces--as Brook knew all too well--is that, on stage, they
Need To Be Filled.
The Problem--or at least
a Major Problem, as there is more than one with this very
difficult, extremely challenging drama--is the Premise
of the Initial Scene.
King Lear is not going
to Die With His Boots On, as Ruler of Britain, but
is going into Retirement, dividing his Kingdom among
his three daughters.
Their Shares
will, supposedly, depend on their Declarations of Love
for their Father.
Lear's Favorite, Cordelia,
balks at such a demand & Loses All…
Many a Shakespeare
Director--with whom your Roving Arts Reporter has talked--has
said that the best way to deal with this Scene is to get through
it as rapidly as possible, before the Audience has really
taken it in.
At the outset of the
current production, it was clear that some of the actors were
speaking their lines very clearly, but also very
rapidly. Even so, it was a Long Evening.
Even in Previews, Waterston's
voice already sounded abraded: this was not part of his
Character Conception, but a technical problem in using his Vocal
Resources effectively.
The result of his Giving
His All to the role was that it seemed, while a Noble Effort,
also Effortful.
Indeed, some of his
pained Grimaces came close to Comic Parody.
As Horror piled on Horror--in
the best tradition of Jacobean Tragedy--at times the Audience
was moved to uneasy giggles.
Although this Major
Drama contains some of Shakespeare's Most Oft Quoted Lines--EVERY
INCH A KING!--it veers toward Melodrama…
In an uneven cast, Master
Clown Bill Irwin's Fool stood out. How could
he not, costumed in bright lemon yellow, in a flaired skirt
over pantaloons, with a jaunty Yellow Cockscomb?
Considering the relentless
metal & leather drabness of most of the costumes, this
Design Choice seemed strange.
Nonetheless, Irwin's
sensitive Clowning for his Doomed Master was one of he
most touching elements in this effortful production…
Feet of Clay? No!
Charles Simonds Has Clay on His Hands, Evoking Mental
Earth.
The great hanging Centerpiece
of Charles Simonds' new show at Knoedler looks a bit like
Surges of Lava have engulfed the Brick Towers
& Walls of Prehistoric Cities in the Great American
West, with sheaths of Schist laid bare:
Beyond Monument Valley,
into the Valley of Geological Destruction & No Return…
In several of Simonds'
fired clay eruptions, tiny tiny bricks ooze out
of sagging brick walls, endangered by Natural Disasters.
The Mini Brick Towers
that seem to be melting--or flattened by some Unseen
Force--suggest that Simonds might have been a Master Mason.
Or at the very least, a brilliant Brick Maker…
But Mental Earth
is not a miniature vision of Global Melt down: It is a
ceramic fantasy of Surreal proportions…
The excellent photographs
in the Knoedler brochure cannot substitute for the actual experience
of seeing this grayish brownish orange colored work--as well as
smaller, similarly inspired pieces--in 3 D: from Every
Angle…
There are two handsome
bone white spiny evocations of Tumbleweed. These were fashioned
& fired at the Sèvres Factory in France: Multi
tendrilled thorny snakes of Kaolin…
You have until 14 January
to study these impressive works. Knoedler is at 19 East 70th
Street, just a door or two down from the Frick Collection. For
more Info: www.knoedlergallery.com.
Linda Lavin Has Left
Other Desert Cities, But Judith Light More Than Fills Her
Shoes!
When Jon Robin
Baitz's Other Desert Cities opened last season at
Lincoln Center, Linda Lavin was devastating as the
formerly alcoholic sister of Stockard Channing's
resolutely Fascist/Republican Country Club Matron.
Lavin is now transformed
into the Jewish Mother from Hell in Nicky Silver's
indictment of The Family, down at the Vineyard.
But Judith Light--recently
Mrs. Lombardi on Broadway--has now made this tricky role
her very own. She is nothing like Lavin, but the character now
has resonances that were not apparent before.
In fact, all the Characters
gain from the transfer to the Booth, because they were initially
seen, in the Newhouse Theatre, at the bottom of amphitheatre seating.
This was rather like
looking down at--but not connected to--a well dressed
& apparently prosperous Family living in a handsome stone
& glass house in Neo Conservative Palm Springs.
At the intimate Booth
Theatre, however, the living room floor of their home pushes out
right into the faces of the Front Row Spectators.
Thus, the rages of the
WASPified ex Texas Jewish Girl, Polly Wyatt [Channing]
are really not only in the faces of her Sister [Light],
her Son [Thomas Sadowski], & her Depressive
Daughter Brooke Wyeth [the excellent Rachel Griffiths],
but also in Our Faces as well.
Brooke--seemingly a
one book novelist--has just completed a new work: It bares all,
including the Dreadful Family Secret which no one really
wants to discuss.
As the Reagan style
ex Western Movie Star & former Republican Ambassador--now
golfing & lunching in Palm Springs, Stacy Keach is
amazing as a Stuffed Shirt who actually has a Heart underneath
all the Arch Conservative Blather.
Watching his ultimate
breakdown, his tears freely flowing, I was moved by his pain as
I never was up at Lincoln Center.
In fact, the entire
Power & Meaning of the play resonates at the Booth
as it never could farther up on Broadway.
Do Not Miss It!
Joe Mantello
has deftly, feistily, staged this Totentanz of Family
Skeletons, rudely ripped from a Metaphoric Closet.
Brit Bunny
Way Off Broadway at 59E59…
Rosie Wyatt is
amazing!
As the sexy teen age
Bunny, she offers a rattling rap of a non stop, often non
sequitur, Monologue about her Life & Times.
She spares us no detail
of her casual sexual intimacies, snap judgment character readings,
& dysfunctional view of Life in general.
Considering her general
ditziness, it was astonishing that she even considered
applying for admission to the London School of Economics,
or LSE.
In the event, she was
selected for Essex, which she seemed to regard as a kind
of Uni for Retards.
Prime Minister David
Cameron--cluelessly responding to the recent Summer Riots
by disaffected & unemployed Teens & Twenties around
Britain--attributed their discontent to a general Moral Decline.
Well, if Bunny is any
example, all is not well in that Sceptred Isle…
Bunny is one
of three Brit Monologues at 59E59, featuring solo performers dealing
with current Malaise: Felix Scott, in The Maddening
Rain; Jonny Collis Scurll, in Shadowboxing,
& Rosie as Bunny…
STARS IN THEIR
CROWNS:
This Week's Rational
Ratings--
Wendy Beckett's
A CHARITY CASE [**]
Phantom Limb's
69ºS [***]
Ping Chong's
ANGELS OF SWEDENBORG [***]
Michael John LaChiusa's
QUEEN OF THE MIST [*****]
Anonymous, Marlowe
or Shakespeare's KING LEAR [***]
Jon Robin Baitz's
OTHER DESERT CITIES [****]
Jack Thorne's
BUNNY [***]
Caricature
of Glenn Loney in header is by Sam Norkin.
Copyright
© Glenn Loney 20012. No re-publication or broadcast use without
proper credit of authorship. Suggested credit line: "Glenn
Loney Arts Rambles." Reproduction rights please contact:
jslaff@nymuseums.com.
Past
Loney's Show Notes
Past
Loney's Museum Notes