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SATURDAY, JULY 25, 2015

This was a week for rumbles, forstriking back at unchallenged wis-

dom. Sometimes thedesire to speak truthto power is so strong itoutweighs any back-lash that such interjec-tions might cause.Sometimes that’s ex-

actly the point.Witness the recent conflagrations

initiated by Nicki Minaj and MeekMill. They have been an item for sev-eral months and are currently on tourtogether — Ms. Minaj is the headliner,of course. On Tuesday, both took toTwitter with fast, feeling-motivatedfingers. Ms. Minaj was concernedabout how the media normalizes andrewards certain types of beauty aboveothers; Meek Mill was focused on pre-serving truthfulness in a genre that’s

long prized it. As the smoke cleared, itbecame evident that hip-hop’s mostprominent new couple are also thenew ethics police, animated by princi-ple and standing firm and tall.

Ms. Minaj went first. On Tuesday,after not receiving an MTV Video Mu-sic Award nomination for video of theyear (though she did receive othernods), she underscored what she be-lieved was a persistent bias in the

kind of videos that receive attention:“If your video celebrates women withvery slim bodies, you will be nominat-ed for vid of the year,” she wrote onTwitter. She was aggrieved but cool,reasonably assailing the ways in

New Ethicists on Twitter: Nicki Minaj and Meek Mill

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Nicki Minaj and Meek Millchallenged norms this week.

JONCARAMANICA

CRITIC’SNOTEBOOK

CHRIS PIZZELLO/INVISION, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

By DAVE ITZKOFF

A former correspondent and writer forComedy Central’s “The Daily Show” hasdisclosed that he and its host, Jon Stewart,engaged in a heated argument about a seg-ment perceived as racially insensitive. Inhis recounting, the correspondent, WyattCenac, who is black, said Mr. Stewart be-came defensive and frequently shouted ex-pletives.

The dispute, which Mr. Cenac detailedthis week in a podcast interview, is morethan just a behind-the-scenes blowup at apopular TV program. It is in jarring con-trast to the reputation of “The Daily Show,”a news satire that has had a wide berth toaddress matters of race, and of Mr. Stew-art, who is one of the few white performersto have tackled these issues frequently andunsparingly.

Producers at “The Daily Show” say thatthey are constantly re-examining how theycreate their comedy segments and thatthey are aware of “blind spots” in theirprocess.

But Mr. Cenac’s account has nonethe-less surfaced at an especially awkwardtime as Mr. Stewart prepares to step downas its host on Aug. 6 after a 16-year run.

Mr. Cenac, who worked on “The DailyShow” from 2008 to 2012, recounted thefight with Mr. Stewart in an episode ofMarc Maron’s podcast that was posted onThursday.

In the podcast, Mr. Cenac describedevents at “The Daily Show” in 2011, afterMr. Stewart did an on-air impression ofHerman Cain, a black business executivewho was seeking the 2012 Republicannomination for president.

Mr. Cenac compared Mr. Stewart’s im-personation to the Kingfish, a racially ster-eotyped character from “The Amos ’n’Andy Show,” and said it struck him as “alittle weird.”

For days afterward, the Fox News Chan-nel, a frequent target of “The Daily Show,”seized on Mr. Stewart’s imitation and crit-icized it as racist.

When Mr. Cenac later tried to discour-

‘Daily Show’Race DisputeIs RecalledBy Writer

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From Headphones to Headliners

The popularity of live podcast eventsfuels two festivals in New York. PAGE 5

INSIDE

The Lincoln Center Festival typicallypacks all manner of theater, music anddance offerings into a month. Its director,Nigel Redden, has acknowledged the diffi-

culty of figuring out howmany performances of eachwork to present. The festivalprobably overscheduled theentertaining opening event,“Danny Elfman’s MusicFrom the Films of Tim Bur-

ton,” which drew big audiences at the startbut sold inconsistently through the eight-performance run.

Unfortunately, “Delusion of the Fury,”the unclassifiable music-theater work fromthe late 1960s by the American maverickcomposer Harry Partch, was scheduled forjust two performances on successivenights. The fantastical, daffy yet affecting

production, created by the composer anddirector Heiner Goebbels for the Ruhr-triennale in Germany in 2013, opened onThursday at New York City Center. Re-gardless of the financial and logistical re-straints, I bet “Delusion of the Fury” couldhave drawn solid audiences for a week. At

Of Warriors,VagabondsAnd Anger

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ANTHONYTOMMASINI

MUSICREVIEW

Delusion of the FuryCity Center

By RACHEL DONADIO

PARIS — The art practical-ly leaps off the walls. A strik-ing painting of PresidentObama, Nelson Mandela andPatrice Lumumba, the Con-golese leader who was assas-sinated in 1961. Lusciousblack-and-white photographsof 1950s night life in Léopold-ville, now Kinshasa. Whim-sical watercolors from the1930s.

These are among 350works by 41 artists in “BeautéCongo,” an electric, eye-open-ing survey of art from Congofrom 1926-2015 at the CartierFoundation here that offers awindow into a dynamic artscene not often showcased inWestern museums.

“We wanted to create anarrative that reintroducesthese exceptional artists intothe history of art,” said AndréMagnin, a boisterous French-man who curated the show.He has traveled to Congo fordecades, cultivating relation-ships with some of the artistsfeatured as well as buyingwork on behalf of a major col-lector. “We wanted to showthe broader public exception-al works from a continentwhere the television onlypresents dark, disastrous im-ages of war and illness,” headded.

Mr. Magnin said the surveywas intended as a “politicaland historical” gesture that

ANDRÉ MORIN

Congo Vision:A HomelandAs Its Artists

Render It

FLORIAN KLEINEFEN

REVUE NOIRE

“Beauté Congo,” at the Cartier Foundation in Paris,includes, from top, Chéri Samba’s “Yes One Must Think,”of President Obama, Patrice Lumumba and NelsonMandela; Monsengo Shula’s “Sooner or Later the WorldWill Change”; and a photograph by Jean Depara.

Continued on Page 2

A sudden craving for Kentucky FriedChicken swept over me at one point duringthe stage adaptation of the Haruki Muraka-mi novel “Kafka on the Shore,” being pre-

sented through Sunday at theDavid H. Koch Theater as partof the Lincoln Center Festival.It has been well more than adecade since I’ve visited aKFC, but those familiar withMr. Murakami’s playful meta-

physical mystery will recall that ColonelSanders — or rather a spirit taking the formof that corporate icon — is among thestrange array of characters in the book.

So, too, is Johnnie Walker, the top-hattedfigure strolling across many a whiskey bot-

tle. And by the conclusion of this visually ar-resting but ponderous three-hour produc-tion, performed in Japanese with English su-pertitles, thoughts of crispy chicken hadbeen swept away by a stronger craving for abracing glass of that liquor. Or indeed anyother.

The production, adapted by Frank Galati(who earlier adapted and directed a stageversion of two stories from Mr. Murakami’scollection “After the Quake”) and directed

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CHARLESISHERWOOD

THEATERREVIEW

Searchers in a Spirit World Laced With Pop ClichésKafka on the Shore From left, Mame Yamada,Katrine Mutsukiko Doi Vincent and KatsumiKiba at the David H. Koch Theater.

SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES

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C2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, SATURDAY, JULY 25, 2015

by Yukio Ninagawa (making histhird appearance at this festival),features an alluring and impres-sive set design by Tsukasa Naka-goshi. The wide expanse of thestage — usually home to NewYork City Ballet and other dancecompanies — is filled with largeglass boxes lit by fluorescent tub-ing. These vitrines, of variousshapes and sizes, are manipulat-ed by black-clad figures so thatthey slip and slide smoothlyaround like ambulatory diora-mas, giving the sweep of thestory an almost cinematic flow.Scenes from the book take placemostly inside or just outsidethese boxes, which represent lo-cations as varied as a quiet pri-vate library, a teeming red-lightdistrict, a long-haul truck and aremote forest idyll.

Mr. Galati does a smooth job ofstreamlining the book, but as isoften the case with stage ver-sions of philosophically inquisi-tive novels (or for that matter,nonphilosophically inquisitiveones), story tends to take prece-dence over the less easily drama-tized layers, which in this case in-clude much rich meditation on

the quirks of destiny, the fluid na-ture of time and identity, theechoing hollowness of human ex-perience and the strange forcesthat bring people into life-chang-ing contact.

Broadly speaking, the storycharts the intersecting odysseysof two principal characters, the15-year-old Kafka (Nino Furuha-ta), whose self-chosen name sug-gests his precocious spiritualalienation, and Nakata (Katsumi

Kiba), a childlike older manwhose brain was scrambled, welearn in flashback, when he was ayoung boy during a weird mysti-cal occurrence on a school outingin the forest during the war.

Since this trauma, Nakata hasbeen unable to read or write, buthe is able to converse with cats,and picks up a few dollars to helpsupport himself by using this un-usual gift to track down lost fe-lines. (The talking cats — repre-

sented by actors in sleek fur cos-tumes — are among the more en-gaging aspects of the show, withthe performers persuasivelymimicking the slinking of a Sia-mese or the playful rubbing of ayoung tomcat.)

Both characters begin theirjourneys in Tokyo, but Kafkasoon leaves the city behind. Un-happy at home with his famoussculptor father and convincedthat he needs to flee to avoid adark Oedipal destiny, he moveson and eventually finds a newspiritual home in the small li-brary run by the reclusive, beau-tiful Miss Saeki (Rie Miyazawa)and her assistant, Oshima (Nao-hito Fujiki), who, in one of thenovel’s many odd surprises,eventually reveals that he is bio-logically female but lives his lifeas a gay man. (Long story — ofwhich there are many in the nov-el and which Mr. Murakamimakes a sort of comic motif.)

At roughly the same time,Nakata’s search for a lost catbrings him into the dark orbit ofan evil figure taking the form ofJohnnie Walker, a kitty killerwhose outrages so upset Nakatathat he is forced to murder him(albeit at Johnnie’s express re-

quest). Nakata, too, flees the city,with the help of the friendly truckdriver Hoshino (Tsutomu Taka-hashi), who’s intrigued by thisstrange codger who has the abili-ty, among other things, to makefish fall from the sky.

All of this, by the way, is mere-ly the rough outline of the essen-tials. As the plot develops, manymore swirling currents develop,each as surprising, mystifying orsimply bewildering as the one be-fore. Unfortunately, even with anextensive running time the pro-duction does not allow for thecharacters to inhabit our imagi-nations as richly as they do in thebook. (And forget trying to parsethe murky layers of meaning.)

In the large theater, the per-formances likewise are unable toregister powerfully, especiallysince the sometimes denselyphilosophical dialogue and themyriad oddities of the plot re-quire us to pay close attention tothe titles high above the stage.Still, the actors give winning ifmostly economical interpreta-tions of their characters.

Although Mr. Furuhata lookscloser to 13 than the 17 years oldthat Kafka sometimes pretendsto be, he is touching as this youngfellow, still trusting and kindlybut possessed of a dark worldli-ness — and eventually a sexualcharisma that has surprising con-sequences. Mr. Kiba’s Nakata

naturally wins our hearts withhis deadpan confessions of hisown stupidity and genial abilityto catch each of life’s curveballsas if it were nothing out of the or-dinary. Ms. Miyazawa’s MissSaeki has an ethereal, almostghostly presence, her soul stillbound up in a tragedy in her past.

The supporting players, too,make vivid impressions, with Mr.Takahashi’s jovial Hoshino par-ticularly warm and welcome.Masato Shinkawa is flesh-crawl-ingly effective as Johnnie Walker,who feasts on kitty hearts. And asColonel Sanders, Masakatsu Tori-yama both looks and acts the partof the avuncular fellow so famil-iar to us all, at least from distanttelevision commercials.

Owners of the KFC brand, how-ever, might not be quite sopleased with his representationhere. The colonel proves helpfulin leading Hoshino to a mysteri-ous stone that is a sort of portalinto the spirit world that Nakatais in search of. But he’s also apimp who insists that Hoshinosleep with one of his girls beforehe will be granted access to thatstone. That’s a long, strangestory, too — and so, in sum, is“Kafka on the Shore.”

SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ambulatory dioramas: From left, Anne Suzuki, Nino Furuhata and Naohito Fujiki in “Kafka on the Shore,” adapted by Frank Galati from Haruki Murakami’s 2002 novel.

Searchers in a Spirit World Laced With Pop ClichésKafka on the ShoreBased on the book by Haruki Murakami; adapted for the stage by Frank Galati; direct-ed by Yukio Ninagawa; translated by Shunsuke Hiratsuka; sets by Tsukasa Naka-goshi; costumes by Ayako Maeda; lighting by Motoi Hattori; sound by Katsuji Taka-hashi; hair and makeup design by Yoko Kawamura and Yuko Chiba; music by UmitaroAbe; stage manager, Shinichi Akashi; technical manager, Kiyotaka Kobayashi; pro-duction manager, Yuichiro Kanai. A Ninagawa Company production, presented by Lin-coln Center as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. At the David H. Koch Theater, 212-721-6500, lincolncenterfestival.org. Through Sunday. Running time: 3 hours.

WITH: Rie Miyazawa (Miss Saeki/Girl), Naohito Fujiki (Oshima), Nino Furuhata(Kafka), Anne Suzuki (Sakura), Hayato Kakizawa (Crow), Tsutomu Takahashi (Hoshi-no), Masakatsu Toriyama (Colonel Sanders), Katsumi Kiba (Nakata) and Masato Shin-kawa (Johnnie Walker), Mame Yamada (Kawamura) and Katrine Mutsukiko Doi Vin-cent (Mimi/the Colonel’s Girl).

From First Arts Page

Twin odysseys of aboy and an old man.

sought to disprove the commonmisconception that art in Africahad skipped several generationsfrom the traditional works of thepast to those made after manyAfrican countries became inde-pendent of their European colo-nizers. (Belgian colonial rule inCongo ended in 1960.) Althoughmuch of this show is dedicated tocontemporary artists like ChériSamba, who painted the image ofworld leaders, the earliest workshere have rarely been shown insuch numbers, and the exhibitionmakes a strong case for the conti-nuity of rich artistic productionover the last century.

“Beauté Congo,” which runsthrough mid-November, beginsin the 1920s, when the husband-and-wife painters Albert and An-toinette Lubaki and the artistknown as Djilatendo moved fromdecorating traditional huts to cre-ating works on paper at the re-quest of a Belgian colonial admin-istrator. The Lubakis’ watercol-ors, often of animals or leaves,fall somewhere between realismand fantasy, while Djilatendo’sgeometric patterns hover be-tween traditionalism and mod-ernism. The show fills all of theexhibition space at the founda-tion, which is housed in a glassbox designed by Jean Nouvel.

In the late 1920s and early1930s, work by the Lubakis wasshown in important museumsand galleries in Europe. Djilaten-do was represented in an exhibi-tion in Brussels along with Ma-gritte. But after 1935 and a fightbetween curators, they stoppedproducing and were eventuallylost to history. Mr. Magnin saidhe went in search of their workafter learning about it in a book

he stumbled upon in 1989 in Zaire,as the country was then called.(It is now the Democratic Repub-lic of Congo.)

“Beauté Congo” also show-cases the artists who participatedbetween 1946 and 1954 in an acad-emy “for popular indigenous art,”as the catalog puts it, started by aformer French navy officer andartist, Pierre Romain-Desfossés.They include vibrant, naturalisticunderwater scenes of fish and ofbirds in trees from the 1950s bythe artist known as Bela, whoworked as a night guard forRomain-Desfossés before takingup painting, which he did with hisfingertips, without a brush.

In the 1950s, the photographerJean Depara, born in 1928, cap-tured a moment in Léopoldville,where rumba was all the rageand ladies of the night wore cock-tail dresses. His images, in richsilver gelatin prints, recall thoseby the Malian photographersSeydou Keïta and Malick Sidibé,but unlike Mali, Congo isn’t aMuslim country, and its night lifeis racier.

Various works in the show arededicated to the “Rumble in theJungle,” the politically charged1974 boxing match in Kinshasa inwhich Muhammad Ali defeatedGeorge Foreman, a moment ofblack pride in a newly liberatedcountry. These include photosand a colorful painting by Moke,who worked in the popular styleand died in 2001. Steve Bandoma,born in 1981, revisits the match inhis 2014 “Cassius Clay” series,done in papier collé with ink. “Itry to go against the stereotypesof African artists,” Mr. Bandomasaid at the exhibition opening. “Idefine myself as an artist, not anAfrican artist.”

Today, Moke’s cousin Monsen-go Shula, 55, a self-described

autodidact, works in the popularvein, but with an “Afrofuturist”twist. The exhibition features his2014 painting “Sooner or Laterthe World Will Change,” of Afri-can astronauts in outer space,with an African statue at the cen-ter of their satellite.

Also on view are colorful futur-istic cityscape sculptures, archi-

tectural models gone wild, by theartist Bodys Isek Kingelez,(“Phantom City,” 1996) andRigobert Nimi (“The City ofStars,” 2006), who uses found ma-terial and castoff electronics.Born in 1965, Mr. Nimi lives inKinshasa without electricity, Mr.Magnin said. At the show’s open-ing, Mr. Nimi and other artists in

the show spoke of the challengesthey face. “For an artist to be-come a celebrity, he has to go toEurope,” Mr. Nimi said.

Congo’s current governmenthas come under fire by humanrights groups for its repression ofdissent, and most of the works inthe exhibition shy from direct po-litical confrontation. Mr. Samba,one of Congo’s best-known art-ists, veers into the political with awork depicting a child soldierwith the words “I am for peace,that is why I like weapons.”

“Beauté Congo” has receivedpositive reviews in France sinceit opened on July 11, but there hasalso been some criticism. PascaleObolo, a filmmaker and the editorof Afrikadaa, a cultural journal,found fault with the “very neoco-

lonial and paternalistic” attitudeof Mr. Magnin and others whobring African art into Europeanmuseums. “We’re in a world ofglobalization,” she said. “Wedon’t need France or Belgium inorder to show art from Africa.”

Some questioned why the onlywoman included in the exhibitionwas Antoinette Lubaki, from the1930s, and why, for instance, theshow did not include the prize-winning artist Michèle Magema,born in 1977, whose work hasbeen shown widely in Europe.“I’m sure they exist,” Mr. Magninsaid of female artists. “Unfortu-nately I haven’t met them.”

Others questioned the possiblecommercial implications of theshow, since Mr. Magnin acquiredwork by some of the artists fea-tured here in building up theholdings of Jean Pigozzi, a busi-nessman, with what Mr. Magninsaid was the largest collection ofAfrican contemporary art in theworld, with 12,000 works.

Hervé Chandès, the director ofthe Cartier Foundation, said hewasn’t concerned. “If Andréhadn’t been there, I couldn’t havedone the exhibition,” he said. “Ineeded someone with the knowl-edge of the artistic life of Congo.”

Back at the exhibition opening,some of the artists thanked Mr.Magnin for championing them.“He helped me a lot after he said,‘Find your style,’” said the artistJ P Mika, standing by one of hispaintings, which also featuresMr. Obama and Mr. Mandela. Inthis one, each man is split in half,depicted simultaneously as hisyounger and older self. Mr. Shula,who painted the African astro-nauts, said he hoped being in-cluded in the show would driveup prices for his work. “Ofcourse,” he said.

Nearby were rich color pho-tographs from the 2011 series “AView,” by Kiripi Katembo, born in1979. They show images of Kin-shasa reflected in puddles. Aworld turned upside down, sat-urated with grit and color andlove.

ANDRÉ MORIN

THOMAS SALVA/LUMENTO, VIA THE CARTIER FOUNDATION

Above, the 1974 Ali-Foremanfight in Kinshasa (“Untitled”),by Moke, and left, J P Mikawith “Kiese na Kiese (LeBonheur et la Joie).” Moreimages: nytimes.com/arts.

Visions of a Homeland

As Its Artists Render It From First Arts Page

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