Like Life, the century bending, gender bending, mind bending show at the Met Breuer which mixes ancient sarcophogai and a Sleeping Beauty with aplomb is a sculpture show that in juxtaposition of unlike delivers new ways of seeing. As with the Monet show at the Orangerie, another venerable institution wanting to spice things up and draw new crowds, the curators have thought big, very big, so big as to sometimes confound our definitions of sculpture per se. The spare presentation is elegant and thoughtful, and without its more classic settings at the Met momma, the ancient or medieval works look surprisingly contemporary. Some polychrome efforts of these earlier periods are so specific and lifelike, with eyes that truly see, that there is an uncanny spiritual effect, almost like a séance has summoned them back. A Pavlova head and a head of Christ take on a similar importance but that is to the good after all dancers can be like goddesses. The decorative mingles with hardscape: Dorothea Tanning deconstructs poor Madame Bovary’s dresses she made out of curtains to impress Rodolfo, Kusama affixes colorful penile protuberances to the outside of a dress, Lucio Fontana makes gorgeous enameled crucifixes that look like necklaces. This show has something for everyone, and dare I say, worthy of the $$$ the Met is now charging out of towners. While I was at the entry, a local gave a nickel to get in. And there you have their dilemma.
Danh Vo at the Guggenheim did take my breath away
Danh Vo, the Vietnamese-Danish conceptual artist who is part archivist, collector, finder, fabricator, disrupter, juxtaposer-of-things the way the surrealists were meant to be, is leaving the Guggenheim by May 8 (for Bordeaux) but he will leave with me a few gems.
Vo has bought up entire collections of ephemera with an eye towards socio political commentary. Most striking: letters of Leonard Lyons, erstwhile NY Post critic to Henry Kissinger, hilarious with a macabre twist. Lyons who apparently was nothing if not a suck up, routinely wrote to Henry the K to offer house seats to various NY productions, Hello Dolly, the Royal Ballet. From time to time Kissinger did get the ducats. I’m not sure what the pay off for Lyons was, except maybe these letters. Kissinger is mostly begging off for White House dinners, Eisenhower’s funeral, trips to Cambodia and other fun stuff in the 70’s as the war rages. Robert MacNamara’s pen nibs for signing treaties intermingles with giant molds of a re cast Statue of Liberty and small snaps of napalm victims. Here’s a show where I went straight for the wall labels first but it felt ok. I was remarkably moved.
Julian Barnes and Lorrie Moore: the new Nichols and May?
Julian Barnes and Lorrie Moore appeared together last night at the 92ndSt Y. Theoretically they were there to read from and promote their new books, The Only Story, a novel (Barnes) , and See What Can be Done (Moore), a collection of mostly-published essays. As seen in the attached photo, they are close: as correspondents of over 20 years, as reviewers of each others work (Barnes to Moore) and as friends. Barnes, with his sly wit, read from his very moving, very sad story of the affair of a much younger man with an older woman. Moore with her impeccable comic timing and deadpan asides read from a story about her wedding and honeymoon. Though love gone wrong was their joint theme, together their timing was spot on.
The new Nichols and May!
National Geographic Genius tries its hand at Picasso
National Geographic’s Series on Geniuses continues tonight with Picasso.
Javier Bardem who plays the older Picasso is perfect casting as is Alex Rich for the younger Picasso—if looks are what is important.
And if you don’t know anything about Picasso, this lavish production which intermingles periods with an anarchist's aplomb is as good a way to start to get familiar with the Picasso and the by now legendary muses that populated his long, productive life.
Like many people trying to make sense of Picasso’s life and work which were entirely connected, they have made the women the focal point of the series ( I’ve seen only the first four parts)
But it’s so confusing! We jump back and forth from Dora Maar, Marie Therese, Fernande and Francoise, with a soupcon of Germaine. I’m not sure why they missed Eva (maybe she’s on deck) or most importantly Olga, who was the only wife until Jacqueline (also in the next parts?).
The male friends assume an importance that is occasionally overbearing though it's nice that they are there more than usual: Casagemas, who died tragically young, Apollinaire and Max Jacob the merry pranksters(did Jacob hit on Picasso quite so much?!), the dealers who at first gave him a hard time and then begged for crumbs, and Matisse who appears, so far,only in his work but was Picasso’s supposed great rival.
There are catfights (real fights), chaste love scenes, lots of melodrama.
The accents are a disaster. I have never heard so many bad French ones, actors slipping in and out of them with impunity.(I normally adore Clemence Poesy who plays Francoise. I've met the real Francoise. She is much more dynamic. Read her Life With Picasso which he tried and failed to suppress. That will give you a jolt)
The acting, not the fault of the actors I don’t think, is stilted and formulaic.
In short there is not an ounce of subtlety. Exec Produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard, I don't know, maybe this is what has to pass for artists bios in Hollywood. Twas ever thus. Take a look at the old Van Gogh film with Kirk Douglas and the Goya with Ava Gardner. I long to see what Julian Schnabel is doing with Van Gogh, however, coming soon.
So many historians, filmmakers, writers, critics and ordinary folk too have had their try at parsing Picasso. I am enclosing here some other, in my opinion more successful hands. (We are all breathlessly awaiting John Richardson’s final installment of the biography) Still: if you want an introduction to the artist who along with Monet apparently is still the biggest draw in museums worldwide, tune in. It premieres tonight, Tuesday, on the National Geographic Channel.
*Follow the links to some of my previous extensive posting on Picasso and scroll down to my recent London blog where I discuss the current wonderful exhibition at the Tate Modern on 1932, one of his most productive years. I worked on a docu that was done in conjunction with WNET and the big MoMA retrospective after his death. I'm just another one of the many women who has devoted a chunk of her life to Picasso.
David Ives's brilliant wordplay in The Metromaniacs
I have been an admirer of David Ives for a long time, once even approached him to work together after I saw All in the Timing,his first ‘hit’, a collection of shorts which displayed his gift for gab and pacing. If Balanchine was the master of the quick- stepped ballet, Ives is the king of quick-witted theater. Ives does not believe in letting you get bored or think about how long the line will be at the bathroom during the interval. Ives worked with Roman Polanski on an adaptation of his also spectacular Venus in Fur which was much,much better as a play(though I understood the temptation.)
Now Ives has rediscovered a Moliere-ish/Feydau-ish French farce by the largely forgotten Alexis Piron from 1738 which depends on mistaken identity, painted wooden glades, convoluted verse, pushed-up poitrines, and impeccable comic timing. The Metromaniacs has all this and more. Ives has made a silk purse out of an obscure play by an author who could not get into the Comedie Francaise, wholly reinventing, in English, a story of love, betrayal, jurisprudence, class, and alls-fair-in-love-and-war filled with nonsensical rhymes-- which make perfect sense. Double entendres, loopy-ended couplets, he is calling it a ‘transladaptation”. Whatever you call it, it is very engaging, fleet of foot and mouth, and altogether worth seeing unless farce is not at all your thing. Describing the plot would take too long, and spoil the fun.
The cast is uniformly brilliant. A ditzy maid, Dina Thomas who reminded me of Bette Midler, a ditzy heiress, Amelia Pedlow who reminded me of Marilyn Monroe, and Christian Conn, Noah Averbach-Katz, Adam Green and Adam Lefervre as the misguided gentlemen. But the star of the show is Ives’s wordplay. It’s at the Red Bull Theater at the Duke on 42ndStreet until May 26.
8 Reasons to Visit Paris right now
First things first. As usual, the French are on strike. Through June. I cannot recall how many times I have arrived to an embouteillage on the Route Nationale or a train or plane strike. Macron is trying again where others have failed to disable the crippling pensions and work rules of the syndicats (we have the same problem in the US) where minimal number of hours per week and early retirement are the norm. The SNCF have even published a calendar of advance dates when the strike is on and off, and weekly and daily updates. However it’s not totally working. The Eurostar made an unscheduled stop in Lille for precisely 24 minutes announced in advance for a technical problem (how did they know it would take 24 minutes?!) and which we presumed to be a union effort to go into overtime.
Nevertheless, as usual, though still a bit chilly and rainy, Paris is the best, the Luxembourg gardens already planted and blooming (hey ouvriers, this planting is where the state money is going), everything green and gorgeous.
There is lots to see and do, and here again, in no particular order, a list of suggestions.
1. The Musee d’Orsay (which has my least favorite museum architecture in the world) has a lovely show of Baltic Symbolist art. I had never seen any of these paintings, and they are pretty, mysterious, fanciful. Some look quite contemporary.
2. The Orangerie has a revelatory exhibit of selected Monets alongside the New York school of Abstract Expressionists. At first hearing about this I was skeptical as there seems to be a virus of Monet exhibits worldwide. I instead came away feeling these paintings had been ‘separated at birth’. Monet became very abstract and Alfred Barr at MoMA organized a show in 1955, here partially revisited. Clement Greenberg and Helen Frankenthaler, then an item, came to see the Monets together in Paris. Greenberg made an impression himself with his endorsement of Monet’s canvases in a famous essay extolling his late work which produced an ''all-over' sensation'. Joan Mitchell, de Kooning, Kelly, Pollock and more--the parallels are unmistakeable.
3. Ah Delacroix. This historic exhibition at the Louvre, a complete career survey, will travel to the Metropolitan in the fall. Still: I’m not sure some of the most important canvases will make the trip. The Louvre has done yeoman work in pulling all this together, it’s very moving. Delacroix who began at a very young age to understand his own gifts and importance was very careful both about his subject matter and his politics. The portraits are intense and specific, the historical scenes grand and documentary, the paintings like Femmes D’Algers clearly outliers in their genre. In the later work, he too is so abstract. And what of the bed sheets he paints, erhaps my favorite image in the whole show. Many do not know you can visit the home of Delacroix in the 6th arrondissment. Go see both.
4. After seeing the many Picassos at the Tate, you would think that would be enough for one week. However, the Guernica exhibit at the Musee Picasso is also worthwhile. The museum highlights the precursors in Picasso’s work, and the effect the painting had on others. It tells of the actual journey the painting took around the world as a symbol of resistance and hope for peace. It has a slide show of Dora Maar’s photographs which she took as the painting took shape at the rue des Grands Augustins.
For an entire year I chased Dora, the eternal Weeping Woman, to get a copy of these images (and of course to interview her) for our PBS film. She played cat and mouse with me, first agreeing to see me, then changing her mind at the last minute.Dora had been dumped by Picasso and knew her archive was ever more precious and highly desirable. I think she no longer wanted to contribute to the deification of Picasso. Plus she needed money. The Guernica was Picasso at his best, drawing from multiple sources, but spitting out something entirely revolutionary. When I worked at MoMA and the painting still lived there (now at the Reina Sofia, Madrid, the co organizer of this exhibition), I would often stand in front of it and mourn with the mother holding her child, the horse in agony, the fallen soldier. In a lifetime of Picasso's important works, this painting often holds pride of place.
5.The Fondation Cartier, the erstwhile site of my beloved American Center on the Boul Raspail, home to my modern dance class, Jerry Rubin and Abby Hoffman yippeeing their way across the stage, is now the very elegant see-thru Fondation, at this moment home to an architectural exhibition by Junya Ishigami, Freeing Architecture. A poet/architect who thinks perhaps first in cadence and then in building specifics, has designed excised grottos as restaurant/houses, botanical farms, villas, chapels, cloud gardens, forest kindegartens, home for the elderly, restaurants, museums, universities, and a house of peace.
Not all the projects are built. You see he is ‘son of Sanaa’, the echoes of their River project in Connecticut, their museum in Kanazawa, the way they use glass, their long snakelike open air pavillions. Some had me wondering how he was going to heat and cool his constructions and whether in situ they might not appear folly-like instead of practical. If only all clients had unlimited budgets and vision.
The Fondation Gardens are looking particularly green and inviting, the pairing of the Jean Nouvel building (one of his less overweaning) and Ishigami a good one. Maguy Marin is doing a project in the building on April 23. If you are in Paris, I would do!
5. The Maison Rouge, a small museum near the Bastille is hosting the first exhibition outside the US of the collection of Deborah Neff’s Black Dolls. Neff has assembled a world class collection of a century’s worth of what we used to call rag dolls made of buttons and thread, stuffed with whatever was handy, dressed meticulously in the outfits of the day. The salient fact that Neff wishes to convey: when asked about which doll they preferred, black children most often went for the white dolls. Black dolls were “bad”. This self loathing however is not present in the dolls themselves who are engaging and modest and who, in artfully arranged groups on simple wooden plinths, stare out at us. Sometimes they feel accusatory and I don't blame them. At least one is crying.
6. The saga of getting a ticket to the sold out Romeo and Juliet by the combined Paris Opera ballet and chorus shall not be repeated here. Suffice to say it was worth it. The very contemporary, ambitious production by German choreographer Sasha Waltz, the rare one when ballet takes precedence over singing---has music by Berlioz. In somber black and white on a severely raked platform, the tragedy unfolds, most effectively in the extended pas de deux. I did not know Waltz’s work which was very repetitive if challenging, but I found the ensemble with chorus dramatic and powerful.
8. There’s always something to see at the Museum of Arts Decoratifs. This time I stopped in for the Margiela/Hermes but was instead captivated by the jewelry by artists show. So many lovely things, my acquisitive nature was in high gear at every vitrine. Here’s the case of another visionary collector, Diane Venet, making me feel small. Still, just to imagine wearing the Ernst Fish or the Tanning Octopus is a treat.
8 Reasons to Visit London right now
A long break from London delivered a fresh eye on the city which under Brexit and the disbursement of the oligarchs is having its own moments of Trump-ian anguish. London's shards and pickles, the tall, oddly-shaped contemporary buildings that are now dotting the skyline in all quarters and which seem to be in competition with each other for masculine folly of the year, appear instead to look like so many weeds sticking up.There are however other wonderful things to see this spring, and in no particular order, here they are:
1.
The newly-extended Kettles Yard Museum in Cambridge falls well within the parameters of my favorite things as it answers the question: How do creative people live? The museum grew out of the very personal home and collection of Jim Ede, a polymath Tate curator and his wife Helen, who seemed to have an egalitarian and communal impulse from the very outset of life and career. The home is eccentric in the best sense. A personal collection that has drawings, painting and sculpture from artists like Ben Nicolson and Brancusi and also delicate golden filegreed glass, stones in concentric circles that remind of the Spiral Jetty, porcelain, books and objets is a testament to unpretentious passion.
In its charter, it is forbidden to alter anything. That’s ok. The paintings are often hung at eye level if you are sitting in a slipper chair, or cached behind a jug, or hung akimbo over a sofa.
The new wing of the museum gives them the space they need to stay current. But what stays with you are the well chosen drawings in the attic, the light coming in through the bay windows, the sense of contemplative but lively space. The man and his wife were loyal patrons, and friends and collaborators. Listen to the oral histories on the website for first hand glimpses into their thinking.
Like Charleston, the home of the Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell in Sussex, it’s a glimpse into the life of those who cared deeply about art and artists and wished to show by example how one can live fairly simply, buy what one likes, share the wealth of that. It’s collecting and philanthropy by another name and puts many of todays trophy collectors in their place.
2.
The Picasso show at the Tate Modern is expansive in two senses: first, we think after the plethora of Picasso shows for the last thirty years since his death we know everything there is to know about Picasso. We don’t.
Second: in one year, 1932, Picasso produced more work than is humanly thought possible. Good and mostly great work.
And it was all due to the high, the joy, the delight he had in his largely sexual relationship with the young Marie Therese Walter.
He was 45. She was 17.
It certainly wasn’t intellectual. She was a shop girl, one who looks almost butch to me in her short blonde hair and criss crossed bathing suits. Athletic and capable.
But in paint and on paper and in the many sculptures he did of her, he transformed her into this coiled, dreamy creature who was just waiting for him to show up.
Being the object of this kind of attention, the attention of a genius who wanted you 24/7, must have been heady stuff for this young woman. One passes from tableau to tableau marking the swirls, the colors, her blonde hair, her feline energy waiting to spring into his arms/bed.
It drove poor Olga, already unhappy from a ballet injury, already the mother of his child Paolo, already the matron of Boisgeloup and a life of respectability, bonkers.
Once Marie Therese had their daughter Maya, Picasso split definitvely from Olga.
Its always a treat to see Picassos that have been more or less hiding in private collections, and that is usually a euphemism for the various branches of family. It reminds me of the stress I had procuring images for our PBS documentary done in conjunction with the MoMA retrospective, a time when Picasso heirs were not nearly as out of the closet.
3.
I wish I could feel more kindly towards the ambitious show of Abstract women artists of many generations at the Victoria Miro gallery. It is alas the result of too much #metoo: these artists deserve better. While the Helen Frankenthaler and Popova paintings are standout, some examples are are second rate and they suffer from being juxtaposed with these earlier gems. However: if you have not been to the Miro space on the Regents Canal with its very own lake and rotating installations, I highly recommend a visit.
4.
The Tate Britain All Too Human show also gets the short end in comparison with the London Calling show from a few years back at the Getty, a more tightly focused show that shone a light on these artists with more focus. Still for those who haven't seen the Tate's rich collection of Freuds and Bacons and the London school of figurative artists it is worth catching up. Above a Freud I had not seen before which shows his consummate facility with things other than human.
5.
From the Royal Box at the Royal Opera House, replete with two royal chairs purportedly given to Victoria and a his and hers bathroom not far away (a royal fanny on the loo!) we were warned we would not have perfect sightlines. Instead we felt supremely cosseted and royal by extension. Covent Garden is still one of the most elegant halls, and it’s a delight to see dance there.
The program of three Bernstein commissions felt flat by comparison. And alas, I do not love Bernstein's music (with the exception of West Side Story). But the absolutely fantastic sinewed bodies on display on this, the last night of the series, made me sorry not to see more of them.
Of the three pieces, Wayne McGregor's Yugen is the simplest and most effective. The red costumes, the haunting historic Hebrew text choruses of the Chichester Psalms (which I knew only from synagogue) are a very moving counterpoint to the stripped down choreography and sets from Edmund de Waal.
The Liam Scarlett The Age of Anxiety was a bit of shock. I mean, hasn’t he seen Fancy Free? The first movement was a direct steal from the earlier,much better Robbins ballet down to the bar and stools and soldiers etc.Story ballets and me, except if they are Swan Lake, do not go down easy. I find them dated, amusing like a vintage dress which you wear once or twice and then realize its got holes under the arms and a tear in the hem.
And the Chris Wheeldon? Well, the faux Greek dancers, girls in old fashioned bras and girdles with black criss crossed tails hanging from various body parts in Corybantic Games felt like the Olympics with an S and M overlay. Huh? The marcelled hair like something out of Nijinsky and Afternoon of a Faun, early Russian but unlike Ratmansky’s Namouna, utterly at odds with its music.
Bernstein, like Robbins, wanted to have lasting impact with more “serious” works beyond West Side Story. Robbins went on to have a much more successful career hors Broadway. This music has elements of WSS, riffs and trills that make you wish they would just dispense with the other and give us WSS. There is always a risk with these large scale 'festival' commissions and I remember feeling similarly with the Balanchine Stravinsky fest etc. I hope that at least the McGregor will survive beyond. (This program can now be seen in the US at selected theaters)
6.
The Ocean Liner show at the V and A was a surprise. Probably one of the most expensively produced I have ever seen, replete with a fake swimming pool and bathers and divers, a grand golden mural from first class, a descending staircase and a skydeck of twinkling stars, films, beautiful Gio Ponti chairs, etc it made the impoverished but enormous Airbus double decked and filled with 500 people I flew over in, but a pathetic example of mass travel. I am not a cruise person and once even turned down a free crossing with my family on the QE 2 (5 days in the middle of the Atlantic with my extended family?!!!). But this show made me pine for a time of grace and elegance even if Hitler is seen communing with German soldiers out the window in a film extract.
7.
The Charles 1 show at the Royal Academy in its last days was packed full of Brits enraptured by the hefty collection of the most acquisitive of kings, re- gathered together here in a most regal fashion. Charles with his pointed red nose (too much Bordeaux?), his dandified outfits, his many horses, his hunting equipes, his many royal babies, made me happy to have Thomas Jefferson (if not DJT) as an political ancestor. So many portraits! I can understand while though an excellent patron of Van Dyke, Rembrandt and other northern artists, of Titian and Tintoretto and other Italians, he was clearly someone for whom noble birth had brought an onslaught of envy and anger in the populace: he was the only English monarch to be executed.
8.
The Brutalist architecture at the Southbank complex, particularly the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room have been reopened after theree years of renovaton. Some might quibble with the costs, after all they’ve just torn down the Robin Hood Gardens complex also a Brutalist landmark, but the hall looks just ravishing, the lobby especially with its mushroom columns, the skylights, the brass bars as welcoming as any could be. People have hated these heavy structures, but luckily one has a chance to revisit previous procilivities . A tour which takes you backstage including a live girl gyrating over the seats, a sixties music mashup (the hall is primariy a home to classical music), an overly long stop at an archive, a stage elevator ride, and a 60s son et lumiere that is silly and overblown surely was produced to help justify the costs of public financing of the project. It’s not necessary. What they need to add is a viewing of the QE hall, the main event. I wish I could return for a concert, and I will. But in the meantime, a tea in the lobby and a look at the Purcell with its sixties wooden walls (gorgeous) is a new must on any tour of London. (The Hayward Gallery next door, part of the complex has a Gursky show on).
LA Dance Project in Beverly Hills
The LA Dance Project returned to the Wallis Theater in Bev Hills. Now that Benjamin has installed them in their own space in the Arts District, these forays to the west side might become less frequent. He did not pander however to any ‘westside mentality’ in programming this stand which includes two Martha Graham duets, Helix, an LADP commission by Justin Peck, Millepied’s own Sarabande and Ohad Naharin’s Yag, an early Gaga piece.
The Grahams are Graham, her signature ‘crunches’ on full display and as I am not so much a Graham girl, these not my favorite, but they are as contemporary as ever and shocking to believe they were created in 1948 and 1952.
The Peck is a slender work, after seeing his Rodeo at NYCB recently, you can see that Peck has really matured as a choreographer. He knew he was working on a small company, perhaps that is the reason for it feeling less than.
But Benjamin’s own Sarabande looks better all the time. It smells and tastes of Jerome Robbins so clearly, yet has the twirls and hand movements of Millepied. It has Bach, and that makes its connective to a piece like Goldberg Variations even stronger.
Yag was a revelation. I had heard Naharin speak at Rolex Berlin and have his protégé demonstrate some of his Gaga theories. It was just after his father died and he appeared subdued and exhausted. But this piece about a family—who “loved loved loved to dance”—and the fractures and togetherness that tear them apart and bring them close summoned all kinds of narratives—in our group alone words like abuse and holocaust were tested. It’s very compelling, very original and made me understand in a deeper way what Naharin and his no-mirror philosophy of dance training is all about. He is a brave choreographer.
Benjamin did a Q and A after with some of his dancers (there are some new dancers, some older ones were missing, the company remains strong). He is clearer than ever about being “done” with ballet, ballet companies (I guess he is not going to take over for Peter Martins) and that what for him seems to be a hermetic, airless tradition. Yet Sarabande is so full of Robbins that it’s hard to recommend him dumping the baby out with the bathwater. (He says his new piece going up in Paris in a few weeks has toe shoes so...) Whether he can pull off the hat trick of remaining an LA company with the modest philanthropic base for dance in LA remains to be seen. I can only commend him for trying.
Notes on Seattle
Like other west coast cities, Seattle is booming. It's not just Amazon that is creating new architecture but restaurants, housing, culture spaces and more.
The Pacific Northwest Ballet headed up by the warm and welcoming Peter Boal has excellent dancers but they were in search of a better repertory program on the Sunday matinee I took in. The William Forsythe Slingerland Duet was a tease for the longer work it had originally been part of, New Suite, and One Flat Thing, an early work Forsythe made on Ballet Frankfurt though gymnastic and complex seemed busy rather than soaring. The Perpetual State, a new work by Ezra Thomson felt dated and static, the corps performing robotically and symmetrically throughout the piece. Red Angels by Ulysses Dove is the crowd pleaser from NYC Ballet's Diamond Project and it stands out for its dynamic dancing and fluid and upbeat rhythm. Violinist Michael Lim accompanies the quarter with gusto.
The Pacific Science Center, a sixties-era faux Venetian jewel leftover from the Worlds Fair near the Space Needle was filled with leftover marchers from Saturday's anti gun rally and felt particularly busy and happy after the more solemn march, as children younger than the Parklanders made and launched rockets and learned about physics and bioengineering etc from the U of Washington grad students who were placed around strategically to impart a little science along with the exhibits. This is a great collaborative program and should be copied everywhere.
The Pike Market, the mother of all urban farmer's markets is now a bit too shiny for my taste but some things do still taste very very good, in particular the roules cannelles from Le Panier.
I always like the Seattle Art Museum for its careful curation of its permanent collection. I learn something new each time I'm there from the rotating selection of works, and this time, a special exhibition of Kerry Marshall, Robert Colescott and Mickalene Thomas allows these superstars to become even starrier in juxtaposition with one another. Marshall's latest work (post the MoCA show) continues to be rich and rewarding. He has done a series of riffs on Fragonard I found particularly engaging.
Postscript: Joseph Pereira interview at LA Phil Intermission
A few months ago I wrote about this marvelous collaboration of the LA Phil percussionist Joseph Pereira and Maracaz for his new work, Threshold. Please see the new video of how it all happened.
The Marciano Art Foundation: a Masonic temple becomes a temple to art
All these years I’ve been driving by this immense white elephant of a structure on Wilshire Boulevard wondering what was inside.
Now I know. It's become the Marciano Art Foundation Building a/k/a the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple.
And it’s marvelous.
I hesitated before going because from what I had read, it had become just another, yawn, private museum.
But the Temple, 1961, from SoCal native artist/architect Millard Sheets was, is, a wondrous thing and to the immense credit of Paul and Maurice Marciano, a/k/a Guess, it has been revamped to house their contemporary art collection.
How successful have they been?
First the architecture: Luckily, Kulapat Yantrasast of wHY Architects left enough of the raw material so that we can see what ‘splendor’ meant in 1961. It is hulking, marble, adorned with over-the-top Albert Stewart statuary of Masonic figures, gold wall tiles, gold drinking fountains, ambitious mural work, multi-colored flooring, everything we associate with Los Angeles. Why it’s a miracle that the gold Oscar statues are not also on display. (Bisazza—the closest thing in contemporary tile, should come and have a look and license these.) And now that so many of the buildings from that era are at risk, (e.g. , the Ahmanson pavilion at LACMA with which it shares some stylistic flourishes), we need to embrace what is left of our paltry architectural heritage here in LA and applaud those who see the potential. Christopher Hawthorne, our new design czar, take heed!
I am sorry I missed the opening Jim Shaw show which contained a number of scrims that the Masons had used for their high/low performative works that showed off their magical thinking. Alas, a curator actually allowed Jim Shaw to paint over them in his work. Shame! Also a shame that what looks to have been a very appealing theater where the performances were held was torn down for fashionably large art installations. But ok: this is an art space not a theater space. Still, I long to program a series of dance performances that utilize these amazing backdrops which are being stored somewhere, at least that.
Another problem: A large, freestanding wall has been built at the end of the permanent galleries totally obscuring the amazing Millard Sheets wall-sized mosaic behind, next to which the big, pretty art in the room rather pales. Maybe that was intentional.
Which brings me to the art: it's pretty. Some of it is accomplished, the names are right. But in this big gallery space, it all begins to meld. It's colorful,large-scale, patterned and in the end the artists are not served by being hung in such even proximity to each other. It leaves you with the feeling of a big meal, but not an especially refined one. If the Broad is blue chip this is potato chip. Eating but not dining etc.
Currently into the vast former theater space is Olafur Eliasson's Reality Projector. I admire Olafur Eliasson, and his work, and his big thinking, but this is not his best piece and instead comes across as something that would have better re-purposed as an Anni Albers-style tapestry or a Frank Lloyd Wright designed fabric as it resembles them both.
The Marcianos have been wise and created a library filled with Masonic literature, memorabilia, clothing, and explanatory material.I remembered that Mozart, Cecil B. DeMille, Louis B. Mayer, Darryl F. Zanuck, and Walt Disney were Masons. It’s a rather diverse list combining youthful 17th century composers, gay 20th century directors and autocratic studio owners.
I think there is something in the all-male, secret society Mason thing that may have spoken to the Marcianos. From their very own website,
“The great appeal of the Scottish Rite Temple might have been the freedom men felt—among their “brothers” and within the “safe spaces” of the lodge where all were sworn to secrecy—to rid themselves of the restrictive one-dimensionality of conventional public demonstrations of masculinity.”
As brother Paul has recently been accused of being something of a not-so-secret sexual predator, they might want to re-think this text.
Nonetheless: Bravo to the Marcianos for thinking big and saving us from yet another loss.
#MeToo Round One: Carolee and Judy show sisterhood at its most original
Forgive me if I call them by their first names. Carolee Schneemann and Judy Chicago. They may be fed up with being linked. But it's impossible to see the shows at PS 1 and the Brooklyn Museum and Salon 94 without making the connections both to each other and to our current feminist moment. They represented sisterhood, and women's liberation, terms that fell out of favor, but seem to have been reborn, at least partially, in #MeToo.
Born exactly the same year, 1939, often lumped together as second-wave feminist leaders and first-wave feminist artists because they were so bold, there were still differences. Like Schneemann, Chicago was interested in the body but Chicago did not privilege the erotic or her own body in a performative practice, though she also has been interested in the birth process and in the sources of male power. Both had a reverence for the first wave feminists, Mary Wollenstonecraft, Virginia Woolf et al.
Schneemann said at the outset she was interested in undoing the separation between painting and life, and used multidisciplinary interdisciplinary art forms-- dance, theater, music, visual art, etc-- to get at the question, “ Can I be both an image and an image maker?"
She had no fear and also no modesty. She literally threw her whole body into situations—although with a great deal of forethought and planning--and waited to see what the consequences of her actions might be. Fire, rope, film, menstrual blood, internal scrolls that she withdrew from her vagina, these were just tools to get at the truth even though she always thought of herself as a painter. But she wanted to take painting beyond the canvas and substituted her own body and the bodies of others as brushes to make her mark. In the beginning there are the traces of de Kooning and Rauschenberg in the work but pretty soon it is all Schneemann. And having just seen the Gunter Brus show in Vienna, (born 1938) we see that Schneemann wasn’t alone in using her body as her primary arsenal.
An interesting factoid: In art school, she was allowed to pose nude for the male artists in her class but not to do a nude self-portrait. She was always rebellious, dropped out of high school, and made one of the first art films that was simply a very tight shot on her own heterosexual sex act with her partner from different angles—also the cat’s--her constant companion and alter ego.
Meat Joy, which was once characterized as ‘Ab Ex meets Busby Berkeley’ was an early performance piece. “Only I knew the destination but they would discover it for themselves,” she said of its participants who also included Dorothea Rockburne. The names of the groups and the performers and creators pop out at me like way-stations: the Living Theater, Judson Dance Theater, Stan Brakhage. Just like vintage fashion, with vintage feminism, everything old is new again.
Still, when critics --and even the artists themselves--depend so much on theory and start throwing around terms like ‘ intersubjective interdependency’(from the Schneemann catalog)—completely echoing a base in the theoretical as much as any Abstract Expressionism, a movement they theoretically had put aside, my eyes glaze over. When I am spending more time looking at wall labels then on art, I know I am in a realm that feels artificial.
But I came away from all of these shows respecting these artists and their resistance to male-dominated imagery and I was newly impressed how ambitious and original these women were.
This brings me to the fact that neither of them has biological children (Chicago says she could never have had the career she has had with children), but they have many artist-children and acolytes. In those earlier days of feminism, it seemed to be either or. You had to commit to artistic practice or piano practice there wasn’t an in between. It's a subject that interests me as I see the divergent lives of my friends with children and without.
After The Dinner Party and the The Birth Project, Chicago wanted to turn the tables on the male gaze. Power Play, at Salon 94 Bowery, works from 1982-7 does so with gorgeous air brushed imagery of men in full power-mode display. Whether peeing or sticking their tongues out, the paintings have a Soviet era image ethos that I was hyperconscious of after my trip to Eastern Europe. Though this body of work apparently got scant attention when it was shown contemporaneously, now, the work seems remarkably prescient.
“I knew that I didn’t want to keep perpetuating the use of the female body as the repository of so many emotions," said Chicago at the time, "it seemed as if everything — love, dread, longing, loathing, desire, and terror — was projected onto the female by both male and female artists, albeit with often differing perspectives. I wondered what feelings the male body might be made to express, ”
Anyone interested in #MeToo (which should be everyone) should see these important exhibitions. They close soon.
Chicago’s Dinner Party is at a permanent install at the Brooklyn Museum and a show about its origins closes on March 4.
The Judy Chicago Power Play show closes at Salon 94 on March 3
The Carolee Schneemann show closes at PS 1 on March 11.
Image credits:
Carolee Schneemann. Meat Joy. 1964. Chromogenic color print of the performance in New York. 5 × 4" (12.7 × 10.2 cm). © 2017 Carolee Schneemann. Courtesy the artist, P.P.O.W, and Galerie Lelong, New York. Photo: Al Giese
Carolee Schneemann. Eye Body: 36 Transformative Actions for Camera. 1963/2005. Eighteen gelatin silver prints. 24 x 20" each (61 x 50.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist. © 2017 Carolee Schneemann. Courtesy the artist, P.P.O.W, and Galerie Lelong, New York. Photos: Erró, Courtesy MoMA PS 1
Power Play, Judy Chicago at work, and the work itself, courtesy Salon 94
Man Ray in Vienna: An exhibition at the Kunstforum shows off his versatility
Lisa Ortner-Kreil is just finishing up installing her comprehensive exhibition on Man Ray when I arrive at Vienna’s Kunstforum Wien to get an early glimpse before the show’s official opening even as filmmakers are there waiting for a moment to interview her. Ortner-Kreil looks remarkably like Rebecca Hall, the actress, tall, graceful, and as it happens, is the mother of five month old girl who is also patiently awaiting her attentions outside for a quick feed.
I think Man Ray would have appreciated her ability to multi-task for in fact that is what Ornter-Kreil’s exhibition shows off most about this 20 century artist: his ability to throw himself into so many different disciplines without fear.
I tell her at the outset about my one encounter with Juliet Man Ray, his ex-Hollywood Martha-Graham-trained model/ wife, who received me in their small, chock a block home/atelier in Paris on the rue Ferou when I was doing research on a Picasso documentary. With her signature cat’s eye sunglasses, Juliet still had undiminished eccentric wit and charm. Even then, looking around this diminutive space, one could see Man Ray's voracious bumblebee instinct, alighting here and there for a time in photography, painting, sculpture, text, and film, each time with an eye to creating something new within the form.
Man Ray is still mostly known for his photographs. But the exhibition, for which Ortner-Kreil secured some very hard-to-get loans, is in keeping with some previous retrospectives in reviewing Man Ray’s discursive career which still has often left him slightly marginalized in art history. The exhibition shows his fertile mind and practice and aims to correct some of that narrative. ‘I paint what I cannot photograph,' the artist said in 1973, 'My dreams, for instance. And I photograph what I cannot paint’.
Man Ray was a Brooklyn boy, Manny (Emmanuel) Radnitsky, son of Max and Minnie, by way of Philly who ended up in Paris with Marcel Duchamp as a bestie, in Hollywood photographing stars like Ava Gardner and in a double wedding ceremony with Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning and then back in Paris after the war as a compatriot of Picasso,Paul Eluard, and other luminaries of the period. That alone tells you of the ambition of this artist. Originally dedicating himself as a painter, he gradually came to understand through the filter of Dada and Surrealism—and Duchamp—the value of alternative ways of making art.
Unconcerned but not indifferent is written on his tombstone in the Montparnasse Cemetery.
The exhibition tells the story of his path through photography (the self-named Rayograms, then Solarisations with Lee Miller, his muse and protege), fashion (Harpers Bazaar and Vogue), sculpture,(including readymades like his iron with spikes, his family had been in the clothing business and a number of his works relate to stitchery) filmmaking (both for his own films and work on others) and text (which he often incorporated directly on the canvas or paper).
A much smaller show of some of the Hollywood images are currently at Gagosian Beverly Hills. His estate passed to Juliet’s brother, a car dealer, and has been the subject of much to-and-fro between auction houses, museums and dealers. Perhaps now there will be something of a corrective.
For many years, my favorite Man Ray painting, Pisces from 1938, certainly modeled by Lee Miller, which hangs in the Tate Modern, has been in rotation on my desktop with the Max Ernst portrait of Gala Eluard (Dali) which hangs in the Met from the same period. (Ortner-Kreil tried to get this painting but was not able to. The Parisian collector Marion Meyer was more generous) These two friends revered the smart and beautiful women they worked alongside and the paintings reflect the beauty and intelligence of the subjects.*
Vienna was a revelation to me, the sheer number of excellent museums and collections, plus outstanding curatorial quality. The Kunstforum Wien show is another particularly rich Viennese sweet.
All images courtesy Kunstforum Wien via the Penrose Collection, MoMA, Galerie Kicken, Galerie Faber, Museum Ludwig, Meyer Collection, Collection Hummel.
* Upon further reflection, the subject of the surrealist muses is more complicated. Please see the attached from the NYRB on this subject. Lee Miller apparently partially fell out with Man Ray due to a credit dispute.
Amidst the frou frou of the Habsburgs, I found my Vienna
Just as I used Kundera in Prague as a warm up, I used Graham Greene to prepare for Vienna. The Third Man was written for the screen, but in between, in order to get his story down, Greene wrote a novella which laid out the post war Vienna thriller he had been commissioned by Alex Korda. We all love the film, but in fact this thin volume has some significant differences—and pleasures-- from the eventual film which Carol Reed, the director, shaped to his vision.
The exterior of Vienna and some select buildings in the interior Ring had been destroyed during the war but more importantly the city had been carved up into four sectors delineating the different holdings of the Russians, Americans, British and French. Greene took this divisiveness and ran with it, setting Rollo Martins (who became Holly in the film) and his quest to discover the truth about his slippery old friend Harry Lime in the watery, dark, sewery, wintery and chilly city. The Vienna I experienced though cold was slightly sunnier. In actual fact, I learned from Kerstin Timmerman whose family has the lock on the most engaging Third Man Tours that it was fall when they shot and Reed had them slick the cobbles down whenever necessary. Timmerman’s tours include lots of marvelous tidbits about the production of the film as well as a zither performance of the famous theme music—not to be missed.
Vienna felt like an overly-opulent bubble bath after the austere beauty of Prague at first glance. But I came to appreciate its more hidden spaces, once again through the meticulous offices of Insight Cities local expert guide, Felicitas Konecny, who is also part of her own network of architectural tours.
Felicitas was brilliantly prepared for our half day express tour of Vienna, and had done considerable homework for my visit, tailoring her tour to things she thought I might enjoy. She was flexible and thorough, and was able to get entry into places most people can’t. Again, I was looking for modernist Vienna, the Vienna beyond the grand Opera House which I was able to see right from my window from the vintage Hotel Bristol, itself a pastiche of high Habsburg-ian curlicues and brass fittings, with a devoted Austrian clientele who had come for the most important ball of the season, the Opera Ball and stayed for others.
Thus again I was well situated in the center, within walking distance or short U-bahn distance of almost everything we saw that first day. Felicitas was diligent in telling me about Viennese architectural history but I really began to perk up when we got to the Looshaus, originally a men’s clothing store and now a bank, having just been in his Villa Muller. The Hochhaus Herrengasse consisting of shops, offices and apartments still has modernist charm inside despite the rather garish shops on the ground floor as does the modernist Wittgenstein house for his sister Margaret which is something of a rundown letdown on the inside now owned by the Bulgarian government which at least has saved it from the wrecking ball. The soaring Otto Wagner designed former post office, now sadly abandoned by the bank which had taken it over and whose fate is still undecided is luckily still in pristine shape. After a necessary break at the Provencale style Paremi bakery we visited my favorite site, the Josef Plecnik 1905 narrow mixed use building for Johann Zacherl an industrialist. Again, we immediately needed chocolate and stopped at Leschanz for a dark chocolate brick for me and a malted milk ball for Felicitas. Vienna is like that: you must take the sweet at every opportunity. Another Loos interior, the Knize men’s clothing store, with its original green linoleum flooring, polished wood walls, and vintage dressing rooms is also a treat. We finished with the Third Man tour and slipped into see Klimt’s Kiss at the Upper Belvedere Museum and then I happily collapsed at a charming restaurant Felicitas found, Zur Herknerin, completely authentic cooking as if mother had made it (generally mother does make it.)
The following two days I had to devote to Vienna’s overwhelmingly excellent museums. While they were building the over-the-top palaces, the Habsburgs were also voluminous—and largely discriminating-- collectors of art and they passed this tradition down to other Viennese. I was in museum heaven in Vienna, first at the Albertina, which has among other lovely things, a very good encyclopedic modern painting collection and a wonderful survey of architectural drawings and then at the famous Kunsthistoriches (soon to be parsed by Wes Anderson). Like the Metropolitan or the Prado, this can be exhausting but the museum has couches everywhere understanding that this plethora of A plus art can be overwhelming.
Then I shifted gears (and centuries) at the Leopold Museum on the adjacent square across the street. I was unprepared for the fascinating historic time line and breadth of work of Egon Schiele, the attractive, louche, rebellious, bipolar disciple of Klimt’s whose work in this context was more important than I had ever seen it. (The Leopold also has a terrific cafeteria of Asian specialities)I then bisected the city through the many palaces as I ran to my appointment at the Kunstforum Wien Bank Gallery (a separate post follows on the excellent Man Ray show there).
That night, I of course had to take a ticket to Elisir D’Amore at the opera, a fusty production but with an excellent young cast. Again: absolutely packed with young aficionados. I was up bright and early to take in the show Jason Farago had conveniently alerted me to just that morning at the Lower Belvedere on Aging (something preoccupying me of late, see Louise Bourgeois and Simone de Beauvoir, two heroines of mine, below) and then the adjacent slender but lovely show on Zagreb Modernism at the Orangerie. Then I climbed to the Belvedere 21 Museum , another building repurposed from the Brussels 58 fair, which has a riveting if challenging show on the performative artist Gunter Brus who makes Marina Abramovich look positively tame.
On the door to my room at the Bristol was a name that had intrigued me, Heinrich Karl Strohm and a date 1940-41. It turns out that the Bristol had dedicated each of its opera-facing rooms to a director of the Opera through the decades. I had resolutely avoided thinking about the Austrians during the war, and barely discussed this with Felicitas, but this made it virtually impossible to ignore..
When I got home, I did a little homework. In 1938, Anschulss had already occurred, fulfilling Hitler’s dream to annex Austria. Shortly after, Kristallnacht destroyed almost all the synagogues and by 1940, the Jews were thoroughly driven from their homes, jobs and businesses. 6000 Jews had been deported to Dachau and the ones who remained like Jewish actresses were cleaning the theater--and likely also the Opera-- toilets (by the way, the Opera bathrooms are now a fifties delight, it must be said). By the end of 1941, 130,000 Jews had left Vienna. This then was the exact period when Strohm had overseen the Opera. Had he actually stayed in my room? I don’t know.
Like the US, and Germany, and Poland and Holland, and Israel, Austria is listing to the right again and many Americans I spoke with said they would not travel to Austria.
I feel this is wrongheaded. After all, we live in a place where a racist, maniacal despot has taken control and we need make many apologies ourselves for allowing this state of affairs to occur. I thought the Austrians were welcoming and warm (in fact warmer than the Czechs) and though they are still proudly sporting fur coats in the streets, there is a love of art and culture and music which binds us together. The more we interact, the less of a chance of the events of 1940-41 will likely re-occur. We must remember but we must move on.
Winterlude in Prague
In preparation for my trip to Prague, I re-read for the fourth time Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being. In the past I have read this when I want an erotic, romantic novel but also when I need reminding about how manipulative men can be even when you are brilliant and devoted or sexy and independent. But this time I read it for its scenes of Communist Era Prague which was to be my focus, unlike most tourists who go to Prague for the cupcake architecture which though absolutely beautiful in its art nouveau/art deco splendor was not the Prague I was seeking. Somehow in these darker times, the more utilitarian architecture is what is speaking to me.
Kundera and Vaclav Havel are the twin lit/pol lights of post-war Czechoslovakia. If the US can elect a reality tv star as president can't we elect a playwright?
Helping me in my search for this more modernist Prague was Insight Cities which specializes in walking tours of some Eastern European and US cities and whom I can highly recommend for their excellent expertise. They referred me out to a local architecture specialist, Alex Went, who is their representative there, a teacher and the founder of a marvelous website The Prague Vitruvius In our half day of express architecture sightseeing, even Alex was able to see some things unfamiliar to him as I am generally intrepid about knocking on doors and ringing bells even if ‘no fly’ zones are clearly posted.
Prior to connecting with Alex I did do my homework. I had received a very favorable winter rate from the absolutely perfectly situated Four Seasons, in the heart of the Jewish Quarter of old Prague. This turned out to be the wisest investment I made as it enabled me to do almost everything either by walking or by tram, only a few Ubers when I ventured to the other side of the river to see the Prague Castle, the least interesting part of my short stay but one I felt I had to incorporate, if only to try to see the Josef Plecnik bits that are very difficult to access as they are in the Presidential wing of the castle and still in use. It is 100% worth the splurge and rates do go down in low season.
I thus was able to visit in an afternoon all seven nearby synagogues plus the famous Jewish cemetery and because it is winter, I did not have to wait on lines and had the places mostly to myself. This turned out to be ideal as it’s the right atmosphere for seeing the small but very different structures, the last remnants of a once thriving quarter. The Spanish synagogue with its mosaic and the grand Jerusalem synagogue, also in the Spanish mode were to my mind pale comparisons of the ones one can actually see in Andalucia in more pristine, un-repainted states. My heart instead stopped at the Pinkas synagogue with its newly repainted but still evocative list of names of families who perished during WW 2 and the tiny but most ancient Staronova synagogue with its double nave and wooden choir stalls for male only parishoners more common in old churches(women sequestered outside naturally. Don’t get me started) I returned to the Maiselova synagogue one night for an hour long concert (this is a feature that is under reported, on most or many nights one can hear hour long concerts at the synagogues before dinner.) In my case I saw Jarmila Vlachova, accordianist and Miroslav Vilimec play a vibrant, diverse program including the John Williams theme from Schindlers List which just about made me weep. Dinner at Mincovna, just around the corner a local restaurant that has a mid century twist with excellent local fare was the perfect segue.
In our speed tour of Prague architecture, only some of which I am sharing here, I found plenty of remnants of Communist and between war architecture and statuary. Highlights were three churches: the first a Hussite Congregational Church filled with reliquaries next to an austere but rich interior with a sloping floor, a Plecnik church I could not see inside, and the St Wencelas church which has an unusual pale rose colored stained glass window of Saint W atop his horse. Went knew the quickest routes to everywhere and took me into the subways which also have a trove of Communist wall art which although very poorly maintained is still wonderful and into the outskirts of the city near where he lives and where an intellectual community of single family houses still exists along with Communist monuments that were very appealing.
That night I walked from the hotel just across the street to the Rudolfinum, a grand but acoustically undistinguished concert hall, to hear the Pilsner Symphony under the direction of Kirk Smith, a young American, play Rach 3 and Dvorak 9. Again, as in Berlin, the place was packed with well-dressed young people, date night at the symphony. Again, I bemoaned our impoverished US culture which does not incorporate enough music ed to get our kids up to speed.
A visit to the Villa Muller, Adolf Loos’s impressive single family home which has been lovingly restored and curated and the Villa Rothmeyer, Plecnik's protégé's home which though much more pedestrian has a central stairway to die for, were a rich domestic interlude. Along with me on my tour was a young woman wearing an orange shortie jumpsuit with a cold shoulder shirt –it was only 30 degrees out but this did not seem to bother her in the slightest. My toes were cold in Prague almost all the time, but the absence of tourists in this wintery moment was a small price to pay..
Finally, I saw the Communist Era building Expo 58 which had been the Czech pavilion at the Brussels Worlds fair which had exhibitions designed to show off each country’s specialities, in this case work, leisure, and culture
According to the literature, “the portrayal of technology as a force for good in the world resonated, in particular, with the committee putting together the program for the Czechoslovak Pavilion, which had its own motto, 'we live in 1958, the year of technological miracles, when all is possible.'” Multimedia theater shows like Laterna Magika a particular Czech speciality of live shows in front of films were in repertory and still exist in the capital.
The modern branch of the National Gallery in Prague Trade Fair Palace admired by Le Corbusier is another earlier building which intrigued with a wonderful collection of Czech surrealists unknown to me (see examples below). The museum, (which also has some Picasso treasures I had never actually seen), is the perfect austere setting for these small gems.
On the way south to Vienna I jumped off the train in Brno and went to the famous Mies Van der Rohe Villa Tugendhat which was simultaneously being scouted for a feature film location, much like the Villa Necchi was the star of I am Love. This villa also would upstage any actors. It has been impeccably restored and is one of the Iconic Houses which deserve a special trip. Mies had an unlimited budget from this wealthy Jewish textile family and it shows in the window construction, the furnishings, even the heating systems. When the client asked him to lower a doorway because he was afraid of it not being safe for the children, Mies threatened to walk off the job. A classic architect diva did produce a stunning building.
Kundera was born in Brno into a musical family and I was sorry not to have more time in this city which also boasts modern architecture. He was exiled in 1979 and in 1981, he renounced his Czech citizenship and became a French citizen. He is still alive, at 88, but famously reclusive. His spirit lingers however in his books and in the Czech Republic and wherever women who are struggling with their men are found.
(See slideshows below)
Berlin Stories, Part two
In the few spare minutes I had while in Berlin, I did three things that are not to be missed.
First: the KunstHalle DeutscheBank is the second home of a Tate Gallery show on Turkish artist Fahrelnissa Zeid, someone entirely unknown to me. Zeid was born into Ottoman gentry in 1901. Her brother shot her father but this devastation did not prevent Zeid from going on to study first in Turkey and then in Paris and eventually to marry a writer and become a private painter.
Suddenly she divorced and married an Iraqi Prince who was appointed ambassador to Berlin. She took up painting quite seriously and traveled widely, an itinerant painter. Finally after he was transferred to London, she narrowed her focus between London and Paris and became part of the Nouvelle Ecole.
Her influences were eastern and western and her art reflects this intersectionality. After painting, she began some work in golden resin which reminded me of Rachel Whiteread and is so contemporary, capturing chicken bones which she used as talismans of destruction.
Second: I stole away on our one free night to listen to Christian Tetzlaff, his sister Tanja and Lars Vogt at the newish Frank Gehry designed Pierre Boulez Saal, home to the East West Orchestra of Daniel Barenboim. Though not as sumptuous as Disney Hall, and slightly less perfect for viewing (I was in the upper tier, and a bar does obstruct the view somewhat), it is another acoustical marvel and the Tetzlaffs and Vogt showed it off to perfection with a rousing performance of Schumann, Brahms and Dvorak. It's intimate and lively, and it renewed my feelings of jealousy of the youthful and serious audience for music in Berlin. What a delight to feel that music is part of daily life and not an extravagance! I don't know why we can't replicate this in the US. I understand about unions, I understand about costs, but there must be a way that we can inculcate young people with a delight in music that goes beyond pop (nothing against pop, I love it, but let's have both)
Finally, as mentioned, I visited the Stasi Prison on the outskirts of the former East Berlin. Entirely preserved down to the padded cells, the interrogation rooms, the windowless corridors, it is The Lives of Others come to life. It's a sobering but necessary reminder of what can happen when citizens are forced to turn against each other.
In my next life, I want to return as a Rolex Protege
When Christopher Isherwood came to Berlin in 1929 to follow his mentor W.H. Auden, he was looking for freedom and an artistic community that would nourish his unconventional spirit and early writings.
Last week, seven Rolex protégés in architecture, dance, film, theater, music, visual arts and literature followed their mentors to Berlin after more than a year of collaboration, learning from each other, hanging out, traveling and making something new and to present the fruits of their labors.
Berlin was a perfect location. Though chillier than the last round of presentations (in Mexico City) outside, inside the spectacular locations Rolex had secured for the presentations and panels made one feel as if a kind of benevolent queen—in this case Rebecca Irvin, head of Rolex Philanthropy-- had opened her architectural jewelbox—just for us, the participants, mentors and protégés from past cycles as well as advisors in all the disciplines and the general public. To be in the Gemaldegalerie or the Staatsbiliothek or the Deutsches Theater or the Kammerspiele or the Staatsoper seated among so many talents was truly a ‘pinch-me’ moment.
But of course there is always the shadow of Berlin Wall—and the remnants of the Stasi Prison which I also visited on this trip, a troubling reminder that walls and intimidation only accomplish the desire to break free. In the middle ages walls were fortification against invaders. In Berlin they kept people in.
But Berlin is now so welcoming. Musician Protégé 2012, Dina El Wedidi (who was mentored by Gilberto Gil) tells me about what is happening politically in Egypt and has even come to Berlin to produce her new record which depends on the sounds of trains.
David Chipperfield Mentor 2016-7 who has had major commissions in Berlin and now has a second home there commends the openness and easy cross fertilization between the arts and politics that is hard to replicate in London.
It’s a challenging time for philanthopists. Boards of Trustees and owners, once closeted in cushy board rooms and able to hide behind large edifices are now being held to account. Are works to be repatriated, restituted or deaccessioned? Do the actions of your family business in the opioid epidemic make you an unfit patron? Are the owners of companies or publications or film studios responsible for the actions of the people they employ?
Rolex strives to be different. Other than the culminating dinner, the rest of the events are free, open to the public, and where anyone has the rare opportunity to find themselves seated beside a celebrated artist and engage in dialog and feel truly connected to those we so admire. During the course of their collaborations the mentors and protégés are left largely to themselves. If I sound gushy it’s not to be helped: looking around at the artistic firmament, it’s hard not to be impressed.
Though the Mentor Protégé program has the goal of helping artists (which it does, handsomely), it also allows an extremely rare opportunity for both leading and up and coming stars to mingle with each other. All through the weekend I saw protégés from previous cycles huddling like football players sharing insights and strategies before they take the field:saving seats on the bus, hearing about the new symphonies, films, record albums, dance installations, and often, the colder bath that awaited them outside the program.
For the mentors and advisors too, it’s stimulating. Architect advisor Tatiana Bilbao tells about her new commission for a nearby monastery. Architect Kazuyo Sejima sweeps by in a much admired black long skirt only the Japanese can do properly. Wayne McGregror, Lucinda Childs and Alexei Ratmansky—three very different style choreographers-- sit in the same row and watch Dance protege Londiwe Khoza and her mentor Ohad Naharin present his particular form of dance process he calls Gaga. Mia Couto and Julian Fuks share their experiences as writers processing the world from widely different parts of the colonial Portuguese era. Olaffur Eliasson, whose studio is in Berlin, recounts memorable evenings at the Clarchens ballroom, where the particpants meet casually in open seating the first night. Alfonso Cuaron shows a few clips from his as yet unreleased new film which is already eliciting raves and says he is so happy to have returned to Mexico for its production after a series of huge budget international films. Anish Kapoor and Homi Bhabha huddle at the four-wall film presentation of Robert Lepage’s theater protégé Matias Umpierrez (in which Legpage is also an actor). Film and Video stand out as the disciplines that are now in every proteges toolkit.
Not all the events are equally well received. Much is made of the fact that David Chipperfield’s panel is all-white male dealing with urban design fixes for London, a first world city. (David Adjaye, next cycle’s architecture mentor, will surely fix that.) At Bhabha’s panel discussion on power there is a feeling of more inclusiveness. (His wife Mira, a human rights scholar and also a Harvard professor, expresses concern about government crackdowns in a quiet moment at breakfast.) Tackling big projects, big themes and big ideas are necessary as others try to shrink our world. Learning to listen. Learning to collaborate. Opening up boundaries. These were the themes repeated over and over again by all participants.
The protégés—all of whom already have some reputation in their fields—are not daunted. Re-armed with individual attention from some of the best creative minds in the world, they jump over personal stumbling blocks and fears.
I was most impressed with Joan Jonas’s protégé, Thao-Nguyen Phan from Vietnam, a small, delicate, young woman whose size belies her ambitious historical body of work comprised of watercolor, construction, and most especially a brilliant video—really the beginnings of a feature film—on Vietnamese schoolchildren that references her own past. Pauchi Sasaki and her team of musicians, lighting and production designers end the weekend in a rousing production which has a bit of Philip Glass (her mentor) but mostly a lot of Pauchi, a violinist, and an exciting new female percussionist Aleksandra Suklar whom we all agree we want our daughters to emulate. Pauchi—also quite diminutive-- has made her own costume out of acoustical Styrofoam blocks that resemble a Pierre Cardin dress. These women, along with the many talented young women who have passed through the program, make me feel so hopeful.
Gossip is, of course, traded, especially fallout from the #MeToo scandals that have hit artistic circles close to home (Chuck Close, Peter Martins). Palestinian Annmarie Jacir and Argentinian Celina Murga, both previous film protégés, had thoughtful comments to add to this conversation. Malian Rokia Traore bemoans what is happening to artists under burgeoning repressive regimes. But in general, the atmosphere is supportive and upbeat and the few journalists who are there are not in an adversarial mode.
Still,life intervenes. Film Editor/mentor Walter Murch’s son has just had surgery, Ohad Naharin’s father has just died, Julian Fuks carries his very young baby around for most of the presentations.
The next cycle will be modified, reduced to four disciplines for two years, and then another three or four for a second round but individual funding for participants, already generous, will increase. I just wish so many more could benefit from this effort.
Not all protégés will end up with a hit like Christopher Isherwood's “Cabaret” (which, after all, was a fourth-gen iteration of The Berlin Stories). But the program gives permanent lie to the fear of encroachment and battening down the hatches against outside influences. Instead it is vibrant testimony that the freedom (and resources) for artists to interact and derive sustenance from each other is crucial not only to artistic practice but to our world. Global forces conspire to interrupt this flow and exchange. (Trump's new proposed budget once again flays the Arts and Humanities Endowments while ramping up defense.) To see Mariam Kamara, the new Architecture protege, get up on the dance floor in a spontaneous burst of exuberance or to watch South African dance protégé Londiwe Khoza leap to Do you want to Dance, an American hit from the 50s, after confessing to ‘releasing blockages” is to feel that we really are one connected human chain.
Naharin’s Gaga method depends on taking away mirrors. Perhaps Gaga can be exponentially expanded. We need to look inside ourselves and out, at each other, but not so much at our exterior image.
On my way to Berlin, the US government was headed to its second shutdown in as many weeks and Angela Merkel was in the last stages of finally being able to form a government. In the face of so much unsettling and divisive news, it was encouraging to see citizen-artists from all over the world join together to celebrate the arts, and each other.
My story for Wallpaper* on William Wegman's video gifts to the Metropolitan Museum
Please see my latest story for Wallpaper* about the new William Wegman video gifts to the Metropolitan Museum of Art including a charming early video, Spelling Lesson, co-starring his first Weimaraner, Man Ray and, below, an extract from the David Letterman show that introduced them into the wider, popular culture.
(Above images Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, and William Wegman bequest)
Threshold: An LA Phil world preem by Joseph Pereira is also a Birthday present to Gustavo Dudamel
Second only to my crush on Gustavo Dudamel (now, at 37 as of Friday, a graying eminence, though still with a youthful salsa sway when the music overtakes him) has been my crush on Joseph Pereira, the heartthrob tympanist. Though Pereira sits at orchestra rear, he is a fierce and dynamic presence at every concert and also a drum whisperer. He puts his face down close to his beloved drums and settles them down with two fingers as if checking on a baby.
How lucky then to be at the world premiere of Pereira’s Threshold, a 25-minute score that is part sound bath, part conceptual art installation. The piece had a little Ravel, a little Stravinsky (a short burst of which preceded), Caribbean street performance, Latin American rhythm. but a lot of Pereira who was seated gloriously at center stage bookended by his imported team of athletic percussionists, Maraca2 and for whom he actually wrote the piece at their suggestion.
This would be an excellent piece to introduce the orchestra to young people as its list of ingredients shows that everyday objects can make music. In this case ceramic tiles, shakers, congas, bongos, gongs, thunder sheets, scrub brushes, wind chimes, spring coils, 2 rocks, cymbals, temple bowls and sleigh bells, tom toms and tam tams and many other percussive instruments were enlisted in a piece Pereira describes as reflecting the “tension and anxiety” with which society has become saturated.
However, I did not feel tension, but a marvelous feeling of appreciation at his ingenuity and flair.
Dudamel went on to conduct a stirring rendition of Brahms Symphony No 1 in C Minor which gave full vent to the other members of our wonderful Los Angeles Philharmonic and to Disney Hall’s acoustics. Neither his ardor, or ours, has diminished in the slightest.
Happy Birthday, Gustavo, what a perfect way to celebrate.
( I am sending you to an LA Times link so you can see the marvelous installation on the stage.)
The Wende Museum brings memories of the Cold War to LA with elegance and good timing
A Museum of the Cold War in Culver City, California? The Wende Museum, a modest new jewel in a redone armory/bomb shelter by Paravant Architects with landscaping by Segal Shuart could be considered an odd subject choice for Los Angeles as its focus is strictly on the communist era in Russia and Eastern Europe.
And yet: what a treat. As I’m preparing for a trip to the region it was a welcome wealth of memorabilia, posters, photographs and and texts about this complicated period of public repression combined with private creativity. On the outside, people had to conform to strict dictates. But in their homes and offices, outliers were able to continue their art or design practices.
Some examples of facial recognition instructions for eastern block border guard training are scarily prescient but the decorative arts were still able to flourish out of sight of the watchful eyes. I am particularly looking forward to the upcoming exhibition they are jointly hosting with the Getty Research Institute on Hungary during this period.
It’s useful to go to the Wende in times such as ours to see that no matter how dictatorial and unfriendly governments become, the human spirit rises above. The Arcadia Fund, Benedikt Taschen and executive director Justinian Jampol, lead movers on the project are to be commended.