cityArts October 26, 2011

WWW.CITYARTSNYC.COM OCT. 26–NOV. 8, 2011 Volume 3, Issue 17

The CityArts interview: Will Barnet Page 19 Kissing the Air: Streb’s Action Faction Page 17 Watch the Throne: Marsalis at 50 Page 10

MONUMENTS TO KING Art and Politics in Stone and on Stage

Why Let the Billionaires Have all the Fun?

INSIDE Galleries

MLK monument

Pioneers in Shadows

by Mario Naves Page 4 Texture as Sculpture

by Valerie Gladstone Page 7

I Have a Nightmare

by Gregory Solman Page 12 Virtual Deity

by Maureen Mullarkey Page 13 Crowd Pleaser

by John Lingan Page 14 Stone Cold

by Emma Lockridge Page 14

Museums

Out of the Past

by Melissa Stern Page 8 Cezanne’s Wine Bottles

by Phyllis Workman Page 8 Classical Music

From Rosina to the Finland Station

by Jay Nordlinger Page 9 Jazz

Watch the Throne

by Howard Mandel Page 10 Theater

Whatever your philanthropic passions, The New York Community Trust can help you design your own Giving Pledge.

Set up a charitable fund with us and get the expert advice and support the billionaires get.

Belief with Wings

by Armond White Page 11 EDITOR Armond White awhite@manhattanmedia.com MANAGING EDITOR Mark Peikert mpeikert@manhattanmedia.com

SENIOR ART CRITIC Lance Esplund SENIOR MUSIC CRITIC Jay Nordlinger

Contact us today for our free booklet.

You’ll be inspired by what you can accomplish.

Call Jane Wilton at (212) 686–0010 x379, e-mail gray@nyct-cfi.org, or visit nycommunitytrust.org.

ASSISTANT EDITOR Deb Sperling

SENIOR DANCE CRITIC Joel Lobenthal CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Caroline Birenbaum, John Demetry, Valerie Gladstone, John Goodrich, Amanda Gordon, Ben Kessler, Howard Mandel, Maureen Mullarkey, Mario Naves, Gregory Solman, Melissa Stern, Nicholas Wells

DESIGN/PRODUCTION PRODUCTION/creative director Ed Johnson ejohnson@manhattanmedia.com advertising design Quarn Corley

Film

Bedtime for Gonzo

by Armond White Page 15 Dance

Coming Attractions

by Joel Lobenthal Page 16 auctions

Going, Going Auctions

by Caroline Birenbaum Page 18 the cityarts interview

Will Barnet Page 19 PUBLISHER Kate Walsh kwalsh@manhattanmedia.com advertising consultant Adele Mary Grossman maryad@mindspring.com Account Executives Ceil Ainsworth, Mike Suscavage

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2 CityArts | October 26, 2011

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LIGHT BULB ARMOND WHITE

On the cover: MLK Monument photo courtesy of the USDA. Samuel L. Jackson as Martin Luther King Jr. by Mary Ellen Mark, courtesy of the production.

H

That enormous American monument ow do you portray grace in stone?

Like Bernini or the Pièta? This is also (and its questionable commission) needs a political matter, as proved by the ethical scrutiny—just like the Elizabeth Martin Luther King Jr. National Monu- Streb and William Forsythe choreography ment recently dedicated in Washington, that Valerie Gladstone and Joel LobenD.C. The question inquires whether artists thal, respectively, give fine examination. can transcend politics or get trapped and There’s every reason a work of public limited by them—which can happen with art should meet the same standards that Mario Naves and John Goodrich our own unwary responses to art. find, respectively, Each publication of CityArts reviews that In the art world, where in Georges Braque and Ruth Miller. A struggle in various art the most pressing monument’s value is endeavors, but this public concern is found in how it comtime shines special memorates an idea light on the issue with how much a painting whether its craft a section of articles raises at auction, the and and imagination are that take a serious look at the MLK mon- ethics of commissions, a sufficient tribute.

John Lingan, Emma ument. This two-part, grants, design and Lockridge, Mau30-foot granite sculpsocial impact are reen Mullarkey and ture puts art on the routinely ignored.

Gregory Solman offer front page of national strong, distinct perconsciousness. When was the last time that happened? When spectives on the MLK stone work. Their Picasso premiered his large-scale Chicago essays should illuminate public response mask in 1967? When a madman smashed rather than further political idolatry.

About the cover: Two representations of Michelangelo’s Pièta in 1972?

In the art world, where the most MLK—the monument and the Broadway pressing public concern is how much a impersonation by Samuel L. Jackson—are painting raises at auction, the ethics of juxtaposed. Art director Ed Johnson adds commissions, grants, design and social tints that evoke current political quanimpact are routinely ignored. The King dary, with the result of a compelling Janus statue calls attention to the art world’s effect. Jackson’s surprising portrayal of political consciousness. King may be King in Katori Hall’s play The Mountainuniversally respected for his moral cour- top seeks to remedy political hypocrisy age, but that doesn’t mean his likeness is and the moral amnesia that now defines safe from being used for unworthy pur- King worship. The Janus effect—more poses—hidden agendas or simply a lack than one way of looking at art—brings thinking back. of consciousness.

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October 26, 2011 | CityArts 3

GALLERIES

Exhibition Openings

Pioneers in Shadows Scaling Braque and Takenaga

By Mario Naves

4 CityArts | October 26, 2011

David Nolan Gallery: Richard Artschwager: “Weave.” Opens Oct. 27, 527 W. 29th St., davidnolangallery.com.

First Street Gallery: Nancy Balliett: “Then & Now.” Opens Nov. 1, 526 W. 26th St., Ste. 209, firststreetgallery.net.

Gallery 307: Flo Fox: “Photographs 1972–2011.”

Opens Oct. 27, 307 7th Ave., Ste. 1401, carterburdencenter.org.

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he paintings of Barbara Takenaga, on display at DC Moore Gallery, are easy to admire and hard to love.

Straddled between these polarities is Takenaga herself, an artist cruising on pictorial stratagems and touched by personal tragedy. The relationship between the two curbs our judgment of the work.

Immaculately contrived and spectacular in effect, a Takenaga abstraction would enhance any mantelpiece over which it hung. Undulating patterns, typically comprised of dots, expand over the surface of each canvas. Takenaga’s methodology is impressive: The deliberate application of myriad blips of acrylic paint endows the pictures with a steely, photographic shimmer.

Funneling op art’s sensory overload through a stately vein of mysticism, Takenaga propels us to the outer reaches of the galaxy even as she recalls the microscopic doings of subatomic particles. Linear perspective establishes zooming, heady spaces; atmospheric perspective, an unearthly glow.

There’s a cartoon element involved as well.

The works’ rhythmic verve and rubbery plasticity brings to mind Kenny Scharf’s goofball riffs on Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Reading the catalog, we learn that Takenaga’s recent pictures are influenced by events considerably less sunny: the death of a sick parent. “There is,” critic Nancy Princenthal writes, “nothing literal” about the connection between a mother’s dementia and her daughter’s “twilight palette.” All the same, it’s there, “run[ning] deep below the surface like a big, dark shadow.” There’s no doubting that Takenaga has evoked something elemental, hard and true from her unearthly runs of black, gray and white. (When saturated colors do make an appearance, a palpable diminution of feeling takes place.)

It’s to Takenaga’s credit that her art pinpoints, with uncanny specificity, “that sense of fading—shiny, hazy shifting” typical of a person afflicted with dementia. What Takenaga can’t entirely enliven (or redeem) is the dulling prerequisites of formula. A canvas like “Doubleback” (2011) would benefit from the aforementioned mantelpiece—seen on a piecemeal

Blue Mountain Gallery: Nancy Beal: “Recent Paintings.” Opens Nov. 1, 530 W. 25th St., 4th Fl., bluemountaingallery.org.

James Cohan Gallery: Byron Kim. Opens Nov. 4, 533 W. 26th St., jamescohan.com.

Lesley Heller Workspace: Tom Kotik: “Tone.”

Opens Oct. 26. “Head Case.” Opens Oct. 26, 54 Orchard St., lesleyheller.com.

Minus Space: Gabriele Evertz. Opens Nov. 5, 98 4th St., Rm. 204, Buzzer #28, minusspace.com.

Noho Gallery Chelsea: Jiwan Joo: “Labyrinth as Puzzle.” Opens Nov. 1, 520 W. 25th St., nohogallery.com.

Barbara Takenaga, “Ronin,” 2011, acrylic on linen, 42 x 36 in.

Image courtesy of DC Moore Gallery, New York.

basis, Takenaga performs wonders. Seen en masse, you realize just how mechanical wonders can be.

Barbara Takenaga: New Paintings Through Nov. 12, DC Moore Gallery, 535 W. 22nd St., 2nd Fl., 212-247-2111, www.dcmooregallery.com.

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he French painter Georges Braque (1882–1963) exists in the popular imagination primarily as an adjunct to the life and art of Pablo Picasso. The role they played in the advent of cubism, arguably the 20th century’s most important and far-reaching art form, guaranteed that their names, if not fortunes, would be bound together like mountaineers.

That was Braque’s estimation of the relationship he and Picasso played in upsetting and, by fiat, extending pictorial tradition. Picasso drummed up a different analogy, likening Braque (or so legend has it) to being his “wife.” It’s easy to glean the Spaniard’s condescension—we know his take on women. The shadow cast by Picasso’s bullying genius is all but obliterating. Getting a sense of Braque as Braque has been difficult.

Georges Braque: Pioneer of Modernism, an exhibition at Acquavella Galleries on the Upper East Side, should contribute much to our understanding of the painter’s accomplishment. The show isn’t definitive—it skips out entirely on the last 13 years of Braque’s art—but what it lacks

in breadth it gains in concentration.

Borrowing key works from major institutions—among them MoMA, The Met, Pompidou and The Tate—along with paintings, drawings and collages from private collections, Acquavella has orchestrated some kind of coup. In doing so, it has performed a mitzvah for New Yorkers devoted to the vagaries of modernist art.

From the early fauvist landscapes to the invention and refining of cubism to the darker, more equivocal works of the 1940s and ’50s, Pioneer of Modernism elaborates upon Braque’s oeuvre with surprising depth. He emerges as a gentle temperament with tenacious gifts, a painter given to poetic and often moody reveries.

That, and he’s a stick in the mud—a loner given to duty rather than pleasure, to musty habits and overheated tropes.

“Studio V” (1949–1950) pulls apart the conventions of cubism in the service of dry melancholia; “Studio IX” (1952–53/56) does something similar, albeit in a more scattered manner. In both cases, gravity stifles vitality, leaving the viewer with masterworks burdened by modesty.

Vulgarity isn’t necessarily a coefficient of great art, but it goes some way toward explaining Picasso’s genius and the more politic nature of Braque’s. Pioneer of Modernism is an event, absolutely, but one whose upshot doesn’t quite overturn the received wisdom.

Georges Braque: Pioneer of Modernism Through Nov. 30, Acquavella Galleries, 18 E. 79th St., 212-734-6300, www.acquavellagalleries.com.

Energy in Blossoms Benson’s colors and China’s blossoms

By Kate Prengel

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rudy Benson’s painting is full of physical energy. The paint is applied so thickly that it turns into an object in its own right; the stripes and circles on the canvas look like moveable parts. Fittingly, most of the pieces in her show at Mike Weiss Gallery, Actual/Virtual, evoke outer space with their names—“Cosmic Canvas,” “Stellar Evolution”—and with the gravitational games they play.

Looking at “Red Giant,” for example, is like launching into orbit. The painting is overwhelming: a fat red center and a series of black rings, some shading into purple. It’s hard to know where to focus; there are so many rings and curves, nearly echoing each other, drawing your eye in constant new directions. Then, a green line as raw as space itself cuts across the front of the sphere. In the end, you feel you’ve circled a new planet.

“Holographix” also suggests constant motion. Black paint as thick as tire treads moves across the canvas; little stenciled balloons rise from below and a bold pink stripe hangs, promisingly, above a blue window.

Your eye travels up, leaving behind a crosshatched black-and-yellow base and entering entirely new territory, free of geometry.

After all this, “Sweet and Lowdown,” which hangs next to “Red Giant,” feels like a little valley of peace. Its peachy center is round and inviting; the little red circles crossing the painting keep to a reassuring rhythm. The rather strident crosshatching on the painting’s perimeter reminds you to focus on the little pocket of peace in the middle.

“Yellow Painting” is similarly cheering. I at least had to smile at its look of warm certainty, the sweet, uneven white stripes moving up to a soft beige field covered in yellow paint suggested a meadow full of wildflowers and made me feel that I’d returned from a long trip through space.

Some of the work is exciting indeed. I was stunned by Jiang Depu’s “Black Symphony,” a series of three pen and ink landscapes. To my Western eyes, at least, the swirling ink lines look a lot like traditional Chinese painting.

But Jiang takes those lines and breaks them up, so the mountains seem to float above us.

In “Mountain Creek,” my favorite of the series, the lines turn choppy, cascade into each other and form big ink blots. The result is a free-rolling stream and a highly personal dreamscape,

very far indeed from social realism.

Another standout is Wang Keping’s wood sculpture, “Silent.” A dark, beautifully whorled wooden head looks at us while a wooden stopper fills his mouth. The piece is so physical that I longed to reach in and pull that stopper out.

The renowned Ai Weiwei also has a few pieces in the show, poking fun at small-minded bureaucrats; they’ll make you smile, although they’re not precisely passionate.

Other pieces here, though, cannot stand on their own merit. The room dedicated to the so-called “Wuming” or “no name” group looks a lot like an amateur arts fair, full of

vaguely post-impressionist paintings of houses and flowers. Du Xia’s works impress with their poignancy, as if the artist has deliberately shrunk her worldview down to the size of a vase of autumn leaves. But for the most part, the Wuming movement reminds us that, just as political oppression can inspire great art, censorship can also stunt some of our most promising artists.

Blossoming in the Shadows: Unofficial Chinese Art, 1974–1985 Through Dec. 11, China Institute, 125 E. 65th St., 212-744-8181, www.chinainstitute.org.

“Epic and immersive” —New York Times

Wonder of the Age MASTER PAINTERS OF INDIA , 1100–1900

Actual/Virtual Through Nov. 12, Mike Weiss Gallery, 520 W. 24th St., 212-691-6899, www.mikeweissgallery.com.

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he China Institute is aiming high right now. Its curators want to show us why Chinese artists, after years of stateimposed social realism, have lately “taken the art world by storm” with their very modern style. Thus, the Institute’s current exhibit, Blossoming in the Shadows: Unofficial Chinese Art, 1974–1985 looks for the modernist roots in the underground art of the 1970s and ’80s.

Through January 8 The exhibition is made possible by Additional support is provided by It was organized by the Museum Rietberg Zurich in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

metmuseum.org Attributed to Payag (painter) and Mir ‘Ali (calligrapher), Shah Jahan Riding a Stallion (detail), page from the Kevorkian Album, India (Mughal court at Agra), ca. 1628, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Rogers Fund and The Kevorkian Foundation Gift, 1955.

October 26, 2011 | CityArts 5

Everything’s Gone Green

By John Goodrich

I

t’s no surprise that over the decades, the painterly landscapes and still lifes of Ruth Miller (b. 1930) have gained many admirers. Her vivid hues and richly scumbled surfaces have an immediate appeal, but more impressive still is the radiant restraint of a wise but ardent notion of painting: forms have a significance, colors contain an inner light and together they make for a deeper kind of rendering.

Is it presumptuous to claim the artist has just made a significant leap in her painting? Probably, but here goes: It seems to me that the color in her latest paintings at Lohin Geduld has become noticeably more potent and focused and now more discriminately characterizes her subjects.

The same sense of committed purpose and delight in materials is there, but it is now propelled by the actions of color. In the process, her images have moved from luminous recitations to vital and surprising re-creations.

If an illustrator renders a likeness with evocative style and technique, painters draw on more primal, demanding and autonomous forces. Miller fully embraces them in canvases like “Place Revisited—Light on Lake” (2010), which moves through a remarkable range of greens that would seem to belong to separate worlds.

An airy ochre-green, an elusive tawniness, a dense lime, a deep verdant hue as absorbent of light as a cave—all jostle, pushing aside or giving way to one another in a dozen spatial dislocations.

The artist’s drawing, however, steers these impulses, locating the massiveness of a shadowy tree trunk, the placid mirror-plane of water beyond, a curling wisp of reflection hovering within it. A heavy, overhanging bough winds across the canvas’ upper portion, charging the entire space beneath. The contradictions of color surprise, but even more startling is the coherence of the resulting image. In fact, a painting as dynamic as this seems held together only by exigencies of color as restless as nature herself. One thinks of Diderot’s astute comment about the paintings

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but compared to other paintings it suffers from a certain evenness of purpose; the eye coasts through the undifferentiated color pressures above and below the tabletop. One misses the sense, so evident elsewhere, of every element somehow remaining independent while proving inevitable; a unique personality, whether a jug, tree or cabbage. What else would a true likeness be? So Miller’s latest paintings seem to ask, making the daunting challenge of painting seem as natural as breathing.

Conductorless concert

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Image by Lohin Geduld Gallery

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Ruth Miller, “Pot, Shell, Blue Coffee Pot,” 2011, oil on linen, 16 x 22 in.

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Ruth Miller leaps forward

of Chardin (1699–1779), arguably history’s greatest still life painter: “Draw near and everything blurs, flattens and disappears; back off and everything is re-created.”

And indeed, the artist achieves the same effect in her still lifes. In “Pot, Shell, Blue Coffee Pot,” (2011), broad forms perambulate about a tabletop, not always identifiable but always rhythmically selfpossessed. A section of fabric darts in, catching the light, while another piece slips heavily to the side; a teapot’s spout twists through a distant interval. Toward a corner a small, pale cup settles beneath the pot’s looming bulk of sienna red—a scenario that might seem only clever were it not for the poignant, contrasting distinctions of color that weight each event.

In the gallery’s smaller room, don’t miss the small canvas entitled “Gourds, White Pitcher” (2009), in which the contours of these two objects seem bent on orbiting and eclipsing each other, like twin planets.

This room also contains a number of fine drawings, though in this context they feel like preparatory studies: rational probings that anticipate the exuberant risks of color.

Some paintings fall slightly short of these high standards. “Shell, Blue Coffee Pot” (2011), a smaller version of the still life mentioned above, has a vibrant solidity,

Texture as Sculpture Artschwager weaves media with feeling

By Valerie Gladstone

particular favorite, “Abstraction,” painted in 2004, looks like a Cézanne landscape with its geometry, the green and blue bands of color going off to the horizon. A maze as well, the work has the depth and two-dimensionality that Artschwager strives for. How wonderful that he never stopped at any of his dynamic stages, allowing us to see where they would eventually take him.

Richard Artschwager Through Dec. 3, David Nolan Gallery, 527 W. 29th St., 212-925-6190, www.davidnolangallery.com.

The International Art Fair for Fine Prints and Editions Old Master to Contemporary November 3 – 6 The PArk AveNue Armory Park avEnuE at 67th StrEEt oPeNINg NIghT PrevIew Wednesday, november 2, 6:30 – 9:00 pm Preview tickets $75 (includes run-of-show pass) Show hourS thursday – Saturday 12 – 8:00 pm Sunday 12 – 6:00 pm admission $20 SATurDAy ProgrAmS 11:00 am Collecting Essentials: Finding Your Masterpiece

Richard Artschwager, “Abstraction,” 2004, acrylic and pastel on fiber panel on soundboard with artist’s frame, 67 x 49 1/2 in.

Courtesy of David Nolan Gallery, New York.

objects and showed himself ingenious with geometric forms, they always served less of an immediate purpose than to comment on themselves. Full of ideas, yes, but not nearly as cool as most conceptualists.

In some recent works here he returns to the region of his childhood, Las Cruces, N.M., with atmospheric landscapes that capture the openness and rawness of that part of the country. “Landscape with Rosettes” shows a yellow sun or moon hanging in the sky over the rust-brown earth, its surface dotted with green shapes arranged in an irregular formation. The circular arrangements of leaves seem out of place—growth from a richer, wetter climate.

Two yellow lines cut across a square of brown

2:00 pm Conversation with a Curator Faye hirsch, Senior Editor, art in america magazine with Christophe Cherix, the abby aldrich rockefeller Chief Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books, the Museum of Modern art eye Spy an activity for children at the Fair visit www.printfair.com for tickets Information tours & Program registration

ifpda printfair 2011

When artists enjoy long lives, their fans reap tremendous advantages. This thought came to mind when looking over Richard Artschwager’s new works at David Nolan Gallery. Born in 1923, he has never fit into any category for very long, passing through styles that superficially resembled pop, minimal and conceptual, all the while confounding critics who have tried to pigeonhole him.

A painter, sculptor, photographer and carpenter—he even made altars for ships in 1960—Artschwager’s consistent concern seems only to be investigating the illusions of perception. Though he did employ utilitarian

earth in the middle of overgrown vegetation in “Landscape with Median.” The sky fades to blue-green in the distance. Because the lines—the median—go nowhere and serve no purpose, stopping almost as soon as they start, they give the impression of a dead end or of a futile human intervention into the wild.

In older works from the ’70s, Artschwager uses charcoal pencil and pastel when draw-

ing on ivory laid Strathmore paper or paper handmade from crushed sugarcane pulp. By employing these textured surfaces, he gets the sculptural effect that he always seems to be after. Fittingly titled “Weave,” the drawings of crisscrossing gray and black lines look like window frames or even the bars of a cage.

They are reminiscent of Franz Kline’s blackand-white abstractions and are endowed with the same fierce, insistent angularity.

To give a sense of his range, the gallery also includes “Arch,” a silver-painted wooden sculpture from 2007, a dynamic totem. A

Presented by The International Fine Print Dealers Association Show managed by Sanford L. Smith & Associates Squeak Carnwath, Not Known, (Detail) 2011; Color aquatint etching, Edition of 35.

October 26, 2011 | CityArts 7

MUSEUMS

Bronx Museum: “Alexandre Arrechea: Orange Tree.” Ends Jan. 1, 2012. “Urban Archives: Emilio Sanchez in the Bronx.” Ends Jan. 1, 2012.

“Muntadas: Information >> Space >> Control.”

Ends Jan. 16, 2012. “Acconci Studio: LobbyFor-The-Time-Being.” Ongoing, 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx, bronxmuseum.org.

Out of the Past

The Morgan Library & Museum: “Ingres at the Morgan.” Ends Nov. 27. “David, Delacroix, & Revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre.”

Ends Dec. 31. “Treasures of Islamic Manuscript Painting from the Morgan.” Ends Jan. 29, 2012.

“Charles Dickens at 200.” Ends Feb. 12, 2012, 225 Madison Ave., themorgan.org.

Sekaer’s signs trace history at ICP

By Melissa Stern

El Museo del Barrio: “The (S) Files 2011.” Ends Jan. 8, 2012, 1230 5th Ave., elmuseo.org.

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National Academy Museum: “Will Barnet at 100.” Ends Dec. 31, 1083 5th Ave., nationalacademy.org.

he stunning new exhibition at The International Center of Photography forces you to slow down, ignore the hustle of the city outside, take a deep breath and dive into a world long gone.

Signs of Life: Photographs by Peter Sekaer presents the Danish-born photographer’s now obscure work chronicling America under the New Deal, portraying a land of poverty, segregation, hope and utter beauty. Like his better-known colleague Walker Evans, Sekaer traveled both the rural and urban roads of America for his photographic subjects. He created a poetic elegy to the period.

With an outsider’s objectivity, using his background in commercial art, Sekaer brings an elegant sense of design as well as a great love for signs and typography to his work. It struck me how many of these “sign” photos presage later 20th-century artists like Ed Ruscha and Barbara Kruger. Delightful calligraphic swirls spell out “Jones Barber Shop.”

A solid art deco font marches up a staircase labeled ”Colored.”

I think, however, that the curator has used the word “sign” in a broader context.

In Sekaer’s quiet and often empty urban landscapes, these signs, posters and bits of

Studio Museum: “The Bearden Project.” Opens Nov. 10, 144 W. 125th St., studiomuseum.org.

Wave Hill: “Sreshta Rit Premnath.” Ends Dec. 1. “Hive Culture: Captivated by the Honeybee.” Ends Dec. 1, W. 249th St. at Independence Ave., Bronx, wavehill.org.

Peter Sekaer, “Times Square, New York,” 1935, gelatin silver print. © Peter Sekaer Estate, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchased with funds from Robert Yellowlees. advertising are a reminder that these were once vibrant communities.

Sekaer’s portraits of people, though posed, capture a quiet sense of loss and despair. There are not a lot of smiles in these

Elements of Art Cezanne’s wine bottles (1 of 3)

By Phyllis Workman Towering above the other objects in Paul Cézanne’s “Still Life with Oranges and Apples” from 1895–1900 is a wine bottle.

There it stands to the left of the frame, dominating the display of comestibles and asserting a curious authority. It is a tribute to thirst amidst the spread of plenty.

Cézanne’s painting is one of the great tributes to sustenance and inspiration.

8 CityArts | October 26, 2011

I once bought a bottle of malbec just because it featured Cézanne’s painting on the cover. Although it was an Argentinian wine, as so many of the best malbecs are, it stimulated my memory of what malbec means and where it originates. The purple grape from the Bordeaux family began in French vineyards before being an Argentine varietal. Its purplish hue and inviting darkness are there to be seen in Cézanne’s cylindrical shaft.

The depiction of wine bottles in painting are signs of what an artist takes into

into the camera, refusing to give up or give in. Sekaer’s lush silver prints—an older, but arguably subtler photographic technology—is a reminder of just how much is lost in contemporary digital prints.

This is a powerful political exhibition. Its juxtaposition with a fluffy retrospective of photos from Harper’s Bazaar in ICP’s next room may be a sly comic statement about the medium’s diverse use. And as Occupy Wall Street marchers passed by the museum, I thought about how Sekaer’s photographs comment on the world of the haves versus the have nots from long ago.

photos, but their masterful composition and beauty dispel any sense of gloom. Most of the photos in the show were commissioned by the government to document the Great Depression. A stoic populace stares

Signs of Life: Photographs by Peter Sekaer Through Jan. 8, 2012, International Center of Photography, 1133 6th Ave., 212-857-0000, www.icp.org.

his life as part of daily habit and frequent pleasure. Cézanne respects its shape and importance as part of the geometric constants of his lifestyle—of our lifestyles, too.

An esteemed art critic paying tribute to Cézanne’s composition noted that the series of still lifes featuring wine gave consistency to Cézanne’s vision of the objects in his world. The wine bottle was noted as a formal theme, the chief whose shape was less complex than the apple and orange yet strong in the composition because it could not be withdrawn from it.

Cézanne, as always, was commenting on visual perception and analyzing the process of sight, recognition and appreciation, whether it was in his own painting

and sketches or even in the commonplace items of daily living. Turning fruit into wine is a scientific process as well as an artistic process with nearly Biblical reverence. Coming from Cézanne, it is a ponderable suggestion of life cycle—as is the image of fruit and wine.

The man-made object is, for Cézanne, as admirable as the natural fragrant orbs.

The 1895 wine bottle has been wonderfully described in art textbooks: “Its stem, off-axis to the right, shifts the whole away from exact alignment with the important point of meeting of two curves.” Cézanne understood that the vessel that gets people tipsy could also gives his painting balance.

CLASSICAL

Music & Opera

From Rosina to the Finland Station Singers, a composer and Sibelius

By Jay Nordlinger Since its debut in 2006, Bartlett Sher’s production of The Barber of Seville at the Metropolitan Opera has had a string of excellent Rosinas: Diana Damrau, Joyce DiDonato and Elina Garanca. They have all been different from one another, and they have all been sparkling. Add a fourth Rosina to the string: Isabel Leonard, the American mezzo-soprano. On a recent Friday night, she was a model of poise. You have heard “Una voce poco fa” with more razzle-dazzle.

But Leonard was the complete package Rosina: elegant, imperious, coy; a viper, a coquette and a treat.

Opera impresarios and audiences are lucky: In Isabel Leonard, they are getting one of the most beautiful women extant and a very smart and talented singing actress.

Maurizio Muraro was Dr. Bartolo, putting on a clinic in Italian diction. Rodion Pogossov, our Figaro, did not have diction—but he had a wonderful voice and a wonderful spirit. Paata Burchuladze boomed it out there gloriously as Don Basilio. He did not show real Rossini style, however.

Almaviva was sung by the Mexican tenor Javier Camarena: assured and relatively virile. He grew tired and ragged at the end, but he had turned in a satisfying performance.

Let me say that he is polite, too. This production has Almaviva enter through the opera house itself. Camarena brushed against my crossed leg, paused to whisper, “Excuse me,” then sang his opening lines.

Age does not wither The Barber of Seville, nor does custom stale this comic masterpiece, or just plain masterpiece. It is kissed with sunshine and genius, isn’t it?

TRUTH IN MUSIC Under the auspices of a concert series called Transit Circle, an evening of Michael Hersch’s music took place in Merkin Hall.

Hersch is an American composer born in 1971. He leads the composition department at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore. The opening piece on his New York program was After Hölderlin’s Hälfte des Lebens.

Hölderlin was a German poet who lived from 1770 (year of Beethoven’s birth!) to 1843. The composer, Hersch, often takes his inspiration from poets. He wrote his Hölderlin piece in 2000, and he wrote it

for clarinet and cello. But he “dually conceived it” for viola and cello, as he says, and he “committed that version to paper in 2002.” It was the viola-and-cello version we heard at Merkin Hall.

Hersch can do a lot with just two instruments—I mean, two instruments that do not include a piano. One of his major works is Last Autumn, originally written for French horn and cello, also available in a version for alto saxophone and cello.

Last Autumn is more than two and a half hours long.

The Hölderlin piece is about ten minutes, but it packs a serious punch in that period. Like many Hersch pieces, it is spare and intense. No note is wasted. Silences are plentiful and daring. The music is quiet, ominous, angry, anxious. So are any number of contemporary pieces. But Hersch seems to have something unusually important to say. There is not an ounce of pretense in his output. He gives the impression of pursuing the truth (no less).

The violist at Merkin Hall was Miranda Cuckson, founder of Transit Circle, and the cellist was Julia Bruskin. They played with the conscientiousness that the music before them deserved.

A TRIP TO FINLAND One of the very best performances in New York last season was that of the Elgar Violin Concerto by Nikolaj Znaider and the New York Philharmonic, under Sir Colin Davis. May I quote myself? “I thought Avery Fisher Hall might levitate.”

Znaider and Sir Colin partnered again in Avery Fisher Hall, this time with the London Symphony Orchestra. And this time their concerto was the Sibelius. The hall did not levitate.

It’s not that it was a bad performance.

Znaider did some admirable playing, and so did the LSO. The orchestra’s sound was magnificent. But the concerto did not unfold with the inevitability you want.

The first movement seemed to go from episode to episode. Moreover, there was more technical sloppiness than can be ignored: Znaider was often flat, and there was disunity between soloist and orchestra. The second movement—one of the most beautiful slow movements in all of music—was better than the first. And the third movement was okay. But this concerto of fire and ice never caught fire.

After intermission, Sir Colin led the LSO in a Sibelius symphony, the Second. I will

pay possibly the highest compliment: You could forget the playing, forget interpretation and simply listen to the music. Sir Colin gave you Sibelius almost unfiltered.

The Finale, marked Allegro moderato, was a little slow for my taste. Sir Colin emphasized the moderato. But the final pages brimmed with their extraordinary purposefulness.

As she was leaving, a woman said, “That was worth coming out on a rainy night for.” Absolutely.

Immanuel Lutheran Church: Gwendolyn Toth & Dongsok Shin perform works by Mozart & Clementi as part of ARTEK’s The Art of the Early Keyboard Series. Nov. 3, 122 E. 88th St., gemsny. org; 8, $25.

Mary Flagler Cary Hall at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music: New York Festival of Song presents Joseph Thalken, Sam Davis & Peter Foley playing their own original music, as the first part of the two-part series NYFOS Next.

Nov. 8, 450 W. 37th St., nyfos.net; 7, free.

Millenium Theatre: The Brooklyn Philharmonic, Children’s Theater Studio & others perform in an evening of Russian cartoon films with live music.

Nov. 3, 1029 Brighton Beach Ave., Brooklyn, bphil.org; 7:30, $15+.

enoteca & trattoria

In the heart of the Upper West Side ‘Cesca serves equal portions of elegance and relaxed ambiance. A “very fine, though unrelentingly rustic” authentic dining experience borne of its founders’ Italian heritage.

Executive Chef Kevin Garcia presents simple yet extraordinary fare and owner and Italian-wine expert Anthony Mazzola has put together an incomparable list of Italian wines.

164 West 75th St. at Amsterdam Avenue New York, NY 10023

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October 26, 2011 | CityArts 9

JAZZ

Watch the Throne Trumpet king Marsalis at 50

By Howard Mandel

W The Business of Fun in Zurich

By Penny Grey As one of the world’s busiest capitals of finance, Zurich is a city that tourists often miss.

Written off as a boring business city, Zurich is ignored as leisure travelers head straight for the Swiss Alps and the Lake District. But to bypass such a city is a mistake: As a lifestyle capital of the world, Zurich offers an unsurpassable combination of nature, culture and pleasure not to be missed.

American Airlines flies from JFK to Zurich daily, with Flight 64 leaving New York at 6:10 p.m., and arriving in Zurich the next morning at 7:55 a.m.

After arriving in the pristine Zurich International and traveling into the city on the impressive Swiss transit system—the only trains in the world guaranteed to run on time—why not start your morning with some local yoghurt and muesli, a Swiss invention?

After breakfast, take a stroll around Zurich’s Old Town and observe as past and present collide. Medieval and Renaissance architecture now house some of the most incredible shops in the world. Trend and tradition collide in the Old Town, with luxury Swiss brands like Bucherer and Beyer set against the backdrop of the double towers of Grossmunster (Great Minster), Zurich’s most famous landmark. On a walk, it’s impossible to miss the Peterskirche (Peter’s Church) with the largest clock face in Europe, and also the Fraumunster (Minister of Our Lady), which contains stained glass windows by both Chagall and Giacometti.

Due to Switzerland’s location as the intersection point of France, Italy and Germany, Zurich boasts a wide array of authentic French, Italian and German cuisine. So, for lunch, stop in at any one of the cozy restaurants on a quiet, cobbled side street for the fare of your choosing.

After lunch, make a visit to the Kunsthaus Zurich (Museum of Fine Art), which houses one of the most important modern art collections in Western Europe. Spanning both 19th and

10 CityArts | October 26, 2011

20th centuries, the Kunsthaus offers visitors the opportunity to see works from artists ranging from Munch, Picasso and Van Gogh to more recent artists like Twombly, Rothko and Bacon.

For the next several months, the Kunsthaus is hosting an exclusive premiere of the Nahmad family’s private collection of significant works

by Matisse, Kandinsky, Monet, Picasso and Miro, and offering excellent Hotel+Museum package deals to boot. This alone is worth a visit to Zurich.

We also recommend you experience the natural world of Zurich. While “outdoors” and “major city” rarely seem to make it into the same sentence nowadays, Zurich is one of the rare cities of the world in which adventure travel is possible in an afternoon.

Take the 10-minute train ride to Uetliberg, and enjoy a brief but invigorating hike to the top of the 3,000-foot summit at the edge of the city and experience a panoramic view of the city, Lake Zurich and the famous Alps.

Or join a boat tour on Lake Zurich itself for a different perspective on the city. And in the summer months, enjoy free bicycle rentals around Zurich.

An evening in Zurich brings an abundance of possibility. Whether it’s a visit to the famous Zurich Opera House for a swelling spectacle of culture, or a journey to one of the popular nightclubs in the Old Town, or even a nighttime trolley ride along the lake, it will shed new light on the city after dark. And no robust day in Zurich is complete without a traditional Swiss dinner to ensure a good night’s sleep.

Step into a “Swiss House” style restaurant and watch as a “Swiss Miss” prepares rich fondue, potato rosti (like hash browns) and Zurcher Geschnetzeltes, the local Zurich variation of wiener schnitzel.

After dinner, step into the night and enjoy the fresh mountain air, as clean as you will find in any major city of the world, and prepare for another day in Switzerland’s unexplored gem of a city.

ynton Marsalis is indisputably the reigning king of jazz. Trumpeter, composer, orchestra leader, artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center, NEA Jazz Master, visitor to the White House and international ambassador of American music, the king celebrated his 50th birthday Oct. 18.

The event was heralded by an hour-long PBS broadcast of a two-hour concert (streamed live in its entirety and available for free viewing at PBS.org) at the Rose Theater in the fabulous JALC facilities Marsalis had designed to jazz specifications and built on the fifth floor of the Time Warner Center, which opened in 2004. As Movado, the watchmakers Marsalis endorses, noted in its half-page New York Times ad celebrating his half-century, he has sold 7 million records and won nine Grammys and the Pulitzer Prize. He’s been on TV, written books and lectured at Harvard. He looks fit, speaks with eloquence and charming modesty and can play up a storm.

Marsalis was coronated more than 25 years ago upon winning Grammys for both jazz and classical recordings in 1984, something no one had done before. His administration has a conservative aesthetic—he has cast himself in the lineage of Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington, exemplary models from the past century. Yet, he has shouldered responsibilities no previous jazzer ever faced.

The king came up at a cultural turning point, when the opposing musical camps of disco and punk rock gave way to rap and pop as mostly easy-listening pap. Back then, the frontlines of jazz were in commercial disarray, with stillgreat veterans like Art Blakey (one of his mentors) and Miles Davis (whom Marsalis took as the reigning king to oust) in their last years.

Record companies were mainly eager to profit from reissues of classic records in the spanking new format, the CD. However, Columbia Records got behind the young prince, as did Lincoln Center. The rest is history.

Marsalis was and has remained dismissive of electric jazz, funk and much of the avantgarde, rallying his forces around the flag of swing, blues and ballads. A proud scion of New Orleans, he positioned himself as a race man for serious strivers at a time when more black Americans were becoming prominent in the bourgeoisie. His attitudes were attractive as was his tailored style, especially as his virtuosity supported his claims.

Virtuosity has been a keystone of Mar-

salis’ career, matched by discipline and ambition. Recording prodigiously, touring nonstop with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, collaborating with everyone from Peter Martins to Eric Clapton, actively promoting the revival of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and mentoring a generation of youngsters who’ve risen through the jazz ranks, the king has labored steadily, with only a brief break in 2006 to recover from laser surgery on his lip.

Putting aside classical repertoire, he has demonstrated an instrumental mastery across the range of jazz, credibly addressing works by Jelly Roll Morton, John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman and in bebop, western swing and Latin jazz.

Marsalis is a brilliant trumpeter, always impassioned and capable of stunning nuance. During his broadcast birthday performance he was omnipresent and omnipotent, emerging from his big band with plunger mute in hand for a horn solo employing an early-jazz vocabulary of growls and smooches. He presented sections from his major works Blood on the Fields, All Rise and Abyssinian 200, stronger for being excerpted from lengthy scores—they can be ponderous when offered up whole. He generously featured loyal members of his orchestra, as well as singer Gregory Porter, fiddler Mark O’Connor, tap dancer Jared Grimes and Damien Sneed’s Chorale Le Chateau. Also featured was Ghanian drummer Yacub Addy with his ensemble Odadaa! who provided an authentically African-derived “ring shout” and upbeat finale, during which the entire cast second-lined into the wings.

Most tellingly, Marsalis dueted with pianist Marcus Roberts, his longtime confederate, jamming on “Delfeayo’s Dilemma” like jazz has no bounds—which his hasn’t.

After working up a sweat, Marsalis pshawed it, commenting that they’d played like that when they were young but had since decided jazz needs more melody. Wait—there was melody, engagement and excitement in the unknown in what the two men did. It was nothing to be ashamed of, to fancy up or trim for some protocol of propriety. And it was hot, which his formal works aren’t.

That Marsalis has it in him to blow like that makes me ask if the man needs a holiday.

Would the king like a holiday? Does he want to be free? If so, he should be! Do as you will, Wynton, you rule jazz, not a castle. And live long that way, king.

jazzmandel@gmail.com

THEATER

Belief with Wings King bio confounds Broadway

By Armond White

A

line from Angels in America would fit perfectly into Katori Hall’s Martin Luther King Jr. biography The Mountaintop, now on Broadway. In Angels, Tony Kushner’s deus ex machina proclaimed: “American prophet, tonight you become American eye that pierceth dark, American heart hot full for truth.”

As the principal figure of the American mid-20th century Civil Rights Movement, King’s myth makes him a prophet for the ideals and promises that America holds, yet troublingly withholds from its citizens. Hall dramatizes King as a weary, doomed, all-toohuman political leader and insists on both the mortal and immortal sides of his legacy.

The Mountaintop shows King (played

by Samuel L. Jackson) in his final moment of despair on April 3, 1968, in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the night before he was assassinated there. Jackson portrays a man facing his doubts and fears. “Fear is my companion,” he tells the chattering motel maid who delivers to him coffee, cigarettes and a little flirtation. The maid, Camae (Angela Bassett), is both a reminder of the commonweal and of his impending mortality.

Now that the theater press has held forth, mostly negatively, on The Mountaintop, it won’t spoil the play to admit its metaphysical aspects. This is necessary in order to understand Hall’s daring. She connects conventional wisdom about King as a liberal monument to both posthumous skepticism and the broad vision of Kushner’s 1990s landmark (“A Gay Fantasia on National Themes”), which supposedly enlightened modern American theater.

Hall follows Kushner’s quasi-theological, quasi-philosophical dramaturgy. The Mountaintop applies Kushner’s unexpected combination of religion and politics to a black American subject. Critics who don’t recognize this mix of down-home dialectic and political aspiration as an authentic Southern fusion—perfectly befitting a subject like King and the import of the Civil Rights Movement—reveal a hardened secularization of contemporary culture. They also reveal how hollow most King celebrations have become.

The Mountaintop’s suggestion of King’s spiritual life balances myth with recent

feet-of-clay revisionism. This King drinks, smokes, cusses and has a libido to which Camae appeals (“You smoke to feel sexy”).

Hall’s vernacular makes the interaction between King and Camae an enjoyable contrivance, reaching a peak when Camae shows King (to whom she refers in Southern dialect as “Doctuh Kang”) her own oratory gifts. She gets carried away by the anger that King always suppressed, yet he recognizes its truth—especially through Camae’s hilarious vulgarity. This common touch keeps the play companionable, even though it prevents critics from using it as a platform for their own condescending selfrighteousness.

The middle class likes to hold historical figures to their own measure—it’s a form of gatekeeping (which may relate to why the King memorial in D.C. oddly suggests egress more than progress). Critics who don’t accept Hall’s concept also seem resistant to the ways black people may differently perceive politics, society and heroism.

The Mountaintop is at its best anti-elitist, if not downright populist.

This entreaty begins with casting movie stars Jackson and Bassett. Those gospel preacher rhythms and sacrilegious tones that Jackson disgraced in his Pulp Fiction hitman’s oration get turned around and redeemed by his mellow performance.

Against the odds, SamJack disappears and Jackson, the serious actor who plied his craft at the now forgotten but legendary Negro Ensemble Company, proves subtler and more humane than ever.

Responding to the challenge of portraying King, Jackson plays out the complex re-evaluation of history and self that are part of the current King rethink. Trashy as Jackson’s film career has been (Snakes on a Plane and Black Snake Moan—his snake diptych), he finds the unsalacious essence in Hall’s demystifying characterization.

And Bassett’s archetypal Woman/Sister/ Angel matches him.

Avoiding false piety, Hall’s humor and drama attempt revelation, prophecy, dream and hallucination. Director Kenny Leon rises above his usual mundane approach, starting with a Public Enemy-style aural montage and climaxing with a tour de force visual montage, pouring forth the cornucopia of cultural moments that the Civil Rights Movement made possible.

Hall’s theatrical rhetoric should have

Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Basset in The Mountaintop made its Angels connection axiomatic.

Kushner’s line “An angel is a belief with wings and arms that can carry you. It’s not to be afraid of, and if it can’t hold you up, seek for something new” gives a fitting con-

text for King’s gospel-inspired pragmatism.

The Mountaintop’s two-sided vision of glory (“You won’t feel the hurt, the world will”) equals anything Kushner wrote. It calls for a devout audience.

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October 26, 2011 | CityArts 11

Monuments to King: Art Meets Politics

I Have a Nightmare

By Gregory Solman

T

he first, unavoidable observation of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial statue compels its rejection as dishonest art: Irrespective of any artistic aim—anywhere along the spectrum from verism to modern abstraction—the resulting work doesn’t represent the man in either body or spirit, neither the color of his skin nor the content of his character.

The statue, by People’s Republic of China sculptor Lei Yixin, fails on each of the criteria critic Robert Hughes called “the often derided ‘phallic’ virtues of ambitious art.” Its limited emotional range suggests anything but nonviolent defiance. The figure glowers with arms crossed, gripping a clutch of paper, hands splayed with veins prominent, an angry lawgiver. Orator or New World Orderer? Lacking even the kinetic dimension of the better examples of agitprop, absent what Hughes might call formal vitality or material energy, it hulks inertly.

Its historical ambition is a political fabrication of socialist realism in the Soviet style; think of the much more arresting image of Stalin emerging with futurist movement from a stone row of soldiers in the statue in Prague destroyed in 1962—and remember with sadness the shamed Czech artist who committed suicide before its unveiling.

The semi bas-relief of the figure rising out of the stone as an earthen vessel—which at least avoids the distraction of shoes and cuffs added to those exaggerated trouser creases, buttons and lapels—creates a sense of the Golem-esque. King has neither a humble nor a kind, wise or brave visage; even Lei’s 2008 russet scale model was more recognizably the man and unavoidably more beloved, regardless of expression.

A triangular bottom-heaviness recedes toward the top, reminiscent of looming fascist art. As one anonymous critic of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts astutely observed, it “recalls a genre of political sculpture that has recently been pulled down in other countries.”

12 CityArts | October 26, 2011

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Kezee

Subliminal power of suggestion—as well as the militant mask and squinty eyes—surely nicknames this man Mao-Tse Luther King.

Hewn of off-white Chinese granite—a dubious choice—the artist builds scant visual contrast between figure and ground, which, according to its misbegotten title (the only reference to King’s “I Have a Dream” speech) suggests the “Stone of Hope” arising from the “Mountain of Despair.” As Maya Angelou complained, though she herself was on the committee that bears responsi-

bility for the tendentious quote selections, the mashup inscription, “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness” represents the polar opposite of what King said (“If you want to say I was a drum major, say I was a drum major for justice…”).

L

ikewise, the wrongheaded illiteralism that fashions King from the stone of hope ignores Christian context and betrays King’s plain meaning: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted and

every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain and the crooked places will be made straight; ‘and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.’ This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith, we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”

What caused King himself to despair was

Virtual Deity

By Maureen Mullarkey

“T

he heretofore is just as important as the hereafter, ” wrote Michel Tournier, “especially as it probably holds the key to it.” The future of American race relations—our communal hereafter—has a large stake in the character of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. Standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, King gave one of the most commanding political speeches of 20th-century America. “I Have a Dream,” delivered in the cadences of a Baptist sermon, stirred the collective conscience of a people. A compelling orator, King prompted the nation to consummate its own founding ideals and abolish the scandal of racial division. He gave soaring voice to the aspirations of Black Americans and articulated the ethos of his times. Without a doubt, King is owed a memorial in the company of statesmen.

But whether he—and we—deserve this particular one is less clear.

The byways and limited victories of historical reality are too many and too intricate for formal commemoration. This 4-acre memorial on the National Mall enshrines King’s iconic status in the American imagination and communal memory.

In doing so, it necessarily erases the continuum of which he was part. Granted, monumental sculpture is intended to transpose into image those myths chosen to become artifacts of memory—that is its public function. Still, the grandiose aura of sanctity that informs the King memorial tilts toward idolatry. It carries a certain

his relentless secularization and buttonholing by American media. He bemoaned to his friends the pattern that when he turned from the politics of racial equality to its font—its inextricable confluence with Christian duty and mission, indeed any mention of God— the cameras stopped rolling and the press couldn’t pack up fast enough.

The commemoration bears no sense of the Reverend King, the ordained Baptist minister, and but for King’s oblique references to sacred scripture, not a single men-

falsity, a hint of bathos, that speaks more poignantly of our own cultural moment than of his.

The historic Civil Rights Movement was larger than even its most charismatic prolocutor. It was the culmination of a dynamic, evolving odyssey with roots reaching past the abolitionists, past the agony of Gettysburg, the 13th Amendment and the first (ineffectual) Civil Rights Act of 1875. It encompasses the years of the Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois. It stretches back to 1794 and the first congressional act against the slave trade.

If the movement in its modern phase can

biracial engagement. The civil rights revolution succeeded because the justice of it was embraced by the nation at large. The moral courage of black-led marches, boycotts and sit-ins struck an answering chord in the white majority. Whites, too, stood at stations along the bloody via crucis traveled by black Americans.

What the memorial’s fundraisers invoke as “Dr. King’s spiritual presence” was hardly his alone. It was his inheritance from evangelical Protestantism, the spirit that fueled American abolitionist revulsion against the moral schism at the heart of a slave-owning culture. King was the William Lloyd Garrison for the Jim Crow era. It detracts nothing from King’s achievement to acknowledge his place in a redemptive chain of persons and events. Quite the contrary, the survival of our common cultural identity requires it. Yet here among the cherry blossoms of the Tidal Basin, King

King’s obdurate stance—arms crossed, face as impassive as a Stalin-era Buddha—bespeaks the aesthetic of a sculptor on stipend from the Chinese government for a succession of public monuments, including several of the murderous Mao. be plausibly fixed in any specific moment or event, it would reside in Harry Truman’s 1948 Executive Order 9981, desegregating the military. Place another mark on the timeline six years later: In 1954, the Supreme Court put paid to de jure segregation in education and the assumption of separate but equal.

The movement was an accelerating progression in which countless names participated and made salient contributions.

It suffered martyrs, Medgar Evers and King among them. The 1964 killing of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner—two young black men and one white man—was emblematic of its

is solemnized in architectural terms that suggest a lone giant of biblical proportions: Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt.

Visitors wander an inscription wall carrying quotations from King’s speeches and sermons. Chosen to confirm him as a timeless spokesman for the Everyman, the selections mute his specificity. There are those hazy, universalist pieties (e.g. an injunction to “develop an overriding loyalty to mankind as a whole”) that can flatter any utopian purpose, fair or foul.

Few testify to the quintessential American quality of King’s mission, grounded in the American experience and scriptural trust in the sanctity of the individual.

tion of God or confession of faith is in any of the 10 inscriptions. Not a single quote represents King’s nonviolence, as in this one of countless examples, “I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.”

Yet the perpetrators of this re-figuration fraud find room for King quotes against the Vietnam War—why not just face him toward The Wall?—and for ecumenism, three

square meals for all and developing a “world perspective” (when, even in King’s day, the United States had nothing to learn about racial justice from any nation on earth).

Those quotes cannot be blamed on Lei—a frequent sculptor of Mao—however ill-advised was his chisel for hire. Associating King by commissioned artist to a murderer of 50 to 70 million souls is analogous to paying Leni Riefenstahl for a film tribute to Father Kolbe. In Lei’s work is, to invert King’s admonition, the presence of

The bedrock from which King emerged was the Christian faith in its American Protestant manifestation. “The Lord is my Rock, my fortress and my deliverer,” quoth the psalmist. But here King himself is the Rock: the mawkishly named “Stone of Hope,” a 30-foot granite monolith that suggests a one-man Mount Rushmore.

The $120 million colossus, quarried and carved in the People’s Republic of China, stands 11 feet higher than Daniel Chester French’s figure of Lincoln, but with none of its humanity. King’s obdurate stance—arms crossed, face as impassive as a Stalin-era Buddha—bespeaks the aesthetic of a sculptor on stipend from the Chinese government for a succession of public monuments, including several of the murderous Mao. Now, the triumphal banality of socialist realism rises across the Potomac from the symbolic neoclassicism of the Jefferson Memorial. The disjunction in sensibility is jarring.

Visitors approach the Stone of Hope through a breach in the “Mountain of Despair.” A pair of two massive boulders mirroring each other, the Mountain pretends to part like the Red Sea. Pulled from King’s own words, its name leans on John Bunyan’s allegorical slough of despond or hill of difficulty—a reminder that Pilgrim’s Progress, in the full phrasing of its title, was also “delivered under the similitude of a dream.” Visually, however, the tripartite monument best resembles a prop from Return of the Jedi. We can only wonder why the sculpture commission was not awarded on the basis of an audition, as was the landscape design. Lei Yixin was simply called, like an apostle, to the job.

In sum, the memorial disconcerts. The monument itself is a brutish incongruity in a graceful setting. More significantly, inflated focus on a virtually deified figure impoverishes our understanding of America’s pilgrimage toward witness, in fullness and truth, to the proposition that all men are created equal.

tension and the absence of justice.

Finally, the work intentionally disassociates King from the King of Kings and the Prince of Peace. So, to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, this disturbing monstrosity should be returned to its place of origin as a gift to China, a land of unceasing persecution of ministers and priests who languish in jail this very day for the crime of preaching the risen Christ. They need to be reminded of the Reverend King in any way, shape or form.

October 26, 2011 | CityArts 13

Monuments to King: Art Meets Politics

Stone Cold

By Emma Lockridge The recently dedicated Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial statue by sculptor Lei Yixin lacks the essence of the beloved civil rights leader’s spirituality and humanity. The People’s Republic of China artist’s rendering channels the Cold War instead of a non-violent advocate for peace. In contrast, a Joe Louis sculpture of that muscular arm that symbolically knocked out Nazi superiority packs a huge emotional punch and embodies the spirit of the Brown Bomber.

What went wrong?

Body language expert Patti Wood, called the Babe Ruth of her profession, weighs in. “Dr. King looks trapped on that monument. He pushed for peace but he’s pulled back into the stone. He was a person who brought people up, and the statue’s downward gaze speaks to feeling low, depressed or submissive. His right arm is covering Photo courtesy of USDA and protecting his other hand and his arms are covering his stomach. That indicates suppressing fear and anger. His downward cast makes him look angry—and that’s not how we remember him.”

For comparison, Wood contrasts the King sculpture to the controversial 1986 monument to Louis sculpted by Robert Graham located in downtown Detroit.

Detractors have argued that the sculpture depicting Louis’ arm in a punching gesture is a black power fist, which offends some people. Wood offers a different interpretation. “The Joe Louis sculpture has a positive energy because it is positioned coming toward you. It exudes power, life and emotion, although it also has a level of aggression.

But I feel something when I see it, unlike my response to the King sculpture.”

Thankfully, the backers of the King

14 CityArts | October 26, 2011

memorial are open to feedback and plan to correct a paraphrased quote that makes King look like an “arrogant twit” in Maya Angelou’s estimation. Hopefully other enhancements will follow, like adding the phrase “I have a dream” somewhere on the memorial’s 4.3-acre site. For children, the quote-laden monument could use mosaics illustrating major milestones of the Civil Rights Era, like the four Birmingham girls lost in the church bombing. And it would be nice to see a modification of that stone attached to King that constrains and overpowers him.

The erection of the King memorial is a magnificent feat, thanks to King’s

Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity brothers and countless supporters. The Alphas succeeded in ushering in the memorial site along the Tidal Basin at a price tag of $120 million, with $6 million still to be raised.

I do ponder if King would have preferred giving to the living legacy instead of spending millions on a memorial to himself—after all, he famously announced that he would ply his Nobel Peace Prize money back into the Civil Rights Movement. That makes me question if he would have targeted the monument’s millions to helping those struggling among us and educating our youth, instead of sinking it into tons of stone.

Emma Lockridge is a former NBC News writer. Based in Detroit, she is writing a children’s creativity book.

Crowd Pleaser

By John Lingan

B

y midafternoon on Oct. 15, the crowd around the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial was reaching its height.

The sun was aloft, the air was chilled just so and the terrace was filling up with union members—the memorial, on the northern edge of the Tidal Basin, was the symbolically appropriate finish line of the Al Sharpton-led March for Jobs and Justice that had started nearby in the shadow of the Washington Monument.

I circled the “Stone of Hope” portion, which depicts King standing tall and semi-emergent from a mountainside, and staked out a spot to his left. The crowd was overwhelmingly black and largely clad in matching clothes (I stand in awe of SEIU 1199’s charter bus and T-shirt budget). I wanted to eavesdrop on the conversations that people were having in view of the quote that some of the monument’s many critics, notably Maya Angelou, have denounced: “I was a drum major for justice, peace and righteousness”— controversial because sculptor Lei Yixin excised King’s opening caveat, “If you want to say I was a drum major…” and condensed his characteristically anaphoric language into a single line.

The denunciation, however valid, embodies the no-win situation in which this memorial has been mired since its inception. Every decision about the statue—from the nationality of its lead artist to the selections for the Inscription Wall, has pissed somebody off—and the ironic, unavoidable outcome is that it feels nearly desperate to avoid potential controversy. The chosen quotes are pulled judiciously from every portion of King’s varied career, casting his essential message in the broadest terms possible. It’s inspiring, until you think about what’s missing.

You will find many stirring calls for equality and brotherhood on the two walls that flank the 30-foot granite statue of King and the “Mountain of Despair” that he has metaphorically moved out of, but you will not find the word “black.” Perhaps this makes the monument more “universal,” but it’s still absurd.

King’s causes—opposition to war, support for workers, his “overriding loyalty to mankind”— transcend ethnicity, but they were all informed by his experience as a Black American at a spe-

cific time in the country’s history. It should not be controversial to say as much.

That’s my analytic response: The memorial honors the man but entombs him in his own saintliness, representing him as a nearly elemental force standing broad-shouldered, pensive and alone. The reality, almost too obvious to bring up, is that King was inspirational precisely because he emerged not from stone but from the pulpit, and made his lasting contributions to humanity while standing literally and figuratively alongside countless others at street- and eye-level.

But a monument doesn’t exist for analysis alone, it exists to attract people and incite reflection. And however implicit King’s racial legacy remains in the stone itself, it was fully explicit that mid-October day, when Angelou’s least favorite quote was the backdrop for more group photos than any other portion of the memorial. Group after group of young people posed together under this chiseled paraphrase while dozens of older ones walked around clutching signs and newly bought posters that depicted King next to President Barack Obama in sepia tones.

When the president spoke the next day at the rescheduled dedication ceremony, he used the word “black” twice and “African Americans” once and spoke in the fiery manner he only employs in front of his supporters. Like the memorial, Obama has been attacked from all sides—he’s managed to be suspiciously foreign to his crudest opponents and insufficiently black to Cornel West. But Obama’s ascendancy and the King memorial are both recent, vindicating victories in a centuries-long struggle for civil rights, no less important for being imperfect.

“Unlike white progressives,” Ishmael Reed wrote in the New York Times last year, “blacks and Latinos are not used to getting it all.”

Two young girls caught my eye as they posed in front of the massive stone King.

They wore the same beaming smiles and the same buttons on their jackets: “I [heart] BEING BLACK.” As they unlocked arms and went to approve their dad’s photo, their mother remained fixed on the drum major inscription. She turned around in a reverie and said triumphantly to her daughters, “That’s what’s up.”

Those buttons, that photograph, that family’s pride and awe—these are the true monuments to King. A better memorial would reflect that reality, but this one, it appears, will nevertheless provide a worthy venue for it.

FILM

Bedtime for Gonzo DEPP’S DULL DiARy REBELLiON

BY ARMOND WHITE

J

ohnny Depp’s Hunter S. Thompson persona is no different from his pirate Jack Sparrow—another intoxicated hipster whose antisocial bravado is backed by multimillion-dollar Hollywood privilege.

Depp is so infatuated with Thompson’s hipster cool that his new production of The Rum Diary (based on Thompson’s early, long unpublished novel about his 1960 penance as a reporter in Puerto Rico) marks his second turn portraying the late writer.

After the 1998 film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Depp doesn’t get any deeper into Thompson. The Rum Diary simply extends the self-aggrandizing. For Depp, Thompson represents an inside outsider, woozily pontificating on crazed subcultures with a totally solipsistic sense of righteousness. As journalist Paul Kemp, Depp portrays a younger version of Thompson’s soused cynic. Set in 1960 as if it was the last days of innocence, The Rum Diary follows Kemp/Thompson’s awakening to the corruption of American capitalism among real estate developers and journalists. It suits the era without illuminating it.

The best that can be said for The Rum Diary is that it’s less offensive than George Clooney-club smugness. Thompson’s journalist’s instinct (from before the term journalism meant TV gadabout) seeks oddball

characters rather than social targets.

Kemp’s ragtag colleagues Sala (Michael Rispoli) and Moberg (Giovanni Ribisi) tolerate their cynicism with booze and drugs; it helps them cope with being in the same boat as their exploitative boss Lotterman (Richard Jenkins) and the object of their juvenile disdain, rich, WASPy developer Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart). It is Sanderson who advises, “Nobody wants to rock the boat, they want to climb aboard”—a clearer social observation than the Clooney club admits, yet it’s just slipped into The Rum Diary as if hazily recalled.

This complacent take on Thompson seems disconnected from the ethics at the base of his sozzled journalism. Kemp’s easy temptation—especially by Sanderson’s hot babe Chenault (Amber Heard, or Jennifer Connelly 2.0)—offers the same useless, vicarious escapism as other bad Depp movies, particularly the nostalgic decadence of Blow.

Director-screenwriter Bruce Robinson doesn’t provide journalistic insight but the opposite: subcult shortsightedness. Best known for the ’80s Brit comedy Withnail and I, Robinson specializes in dissipation.

But his dry Brit wit is dusty, not flamboyant like Terry Gilliam’s Fear and Loathing, and almost as inert as Art Linson’s film of Thompson’s Where the Buffalo Roam. Robinson’s mix of Latino sensuality and gringo obnoxiousness doesn’t sizzle or delight, unlike the pointed introductory scenes of Richard Lester’s 1979 Cuba.

Johnny Depp in The Rum Diary The worst that can be said for The Rum Diary is that it misses the point of Thompson’s naïve idealism. This was his version of Nathanael West’s Miss Lonelyhearts, exposing journalism to expose human frailty, but Robinson’s style lacks the conviction to be either appalled or scolding.

The Rum Diary is not gonzo filmmaking but its opposite; Robinson approaches Thompson’s personal criticism of Third

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World exploitation and middle-class selfexploitation through dully conventional means. He poorly stages a chase scene, and a slo-mo drug experience is as attenuated as the sober scenes. This leaves Depp doing vain heroics: “I put the bastards of the world on notice!” Does he mean the millions who flock to his Pirates films or the millionaires who finance them and thus commercialize rebellion?

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Tom Kotik Ampeg, 2011 MDF, paint, felt 60” x 26” x 3”

54 Orchard Street New York NY 10002 (212) 410-6120 • lesley@lesleyheller.com

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October 26, 2011 | CityArts 15

DANCE

Coming Attractions A look at what’s to come in dance

By Joel Lobenthal

“I

was thinking The Mists of Avalon, but there was a couple necking in my sightlines and a speedboat and I was like, no, this isn’t The Mists of Avalon!” So said a dancer overheard at

Wave Hill, which overlooks the Hudson River in Riverdale, on a July night a decade ago, when I attended a memorable dance performance there. The performance consisted of four pieces performed in different areas of the 19th-century estate turned public park and botanical showcase.

This Saturday, Oct. 29, at Wave Hill, the venue is also “on the grounds” starting at 3 p.m. Choreographer Merián Soto was

Bard Graduate Center Gallery presents

Hats: An Anthology by Stephen Jones in the Main Gallery through April 14, 2012

American Christmas Cards, 1900–1960 in the Focus Gallery through December 31, 2011

Hats: A Field Guide Gallery Talk with milliner Melinda Wax Thursday, November 10, 6 pm

Hats-in-Progress: A Study Day with milliners Gretchen Fenston and Rodney Keenan Friday, November 11, 10 am–4:30 pm

The Surrealist Hat

Lecture by fashion curator Dilys Blum Thursday, November 17, 6 pm

Women Designers and Greeting Cards of the Arts and Crafts Movement

Lecture by historian Anne Stewart O’Donnell Thursday, December 1, 6 pm

For complete information and tickets please visit bgc.bard.edu or e-mail programs@bgc.bard.edu Gallery Hours Tuesday through Sunday from 11 am–5 pm Thursday from 11 am–8 pm The Main Gallery and Focus Gallery are both located at 18 West 86th Street, between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue, in New York City.

bgc.bard.edu

16 CityArts | October 26, 2011

“With Every Christmas Card I Write” Concert of American Holiday Songs, 1900–1960

with Robert Osborne, Katie Geissinger, and Richard Gordon Sunday, December 11, 2 pm

The Hatmaker’s Muse: A Conversation with New York Milliners

Lola Ehrlich, Albertus Swanepoel, and Patricia Underwood.

Moderated by costume and textiles curator Phyllis Magidson Thursday, December 15, 6 pm Stephen Jones for Christian Dior Haute Couture. ‘Olga Sherer inspirée par Gruau’ Hat. Autumn/ Winter 2007/2008. ©Christopher Moore/ Catwalking.

awarded a one-year residency to create a site-specific project there, Branch Dances, which will play out in four outdoor performances, one per season. Saturday is the initial installment, using four dancers and an acoustic musician. (Performances are free with admission to the grounds.)

What makes a performance at Wave Hill so memorable is the way the choreography on display collaborates with the suggestion of movement created by the contours of the undulating landscape.

Sitting in a seat positioned halfway down a slope that long-ago July, I sensed the dancers becoming alter egos, answering the vicarious call of wish fulfillment.

Watching three women arch, tilt and roll down the hill, wouldn’t we spectators at that moment have liked to do so ourselves? One is continuously confronted by riddles of distance, perspective and spatial continuity across a landscape that affords both episodic and broad-ranged vistas. Everything, from the topography to architectural features on the grounds, becomes part of the theatrical machinery.

By contrast, Robert Wilson’s staging of The Threepenny Opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music earlier this month spoke most eloquently when he launched the performers in a frontal assault, standing straight, facing us down, as it were, and giving us an earful. It suited the semididactic nature of the work and its heavily cabaret-influenced score. Going eyebrowto-eyebrow was a preferred mode of address of Bertolt Brecht, Threepenny’s German author, who championed a “theater of alienation” that dissolved illusionist barriers.

Choreographer and theatrical auteur William Forsythe is American but has been based in Europe for years, where he has perpetuated and wrung changes to this spirit of deconstructed illusionism.

At BAM Oct. 26–29, the 18 dancers of The Forsythe Company will present the New York premiere of Forsythe’s I don’t believe in outer space. First performed in Frankfurt in 2008, it was described in London reviews earlier this year as something of a three-ring circus of life in its infinite variety, as recollected by a tranquil protagonist forced to a perhaps valedictory retrospective.

Chris Ferris & Dancers: The company presents “Continental Drift” with 5 dances, including “Clearing,” which incorporates hanging, swinging sculptures. Nov. 4 & 5, Center for Performance Research, 361 Manhattan Ave., Brooklyn, chrisferrisdance.com; 8, $15.

Dušan Týnek Dance Theatre: The Czechinfluenced company performs new works & pieces from their repertoire, & teams up with postclassical string quartet ETHEL. Oct. 27–29 & Nov. 3–5, Tribeca PAC, 199 Chambers St., tribecapac.org; 7:30, $25.

Wave Rising Series: 24 dance companies perform new & established works 3 times each during this 3-week festival. Ends Nov. 6, WHITE WAVE John Ryan Theater, 25 Jay St., Brooklyn, whitewavedance.com; $20.

Noon is a nice and relatively novel time for a performance and it’s a time slot now regularly programmed by the 92nd Street Y. On Oct. 28, a free performance pays tribute to ballet dancer Janet Collins, the first African American to dance for the Metropolitan Opera. She was 34 when she debuted there in Aida on Nov. 13, 1951, the opening night of the season. The Y concert will include two new works created especially as homage to Collins, who died in 2003. Yaël Lewin will read from her new biography of Collins, Night Dancer, and show some performance footage.

A panel discussion with interesting and distinguished contemporaries will follow.

Don’t make too much noise in your seat or you’ll become the orchestra that’s not supposed to be there as you watch Necessary Weather, a 1994 collaboration without music between dancer Dana Reitz and lighting designer Jennifer Tipton. Danced

by Weitz and Sara Rudner, it is revived Oct. 27–29 at the Baryshnikov Arts Center as part of Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival. I saw it performed at Jacob’s Pillow in 1997, when Rudner couldn’t dance and it turned into a solo. But it’s not really a solo, since the lighting here is made collaborative by virtue of the dancers’ interaction with it.

Obviously, there’s room for extemporaneous adjustment in this choreography.

Both Rudner and Weitz are acclaimed modern dancers now in their sixties, and the ways in which performers of this age conserve/expend their energy becomes a kinetic text of its own.

Nothing could be farther from Wave Hill here—or could it? Distilled in the graphic/ kinetic forces at work in the black box performance space at BAC is the same drama of the ways of seeing, the drama of the ever-shifting signposts to perspective.

Read more by Joel Lobenthal at Lobenthal.com.

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Kissing the Air

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As if this were not demanding enough, Streb is also featuring the spellbinding

By Valerie Gladstone Human Fountain, which drew crowds last summer at the World Financial Cenlizabeth Streb’s dancers jump, ter. Inspired by the Bellagio Fountains in bounce, climb, spin and fly, making Las Vegas, the piece consists of 20 dancdownhill racing, hang-gliding and ers gushing like water from a three-story Himalayan mountain climbing look like honeycomb structure to the resounding child’s play. Over the past 25 years, the chords of the fourth movement of Mozart’s choreographer has often presented her Symphony #36.

One by one, two by two and finally all dazzling works in conventional theaters, but they’ve always shone brightest in big together the handsome young men and spaces and out of doors. Now she brings women, who hail from all over the world, several new gripping, gorgeous pieces to throw themselves off the apparatus onto the vast Park Avenue Armory, Dec. 14-22, thick mats. Sometimes they fall like logs ready to give the seasonal Nutcrackers a while other times, with their arms outrun—or leap—for their money with her stretched, they fly to the ground with the grace of birds. Though aptly titled show Kiss onlookers were renthe Air! One by one, two by dered speechless by its After all, how many two and finally first performance, Streb choreographers win all together the hopes to add yet anothcompliments like er story to the structure “Potent and beautiful” handsome young for the Armory show. from Mikhail Baryshmen and women, who All of this accounts nikov and “Superwomhail from all over for less than half of the an” from choreographer Streb excitement at the Trisha Brown, plus the the world, throw Amory. The program admiration of high-wire themselves off the also includes Falling artist Philippe Petit? apparatus onto thick Sideways, with dancStreb, a winner of a mats. Sometimes ers launched into the MacArthur Foundation air like rockets; Pass, in Genius Grant, started they fall like logs which they bounce from on the new works over while other times, mini trampolines onto a year ago in the Wilwith their arms two big hoops, powerliamsburg home of her outstretched, they ing a howling perpetual company SLAM, which also doubles as a com- fly to the ground with motion machine; Air Hurl, in which dancers munity center and a the grace of birds. in harnesses attached to school for would-be cables turn into human daredevils. Thrilled to be invited to the Armory’s 55,000-square- slingshots, their movements creating arcs foot, 70-foot-high Wade Thompson Drill of flight; and Kiss the Water, in which they Hall, she plans to show “what movement fly over water—and there’ll be a demoncan do.” Her richest program to date stration by her troupe of her Pop Action includes just about every physical feat moves.

Where do all of her ideas come from? imaginable, her respect and love for the “Since I was a little critter,” she says, “I’ve body imbuing each work with magic.

Ascension, first performed in Gan- been passionate about and obsessed with sevoort Plaza in July to inaugurate the the versatility and capabilities of the body.

Whitney Museum’s new downtown You know how when a singer hits a high home, revolves around a spinning 21-foot C or an instrumentalist plays a beautiladder, an idea inspired by a conversa- ful phrase? We don’t ask anything of it tion with a firefighter. But no firefighter but itself. We’re content with what we’ve would agree to the challenges imposed heard. My ultimate quest is to achieve that on the eight gutsy dancers; to the music response with movement.”

Watch carefully at Kiss the Air! and you’ll of percussionist David Van Tieghem they twist and turn on the rungs, ever foiled in probably see her dancers hit the high C. their ascent by the ladder’s revolutions yet managing to look beautiful as well as Kiss the Air! beyond athletic as they set themselves Dec. 14-22, Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Ave., impossible goals.

212-616-3950, www.armoryonpark.org.

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October 26, 2011 | CityArts 17

AUCTIONS

Going, Going Auctions

By Caroline Birenbaum

A

s the high season for New York auctions unfolds, there’s a brief window of opportunity to view many outstanding works of art, some of which have been in private collections for generations, during the public exhibitions before each sale.

Swann’s curated print sale, to be held the afternoon of Oct. 27, explores the influence of Stanley William Hayter’s collaborative Atelier 17 workshops on the revival and growth of printmaking in both Europe and the United States in the mid-20th century and the ensuing development of abstract expressionism and the New York School. The consignment of a rare, circa 1944– Alexander Calder, “Deux blancs en dessous,” 1974, 45 abstract drypoint and painted metal and wire stabile. Estimate $400,000–$600,000. engraving by Pollock was At auction at Bonhams Nov. 7.

Photo courtesy of Bonhams. the impetus for bringing this art-historically important selection pastel of a woman bathing and a Soutine of works together and documenting them portrait painting. Impressionist and modin the catalog. Highlights range from late ern works on paper comprise the morning 1930s surrealist engravings to 1980s color session Nov. 2, with a cubist still life drawprints by Motherwell and de Kooning. Pre- ing by Gris, a Schwitters collage and two strong watercolors by Klee from 1916 and view Oct. 26–27, www.swanngalleries.com.

Sotheby’s fine print offerings, Oct. 1923. The sale concludes with more paint27-28, include such beauties as Picasso’s ings and sculptures from several private linoleum cut portrait of Jacqueline, evoked collections, including a gorgeous polished with delicate lines against a heavenly blue terra cotta abstract sculpture of a nude background. The spotlight, though, is on woman from 1935 by Archipenko, Rodin’s the evening session Oct. 27, offering 37 “Petit modèle,” cast in 1927, two Degas lots of important contemporary prints bronzes from the Wassermans and a set from an American collection that boasts of backdrops created by Dali for the balsix complete Warhol portfolios acquired let Tristan Fou (1944) from the John Kluge directly from the artist’s studio. Preview collection, being sold to finance scholarships for Columbia University students.

Oct. 26–27, www.sothebys.com.

Christie’s kicks off a series of high- Preview Oct. 28–Nov. 1, www.christies.com.

Back to Sotheby’s for blockbuster imprespowered impressionist and modern art sales with an evening session Nov. 1 that sionist and modern art sessions on the features the famed Degas sculpture “Little evening of Nov. 2 and the morning of Nov. Dancer 14 Years Old,” a charming Rodin 3, including a number of works deaccesbronze of three dancing female fauns and sioned by the Israel Museum, the Boston works from the collection of Hollywood MFA and the Menil Collection. Of particular mogul and philanthropist Lew Wasserman note is a glowing Klimt landscape, “Litzlberg and his wife Edie, including a classic Degas am Attersee,” that until recently was among

18 CityArts | October 26, 2011

Christie’s: Impressionist & Modern Evening Sale. Nov. 1, 7. Impressionist & Modern Works on Paper. Nov. 2, 10 a.m. Impressionist & Modern Day Sale. Nov. 2, 2. Post-War Contemporary Evening Sale. Nov. 8, 7. Works from The Peter Norton Collection. Nov. 8, 6:30. Post-War & Contemporary Art. 9:30 a.m. & 2. Selected Works from The Collection of Anton & Annick Herbert for the Benefit of the Herbert Foundation. Nov. 9, 1:30, 20 Rockefeller Plz., christies.com.

Doyle New York: European, American, Modern & Contemporary Art. Nov. 2, 11 a.m. Books, Photographs & Prints. Nov. 7, 10 a.m. Prints & Books from the Creekmore & Adele Fath Charitable Foundation Collection. Nov. 8, 10 a.m., 175 E. 87th St., doylenewyork.com. iGavel: Online auctions of fine art, antiques & collectibles from a network of independent sources, igavelauctions.com.

ROGALLERY.com: Fine art buyers & sellers in online live art auctions, rogallery.com.

Swann Auction Gallery: Autographs. Nov. 3, 1:30. Art, Press & Illustrated Books/19th & 20th Century Literature, Nov. 8, 1:30, 104 E. 25th St., swanngalleries.com.

the jewels of the Salzburg Modern Museum.

Originally in the collection of Viennese steel magnate and Klimt patron Viktor Zuckerkandl then inherited by his sister Amalie Redlich, who became a Holocaust victim, the painting was looted by the Nazis in 1941.

It was restituted this year to Redlich’s grandson and heir, Georges Jorisch of Montreal, Canada, who intends to donate part of the proceeds to the museum to create a wing named in honor of Redlich.

Another featured work is a bronze cast of Matisse’s monumental bas-relief “Nu de dos,” first state, being sold by the Burnett Foundation of Fort Worth, Texas. The foundation acquired the entire series of four progressively abstracted takes on a woman’s back in 1982 and put them on public display. The foundation now considers them too valuable to retain and first attempted to sell them as a set. As Sotheby’s was unable to find a buyer, they are being offered individually in auctions alternating between London and New York, with the proceeds to be used for the foundation’s community projects. In addi-

tion to paintings and sculptures, the Nov. 3 sessions offer some lovely works of decorative art, including a woven Aubusson wool tapestry after Picasso’s interpretation of Manet’s “Picnic on the Grass,” circa 1963–67, and a Diego Giacometti console table, circa 1978. Preview Oct. 28–Nov. 1, www.sothebys.com.

Doyle’s Nov. 2 sale of European and American modern and contemporary art features a charming portrait of a young Jack Cuddihy by Robert Henri, 1926, several Motherwell drawings from the John M. and Harriet D. Cuddihy Collection and a lovely charcoal portrait of Alice Appleton Hay, 1919, from the Creekmore and Adele Fath Charitable Foundation. Preview Oct. 29–Nov. 1, www.doylenewyork.com.

On Nov. 8, Doyle presents a single-owner sale of prints, books and autographs from the Fath Collection. Creekmore Fath was a progressive Texas politician and aficionado and expert on the prints of Thomas Hart Benton, and the auction contains almost all of Benton’s lithographs as well as the archive of correspondence and notes Fath assembled when preparing his Benton catalogue raisonné. Preview Nov. 4–6, www.doylenewyork.com.

Bonhams’ auction of modern and contemporary art Nov. 7 stars a delightful Calder stabile, or, as they refer to it, a “standing mobile,” “Deux blancs en dessous,” 1974, and includes a Botero oil still life with oranges, 1967, and a David Hammons body print, 1975, among the eclectic offerings. Preview Nov. 4–7, www.bonhams.com.

THE CITYARTS INTERVIEW

Will Barnet

W

You got a scholarship to the Art Stuill Barnet’s eight-decade career is not only one of the most endur- dents League.

Yeah, a four-year scholarship. Stuart ing of any living American artist, it is also one of the most varied. Over the Davis was there and I liked Stuart Davis’ many years, the renowned painter and work. So I worked with him for a while printmaker has moved through phases of until he was fired from his job and then I social realism, cubism, abstraction and went directly to the graphic department lyrical realism before his recent return to with Charlie Locke. That’s where I did abstraction. His numerous awards include my apprenticeship, learning how to print the American Academy and Institute of so I could make a living during the deep Arts and Letters’ Childe Hassam Prize as Depression.

Of course, the Second well as lifetime achieveWorld War was coming ment awards from both “It took quite a up and we were all aware the National Academy few years for the of Hitler, very much so. of Design and the College Art Association. His abstraction to have We knew what they were doing to people, so we works are in the colleca certain reality tions of virtually every for me, an ability to tried to help get people out of Germany. Some major museum in the convey my thoughts. of them did get out, like country.

There is a language George Grosz, who taught Born to Eastern Euroat the League. I was one pean immigrants in in abstraction, of the guys who helped Beverly, Mass., in 1911, which is different get him here.

Barnet attended the Bosfrom the language All of those tumultuous ton Museum School and things happening in New the Art Students League of realistic York—the Depression, in New York, where he painting.” strikes—I put them into taught for nearly four decades. Now 100 years old, the artist is my work. I covered the ball field, as they currently the subject of a retrospective say. I began to change later on. I liked at the National Academy Museum that more classical work. It’s very rare that you features nearly 50 of his works on loan see a show like this [the National Academy from private and museum collections. Museum retrospective] today that deals The artist recently talked with CityArts in with structure and a certain kind of analyhis apartment in the National Arts Club.— sis of nature and puts them together. It’s more abstract in its thinking.

John Goodrich It seems it’s abstract, but it’s real.

It’s real, yeah, but you have to be able to Looking at your work, one sees all kinds of influences: of course, there’s Native be abstract at the same time. You have to get rid of the superficial surfaces and find American, maybe Egyptian, Japanese.

From the time I was very young, I went the underneath things that give it depth to the library and absorbed every book I and strength, like Ingres does with beautiful possibly could read about the history of art women—you look underneath and you see and what took place in different cultures— that the elbow is so goddamned long, like an not just one culture but many cultures. I elephant’s trunk. You see the exaggerations had a very broad education just from the that took place to make it a work of art.

You keep the same philosophy even Beverly public library. I loved it. It was my though your work changes a lot, from ideal home, actually, the library.

And your parents were supportive of abstraction back to figuration.

And then back to abstraction. Abstracyou?

Not particularly. They were very good tion is not too far away from the figure. I’m parents, but they were very hardworking basically a figure painter, and portraiture and they had their own problems. I was is always something I’ve loved very dearly. the last one born, about 14 years younger, I did quite a few portraits of people, but they’re not commercial. so I was an only child. I was on my own.

Will Barnet ©Marc Royce, courtesy Alexandre Gallery, New York

When you rework something, do you work from many studies?

Yes, hundreds of studies. Hundreds.

Do you change things on the canvas?

Most of the changes take place in the drawings, because by the time I’ve gotten to the point where I know what I want to say, I start putting it on a canvas. I may make a lot of changes, particularly in colors, but the actual work is done on paper.

It took quite a few years for the abstraction to have a certain reality for me, an ability to convey my thoughts. There is a language in abstraction, which is different from the language of realistic painting. You begin to see this flat surface has to be structurally understood and there’s a certain amount of space taking place as you work, up and down, across. The Egyptians had their language. The Japanese had their language. The Chinese had their language. And they’re all different.

But they all relate if they’re well done.

They all relate in being aesthetically, you might say, acceptable, in terms of being a classical piece of work.

What other paintings do you find yourself going back to?

I lectured a lot about the paintings at The Met, but I also went to the Museum of the American Indian up on 155th Street and talked about Indian concepts. They had their own culture, too.

It’s interesting that you like such a variety of work. There’s Modigliani…

He was a big influence in the early work.

I loved his work.

And Juan Gris?

Juan Gris was one of the great artists. I used to lecture on him. I used to have his dealer come and speak to my class—Kahnweiler, the famous Kahnweiler. Another great artist was Seurat. He was one of the great structural painters of his time. An amazing genius.

When you work now, do you find that sometimes you’re in touch with the painting and sometimes you’re not?

Well, when you get to be 100, you have the right to be in touch with anything.

Will Barnet at 100 is on view at the National Academy Museum through Dec. 31.

October 26, 2011 | CityArts 19

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