Here, Kiddie, Kiddie: A Witch Is Cooking Up a Treat€¦ · day this month. In the 1940s, ’50s...
2
E1 N WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2007 Families can be so embarrassing. Imagine the agonies of an adoles- cent girl whose house has become infested with India-besotted hippies from all over the globe, whose sarcas- tic father stumbles around in an alcoholic haze and whose moth- er kneels at the feet of every swami she meets. And let us not forget grand- ma, who holds long conversations with her cow and once met a 1,000- year-old cobra with a ruby in its forehead and a mustache on its albi- no face. Gods, gurus and eccentric rela- tives compete for primacy in Kirin Narayan’s enchanting memoir of her childhood in Bombay (present- day Mumbai). The title, which al- ludes to Gerald Durrell’s “My Fam- ily and Other Animals,” originated as an act of revenge. Ms. Narayan, fed up with the family pen- chant for ashrams and spiritual quests, turned to her mother and warned, “When I grow up I’m going to write a book called ‘My Family and Other Saints’ and put you in it.” And so she did. The adolescent anger is gone, but the child’s sense of wonder remains. Ms. Narayan, now a professor of cul- tural anthropologist at the Universi- ty of Wisconsin, Madison, grew up in extraordinary circumstances, the daughter of a bohemian American mother and a deeply unhappy Indi- A Groovy Pad Full of Gods And Gurus “There Will Be Blood,” Paul Thom- as Anderson’s epic American night- mare, arrives belching fire and brim- stone and damnation to Hell. Set against the backdrop of the Southern California oil boom of the late-19th and early-20th centuries, it tells a story of greed and envy of bib- lical proportions — re- verberating with Old Tes- tament sound and fury and New Testament evangelicalism — which Mr. Anderson has mined from Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel “Oil!” There is no God but money in this oil-rich desert and his messen- ger is Daniel Plainview, a petroleum speculator played by a monstrous and shattering Daniel Day-Lewis. Plainview is an American primi- tive. He’s more articulate and civi- lized than the crude, brutal title char- acter in Frank Norris’s 1899 novel “McTeague,” and Erich von Stro- heim’s masterly version of the same, “Greed.” But the two characters are brothers under the hide, coarse and animalistic, sentimental in matters of love and ruthless in matters of ava- rice. Mr. Anderson opens his story in 1898, closer to Norris’s novel than Sinclair’s, which begins in the years leading up to World War I. And the film’s opener is a stunner — spooky and strange, blanketed in shadows and nearly wordless. Inside a deep, dark hole, a man pickaxes the hard- packed soil like a bug gnawing through dirt. This is the earth mover, the ground shaker: Plainview. Over the next two and a half mes- merizing hours Plainview will strike oil, then strike it rich and transform a bootstrapper’s dream into a terrify- ing prophecy about the coming American century. It’s a century he plunges into slicked in oil, dabbed An American Primitive, Forged in a Crucible of Blood and Oil FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL/PARAMOUNT VANTAGE There Will Be Blood with Dillon Freasier, left, and Daniel Day-Lewis, opens on Wednesday. Continued on Page 5 MANOHLA DARGIS FILM REVIEW MORE FILM REVIEWS “Chuck Close,” a documentary, Page 3. “Smiley Face” and “Aliens vs. Pred- ator: Requiem,” Page 5. Children were everywhere at the Metropolitan Opera on Monday after- noon for a special Christmas Eve mati- nee, the premiere of a new production of Engelbert Humperdinck’s “Hansel and Gretel.” As patrons entered the house, some children scurried up and down the stairs of the grand promenade, while others peered over the rim of the orchestra pit to watch the musicians warm up. As the house lights dimmed, and the Met’s low-hang- ing crystal chandeliers ascended to the ceiling, impressionable children ap- plauded. Indeed, applause broke out all through the performance, especially when the plucky Hansel and Gretel pushed the glutinous Witch into the oven during the final scene. This new production, a surreal, sometimes baffling yet intriguing stag- ing by the British director Richard Jones, was created for the Welsh Nation- al Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago. It was brought to the Met by the general manager, Peter Gelb, as this season’s special family fare. Last season’s family offering was Julie Taymor’s production of Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” trimmed to 100 minutes and performed in English. Humperdinck’s compact opera needs no trimming; with an intermission the per- formance lasts just over two hours. It is performed in a very free English trans- lation of the German by David Pount- ney, filled with clever rhymes and snap- py vernacular. The German soprano Christine Schäfer, whose only previous work at the Met was a string of shattering per- formances in the 2001-2 season as Berg’s voluptuous Lulu, makes a girlish and not-so-innocent Gretel. The dusky- voiced British mezzo-soprano Alice Coote, who in the last two years has won admirers at the Met for her portrayals of Mozart’s Cherubino and Handel’s Sesto, sings Hansel, played as a boisterous, fid- Here, Kiddie, Kiddie: A Witch Is Cooking Up a Treat SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES Hansel and Gretel at the Metropolitan Opera, with Alice Coote, left; Christine Schäfer, right; and Philip Langridge, center in the oven, as the Witch. Continued on Page 13 ANTHONY TOMMASINI MUSIC REVIEW By KATHRYN SHATTUCK With his allegiance to dewy-eyed innocence and earnest sentimental- ity, the illustrator Norman Rockwell has often been mocked for creating an America that never was and nev- er will be. But Kevin Rivoli, a photojournal- ist in upstate New York, will tell you that’s just not true. He knows be- cause he’s documented it. Mr. Rivoli has spent the past 15 years capturing timeless moments in contemporary America — the sol- emn christenings and squirmy first haircuts, the town meetings and pa- triotic parades, the youthful shenan- igans and the mature reverence symbolized by elderly hands resting on a well-thumbed bible. He calls his project “In Search of Norman Rockwell’s America,” and by autumn his photographs will have grown into a book, published by Prestel, and a traveling exhibi- tion, overseen by International Arts and Artists, that juxtaposes Mr. Rivoli’s images with Rockwell’s. The project has received the blessing of the Rockwell family; the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass.; and Curtis Pub- lishing, owners of The Saturday Evening Post, whose covers Rock- well illustrations adorned. Addition- ally, some scholars hope that Mr. Rivoli’s images will put the old crit- icism about Rockwell to rest once and for all. “I cover a lot of small-town Amer- ica,” said Mr. Rivoli, 47, a contract photographer with The Associated Press who occasionally does work for The New York Times. “I’m not a war photographer, I’m not in metro- politan America. I tend to look for Photographing The Life That Rockwell Depicted Continued on Page 10 What to do with our aging architectural heroes? What if their genius deteriorates and they begin tinkering with their own master- pieces? A powerful case in point is the Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, who celebrated his 100th birth- day this month. In the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s he established himself as one of Modernism’s greatest luminaries, infusing stark abstract forms with a be- guiling tropical hedonism that reshaped Bra- zil’s identity in the popular imagination and mesmerized architects around the globe. In Brasilía, a city that rose out of a jungle in the span of four years, he created at least a half dozen architectural masterpieces — a mind-boggling accomplishment by today’s standards. Today Mr. Niemeyer is held up as one of Brazil’s greatest national treasures, and he seems as spry as ever. He is at work on a cultural center in Aviles, Spain, and another in Niteroi, just south of Rio de Janeiro. He recent- ly unveiled a new line of furniture at the Art Basel Miami fair. And last year he married his longtime secretary, Vera Lúcia Cabreira. In recognition of the heroic scale of his ac- complishments, Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, recently proposed legislation that would confer special landmark status on all of his buildings. But the greatest threat to Mr. Niemeyer’s remarkable legacy may not be the developer’s bulldozer or insensitive city planners, but Mr. Niemeyer himself. It is not simply that his latest buildings have a careless, tossed-off quality. It’s that Even If His Own Work Isn’t Broken, a Brazilian Architect Fixes It RICARDO MORAES/ASSOCIATED PRESS The Museum of Contemporary Art, overlooking Guanabara Bay in Niteroi, Brazil, was completed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1996. Continued on Page 8 NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF ARCHITECTURE My Family and Other Saints By Kirin Narayan Illustrated. 236 pages. University of Chicago Press. $22.50. Continued on Page 14 WILLIAM GRIMES BOOKS OF THE TIMES C M Y K Nxxx,2007-12-26,E,001,Bs-4C,E1
Transcript of Here, Kiddie, Kiddie: A Witch Is Cooking Up a Treat€¦ · day this month. In the 1940s, ’50s...
-
E1N
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2007
Families can be so embarrassing.Imagine the agonies of an adoles-cent girl whose house has becomeinfested with India-besotted hippies
from all over theglobe, whose sarcas-tic father stumblesaround in an alcoholichaze and whose moth-er kneels at the feet ofevery swami she
meets. And let us not forget grand-ma, who holds long conversationswith her cow and once met a 1,000-year-old cobra with a ruby in itsforehead and a mustache on its albi-no face.
Gods, gurus and eccentric rela-tives compete for primacy in KirinNarayan’s enchanting memoir ofher childhood in Bombay (present-day Mumbai). The title, which al-ludes to Gerald Durrell’s “My Fam-ily and Other Animals,” originatedas an act of revenge. Ms. Narayan,fed up with the family pen-
chant for ashrams and spiritualquests, turned to her mother andwarned, “When I grow up I’m goingto write a book called ‘My Familyand Other Saints’ and put you in it.”And so she did.
The adolescent anger is gone, butthe child’s sense of wonder remains.Ms. Narayan, now a professor of cul-tural anthropologist at the Universi-ty of Wisconsin, Madison, grew upin extraordinary circumstances, thedaughter of a bohemian Americanmother and a deeply unhappy Indi-
A Groovy PadFull of GodsAnd Gurus
“There Will Be Blood,” Paul Thom-as Anderson’s epic American night-mare, arrives belching fire and brim-stone and damnation to Hell. Setagainst the backdrop of the Southern
California oil boom of thelate-19th and early-20thcenturies, it tells a storyof greed and envy of bib-lical proportions — re-verberating with Old Tes-tament sound and fury
and New Testament evangelicalism— which Mr. Anderson has minedfrom Upton Sinclair’s 1927 novel“Oil!” There is no God but money inthis oil-rich desert and his messen-ger is Daniel Plainview, a petroleumspeculator played by a monstrousand shattering Daniel Day-Lewis.
Plainview is an American primi-tive. He’s more articulate and civi-lized than the crude, brutal title char-acter in Frank Norris’s 1899 novel“McTeague,” and Erich von Stro-heim’s masterly version of the same,“Greed.” But the two characters arebrothers under the hide, coarse and
animalistic, sentimental in matters oflove and ruthless in matters of ava-rice. Mr. Anderson opens his story in1898, closer to Norris’s novel thanSinclair’s, which begins in the yearsleading up to World War I. And thefilm’s opener is a stunner — spookyand strange, blanketed in shadowsand nearly wordless. Inside a deep,dark hole, a man pickaxes the hard-packed soil like a bug gnawingthrough dirt. This is the earth mover,the ground shaker: Plainview.
Over the next two and a half mes-merizing hours Plainview will strikeoil, then strike it rich and transform abootstrapper’s dream into a terrify-ing prophecy about the comingAmerican century. It’s a century heplunges into slicked in oil, dabbed
An American Primitive, Forged in a Crucible of Blood and Oil
FRANÇOIS DUHAMEL/PARAMOUNT VANTAGE
There Will Be Blood with Dillon Freasier, left, and Daniel Day-Lewis, opens on Wednesday. Continued on Page 5
MANOHLADARGIS
FILMREVIEW
MORE FILM REVIEWS
“Chuck Close,” a documentary, Page3. “Smiley Face” and “Aliens vs. Pred-ator: Requiem,” Page 5.
Children were everywhere at theMetropolitan Opera on Monday after-noon for a special Christmas Eve mati-
nee, the premiere of a newproduction of EngelbertHumperdinck’s “Hanseland Gretel.” As patronsentered the house, somechildren scurried up anddown the stairs of the
grand promenade, while others peeredover the rim of the orchestra pit to watchthe musicians warm up. As the house
lights dimmed, and the Met’s low-hang-ing crystal chandeliers ascended to theceiling, impressionable children ap-plauded. Indeed, applause broke out allthrough the performance, especiallywhen the plucky Hansel and Gretelpushed the glutinous Witch into theoven during the final scene.
This new production, a surreal,sometimes baffling yet intriguing stag-ing by the British director RichardJones, was created for the Welsh Nation-al Opera and the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
It was brought to the Met by the generalmanager, Peter Gelb, as this season’sspecial family fare. Last season’s familyoffering was Julie Taymor’s productionof Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” trimmed to100 minutes and performed in English.Humperdinck’s compact opera needs notrimming; with an intermission the per-formance lasts just over two hours. It isperformed in a very free English trans-lation of the German by David Pount-ney, filled with clever rhymes and snap-py vernacular.
The German soprano ChristineSchäfer, whose only previous work atthe Met was a string of shattering per-formances in the 2001-2 season as Berg’svoluptuous Lulu, makes a girlish andnot-so-innocent Gretel. The dusky-voiced British mezzo-soprano AliceCoote, who in the last two years has wonadmirers at the Met for her portrayals ofMozart’s Cherubino and Handel’s Sesto,sings Hansel, played as a boisterous, fid-
Here, Kiddie, Kiddie: A Witch Is Cooking Up a Treat
SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Hansel and Gretel at the Metropolitan Opera, with Alice Coote, left; Christine Schäfer, right; and Philip Langridge, center in the oven, as the Witch.
Continued on Page 13
ANTHONYTOMMASINI
MUSICREVIEW
By KATHRYN SHATTUCK
With his allegiance to dewy-eyedinnocence and earnest sentimental-ity, the illustrator Norman Rockwellhas often been mocked for creatingan America that never was and nev-er will be.
But Kevin Rivoli, a photojournal-ist in upstate New York, will tell youthat’s just not true. He knows be-cause he’s documented it.
Mr. Rivoli has spent the past 15years capturing timeless momentsin contemporary America — the sol-emn christenings and squirmy firsthaircuts, the town meetings and pa-triotic parades, the youthful shenan-igans and the mature reverencesymbolized by elderly hands restingon a well-thumbed bible.
He calls his project “In Search ofNorman Rockwell’s America,” andby autumn his photographs willhave grown into a book, publishedby Prestel, and a traveling exhibi-tion, overseen by International Artsand Artists, that juxtaposes Mr.Rivoli’s images with Rockwell’s.
The project has received theblessing of the Rockwell family; theNorman Rockwell Museum inStockbridge, Mass.; and Curtis Pub-lishing, owners of The SaturdayEvening Post, whose covers Rock-well illustrations adorned. Addition-ally, some scholars hope that Mr.Rivoli’s images will put the old crit-icism about Rockwell to rest onceand for all.
“I cover a lot of small-town Amer-ica,” said Mr. Rivoli, 47, a contractphotographer with The AssociatedPress who occasionally does workfor The New York Times. “I’m not awar photographer, I’m not in metro-politan America. I tend to look for
PhotographingThe LifeThat RockwellDepicted
Continued on Page 10
What to do with our aging architecturalheroes? What if their genius deteriorates andthey begin tinkering with their own master-pieces?
A powerful case in point is the Brazilianarchitect Oscar Niemeyer,who celebrated his 100th birth-day this month. In the 1940s,’50s and ’60s he establishedhimself as one of Modernism’sgreatest luminaries, infusingstark abstract forms with a be-
guiling tropical hedonism that reshaped Bra-zil’s identity in the popular imagination andmesmerized architects around the globe.
In Brasilía, a city that rose out of a junglein the span of four years, he created at least ahalf dozen architectural masterpieces — amind-boggling accomplishment by today’sstandards. Today Mr. Niemeyer is held up as
one of Brazil’s greatest national treasures, andhe seems as spry as ever. He is at work on acultural center in Aviles, Spain, and another inNiteroi, just south of Rio de Janeiro. He recent-ly unveiled a new line of furniture at the ArtBasel Miami fair. And last year he married hislongtime secretary, Vera Lúcia Cabreira.
In recognition of the heroic scale of his ac-complishments, Brazil’s president, Luiz InácioLula da Silva, recently proposed legislationthat would confer special landmark status onall of his buildings.
But the greatest threat to Mr. Niemeyer’sremarkable legacy may not be the developer’sbulldozer or insensitive city planners, but Mr.Niemeyer himself.
It is not simply that his latest buildingshave a careless, tossed-off quality. It’s that
Even If His Own Work Isn’t Broken, a Brazilian Architect Fixes It
RICARDO MORAES/ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Museum of Contemporary Art, overlooking Guanabara Bayin Niteroi, Brazil, was completed by Oscar Niemeyer in 1996. Continued on Page 8
NICOLAIOUROUSSOFF ARCHITECTURE
My Family and Other SaintsBy Kirin NarayanIllustrated. 236 pages.University of Chicago Press.$22.50.
Continued on Page 14
WILLIAMGRIMES BOOKS
OF THE TIMES
C M Y K Nxxx,2007-12-26,E,001,Bs-4C,E1
-
E10 N . KTHE NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2007
connections between people.“Rockwell did a lot of that in
his artwork,” he said.Mr. Rivoli connected with
Rockwell 18 years ago when heand his future wife, Michele, vis-ited the Rockwell Museum.There they learned of critics’ con-tentions that Rockwell’s imageswere trite and kitschy figments oftheir creator’s nostalgic imagina-tion.
“Kevin immediately said, ‘He’snot creating an America thatdoesn’t exist,’” Ms. Rivoli, a for-mer reporter, recalled. “‘Thosemoments do exist, and I havethem on film.’”
Over time Mr. Rivoli collectedmore than 120 such images, most-ly the result of spontaneous mo-ments snapped during assign-ments in upstate New York. Forexample, a photo of altar boys ata 1996 wedding in Otisco recallsthe “Choirboy” cover Rockwelldrew for the Post in 1954.
“When I go into an assignmentthat could be boring, I try to lookfor the picture within the picture,the essence of Norman Rock-well,” he said. “I always think,‘How would he paint this?’”
For a while the Rivolis owned agallery near their home outsideAuburn, in the Finger Lakes re-gion. But they closed shop twoand a half years ago to spendmore time with their small twinsons.
“My concern was that Kevinwasn’t going to have a creative
outlet for people to enjoy what hedid,” Ms. Rivoli said. So she sug-gested that he compile his im-ages into a book.
“One day we started looking atRockwell’s artwork, and it waskind of uncanny, in that the pic-tures would match up,” Mr. Rivolisaid. “There were a lot of paral-lels between what I was shootingover the years and what he paint-ed.”
The Rivolis sent the images tothe Rockwell Museum and toJohn Rockwell, Norman’s grand-son, who granted the Rivolis therights to use the artist’s art andname.
“I thought it looked great, and Ithought it was nice that he wasinspired by Norman’s pictures,”
John Rockwell said. “I think themoments in Norman’s pictures, ifthey actually didn’t take place,they could have taken place. Ithink Kevin’s pictures do showthat there’s a side of Americathat still exists.”
Mr. Rivoli’s images may helpbuttress the argument that Rock-well’s illustrations helped to giverise to feature photojournalism inthe 1950s and ’60s.
“Rockwell really taught pho-tographers to see those commoneveryday moments, which he de-fined through his covers for TheSaturday Evening Post,” said An-drew L. Mendelson, chairman ofthe journalism department atTemple University.
“The era of illustrators is reallyover, and in my argument thatera has been replaced by photo-journalism,” said Mr. Mendelson,who has written about Rockwell’simpact for publications like Jour-nalism History.
Rockwell began selling his il-lustrations in the 1910s, before theadvent of hand-held cameras inthe ’20s made it easier for pho-tographers to capture their sub-jects in motion rather than havethem pose before a tripod.
He also chose average men,women and children as his sub-jects at a time when illustrationveered toward celebrity portraitsor fantasy scenes.
That trend also emerged in De-pression-era photography com-missioned by the United Statesgovernment in the 1930s, thoughnot with “the juxtaposition of hu-morous elements of everydaylife,” Mr. Mendelson said, a Rock-well twist that sometimes drewderision from art photographersand photojournalists, who foundhis images banal and contrived.
“Photographers like to say thatthey’re finding real moments,”Mr. Mendelson said. “They wantto think that they’re findingsomething new.”
“But when I look at award-winning photographs within jour-nalism, almost every photographthat wins is a Rockwell moment,”he said. “He has taught us how tosee what is really important tous.”
News isn’t always about thebad things, Mr. Mendelson noted.Sometimes it’s about events thatmake people happy.
Perhaps it’s just that most ofthe time people aren’t paying at-tention, Mr. Rivoli said.
“There are these subtle, quiettraditions that we don’t careabout or pay attention to becausemaybe we’re too busy to notice orare inundated with the politics ofdaily life,” he said. “But as a pho-tojournalist we chronicle ourlives, our communities, our fam-ilies.
“Rockwell did the same thing.”
Do not forget the Neediest!
Additional photographs andpaintings:
nytimes.com/design
ONLINE: NORMAN ROCKWELL
PHOTOGRAPHS BY KEVIN RIVOLI
Kevin Rivoli caught the interplay of “Election Day,” above, in 1995 in a firehouse in Sennett, N.Y.
© CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
Mr. Rivoli’s “Wedding Day,”left, taken in Otisco, N.Y., in1996, recalls Rockwell’s 1954“Choirboy” cover illustrationfor the Post, above.
Photographing the Life Rockwell Drew
© CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
Norman Rockwell’s “WhichOne?” was a SaturdayEvening Post cover in 1944.
From First Arts Page
C M Y K Nxxx,2007-12-26,E,010,Bs-BK,E1_K
NYTimes E1.pdfNYTimes E10.pdf
