cityArts May 17, 2012

Eye on Auctions

By Caroline Birenbaum Auction previews worth a visit in the next two weeks include a wealth of Latin American art.

Christie’s

Edited by Armond White

New York’s Review of Culture • CityArtsNYC.com

Moja Better Deco

Among the Old Master paintings offered June 6 are 11 lots being sold by the Metropolitan Museum of Art to benefit the European Paintings acquisitions fund; a newly discovered oil sketch of the “Adoration of the Magi” by Rubens from a private American collection; and Girolamo Romanino’s “Christ Carrying the Cross,” restituted this spring to the heirs of Federico Gentili di Giuseppe, whose estate was dispersed by the Vichy government in a forced auction in 1941.

Christie’s: May 22 at 6:30 p.m. and May 23 at 10 a.m., previews May 19-22. June 6 at 5 p.m., previews June 2-5. www.christies.com

Japan Shapes 20th Century Art and Culture

Sotheby’s The American Art sale on May 17 features George Bellows’ fabulous 1920 painting “Tennis at Newport,” Edward Hopper’s 1939 Central Park equestrian scene “Bridle Path,” being sold by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to benefit the acquisitions program, and Niles Spencer’s precisionist painting of the Fairmont, West Virginia, glass works, being sold by NY’s MoMA to benefit its acquisitions fund.

By Marsha McCreadie

S

ometimes the best way to get at a culture is to smash it up against a disparate element, or encase it in a seemingly alien time frame, seeing unexpected elements in each, even redefining each. So it is with Art Deco, and Japan, a yoking you never thought of before.

No, there are no Cole Porter photos in Japan Society’s Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945 exhibit, but there’s a marvelous poster of three high-stepping dancers worthy of the Stork Club. A vase with a single “modern” but delicate stem line of willow right down the middle, and with the traditional Japanese emblem of a cicada now highly formalized, blew me away (“Vase with Cicada and Willow Design,” Katori Masahiko, 1931).

All of a sudden, Japanese obsession with perfection seems congruent with Art Deco’s geometrical matrix, a reaction against Art Nouveau. So how come we never knew about this before? For one thing, most of this 200-piece collection is from a private collection, shown through the generosity and collector perspicacity of Robert and Mary Levenson of Clearwater, Fla. (There are also five paintings on loan from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts.) Moreover, while we always thought of pre-World War II Japan as exclusively nationalistic, not fun-filled or with an urban aesthetic, the fact is that it was rebuilding, ironically enough from today’s perspective, from an earthquake. The design

The tightly edited evening session of the Latin American sale on May 22 includes engaging paintings and sculptures by Botero, fine paintings by Matta, an atypical abstract stone sculpture of a reclining nude by Zuñiga, Candido Portinari’s painting of a slave ship bringing its cargo to Brazil, and a wondrous painted wooden cradle carved by José Horna for his baby daughter and exquisitely decorated by Leonora Carrington.

An enormous sale of Latin American art on May 23 and 24 offers Wifredo Lam’s impressive “Ídolo,” Diego Rivera’s “Niña en Azul y Blanco” and a lovely Yucatan landscape, strong selections of paintings by Francisco Toledo, Carlos Mérida and Sarah Grilo, kinetic constructions by Jesús Rafael Soto and “Physichromes” by Carlos CruzDiez.

Sotheby’s: May 17 at 10 a.m., preview May 16. May 23 at 7 p.m. and May 24 at 10 a.m., previews May 19-22. www.sothebys.com Doyle K. Kotani, “The Modern Song (Modan bushi),” 1930. Color lithograph, ink on paper, 16 x 20 in. concept of the time? Art Deco.

But let’s get to the heart of the show, or rather you should get to it: the ultimate, breathtakingly beautiful images of Japanese women testing their mettle against the freedom of Western women, or the flapper concept. Watch a Japanese woman working her skis; or two in a sailboat venturing out, yet serene and contemplative in their straightahead gaze. Spotlight on the prima donna of

the exhibit: the Moja, the Japanese flapper, with her lacquered red mouth, her geometrically cut hair. (It was a kick-over-the-traces era there too, with women working, living it up in public, for the first time.) See especially “Tipsy,” a print by Kobayakawa Kiyoshi (1930), a Moja with a cigarette in one hand and a cocktail before her.

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The May 23 auction, Important English & Continental Furniture & Decorations, features a pair of floral still life paintings by JeanBaptiste Monnoyer and a superb silver tureen

by Robert Garrard bearing the arms of the Rothschild and Montefiore families.

The sale of Belle Époque Decorative Arts on June 6 includes several Art Deco bronze and ivory figures of alluring female dancers.

Doyle: May 23 at 10 a.m., previews May 19-22. June 6 at 10 a.m., previews June 2-5. www.doylenewyork.com

DaNce

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Preserved expectations Ballet’S perIlOuS hIStOry On VIdeO

By Joel loBeNthal

N

ot enough of Natalia Makarova’s high artistic quality nor her particular qualities were on view at the tribute to her staged by Youth America Grand prix late last month. The videos shown of her performances existed almost in a class of their own. I don’t think that this was deliberate, for the performers chosen were top international names. Granted as always that they came from all four corners of the globe and may have been tired, etc., etc., I still missed Makarova’s line— flowing even when she stood absolutely still. I missed her float and illusion of impalpability. I missed her ability to sustain the fiction that a kinetic pulse continued beyond the actual conclusion of a step or an extension.

Of course Makarova would have been extraordinary at any time or place. But watching the videos shown and thinking back to the many times I saw her dance live in the late 1970s and 1980s, something startling was clear: Although individual aspects of ballet technique have strengthened quantitatively, technique as an integrated expression has not really progressed.

But going back 100 years or so, there is no question that what was considered ballet dancing is a world apart from what we think of it today. Recently I was studying with fascination a 1917 silent melodrama, The Dancer’s Peril. Twenty-four-year-old Alice Brady plays both a student at the imperial ballet school in St. Petersburg, and her mother, a lesser-caste sent back to Paris by her grand duke husband once the czar has made his disapproval of their liaison quite clear.

The young dancer goes to Paris with a

Diaghilev-like troupe, which could not have been a more timely career path. In the year prior to the film’s release in March 1917, Diaghilev’s troupe had played three seasons in New York and made two cross-country tours of the United States. A title card tells us that “Le Ballet Russe performs Le Ballet Scheherazade”—one of Diaghilev’s greatest hits. On film we see a simulacrum, elaborately staged. It doesn’t borrow steps from Fokine—there were already lawsuits concerning choreographic copyright—but the derivation is explicit.

Non-dancer Brady throws herself with gusto if not finesse into all sorts of dance moves, but she never tries to go on pointe—in class she wears a Grecian tunic while the other women toil in rehearsal tutus and pointe shoes. (Most of what Brady does kinetically is of course framed in medium or long shot.) Moscow-trained Alexis Kosloff is Brady’s instructor, and he’s the male lead in the ballet. He can jump, beat, and boy can he clutch-and-stagger!

In the studio and onstage vignettes we see continuity and rupture between technique then and now. The tutus are much more voluminous than today’s. The dancers’ extended legs are much lower. The women are on the whole shorter than today’s. They are certainly sleek and many are well proportioned. But they have much larger and rounder muscles than ballet dancers have today. I think these dancers may have come from the Metropolitan Opera’s resident ensemble, the city’s major ballet troupe at that time. (Kosloff eventually directed them.) Watching The Dancer’s Peril today, we have the chance to see ballet through eyes of a different public who came long ago to ballet with a very different set of visual expectations.

techNiQue as aN iNteGrateD eXPressioN has Not really ProGresseD.

Japan Deco Continued from previous page Deco Japan is unquestionably the most important exhibit in New York City right now, visually stunning from its tiny objects to large paintings. It also forces us to rethink an entire nation and to reappraise Art Deco, which saw a revival from the 1960s to the 1980s, when you could show off by pointing out Aztec origins and going all ’30s camp.

Well, the Japanese got that too, as well as the

Read more by Joel Lobenthal at Lobenthal.com

sunburst image (check out the matchbook covers), the adaptation of traditional Japanese tea screens with angular motifs of birds looking like airplanes. Much more.

Indeed, Art Deco seems to have permeated every aspect of Japanese culture, which tells us something about the mutual attraction of hard work, discipline and clean design lines.

Deco Japan: Shaping Art and Culture, 1920-1945 is on view through June 10 at Japan Society, 333 e. 47th St.; 212-832-1155, japansociety.org.

CityArtsNYC.com

classical

Alan Gilbert of the New York Philharmonic. photo by Chris lee

less talk, More rock neIKruG’S neW COnCertO at the phIlharMOnIC

By Jay NorDliNGer

o

n a Friday afternoon, the New York Philharmonic began a concert with the Corsair overture of Berlioz. Then it was time for a new work, a concerto for orchestra by Marc Neikrug. The conductor, Alan Gilbert, did not stride to the podium to conduct. He and the composer ambled out holding microphones. Uh-oh.

At the Philharmonic, it seems, there cannot be a new piece without talk from the stage. Without special pleading and handholding. Gilbert made a crack. He said the premiere of the piece had taken place the night before, so “don’t worry about the new-music thing, guys.” The piece was no longer new, see?

This was kind of witty, but also incredibly condescending. If audiences are skeptical of new music, maybe it’s because they have been fed so much bad new music over the years. And whose fault is that, “guy”?

Neikrug made some rambling remarks about physiological reactions to musical notes, I think—I found it hard to understand him. If you’re going to impose talk on the audience, at least do it well. Some people are cut out for it, some are not.

Before he left the stage, Neikrug declared that the New York Philharmonic was “the best-sounding orchestra on the planet.”

Turning to Gilbert, he added, “And this is no small thanks to you.” These words did not, as they say in Washington, “pass the laugh test.” Even the Philharmonic’s biggest fans don’t say that the orchestra has a distinguished sound. Virtuosity and brashness,

maybe. Sound?

Listening to the Philadelphia Orchestra that night, I thought of Neikrug’s declaration—and was again amazed. True, the Philadelphians’ concert was in Carnegie Hall, whose acoustics are much better than those of the Philharmonic’s home, Avery Fisher. But still.

The talking between Gilbert and Neikrug went on for maybe 10 minutes, but it felt to me like 45. And it killed the concert dead. The Corsair overture had been fairly exciting, but then the concert hit this brick wall. Not only was the talking completely unnecessary, and unhelpful, it was also insulting—insulting to the audience and, I believe, to the composer. Music speaks for itself.

Neikrug’s Concerto for Orchestra is in four movements. The first includes a lot of percussion, as so many of today’s orchestral pieces do. It is jazzily atonal, or atonally jazzy. Through a din, melodies struggle to be heard. This piece was brand-new, but I felt I had sat through it many times before.

The second movement, a scherzo, is hazy, fluttery, meditative. There is a Debussyan flute. Also some Mendelssohnian lightness.

The third movement, Adagio, pays homage to Mahler, I believe. Was that The Song of the Earth I heard? The final movement, Allegro, lets the clarinetist and some others get in some good licks.

I found this piece inferior to a Neikrug piece programmed by the Chamber Music Society not long ago: a clarinet quintet.

Nothing in the concerto arrested or moved me the way parts of the quintet did. But I would like to hear it again. Neikrug is a very capable man. And next time, please: Less talk, more rock.

FilM

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spooky or Kooky? tIM BurtOn’S CaMpy darK ShadOWS By arMoND White

G

one are the days when Tim Burton films made you laugh first. Now Burton more likely makes you cringe, as in Dark Shadows, his new film version of TV’s 1960s daytime soap opera. It retells the story of Barnabas Collins, an early-American fishing scion who had been turned into a vampire by Angelique, a witch he spurned.

“She caused me to be a vampire so that my suffering would never end,” says Barnabas (Johnny Depp) in tones so sepulchral they’re almost satiric. Yet, Burton loses his signature balance of dread and humor. There’s an indecisive, scattershot approach to both vampire legend and pop culture camp. It’s as if Burton couldn’t decide to be kooky or spooky.

Burton’s done genre makeovers before, yet Dark Shadows isn’t a transformation like his 2001 Planet of the Apes or his do-over Batman Returns, which definitively grasped

the comic-fright tone missing from his nowforgotten 1989 Batman blockbuster. Burton’s Dark Shadows never takes hold as a gothic vision of American history (Sleepy Hollow II) or a comedy about love versus spite, the occult versus the all-too-mortal follies that transpire within the personalized crosscurrents of ruthless business practices in the Collins family saga.

Some of all of that occurs throughout Dark Shadows, but only in flashes; primarily when BarNabas and Angelique (Eva Green) combine sexual tension with commercial competition.

Their seduction scenes (frolicking among Pop Art paintings like the Partyman museumvandalizing sequence) combine simultaneously with corporate hijinks. If this jokiness isn’t the fault of a studio mandate, then blame Burton’s confused artistic impulses.

Burton had developed his own idiosyncratic approach to genre and sentimentality in such enjoyable films as Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Ed Wood, Mars Attacks (his masterpiece), Beetlejuice, Batman Returns and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But the

Johnny Depp in Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows. mix of gloomy/gleeful tones in Dark Shadows (such as the poorly timed joke when 230year Barnabas misinterprets McDonald’s golden arches), suggests he’s lost his mirth.

The ghoulishness that has overtaken Burton’s filmmaking—in the nightmarish operetta Sweeney Todd and the lackluster freakshow Alice in Wonderland—vitiates his unique, usually macabre satire. Burton’s benign nerdiness now clashes with Dark Shadows’ strange pop culture anachronisms (the story is set in 1982). The original Dark Shadows program was inadvertently campy; through serialization of the horror

genre it meant to attract a younger audience, engrossed in human mystery and the fantastic. But the show became a source of amusement for emotionally detached viewers. When Burton joins their scoffing ranks, he winds up with something messily uneven: A ball scene with Alice Cooper (and some of the original soap opera’s cast) proves desperately inconsistent with Burton’s wry morbidity.

This Dark Shadows borrows from the campy Addams Family films as much as various scenes replay the outsider anxieties of Edward Scissorhands—not Burton’s finest moment although probably essential to understanding his fantasy life. Making sexy camp is a devolution for a once original pop artist. Burton was smart to get Johnny Depp’s best deadpan readings (“You may immediately place your wonderful lips upon my posterior and kiss it repeatedly”) and lucky to cast wonderfully histrionic Eva Green as Angelique, a ghoul in the shell of a vixen. When Angelique cries, her tears fall in the cracks of her decaying visage—at last an image worthy of Burton and equal to the improbable mashup of Barnabas’ clawing Nosferatu fingers.

Follow Armond White on Twitter @3xChair

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oN GaMiNG

shallow children GaMe predICtIOn: tO err IS huMan By steVe hasKe

“t

echnology will eventually destroy us.” That’s probably an idea you’re familiar with, whether by observation of the increasingly alarming dependency we have on our electronic devices, or maybe just exposure to allegory in science fiction. It also might be an apt description for Binary Domain, a sci-fi shooter that explores some exceptionally thought-provoking themes.

Criminally overlooked in retail despite its unique qualities, Binary is in many ways similar to Blade Runner: in the future, cybernetic technology is so advanced that it becomes possible to create robots that are indistinguishable from humans. After a U.S. attack by a so-called “hollow child,” an international spec-ops team is sent to Japan to apprehend the creator of the world’s most advanced robotics technology, under violation of an international treaty banning the research and development of sentient intelligence in machines. Only unlike Blade Runner’s replicants, hollow children have no idea they’re not human.

There’s plenty of commentary that can spark just from this setup: humanity playing God, ethics in technology or even, as Binary was developed by a Japanese team, issues Japan has historically grappled with regarding its military stance or its own cultural identity. It’s a bit unexpected for a game whose surface-level description could be summed up as using automatic weapons to destroy robots.

Binary’s self-awareness is likely its most fascinating aspect. On a design level, this manifests in the AI of your enemies, all Japanese-manufactured cybernetic soldiers (nicknamed “scrapheads”). Thematically tying in with the idea of evolution, they dynamically react to changing battle conditions, adapting as situations warrant by, say, shooting malfunctioning teammates or picking up weapons even if primary shooting limbs have been blown off.

Yet hollow children aren’t self-aware.

They are ignorant to the reality that they’re

actually machines.

The only thing that separates them from the scrapheads on the battlefield is a layer of artificial skin and implanted memories.

And if these androids lived as humans for so long, what can it even mean to be alive?

It’s almost impossible to get into the meat of Binary without revealing too much about the narrative, which twists unexpectedly while raising heavy questions about natural selection and the dichotomy between real and artificial life. Interestingly, the developers also acknowledge the cultural stereotypes Japan usually affords foreign culture, lending a touch of Zoltan Korda’s Sahara to the proceedings—all this in the body of a dumb sci-fi shooter.

Binary Domain is available now on PS3 and Xbox 360.

Steve Haske is a Portland-based journalist. You can follow him on Twitter @afraidtomerge.