5 – 6 December 2009
Before I descend utterly into the realm of the senses – specifically, those of taste and smell, I have to say that I’m still under the spell of something that went far beyond the olfactory and well into the realm of the idea pure (and never exactly simple), or simply figure, beguiling and ultimately enigmatic, all the while drawing us whole and sensually into its sonic architecture, ‘narrative’, tapestry – long before Duchamp served up his own ‘anti-olfactory’ and, against all protests to the contrary, stubbornly retinal, enigmatic art.
Listening to the Beethoven string quartets once, twice – and we can go on from there – always reminds us that we must listen to many of them again – though when exactly we can never say, and sometimes that day threatens to never return. It’s like re-reading (or simply finishing for some of us) Proust, Shakespeare, Mann, Joyce, etc. We never seem to get around to it. Fortunately, they appear from time to time on the radio, pulled out from stacks of CDs, etc.; though moving, through one’s everyday tasks or agendas, our attention may be drawn away – which is why there’s nothing quite like hearing them in one focused sitting, or sometimes better still, in live performance. Last night, it was the Opus 131 C-sharp minor quartet – that slightly rambling (though intense) essay (I want to say ‘quasi-fantasia’ – as with that other famous C# minor work) through several loosely related, sometimes simple but infinitely subtle themes, variations and moods – as performed by the Takács Quartet. I’ve had Handel on my brain a bit lately, as I’ve noted here; but listening to something of this scope, intensity and invention reminds us that the leap from Handel (or Bach) to Beethoven (a relatively brief time span) is like that from Newton to Einstein. Also, how, in that wildly free-form classicism that is his alone – how utterly modern Beethoven remains here and now in the post-serial/atonal/polytonal landscape of the 21st century; a fact brought home by the Quartet’s dazzling performance of Bartok’s polytonal/atonal (frequently near-atonal in its complex chromatic harmonies) String Quartet No. 4. The Takács Quartet has a special affinity for Bartok – especially his predilection for the pizzicato (an extremely percussive pizzicato, I might add) – and the quartet’s incidents and inversions, call-and-response thematic schemes and rhythms and and chromatic symmetries were aired with intensity and dazzling clarity.
Fun, huh? (The program – speaking of that ‘Newton-Einstein leap’ – began with Haydn (Op.71, No.1 quartet in B-flat major.) As readers of this blog are probably aware, this recital was part of an on-going series hosted by the ACE Gallery – at their Beverly Hills gallery – in its main, central gallery – an excellent, intimate, if acoustically imperfect space for this kind of music. The art on the walls right now is John Millei’s – about which I won’t say anything at the moment if for no other reason than the show hasn’t actually opened (at least I don’t think it has). It’s impressive; but – well you tell me – Duchamp (or Rembrandt or Raphael, etc.) would have a hard time standing up to the Beethoven Opus 131.
I went there straight (or almost) from Barneys – no shit – where I’d gone to look for a special edition of colors for MAC produced by…. Now that I’ve gone on, still under the spell of late Beethoven (and a beautiful gray afternoon in Los Angeles), I’m going to save this for later… oh yeah, I know what you’re thinking – at least those of you who read Artillery. “Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot”? as they say in military parlance (has everyone read the front page piece of the Sunday New York Times?). All right. Well, I’ll tell you. Later – it’s not as simple as you think (it really isn’t). And so I like to look at shoes (believe me it’s more looking than buying) and furry hats – so what? Okay, gotta, uh, finish reading the papers.
Sunday, December 6, 2009
Saturday, December 5, 2009
The Case Against Cute
29 November – 5 December 2009 [preview draft]
I’m feeling distracted over the last day or so – even more so than usual (I must say the kick-off to the national holidays of greed and gluttony really did me in) – blowing past a couple deadlines, dropping a couple of books in favor of the Sunday Times and some fashion magazines, ignoring the toxic disaster of my apartment and skipping off into the autumn afternoon. And ya know what? – I’m just going to go with it. So I’ll talk about the beautiful mini-retrospective of Dora de Larios’s ceramic sculpture I just saw at the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum another time. And of course, after shlepping off to Regen II to have a second look (my first was about 3 minutes long) at the Marilyn Minter show, I found the gallery shuttered for the holiday week-end – so that has to wait anyway. So – here’s my problem….
Except it’s not even really a problem. Cute. C-U-T-E. I live in L.A. – a city that might have been founded on cute – except it wasn’t; Anaheim, an hour or two south of here – home of Disneyland, at whose doorstep much of the blame, I think, can be placed, is that city. James Wolcott (I think it was James Wolcott – who, by the way, I think is pretty cute) already wrote something about this in his Vanity Fair column a month or so ago, so I’m going to avoid re-treading that turf. I’m a sucker for Nara and Murakami (though it’s the stuff beyond the kaikai-kiki thing that pull me back into it) and all sorts of Japanese – for that matter Eurasian – novelties; have acquired libraries of children’s books for my nephews, nieces and kids of friends (and saved a few for myself); am utterly a child of Oz and Neverland (the Barrie one, not the Jackson – though I’ll always love some of Michael’s music); love babies and almost all children under 10 and pretty much all quadruped animals. And greater than quadruped (I LOVE spiders). And no – there is absolutely NO truth to the rumor that I was the model for Eloise. I’m Madeline.
I’m still a child. But I’m not exactly innocent – if children ever are entirely. And like any other child, I’m voracious, insatiable. The cute and cozy is all well and good – but tell me MORE. And more and more and more. I have to see more, visit the dark places, look at what’s on the other side(s)… and then things change; stuff happens. ‘Cute’ suddenly seems stillborn, frozen in a moment for which we can’t even summon up a nostalgia – because there wasn’t enough there in the first place. Do you remember your first trip to Disneyland? Or (assuming you might live in some proximity to one of the parks) your second? (Was there a third?) I think I remember each of my three visits to the original Anaheim park – the first (naturally) and third being the most memorable. The park has changed significantly over the years; but I have never had any desire to return to it. There was nothing regrettable about the experience. I wouldn’t say there were any particular thrills – even the faster, more rollicking rides seemed relatively tame; but the park’s amusements were fun and entertaining – variously novel, charming, clever, creative, sensational, mystifying and, well, amusing. In retrospect, some of the hokiest, most dated amusements (e.g., from “Frontierland” and “Futureland”) bring the most delight – experiences and specimens pulled from a time capsule that recall not only the shows or amusement rides themselves, but the way we saw the world then – framed within a moment of time, now seen with historic perspective, from a child’s (not necessarily unthoughtful and sometimes surprisingly sophisticated) viewpoint.
But that’s half the point – or maybe the whole point. Once outside the park gates and past its initial charms, what the child inevitably realized (sooner rather than later) was how much was left out of the experience, how diluted (to say nothing of deluded) it all felt in retrospect, how much richer, more enthralling it might have been, rather than the sort of ice-cream-parlor-with-sideshows stroll it turned out to be. And then on the other side, when you recall that some of the hokiest things turn out to be the most memorable, you recognize what was most authentic, committed, among the entertainments – where the Disney Company gave itself over most completely and committedly to its slightly looney “Imagineers” vision.
Even Walt Disney and Co. weren’t always just about the ‘cute’. The earliest incarnations of Mickey Mouse have a much wider (and darker) expressive and affective range. Even in some of Disney’s consistently saccharine animated vehicles, the most interesting characters are frequently the villains or – proto-feminist touch here – villainesses: the Wicked Queen of Snow White, Maleficent of Sleeping Beauty, Cruella de Vil. (A girl could practically make role models out of these.)
Why did it have to stop there? Why should it ever stop there? What the child – selfish, greedy, curious (and yes, by degrees, innocent, even cute) – wants is nothing less than the world, or at least some world – drawn from the physical world, or invented whole-cloth out of the imagination. These are worlds of conflict and contention, competing social order and disorder, searching, striving, evolving ethics and nascent corruption, reason and chaos, logic and absurdity, wit and arabesque, delight and enchantment, magic and mortality. Corruption, chaos, absurdity, and finally death – yes, welcome to kiddieland. It’s a place I’m always happy to re-visit – through the mythos of certain fairy tales, the absurd, surreal Wonderland of Alice, James Barrie’s Neverland, Narnia, the mad, mad, mad, mad world(s) of Oz. (And sure – I like Paris and the Plaza Hotel, too.)
I’m not sure what triggered this particular blow-out on the subject: something uncharacteristically (and sooooo inauthentically, untruthfully) cheaply sentimental trod out by one of my siblings (made even more dishonest by his protest); the unrelenting and oppressive parade of ‘stupid pet tricks’ in one form or another that are a constant of the background chatter in the office where I work – from the ‘cute’ to the merely witless; the latest e-mail ‘cute’ cat video from a relatively intellectual pal who nevertheless gives me grief for my political vigilance (and, yes, occasionally the vitriol that ensues); the sort of oppressively cheerful, American greeting card viewpoint of far too many people (especially in this economy – what? it takes another Depression to bring them back down to earth?); or maybe the flood of good (and fairly superficial) reviews for a film (gee, that’s a shock) that, however charming (in the most superficial way), however clever (by very small and mostly technical degrees), whatever the merits of the story on which it was based, was really not much of a film.
The film I’m referring to is The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s animated film based on the story by Roald Dahl – several of whose stories have been successfully translated to the screen (e.g., Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and its earlier musical incarnation, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; James and the Giant Peach; The Witches; and more). Though not far from the story (which is frankly not one of my favorites from Dahl), the film seems to alter its sly spirit, becoming slightly overbearing where the story remains quite light, yet if anything minimizing the real danger to Fox and his family. (There is never any doubt that Fox will somehow prevail, no matter what the dangers, how the odds are stacked against him, or how grimly determined and vigilant his enemies. (Perhaps a problem with the story: Fox’s enemies are never particularly clever, merely dogged and in fact quite stupid. Fox is by far the most clever of any of the characters – and knows it.) Wes Anderson knows he’s clever, too – and dogged – you’d have to be to pull off such a feat of animation; and that’s not the worst of it. It’s as if what he really wanted was to graft The Royal Tenenbaums onto the Dahl story, while re-making Fox into his avatar – really a kind of narcissistic homage – right down to his half-size-too-small bespoke corduroy suit. And voicing the characters? Forget about the predictable Bill Murray or Owen Wilson – Fox and his wife must be voiced by George Clooney and Meryl Streep (a pity the script should be so pallid with talent like that).
It was actually self-professed comedy-hater Opera Buddy who was initially eager to see the film. Why not? I thought, fan of Charlie, Willy Wonka, et al. that I am. For a screening audience, I thought the reaction was pretty enthusiastic. People seemed to laugh (a little too heartily) at all the jokes in all the “right” places, be touched by the picture of Fox and his family, and cheer them on. I could tell Opera Buddy was trying to muster some appreciation for the film – certainly it coaxed a few yuks, a smile or two out of us. But by the movie’s end, we were ready to dash for the exit, eager to be as far away from it as possible; and we each turned to the other to ask the question we always ask in situations like this: “Whose idea was it to see this???”
What was it the audience found so laugh-out-loud funny, so worthy of engagement with these characters (gee and I thought I was the sucker for furry friends both real and manufactured), so worthy of cheering? Forgive me, but I have to be just a bit suspicious of that kind of enthusiasm – I mean that as well in the 17th century Restoration sense, as in the sway of an almost religious fervor, rapture, a kind of blind faith; in other words, setting aside critical judgment. I can hear the other side of this argument: ‘well, for chrissakes it’s just a children’s animated film, right?’ Yes, but (speaking only for myself) the children’s stories, plays, films and animated cartoons that sustain my engagement take us to something and through something, ultimately showing us something in a way we may not have seen it before. (The story, cartoon, whatever doesn’t necessarily have to be that serious or sustained: I can think of many Warner Bros. cartoons that, in a few minutes duration, are completely satisfying. To say nothing of classic fairy tales.) As far as the end-point here, I can’t blame that entirely on Anderson – I think that’s straight from Dahl’s story. But it’s taken for granted that an original film will take some liberties with the underlying text – maybe a great many. And perhaps that’s the ultimate frustration here – the constraints we feel, not simply from the painstaking animation of the three-dimensional characters, but parallel to this, the scope of the characters’ actions and behavior: you want them to take more liberties.
This is what nags at me as I smile through the ‘cute.’ Is there a ‘flip-side’ to ‘cute’ – both the response or impression and the overall aesthetic? And why does that ‘flip-side’ seem to partake of something akin to fear and repression? Why does ‘cute’ ultimately seem like an obstacle or ditch along the steeple-chase to something more fully realized; something much more expansive or phantasmagorical? Over the last 30 or so years since the political right wing – here and elsewhere – largely hijacked the political dialogue and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the cultural dialogue (they will NEVER be able to constrain it entirely) – have people become more fearful of liberty?
I’m feeling distracted over the last day or so – even more so than usual (I must say the kick-off to the national holidays of greed and gluttony really did me in) – blowing past a couple deadlines, dropping a couple of books in favor of the Sunday Times and some fashion magazines, ignoring the toxic disaster of my apartment and skipping off into the autumn afternoon. And ya know what? – I’m just going to go with it. So I’ll talk about the beautiful mini-retrospective of Dora de Larios’s ceramic sculpture I just saw at the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum another time. And of course, after shlepping off to Regen II to have a second look (my first was about 3 minutes long) at the Marilyn Minter show, I found the gallery shuttered for the holiday week-end – so that has to wait anyway. So – here’s my problem….
Except it’s not even really a problem. Cute. C-U-T-E. I live in L.A. – a city that might have been founded on cute – except it wasn’t; Anaheim, an hour or two south of here – home of Disneyland, at whose doorstep much of the blame, I think, can be placed, is that city. James Wolcott (I think it was James Wolcott – who, by the way, I think is pretty cute) already wrote something about this in his Vanity Fair column a month or so ago, so I’m going to avoid re-treading that turf. I’m a sucker for Nara and Murakami (though it’s the stuff beyond the kaikai-kiki thing that pull me back into it) and all sorts of Japanese – for that matter Eurasian – novelties; have acquired libraries of children’s books for my nephews, nieces and kids of friends (and saved a few for myself); am utterly a child of Oz and Neverland (the Barrie one, not the Jackson – though I’ll always love some of Michael’s music); love babies and almost all children under 10 and pretty much all quadruped animals. And greater than quadruped (I LOVE spiders). And no – there is absolutely NO truth to the rumor that I was the model for Eloise. I’m Madeline.
I’m still a child. But I’m not exactly innocent – if children ever are entirely. And like any other child, I’m voracious, insatiable. The cute and cozy is all well and good – but tell me MORE. And more and more and more. I have to see more, visit the dark places, look at what’s on the other side(s)… and then things change; stuff happens. ‘Cute’ suddenly seems stillborn, frozen in a moment for which we can’t even summon up a nostalgia – because there wasn’t enough there in the first place. Do you remember your first trip to Disneyland? Or (assuming you might live in some proximity to one of the parks) your second? (Was there a third?) I think I remember each of my three visits to the original Anaheim park – the first (naturally) and third being the most memorable. The park has changed significantly over the years; but I have never had any desire to return to it. There was nothing regrettable about the experience. I wouldn’t say there were any particular thrills – even the faster, more rollicking rides seemed relatively tame; but the park’s amusements were fun and entertaining – variously novel, charming, clever, creative, sensational, mystifying and, well, amusing. In retrospect, some of the hokiest, most dated amusements (e.g., from “Frontierland” and “Futureland”) bring the most delight – experiences and specimens pulled from a time capsule that recall not only the shows or amusement rides themselves, but the way we saw the world then – framed within a moment of time, now seen with historic perspective, from a child’s (not necessarily unthoughtful and sometimes surprisingly sophisticated) viewpoint.
But that’s half the point – or maybe the whole point. Once outside the park gates and past its initial charms, what the child inevitably realized (sooner rather than later) was how much was left out of the experience, how diluted (to say nothing of deluded) it all felt in retrospect, how much richer, more enthralling it might have been, rather than the sort of ice-cream-parlor-with-sideshows stroll it turned out to be. And then on the other side, when you recall that some of the hokiest things turn out to be the most memorable, you recognize what was most authentic, committed, among the entertainments – where the Disney Company gave itself over most completely and committedly to its slightly looney “Imagineers” vision.
Even Walt Disney and Co. weren’t always just about the ‘cute’. The earliest incarnations of Mickey Mouse have a much wider (and darker) expressive and affective range. Even in some of Disney’s consistently saccharine animated vehicles, the most interesting characters are frequently the villains or – proto-feminist touch here – villainesses: the Wicked Queen of Snow White, Maleficent of Sleeping Beauty, Cruella de Vil. (A girl could practically make role models out of these.)
Why did it have to stop there? Why should it ever stop there? What the child – selfish, greedy, curious (and yes, by degrees, innocent, even cute) – wants is nothing less than the world, or at least some world – drawn from the physical world, or invented whole-cloth out of the imagination. These are worlds of conflict and contention, competing social order and disorder, searching, striving, evolving ethics and nascent corruption, reason and chaos, logic and absurdity, wit and arabesque, delight and enchantment, magic and mortality. Corruption, chaos, absurdity, and finally death – yes, welcome to kiddieland. It’s a place I’m always happy to re-visit – through the mythos of certain fairy tales, the absurd, surreal Wonderland of Alice, James Barrie’s Neverland, Narnia, the mad, mad, mad, mad world(s) of Oz. (And sure – I like Paris and the Plaza Hotel, too.)
I’m not sure what triggered this particular blow-out on the subject: something uncharacteristically (and sooooo inauthentically, untruthfully) cheaply sentimental trod out by one of my siblings (made even more dishonest by his protest); the unrelenting and oppressive parade of ‘stupid pet tricks’ in one form or another that are a constant of the background chatter in the office where I work – from the ‘cute’ to the merely witless; the latest e-mail ‘cute’ cat video from a relatively intellectual pal who nevertheless gives me grief for my political vigilance (and, yes, occasionally the vitriol that ensues); the sort of oppressively cheerful, American greeting card viewpoint of far too many people (especially in this economy – what? it takes another Depression to bring them back down to earth?); or maybe the flood of good (and fairly superficial) reviews for a film (gee, that’s a shock) that, however charming (in the most superficial way), however clever (by very small and mostly technical degrees), whatever the merits of the story on which it was based, was really not much of a film.
The film I’m referring to is The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson’s animated film based on the story by Roald Dahl – several of whose stories have been successfully translated to the screen (e.g., Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and its earlier musical incarnation, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory; James and the Giant Peach; The Witches; and more). Though not far from the story (which is frankly not one of my favorites from Dahl), the film seems to alter its sly spirit, becoming slightly overbearing where the story remains quite light, yet if anything minimizing the real danger to Fox and his family. (There is never any doubt that Fox will somehow prevail, no matter what the dangers, how the odds are stacked against him, or how grimly determined and vigilant his enemies. (Perhaps a problem with the story: Fox’s enemies are never particularly clever, merely dogged and in fact quite stupid. Fox is by far the most clever of any of the characters – and knows it.) Wes Anderson knows he’s clever, too – and dogged – you’d have to be to pull off such a feat of animation; and that’s not the worst of it. It’s as if what he really wanted was to graft The Royal Tenenbaums onto the Dahl story, while re-making Fox into his avatar – really a kind of narcissistic homage – right down to his half-size-too-small bespoke corduroy suit. And voicing the characters? Forget about the predictable Bill Murray or Owen Wilson – Fox and his wife must be voiced by George Clooney and Meryl Streep (a pity the script should be so pallid with talent like that).
It was actually self-professed comedy-hater Opera Buddy who was initially eager to see the film. Why not? I thought, fan of Charlie, Willy Wonka, et al. that I am. For a screening audience, I thought the reaction was pretty enthusiastic. People seemed to laugh (a little too heartily) at all the jokes in all the “right” places, be touched by the picture of Fox and his family, and cheer them on. I could tell Opera Buddy was trying to muster some appreciation for the film – certainly it coaxed a few yuks, a smile or two out of us. But by the movie’s end, we were ready to dash for the exit, eager to be as far away from it as possible; and we each turned to the other to ask the question we always ask in situations like this: “Whose idea was it to see this???”
What was it the audience found so laugh-out-loud funny, so worthy of engagement with these characters (gee and I thought I was the sucker for furry friends both real and manufactured), so worthy of cheering? Forgive me, but I have to be just a bit suspicious of that kind of enthusiasm – I mean that as well in the 17th century Restoration sense, as in the sway of an almost religious fervor, rapture, a kind of blind faith; in other words, setting aside critical judgment. I can hear the other side of this argument: ‘well, for chrissakes it’s just a children’s animated film, right?’ Yes, but (speaking only for myself) the children’s stories, plays, films and animated cartoons that sustain my engagement take us to something and through something, ultimately showing us something in a way we may not have seen it before. (The story, cartoon, whatever doesn’t necessarily have to be that serious or sustained: I can think of many Warner Bros. cartoons that, in a few minutes duration, are completely satisfying. To say nothing of classic fairy tales.) As far as the end-point here, I can’t blame that entirely on Anderson – I think that’s straight from Dahl’s story. But it’s taken for granted that an original film will take some liberties with the underlying text – maybe a great many. And perhaps that’s the ultimate frustration here – the constraints we feel, not simply from the painstaking animation of the three-dimensional characters, but parallel to this, the scope of the characters’ actions and behavior: you want them to take more liberties.
This is what nags at me as I smile through the ‘cute.’ Is there a ‘flip-side’ to ‘cute’ – both the response or impression and the overall aesthetic? And why does that ‘flip-side’ seem to partake of something akin to fear and repression? Why does ‘cute’ ultimately seem like an obstacle or ditch along the steeple-chase to something more fully realized; something much more expansive or phantasmagorical? Over the last 30 or so years since the political right wing – here and elsewhere – largely hijacked the political dialogue and, to a somewhat lesser extent, the cultural dialogue (they will NEVER be able to constrain it entirely) – have people become more fearful of liberty?
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Making Honey While the World Burns
28 November 2009
After the immense disappointment of NOT being seated for the Los Angeles Opera production of Handel’s Tamerlano with Placido Domingo – ever seeking new operatic challenges – taking the role of the defeated Turkish sultan Bajazet, and the reportedly (at least from the buzz we’ve heard to date) amazing counter-tenor Bejun Mehta (as well as the very talented soprano Sarah Coburn as Asteria), Opera Buddy and I trekked out to console ourselves over sweet potato fries, spinach, tapas and a velvety Malbec at Kate Mantillini’s – accompanied by college football highlights on ESPN (one of our new favorite things) – then walked across the street to the Laemmle Music Hall to see Frederick Wiseman’s documentary film on the Paris Opera Ballet, La Danse – which is also a valentine to the lush monument to French opera, dance, spectacle and sheer grandeur that is the Palais Garnier itself. Wiseman takes us literally from its deepest foundations where carp and minnows swim in shallow canals, to the cupola with its lyre-screened windows that light the company’s rehearsal studios and audition rooms. La Danse is above all a portrait of the company – a kaleidoscope of its many seemingly randomly arrayed facets which, taken as a whole, assume an organic unity – the cultural institution as a living organism, and its symbiotic habitation in the Palais Garnier. I never knew that there was a fully operational apiary atop the Palais – a fascinating detail – but maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Wiseman shows us the Palais as an intense hive of activity – choreographers (including Mats Ek and Wayne McGregor) constructing their ballets by all means necessary, intently shaping, pacing, and articulating their supremely capable principals; soloists rehearsing difficult step sequences, dramatic pantomime; dance masters rigorously, passionately training their budding stars and whipping their corps de ballet into shape – as well as the many workshops – art, costumes, hair and make-up – that support the theatrical production; and the kitchens that fuel this army. The viewer could almost be forgiven for assuming that Brigitte Lefèvre, the company’s formidable Director and Administrator, is the queen of this hive – her receptive but willful and sure-footed guiding spirit seems omnipresent – but the real queen here is always, as the title plainly states, the dance, the finished work, as well as the institution itself. Opera Buddy ducked out early – the unrelenting French (which of course I can’t get enough of) was getting to her; and it has to be said, in spite of the drama and polish of some of the finished production scenes (including a graphically bloody Medea), the last 45 minutes of the film flag somewhat. Still, I found it almost inexhaustibly absorbing and – jettisoning half that last 45 minutes – would have gladly sat down for a second helping. L.A. may not be the cultural desert it was 30 years ago; but we still starve for dance in this town; and, even the slender smorgasbord of Ek, McGregor, Nureyev, Balanchine and Pina Bausch on view in Wiseman’s film can be richly satisfying after a long fast.
For a fan of Handel opera (and, really, all Baroque opera) like me, it really hurts to miss something like the L.A. Opera Tamerlano. I take some consolation in the fact that the production (by Chas Rader-Shieber, with art direction by David Zinn) sounds absolutely dreadful – blackshirts, black suits, and a proto-Nazi scheme (with the exception of Bazajet and Asteria, who are inexplicably done up in period costume) against a stark staging. What could be more clichéd, more tedious? Ugh. Obviously, the singing is all that redeems it.
As usual, I’m going on – this isn’t even what I sat down to blog about – or not the only thing anyway – and now I have to jump. [While I've been writing this, I’ve been listening to the NPR news – the week-end program hosted by – speaking of tedious – Scott Simon; and wanted to throw in a few comments on that endless blather while he and a couple of interview subjects were chattering on – not unrelated to a couple of my other items; but it will have to wait. (Thank goddess for Daniel Shorr.)] It’s a bit off-topic, anyway, and – just to forewarn the itinerant blog-reader – political. Well. Hey – and while everyone’s going nuts over the State dinner gate-crashers at this past week, let’s just be happy that the Obamas have restored a bit of luster to the after-hours White House. (How glamourous Michelle looked – that’s something I think everyone, regardless of partisanship, can agree on.)
After the immense disappointment of NOT being seated for the Los Angeles Opera production of Handel’s Tamerlano with Placido Domingo – ever seeking new operatic challenges – taking the role of the defeated Turkish sultan Bajazet, and the reportedly (at least from the buzz we’ve heard to date) amazing counter-tenor Bejun Mehta (as well as the very talented soprano Sarah Coburn as Asteria), Opera Buddy and I trekked out to console ourselves over sweet potato fries, spinach, tapas and a velvety Malbec at Kate Mantillini’s – accompanied by college football highlights on ESPN (one of our new favorite things) – then walked across the street to the Laemmle Music Hall to see Frederick Wiseman’s documentary film on the Paris Opera Ballet, La Danse – which is also a valentine to the lush monument to French opera, dance, spectacle and sheer grandeur that is the Palais Garnier itself. Wiseman takes us literally from its deepest foundations where carp and minnows swim in shallow canals, to the cupola with its lyre-screened windows that light the company’s rehearsal studios and audition rooms. La Danse is above all a portrait of the company – a kaleidoscope of its many seemingly randomly arrayed facets which, taken as a whole, assume an organic unity – the cultural institution as a living organism, and its symbiotic habitation in the Palais Garnier. I never knew that there was a fully operational apiary atop the Palais – a fascinating detail – but maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Wiseman shows us the Palais as an intense hive of activity – choreographers (including Mats Ek and Wayne McGregor) constructing their ballets by all means necessary, intently shaping, pacing, and articulating their supremely capable principals; soloists rehearsing difficult step sequences, dramatic pantomime; dance masters rigorously, passionately training their budding stars and whipping their corps de ballet into shape – as well as the many workshops – art, costumes, hair and make-up – that support the theatrical production; and the kitchens that fuel this army. The viewer could almost be forgiven for assuming that Brigitte Lefèvre, the company’s formidable Director and Administrator, is the queen of this hive – her receptive but willful and sure-footed guiding spirit seems omnipresent – but the real queen here is always, as the title plainly states, the dance, the finished work, as well as the institution itself. Opera Buddy ducked out early – the unrelenting French (which of course I can’t get enough of) was getting to her; and it has to be said, in spite of the drama and polish of some of the finished production scenes (including a graphically bloody Medea), the last 45 minutes of the film flag somewhat. Still, I found it almost inexhaustibly absorbing and – jettisoning half that last 45 minutes – would have gladly sat down for a second helping. L.A. may not be the cultural desert it was 30 years ago; but we still starve for dance in this town; and, even the slender smorgasbord of Ek, McGregor, Nureyev, Balanchine and Pina Bausch on view in Wiseman’s film can be richly satisfying after a long fast.
For a fan of Handel opera (and, really, all Baroque opera) like me, it really hurts to miss something like the L.A. Opera Tamerlano. I take some consolation in the fact that the production (by Chas Rader-Shieber, with art direction by David Zinn) sounds absolutely dreadful – blackshirts, black suits, and a proto-Nazi scheme (with the exception of Bazajet and Asteria, who are inexplicably done up in period costume) against a stark staging. What could be more clichéd, more tedious? Ugh. Obviously, the singing is all that redeems it.
As usual, I’m going on – this isn’t even what I sat down to blog about – or not the only thing anyway – and now I have to jump. [While I've been writing this, I’ve been listening to the NPR news – the week-end program hosted by – speaking of tedious – Scott Simon; and wanted to throw in a few comments on that endless blather while he and a couple of interview subjects were chattering on – not unrelated to a couple of my other items; but it will have to wait. (Thank goddess for Daniel Shorr.)] It’s a bit off-topic, anyway, and – just to forewarn the itinerant blog-reader – political. Well. Hey – and while everyone’s going nuts over the State dinner gate-crashers at this past week, let’s just be happy that the Obamas have restored a bit of luster to the after-hours White House. (How glamourous Michelle looked – that’s something I think everyone, regardless of partisanship, can agree on.)
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Michael Govan's Baby and other Thanksgiving Follies
24- 26 November 2009
Okay – I really didn’t think it was going to be quite this long – but I’ve been having problems both trivial (relatively) and serious – and all of them disabling – with both my desktop AND my laptop; and things have been just crazy enough in my office to sideline whatever impulse I might have had to post from there. (It’s not always like that – but sometimes more so than others – like, uh, recently.)
Anyway, much as I would like to, I’m not even going to begin to retrace my steps (which are many) and just jump in with what’s in my scope at the moment, what’s on the table right in front of me, and generally what’s on my mind.
What’s in front of me right now is an item from Bloomberg by way of the Los Angeles Times’ Culture Monster blog regarding the status of that Jeff Koons boondoggle folly, “Train” – the full-scale 70-foot, mechanically functional 1943-vintage Baldwin 2900-series steam locomotive intended to be hoisted by an enormous crane and suspended above Wilshire Boulevard (or at least over the sidewalk, threatening only pedestrians foolish enough to attempt entering the museum through its main entryway). The status is, in a word, stalled; and maybe, to judge from the slightly resigned, pessimistic tone of the posting, a bit stale. Well, no kidding. Its sheer grandiosity made it stale before LACMA’s Wallis Annenberg Director, Michael Govan, managed to put into words just how stale it was – that is to say, stillborn – though Govan apparently doesn’t know this yet. Sometimes I get the impression that Govan is playing a museum director version of the Ira Levin/Roman Polanski character, Rosemary – as in Rosemary’s Baby – running here, flitting there, picking at this or that, all over town, unaware that the vision he’s gestating is something of an art world Antichrist – a monument to post-industrial and post-financial melt-down that may in fact be its singular (and single) artistic merit. Oh sure – go ahead and bankrupt the museum, squander millions that might actually be committed to real art with serious street-cred in and out of the critical dialogue, on and off the auction block – all for a $35 million folly (you read that right – yeah, I know the published estimates are in the $25 million neighborhood; but if you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you; oh and did anyone say anything yet about MAINTENANCE?)
As everyone knows, the same Wallis Annenberg who subsidizes Govan’s paycheck funded the feasibility studies on this project, but over the last year or so has reportedly lost much of her interest in it (a tribute to Govan’s persuasive skills that she mustered any interest in it in the first place) and wisely shifted her focus towards acquisitions of actual art and other LACMA programs. (By the way, if this posting should ever find its way to Ms. Annenberg’s transom, I am completely open to re-naming it Wallis Annenberg awol [On the other hand, I’ll have to check with my editor to see if she’d be willing to re-name my position Wallis Annenberg Staff Writer of Artillery Magazine.] I can assure her Foundation straight off that it would be a MUCH smaller investment than Govan’s subsidy. Frankly, the sooner the better – for starters, I could use some help getting to Miami Beach next week – no kidding.)
Setting aside the hazards – really an engineering nightmare, especially in a seismically active zone – of erecting such a thing in proximity to one of the most heavily trafficked blocks in Los Angeles – the thing at best reads as a monument to decline – and, in a way, a slap at the museum itself (which might not be entirely a bad thing); and I’m not even sure how apt such a notion really is – right now or 30 years from now or 130 years from now. (If Warren Buffett is suddenly bull-ish on trains and rail transportation – and we better be bull-ish on some alternative to the hopeless carbon monster our mass transportation is for the most part in this country – perhaps the train is not as much of an Industrial Age relic as the Koons project seems to imply.) Speaking specifically of follies – I mean in the classic sense – Govan is actually not stupid, and you have to wonder why he can’t seem to shake himself out of his monument-building lock-step and take the radical step of thinking small – or at least within the museum’s means, which so far, he’s pushed WAY beyond. I mean – why not an actual folly – something small enough to disappear in the rush of Wilshire Boulevard traffic – yet exquisite enough to conjure a rapture within the right perspective. He should make a research tour of some English stately homes and German shlosses to see how it’s done.
Of course, folly or whatever, then he has to find the right artist for the project; and I have to say I can't think of such an artist off the top of my head. But I'm pretty sure it's not Jeff Koons or Chris Burden. There’s more to say about all this – and a few other things – but enough for now.
Happy Thanksgiving, possums -- as Dame Edna would say.
Okay – I really didn’t think it was going to be quite this long – but I’ve been having problems both trivial (relatively) and serious – and all of them disabling – with both my desktop AND my laptop; and things have been just crazy enough in my office to sideline whatever impulse I might have had to post from there. (It’s not always like that – but sometimes more so than others – like, uh, recently.)
Anyway, much as I would like to, I’m not even going to begin to retrace my steps (which are many) and just jump in with what’s in my scope at the moment, what’s on the table right in front of me, and generally what’s on my mind.
What’s in front of me right now is an item from Bloomberg by way of the Los Angeles Times’ Culture Monster blog regarding the status of that Jeff Koons boondoggle folly, “Train” – the full-scale 70-foot, mechanically functional 1943-vintage Baldwin 2900-series steam locomotive intended to be hoisted by an enormous crane and suspended above Wilshire Boulevard (or at least over the sidewalk, threatening only pedestrians foolish enough to attempt entering the museum through its main entryway). The status is, in a word, stalled; and maybe, to judge from the slightly resigned, pessimistic tone of the posting, a bit stale. Well, no kidding. Its sheer grandiosity made it stale before LACMA’s Wallis Annenberg Director, Michael Govan, managed to put into words just how stale it was – that is to say, stillborn – though Govan apparently doesn’t know this yet. Sometimes I get the impression that Govan is playing a museum director version of the Ira Levin/Roman Polanski character, Rosemary – as in Rosemary’s Baby – running here, flitting there, picking at this or that, all over town, unaware that the vision he’s gestating is something of an art world Antichrist – a monument to post-industrial and post-financial melt-down that may in fact be its singular (and single) artistic merit. Oh sure – go ahead and bankrupt the museum, squander millions that might actually be committed to real art with serious street-cred in and out of the critical dialogue, on and off the auction block – all for a $35 million folly (you read that right – yeah, I know the published estimates are in the $25 million neighborhood; but if you believe that, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you; oh and did anyone say anything yet about MAINTENANCE?)
As everyone knows, the same Wallis Annenberg who subsidizes Govan’s paycheck funded the feasibility studies on this project, but over the last year or so has reportedly lost much of her interest in it (a tribute to Govan’s persuasive skills that she mustered any interest in it in the first place) and wisely shifted her focus towards acquisitions of actual art and other LACMA programs. (By the way, if this posting should ever find its way to Ms. Annenberg’s transom, I am completely open to re-naming it Wallis Annenberg awol [On the other hand, I’ll have to check with my editor to see if she’d be willing to re-name my position Wallis Annenberg Staff Writer of Artillery Magazine.] I can assure her Foundation straight off that it would be a MUCH smaller investment than Govan’s subsidy. Frankly, the sooner the better – for starters, I could use some help getting to Miami Beach next week – no kidding.)
Setting aside the hazards – really an engineering nightmare, especially in a seismically active zone – of erecting such a thing in proximity to one of the most heavily trafficked blocks in Los Angeles – the thing at best reads as a monument to decline – and, in a way, a slap at the museum itself (which might not be entirely a bad thing); and I’m not even sure how apt such a notion really is – right now or 30 years from now or 130 years from now. (If Warren Buffett is suddenly bull-ish on trains and rail transportation – and we better be bull-ish on some alternative to the hopeless carbon monster our mass transportation is for the most part in this country – perhaps the train is not as much of an Industrial Age relic as the Koons project seems to imply.) Speaking specifically of follies – I mean in the classic sense – Govan is actually not stupid, and you have to wonder why he can’t seem to shake himself out of his monument-building lock-step and take the radical step of thinking small – or at least within the museum’s means, which so far, he’s pushed WAY beyond. I mean – why not an actual folly – something small enough to disappear in the rush of Wilshire Boulevard traffic – yet exquisite enough to conjure a rapture within the right perspective. He should make a research tour of some English stately homes and German shlosses to see how it’s done.
Of course, folly or whatever, then he has to find the right artist for the project; and I have to say I can't think of such an artist off the top of my head. But I'm pretty sure it's not Jeff Koons or Chris Burden. There’s more to say about all this – and a few other things – but enough for now.
Happy Thanksgiving, possums -- as Dame Edna would say.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Zombie of the Opera
31 October 2009
It’s Halloween – so I’m back to spook you. To scare you. Well, contemporary art and music (& movies, dance, theatre, etc.) should be a little scary. Maybe a LOT scary. (And NO – that doesn’t mean GROSSED OUT. It’s not about cheap EXPLOITATION. In fact it’s not about CHEAP – EVER! Nor for that matter EXPLOITATION – EVER! Have I made myself CLEAR? (Or am I simply confusing the Scientologists who may be reading this?)
So – no – I’m not going to go into an extensive re-tread. Everyone here knows my story (and it’s a sad one); so let’s skip it. Yeah, yeah, yeah – I’m as exhausted as ever. So here we go. Last night (30 October) I went to the opening of conceptual art legend Stephen Kaltenbach’s very aptly timed and titled show at Another Year In L.A., S’Fear. Certainly some aspect of ‘fear’ – or certainly a kind of intimidating mystery – and of course, simply fear and apprehension of the unknown, have played prominently in Kaltenbach’s work in the past: what is hidden from view, scarcely limned through its container or shell (or title – which of course is its own kind of container). And so it was here: more explicitly (and, in one instance, theatrically) than ever. The fear – and the sphere – and the implicit mystery of geometries of two, three and more dimensions. Theatricality to one side – which I find irresistible – it’s a thoughtful and elegant show. So go. Oh – and you might bear in mind that Another Year may be moving from its current landmark Deco building on San Fernando because of some MASSIVE pile of a high school(?) that is set to rise directly across the street. (We need another high school? Why not just make the ones we already have BETTER? As in through MORE, BETTER TEACHERS? A little (or a lot) MORE MONEY??) So – one more reason to hustle over there and see the show.
Thursday night (29 October), Opera Buddy and I went to a screening of a film of the Barcelona-based Fura des Baus production of Wagner’s Die Walkure staged in the (Calatrava designed) Palau de las Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain, featuring Peter Seifert and Jennifer Wilson as Brunnhilde and Juha Uusitalo as Wotan with the the amazing Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana brilliantly conducted by the apparently indefatigable Zubin Mehta. (If you’ve forgotten how amazing he can be, I can recommend this filmed opera on that basis alone.) The production is heavily video and effects-laden – with the internecine dramatics of the first two acts a bit muddied by the staging – but redeemed by the climactic (always threatening-to-never-actually-reach-climax) third act and Brunnhilde’s agony – which reduced Opera Buddy (despite her reservations about the production overall) to tears, and me (after my exhausting workday) to simultaneous catharsis and paralysis. (I comforted OB – ‘hey Dads are like that. Ya try to make them proud of your battle prowess and they end up disowning you & you have to settle for them not letting anyone fuck you but a billionaire master-of-the-universe,’ Right?) Well. (I’m telling you, it was pretty fucking GREAT.)
Earlier that day, I had the great fortune of viewing a portion of Ann Janss’s extensive and eclectic collection of L.A. and other artists – which in addition to some phenomenal Michael McMillen pieces and an entire gallery devoted to an amazing H.C. Westermann series, See America First, provided me with an introduction to the work of Steve Galloway. (As usual, I have to ask myself – was my head stuck under a rock or something?). I’m not going to go into great detail at the moment; because I have to jet out to, uh, the Silver Lake Dog Park. (You think I’m joking, don’t you? Well think again.) If you see a zombie in the dog park, it’s just me. Back in a zombie minute. (That could be a few millennia, you realize.)
It’s Halloween – so I’m back to spook you. To scare you. Well, contemporary art and music (& movies, dance, theatre, etc.) should be a little scary. Maybe a LOT scary. (And NO – that doesn’t mean GROSSED OUT. It’s not about cheap EXPLOITATION. In fact it’s not about CHEAP – EVER! Nor for that matter EXPLOITATION – EVER! Have I made myself CLEAR? (Or am I simply confusing the Scientologists who may be reading this?)
So – no – I’m not going to go into an extensive re-tread. Everyone here knows my story (and it’s a sad one); so let’s skip it. Yeah, yeah, yeah – I’m as exhausted as ever. So here we go. Last night (30 October) I went to the opening of conceptual art legend Stephen Kaltenbach’s very aptly timed and titled show at Another Year In L.A., S’Fear. Certainly some aspect of ‘fear’ – or certainly a kind of intimidating mystery – and of course, simply fear and apprehension of the unknown, have played prominently in Kaltenbach’s work in the past: what is hidden from view, scarcely limned through its container or shell (or title – which of course is its own kind of container). And so it was here: more explicitly (and, in one instance, theatrically) than ever. The fear – and the sphere – and the implicit mystery of geometries of two, three and more dimensions. Theatricality to one side – which I find irresistible – it’s a thoughtful and elegant show. So go. Oh – and you might bear in mind that Another Year may be moving from its current landmark Deco building on San Fernando because of some MASSIVE pile of a high school(?) that is set to rise directly across the street. (We need another high school? Why not just make the ones we already have BETTER? As in through MORE, BETTER TEACHERS? A little (or a lot) MORE MONEY??) So – one more reason to hustle over there and see the show.
Thursday night (29 October), Opera Buddy and I went to a screening of a film of the Barcelona-based Fura des Baus production of Wagner’s Die Walkure staged in the (Calatrava designed) Palau de las Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia, Spain, featuring Peter Seifert and Jennifer Wilson as Brunnhilde and Juha Uusitalo as Wotan with the the amazing Orquestra de la Comunitat Valenciana brilliantly conducted by the apparently indefatigable Zubin Mehta. (If you’ve forgotten how amazing he can be, I can recommend this filmed opera on that basis alone.) The production is heavily video and effects-laden – with the internecine dramatics of the first two acts a bit muddied by the staging – but redeemed by the climactic (always threatening-to-never-actually-reach-climax) third act and Brunnhilde’s agony – which reduced Opera Buddy (despite her reservations about the production overall) to tears, and me (after my exhausting workday) to simultaneous catharsis and paralysis. (I comforted OB – ‘hey Dads are like that. Ya try to make them proud of your battle prowess and they end up disowning you & you have to settle for them not letting anyone fuck you but a billionaire master-of-the-universe,’ Right?) Well. (I’m telling you, it was pretty fucking GREAT.)
Earlier that day, I had the great fortune of viewing a portion of Ann Janss’s extensive and eclectic collection of L.A. and other artists – which in addition to some phenomenal Michael McMillen pieces and an entire gallery devoted to an amazing H.C. Westermann series, See America First, provided me with an introduction to the work of Steve Galloway. (As usual, I have to ask myself – was my head stuck under a rock or something?). I’m not going to go into great detail at the moment; because I have to jet out to, uh, the Silver Lake Dog Park. (You think I’m joking, don’t you? Well think again.) If you see a zombie in the dog park, it’s just me. Back in a zombie minute. (That could be a few millennia, you realize.)
Saturday, October 10, 2009
Murmures des Richesses
9-10 October 2009
Oh who cares who was at the Burchfield opening at the Hammer? Annie Philbin, Cathy Opie, Marlene Picard, Mitch Handsone, Lydia Szamraj, television producers (Hey – I just wrote a treatment – have ya got a minute? I think I have a copy in the car.), models, investment bankers – all the usual suspects. (Never did fetch that treatment.) But let me tell you what I was doing (almost a week later!) before. First of all, there was a truckload of GREAT work at Bergamot Station, where I went to do a bit of reconnaissance. The Francesca Gabbiani show (the second part of a two-part show) at Patrick Painter was extraordinary. I’ve been a fan of hers practically from my first exposure to her work (which, speaking of the Hammer, I believe was through a Hammer Project space (or maybe it was in the main galleries, I don’t remember – but the Hammer gave her the exposure). But her work just keeps getting richer, denser – more elaborate, exquisite, too, of course – but always to a very controlled, specific end – the whole of the conceit, the composition, at the service of the unified effect. (Though it is impossible not to be drawn into the rich details of these ‘black mirror’ collage-tableaux.) In the work on view here, the artistic and decorative fashions of 18th century rococo pastoral are re-worked into a kind of swirling ecological cacophony ‘framing’ a black ‘mirror’ lagoon-negative space. But here the foliated and filigreed shells, flora and fauna of the benign 18th century pastoral-boiserie is given a more forbidding cast, veering into the depths of jungle or forest – barn owls looming over chameleons, reptiles and dense foliage.assembled into a slightly tempestuous froth. The effect is simultaneously haunting and enchanting. Trick-or-treat – Patrick: would you mind putting one of these in my candy sack? I could spend hours with any one of these singular pieces.
I’m jumping ahead a bit here, though (yeah, on a certain level, that makes no sense) – because on the prior Wednesday evening (that’s 30 September), I had the privilege of attending Ana Cervantes’ extraordinary piano recital – really a recital/recitation – a unique music, literary, and arguably even visual experience, almost entirely curated, commissioned and performed – I want to say breathed or launched upon the airwaves – by this marvelous pianist-performer. In the past, I’ve tended (a bit irrationally to be honest about it) to militate a bit against ‘program’ music – as a kind of coloration, literary or narrative, that the music doesn’t really need or support; that may indeed veer sharply from what the purely musical character delivers on its own abstractly. At the same time, I’m completely mad about film soundtrack music – as sensitive to score and sonic tapestry woven behind, through and surrounding film image, action and dialogue – the astonishing capacity a great score has to underscore, heighten or emphasize mood, prefigurations, undercurrents, suspense, climax – as I am to any other aspect of the film: script, dialogue, performance, direction, editing. I’m full of contradictions, I fully realize. Then of course we routinely, almost unconsciously, deal with the ‘literary’ bridges of popular and folk song, commercial music that bombard us daily, to say nothing of the heavy lyric and literary content of musical theatre (or could we stretch that to simply say theatre, period?) and, uh (GASP!) OPERA!
In other words, I guess I’m getting over such irrational biases. A good thing, too – because Ana Cervantes’s magnetic performance, which she titled Rumor de Páramo: Murmurs From the Wasteland effectively put to rest whatever reservations I might have had left about this nexus. (Which are really merely the reflection of my own interior tug-of-war between my literary and purely musical sensibilities.) To be introduced to great bodies of musical and literary work on the same evening for me is practically a formula ready-made for an ecstatic experience. By far the great literary inspiration of Rumor de Páramo is the work of Mexican writer, Juan Rulfo, one of whose principal works is the novel, Pedro Páramo. And as if he needed any endorsement beyond the genius (I think I can take the word of Cervantes, et al. here) of his work, Octavio Paz (a titanic literary hero for me, whose work alas I have only read in English and French), perhaps Mexico’s greatest man of letters, wrote that Juan Rulfo was “the only Mexican novelist to have provided us an image – rather than a mere description – of our physical surroundings.” (meaning Mexico itself). The only composer on the program with whom I was familiar was Arturo Márquez – who might simplistically be described as a Mexican impressionist, TKTKTK
Oh who cares who was at the Burchfield opening at the Hammer? Annie Philbin, Cathy Opie, Marlene Picard, Mitch Handsone, Lydia Szamraj, television producers (Hey – I just wrote a treatment – have ya got a minute? I think I have a copy in the car.), models, investment bankers – all the usual suspects. (Never did fetch that treatment.) But let me tell you what I was doing (almost a week later!) before. First of all, there was a truckload of GREAT work at Bergamot Station, where I went to do a bit of reconnaissance. The Francesca Gabbiani show (the second part of a two-part show) at Patrick Painter was extraordinary. I’ve been a fan of hers practically from my first exposure to her work (which, speaking of the Hammer, I believe was through a Hammer Project space (or maybe it was in the main galleries, I don’t remember – but the Hammer gave her the exposure). But her work just keeps getting richer, denser – more elaborate, exquisite, too, of course – but always to a very controlled, specific end – the whole of the conceit, the composition, at the service of the unified effect. (Though it is impossible not to be drawn into the rich details of these ‘black mirror’ collage-tableaux.) In the work on view here, the artistic and decorative fashions of 18th century rococo pastoral are re-worked into a kind of swirling ecological cacophony ‘framing’ a black ‘mirror’ lagoon-negative space. But here the foliated and filigreed shells, flora and fauna of the benign 18th century pastoral-boiserie is given a more forbidding cast, veering into the depths of jungle or forest – barn owls looming over chameleons, reptiles and dense foliage.assembled into a slightly tempestuous froth. The effect is simultaneously haunting and enchanting. Trick-or-treat – Patrick: would you mind putting one of these in my candy sack? I could spend hours with any one of these singular pieces.
I’m jumping ahead a bit here, though (yeah, on a certain level, that makes no sense) – because on the prior Wednesday evening (that’s 30 September), I had the privilege of attending Ana Cervantes’ extraordinary piano recital – really a recital/recitation – a unique music, literary, and arguably even visual experience, almost entirely curated, commissioned and performed – I want to say breathed or launched upon the airwaves – by this marvelous pianist-performer. In the past, I’ve tended (a bit irrationally to be honest about it) to militate a bit against ‘program’ music – as a kind of coloration, literary or narrative, that the music doesn’t really need or support; that may indeed veer sharply from what the purely musical character delivers on its own abstractly. At the same time, I’m completely mad about film soundtrack music – as sensitive to score and sonic tapestry woven behind, through and surrounding film image, action and dialogue – the astonishing capacity a great score has to underscore, heighten or emphasize mood, prefigurations, undercurrents, suspense, climax – as I am to any other aspect of the film: script, dialogue, performance, direction, editing. I’m full of contradictions, I fully realize. Then of course we routinely, almost unconsciously, deal with the ‘literary’ bridges of popular and folk song, commercial music that bombard us daily, to say nothing of the heavy lyric and literary content of musical theatre (or could we stretch that to simply say theatre, period?) and, uh (GASP!) OPERA!
In other words, I guess I’m getting over such irrational biases. A good thing, too – because Ana Cervantes’s magnetic performance, which she titled Rumor de Páramo: Murmurs From the Wasteland effectively put to rest whatever reservations I might have had left about this nexus. (Which are really merely the reflection of my own interior tug-of-war between my literary and purely musical sensibilities.) To be introduced to great bodies of musical and literary work on the same evening for me is practically a formula ready-made for an ecstatic experience. By far the great literary inspiration of Rumor de Páramo is the work of Mexican writer, Juan Rulfo, one of whose principal works is the novel, Pedro Páramo. And as if he needed any endorsement beyond the genius (I think I can take the word of Cervantes, et al. here) of his work, Octavio Paz (a titanic literary hero for me, whose work alas I have only read in English and French), perhaps Mexico’s greatest man of letters, wrote that Juan Rulfo was “the only Mexican novelist to have provided us an image – rather than a mere description – of our physical surroundings.” (meaning Mexico itself). The only composer on the program with whom I was familiar was Arturo Márquez – who might simplistically be described as a Mexican impressionist, TKTKTK
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Dandelion Whine
2-3 October 2009
Before I pick up where I left off – and yes, I’m lagging behind again – here’s a discovery. The Blue Whale is apparently a beached whale on Saturdays. This has always been the case to some extent, as I’m aware – the building has long been mostly devoted to design, architecture, textile and furniture showrooms catering mostly to the trade who keep regular Monday through Friday business week hours. But until recently, it seemed there was always something open (besides the restaurant) – or at least some special event that kept the doors open for some segment of non-trade customers or would-be clients trawling the interior design studios. Not so – or certainly not so anymore. When I returned early Saturday afternoon for a bit of reconnaissance (mostly Carl Berg), I was dismayed to be told by a guard that the entire building was closed. That, I said confidently to him, was impossible. There were art galleries on the second and third floors that should be open for business. Should be – but apparently are not. As we both made calls on our respective phones, it became clear that there was no one at the Carl Berg Gallery. I left a message; but there was no reason to expect an immediate reply. The building is apparently closed on Saturdays to ALL. You would think this might change, given the re-purposing of so many of these spaces for art galleries – but nooooo. The galleries will simply have to find a way around this. Here’s a shout-out to Carl: I think some kind of party or salon at some bar – say half-way between that area and Culver City (not the Mandrake – which is something apart and unto itself) – should take the place of the gallery’s Saturday hours – which, let’s face it, are as important to clients and collectors as they are to the rest of us art world shmos cruising for a free view, intel, and something to talk about at the next dinner, drinks or, uh, BAR.
So – Erin Dunn (half the reason I was there) will have to wait a bit. But let me just preview more extended comments by saying it is one of the most astonishing debuts I have seen in some time. Carl Berg obviously agreed. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have essentially handed over an entire gallery – an enormous space divided axially into several smaller rooms or galleries – to this young artist, who only recently settled in Los Angeles after graduating from RISD, with only a few appearances in group shows to date. Obviously any artist this young (I’m not sure if she’s even 25) is still evolving and will probably veer some distance from what is on view here. But the assuredness of her vision (and its range) and technique – in addition to the exuberant, fantasist freedom with which it’s deployed – are truly astonishing.
The work is largely drawn from nature – but abstracted, heightened in color, composition and orientation, and scale to something that is a world apart – a garden of earthly delights transformed into a private fairyland of exquisite, almost monstrous creations. The closest comparison (in terms of both color and style) I can make is to the work of Odilon Redon. Some of Dunn’s flower paintings (I’m not sure what else to call them) struck this note most distinctly – but with slightly more immediacy, a more vivid charge. (And for the most part, they are larger than Redon’s typical scale.)
But it is not just the paintings. Berg did not just throw a gallery to Dunn. Her work – which ranges into collage/assemblage, objects, textiles – encompasses a world. It is something that requires this kind of space. I don’t mean to overstate or exaggerate, but it is visionary on an almost Blake-an scale. No, she is not a William Blake, a Bosch or Breughel, or – well perhaps it’s jumping ahead a bit to even put her in the same company with Redon. But it is a vision complete, compelling and coherent. Okay – let’s move on. I’ll come back to the Beached Whale. At some point.
This past evening (which now slips into the 4th) I’ve been to the opening of the Robert Gober-curated Charles Burchfield show at the Hammer – Heat Waves In A Swamp – which is something of a revelation viewed within the context of the past 15 or 20 years of Los Angeles art. I should say, with some embarrassment, a revelation to me – not obviously to Gober, nor to Ann Philbin. I had only the vaguest clue who he was – knew his work dated from some time in the early 20th century, knew he’d worked in Buffalo, New York, vaguely associated him with Ashcan School painters of upstate New York. As far as I knew (which was NOTHING), he might have just been another journeyman artist cum illustrator cum graphic artist (partially true – his work does have a graphic quality; and he earned his living for a time designing (with splendid success) wallpaper. Nothing could be further from the truth. In point of fact, he was the first artist given a solo mid-career retrospective at MoMA – which triggered an extensive correspondence with the redoubtable Alfred Barr. Edward Hopper singled him out for praise early in his career. (It was not long after that encomium that he was able to devote himself full-time to his art.) More recently (well, okay 25 years ago) there was a Metropolitan Museum show; still more recently (1993), a show at The Drawing Center. Well, we know where Ann Philbin was; but where the hell was I? Apparently sleeping under a rock somewhere – what? – my subscription to the Times had lapsed?
Of course, Opera Buddy (who I assumed had skipped in favor of the Resnais movies at LACMA) knew all about Burchfield. “Oh, of course – Charles Burchfield. He was a genius. I love his work.” (Am I awake yet?)
The work is not exactly a ‘wake-up call’, however much a revelation to me. Hopper praised Burchfield for his dedication to painting “life” or nature. But as a ‘naturalist’, Burchfield’s hand (and eye) are heavily stylizing – occasionally abstracting nature into a tapestry of interweaving ornament. It is at once schematic and elaborate – a simplified line extended and elaborated into a motif repeated or integrated within a composition of similar landscape elements – or ‘natural’ motives. And as much of a ‘naturalist’ as he was, he did not shy away from depicting the industrial landscape of the northeast and midwest U.S. It was easy to see how he could lend his talents quite successfully to wallpaper design – and of course, his designs were rich, fantastic. But it was a good thing he was able to get away from that business. His best work – mostly watercolors, or watercolors with goache, ink and graphite – has an almost ethereal quality – qualities he was able to sustain almost to the end of his career. One of the most amazing pieces – slightly monochromatic, almost grisaille – comes close to the end of his life (1961-65), Dandelion Fields and the Moon – silvery and shimmering.
In short (yeah, it deserves more than a ‘short’ – but bear with me for a bit), it’s a terrific show. Who was there? Oh let me get back to you about that.
Before I pick up where I left off – and yes, I’m lagging behind again – here’s a discovery. The Blue Whale is apparently a beached whale on Saturdays. This has always been the case to some extent, as I’m aware – the building has long been mostly devoted to design, architecture, textile and furniture showrooms catering mostly to the trade who keep regular Monday through Friday business week hours. But until recently, it seemed there was always something open (besides the restaurant) – or at least some special event that kept the doors open for some segment of non-trade customers or would-be clients trawling the interior design studios. Not so – or certainly not so anymore. When I returned early Saturday afternoon for a bit of reconnaissance (mostly Carl Berg), I was dismayed to be told by a guard that the entire building was closed. That, I said confidently to him, was impossible. There were art galleries on the second and third floors that should be open for business. Should be – but apparently are not. As we both made calls on our respective phones, it became clear that there was no one at the Carl Berg Gallery. I left a message; but there was no reason to expect an immediate reply. The building is apparently closed on Saturdays to ALL. You would think this might change, given the re-purposing of so many of these spaces for art galleries – but nooooo. The galleries will simply have to find a way around this. Here’s a shout-out to Carl: I think some kind of party or salon at some bar – say half-way between that area and Culver City (not the Mandrake – which is something apart and unto itself) – should take the place of the gallery’s Saturday hours – which, let’s face it, are as important to clients and collectors as they are to the rest of us art world shmos cruising for a free view, intel, and something to talk about at the next dinner, drinks or, uh, BAR.
So – Erin Dunn (half the reason I was there) will have to wait a bit. But let me just preview more extended comments by saying it is one of the most astonishing debuts I have seen in some time. Carl Berg obviously agreed. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have essentially handed over an entire gallery – an enormous space divided axially into several smaller rooms or galleries – to this young artist, who only recently settled in Los Angeles after graduating from RISD, with only a few appearances in group shows to date. Obviously any artist this young (I’m not sure if she’s even 25) is still evolving and will probably veer some distance from what is on view here. But the assuredness of her vision (and its range) and technique – in addition to the exuberant, fantasist freedom with which it’s deployed – are truly astonishing.
The work is largely drawn from nature – but abstracted, heightened in color, composition and orientation, and scale to something that is a world apart – a garden of earthly delights transformed into a private fairyland of exquisite, almost monstrous creations. The closest comparison (in terms of both color and style) I can make is to the work of Odilon Redon. Some of Dunn’s flower paintings (I’m not sure what else to call them) struck this note most distinctly – but with slightly more immediacy, a more vivid charge. (And for the most part, they are larger than Redon’s typical scale.)
But it is not just the paintings. Berg did not just throw a gallery to Dunn. Her work – which ranges into collage/assemblage, objects, textiles – encompasses a world. It is something that requires this kind of space. I don’t mean to overstate or exaggerate, but it is visionary on an almost Blake-an scale. No, she is not a William Blake, a Bosch or Breughel, or – well perhaps it’s jumping ahead a bit to even put her in the same company with Redon. But it is a vision complete, compelling and coherent. Okay – let’s move on. I’ll come back to the Beached Whale. At some point.
This past evening (which now slips into the 4th) I’ve been to the opening of the Robert Gober-curated Charles Burchfield show at the Hammer – Heat Waves In A Swamp – which is something of a revelation viewed within the context of the past 15 or 20 years of Los Angeles art. I should say, with some embarrassment, a revelation to me – not obviously to Gober, nor to Ann Philbin. I had only the vaguest clue who he was – knew his work dated from some time in the early 20th century, knew he’d worked in Buffalo, New York, vaguely associated him with Ashcan School painters of upstate New York. As far as I knew (which was NOTHING), he might have just been another journeyman artist cum illustrator cum graphic artist (partially true – his work does have a graphic quality; and he earned his living for a time designing (with splendid success) wallpaper. Nothing could be further from the truth. In point of fact, he was the first artist given a solo mid-career retrospective at MoMA – which triggered an extensive correspondence with the redoubtable Alfred Barr. Edward Hopper singled him out for praise early in his career. (It was not long after that encomium that he was able to devote himself full-time to his art.) More recently (well, okay 25 years ago) there was a Metropolitan Museum show; still more recently (1993), a show at The Drawing Center. Well, we know where Ann Philbin was; but where the hell was I? Apparently sleeping under a rock somewhere – what? – my subscription to the Times had lapsed?
Of course, Opera Buddy (who I assumed had skipped in favor of the Resnais movies at LACMA) knew all about Burchfield. “Oh, of course – Charles Burchfield. He was a genius. I love his work.” (Am I awake yet?)
The work is not exactly a ‘wake-up call’, however much a revelation to me. Hopper praised Burchfield for his dedication to painting “life” or nature. But as a ‘naturalist’, Burchfield’s hand (and eye) are heavily stylizing – occasionally abstracting nature into a tapestry of interweaving ornament. It is at once schematic and elaborate – a simplified line extended and elaborated into a motif repeated or integrated within a composition of similar landscape elements – or ‘natural’ motives. And as much of a ‘naturalist’ as he was, he did not shy away from depicting the industrial landscape of the northeast and midwest U.S. It was easy to see how he could lend his talents quite successfully to wallpaper design – and of course, his designs were rich, fantastic. But it was a good thing he was able to get away from that business. His best work – mostly watercolors, or watercolors with goache, ink and graphite – has an almost ethereal quality – qualities he was able to sustain almost to the end of his career. One of the most amazing pieces – slightly monochromatic, almost grisaille – comes close to the end of his life (1961-65), Dandelion Fields and the Moon – silvery and shimmering.
In short (yeah, it deserves more than a ‘short’ – but bear with me for a bit), it’s a terrific show. Who was there? Oh let me get back to you about that.
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