With his low-key, affable charm, the Austrian conductor Manfred Honeck rarely draws attention to himself. But the stellar work he has done with the Pittsburgh Symphony and a few highly successful guest stints with the New York Philharmonic have made him one of the contenders to succeed Alan Gilbert in New York when he vacates the job of music director. Players and audiences can test the chemistry this week at a series of concerts beginning on Thursday, featuring the magnificent violinist Augustin Hadelich in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5 “Turkish,” Brahms’s Fourth Symphony and the overture to Strauss’s “Die Fledermaus.” Tonight we sat on Row D in the center of the center section. It was great for watching the soloist, the conductor, and many of the players. We normally sit further back to see more of the orchestra and to give the sound a chance to merge.
A word about dress... New Yorkers come casual. Only visitors dress up. Tonight, literally, we saw two men dressed in shorts, many in Levi's, most in comfortable shoes, and all dressed to either ride the subway or walk to the concert.
Review: Manfred Honeck Coaxes a Burnished Sound From the New York Philharmonic
The New York Philharmonic played Mozart, Brahms and Johann Strauss on Thursday night at Avery Fisher Hall. A program so crustily traditional almost feels like news, given the orchestra’s innovative track of the last few months, with intriguingly balanced programs and new(ish) works by Thomas Adès and John Adams, Thierry Escaich and Peter Eotvos. Under Alan Gilbert, evenings of Old World heft are no longer the norm.
But this conventional billing became spectacularly unconventional in the hands of Manfred Honeck, the music director of the reinvigorated Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and potentially a candidate for the same role in New York in the near future. A modest man with immoderate talent, he inspires a rare concentration in these players. In Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, he coaxed a sound much closer to the deep, golden hue of the Vienna Philharmonic — in which he was a violist from 1986 and 1992 — than the glossier, glassier tone this orchestra usually exudes. Strauss’s overture to “Die Fledermaus” had bite and snap, an evocative swoon to its waltz and a rampaging glee in its coda.
Mr. Honeck has ideas and charisma. But he’s become typecast in the standard repertory at the Philharmonic. Aside from performances of Claude Vivier’s “Orion,” when he led the orchestra as a very late substitute for Gustavo Dudamel last year, his four appearances with the ensemble have involved nothing written after World War I. Whether that’s what the Philharmonic asked for in engaging Mr. Honeck or it’s simply what he wants to conduct, you get the sense that he’s comfortable in the role.
In Mozart’s Violin Concerto No. 5, he seemed to caress every phrase of the orchestral part into a sepia elegance, producing a poignancy that stayed buoyant, a contentment that still yearned for something more. That searching quality matched the eloquence of the violinist Augustin Hadelich, whose slight toughness of attack suggested unease under the jollity and poise of Mozart’s surfaces. His encore, Paganini’s Caprice No. 5, was finger-flying fast.
The Brahms was thoughtful, deliberate and provocative. Rooting the sound in the cellos and basses and demanding precision with his stylish, meticulous movements, Mr. Honeck made the Fourth something shadowy and equivocal. Long, legato lines in the first movement flowed but had a tensile strength; the second was dragged out daringly, as if concealing worry. Not for him the glitter and playfulness others find in the scherzo, but rather weight and menace, as if to pre-empt the passacaglia finale, itself engrossing yet ambivalent here.
Familiar repertoire or not, I haven’t often walked away from a Philharmonic concert thinking so hard, pondering what an interpretation meant. Clearly inspired, and despite his protests, the orchestra refused to let Mr. Honeck get away without a solo bow. Read into that, and the unanimity of its applause, what you will.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
MUSEUM and Walk
Museum of Biblical Art
Sculpture in the Age of Donatello: Renaissance Masterpieces from Florence Cathedral
Twenty-three masterpieces of early Florentine Renaissance sculpture—most never seen outside Italy—will be exhibited at MOBIA as the centerpiece of the Museum’s tenth anniversary season. MOBIA will be the sole world-wide venue for this once-in-a-lifetime exhibition. These works—by Donatello, Brunelleschi, Nanni di Banco, Luca della Robbia and others—were made in the first decades of the fifteenth century for Florence Cathedral ("Il Duomo"), which was then in the last phase of its construction, and are figural complements to Brunelleschi’s soaring dome, conveying an analogous sense of courage and human potential. Like the dome, these statues of prophets and saints express the spiritual tension of a faith-driven humanism destined to transform Western culture.
This tightly focused exhibition features works all created as components of larger programs for the exterior and interior of the Cathedral from around 1400 until 1450. They include statues and reliefs by Nanni di Banco and Donatello from the lateral entry known as the "Porta della Mandorla"; two larger-than-life seated evangelist figures made to flank the church’s main western portal, again by Nanni and Donatello; two of Donatello’s life-size figures of Old Testament personages from the Bell Tower; and three of the hexagonal reliefs carved by Luca della Robbia to complete a fourteenth-century series of scenes of Florentine life, also from the Bell Tower. In addition, the exhibition includes the two bronze heads with which Donatello adorned his "cantoria", or singing gallery, inside the Cathedral in 1439. Also on view will be two Brunelleschi wood models of the dome—one relating to the overall structure and the other to the titanic lantern—and three early fifteenth-century stone reliefs derived from scenes on Ghiberti’s first bronze doors for the Baptistery facing the Cathedral.
The significance of the exhibition derives in part from its single-site specificity. Sculpture in the Age of Donatello brings together objects made for the same location by artists who knew each other personally, offering a moving, close-up look at the project which more than any other shaped the early Florentine Renaissance: the completion of "Il Duomo".
We left MOBIA and rode the subway from 59th, Columbus Circle, to 4th, near NYU. That gave us a chance to walk through Washington Square Park.
We continued our walk northward to 23rd Street, Madison Square Park and the Original Shake Shack.
The Shake Shack has opened after 7 months of remodeling. Good burgers!
Saturday, May 23, 2015
CATSKILLS
Memorial Day.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
LINCOLN CENTER
Avery Fisher Hall
New York Philharmonic
Susanna Malkki - Conductor
Kirill Gerstein - Piano
Brahms - Variations on a Theme by Haydn
Harvey - Tranquil Abiding
Brahms - Piano Concerto No. 1
"A rising star in the conducting world, the Finnish maestra Susanna Malkki makes her much-anticipated Philharmonic debut conducting Brahms’s ebullient “Variations on a Theme by Haydn” and his seething Piano Concerto No. 1, with Kirill Gerstein replacing an injured Jonathan Biss as soloist. Jonathan Harvey’s Buddhist-tinged “Tranquil Abiding” rounds out the program." A NYTs review...
Review: Susanna Malkki Makes an Immediate Impression
Though the Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki’s long-overdue debut with the New York Philharmonic on Thursday night gave me deep pleasure, the occasion also stirred up some annoyance with the Philharmonic’s leadership team. Where has this impressive 46-year-old artist been? How has it taken so long for the Philharmonic to invite her as a guest?
Accomplished, exuding quiet charisma, respected internationally for expertise in contemporary music and a wide swath of the standard repertory, Ms. Malkki could have been an exciting possibility to succeed Alan Gilbert, who has announced his departure, as music director in 2017. Alas, she is now bound for the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, where she takes over in 2016. In any event, as Ms. Malkki said in a recent interview, it is only reasonable for the New York Philharmonic to appoint a music director who has worked regularly with the orchestra and established a relationship with players and audiences.
Ms. Malkki made a great start at doing both on Thursday at Avery Fisher Hall, even though on paper the program might not have seemed ideal for making an immediate impression. The second half was devoted to a probing, audacious performance of Brahms’s teeming Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor, with the extraordinary pianist Kirill Gerstein (taking the place of Jonathan Biss, who is nursing an injury). That Ms. Malkki collaborated so dynamically with Mr. Gerstein says much about her musicianship.
She had the first half to herself, beginning with an ebullient and imaginative account of Brahms’s “Variations on a Theme by Haydn.” That theme, a stately chorale (which many scholars assert was not actually composed by Haydn), sounded shapely and purposeful in the performance Ms. Malkki drew from the responsive players. But immediately in the first variation, she latched on to the investigative way Brahms explores this theme. Her inquisitive approach continued through the succession of variations: an elusive minor-mode one, a playful military march, a subdued variation rich with crawling counterpoint, and more, until the joyous finale.
Then Ms. Malkki led the Philharmonic’s first performance of the British composer Jonathan Harvey’s Buddhist-inspired 1998 piece, “Tranquil Abiding,” a work co-commissioned by the Riverside Symphony, which gave the world premiere in New York in 1999. Ms. Malkki has long admired Mr. Harvey, who died in 2012 at 73.
Ms. Malkki developed her command of new music during a seven-year tenure as the music director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain in Paris, which she left in 2013. Mr. Harvey’s mysterious 14-minute work is like an aural depiction of breathing and meditation. A slow-moving rhythmic gesture — an inhalation poised on a high note that slides to an exhalation on a lower one — runs through the piece. As the music breathes calmly, motifs and figures intrude: a burst of quiet brass, a darting riff in the woodwinds, fidgety melodic fragments. Sometimes these fleeting bits turn ominous and grating, like those thoughts that pop into your mind while meditating that, ideally, you are supposed to let go of. But in this case, the music is so interesting, and you almost want the intrusions to linger. Ms. Malkki could have picked a flashy contemporary piece, the better to wow an audience. Instead, she invited listeners into a mystical musical realm. The audience followed her, judging from the warm ovation.
In the Brahms concerto, all the dark, turbulent, Romantic fervor of the music came through. Yet, that Ms. Malkki and Mr. Gerstein play so much contemporary music (Mr. Gerstein, who made his Philharmonic debut in 2011, is also a jazz pianist) seemed crucial to their take on this youthful Brahms masterpiece. They were alert to every experimental turn and pungent harmonic twist. I have seldom noticed how obsessively Brahms relies on syncopated rhythmic writing in this score, even during pensive passages of the great slow movement.
Ms. Malkki’s auspicious Philharmonic debut should be a reminder to the search committee, and to audiences, that beyond the usual suspects there are other potential conductors around.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
THEATER
The Pearl Theater
Don Juan - Moliere
"Don Juan has just gotten married—so naturally it’s time for him to get out of town. Thus begins the strangest road trip in history; a madcap journey by sea and land in which our “hero” lies, cheats, blusters, and seduces his way across the world—much to the dismay of his honest but dim servant—in an effort to escape his blushing bride’s outraged family. But there’s an unearthly surprise waiting at the end of their road. Perhaps Molière’s most quixotic farce, Don Juan teases the limits of reality, and brings the natural and supernatural into an outlandish partnership to seal the fate of one deliciously unrepentant rascal."
The New York Times' review... Review: A Molière-Born Cad for the Ages in ‘Don Juan’ What becomes a legendary scoundrel most? In Jess Burkle’s larkish, winking new adaptation of Molière’s “Don Juan,” directed by Hal Brooks at thePearl Theater Company, the title character has cascading blond locks, legging-tight metallic pants and a codpiece that could put an eye out.
With a fringed biker jacket, wings sprouting from the shoulder blades, the look (by Anya Klepikov) suggests that Don Juan follows his own rules in fashion as well as love. But if it seems as if the handsome seducer were dressed in a different century from the people around him, that’s emblematic of the disjointedness of this show, which unfolds on a good-looking set (by Harry Feiner) strewn with overgrown remnants of Classical architecture, surrounded by contemporary walls. By reframing Molière in modern, colloquial language, Mr. Burklemeans to bring “Don Juan” closer to us and have a bit of fun. He succeeds only intermittently, though Mr. Brooks’s production gets one important element absolutely right. Justin Adams plays Don Juan as a comic embodiment of everyone’s awful ex: a beguiling, strutting, sneering bad boy whose capering heart reliably turns to stone the morning after. The show fares less well with Sganarelle, Don Juan’s clownish valet, who’s fearful of heaven’s wrath and horrified by his unbelieving master’s recklessness. Brad Heberlee, a smart actor who has trouble playing dumb here, can’t find the valet’s pulse. The dialogue, overwritten and too reliant on alliteration, is partly to blame. The production’s only interlude of hilarity comes when the dimwitted rustic Pierrot (an excellent Pete McElligott) recounts for his beloved, in a mock-Italian accent, how he rescued some drowning men. Mr. McElligott later doubles as a very funny, exasperated Don Carlos, brother to the abandoned Donne Elvire (Jolly Abraham). Molière’s play is a weird one, what with the talking statue that shows up for dinner, but it’s also rooted in a Christian culture whose rules Don Juan is flouting. Plotwise, Mr. Burkle’s adaptation retains those elements. But in their pursuit of silliness, he and Mr. Brooks never firmly establish that milieu, leaving their antihero without a foil and their play without a context. Mr. Brooks,the Pearl’s artistic director, is determined to put new translations and adaptations of classics onstage — a laudable impulse. But what you get for trading in something old and elegant isn’t always such a bargain.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
LINCOLN CENTER
Metropolitan Opera House
American Ballet Theater - Otello
"Shakespeare's gripping tale of jealousy and betrayal provides the inspiration for this immensely theatrical spectacle. Featuring Lar Lubovitch's whirlpool of passionate choreography and Academy Award-winning composer Elliot Goldenthal's dramatic score, this psychological thriller reaches its inevitable, heartbreaking climax as the brooding commander Othello succumbs to the sinister Iago's machinations and tragedy befalls the palace." "Originating as a story in the Hecatommithi (Hundred Tales) of Giraldi Cintio published in Venice in 1566, the characters and basic plot were subsequently adapted by William Shakespeare into his play, The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice, around 1602."
Lar Lubovitch’s “Othello,” a full-length ballet from 1997, calls to mind an anguished line from thatShakespeare tragedy: “O heavens forfend!” The dance, a co-production of theAmerican Ballet Theaterand San Francisco Ballet in collaboration with the Lar Lubovitch Dance Company and performed Tuesday by the Ballet Theater at theMetropolitan Opera House, isn’t particularly strong on choreography. The music by Elliot Goldenthal is all over the map, more like a scattered film score than anything suited to the emotional gradations of a story ballet. And the drama — because so much of the movement is simplistic and repetitive — is fraught with histrionics. Writhing on the floor is a common sight, leading to the biggest frustration of all: “Othello” gives modern dance a bad (as in dull) name.
The stellar Marcelo Gomes as Othello and Julie Kent as Desdemona deliver finely nuanced performances that grow in depth during the three-act ballet. Mr. Gomes, painted a striking bronze with body makeup, cuts a fervent figure as the general betrayed by the conniving Iago (Sascha Radetsky) and who destroys the loyal Cassio (Herman Cornejo). As Desdemona Ms. Kent is gentle and pure; her dewy innocence is radiant. The ballet opens at the wedding of Othello and Desdemona as a scowling Iago watches, angrily plotting his next move. It hardly helps that Mr. Radetsky, slighter in stature than Mr. Gomes, is like a juvenile delinquent in his generic approach to brutality. As Emilia, Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s handmaiden, Stella Abrera is as luminous as ever, but her role is pretty much reserved to that of Iago’s punching bag. Adrienne Schulte as Bianca, who leads the corps de ballet in a wild tarantella, could do with more projection and abandon. “Othello” is lighted with moody shadows by Pat Collins and features something resembling Lucite scenery by George Tsypin with projections of Venice and slow-moving clouds by Wendall K. Harrington. Mr. Lubovitch, a modern dance choreographer who has also created ice dances, seems to want to echo the sweeping sensation of figure skating throughout “Othello,” especially the lead couple’s pas de deux. Ms. Kent, draped on Mr. Gomes’s shoulder or hoisted across his body in any old shape, is seldom in control. Instead of imparting a sense of freedom, her soaring (or spinning) form makes it clear that she is a helpless damsel in distress. Such a cartoon mentality lends clarity to certain details of the story, like the passing of the handkerchief in the second act, but it also stunts the work’s subtlety.
Tonight Mr. Gomes reprises his role opposite Alessandra Ferri, the dramatic ballerina who, to the distress of many, will retire from the company at the end of the season. “Othello” is not the best material, but Ms. Ferri should have some bright ideas about what to do with it.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
THEATER
Theater for a New Audience
The Two Gentlemen of Verona - Shakespeare
This show's in Brooklyn and a new theater. Everything we've seen there has been wonderful. Just a subway ride away. We come up from the subway to street level at the Barclay Center.
The NYTs review by Ben Brantley... Mating-Season Mood Swings in ‘Two Gentlemen of Verona’
For those of you who had been wondering if spring had decided to skip New York this year, there has been a confirmed sighting of that elusive season at Theater for a New Audience’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Brooklyn. Fresh sap, tickling breezes, blushing blooms — yep, they’re all in evidence. So is the tendency of emerging specimens of human fauna to seize the day as if it were made exclusively for mating.
With impeccable timing, Fiasco Theater’s frolicking production of“The Two Gentlemen of Verona”opened on Thursday night, which happened to have been the last day of April. This is a play, after all, that sees “the spring of love” as having “the uncertain glory of an April day,” in which sun and storms jostle for ascendancy.
The speaker of those words is one of this slight but pliable comedy’s title characters, though whether he qualifies as a real gentleman has always been open to debate. His name is Proteus, played here by Noah Brody. And in his attitudes, moods and affections, he is easily as variable as April.
Still, what do you expect? He’s young, as wasShakespearewhen he invented Proteus, in what may have been his first play. Directed by Jessie Austrian and Ben Steinfeld, this “Two Gentlemen of Verona” makes a case for a little-loved comedy as a testament to the charms of vacillating youth, struggling to find its path and its form in the green season.
A small troupe with an expansive imagination and an eagerness to wrestle with thorny classics,Fiascohas quickly become a force to reckon with in American theater. Deploying small casts, minimal sets and sparklingly lucid powers of interpretation, Fiasco is the troupe that earlier this year presented what is perhaps the most accessible version ever of the knotty Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical“Into the Woods.”
The company has also shown an affinity for Shakespeare plays that in performance often collapse under the weight of their contradictions. Fiasco’s 2011 production of the lumbering romance “Cymbeline” seemed to be written in air. And last year, the troupe found sweet music in the sour-tempered“Measure for Measure.”
Unlike those plays, “Gentlemen” has never commanded much respect among scholars. It is a skipping portrait of arbitrary desires in which character is bent like a pretzel to accommodate a convoluted plot. (It is perhaps best known for the hedonistic 1971 musical it inspired.) Many Shakespeare analysts, a tribe not known for whimsy, seem to agree that the most intriguing figure in “Gentlemen” isn’t even human, but a very shaggy dog named Crab.
This production doesn’t undermine that assessment. How could it, when Crab’s flea-filled fur is inhabited so winningly by Zachary Fine (who also portrays Valentine, the other title character)?
But Fiasco also finds a beguiling continuity in the play’s erratic behavior, in which an unformed author and his untried characters are both groping for their identities. In a program note, the team explains that they regard “Gentlemen” as “a first draft at love,” a preamble to more mature depictions of richer lives.
Such an interpretation tracks nicely with the text, in which uncertain romancers seem forever to be writing and losing and tearing up declarations of passion. Derek McLane’s set is an enchanting bower of what at first glance appear to be walls of layered white flowers but on closer inspection prove to be crumpled sheets of scribbled-upon paper.
A corresponding sense of teeming hearts and minds tentatively testing their mettle abounds. All the play’s characters (attired in Easter pastels by Whitney Locher) partake in verbal games of one-upmanship. They are not, by the standards of later Shakespeare, terribly sophisticated games. But this production allows us to feel the rush of pleasure these awkward wordsmiths derive from the competition.
Of course, it’s not just pleasure that’s being experienced. People are hurt in “Two Gentlemen,” which presents a fragile daisy chain of romantic entanglements. When the play begins, the title characters are inseparable friends, of a single mind, except that Proteus is head over heels for Julia (Ms. Austrian), and Valentine thinks love is just foolish.
Well, not for long. Valentine goes to Milan, at his father’s behest, and immediately falls for the charming Sylvia (Emily Young). When Proteus follows his friend there, he, too, is smitten with Sylvia and determines to betray Valentine to win her. In the meantime, the doting Julia disguises herself as a boy and hurries to Milan, where she discovers that her beloved’s undying love for her is dead.
This would all end in tears if “Gentlemen” had been written with any strict psychological logic. Instead, it offers one of the least credible happy endings in the canon.
But this production sees in the text a mirror for the irrationality that comes with being young, mercurial and at the mercy of metabolic changes that the sober mind can’t begin to make sense of. It’s not just Proteus who’s a chameleon here. All the characters, even the relatively steadfast women, are subject to moods that match the weather.
As is usual with Fiasco productions, the ensemble members — six in total, rounded out perfectly by Paul L. Coffey and Andy Grotelueschen as crafty manservants of contrasting temperaments — play multiple parts, including a banished band of brigands. (Don’t ask.) They also play musical instruments and sing gentle ballads of love’s waywardness in close harmony.
The four lovers are packed here with emotions that are ultimately as narcissistic as they are intense. (You can imagine them all running to the mirror to see themselves feeling deeply.) So while they match up symmetrically and prettily for the final scene, you kind of doubt that these couples are destined for a happily-ever-after eternity.
The most persuasive love match here is between Proteus’s put-upon servant, Launce (Mr. Grotelueschen), and his dog, Crab (Mr. Fine, in a bulbous black nose, is priceless). When Launce complains about the sacrifices he makes for the love of this dog, we are certain that this guy — unlike the other characters — is enduringly sincere.
And this production’s most memorable kiss is between said dog and his master. Call it puppy love, if you will, but it promises to be a far more lasting commitment than anything between frivolous, fickle human beings.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
THEATER
59E59 Theater
Tuesdays at Tesco's
This play was written before Bruce Jenner's quest.
Below is the New York Times review...
Simon Callow in ‘Tuesdays at Tesco’s’
You’ve seen the British actor Simon Callow in heady stuff like “Being Shakespeare,” perhaps, and maybe caught his performances in films including “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” but you haven’t seen all that this versatile performer, director and writer has to offer until you catch “Tuesdays at Tesco’s,” which begins previews at 59E59 Theaters on Thursday.
This English-language version of the play, translated and adapted by Matthew Hurt and Sarah Vermande from Emmanuel Darley’s French play “Le Mardi à Monoprix,” was first presented in 2011 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In it, Mr. Callow is Pauline, formerly Paul, who makes a weekly grocery-shopping trip with her ailing, widowed father. What should be a mundane event is made more complicated by her father’s lack of acceptance and stares from other small-town folk.
Below is the New York Daily News review...
Simon Callow trans-forms himself for ‘Tuesdays at Tesco’s’
William Burdett-Coutts
Simon Callow in "Tuesdays at Tesco’s"
Lines learned and director’s notes digested, English actor Simon Callow had one last detail — a hairy one — to take care of before launching his run in “Tuesdays at Tesco’s.”
“I’m about to have my chest waxed,” he told the Daily News on Tuesday. “It’s the price of being a woman.”
In this 70-minute monologue adapted from Emmanuel Darley’s French comedy-drama “Le Mardi à Monoprix,” Callow plays Pauline, formerly Paul. Her weekly trip to the supermarket with her ailing, widowed father opens a window to a suddenly very topical story about identity and acceptance.
“It’s a role like no other, and not just because it’s transgendered,” says Callow, 65, known for the films “A Room With a View,” “Four Weddings and a Funeral” and “Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls” and the one-man Broadway show “The Mystery of Charles Dickens.”
“Pauline is uniquely scattered, complex, heroic and sometimes pathetic. She’s a turbulent personality.”
Pauline is uniquely scattered, complex, heroic and sometimes pathetic.
Embodying Pauline, and her perils, is by turns “very exciting and quite harrowing,” adds Callow. The feeling is familiar; he first played the role in 2011 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland. Since then, the much-discussed transgender journey of Bruce Jenner has made the subject headline news. Callow hasn’t followed Jenner’s story, but acknowledges it provides a brighter spotlight.
“It’s very convenient,” says Callow. “When I did the play four years ago, Bruce Jenner was a mere stepfather and decathlete.”
Callow, who plays Pauline as well as her father and Tesco’s employees and customers, says the story is about authenticity. “To thine own self be true,” he says, borrowing from the Bard, who he brought to life three years ago at Brooklyn Academy of Music in “Being Shakespeare.” The News’ review applauded his plummy voice and canny acting.”
Callow hasn’t bent genders in Shakespeare. “I was never pretty enough,” he says, “and it’s usually women dressing as men.” But being raised in what he calls “a male-free zone” of two grandmothers, lots of aunts and his mother has informed his emotional and physical portrait of Pauline.
“I know an awful lot about how women make up their faces,” he says. “I watched women assemble themselves. It’s a ritual and science — the science of assembling. I understand how Pauline is assembled.”
Tuesday, May 12, 2015
MUSEUM
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The primary goals today were to see the Plains Indians exhibit and the China Through the Looking Glass exhibit. During lunch we learned that the Plains Indians exhibit close two days ago.
Still, there's a lot to see at The Met.
The first exhibit we wanted to see was on the roof and is pretty avant-garde. Below is a review by the Wall Street Journal.
Installation: No Cat on the Hot Met Roof
By
Ellen Gamerman
The new rooftop installation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is looking a little spare.
Maybe that’s because there is no dead cat.
An outdoor installation by the French conceptual artist Pierre Huyghe (pronounced “Hweeg”) set to open Tuesday was supposed to feature the carcass of someone’s deceased pet cat—an element that resulted from weeks of research with scientists and other experts to figure out how to effectively turn an animal carcass into a kind of metal sculpture.
But on Sunday, after the wall text had already gone up describing the feature, the artist scratched it. He also skipped a living addition: a reproduction of the Met’s “Recumbent Anubis,” an ancient Egyptian limestone sculpture of a wild dog, which was to be inhabited by ants.
Now, on the Met rooftop, three elements remain: an aquarium housing two ancient aquatic species with a volcanic rock floating on the surface; a large chunk of Manhattan bedrock and bald spots where granite floor tiles were removed to reveal dirt, pebbles and other debris.
Met Associate Curator Ian Alteveer, who commissioned the installation with Sheena Wagstaff, chairwoman of the museum’s modern and contemporary art department, said the Met ran the use of living and dead creatures past officials at various animal-welfare organizations, without resistance. Both Mr. Huyghe and Mr. Alteveer said the decision to pull the cat and other elements rested entirely with the artist, who no longer thought the pieces fit into the installation.
The curators described Mr. Huyghe, 52 years old, as approaching the rooftop like an archaeological dig, attempting to expose the remains from earlier eras—including, around the floor tiles, bits of paint from a previous installation there. The work is what Ms. Wagstaff called “a quiet installation” that she compared to “a short, pithy poem.” “I think this will respond to a visitor who pays close attention or who wants to discover something, and I think it will completely go over some people’s heads,” said Mr. Alteveer.
According to an essay in the exhibit catalog, Mr. Huyghe was inspired to explore the effect of copper on carcasses after learning about a miner from around 550 A.D. known as Copper Man, now at New York’s American Museum of Natural History. The mummified body was discovered by accident in 1899, entombed in a hot, airless copper mine in northern Chile. His well-preserved skin and loincloth were coated by copper salts, turning him into what today looks like a greenish mix of flesh and metal.
The cat that would have gone on display at the Met died from natural causes and was preserved by a taxidermist for an owner who decided not to keep it, allowing the artist to obtain it, Mr. Alteveer said.
Mr. Huyghe wanted to connect the animal carcass to nature in Central Park, intrigued by the idea of excavating the world lying outside the museum doors, the curator said.
Mr. Huyghe said he held back the cat and other animals because he was wary of creating a sideshow-like distraction, and because he didn’t think they added to the work.
“When I’m doing a project, I have a tendency to create a mental landscape I walk through,” he said on Monday, dressed all in black on the hot Met roof. “I see how different components interact with each other and I slowly, slowly decide to remove the ones who are not interesting…Sometimes, it’s the main protagonist who has to go away.”
Mr. Alteveer called the cat “very beautiful” and said he pressed the artist on why he wanted to cut it at the last minute.
“I think we as curators, part of our job when we work with a living artist is to sort of challenge them on reasons why. But at a certain point it’s the artist who makes the work, not us,” he said.
Brian Shapiro, New York state director for the Humane Society of the United States, said he didn’t know if the museum contacted his organization before the exhibit but backed the decision to nix the cat. “People who witness such a display can misconstrue this type of art, and we all strive to enlighten the public on the bond we have with animals.”
A spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals also didn’t know if the Met reached out to the group. In a statement, PETA Senior Vice President Lisa Lange said if an animal dies of natural causes, the organization isn’t ethically opposed to making its body into art. But she said it still seems disrespectful, adding: “We’d never preserve and display a beloved human family member.”
Mr. Huyghe also chose not to add carcasses of another domestic cat and a squirrel to the piece—both procured humanely, Mr. Alteveer said. The artist worked on the metal transformation of the dead animals with experts at the Met, Harvard University and Columbia University, the curator said. The idea was to force a copper crystallization on the surface of the animal.
At the Met, the ants that would have made up the Anubis piece were to have been collected by an upstate New York University’s entomology lab, a spokeswoman said. The Anubis sculpture had a personal connection for the artist: The jackal on which it is based may be a distant relative of Mr. Huyghe’s rescue dog, a ghost-white Ibizan hound he named Human. The dog has appeared in Mr. Huyghe’s work in the past, an angular presence with a foreleg colored hot pink with vegetable dye.
Some living pieces remain, including tadpole shrimp and American brook lamprey, fish species believed to be millions of years old, which can be seen inside the rooftop aquarium.
The installation has an indoor addition: A film by Mr. Huyghe featuring a macaque monkey wearing a wig and human mask. The monkey, which a restaurant owner had trained to do small waitressing tasks in an establishment near the devastated Japanese city of Fukushima, is captured alone in the space in haunting silence.
Back on the roof, the uneven floor—tiles stacked here, removed there—was meant to evoke the idea of the museum as a ruin. Here was the artist, literally and metaphorically, digging into the Met.
But in one case on Monday, it had a different effect, tripping a woman who wasn’t looking down at her feet. The Met said it plans to post signs warning about the uneven surfaces.
The project was a bit far out for me. You can see in the video.
We then went to the China exhibit.
Then to Van Gogh's Lilacs and Roses.
Interestingly, one of my regular visitors from Abilene, Texas asked me to include the experience of a Manhattan bus ride home. So just for him, here's the bus ride home.
Since I'm talking about a visitor to the blog, I can report that the blog will have its 35,000th visitor sometime in June.
