Wartburg castle and environs, medieval Germany. The minnesinger Tannhäuser, having spent a year in the magical underground realm of Venus, the goddess of love, longs to return to the human world. He pays tribute to Venus in a song but ends by asking her to let him go. Surprised, Venus promises him even greater pleasures, but when he insists and repeats his pleas, she furiously dismisses him and curses his desire for salvation. Tannhäuser cries out that his hope rests with the Virgin Mary—and suddenly finds himself transported to a valley near the castle of the Wartburg.
A procession of pilgrims passes on the way to Rome. Tannhäuser is deeply moved and praises the wonders of God, as horns announce the arrival of a hunting party. It is Landgrave Hermann with his knights. Recognizing Tannhäuser as their long-lost friend, they beg him to return to the castle with them, but Tannhäuser is reluctant. Wolfram, one of the knights, reminds him that his singing once won him the love of Elisabeth, the Landgrave’s niece. On hearing her name, Tannhäuser understands what he must do and joins his companions.
ACT II
Elisabeth joyfully greets the Wartburg’s Hall of Song, which she hasn’t set foot in since Tannhäuser left. He is now led in by Wolfram. Elisabeth, at first shy and confused, tells Tannhäuser how she has suffered in his absence, but then joins him in praise of love. Observing their emotional reunion, Wolfram realizes that his own affection for Elisabeth is hopeless.
Landgrave Hermann is delighted to find his niece in the Hall of Song, and together they welcome their guests who have come for a song contest. The Landgrave declares love the subject of the competition and promises the victor to receive whatever he asks from the hand of Elisabeth. Wolfram opens the contest with a heartfelt tribute to idealized love. Tannhäuser, his thoughts still on Venus, replies with a hymn to worldly pleasures. Other singers counter his increasingly passionate declarations until Tannhäuser breaks out into his prize song to Venus, to the horror of the guests. As the men draw their swords, Elisabeth throws herself between the parties to protect Tannhäuser and begs the knights for mercy. The Landgrave pronounces his judgment: Tannhäuser will be forgiven if he joins the pilgrims on their way to Rome to do penance. Tannhäuser falls at Elisabeth’s feet and rushes from the hall.
ACT III
Several months later, Wolfram comes across Elisabeth praying at a shrine in the valley. A band of pilgrims, back from Rome, passes by, but Tannhäuser is not among them. Broken with grief, Elisabeth prays to the Virgin Mary to receive her soul into heaven. Wolfram gazes after her and asks the evening star to guide her way. Night falls, and a solitary pilgrim approaches. It is Tannhäuser, ragged and weary. He tells Wolfram of his devout penitence on the way to Rome—of his joy at seeing so many others pardoned, and of his despair when the Pope proclaimed that he could no more be forgiven for his sins than the papal staff bear green leaves again. Left without hope, all he wants now is to return to Venus. He summons her and she appears, just as Wolfram once again brings Tannhäuser to his senses by invoking Elisabeth’s name. At this moment, Elisabeth’s funeral procession comes winding down the valley. With a cry, Venus disappears. Tannhäuser implores Elisabeth to pray for him in heaven and collapses dead. As dawn breaks, another group of pilgrims arrives, telling of a miracle: the Pope’s staff, which they bear with them, has blossomed.
Park Avenue Armory
Tiffany and Associated Artists Decorate Mark Twain's House
About a month ago we rented a car and drove to Saratoga, Lake Placid, Lennox, and Hartford. Our goal was to drive through the Adirondacks and the Berkshires and "see the sights." We included Hartford, CT because we wanted to visit the Mark Twain House. The house is also notable for the major works written during his residency, including The Gilded Age, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Prince and the Pauper, Life on the Mississippi, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, A Tramp Abroad, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. He lived in the house for 17 years. He moved to Hartford because it was the publishing center for the United States at that time. Information about the house in Hartford... "Mark Twain and his family moved into their new house in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1874 and lived there until 1891. The years between were filled with endless dinner parties, billiard games, the raising of three daughters, the meteoric rise of Twain’s literary success, and the ascendance of his social standing in the elite Nook Farm neighborhood. In 1881, the family hired Associated Artists, the decorating firm put together by Louis Comfort Tiffany, to redecorate the interior of the house just after the firm finished its work at the Park Avenue Armory. Tracy Brindle, the Mark Twain House’s new curator, will examine Twain’s connections with Tiffany and Associated Artists, including Candace Wheeler, Lockwood de Forest, and Samuel Colman, and the extensive decoration of the house, known by Twain as “the loveliest home that ever was.” The house went through many alterations through the decades, coming close to demolition at one time, and has undergone a series of meticulous restorations since 2003."
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
LECTURE
Symphony Space
Secret Science Club North: Einstein's General Theory of Relativity
"It’s been 100 years since Einstein presented his General Theory of Relativity, forever changing how we think about space and time and ushering in discoveries beyond even Einstein’s wildest imagination. Blast off with astrophysicist Jason Kalirai to explore where Einstein’s theory has led since 1915, from supermassive black holes to the evolution of the universe itself.
Astrophysicist at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Project Scientist for NASA’s next flagship observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, Jason Kalirai takes us on a stunning visual tour of the cosmos and Einstein’s Universe."
The Frick Ingolf Wunder - Piano Beethoven: Sonata No. 23 in F Minor, Op. 57, “Appassionata” Chopin: Nocturne in E-Flat Major, Op. 55. No. 2 Chopin: Polonaise A-Flat Major, Op. 53Chopin: Nocturne in B Major, Op. 62, No. 1 Chopin: Polonaise-Fantasie in A-Flat Major, Op. 61 Liszt: Sonetto 104 del Petrarca, S. 161, No. 5 Liszt: Mephisto Waltz, No. 1, S. 514 The pianist is a 30 year old man playing for his first time in New York City. The Frick's performance space is round and intimate. We sat on the back row and were as close as seen in the pictures. The artist was amazing and fun to watch and hear. There are so many really good, talented artists! Listen to Chopin...
The Time Jumpers, Country Swing Standard Bearers, Thrive in Nashville
NASHVILLE — In some respects it was business as usual on a recent Monday night at the 3rd & Lindsley Bar and Grill here: The Time Jumpers were playing their long-running weekly gig to a capacity crowd. The musicians, mostly on stringed instruments, occupied the full length of the stage. After racing through “All Aboard,” a quicksilver original with a locomotive theme, they eased into an old blues standard, “Trouble in Mind,” with three fiddles blending in sweet, buttery harmony.
From another angle, the Time Jumpers — a collegial crew of Nashville studio aces like the guitarist Andy Reiss, the pedal-steel guitarist Paul Franklin and the fiddlers Larry Franklin (no relation) and Kenny Sears — operate about as far from business as usual as it gets. This 10-piece band originally formed without the intention of performing in public. And these musicians have been steadfast in their devotion to outmoded, oldfangled and underplayed forms of country music, especially the springy, gladsome lilt of Western swing, best exemplified by Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.
Along the way, over the last 17 years, the band’s stature has evolve from guildlike obscurity to best-kept secrecy to a sort of aw-shucks pre-eminence. Their Monday-night gig long ago became a Nashville institution, with fans often making pilgrimages from abroad.
“They represent the best of roots music,” said Rosanne Cash, who picked the band to kick off her Carnegie Hall Perspectives series on Saturday night at Zankel Hall. “They dip into Western swing and pop standards and real, straight hard-core country. They can do anything.”
Ms. Cash, who was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame this month — joining a pantheon that includes her father, Johnny Cash — will close the four-concert series herself on Feb. 20. Two other concerts will spotlight bluegrass (Ry Cooder, Ricky Skaggs and Sharon White) on Nov. 14; and Southern soul (St. Paul and the Broken Bones) on Jan. 15.
The idea behind the series has to do with history and continuity, which Ms. Cash also explored on her fine 2014 album, “The River & the Thread” (Blue Note). She said that theme was one reason the Time Jumpers made the perfect openers (another being the band’s sheer virtuosity).
Yet another factor: her long friendship with the country star Vince Gill, who joined the Time Jumpers (becoming their most famous member) in 2010. “What’s fun about this band is it’s a bunch of guys who are nuts about how it used to be,” Mr. Gill said.
Nashville prizes its traditions while embracing change; its downtown is pockmarked with construction sites, the byproduct of a $2 billion building boom. It’s tempting to draw a parallel with the present state of country music: the rampant Auto-Tune, the blockbuster arena tours. By that token, the Time Jumpers could seem a bit like their old Monday-night perch, the Station Inn — a revered, unvarnished little bluegrass haunt now across the street from a gleaming Urban Outfitters.
But the analogy goes only so far. “Most people would surmise that this is a band that’s only going to cater to an audience that’s been disenfranchised from their music,” Mr. Gill said. “It’s really not the case.” The audience at 3rd & Lindsley typically includes appreciative new-breed country stars, like Hunter Hayes, and younger fans only dimly aware of the likes of Bob Wills.
As sidemen, members of the Time Jumpers routinely contribute to the sleek mainstream country that their more dogmatic fans might decry. But the band has also become a name brand, a mark of quality: Last year the Time Jumpers appeared on Miranda Lambert’s No. 1 album “Platinum” (RCA), and several band members accompany Kacey Musgraves on her version of “A Spoonful of Sugar,” from the compilation “We Love Disney,” out next week on Verve.
Backstage at 3rd & Lindsley, band members reflected on their undiminished enthusiasm for the gig, and the function they serve. “I understand human nature enough to know that we’re designed to change and evolve,” said the fiddler Joe Spivey. “But you’ve got to be particular about the things of worth that should be held on to. We’re hanging on to this real musical expression that seems to be trying to get lost in all this growth.”
Mr. Sears pushed back on this idea a bit: “You know, we never set out to do that,” he said. “Actually, we didn’t have any intention at all. We certainly didn’t want to try to start careers; some of us are just trying to finish ones we already started!” They both laughed.
The Time Jumpers released a live double album in 2007, and a self-titled studio debut on Rounder in 2012. The toughest change since has been the loss of Dawn Sears, a sterling vocalist (and Mr. Sears’s wife), to lung cancer in December. “We’re doing the best we can,” said Mr. Gill, who had featured Ms. Sears as his own backup harmony singer for 22 years.
There were a few nods to her absence during the show: Mr. Gill sang his ballad “Faint of Heart” in her honor, and took what had been her vocal part in “San Antonio Rose.” At one point, as Mr. Gill sang the Buck Owens tune “Together Again,” Mr. Sears appeared to dab a tear.
But elsewhere the energy was jovial and spry, with routine flashes of brilliance. Mr. Franklin raised the bar with each of his pedal-steel guitar solos, gently swooping around the contours of a melody. Mr. Gill and Mr. Reiss, both on guitars, made their own sure-footed mark — as did Jeff Taylor, on accordion and keyboards.
Two guests sat in during the second hour, and each exposed the jazz undercurrent in the music. The first was Duffy Jackson, a veteran big band drummer. The second was Jack Pearson, a guitarist formerly with the Allman Brothers: He took a series of whip-smart choruses on “Take the A Train,” after which Mr. Sears wondered aloud what the band should do next.
“Practice,” shot back Mr. Gill, cracking up everybody else onstage.
The entire show hewed to a selectively broad vision of American music, one that hasn’t been prominent for some 50 years. But the musicians gave it a live spark, working with unhurried mastery and an obvious accord. “It doesn’t seem like a labor of love, playing with this band,” Mr. Sears had said, before the gig. “It feels like pure unadulterated fun.”
Friday, October 23, 2015
LINCOLN CENTER
David Koch Theater
American Ballet Theater
A second night of ballet! The reason is to see the Mark Morris's production. These others will be interesting and we may leave before The Green Table. We really enjoyed last night, though.
Mixed Repertory Program
After You: Mark Morris NYC Premiere Cast: Company
Synopsis: One of the most acclaimed American choreographers, Mark Morris offers his third ABT commission this fall performed to Hummel's chamber work, Piano Septet No. 2 in C Major, with all-new costumes by Isaac Mizrahi.
Synopsis: The fragrant scent of a rose and the memories of a young girl's first ball inspire her dreams in Fokine's haunting Le Spectre de le Rose. Its soaring leaps are legendary, and its tale of first love's awakening is timeless.
Synopsis: Deceptively simple but fiendishly difficult, this Balanchine jewel charms with windswept dancing in perpetual motion, perfectly attuned to the joyfulness of Glinka's waltz rhythms.
Synopsis: Considered the most powerful antiwar statement ever devised for dance, this indisputable masterpiece opens at a diplomatic conference around a table covered with regulation green cloth, followed by vivid tableaux of the futility of war.
Thursday, October 22, 2015
LINCOLN CENTER
David H. Koch Theater
American Ballet Theater
The Brahms-Haydn Variations
Monotones I and II
The Green Table
I am very excited about see The Green Table this evening. Carolyn and I saw it almost 30 years ago in San Antonio and found it quite moving. It was the first "theater" ballet that I remember that was meaningful. I look forward to seeing it tonight and experiencing what it may or not do for us. We'll see... The Brahms-Haydn Variations
Synopsis: An ABT commission for the Company's 60th Anniversary in 2000, The Brahms-Haydn Variations bursts with invention as Tharp explores Brahms' shimmering score, while brilliantly reaching a new peak of the choreographer's opus for large-cast classical ballets.
Synopsis: Pure poetry, these haunting yet elegant pas de trois achieve an eerie otherworldliness of understated intensity, as Ashton reaches the summit of adagio classicism.
Choreography by: Frederick Ashton Staged by: Lynn Wallis Music by: Erik Satie Costumes by: Frederick Ashton
Synopsis: Considered the most powerful antiwar statement ever devised for dance, this indisputable masterpiece opens at a diplomatic conference around a table covered with regulation green cloth, followed by vivid tableaux of the futility of war.
Choreography by: Kurt Jooss Staged by: Jeanette Vondersaar Repetiteur: Claudio Schellino Music by: F.A. Cohen Costumes by: Hein Heckroth, Masks by Hermann Markard Lighting by: Hermann Markard, Lighting Directed by Brad Fields
RECITAL
Symphony Space Steinway Salon: Jerome Kuderna Plays Debussy
Pianist Jerome Kuderna has been recognized as a leading interpreter of contemporary music for the past 30 years. He kicks off the Steinway Salon series with a beautiful afternoon program including Claude Debussy's Études, composed in 1915.
Program:
Debussy: Etude pour les cinq doigts (for five fingers) (1915) Ross Bauer: Dirge Elegy (for Arlene Zallman) (2007) Arlene Zallman: Variations on "Alma Che Fai?" by Luca Marenzio (1996) Debussy: Etude pour les quartes (for fourths) (1915) Roger Sessions: From My Diary #1 (1939) Brian Fennelly: Babbittelle, from Memoria (2012) Milton Babbitt: My Complements to Roger (1978) Debussy: Etude pour les agrements (for ornaments) (1915) Robert Helps: Nocturne (1973) Debussy: Etude pour les tierces (for thirds) (1915) Elliott Carter: Intermittences (2005)
Jerome Kuderna received his initial training in piano and conducting in Denver with Antonia Brico. While studying the music of Webern and Schoenberg with Rudolf Kolisch he performed works by the 2nd Viennese school with soprano Bethany Beardslee. He studied piano with Adele Marcus at Juilliard and Robert Helps at the New England Conservatory. He has taught at the University of Louisville and at Princeton University where he met Roger Sessions and Milton Babbitt. His doctoral studies at NYU included a Ph. D dissertation on the piano works of Babbitt. He has premiered works by American composers including Milton Babbitt, Richard Swift, Alden Jenks, Robert Helps, Ann Callaway, Judith Shatin and Herb Bielawa . In January 2006 he gave the West Coast premiere of Elliott Carter's Piano Concerto with the Berkeley Symphony under the baton of George Thompson. He currently gives weekly lecture- recitals under the auspices of The Berkeley Arts festival.
Tuesday, October 20, 2015
LINCOLN CENTER
Alice Tully Hall
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center
Haydn - Trio in A major for Piano, Violin, and Cello, Hob.XV:18 (1794)
Mendelssohn - Sextet in D major for Piano, Violin, Two Violas, Cello, and Bass, Op. 110 (1824)
Schumann - Quintet in E-flat major for Piano, Two Violins, Viola, and Cello, Op. 44 (1842)
"The CMS season begins with three jewels of the chamber music repertoire, taking listeners on a journey from the classical to romantic era. Mendelssohn's sparkling sextet provides an eloquent bridge between Haydn's elegant trio and Schumann's passionate quintet." Follow this link and watch the enclosed video, please...
Sunday, October 18, 2015
CHURCH
Marble Collegiate
Organ Dedication
We love our church.
We attend every Sunday we're in town and take several young friends with us as they are available. The people of the church are interesting, diverse, and are becoming close friends. The church staff is also interesting, diverse, and committed to the people of Marble and Marble's mission. The preacher is quite good and we look forward to his sermons every week.
Then, there is the music. If you follow this blog you can see that we hear on a regular basis the finest the world has to offer in the realm of musical performance. We truly hear the best. I tell you with certainty that the music we hear every Sunday from the Marble Choir is as fine as anything we're able to hear in NYC. The choir is wonderful!
It is a relatively small choir with professional singers. They sing "straight tone." The music director, Ken Dake, is a Juilliard trained musician. It all comes together in a marvelous way.
Today Marble is dedicating a new 6,500 pipe organ. It will be magnificent.
It was a beautiful autumn day and a great time to visit the Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. We rode the subway to the Gardens and rode the MetroNorth train home to Grand Central Terminal.
The grounds were not crowded and the air was cool. My main goal was not the flowers in bloom, since there weren't any, but to show Carolyn the grounds and the trees. We rode the tram throughout the gardens.
As we left our building on 6th Avenue, right outside our building, we saw a blossom bigger than Carolyn's head. It was spectacular.
I only took two shots, one of a tree beginning to change and one of a rock building from 200 years ago.
It was an evening of 5 recently choreographed pieces that were all enjoyable and interesting.
Thursday, October 8, 2015
THEATER
Symphony Space
Skylight
On a bitterly cold London evening, schoolteacher Kyra Hollis (Carey Mulligan) receives an unexpected visit from her former lover, Tom Sergeant (Bill Nighy), a successful and charismatic restaurateur whose wife has recently died. As the evening progresses, the two attempt to rekindle their once passionate relationship only to ¬find themselves locked in a dangerous battle of opposing ideologies and mutual desires.
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
MUSEUMS
New York Historical Society
Morgan Library and Museum
This was a full day of Museums. The weather is beautiful and so it was a great day to get out and about.
New-York Historical Society | The Hirschfeld Century: The Art of Al Hirschfeld
Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003) brought a distinct style to celebrity drawings, making his work instantly recognizable —to be “Hirschfelded” was a sign that a performer had arrived. Now for the first time, nine decades of Hirschfeld’s work will be on display at the New-York Historical Society in The Hirschfeld Century: The Art of Al Hirschfeld, a multimedia exhibition organized in partnership with The Al Hirschfeld Foundation and in conjunction with Alfred A. Knopf’s publication of curator David Leopold’s groundbreaking book on the artist. The exhibition of over 100 original works includes many highlights from Hirschfeld’s prolific career with a special emphasis on the New York Times—where he was a contributor for over seven decades. Come see the art that defined New York popular culture and made the 1900s The Hirschfeld Century.
Hirschfeld's minimal use of line is amazing.
Look for the name Nina, his daughter, in each of the drawings.
Morgan Library and Museum
Ernest Hemingway: Between Two Wars
September 25, 2015 through January 31, 2016
This is the first ever major museum exhibition devoted to the work of Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961), one of the most celebrated American authors of the 20th century. Organized in partnership with the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, it includes multiple drafts of Hemingway's earliest short stories, notebooks, heavily revised manuscripts and typescripts of his major novels—The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. The show also presents correspondence between Hemingway and his legendary circle of expatriate writers in 1920s Paris, including Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sylvia Beach. Focusing on the inter-war years, the exhibition explores the most consistently creative phase of Hemingway's career and includes inscribed copies of his books, a rarely-seen 1929 oil portrait, photographs, and personal items.
Alice: 150 Years of Wonderland
This exhibition will bring to light the curious history of Wonderland, presenting an engaging account of the genesis, publication, and enduring appeal of Lewis Carroll's classic tale, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
For the first time in three decades, the original manuscript will travel from the British Library in London to New York, where it will be joined by original drawings and letters, rare editions, vintage photographs, and fascinating objects—many never before exhibited.
The enchanting tale of Wonderland was first told “one golden afternoon” to Alice Liddell and her two sisters. Delighted by the fantastic world of logic and nonsense inhabited by rabbits in waistcoats and playing card gardeners, Alice begged for a written copy of her namesake's adventures under ground. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll) painstakingly wrote out the story, illustrating the original manuscript with his own pen and ink drawings.
Revised and radically expanded, it appeared in 1865 as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with the iconic illustrations of Sir John Tenniel. But Tenniel was dissatisfied with the printing quality, and the edition was suppressed almost immediately. Now, only twenty-two or twenty-three copies of the first edition are known to survive. It was quickly republished, and Tenniel's brilliant drawings (markedly different from Carroll's own) and their relationship to the text contributed to the initial and enduring success of the book.
From here, the ethos of Alice and the universe of Wonderland took hold of our imagination, and—150 years later—we are still following her down the rabbit hole.
Saturday, October 3, 2015
LINCOLN CENTER
New York Philharmonic
David Geffen Hall
Emanuel Ax and Brahms
Brahms - Tragic Overture
Marc Neikrug - Canta-Concerto (World Premiere - New York Philharmonic Commission)
Brahms - Piano Concerto No. 2
Alan Gilbert - Conductor
Sasha-Cooke - Mezzo-Soprano
Emanuel Ax - Piano
Alan Gilbert conducts Brahms masterworks, including the sublimely lyrical and virtuosic Second Piano Concerto — which “touches on almost every emotion with extraordinary immediacy and power” (Naxos) — with Grammy winner Emanuel Ax. “When he performs ... you’re in good hands” (The Washington Post). Plus a World Premiere that “strives to mine the innate expressiveness of the voice as an instrument,” says the composer. Alan Gilbert discusses Neikrug's Canta-Concerto Here's Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 played by Emanuel Ax...
The sound produced by the New York Philharmonic is a treat to hear.
Friday, October 2, 2015
MUSEUM
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Greek Vases and Statuary
Kongo: Power and Majesty
Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends
There is an approaching hurricane and it's constant rain outside. So, we are riding the M4 bus from right outside our apartment over to and then up Madison Avenue to the Met Museum. First, we will have lunch in the member's dining room. Then, we will have an afternoon to see the three exhibits listed.
I am currently taking an online course from Wesleyan University on Greek History. I want to see the Greek objects found at the Met.
We also want to see the Sargent and the Kongo exhibits. This should be a good day. Hopefully, there will be fewer tourists and the museum won't be so filled with people.
I was so wrong. The museum was packed with people. The rain drove them inside.
Sargent
"Throughout his career, the celebrated American painter John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) created exceptional portraits of artists, writers, actors, dancers, and musicians, many of whom were his close friends. As a group, these portraits—many of which were not commissioned—are often highly charged, intimate, witty, idiosyncratic, and more experimental than his formal portraiture. Brilliant works of art and penetrating character studies, they are also records of relationships, influences, aspirations, and allegiances.
Sargent: Portraits of Artists and Friends brings together ninety-two of the artist's paintings and drawings of members of his impressive artistic circle. The individuals seen through Sargent's eyes represent a range of leading figures in the creative arts of the time such as artists Claude Monet and Auguste Rodin, writers Robert Louis Stevenson and Henry James, and the actor Ellen Terry, among others. The exhibition features some of Sargent's most celebrated full-length portraits (Dr. Pozzi at Home, Hammer Museum), his dazzling subject paintings created in the Italian countryside (Group with Parasols [Siesta], private collection), and brilliant watercolors (In the Generalife, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) alongside lesser-known portrait sketches of his intimate friends (Vernon Lee, 1881, Tate). The exhibition explores the friendships between Sargent and his artistic sitters, as well as the significance of these relationships to his life and art."
Kongo
"Central Africa's Kongo civilization is responsible for one of the world's greatest artistic traditions. This international loan exhibition explores the region's history and culture through 146 of the most inspired creations of Kongo masters from the late fifteenth through the early twentieth century.
The earliest of these creations were diplomatic missives sent by Kongo sovereigns to their European counterparts during the Age of Exploration; they took the form of delicately carved ivories and finely woven raffia cloths embellished with abstract geometric patterns. Admired as marvels of human ingenuity, such Kongo works were preserved in princely European Kunstkammer, or cabinets of curiosities, alongside other precious and exotic creations from across the globe.
With works drawn from sixty institutional and private lenders across Europe and the United States, Kongo: Power and Majesty relates the objects on view to specific historical developments and challenges misconceptions of Africa's relationship with the West. In doing so, it offers a radical, new understanding of Kongo art over the last five hundred years."
Review: ‘Kongo: Power and Majesty’ at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Much art is made for pleasure or profit. Some is made to save lives and souls. The 15 sensational carved wood figures, standing like thorny trees in a grove, at the end of “Kongo: Power and Majesty” at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, are examples of art of the rescuing kind. They are sculptural responses to a slow-motion emergency, one that shaped the history of the African continent and continues to resonate there today.
For centuries the West assumed that Africa had no history, because none had been found written down. Instead, it was said to be timeless in the way that the primitive was timeless: that is, retarded, suspended in backwardness. Call that a state of innocence; call it savagery. Either way, it was a condition to be patronized, corrected, exploited. Only beginning in the late 20th century, when the notion of primitivism came under widespread critical fire, were the antiquity and dynamism of African cultures acknowledged, and demonstrated in long-researched exhibitions like this one, which has been organized by Alisa LaGamma, the curator in charge of the department of the arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas.
It begins at a very specific time and place: the coast of Central Africa in 1483, the year a navigator named Diogo Cão, on a pioneering mission for the Portuguese court, landed near the mouth of the Congo River to scout possibilities for trade. He carried on board several seven-foot-high limestone columns carved with a cross and the royal coat of arms. With them, he staked territorial claims for Portugal in what is now Angola. All but one of those columns vanished long ago. The sole survivor is at the Met, introducing the exhibition in much the way that, centuries ago, it introduced Europe to Africa, and vice versa.
The Portuguese had landed in territory occupied by Kongo peoples, who formed several separate states ruled by kings in urban courts similar to those of Europe. And the initial encounter was auspicious, viewed by both sides as a meeting of equals. Spiritually adventurous and intellectually curious, the Kongo elite took an avid interest in Christianity and quickly learned the skill of writing. One of the earliest items in the show is a 1517 letter from the Kongo king to his Portuguese counterpart requesting a shipment of prayer books and liturgical instruments.
We know from records that many thousands of such things subsequently flooded into Africa, though none have been tracked down there. What has been found are religious images made by African artists after European prototypes. A little brass Kongo figure of a crucified Christ with starburstlike hands and feet is one. And Western museums hold a small number of objects that, in the 16th and 17th centuries, traveled from Africa to Europe as souvenirs or gifts, landing in Medici palaces and cathedral treasuries.
A lot of what has been preserved of this precious export material is in the Met show, and consists mainly of two types of luxury items: elephant tusks carved with exquisite geometric patterns (one is from the Palazzo Pitti in Florence), and woven palm-fiber textile panels incorporating the same abstract designs. Examples of both float, as if on the sea, in the blue-walled opening gallery. And they carry history with them. The patterns they share appear in almost identical form on African ceramics dating to the late Iron Age, and on ceremonial caps and capes made between the 16th and the early 20th century.
The wearers of such regalia included priests or ritual specialists, who played a crucial role in governance. The Kongo cosmos was generally understood to be made up of two realms, one occupied by the living, the other by the ancestral dead. The priest’s job was to maintain communication between the two, and to channel otherworldly energy through certain charismatic objects, often sculpted figures called minkisi (singular, nkisi), which policed human behavior and promoted peace. Social balance and continuance were the highest good, embodied in paired male and female images, and in the perfect, endless abstract patterns woven in textiles and inscribed on ivories.
About halfway into the show, however, something appears that throws that balance off: It’s a tusk covered with tiny figures, among them shackled slaves. The piece is late, probably from the 1880s, but the realities it documents are much older. The rapport between Europe and the Kingdom of Kongo was brief. Portugal soon made its colonialist intentions clear. Other Western nations — France, Britain, the Netherlands — aggressively followed its lead. Kongo peoples lost their gainful position as gatekeepers to the wealth of the continent’s interior.
Worse, the effects of the Atlantic slave trade were catastrophic. Africans had always participated as suppliers. But by the mid-17th-century, Kongo territory roughly corresponding to modern Angola, Congo and the Congo Republic— had itself become a primary source of captives. By 1850, a third of its population had ended up in chains in the Americas.
Nor was there relief to be found in Africa. There the age of colonialism was underway. Forced labor was common. With the adult male population reduced by slavery, the nuclear family, the core unit of Kongo social organization, was shattered. Traditional occupations, economic structures and value systems, along with the communal identity they sustained, were radically destabilized.
Religion was what was left. Female power figures, depicted as women of idealized beauty supporting and nursing infant-size adult males, proliferated. Regal but tender, they held the promise of fecundity in a withering time, and certain sculptors made a specialty of them. Two such artists — called the Master of Kasadi, the Master of Makaya Vista and the Master of Boma Vonde, for the regions where they worked — have been identified by style. Although each adheres to a fixed image type, their approaches, seen in comparative pieces in the show, are distinctive in detail and mood.
As expressive as these images were, they could do nothing to prevent the reign of terror visited on the Kongo world by Belgian colonial rule beginning in the 1870s. At that point, in what feels like a last-ditch move, a shock troop of male power figures, called Mangaaka, was brought into play. Only around 20 are known; 15 of those, from collections in Europe and the United States, including the Met, are in the final gallery.
Just under life-size, they were carved from wood by master artists. Fitted with animal-hair beards and huge white ceramic eyes, they lean forward, mouths open, as if looking and listening intently, ready to leap. Their torsos bristle with pounded-in spikes and nails, each the seal of a vow made or an injustice to be prosecuted. The source of their energy lies in magical substances — medicines — placed by priests in their hollowed-out bellies and behind their eyes.
Such images are the spiritual equivalent of antibodies, designed to hunt down and eliminate infection in a social body on the verge of systemic collapse. They were meant to stop a viral history in its tracks, reverse its course. They were focused in a way that makes much other art, however ambitious, feel vague in purpose, a distraction from, rather than an engagement with, the politics of living and dying. It’s a measure of the respect they inspired that all of the figures, brothers in arms, seem to have had their medicine removed before leaving Africa. The West would get the form but not the substance of their might.
They make a memorable conclusion to an unusually tight, idea-filled and troubling show. When these figures were conceived, the Scramble for Africa was on full-bore, with Western nations barbarously slicing up and devouring a continent. That depredation has never stopped, even if some of its participants have changed, China being the latest scrambler. And Africa’s history, embedded in some of the world’s most potent art, goes on.
