cityArts September 14, 2011

BRINGING THINKING BACK TO FALL ARTS

Sept. 14–Sept. 27, 2011 Volume 3, Issue 14

Facing the music of 9/11 0

Mamet vs. Letterman Page 16

Antiques, Art & Design at the ArmorySeptember 22 - 25, 2011 • The Park Avenue Armory 643 Park Avenue, (at 67th Street)Complimentary General Admission for Two with this coupon •Visit avenueshows.com for full show details

2 CityArts | September 14, 2011

INSIDE

EDITOR Armond White [email protected]

MANAGING EDITOR Mark Peikert [email protected]

ASSISTANT EDITOR Deb Sperling

SENIOR MUSIC CRITIC Jay Nordlinger

SENIOR DANCE CRITIC Joel Lobenthal

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Lance Esplund, Valerie Gladstone, John Goodrich, Amanda Gordon,

Howard Mandel, Maureen Mullarkey, Mario Naves, Melissa Stern, Nicholas Wells

DESIGN/PRODUCTIONPRODUCTION/CREATIvE DIRECTOR

Ed Johnson [email protected]

ADvERTISING DESIGN Quran Corley

WEB PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Lesley Siegel

PUBLISHER Kate Walsh [email protected]

ADvERTISING CONSULTANT Adele Mary Grossman

[email protected]

ACCOUNT ExECUTIvES Ceil Ainsworth, Mike Suscavage

MANHATTAN MEDIAPRESIDENT/CEO Tom Allon [email protected]

CFO/COO Joanne Harras [email protected]

GROUP PUBLISHER Alex Schweitzer [email protected]

NEWSPAPER GROUP PUBLISHER Gerry Gavin [email protected]

DIRECTOR OF INTERACTIvE MARKETING & DIGITAL STRATEGy

Jay Gissen [email protected]

CONTROLLER Shawn Scott

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GALLERIES

Children of the Towers by Maureen Mullarkey Page 4A Tree Grows in Manhattan by Melissa Stern Page 4Liberating Liz by John Demetry Page 6

MUSEUMS

Memorial City by Lance Esplund Page 7Painting the Times with Color by John Goodrich Page 8

CLASSICAL MUSIC

Facing the Music of 9/11 by Jay Nordlinger Page 10

JAzz

New York Jazz’s Resilient Rhythm by Howard Mandel Page 12

POP MUSIC

Nevermind Kurt Cobain Here’s Jon Stewart by Ben Kessler Page 14

THEATER

Frivolous Broadway by Mark Peikert Page 15

TELEvISION

David Versus David by Gregory Solman Page 16

FILM

Drive and Restless by Armond White Page 18

DANCE

Harlem Stage Keeps Dancing by Valerie Gladstone 0Troupers Retrench by Joel Lobenthal Page 21

OUT OF TOWN

Listings Page 22

Ronald P. Stanton presents

Pho

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BAM.org Sep 18—24 only! US Exclusive Engagement

By Jean-Baptiste Lully

Les Arts Florissants

Opéra Comique

Musical direction by William Christie

Directed by Jean-Marie Villégier

Co-produced by BAM, Opéra Comique, Théâtre de Caen, Opéra National de Bordeaux, and Les Arts Florissants

William Christie

Les Arts Florissants

Jean-Baptiste Lully

Presenting sponsor for Atys

Atys is made possible with the generous support of Ronald P. Stanton and The Delancey Foundation.

Leadership support for Atys provided by The Devitre Fund; Geoffrey C. Hughes Foundation; The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; The SHS Foundation; and

The Florence Gould Foundation

“one of the most extraordinary productions of Baroque opera I have ever seen” —THE NEW YORK TIMES

September 14, 2011 | CityArts 3

LIGHT BULB ARMOND WHITE

Looking forward from 9/11 requires the same conscientiousness as looking back. All the arts should be part of this process, which is why CityArts, “New York’s Review of Culture,” is expanding its scope to mix popular with classical arts. Painting, meet photography. Symphony, meet jazz. Sculpture, meet games. Theater, meet tele-vision. Opera, meet cinema—which is, we should remember, the evolved, ultimate form of all the arts.

Living for 10 years with a consciousness of terror hastens the transformation of civ-ilized art appreciation from a casual inter-est into one of the ways New Yorkers sur-vive. Our arts culture becomes part of how we preserve humane values—nothing less. And so, to support that endeavor, CityArts brings thinking back to arts media.

Each fall season stokes expectation for what artists will reveal; after the need created by 9/11, it’s a robust, cultivated reflex. But while antici-pating something new, audiences need to think critically, using an arsenal of imagina-tion and helpful values informed by active awareness of our artis-tic heritage. For that reason, it is necessary that arts journalism bring thinking back.

Sure, we’re accus-tomed to the profit-making corruption of life. Even before 9/11 it had perverted arts jour-nalism’s criteria from aesthetic principles to box office obsession and celebrity worship. We’ve seen the com-mercialism that always entangles the pop-ular arts ensnare and decimate New York’s classical art institutions. But this dreadful, market-driven reality should not com-promise our standards or responses. Only arts journalism can maintain and explain art’s glorified pursuit of truth and remind culture consumers they should challenge what’s familiar.

Will anything in the upcoming fall cultural season be as thrilling as the late summer one-two punch of Attack the Block and Rise of the Planet of the Apes? As awesome as the Picasso L’amour fou show at Gagosian? As game-changing as Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch the Throne? Or as scintillating as Zoe Saldana in Olivier Megaton’s Colombiana? The way these

events roused feelings of liberation and guilt, empathy and vengeance should have complemented post-9/11 perceptions and informed discussion of recent social crises taking place in London and Philadelphia. But the media’s tendency to treat art sim-ply as fodder or product denied proper appreciation of those films. Arts coverage has obviously lost its ethical purpose.

Alarmingly, the idea of escapism has taken hold in the popular arts as a con-vention or necessity, and too many jour-nalists promote the canard. But in the post-9/11 era, escapism is synonymous with cowardice—aesthetic cowardice. It’s a fear of facing ourselves, refusing to own up to the social and spiritual benefits that art—and artists—must provide. It’s those low standards of quality that cause Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Attack the Block, Watch the Throne and Colombiana to so

suddenly recede from prominence and threat-ens appreciation of the upcoming season.

Arts journalism shouldn’t simply pro-mote product but clarify how good, new ideas struggle against com-placent success and the mediocre status quo. This requires what the word journalism implies: regu-lar cultural vigilance. For 10 years we frequently endured the unhelpful post-9/11 phrase, “It’s too soon,” used in a cowardly way by power elite pun-dits against adventurous

works (Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center, Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Otis”) that attempted to come to terms with the national, global, spiri-tual crisis. Now the coward’s question must be replaced with a defiant, “Is it too late?” Not if we can bring thinking back.

About the cover: “I’ve got an idea!” Every work of art begins with that creative spark. Ideas are also fundamental to good appreciation of the arts in spite of our col-lective obsession with money and status, so CityArts uses Robert Fisher’s famous satire of Gen X’s indoctrination—the baby swimming toward money—and converts that icon to reintroduce the grasp toward ideas. Reimagining Nirvana’s Nevermind album cover (see Ben Kessler’s article page 14) symbolizes what CityArts is after as it brings thinking back.

OUR ARTS CULTURE BECOMESPART OF HOW WE

PRESERvEHUMANE vALUES—NOTHING

LESS.

Bringing Thinking Back

JAZZ AT L INCOLN CENTER ORCHESTRA wi th WYNTON MARSALIS

Celebrating Duke Ellington’s years at America’s most famous nightspot.

A N ENCORES! S P E C I A L E V E N T

NEW YORK CITY CENTER & JAZZ AT LINCOLN CENTER PRESENT

N Y C I T Y C E N T E R . O R GJ A L C . O R G

C I T Y T I X 212-581-1212

B O X O F F I C E131 W 55th Street (btw 6th and 7th)

M U S I C D I R E C T I O N B YW Y N T O N M A R S A L I S

D I R E C T E D A N D C H O R E O G R A P H E D B YWA R R E N C A R LY L E


GALLERIES

Children of the TowersExHiBit uSES iNNocENcE AS A PoLiticAL tooL

By MAUREEN MULLARKEy

Political mythology is a more significant player than art itself in shaping a culture’s mentality. Commemorating 9/11 by means of children’s artwork sentimentalizes the event and allows us to avoid calling the events of that day acts of war. 9/11: Through Young Eyes severs its subject from the only thing by which it can be measured and understood: historical context.

On show is a collaborative series of 31 collages by then-8th graders at the Calhoun School on the Upper West Side. During the autumn of 2001, the youngsters attended an exhibition of Jacob Lawrence’s narrative collages at the Whitney. The exhibition came packaged with a battery of lesson plans, timelines and web resources designed for the classroom. Kids set to work tapping their inner Lawrence by illustrating the story of 9/11 as they—and their classroom men-tors— experienced it. The result is an oddly truncated exercise in sanitized storytelling that sacrifices historical understanding to a bien pensant avoidance of the obvious. Call it a pious commitment to denial.

A full quarter of the panels—8 out of 31—preen themselves on the sly implication that America is just one more rogue state. There is no mention of al-Qaeda or enemy assault. Instead, cartoon marines head to Afghanistan. Bombs drop on Afghanistan.

A soldier lectures on “bad” Arabs. People start “using the flag as a symbol of war.” One panel growls: “War was glorified and commercialized.” Such wording hardly came unprompted from the mouths of babes who seem never to have heard the word jihad. The caption is as vague and reductive as the image that carries it. In context, the censure applies not to fanatics who shout “Allahu Akbar” in bloody ecstasy, but to America.

That and similarly weighted captions do

nothing to increase understanding of 9/11. Viewers are simply expected to applaud the program for its enlightened refusal to see evil anywhere but at home, where “mosques were burned” and “Muslims were dehu-manized.” And “some Arab-Americans were even murdered.” (That one is especially grotesque, given that—then, as now—Jews are the preferred target of bias crimes.) In a perverse inversion of sympathy, the tragic splendor of victimhood accrues to Muslims, not to annihilated New Yorkers.

Art is not discursive; it cannot be argued with. Children’s art is particularly insulated from criticism. Adolescent distortions of

fact—or raw execution—earn a pass on the ground of expression. No one can bring to bear Lawrence’s achievement on childish simulations. The exhibition’s patchwork of Individual panels adopt bright color, simplistic shapes, occasional cartoony touches—visual tropes lazily associated with frankness. Each unit in this untrained ensemble offers the artless vivacity that mothers admire on refrigerator doors across the fruited plain. That is very nice for Mom. But it has scant relation to the

products of a cultivated hand: Lawrence’s compositional complexity and graphic subtlety. More significantly, the project is sorely impoverished as acknowledgment of the massacre of innocents.

Right-thinking, not art, is the point here. Collage provides a pretext for commen-tary emblematic of the distance between political posture and observable reality. But we cannot blame the 8th graders. Their recorded experience was filtered through the sanctimony of their elders and edited to the point of mendacity.

Viewed through the unripe eyes of Cal-houn’s 13-year-olds, the collapse of the

Twin Towers might have been a natural disaster. Captions tell us that the “The loss was sudden and great”; “Smoke and dust were everywhere”; and “The streets were empty.” For all the project’s pretense to chronicle, nothing indicates why. “People donated blood.” So? Blood drives are com-monplace. “The people were afraid.” But of what? Yes, “people still miss the Twin Tow-ers.” But why are they gone? Did they just fall down of their own accord? Might their destruction have had something to do with the lethal ideology of Islamist jihadists? Or with Islam’s theological imperative toward war with the infidel and the religiously sanctioned violence of classic Islamic juris-prudence? The display keeps mum on the critical matter of responsibility.

Yes, “smoke and dust were everywhere” but what caused it? No hint appears that it came from burning skyscrapers in which 3,000 civilians were slaughtered. What was the instrument of mass murder? The Calhoun class noticed military fighter jets flying over the city but missed the two com-mercial jets hijacked by the Quran-inspired assassins. No one seems to know a shred of Islam’s long history, dating from the 7th century, of lust for conquest.

The Calhoun community—as DC Moore refers to it—believes in original sin. But only America carries the stain. 9/11 Through Young Eyes through oct. 8, Dc Moore Gallery, 535 W. 22nd St., 212-247-2111.

“American flags appeared everywhere” (2001), eighth-grade students at the calhoun School. “And people still miss the twin towers” (2001), eighth-grade students at the calhoun School.

vIEWERS ARE SIMPLy ExPECTED TO APPLAUD THE PROGRAM FOR ITS ENLIGHTENED

REFUSAL TO SEE EvIL ANyWHERE BUT AT HOME, WHERE “MOSqUES WERE BURNED”

AND “MUSLIMS WERE DEHUMANIzED.”

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A Tree Grows in ManhattanLANDScAPE ArcHitEcturE BriNGS MAJESty, rEBirtH to 9/11 MEMoriAL SitE

By MELISSA STERN

“We’re sometimes dismissed as the guys who put the trees in,” says David Walker about his firm’s seminal role in the design of the 9/11 memorial site. The 50-year-old Walker, who co-led the project for Peter Walker & Partners, his father’s renowned landscape architecture firm, is in equal measure self-effacing and self-assured, both traits that served him well throughout the seven-year odyssey that lead to this week’s opening of the site. Moreover, he is also part of what, by all appearances, is an extraordinary design accomplishment.

Walker’s design, a stately and ever-evolving grove of majestic oak trees, is coupled with architect Michael Arad’s deeply symbolic but severe memorial pools. This design pairing and the inherent tension between life and death, historic memorial, and future renewal at the heart of it will likely be seen as the foun-dation of the success of this challenging and exceedingly high-profile site.

The Walker concept was a simple one: “We said that you need a forest to represent renewal,” David Walker says. “The basic notion is that of a forest in downtown Man-hattan to communicate rebirth.” The “forest” evolved into the now largely complete instal-lation of 400 swamp white oak trees and over 40,000 tons of new soil on the 7-acre memo-rial site and surrounding streets. In effect, the Walkers brought ground back to ground zero.

The layout of the trees themselves is at once cultivated and naturalistic, formal and organic. Viewed east-to-west, the oaks are arrayed along a tightly defined grid punctu-

ated by granite slabs to create a boulevard feel. Viewed north-to-south, however, the planting is randomly placed, as in a natural forest. The oaks, cultivated in a New Jersey nursery for the past four years, are now 25-feet tall and pruned to enhance their 15-foot high canopies. Over time, the trees are expected to reach 65 to 75 feet, with their soaring canopies growing together to create “a cathedral-like appearance” when viewed east-west and a fulsome forest from the north and south. Approached from either direction, the site channels visitors through an urban forest to the solemn reflecting pools at its center. “The species of tree we chose creates a vaulted ceiling structure, evoking a religious architectural feel,” Walker explains. The effect also evokes the archways or tridents of the

first three stories of the fallen World Trade towers themselves. As the trees mature, the archways will rise once more.

Walker has little to say of the well-publicized head-butting and conflicts of personalities that surrounded the project. “It was an ego-driven process by everyone involved,” he admits, although one detects little of his own. “But it was all driven by a desire to create a lasting statement, and the net result is a design that will endure.”

And in one last study in contrasts, David Walker makes clear that part of the core concept of the memorial is that it actually becomes less of a memorial over time. “There was a lot of discussion about the fact that this will always remain a memorial, but as 9/11 fades beyond living memory, it will serve increasingly as an urban park more so than a memorial,” Walker predicts. “It may feel less like a grave site over time and more like a living, growing park. This is how we thought about it from the very beginning.”

A rendering of Peter Walker & Partners’ design for the 9/11 memorial site. Rendering by Squared Design Lab, Courtesy of PWP Landscape Architecture.

Madison avenue

next toThe WhiTney MuseuM

941 Madison Avenuebtwn 74th & 75th212.288.2446

AnAmericanCraftsman.com

GALLERY 2 Don’t Fence Me In... Or Out curated by Lisa Corinne Davis,

Katherine Behar, Rachel Budde, Dawn Frasch, Jaeeun Lee, Suko Presseau, Satomi Shirai, Sarah

Young, Amanda Valdez

BACK ROOM James Reeder: Ominous CloudLoren Munk The Bowery and the New Lower East Side,

2008-10, oil on linen, 60 x 36 inches

lesley hellerworkspace

September 7 - October 16, 2011

GALLERY 1Loren Munk:

Location, Location, Location, Mapping the New York Art World

54 Orchard Street, New York NY 10002 212 410 6120 • [email protected]


Liberating LizANDy WArHoL’S GAGoSiAN PriNt SHoW PutS HuMANity BAcK iN cELEBrity

By JOHN DEMETRy

Chelsea’s Gagosian Gallery Liz exhibit returns Andy Warhol and Elizabeth Taylor to the uses of the post-9/11 audience. Eliz-abeth Taylor’s death on March 23, 2011, joined those of other popular artists who combined expressive and sexual innova-tion with political conviction: Katharine Hepburn, Marlon Brando, Robert Altman, James Brown, Paul Newman and Michael Jackson. It reads like the honorees of a War Dead Parade, figures who, in the enduring aftershocks of 9/11, constituted the last remnants of a shared culture (values).

These actors, direc-tors and musicians appealed (through palpable—sensual—compassion) to the psychological and spiritual needs of the audience. Now, even the need to mourn their deaths in a communal fashion reflects the repressed trauma of 9/11 to our collective conscious-ness. Taylor herself gave healing comfort and articulation to fans (and a social body) rocked by the passing of her friend MJ—much of it through social media such as Twitter, continuing her legacy of moral instruction through radical cultural changes—e.g., AIDS and the Internet. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 revealed a society unmoored; 10 years later, gone are most of those figures who anchored the culture by revitalizing and commanding the expres-sive lexicon. It’s the difference between stars and celebrities.

Warhol knew the difference. Warhol’s pop art liberates Taylor from

camp and capitalism. “Blue Liz as Cleopa-tra” (1962) exemplifies that achievement. Etched in pencil black on acrylic blue

background, Warhol’s painting isolates and repeats a frame (taken from a pub-licity still) from Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s Cleopatra (1963). It features Taylor in exotic Cleopatra regalia: ornamented African braids, hieroglyphic eye shadow, and ’60s-Hollywood cleavage-revealing dress. In lesser hands, such elements might lend the image to camp simplifica-tion and derision. However, Warhol frees the image—and its complex of signifi-ers—from the context of advertisement, narrative and ideology. He offers it up to the viewer to share his contemplation of its beauty. Warhol also did as much with a can of Coca-Cola.

Through the figure of Taylor, however, Warhol enables the audi-ence to focus on the movie star’s meaning-making apparatus. In his series of Taylor portraits, represented here by “Silver Liz” (1963) and “Liz #6” (1963), Warhol emphasized glamour and personality through the specificity and impact of color. Among the plea-sures of the underrated Cleopatra and of Taylor’s unfairly maligned per-formance is the spectacle of Taylor and Richard Burton (as Mark Antony) bringing out the better in each other. Stage-trained Burton claimed to have learned from Taylor the movie actor’s talent for knowing how to com-

municate feeling and characterization to a camera. Warhol’s art gives form to Taylor’s intuition.

With “Blue Liz as Cleopatra,” Warhol distills Taylor’s expressive intelligence to its visual essence. Shakespearean Burton must also have appreciated how Taylor utilized this skill to convey how her char-acter’s values and passions (country, cult, Caesar, Antony and son) expressed them-selves in political and military strategy. Following the humanist edict of movie star responsibility, Taylor makes vivid how the personal motivations of charismatic people move history. Warhol investigates

form (the down-turned, off-screen eye-line angle of Taylor’s pose) cutting into color (the subtle gradations in the distinc-tive hue of blue). Doing so, he captures the intensity of Taylor’s emotional and politi-cal acuity.

Consequently, the Gagosian Liz retro-spective remembers a now-passed politi-cal relationship to art (and pop) through Taylor’s liberal humanism and Warhol’s postmodern appreciation. The retrospec-tive features Warhol’s radically gendered and sexual perspective on Taylor’s movie art. His “National Velvet” (1963) literally and analytically breaks down—through repetition, composition and the delicacy of film stock—the image of a triumphant young Taylor astride a horse, a girl com-manding nature. Appropriating Clarence Brown’s 1944 Hollywood masterpiece, Warhol makes the fleeting nature of movie memory—and its enduring inspiration—achingly tactile.

In the post-9/11 culture, however, spectators are alienated from their truest responses. Critics condition audiences to assess art (and pop) by a disastrous new criteria based on the degree to which art affirms one’s political prejudices. By assembling various expressions of War-hol’s personal pleasure in Taylor, Liz pro-vides a forum for the post-9/11 audience to honor Taylor’s legacy while mourning the loss of individual thought and our shared cultural heritage.

Liz, Sept. 16–Oct. 22, Gagosian Gallery, 522 W. 21st St., www.gagosian.com, 212-741-1717. John Demetry chronicles his search for new stars to meet the needs of the post-9/11 audience in his book the community of Desire: Selected critical Writings (2001-2007), available at www.lulu.com.

“Silver Liz,” 1963. © 2011 Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts/ ARS, NY/Gagosian Gallery. Photo by Robert McKeever. Private Collection, NY

ExHIBIT

1500 Gallery: Julio Bittencourt: “ramos.” opens Sept. 21, 511 W. 21st St., #607, 1500gallery.com.

Madison Square Park: Mad. Sq. Art presents Alison Saar’s “Feallen & Fallow.” opens Sept. 22, madisonsquarepark.org.

Marlborough Gallery: red Grooms: “New york: 1976–2011.” opens Sept. 21, 40 W. 57th St., marlboroughgallery.com.

Salmagundi Club Patrons’ Gallery: “the Art of John Pierce Barnes.” opens Sept. 15, 47 5th Ave., salmagundi.org.

Thomas Erben Gallery: “come closer.” opens Sept. 15, 526 W. 26th St., 4th Fl., thomaserben.com.

Vilcek Foundation Gallery: Nicole Awai: “Almost undone.” opens Sept. 17, 167 E. 73rd St., vilcek.org.

LAST CHANCE ExHIBITS

Minus Space: “Pointing a telescope at the Sun.” Ends Sept. 17, 98 4th St., rm. 204 (Buzzer #28), Brooklyn, 347-525-4628, minusspace.com.

Onishi Gallery: “Wa-ring.” Ends Sept. 22. “Japanese contemporary crafts by three Great Masters.” Ends Sept. 22, 521 W. 26th St., 212-695-8035, onishigallery.com.

CONSEqUENTLy, THE GAGOSIAN LIz

RETROSPECTIvE REMEMBERS A NOW-PASSED

POLITICAL RELATIONSHIP TO ART (AND

POP) THROUGH TAyLOR’S LIBERAL

HUMANISM AND WARHOL’S POST-MODERN APPRECIATION.


Bronx Museum: “Muntadas: information >> Space >> control.” Sept. 29–Jan. 16, 2012. “Alexandre Arrechea: orange tree.” Ends Jan. 1, 2012. “urban Archives: Emilio Sanchez in the Bronx.” Ends Jan. 1, 2012. “Acconci Studio: Lobby-For-the-time-Being.” ongoing, 1040 Grand concourse, Bronx, 718-681-6000, bronxmuseum.org.

MoMA PS1: “Francis Alys: A Story of Deception.” Ends Sept. 12. “September 11.” Ends Jan. 9, 2012, 22-25 Jackson Ave., Queens, 718-784-2084, ps1.org.

The Morgan Library & Museum: “charles Dickens at 200.” Sept. 23–Feb. 12, 2012. “David, Delacroix, & revolutionary France: Drawings from the Louvre.” Sept. 23–Dec. 31. “xu Bing: the Living Word.” Ends oct. 2. “Lists: to-dos, illustrated inventories, collected thoughts & other Artists’ Enumerations from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art.” Ends oct. 2. “ingres at the Morgan.” Ends Nov. 27, 225 Madison Ave., 212-685-0008, themorgan.org.

Society of Illustrators: “rolling Stone & the Art of the record review.” Ends oct. 22, 128 E. 63rd St., 212-838-2560, societyillustrators.org.

National Academy Museum: “Will Barnet at 100.” opens Sept. 16, 1083 5th Ave., 212-369-4880, nationalacademy.org.

New Museum: “ostalgia.” Ends Sept. 25. “isa Genzken: rose ii (2007).” Ends Nov. 13, 235 Bowery, 212-219-1222, newmuseum.org.

Rubin Museum of Art: “once upon Many times.” Sept. 16–Jan. 30, 2012. “Quentin roosevelt’s china.” Ends Sept. 19. “Pilgrimage & Faith.” Ends oct. 24. “Human currents.” Ends Nov. 13, 150 W. 17th St., 212-620-5000, rmanyc.org.

American Museum of Natural History: “Picturing Science: Museum Scientists & imaging technologies.” Ends June 24, 2012, central Park West at W. 79th St., 212-769-5100, amnh.org.

Brooklyn Museum: “raw/cooked: Kristof Wickman.” Sept. 16–Nov. 27. “Sanford Biggers: Sweet Funk—An introspective.” opens Sept. 23. “Eva Hesse Spectres 1960.” opens Sept. 16, 200 Eastern Pkwy., Brooklyn, 718-628-5000, brooklynmuseum.org.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art: “infinite Jest: caricature & Satire from Leonardo to Levine.” opened Sept. 13. “Heroic Africans: Legendary Leaders, iconic Sculptures.” opens Sept. 20. “Wonder of the Age”: Master Painters of india, 1100–1900.” opens Sept. 28, 1000 5th Ave., 212- 535-7710, metmuseum.org.

Museum of Arts & Design: “Picasso to Koons: Artist as Jeweler.” opens Sept. 20. “otherworldly: optical Delusions & Small realities.” Ends Sept. 18. “Stephen Burks: Are you A Hybrid?” Ends oct. 2, 2 columbus cir., 212-299-7777, madmuseum.org.

Museum of Jewish Heritage: “Deadly Medicine: creating the Master race.” opens Sept. 15, 36 Battery Pl., 646-437-4200, mjhnyc.org.

Museum of Modern Art: “de Kooning: A retrospective.” opens Sept. 18. “New Photography 2011.” opens Sept. 28. “i Am Still Alive: Politics & Everyday Life in contemporary Drawing.” Ends Sept. 19. “young Architects Program 2011.” Ends Sept. 19. “Projects 95: runa islam.” Ends Sept. 19, 11 W. 53rd St., 212-708-9400, moma.org.

MUSEUMS

Memorial CityArtS rESPoNSES AS DiVErSE AS NEW yorK itSELF

By LANCE ESPLUND

There is faith—even among those who do not really believe in the power of art—that 9/11-themed art is as essential to our cultural survival as counter-terrorist police, full-body scanners and TSA pat-downs are to our physical survival; that to endure as a nation we must collectively bare not only our bodies but also our souls; and that in order to preserve our freedom and to persevere we must always remember—“Never forget!” Artworks have been enlisted for this high-er, though improb-able cause.

Across New York City, there were no shortage of artworks, exhibitions and memorials observing the 10th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001. And although many people agree that those events require art, they’ve differed on what forms those artworks should take and what purposes they should serve.

Many photography and video exhibi-tions—at the International Center of Pho-tography, the New-York Historical Society, the Museum of the City of New York and Pace University, among other venues—focus on the noble cause of documentation. But I’m anticipating MoMA PS1’s moody September 11 (through Jan. 9, 2012), a group show in which the only work made in direct response to the terrorist attacks is “Ground Zero” (2003), Ellsworth Kelly’s proposed memorial: a trapezoidal mound of bright green grass.

Artistic responses to 9/11 vary widely, from the Guggenheim Museum’s recent screenings of Ten Years of Terror, a film featuring reflections on violence by Noam Chomsky, among others, to the controver-sial graphic coloring novel We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom—in which children can color in pictures of the smoldering Twin Towers and a Navy SEAL shooting Osama bin Laden, who cowers behind a Muslim woman.

Other works inspired by children include Faith Ringgold’s 9/11 Peace Story Quilt, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Jan. 22, 2012). Based on children’s draw-ings, Ringgold’s three-panel quilt gathers together feel-good words and images to

promote peace and multicultural sensitiv-ity. In a similar vein, D.C. Moore Gallery’s 9/11: Through Young Eyes (through Oct. 8) has mounted artworks made by 13-year-olds and inspired by the collages of Jacob Lawrence. These exhibits reveal that our hearts are in the right place, but unfortu-nately fall into the realm not of art but of art therapy and community outreach.

One of the first 9/11 memorials to be erected was Eric Fischl’s bronze figurative sculpture “Tumbling Woman” (2002). I’m sure Fischl meant well. But his depiction

of an upside-down, falling nude (who looked like she had just hit the pave-ment) was deemed explicitly literal and, therefore, offensive. “Tumbling Woman” was quickly draped and removed from its site in the lower concourse of Rockefeller Center. Fischl’s lack of imagination and transformation closed down so tightly and illustratively on his subject that it brought the relationship between artwork and viewer to an uncomfortable dead end.

But Fischl is not the only artist who is perhaps too close to his subject. Other 9/11 artworks and memorials are so literal and rely so heavily on the inherent weight of their subject to carry the art that they risk exploiting individual loss; they risk becoming mere physical manifestations of personal grief rather than contempla-tive, commemorative public artworks with lasting, universal appeal.

When I first visited ground zero in 2001, people were collecting dust from the rub-ble. Covered in the white ash they scooped up from sidewalks and storefronts, they looked like ghosts scavenging the ruins. Although 9/11 dust contains human remains, artists continue to be inspired by the ashes. In the exhibition 9/11 Ele-gies: 2001-2011 (through Sept. 25), St. Peter’s Church is exhibiting 12 Ejay Weiss paintings containing dust from ground zero. Also comprising 9/11 ash is Xu Bing’s Buddhist installation “Where Does the Dust Itself Collect” (2004), at the Spinning

Wheel (through Oct. 9).Artists who work with 9/11 debris, such as

Weiss, Xu and Elena del Rivero—whose New Museum installation [Swi:t] Home: A Chant (through Sept. 26) comprises thousands of pieces of paper that flew into her studio across from the World Trade Center—bring us tangible relics. Through the allure of artifacts, they trigger our desire to revisit and reconnect to the tragedy. This impulse is why nearly 150 9/11 memorials throughout New York and New Jersey already do or will incorporate actu-al steel beams from the World Trade Center ruins—battleground-relics-turned-symbols that people can actually touch.

And our desire to bond with 9/11 artifacts as a natural process of grieving is acknowledged

almost exclusively in ground zero’s memorial “Reflect-ing Absence,” whose two WTC-footprint waterfalls and surrounding bronze panels, inscribed with victims’ names, are unmistak-ably direct in their

symbolism; and at the World Trade Center Memorial Museum (scheduled to open in 2012), which will incorporate a destroyed 9/11 fire truck; a piece of steel with a Bible fused to it; 7-story-tall steel “Tridents” from the North Tower’s façade; and the “WTC Cross,” a 17-foot-tall icon of hope discovered in the “Pile.” Also on view will be walls of photos of the 1993 and 2001 victims, supple-mented by an extensive archive of victims personal mementos and videos of shared remembrances by their families and friends.

In its preopening state, the tree-filled pla-za and waterfalls of “Reflecting Absence” are minimal and solemn. Crowded, though, by tourists and mourners (some of whom have already complained that as victims’ family members they shouldn’t have to grieve with strangers), the memorial will undoubtedly lose some of its contemplative appeal, espe-cially when it has to compete with a business complex, transit hub and commercial mall.

Obviously, some of these works send shivers up your spine. But if 9/11-themed artworks are to be successful over time, they must do more than trigger personal grieving about specific events. They must explore themes of heroism, suffering, sacrifice and rebirth and encourage acts of reflection and empathy. They must poetically transform and transcend their subject. “Never forget” is a tall order—especially when much 9/11 art, so deter-minedly fixed on the present, neglects the unforeseeable future.

WHEN I FIRST vISITED GROUND zERO IN 2001, PEOPLE WERE COLLECTING DUST FROM

THE RUBBLE. COvERED IN THE WHITE ASH THEy SCOOPED UP FROM SIDEWALKS AND STOREFRONTS, THEy LOOKED LIKE GHOSTS

SCAvENGING THE RUINS.


Painting the Times with ColorWHitNEy’S FEiNiNGEr SHoW tAKES Art to tHE EDGE oF tHE WorLD

By JOHN GOODRICH

Some artists respond to the traumas of their time by engaging them; consider Goya’s “The Third of May” or Picasso’s “Guernica.” For others (Matisse comes to mind), art became a kind of sanctuary, a refuge for exploring the transcendent. Lyonel Feininger (1871-1956) falls square-ly in the second camp. His delicate Cubist images tell us nothing about his conflicted allegiances to both America and Germany during wartime, but much about an artis-tic temperament quivering between the avant-garde and the beatific.

The current retrospective of his work at the Whitney Museum—the very first to display all aspects of his production—reveals his extraordinary range of interests. In addition to the familiar seascapes and

views of churches, the exhibition includes cartoons, early expressionist paintings, watercolors, musical compositions, carved toys, photographs and a series of late, supple Manhattan cityscapes. Two somewhat contradictory aspirations run throughout: an enthusiasm for caricature and the exotic, and a longing for a mystical synthesis of art and nature.

Born in Manhattan to musicians of Ger-man descent, Feininger was packed off to Germany at age 16 to study the violin. He was determined to pursue art instead, and his “temporary” stay lasted 50 years. The homesick artist always considered himself an American, and yet, as his career blos-somed in Berlin—first as an illustrator, and then as a fine artist—he grew to prefer the German reverence for culture. Indeed, he later claimed that he would never have become an artist had he remained in the States. Exhibiting with both Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter movements, he eventually

The Figure, 1952, watercolor and ink on paper, 85/8 x 55/8 inches

Alexandre GalleryFuller Building 41 East 57th Street New York 10022

212.755.2828 www.alexandregallery.com

will barnetSMALL WORKS ON PAPER FROM THE 1950s

September 10 through October 15, 2011

ALSO ON VIEW

will barnet at 100National Academy Museum1083 Fifth Avenue at 89th StreetSeptember 16 through December 31, 2011Fully illustrated catalogue by Bruce Weber available through the gallery

Alexandre City Arts 9-11_4.917 9/8/11 9:16 AM Page 1

Jean Pierre Cassigneul (B.1935)Femme Au Bord De La Mer

917.882.7008www.Lindabernellgallery.com

LINDA BERNELL GALLERY


headed the Bauhaus graphics department. Finally, at age 66, he returned to the States under the gathering Nazi threat.

In 1907, Feininger had abandoned a highly successful career as a cartoonist to turn to painting. His earliest, Fauvism-inspired canvases in the exhibition are riots of color, barely contained by the same racing contours that had distinguished his cartoons. With their planar forms and crisp details, they bear more than a pass-ing resemblance to Japanese woodcuts. In “Carnival” (1908), several figures—emerald blue-green, a diamond-patterned purple, a pallid pinkish-white—stride across a town square, their postures echoing one another with tight, intense variations. Contradic-tions of scale abound; one horn-player measures only a third of the height of the figure immediately behind, yet weightings of form and color make everything fit.

Feininger experienced another revela-tion during a 1911 trip to Paris: the Cub-ists, whose faceted dislocations fit natu-rally with his own investigations. In fact, almost every subsequent work in the show suggests Cubist influence. Many are poi-gnant; in “Pier” (1912), the pale sproutings of ships’ sails rise evocatively above the horizon; “Calm at Sea III” (1929) delicious-ly captures the vibrant depth between two boats’ masts. But color was not Feininger’s foremost gift, and in later works his hues occasionally feel decorative, filling in rather than measuring intervals. We get appealingly stylized “pictures” of an iso-lated ship or bustling town square rather than the plastic enactment of it. (Gris or Braque would have rooted such scenes in animate color.) Another gallery devoted to Feininger’s toys revealed to me…well, toys: whimsical carvings of houses and trains with little of Picasso’s muscle or transforming insight.

Anther aspect of Feininger’s work, how-ever, gets far too little attention. These are his early cartoons, which, displayed in a

single side-gallery, are extraordinary. The characters that the artist conjured up for the comic strip “Kin-der-Kids” (appearing in the Chicago Sunday Tribune in 1906) are the wholly original creations of a true pioneer. His figures, squat and rounded or achingly thin—all set within craft-ily shaped panels—practically burst with their own plasticity, and with this plastic-ity comes character. Details proclaim, rather than merely denote—that is, a tiny, mouse-like face reacts to the ridiculously broad sweep of a hat; a foot so suddenly catches the narrowing flight of a leg that it seems a mile away.

The children in these cartoons have

the wizened seriousness of the old; the old scamper with youthful enthusiasm. Feininger’s idiosyncratic humor comes through doubly in this medium com-bining text and image. His characters’ semi-sensical utterances (“Begorrah, ‘tis a poor sowl in dishtress!” mutters a chim-neysweep, rescuing a child from a castor oil treatment) provide all the explication necessary in his strange, wild worlds.

Feininger’s genius for caricature didn’t transpose as naturally to painting as it had for Daumier (1808-1879). Of all the paintings in the exhibition, only “The White Man” (1907), his very first, shows an urgency of color equal to his drawings’; his

hues in this canvas powerfully measure a figure soaring before the stolid, staggered structures behind. Having worked so long with commercial printing, did Feininger not fully grasp the possibilities of a painter’s palette? Or did he come to demand less complexity from the “high” art of painting than from the “low” art of illustration? We’ll never know, but “The White Man” marks the fascinating crossing point of two trajec-tories: the exotic urgency of his early work and the luminous solace of the late. Lyonel Feininger through oct. 16, Whitney Museum of American Art, 945 Madison Ave., 212-570-3600.

Lyonel Feininger, Carnival in Arcueil, 1911

© Lyonel Feininger Family, LLC./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Photograph © The Art Institute of Chicago

Newly ReNovatedFRee admissioN aNd aRt classes FRiday–suNday, septemBeR 16–18, 11am–6pm

ExpEriEncE AmEricA’s ArtAn AmEricAn cOLLEctiOnExhibitions from the permanent collection A Panorama of Great Artist Portraits

National Academicians: Then and Now

Parabolas to Post-Modern: Architecture from the Collection

Aligning Abstraction

WiLL BArnEt At 100A retrospective of the artist’s figurative and abstract paintings and prints

Will Barnet in Conversation: October 12

Architects in Conversation: Thom Mayne: October 19

Will Barnet Symposium: November 5

EXHIBITIONS September 16–December 31, 2011

tHe NatioNal academy

1083 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10128 www.nationalacademy.org

Will Barnet, The Blue Robe, 1962, oil on canvas, (detail)


CLASSICAL

Facing the Music of 9/11NEW yorK’S HEAr MEMoriAL coNcErtS AND otHEr GooD iNtENtioNS

By JAy NORDLINGER

After 9/11, there were several memorial concerts here in New York. Then, for the next few years, there were many, many “9/11 pieces”—compositions “about” 9/11 or hav-ing to do with 9/11 in some way. This month, there are, or have been, 10th anniversary concerts. And we have yet more 9/11 pieces.

Allow me a couple of memories, specifi-cally of Leontyne Price. In the days and weeks following 9/11, the great soprano came out of retirement to sing twice. The first time was at a memorial concert in Carnegie Hall. She sang “This Little Light o’ Mine”—which she has always announced as her mother’s favor-ite spiritual—and “America the Beautiful.” The second time was in Avery Fisher Hall, at the annual Richard Tucker gala. She sang “God Bless America.”

I remember when she went up for her final

high B flat. She was really spinnin’ it, in that incomparable Price style. And the people around me began to roar. I was furious, thinking, “This is the last note I will ever hear Leontyne sing, live, and they are drowning it out.” Oh, well.

The 9/11 pieces came fast and furious—hundreds of them. This was a full-blown genre, the 9/11 piece. I think they petered out in about 2004. Almost all of these pieces were instantly forgettable, but, to be fair, that is true of new pieces in general.

In the early going, there were pieces writ-ten before 9/11 that were passed off as 9/11 pieces. Let me illustrate what I mean. On commission from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, William Bolcom wrote his Sym-phony No. 7. It is a good piece, in my view—not instantly forgettable. The composer said, “Sometime in the summer of 2001, I felt a great, inexplicable need to interpose a very slow, mournful Interlude” between movements. He continued, “The need for such a lamentation would appear to all of us the following September... I report this only

because I’ve found that so many other artists felt the same mysterious, prescient dread as I did...”

Make of that what you will.Here is a fact that many people find very

hard to swallow: Music without words means nothing, absolutely nothing (with a few exceptions). The composer may intend a meaning, and a listener can invent a mean-ing, in his head. But this is strictly personal.

John Corigliano can call his Symphony No. 1 his “AIDS symphony” till the cows come home, but the music communicates noth-ing of the kind. After writing the symphony, Corigliano drew from it a choral piece, Of Rage and Remembrance—that is another matter. Peter Maxwell Davies announced that his String Quartet No. 3 was his “reaction to the illegal invasion of Iraq.” Fine, but you’d never know it without that announcement: It’s just a string quartet (and a good one).

Another composer, Ned Rorem, once put it to me this way: “A piece without a text, without a vocal line, can’t mean detailed things like Tuesday, butter or yellow, and it

can’t even mean general things like death or love or the weather, although a timpani roll can sound like thunder, and certain conven-tions about love come out of Wagner.”

But again, music with words is a different ballgame. And on Sept. 10 of this year, the New York Philharmonic performed a piece with words in a concert of “remembrance and renewal.” The concert was free to the public. And the piece was one of the great-est we know: Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, the “Resurrection.”

The next day, there was a different con-cert, also in Avery Fisher Hall. This one was staged by a group called Distinguished Con-certs International New York. The bill of fare included a 9/11 piece composed by René Clausen in 2003. Clausen is a choir conduc-tor and professor at Concordia College in Minnesota.

His 9/11 piece is Memorial, an oratorio. It has four sections, “September Morning,” “The Attack,” “Prayers” and “Petitions.” The text, or texts, are ecumenical, in the modern fashion: a Buddhist meditation, a verse from Psalms, etc. That verse from Psalms is sung in Hebrew, Latin, English and Arabic. Clau-sen says that his hope is to “find a common ground of higher being.”

The music in the first two sections is emo-


CLASSICAL

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House: opéra comique, BAM, théâtre de caen, opéra National de Bordeaux & Les Arts Florissants present Jean-Baptiste Lully’s “Atys.” Sept. 18, 20, 21, 23 & 24, Peter Jay Sharp Building, 30 Lafayette Ave., Brooklyn, 718-636-4100; bam.org; $30+.

Elebash Recital Hall: Balleke Sissoko & Vincent Segal perform chamber music with African traditional & European classical roots, as part of the Graduate center at cuNy’s new Live@365 world music series. Sept. 27, 365 5th Ave., 212-817-2005, gc.cuny.edu; 7, $25.

Metropolitan Opera House: Anna Netrebko stars in the Met premiere of Donzinetti’s “Anna Bolena.” opens Sept. 26, Lincoln center, 212-362-6000, metoperafamily.org.

Miller Theatre: in conjunction with Works & Process at the Guggenheim, Steven Schick, the international contemporary Ensemble (icE), the crossing, red Fish Blue Fish, ross Karre & Nicholas Houfek present the u.S. premiere of James Dillon’s “Nine rivers” symphonic cycle. Sept. 14–17, 2960 Broadway, 212-854-7799, millertheatre.com; 8, $40+.

Paul Hall: Juilliard Baroque performs in “the three Fiddlers,” with music by Gabrieli, Pachelbel, Purcell & others. Sept. 27, 155 W. 65th St., 1st Fl., 212-769-7406, juilliard.edu; 8, free.

tional, exploitative and cinematic. This is hard to avoid. Later on, it is blooming, radi-ant and still cinematic. There are some quite pretty stretches. Memorial is not for me, as you may have guessed, but I don’t doubt for a second its sincerity, or its ability to touch hearts (or assault them?).

At the end of this month, the New York Philharmonic will perform a new work. This is “the first of several world premieres that the Philharmonic has on tap for the 2011-12 season,” which, to me, sounds as much like a warning as a promise. The work in question is One Sweet Morning, by the aforemen-tioned John Corigliano. It has words, and is indeed a song cycle. It is also a 9/11 piece, which the Philharmonic specifically com-missioned. Corigliano says that his piece reflects the hope that war may someday end.

Finally, consider a new work on CD: Steve Reich’s WTC 9/11 (on Nonesuch, this composer’s longtime label). The CD cover shows the horrible black-gray cloud the towers made. The piece is for three string quartets and “pre-recorded voices.” We hear, for example, chatter from NORAD: “They’re goin’ the wrong way . . . No contact with the pilot whatsoever.”

Reich is a very, very skillful guy. But why anybody would want to relive 9/11, so starkly, is a little beyond me. The piece is exploitative to the core. That Reich is so skillful makes the result all the more awful—and “awful” can be a term of praise.

Years ago, I attended a concert that fea-tured a new work, a Holocaust piece. I was dreading this piece, because I think just about all Holocaust pieces stink: They are manipulative, empty, unhelpful, wrongly

disturbing, inadequate—I could go on. But this particular piece I liked. I wish I could remember the composer’s name so I could credit her. I spoke to her after, admitting that I had not looked forward to hearing her piece. She knew exactly what I meant, and seemed touched by my congratulations.

Perhaps I will welcome a 9/11 piece one day? As soon as later this month, at the Phil-harmonic? That would be nice.

The controversial cover art for Steve Reich’s WTC 9/11.

JuilliardJoseph W. Polisi, President

Mon, Sep 19 at 8Peter Jay Sharp Theater at Juilliard

Juilliard JazzQuintetA New Day, A New JoyRon Blake, SaxophoneRodney Jones, GuitarFrank Kimbrough, PianoRon Carter, BassCarl Allen, DrumsDaniel Saidenberg Faculty RecitalFREE tickets at Juilliard Box Office

Wed, Sep 21 at 9 • Paul Hallat Juilliard

Oskar Jezior &Andrew Tyson PianistsWinners, 2011 Gina BachauerPiano CompetitionMr. Tyson plays CHOPIN & FRANCKMr. Jezior plays SCARLATTI & SZYMANOWSKIRecorded live for broadcast asthe 34th season opener of the McGraw-Hill companies’ Young ArtistShowcase on WQXR-FM.FREE concert; no tickets required

Sat, Sep 24 at 8Peter Jay Sharp Theater

New JuilliardEnsembleSEASON OPENERJoel Sachs, ConductorMorgan Jones, SaxophoneHANS ABRAHAMSEN Wald (2008-9)WH

SIR PETER MAXWELL DAVIES De AssumptioneBeatae Mariae Virginis (2001)WH

JING JING LUO TsaoShu (2011) JCARMAN MOORE Concerto for Ornette

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J World Premiere; composed for NJEW World PremiereWH Western Hemisphere PremiereFREE tickets at Juilliard Box Office

Tues, Sep 27 at 8 • Paul Hall

The Three FiddlersThe strings and continuo ofJUILLIARD BAROQUEMonica Huggett, Cynthia Roberts,

Robert Mealy, ViolinsPhoebe Carrai, CelloAvi Stein, HarpsichordWorks by Purcell, Pachelbel, Gabrieli,Buonamente, Marini, FontanaFREE tickets available 9/13

Tues, Oct 4 at 8 • Paul Hall

Juilliard JazzEnsemblesWycliffe Gordon, Guest TromboneWith Juilliard Jazz’s most advanced playersFREE tickets available 9/20

Mon, Oct 10 at 8Peter Jay Sharp Theater

David AfkhamConducts the

Juilliard OrchestraBRAHMS Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat MajorTCHAIKOVSKY Symphony No. 428-year-old Haitink protégé andaward-winning German conductor,makes his NY debutVERY LIMITED FREE tickets available 9/26

Tues, Oct 11 at 8 • Paul Hall

Seymour LipkinCelebrating 25 years as a memberof Juilliard’s piano facultyALL-BEETHOVEN PROGRAMPiano SonatasNo. 2 in A, Op. 2, No. 2No. 24 in F-sharp, Op. 78No. 29 in B-flat, Op. 106 “Hammerklavier”Daniel Saidenberg Faculty RecitalFREE tickets available 9/27

Thurs, Oct 13 at 8Peter Jay Sharp Theater

AXIOMSEASON OPENERJeffrey Milarsky, ConductorWorks by GEORGE GRISEY, MAGNUSLINDBERG, SIR HARRISON BIRTWISTLEFREE tickets available 9/29

Sat, Oct 15 at 8Peter Jay Sharp Theater

Jordi SavallConductsJuilliard415MUFFAT Florilegium, Suite IV “Impatienta”JS BACH Ouverture: Suite IV in D Major,

BWV 1069HANDEL Water Music Suite

in D Major/G MinorRAMEAU “Les Boréades” Suite d’orchestreFREE tickets available 9/30

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JAzz

Charlie Parker Jazz Festival: Postponed due to Hurricane irene, the SummerStage festival features Kenny Werner, James carter, tia Fuller & the Gerald clayton trio. richard rogers Amphitheater, Marcus Garvey Park, Madison Ave. betw. E. 120th & E. 124th Sts., summerstage.org; 6–10, free.

Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola: Joe chambers & his orchestra perform “Moving Pictures” & other works. Ends Sept. 18, Broadway at 60th St., 212-258-9595, jalc.org.

Ella Lounge: Always stylish Dandy Wellington & the Made to Measure Band perform modern jazz, swing, pop & more, with inventive new takes on classic tunes. Every thurs., 9 Ave. A, 212-777-2230, ellalounge.com; 8, free.

Rose Theater at Frederick P. Rose Hall: Jimmy Heath, Jon Hendricks, Kevin Burke, Aria Hendricks, Michelle Hendricks, Bobby McFerrin, Dianne reeves & Sachal Vasandani perform for the opening night of Jazz at Lincoln center. Sept. 24, Broadway at 60th St., 212-258-9800, jalc.org; 8, $30+.

JAzz

New york Jazz’s Resilient RhythmAMiNA FiGAroVA’S ‘SEPtEMBEr SuitE’ A HiGHLiGHt

By HOWARD MANDEL

Creators of jazz and other new music in New York are a resolute bunch, determined to make the best of circumstances that are tough even in the best of times. Immedi-ately after the World Trade Center towers were destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001, local musicians I know reacted to the shocking incidents like second responders. They took it upon themselves to soothe, to reflect, to heal if possible, and by all means to go on and urge others to do the same.

When the Blue Note Jazz Club in the Vil-lage—just beyond the disaster zone—re-opened four days after the attacks, I heard Cameroonian electric bassist and singer Richard Bona lead an ensemble there with an impressively quiet message of warmth and hope. Pianist Myra Melford, a good friend, told me about her duet gig with reeds specialist Marty Ehrlich at the Knitting Fac-tory, very close to ground zero: “The vibe was that we had come together as a com-munity, musicians and audience alike. The atmosphere was charged with the power of music and had an especially sacred quality.”

Musicians, of course, know their art brings people together but is generally more significant as symbolic expression than shield or weapon. They couldn’t restore the towers or change history, but they could go deeper into themselves to connect with core beliefs and bring forth their faith in the values of individuality and originality, the practice of freedom and the will to experiment. So the decade that followed has been marked by jazz and new music makers’ determination not to be deterred from what the Taliban and Tea Party alike may consider marginal activities, if not outright affronts to God’s dominion. Whether the city suffers attacks from abroad, natural disasters or eco-nomic collapses caused by the financial services sector that thrives in our midst, the minds of composers and the bands of improvisers play on.

So though few musicians in the wake of the Bush era’s early calamities set their sights on reverse jihad, many produced works out of the dramas they experienced or observed. One such was pianist-com-poser Amina Figarova. Born in Azerbaijan and educated at the Baku Conservatory, in the late ’80s she had converted to jazz, moved to the Netherlands, studied at Bos-ton’s Berklee College and met and mar-

ried Belgian flutist Bart Platteau. Over the course of 20 years the couple established their international concert and recording careers; last spring they moved from Rot-terdam to Astoria. On the 10th anniver-sary of 9/11, Figarova’s sextet with Platteau performed the New York premiere of her September Suite at the Metropolitan Room. It was a resonant event.

Figarova was visiting friends in Brooklyn on Sept. 11, and was so disturbed by the destruction she awoke to that she refused to watch the endless video replays. Howev-er, a little later a BBC documentary caught her attention with its story of a 9/11 widow and her daughter struggling with the WTC death of their husband/father. Viewing their trials as a passage through stages of grief, Amina sat at her piano and conjured the dark bass line of “Numb,” the first of her suite’s nine movements. She likens that theme to pure evil.

Actually, Figarova is incapable of com-posing or performing music that evokes evil, violence or ugliness—she and Plat-teau live in a world where beauty is mea-sured with purposeful nuance. In Septem-

ber Suite, her flute-tenor sax-trumpet front line, crisp piano comping and probing or delicate solos with bass-drum support depict tension unto strife, sorrow met with compassion, denial running its brisk course, the bittersweet solace of memo-ries, the urge for revenge but no unleash-ing of rage, attempts at reconstruction, the enduring pain of loss, tentative recovery of life’s promise and arrival of new maturity. The suite is not programmatic; it can be listened to and enjoyed without reference to 9/11. But the fact of that day is part of it, not to be dismissed or forgotten. Sep-tember Suite on record returns to where it began, with “Numb” reprised in only slightly recast (sadder? wiser?) form.

And so it is for the ongoing life of new music in New York City. We play and/or lis-ten without hurt and fear haunting every moment, but always at least subliminally aware of the world’s troubles, dangers and unpredictability. We cling to our defenses, real or assumed, and music is one of the best of them. While people are engaged with music, it’s unimaginable they simul-taneously hate. When the spontane-

ous joys of jazz or exploratory efforts of accomplished innovators reach us, we’re transported to our finer instincts and want to be joined there by everyone.

Consequently, we find exciting poten-tial in the new season. The opening of adventurous music and dance presenter Roulette’s new home, a 650-seat the-ater on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, is emblematic. Genius mavericks including Anthony Braxton, Morton Subotnick, Sally Silver, George E. Lewis, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, John Zorn, Henry Threadgill, Simone Forti, Elliott Sharp, Lisa Moore, Wadada Leo Smith and Adam Rudolph will now try to draw the larger audiences Roulette deserves across the river from its longstanding downtown precincts.

The Jazz at Lincoln Center schedule strikes a different tone. Maybe because Wynton Marsalis is turning 50, autumn at the Rose Theater starts on September with revered elders, the saxophonist Jimmy Heath and vocalist Jon Hendricks. Then stars of the past and present up’n’comers—alto saxists Phil Woods and Grace Kelly, composer Gerald Wilson with his guitarist son Anthony and the Juilliard Jazz Orches-tra—are paired in a Generations in Jazz series at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola.

JALC is emphasizing jazz’s Hispanic elements in 2011-12, but so is Symphony Space, where Arturo O’Farrill’s Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra will stage three ambitious programs of classics and commissions to mark its 10th anniversary. Dig that: the same year the Twin Towers went down, a big band was born. In the 21st century, jazz orchestras performing original repertoire are regarded as an endangered species. No one told Arturo O’Farrill. Talk about resolve. [email protected].

Amina Figarova Photo by Robert Beck


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Nevermind Kurt Cobain, Here’s Jon StewartPoLiticAL HiPStEr turNS GruNGE cLASSic iNto BuMPEr SHticK

By BEN KESSLER

I had seen the singer interviewed on TV. He was a foppish young man who seemed thoroughly disgusted to find himself so liked.

—Mary Gaitskill, Because They Wanted ToAs of this writing, the cover of Never-

mind’s 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition has more than 45,000 Likes on the official Nirvana Facebook page. To promote this rerelease, the two surviving core members of Nirvana and Nevermind’s producer Butch Vig will participate in a live two-hour SiriusXM Radio Q&A on Sept. 24. The interviewer will be Daily Show host Jon Stewart.

The curious choice of Stewart to focus on the album’s legacy all but guarantees that the Q&A will be a Like-fest rather than an interesting or revealing discussion. Stewart will appear as yet another Gen-X

authority touting Nevermind’s era-encap-sulating importance. Nevertheless, the fact of his participation tells us a lot about how pop culture has changed since 1991.

What hasn’t changed is Nevermind’s inflated reputation. Now as then, it benefits from mainstream media’s long-standing, oft-noted rockist prejudice. The eventual dominance of hip-hop forced critics to come out of their rockist shells a bit, yet to this day no hip-hop record has gone canonical in the way of Nevermind. As our culture’s fragmentation increases, so does the solidity of this album’s position as its era’s unmatched classic.

Yes, Nevermind is overpraised as “a great modern punk record,” but in at least one respect it is underappreciated. Twenty-first-century praise for Nirvana’s loudness and rawness misses how Kurt Cobain actually spoke to his times. Wikipedia informs us that Cobain was inspired by the simplicity of children’s music, but an even more apt reference point might be TV theme songs and jingles—translated into a punk idiom by sarcastic, pop-addicted

kids. The album has a fairytale quality of inverted innocence, reminiscent of toys that scare the kid who owns them by seeming to assume scary shapes when the lights go out. It’s essentially a post-punk record (defying pop music conven-tion with pomo idio-syncrasy), but without ’80s-utopian sonic experimentation.

Nevermind authen-tically portrays the inner world of the pampered post-boomer youth class, alienated from their advantages, dimly aware that mass media, no less than their parents, are preparing them to accept predeter-mined social roles. Cobain’s lyrics, often mumbled like half-swallowed backtalk

from the back of the classroom, mocked the options available to white youth (e.g., “We can plant a house/ We can build a tree” from “Breed”). Rather than ener-

POP

Continued on page 18


Angelina Ballerina the Musical: the Vital theatre company performs this family-friendly show, based on the well-known children’s book about a dancing mouse. Sept. 17–oct. 16, the theatre at St. Peter’s, 619 Lexington Ave., angelinathemusical.com.

The Old Boat Goddess — Songs of the Ainu: Mask & puppet maker ralph Lee’s Mettawee river theater company presents a work based on 3 traditional stories from northern Japan’s indigenous people. Sept. 16–18, cathedral of St. John the Divine (outdoor garden), 111th St. at Amsterdam Ave., mettawee.org; 7:30, $10.

The Select (The Sun Also Rises): the final installment in a 3-part collection of original re-workings of classic American novels (after interpretations of “the Great Gatsby” & “the Sound & the Fury”), Elevator repair Service performs a new take on Hemingway’s iconic work. Ends oct. 9, New york theatre Workshop, 79 E. 4th St., nytw.org.

Wild in Wichita (Locuras en Wichita): repertorio Español presents the world premiere of this off-beat romantic comedy in which a Puerto rican woman & a Mexican man fall in love. Ends Sept. 25, repertorio Español, 138 E. 27th St., repertorio.org/wichita.

THEATER

Frivolous BroadwaytuNErS-For-touriStS PLAy it SAFE AFtEr 9/11

By MARK PEIKERT

Urinetown and The Producers may have been there first, but it’s hard not to cite Mamma Mia! as the beginning of the end for serious Broadway musicals.

Opening on the Great White Way just a little over a month after 9/11, Mamma Mia! with its infectious ABBA score and mind-less plot, was immediately and thoroughly embraced by still-rattled critics and audi-ences—and remains a perennial crowd-pleaser 10 years later. Giving rise to a legion of jukebox musical carbon copies, Mamma Mia!’s silly, smiley-faced success pointed the way to an increased reluctance to make the audience think too hard. Ambitious shows like Caroline, or Change, Grey Gardens and The Scottsboro Boys were undone by both their transfers from intimate Off-Broadway venues and outré material; Spring Awaken-ing ran for just over two years, but mostly as a fresh rock musical replacement for the fading Rent. Instead of artistic stretching,

we get adaptations of hit films—not a new genre, but one that has virtually obliterated American musicals based on other source material. Think of Hairspray, Urban Cow-boy, 9 to 5, Xanadu and Catch Me If You Can.

The coming season is indicative of the cur-rent state of the musical. Along with the just-opened revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies, we have a revival of ‘70s hit (and perpetual choice of high school theater teachers) God-spell; Frank Wildhorn’s take on Bonnie and Clyde; Lysistrata Jones, the fluffy Off-Broad-way adaptation of Lysistrata set amid a col-lege basketball team; and a radical reworking of On a Clear Day You Can See Forever, now featuring a sexual identity plot thread.

Where once Broadway seasons featured events like a new Sondheim or Kander and Ebb musical, the big-ticket items now are often limited-run, star-driven plays that require little financial fear. Downtown may have recovered from 9/11, but pocketbooks are still feeling its impact, particularly now during the recession. This year’s crop of plays boasts a who’s who of names. Samuel L. Jackson will star as Martin Luther King Jr. in The Mountaintop. Sex and the City icon

Kim Cattrall will import her starring turn in Noel Coward’s Private Lives from London and Canada; Alan Rickman, who starred in the 2002 revival of Private Lives, will return to Broadway in Theresa Rebeck’s Seminar.

Even the list of producers behind shows now require a bold-faced name or two, in an attempt to get audiences into theaters. Whoopi Goldberg and Bette Midler were both involved in Sister Act and Priscilla Queen of the Desert last season; this fall will see Alicia Keys’ name highlighted as one of the forces behind new play Stick Fly, a com-edy of manners about class, race and iden-tity politics. And surely one of the draws of Relatively Speaking, a trio of one-act plays, is that Elaine May, Ethan Coen and, particu-larly, Woody Allen are the playwrights.

One of the few shows avoiding the habit-ual name-dropping of late are Venus in Fur, David Ives’ hit Off-Broadway comedy that has hedged its bets by scheduling a 10-week run (Nina Arianda, a Tony nominee last season for her turn in Born Yesterday, will reprise her star-making performance). Like Venus in Fur, Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities is coming to Broadway on the crest of a wave of critical approval, while Man and Boy, a revival of a Terrence Rattigan play, arrives with a top-notch pedigree in star

Frank Langella. And David Henry Hwang’s Chinglish, which boasts name recognition neither on stage nor off, will have to fend for its life based on the work alone. That’s an increasingly rare fate on Broadway these days, but certainly a worthy one.

Honored with a 2011 Drama Desk Awardwww.pearltheatre.org

NYCityCenter.orgCityTix 212.581.1212 | STAGE II

131 West 55th Street (btwn 6th and 7th)

The Maid by Jon Christensen (Bridgeman Art Library)

The Bald Soprano ∧ By Eugène Ionesco Translated by Donald M. Allen ∧ Directed by Hal Brooks

Now Playing through October 23, 2011Tickets start at just $34 when using

code 7973 (online orders only)Price good for performances through 9/18/11. Tickets subject to availability.

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Tv

David v. DavidMAMEt AND LEttErMAN WAGE tV WAr At tHE croSSroADS oF 9/11

By GREGORy SOLMAN

David Mamet and David Letterman both turned 54 having traversed a similar cultural/temporal landscape when arriv-ing at the post-9/11 crossroads. Letter-man veered left, and Mamet moved right. Mamet is a religious man. Letterman, apparently, is not. More to the point, Let-terman became a “believer” and Mamet listened, reasoned and read his way out of the cliché of Jewish-American socialism that was a profound Woody Allen joke by 1977 (Alvy Singer’s defense? “I’m a bigot, I know, but for the left.”)

“This is the essence of Leftist thought,” writes Mamet in The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture, his new book of 39 short essays. “It is a devo-lution from reason to ‘belief,’ in an effort to stave off a feeling of powerlessness.”

Letterman came undone in Bush/Cheney apoplexy, fell to adultery, was extorted by one of those scrupulous producers at CBS News, adopted a surly, saturnine view of America often indis-tinguishable from the antiwar radicals of Code Pink and, irony of unfunny ironies, now yucks up CBS’s Late Show under threat of death, a frat boy with a fatwah on his head. Apparently, the Islamic radicals in his audience don’t get the joke, much less credit his appreciation of their world-wide “struggle.”

Mamet, showing shades of the emascu-lated and latently enlightened detective of his intriguing movie Homicide (1991), fi ercely reverted to conservative Juda-ism—and an Old Testament thirst for justice that one can trace to the climac-tic summation in his screenplay for The Verdict and his revision of The Winslow Boy. Mamet cleaved to his family, traded required reading with Jon Voight, listened to Glenn Beck and Dennis Prager and absorbed economists Thomas Sowell and Friedrich Hayek. In his book, Mamet restates the angst of Salem Radio talk show hosts in his own voice—the cover of fi ction lifted, the lilt of dramatic rhythm retained, no hiding behind ad hoc or dramatis personae but for the inventive use of parable and metaphor, literary techniques that make the book lucid and entertaining. It is a righteous jeremiad.

“We’ve lost 5,000 fellow New Yorkers,

and you can feel it,” said Letterman on his return to air after a week-long comedy blackout, Sept. 19, 2001. “And it’s terribly sad.” With nary a mention of Islam or Muslims—a pattern on TV as recogniz-able as the Indian wearing a feather head-dress—Letterman said the perpetrators “were zealots fueled by religious fervor—religious fervor. And if you live to be a thousand years old, will that ever make any goddamn sense?” His audience was left awkwardly unable to applaud on cue.

That same night, what seems more than a decade ago, a weepy Dan Rather praised President Bush for calling for fi repower, willpower and “staying power.” He char-acterized al-Qaida (though not by name or religion) as a “hydra-headed operation in 55 countries around the world” and urged a focus not just on Afghanistan but on the Sudan, Iran, Syria, Libya and Iraq. That was shortly before the reliably wrongheaded New York Times suggested Afghanistan would be the next Vietnam quagmire. They might still be railing that it is, but for later declaring Afghanistan/Iraq as the good/bad wars. Had the Timeslikewise condemned the congressionally approved, Clinton-signed Iraq Liberation Act (1998), with its explicit goal of regime change? Like the best cons of Mamet movies, the switch takes place before your eyes.

In 2004, a perverse inversion was taking place at Black Rock: While CBS News was telling the demonstrable lies of Rather-gate, CBS Entertainment was closer to the truth that’s always the value of good fi c-tion. Thanks to The Unit, the series Mamet created, sometimes wrote, rarely directed and nominally supervised from 2006 to 2009, the network engaged in the rarest of realpolitik. With its deep source Eric L. Haney’s Inside Delta Force, Mamet’s show oozed authenticity and experience about the U.S. military mission, unavoidably entangled family lives, and its frisson with the intelligence apparatus and diplomatic corps (drop the “p”s, Mr. President).

Though it sometimes leaned on G.I. Joe the Explainer for its mass (and now military-distant) audience, The Unit just as frequently rewarded those in on the argot of soldier swagger: Sergeant Major Jonas Blane (Dennis Haysbert) barges into a hangar full of National Guardsmen awaiting orders during a terrorist hostage crisis and bellows with authority, “Who can show me a Ranger tab?”

Bouncing through the Serengeti, puff-ing cigars under boonie hats; puke-faced after being skyhooked a thousand feet from the ground to a HC-130 aircraft by only a harness; angrily pumping iron, minutes after a training-bullet grazing; defusing stray bombs matter-of-factly (not as a metaphor for insanity as in Kath-ryn Bigelow’s smug little contrivance, The Hurt Locker), it was a weekly shower of testosterone, impeccably cast with fresh scar-faced and smooth-cheeked stone-cold studs. And just for fun, the occasional bad guy gets plugged through the heart after yelling “Allahu Akbar!”

In the end, Mamet’s counter-terrorist drama was a bracing tribute to unceas-ing, unapologetic interventionism of necessity. Consigning prime-time P.C. to subplots (a soldier’s wife has a crisis of faith for what is apparently the dark 42 minutes of the soul; the obligatory paean to the homosexual veteran; the rescue of insultingly characterized Christian missionaries; the collusion of white-supremacist hillbillies—not university professors—with foreign terrorists), the show invariably overcame TV’s disastrous tendency to socio-political pandering. Even when it threatened to run off the rails by the third-season introduction of a gorgeous female unit operative—jog-ging memory of The Simpsons parody when Poochie joins Itchy & Scratchy—it satisfactorily resolved into something Howard Hawks, maybe even James L. Brooks, might approve of. Meanwhile, it maintained its credible survey of the threat map, down to the detail of an Ira-nian woman spy nervously working at her embassy under the picture of smilingly anti-Semitic Ahmadinejad.

Here’s what Mamet’s The Unit sees around the world: Latino drug dealers smuggle across the California border an

Indonesian terrorist out to wreak nuclear havoc—like the real José Padilla, a name that would live in infamy if not for liberal media bias. Arab terrorists hijack business fl ights in Idaho. Biological weapons stolen from U.S. depots ride on autopilot toward Busch Stadium. The socialist Spanish gov-ernment uses the unit through the CIA to absolve itself of assassinating a local terrorist—then hangs them out to dry. Russians try to sell nuclear technology to Iran. Twenty-two men fall to an RPG at an insertion point because one of the wives talked. Even the episode on “rendition” avoids David E. Kelley agitprop, counter-weighted by a depiction of the real torture suffered by soldiers as part of routine SERE training.

Above all, The Unit rediscovered some-thing television had lost since Vic Morrow was wounded a hundred times in Combat!: It thoroughly respected American soldiers, not just as men, but as men at war, fi ght-ing men—not as the uniformed peaceniks, wisecrackers and cranks of TV’s M*A*S*H—as well as the choices they made every day to remain worthy of tribal loyalty.

At the beginning, all late night rebooted in a patriotic mood. Leno paraded celeb-rities past a 9/11 charity Harley to sign—in Hollywood terms, it was practically equivalent to a loyalty oath. Letterman conspicuously elevated Fleet Week with a nostalgic panorama of audiences fi lled with sailors. Letterman seemed sincere, in contrast to leftists who pay lip service to our troops as a way of parading their moral superiority not just to the right but to ’60s radicals.

But eventually Letterman lost it. His 2008 interview with celebrated-and-discarded ex-Bush press secretary Scott McClellan (appropriately named, as it were, for Civil War buffs), pushing a self-aggrandizing turncoat’s memoir. Letterman found no


more need to cloak his enmity in mono-logue tradition. Letterman’s unit—his increasingly liberal audience and fawning band members—applauded McClellan’s treachery and asinine effrontery, telling Letterman that Bush “doesn’t spend a lot of time reflecting. I think he should spend more time reflecting.”

“Is Cheney a goon?” Letterman asked. Would Bush defer to Cheney because “he was intellectually lazy?” “There is cer-tainly a lack of intellectual curiosity on the part of the presi-dent,” McClellan sheepishly grinned. “My feeling about Cheney and also Bush is that he just couldn’t care less about Americans, and the same is true of George Bush,” Letterman bawled. “And all they really want to do is kiss up to the oil people so they can get some great annuity when they’re out of office. ‘Here you go, Dick, nice job, here’s a couple of billion for your troubles.’” McClellan smiled and nodded. “He pretty much put Hal-liburton in business and the outsourcing to private mercenary groups,” Letterman blathered. “Is there any humanity left in these guys?” Could an original 9/11 con-spiracy theory be far behind? The usual intellectual self-dep-recation aside—it’s only part of Letter-man’s shtick—had he in fact become a “useful” idiot?

The transformation fit Letterman’s ver-sion of comic-turned-dramatic figures, trying Bill Maher-style band-wagoning before anything but tough rooms. Late-night stooge McClellan would go on to endorse Obama. Letterman would lose at least one career-long admirer.

Now it’s Mamet who lives in career limbo, risking retrojected condemnation of his recent stage plays November and Race, which will come as no surprise to the dramatist whose play about misogyny, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, was naturally branded misogynist by a female critic at The Village Voice. “That was,” Mamet

recalled “my first personal experience of Political Thought in the Arts…to this day, nearly 40 years after that review, I am asked in lectures, classrooms and inter-views why I hate women.” For his part, Letterman now routinely picks on-air fights with conservatives like O’Reilly—try sleeping on that blowhard vs. blowhard—and chases Jon Stewart’s Daily Show demagoguery, genuinely funny men who inflate their self-importance, then deflect criticism by claiming comic dispensation.

Yet, Letterman has yet to top Fox commentator Greg Gutfeld for political commitment: His response to a tri-umphalist mosque/madrasah near ground zero was to lease space to open a Muslim-themed gay bar across the street (he’s torn between calling it Suspicious Packages or Turban Cowboy). When The Secret Knowledge came out, Gutfield vowed to monitor what he predicts will be Mamet’s declining reputa-tion among New

York’s critical appa-ratchiks in light of Mamet’s much more courageous coming out. Trotskyite Chris-topher Hitchens, who usually writes for the socialist The Nation—43 issues for $32, all material copyrighted—already found a home at the Times to irritatingly, smugly slam The Secret Knowledge as “irritating” and

“smug.”In The Secret Knowledge, Mamet braves

a political truth while mere entertainers like Letterman arrogate opinion vicari-ously via the cosseted Connecticut crowd and Hollywood’s dacha-on-the-Pacific socialists. What Mamet knows from his-tory is no secret, that the “supposed intransigence on the part of the Religious Right is far less detrimental to the health of the body politic than the Left’s love affair with Marxism, Socialism, Racialism and the Command Economy which,” he writes, “one hundred years of evidence shows leads only to shortages, despotism and murder.”

A lively, fun-to-read com-pendium of Shakespearean “stuff” you once learned in school-the man, his plays, the characters, and the famous lines. Capturing the unbelievable scope of Shakespeare’s influence, this book covers the little-known details of Shakespeare’s life along with the surprising legacy of the language and phrases inherited from his works. Organized for easy reference! The I Used to Know That series is on sale nationwide from Reader’s Digest Books.’

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STORM KING ART CENTER

Mark di Suvero, Mozart’s Birthday, 1989, Steel,25' 6" x 35' 6" x 47', Gift of Maurice Cohen andMargo Cohen, Photograph by Jerry L. Thompson

Over 500 acres of pristine fields, gentle hills, andwoodlands provide a spectacular setting for morethan 100 sculptures. Explore the landscape and arton foot, by accessible tram, or on a rented bicycle.Enjoy fresh seasonal fare, coffee, and more atStorm King Café.

Storm King Art Center closes for the2011 season on November 13.

Old Pleasant Hill Road,Mountainville, NY 10953

For GPS, use 1 Museum Road,New Windsor, NY 12553

www.stormkingartcenter.org845 534-3115

IN THE SECRET KNOWLEDGE, MAMET BRAvES A POLITICAL TRUTH WHILE MERE ENTERTAINERS LIKE

LETTERMAN ARROGATE OPINION vICARIOUSLy

vIA THE COSSETED CONNECTICUT CROWD

AND HOLLyWOOD’S DACHA-ON-THE-PACIFIC

SOCIALISTS.


FILM

No-Fun Gus and the Opposite of a Life ForceGuS VAN SANt’S LAtESt tAKES SEriouSNESS DEADLy SEriouS; ryAN GoSLiNG DELiVErS A DuLL StEVE McQuEEN iMPErSoNAtioN iN tHE oBViouS DriVE.

By ARMOND WHITE

RestlessDirected by Gus Van Sant

All that keeps the death-infatuated Restless from being laughably dismissed like last year’s Charlie St. Cloud is that it’s signed by Gus Van Sant. No mere sen-timentalist who would employ a tween heartthrob like Zac Efron, Van Sant spe-cializes in serious gloom.

Gloom, along with Van Sant’s special element of sexual pathology, sets Rest-less apart from the typical two-hankie liebestod. Shy boy Enoch (Henry Hop-per) meets whimsical, fatally ill bird-lover Annabel (Mia Wasikowska, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, here wearing Mia Far-row’s pixie haircut from Rosemary’s Baby) and they muse on their sexual neutrality and the mystery of death. Together they visit cemeteries and crash funerals; both are bright and prone to brooding. She reveres Darwin (“single greatest idea man”) but is the opposite of a life force. After a close call, Annabel reports to Enoch “I’ve been dead for three minutes and you know what’s there? Nothing.”

Van Sant peddles Nothing while other tragic teen love stories usually sell romantic overload. It’s part of his

hipster creed to cancel optimism and faith to muse on meaninglessness. In Restless, Van Sant emphasizes morbid whimsy, even employing Nico’s warbled elegy “The Fairest of Seasons.” (“Do I really have a hand in my forgetting?”) He shamelessly references the bombing of Nagasaki to justify teenage nihilism, and one shot lets Annabel’s bird book replace the Bible so this “naturalist” romance is actively, implicitly nihilistic. Their “romance” traces their individual lack of effect in society.

All this pessimistic calculation could maybe strike a chord with hopeless youth who feel misunderstood, even in a Lady Gaga world. But that would result in a freak hit—weirdly sanctioning Van Sant’s own grown-up Gaga hopelessness as in his very calculated Nicole Kidman hit To Die For, though, interestingly, not the formulaic Finding Forrester (Too gay. Too upbeat. Van Sant has learned his lesson.) No-fun Gus shows the kids doing varia-tions on snow angels, imitating crime-scene body outlines—a boldly negative switch on the sprawled body outline of David Bowie’s Lodger album cover that was celebrated in Todd Graff’s joyous Bandslam.

Art photographer William Eggleston makes a cameo appearance in Restless as an X-ray tech, apparently just to authen-ticate Van Sant’s spare, elegant visual anatomization of soullessness. Restless contrives to turn Van Sant’s absurdly praised “Death Trilogy” (Gerry, Elephant and Last Days) into an ongoing series.

DriveDirected by Nicolas Winding Refn

So many better movies echo throughout the wannabe thriller Drive—including bad movies, like the entire Michael Mann cata-log—that the resonance nearly drowns out the film’s brazen imitation of one particularly good movie: Walter Hill’s 1978 The Driver.

That Ryan O’Neal film now becomes a Ryan Gosling vehicle—an immediate decline. Gosling plays a loner stuntman who does underworld transport for Jewish mobsters on Hollywood’s fringe. His jaded view of life is part of his alienated cool, warmed over by a single mother waitress (cry-baby Carey Mulli-gan) awaiting the arrival of her ex-con Latino boyfriend. Director Nicolas Winding Refn shows no sense of how classes and ethnici-ties mix in L.A. He prefers evoking the sleek, unreal, existential cool of film noir loners.

But Refn’s cinephilia is specious and imprecise, while Hill’s revisionist modernism uncannily updated the aesthetic and spiri-tual essence of both American and European noir (Anthony Mann as well as Jean-Pierre Melville) into an original, idiosyncratic

vision. Hill’s The Driver wasn’t a thriller it was thrilling, featuring the best on-screen car chases to this day. Refn, infected by Mann, produces fake toughness, fake sentimental-ity and fake style.

Drive is so relentlessly inexpressive of the modern world that it’s often inadvertently comic. Not just when the inadequate Gosling drops his dull Steve McQueen impersonation and lets slip Mickey Rourke’s old smile, but especially when his laconic Old Boy routine clashes with a group of vicious old goats—Ron Perlman and especially Albert Brooks as hypersensitive machers. Brooks’ zany turn as a psychotic has the best dialogue (“It’s not bad timing, it’s bad luck”), but it’s not quite as zany as Refn’s mannerisms, which get hilari-ous during Gosling’s rampages, especially a hammer attack in front of nude, silicon-enhanced strippers who look on idly like the mannequins in Kubrick’s Korova Milk Bar.

Refn’s good facial videography and portentous thrumming music turns hard-boiled storytelling into obviousness. The monotonous, derivative Drive should be retitled Drone.

gized by its opposition to conformity, though, the album as a whole is anxious and uncertain, even heartbroken by the lack of satisfying alternatives.

From a vast remove, Cobain sought to recapture punk’s counterculture integ-rity for an infantilized generation. That’s why the title Nevermind references the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks but refracts that totem to recall Peter Pan’s

Neverland. The way Jon Stewart’s Daily Show works is not so different: Stewart’s humor, meant to appeal to the “smart” youth market, holds today’s political commentators to a ’70s ideal of opposi-tional journalism and finds them want-ing. Unlike Nirvana, however, Stewart entertains his demographic without first considering the import of his own corpo-rate-media celebrity.

The Daily Show was an early adopter of red-state/blue-state humor. Even before Stewart became its host in 1998, the show frequently featured “field pieces” that exploited the eccentricities

of un-hip Americans with proto-Borat glee. Comedy Central paved the way for Jon Stewart to become our preeminent purveyor of political snark soon after the 2000 election. In the Obama era, we hear less about red states and blue states; the cultural divisions that now both intensify and disguise genuine American antago-nisms correspond more closely to mid-dle-class hegemonic tastes. And here’s where Stewart has proved himself the least subversive of satirists: In promoting “Sanity” (i.e., sanitized discourse), he is as slick a triangulator as Bill Clinton was in the ’90s.

In fact, Cobain satirized American entertainment values more successfully than Stewart in “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” (“A mulatto, an albino/ A mosquito, my libido”). But the salvageable, sophis-ticated element of Nirvana’s legacy is difficult to appreciate in the context of today’s Like-based cultural economy. Today’s pop artworks are judged by how well they inflame or distract from our repressed conflicts. Jon Stewart’s refusal to acknowledge the placating purpose he serves for his youthcult audience, or even who signs his paychecks, makes him mad Likeable in a way Nirvana never were.

Cobain/Stewart Continued from page 14

Mia Wasikowska and Henry Hopper in Gus Van Sant’s Restless


Dance New Amsterdam: Monstah Black & Major Scurlock present the world premiere of “Black Moon (La Lune Noir) Act 1.” the multimedia operetta re-works Arnold Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” through an African-American lens, using popular music genres like Afrobeat & house. Sept. 15 & 16, 280 Broadway, 2nd Fl., 212-625-8369, dnadance.org; 8, $12+.

DUMBO Dance Festival: White Wave presents the 11th annual DuMBo Dance Festival, featuring new works from over 100 choreographers in locations throughout DuMBo. Sept. 22–25, 718-855-8822, whitewavedance.com.

Èriu Dance Company: As part of imagine ireland, the company presents “Noctú,”� an at-times risqué irish step dance show choreographed by riverdance’s Breandán de Gallaí. Ends oct. 2, irish repertory theatre, 132 W. 22nd St., 212-727-2737, irishrep.org; $55+.

Heather Olson: Levi Gonzales, Erin Gerken & the 6-months-pregnant olson perform olson’s new work, “Shy show off,” which examines the line between internal worlds & external presentation. Sept. 21–24, the chocolate Factory, 5-49 49th Ave., Queens, 718-482-7069, thechocolatefactorytheater.org; 8, $15.

DANCE

Harlem Stage Keeps Dancing SuNDiAtA’S SPirit LiVES AMoNG DA PEoPLES

By vALERIE GLADSTONE

Poet and educator Sekou Sundiata masterfully combined entertainment and political activism. Only a year before his death in 2007, he introduced the hugely popular WeDaPeoples Cabaret to Harlem Stage, dubbing it a “dance to the revolu-tion.” The show was a natural outgrowth of his brilliant America Project, conceived after 9/11 to bring Americans together.

In honor of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, WeDaPeoples Cabaret starts hum-ming again Sept. 15 and 17 at Harlem’s The Gatehouse. Vocalist and composer Samita Sinha curated the first night’s program of dance, poetry, music, film and spoken word and poet/playwright/recording artist Carl Hancock Rux took charge of another great mixture of the arts for the second night, with perfor-mances by Toshi Reagon, Greg Tate and Queen Esther, among others.

“We’re reaffirming our connection to Sekou with the cabaret,” says Ann Rosen-thal, co-producer of MAPP International Productions and Sundiata’s long-time presenter and friend. “The tragedy spurred him to explore the meaning of citizenship in a globally interdependent world through artistic performance and community conversations. That’s what the America Project is all about. Every performer in the cabarets understands the connections.”

Sundiata’s death inspired MAPP to revive his People’s Potluck Dinners. Cre-ated to bring artists and people from communities all over the country together over a meal to talk about their concerns, the dinners became a fresh way at looking at citizenship and its responsibilities. Top-ics might range from housing to access to fresh food, with artists discovering ways to incorporate aspects of these discus-sions into their works. Theater director Patricia McGregor and her sister, dancer Paloma McGregor, together the found-ers of Angela’s Pulse, thrived as hosts of dinners this summer. On the first night of the cabaret, they will present an excerpt from their multidisciplinary work, Build-ing a Better Fishtrap: Water, Memory and Home, which owes something of its spirit to those stimulating meals.

The McGregors grew up in St. Croix, daughters of an artistic fisherman who

designs handsome fish and lobster traps. It’s why water figures so prominently in their new work. At one dinner, most of the guests were Russian Jews. “When we started talking about what water meant to us,” Patricia says, “they told us that when they put their feet in the water in Coney Island, it reminds them of Odessa. This led us to talk about how water connects all human beings, as it connects all lands on the earth.”

At another dinner with a different group, the conversation turned slightly comical as some guests confessed their addiction to water. “The idea was to get

across our personal responsibility in con-serving water,” she says. “A lot of people talked about their disproportionate use of water, such as running a shower for ages to get the right temperature or dumping out water in a half-filled plastic bottle or watering plants at high noon rather than in the evening. We joked that it was like an AA meeting, except about water.”

Works such as the McGregors’ are exactly what Sundiata hoped would evolve from the conversations he initi-ated after 9/11. “He called into question all our beliefs,” says long-time Sundiata collaborator musician Marc Cary, whose

remarkable band Indigenous People will play at the first cabaret. “He connected so many things. I became dedicated to the concept of freedom in the broadest sense because of him.”

Sinha also drew inspiration from Sun-diata in her artistic life. “He saw 9/11 as a moment of deep unsettling,” she says, “a time to open up new paths for individu-als, communities and the nation. He drew something incredibly positive out of it, seeing it as a time when we could begin to face the future with our deep collective humanity. He wanted to galvanize that energy to plant seeds for a better, more responsible future.”

Because of his influence, she became a more adventurous dancer and chore-ographer, opening herself to possibilities outside her original genre of classical Indian dance. “I began to examine how the internal and external related,” she says, “and how dance, song and poetry can be good for communities as well as for individuals and one’s self.” These thoughts inspired her to start Community Sings. As she began creating the program for the cabaret, she says, “I looked for art-ists who are highly interactive, who draw on various genres—people who will not only entertain but also make audiences think and sing and dance. This is abso-lutely the best kind of party. We know so much more because of 9/11; we just have to use it.” WeDaPeoples Cabaret Sept. 15 & 17, Harlem Stage Gatehouse, 150 convent Ave. (at 135th St.), 212-281-9240, harlemstage.org.

A performance by WeDaPeoples Cabaret.


Troupers RetrenchHoW NEW yorK’S DANcE WorLD rEBouNDS AND rEcoVErS

By JOEL LOBENTHAL

What I would like to be writing: after the cataclysm of Sept. 11, 2001, New York dance awoke with a new sense of purpose. Dancers moved as if every performance would be their last, artistic and admin-istrative directors began to consistently make sensible and judicious decisions, critics started reviewing responsibly and objectively, and audiences rushed to embrace with new fervor this most life-affirming of art forms.

What I must write: none of the above hap-pened. What is undeniable, however, is that 9/11 has been traumatic for the NYC dance world, contributing to the erosion of fund-ing, attendance and media attention that was already occurring. This season we will be seeing no shortage of interesting events, but we are unequivo-cally looking at retrenchment. New York City Ballet is no longer selling tickets to its Fourth Ring on a regular basis: a fool-ish policy, a waving of the white flag. But it has become a per-haps unsightly and demoralizing reality that empty seats pro-liferate at the upper tiers of both NYCB and American Ballet The-atre performances. When I began watching these companies more than 30 years ago, the peanut galleries were frequently packed. What is clear is that the middle class has consistently been a bedrock of attendance and the middle class, increasingly since 9/11, is being battered.

This year, ABT’s fall season at City Center is a single week, running Nov. 8-13, where-as in the past it has been two or three. Last year it didn’t have any City Center season at all, preferring to concentrate instead on bringing Alexei Ratmansky’s new Nut-cracker to the Brooklyn Academy of Music last December. But the City Center sea-son is crucial for the company because it allows for more variety in repertory.

For more than a decade, the company’s programming during its annual spring season at the Metropolitan Opera has con-sisted almost entirely of chestnuts. These old reliables are not, however, sure-fire box office stimulation—nothing is sure-fire anymore. An exception last season was Swan Lake, both at ABT and NYCB. And

yes, the reason must have at least in large part been that film. As biased and shrill a picture of the ballet world as it gave, it did supply at least a short-term boost to main-stream media interest and audience atten-dance—if only for Swan Lake itself. Not surprisingly, NYCB opens its fall season Sept. 13 with a run of its own production.

Certainly there are cases in the dance world in which crisis has created oppor-tunity. Fall for Dance, which runs at City Center Oct. 27 through Nov. 6, has hit upon a successful formula combining a sampling of all genres of dance with a uni-form ticket price of $10.

Paul Taylor’s 2002 Promethean Fire was said to be his response to the twin towers, but it’s debatable how much influence 9/11 has exerted on actual new dance content. Modern dance was once politi-cally engaged, much more so than it is today. The Martha Graham company’s season earlier this year at the Rose Theater

included a program of overtly political solos created in the 1930s by Graham and her disciples. These, as well as other more abstract works in her canon, remain an eloquent reminder that aes-thetics and political commentary can successfully go hand in hand.

Perhaps 9/11 was indeed the beginning of a wake-up call to the dance community, which simply cannot ignore geopolitical and economic policies as they have unfold-ed since the attack. One example: the dras-tic inflation of our military budget since 9/11 means that for the U.S. government, arts funding is not going to be a priority.

Last spring, NYCB presented a new pro-duction of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s 1933 The Seven Deadly Sins. It was inter-esting to read in interviews the way that the choreographer, Lynne Taylor-Corbett, as well as the cast members drew healthy parallels between the initial production and current economic priorities that were even more explicit than its creators might have imagined. For we spectators, the beauty of Sins is the way it remains grip-ping and relevant and universal. We are free to connect it—or not—to pre- and post-9/11 worlds, or to never-never nev-erland. Fortunately, Seven Deadly Sins returns to NYCB in February. Read more by Joel Lobenthal at Lobenthal.com.

PERHAPS 9/11 WAS INDEED THE BEGINNING OF A WAKE-UP CALL TO

THE DANCE COMMUNITy, WHICH SIMPLy CANNOT IGNORE GEOPOLITICAL

AND ECONOMIC POLICIES AS THEy HAvE UNFOLDED

SINCE THE ATTACK.

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THE ALDRICH: Brooklyn-based art collective MtAA presents “All the Holidays All at once,” a months-long all-inclusive display of loaned lawn ornaments from every conceivable holiday. Ends oct. 2, 258 Main Street, ridgefield, conn., aldrichart.org.

BRUCE MUSEUM: “Drawings by rembrandt, His Students & circle from the Maida & George Abrams collection” features 10 of the artist’s works & over 50 drawings by his students & followers. Sept. 24–Jan. 8, 2012. Also on view is “Picasso’s Vollard Suite: the Sculptor’s Studio,” which ends oct. 16. 1 Museum Dr., Greenwich, conn., brucemuseum.org.

CARAMOOR FALL FESTIVAL: the 3rd annual festival features the New york Philharmonic, tony Award nominee Kelli o’Hara & a special showcase of young musicians. Sept. 23–25, 149 Girdle ridge rd., Katonah, N.y., caramoor.org.

THE CLARK: in “Spaces,” large-scale photographs by candida Höfer & thomas Struth capture the emptiness of public spaces. Ends Sept. 15. ”Pissarro’s People” provides a representative sample of the impressionist painter camille Pissarro’s work throughout his career. Ends oct. 2. An exhibition of the work of El Anatsui features the artist’s large-scale sculptures that weave literal Nigerian trash into Ghanian tradition. Ends oct. 16, 225 South St., Williamstown, Mass., clarkart.edu/museum.

CONCERTS AT TANNERY POND: chamber & solo musicians perform classical, romantic & newer works in an intimate, casual setting: a barn-like building constructed by Shakers in 1834. Ends Sept. 17, New Lebanon, N.y., tannerypondconcerts.org.

THE DEMUTH MUSEUM: “chasing inspiration: the Art of the Newswangers” explores the lives & works of father-son artist duo Kiehl & christian Newswanger & their contrasting perspectives on the Amish way of life. Ends Nov. 27, 120 E. King St., Lancaster, Penn., demuth.org.

DIA: BEACON:the gallery presents “Blinky Palermo: retrospective 1964-1977” & artist-led programs. talks & walkthroughs are free with museum admission. Ends oct. 10, 3 Beekman St., Beacon, N.y., diabeacon.org.

KATONAH MUSEUM OF ART: “Double Solitaire: the Surreal Worlds of Kay Sage & yves tanguy.” Ends Sept. 18. “Stephen talasnik: Elusive Landscape.” Ends Sept. 18. “Sarah Perry: if...” Ends Sept. 18. “Joseph Wheelright: tree Figures.” ongoing, 134 Jay St. (rte. 22), Katonah, N.y., katonahmuseum.org.

LIGHTHOUSE KEEPERS’ QUARTERS: Vicky culver & robert Grunke present another edition of their photography exhibit “Around & About.” Ends oct. 30, 84 Mercer rd., Fort Hancock, N.J., nps.gov.

MASS MOCA: Stephen Vitiello’s “All those Vanished Engines”—a site-specific sound installation created for the museum’s boiler house—fuses story excerpts & ambient sounds to create an eerie, dynamically varied portrait of the building’s identity. opens Sept. 25. Also on view is Jane Philbrick’s “the Expanded Field,” a publicly accessible “industrial garden” for rest & meditation. opens Sept. 25, 1040 Mass MocA Way, North Adams, Mass., massmoca.org.

MONTCLAIR ART MUSEUM: “Marina Zurkow.” Sept. 17-Jan. 8, 2012. “Engaging with Nature: American & Native American Artists (A.D. 1200-2004).” Ends Sept. 25. “What is Portraiture?” Ends Nov. 4, 3 S.

Mountain Ave., Montclair, N.J., montclair-art.com.

NEW BRITAIN MUSEUM OF ART: “one Man’s Passion: the Art of carved Birds.” Ends Sept. 25. “New Media: Deb todd Wheeler.” Ends oct. 9. “the tides of Provincetown: Pivotal years in America’s oldest continuous Art colony 1899-2011.” Ends oct. 16. “NEW/NoW: Sarah Lamb.” Ends oct. 30, 56 Lexington St., New Britain, conn., nbmaa.org.

NORFOLK CHAMBER FESTIVAL: young artists & established musicians alike perform in a series of classical music concerts, with many events free & open to the public. Ends oct. 20, Ellen Battell Stoeckel Estate at routes 44 & 272, Norfolk, conn., music.yale.edu/norfolk.

NORMAN ROCKWELL MUSEUM: the museum has a packed schedule, with classes, workshops,

tours & other programs for children & adults alike. on view are “robot Nation,” an outdoor exhibition of weatherproof 3D robot sculptures, & “ice Age: to the Digital Age: the 3D Animation Art of Blue Sky Studios,” an interactive exhibition on digital animation. Ends oct. 31, 9 route 183, Stockbridge, Mass., nrm.org.

STORM KING ART CENTER: “5+5: New Perspectives.” Ends Nov. 14. “the View From Here: Storm King at Fifty.” Ends Nov. 14, old Pleasant Hill rd., Mountainville, N.y., stormking.org.

WADSWORTH ATHENAEUM: in Shaun Gladwell’s “MAtrix 162,” the artist captures death-defying feats on video. Ends Sept. 18. Also on view are two paintings by American artist iona rozeal brown & woodblock prints by Japanese artists ippitsusai Buncho & Kitagawa utamaro. Ends Sept. 25, 600 Main St., Hartford, conn., thewadsworth.org.

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Maya Lin, “Storm King Wavefield,” 2007-08. Photo courtesy of the Storn King Art Center


Meet the Exhibitors

Joern Lohmann of J. Lohmann Gallery

Do you mix your merchandise differ-ently for a New York City show than for those in other markets?

The New York market is very sophisti-cated and educated. They know quality, so I always try to bring my best pieces.

Are you seeing any trends in the way people mix older and newer?

I’ve noticed that people are increasingly mixing old and new. In the past, you saw people collecting only 18th-century Baroque, for example, but now people are mixing it up.

If you were asked to pair one item of yours with something older or newer, what would the pieces be?

I like very much the very early 19th century, like the empire style of furniture, mixed with contemporary artists, whether it’s a painting or a print or a vessel. The empire style has very many straight lines and not a lot of ornaments, so it has a very modern look. I would say, for example, an empire chair paired with a contemporary print.

Robert Lloyd of Robert Lloyd Inc.


Yes I do. I’ll be bringing more of an eclec-tic mix: 17th- and 18th-century pieces as well

as mid-century modern pieces. People in New York come in from all over the world, so it’s a very eclectic market—you can show anything here as long as it’s suitable quality.


Yes, especially with younger clients. For the most part, they’re into a lot of mid-century modern and not so much into the 18th centu-ry, but we try to show them how well it mixes together. I have 18th-century furniture mixed with 20th-century items all over my house. It goes. There’s really no wrong way to do it.


I have an American tankard made in New York circa 1730, very simple, with plain lines, and I’d love to pair that with a 1950s piece of very high-style furniture. That piece of silver works on almost anything.

Jerome Jacalone of Jerome Jacalone Fine Arts


Yes. I tend to bring more intellectual and less decorative pieces to a New York show and I bring more well-recognized artists. I also

This season’s AVENUE Show at the Park Avenue Armory

represents a tremendous variety of styles and eras, with

more 20th-century pieces than ever before. We sat

down with a few of the show’s exhibitors to talk about

the innovative ways in which designers, collectors and

consumers are mixing and matching items from across

the centuries to create timelessly tasteful spaces.

J. Lohmann Gallery

James Infante.

bring earlier pieces, since they require a little more contemplation.


I deal a lot in Baroque and neoclassical art, and both go very well with the clean lines of modern and contemporary furniture and in-teriors. A select placement of classic paintings that I deal with go very well in contemporary interiors. I’ve also noticed that Old Master paintings have gained interest in contempo-rary living environments.


I have a wonderful portrait from 1680 by Luca Giordano of a young boy. It’s a very moody picture that has a lot of emotion to it. It would go very well with an Art Deco side-board or a modern console. Even though the piece is 350 years old, it has a contemporary feel to it.

James Infante of James Infante


I bring the best examples of the collec-tions that I own. I will start as early as the 1880s with some Art Nouveau pieces and go up until the 1970s, but with a specific focus on Austrian decorative arts, many secession-ist things, Hagenauer objects. I try to show a mix.


Good design is timeless. Different styles from different centuries work together. I’ve seen many eclectic collections that span centu-ries and work perfectly in their environments, and that thread starts with good design. A few years ago, there was a focus on mid-century modern—and it’s still there, but people are now opening up once again to a broad level of collecting.


I can answer that question 50 dif-ferent ways, but I’ll say a piece of Carlo

Bugatti furniture from Milano in 1900 and a piece of sculpture by Franz Hagenauer from 1930.

Richard Lavigne of Knollwood Antiques LLC


Absolutely, because of the diversity of the marketplace. We have 17th century up until about 1970 for this show. The range is expansive, and we have some pieces in the

warehouse that are geared just for this show.Are you seeing any trends in the way

people mix older and newer?We’re seeing a huge trend—a lot of pub-

lications are featuring traditional or classical homes but the artwork is nothing but fabulous photography, or really great abstracts mixed with 18th-century French chairs. Or ancient classical sculptures, and then there’ll be some lucite furniture. Or 19th-century pieces mixed with pieces from the 1920s. Or a room filled with really beautiful mid-century pieces, and then on the wall an 18th-century Venetian mirror or a classical painting. It works when it’s done correctly.


I’m doing it for the show. We’re featuring a rare and spectacular pair of human-carved, life-sized sculptures from the early 19th cen-tury paired with a Paul Evans cubist

console table.

Robert Lloyd Inc.

Knollwood Antiques LLC

Jerome Jacalone Fine Arts.

Infante.


September 22–25, 2011

Exhibitor Booth #Linda Bernell Gallery 6Lobel Modern Inc. 36Linda Gumb 73Lynda Willauer Antiques 9M.S. Rau Antiques LLC 53Macklowe Gallery 3Mantiques Modern 69Marion Harris 66Mark Helliar Vintage Murano Glass 77 Mary Deeming 8Michael Pashby Antiques 31Michael S. Haber Ltd. 48Milord Antiques 63Moylan-Smelkinson/The Spare Room 43Myers Huffman Antiques 13Nula Thanhauser Antiques and Signature Purses 75Ophir Gallery 29Pat Saling 67Patrick Bavasi 22Percy’s Silver 54Philip Chasen Antiques 35Potterton Books 37R.M. Barokh Antiques 65Richters 52Robert Lloyd Inc. 42Robin Katz Vintage Jewels 20Sabbadini 1Scott Estepp Gallery 40Steven Neckman Inc. 20The Silver Fund 72Stephen Kalms Antiques 30Valentin Magro 21William Cook Antiques 19Yew Tree House Antiques 62

EXHIBITOR LIST WITH BOOTH LOCATIONS:Exhibitor Booth #A.B. Levy 56Aiston Fine Art Services 26Alexander’s Antiques 47Antique American Wicker 64The Barakat Gallery 15The Englishman Fine Art & Antiques 45Camilla Dietz Bergeron, Ltd. 24Cavalier Galleries, Inc. 55ADallas W. Boesendahl 7Daniels Antiques 46David Brooker Fine Art 81Dinan & Chighine 23Domont Jewelry 14Dragonette Ltd. 27F. L. Braswell Fine Art 68FraMonT 78N & I Franklin 2Galerie Curial Fine Arts 70Gallery Afrodit 76Gary Rubinstein Antiques 32Gilden’s Arts Gallery 16Giraffics Gallery 51Haynes Fine Art of Broadway 41Hollis Reh & Shariff 44Il Segno Del Tempo 39J. Lohmann Gallery 28James Infante 17Jerome Jacalone Fine Art 58 John Atzbach Antiques 59John Jaffa Antiques 55BJoyce Groussman Jewelry 48Knollwood Antiques LLC 81Lame Duck Books 38

Images: courtesy of Dragonette Ltd, Myers–Huffman, Patrick Bavasi, Steven Neckman Inc.

AVENUE SHOWSdefined by quality and design

Antiques, Art & Design at the Armory


Thursday, sepTember 22Show Hours: 11 a.m.–7:30 p.m.

Designer Breakfast Panel Discussion10 a.m.–11 a.m.“The Influence of Women in Interior Design,” moderated by Susanna Salk, featuring Ellie Cullman, Celerie Kemble, Amy Lau, Amanda Nisbet and Katie Ridder.

Jewelry Panel Discussion11:30 a.m.–12:30 p.m.“CIRCA Presents The Art of Collecting Estate Jewelry,” moderated by Chris Del Gatto, Chairmain and CEO of CIRCA, featuring Camilla Dietz Bergeron, Joyce Groussman and Robin Katz.

FrIday, sepTember 23Show Hours: 11 a.m.–7:30 p.m.

Designer Breakfast Panel Discussion10 a.m.–11 a.m.“Decorating with Antiques in the Modern World,” moderated by Susanna Salk, featuring Campion Platt, Jamie Drake and Maureen Footer. Designer Book Presentation and Signing12:30 p.m.–1:30 p.m.“Room for Children: Stylish Places for Sleep and Play”, presented by Susanna Salk. Book signing to follow presentation

Royal Oak Foundation Lecture 4 p.m.–5 p.m.“All My Worldly Goods”: English Royal Weddings, presented by Curt DiCa-millo, Executive Director, National Trust for Scotland Foundation, USA.

Exclusive New York City Book Preview Discussion 6:30 p.m.–7:30 p.m.“Home Sweet Home: Sumptuous and Bohemian Interiors,” presentation and live discussion with Oberto Gili, Susanna Salk, Milly de Cabrol, and Mary Randolph Carter.

SHOW SCHEDULE, EVENTS AND EXHIBITIONS

Susanna Salk Photo by John Gruen

Angelo Donghia’s 72nd St. townhouse

Front facade of San Simeon

September 22–25, 2011

All events are complimentary – Please RSVP at www.avenueshows.com

saTurday, sepTember 24Show Hours: 11 a.m.–7:30 p.m.

Special Presentation11:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m“The Legacy of Angelo Donghia” presented by Crans Baldwin, President of Donghia, Inc.

The Royal Oak Foundation Lecture3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m“Maverick’s Country House: William Randolph Hearst at San Simeon,” presented by Victoria Kastner, author and Hearst Castle historian.

Special Presentation 4:30 a.m.–5:30 p.m.“The Timeless Designs of Billy Haines – As Relavant Today as Yesterday” presented by Patrick Dragonette or Dragonette Ltd.

suNday sepTember 25Show Hours: 11 a.m.–7:30 p.m.

PLUS EXCLUSIVE BOOK SIGNINGS IN THE POTTERTON BOOK BOOTH (#37) THROUGHOUT THE SHOW.All events are complimentary – Please RSVP at www.avenueshows.com

AVENUE SHOWSdefined by quality and design



The Grand Ballroom aT The Plaza hoTel

greatperformances.com | 212.727.2424

Celebrate the art of

hospitality

THE GRAND BALLROOM AT THE PLAZA HOTEL


AVENUESHOWSdefined by quality and design


Designer Committee Co-chairs : Ellie Cullman and Jamie Drake

September 22 - 25, 2011The Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, New York City

For lecture series, book signing & general information, please visit avenueshows.com or call 646.442.1627

W O R T H M O R E

Italian Baroque Venetian mirror with carved giltwood frame, circa 1750, from R. M. Barokh Antiques


Erik Thomsen Asian Art

Japanese Art Dealers Associationof New Yorkwww.jada-ny.org

Japanese screens · paintings · makie gold lacquer · bamboo baskets · tea ceramics

Full moon rising over fall grasses, with shikishi poem cardsEdo Period (1615 – 1868), 17th century, Japan · ink, mineral colors, silver wash and gold leaf on paper Detail from a six-panel folding screen · size: H 67 ¼" × W 144 ½" (171 × 367 cm)

Fall Exhibitions:

September 12 – October 6Moon and Fall Grasses23 East 67th Street gallery

October 14 – November 23Cornelia Thomsen: Stripe Paintings23 East 67th Street gallery

October 21 – 27International Fine Art and Antique Dealers ShowPark Avenue Armory, New York

cityArts September 14, 2011

Documents

Transcript of cityArts September 14, 2011