Shepard Fairey Post-Script

This review of one of Shepard Fairey's exhibitions in 2009 says many of the things I do, and better, and with more knowledge at its disposal:

To this day, he insists that his oeuvre expresses no ideology, that its cardinal message is simply "question everything." Aside from being a lowest-common-denominator philosophy, this is doing a disservice to the urgency of his work’s better messages -- his environmentalism, his anti-war views, etc. Presumably, Fairey actually wants to move people with these works. At the same time, the dictum’s vague character reflects Fairey’s own political vagueness

His bottom line:

Still, at the end of the day, it is Fairey’s aura of idealism -- that his art actually gets out of the gallery and does stuff, that it speaks a popular language, that it feels righteous and relevant -- that has given this show such tremendous resonance. And if there is one thing that his success shows, it’s that images and ideas can take on a life all of their own, and transcend their source. In the political realm, the Obama campaign has inspired hopes, demands and even activism that go far beyond President Obama’s policy prescriptions, which are, after all, pretty limited. If Fairey’s success has something of this effect for the art world, that’s a good thing.

Picasso at the Met

I'm a relative neophyte to the art world. I grew up wanting to draw comic books and became pretty good at drawing, but the closest thing I've taken to a proper art class lately was the British art component of the prep course I had to take for the London trip I went on through my school. The London trip itself--with trips to the Tates Modern and Britain, the National Gallery, and others--expanded on the introduction I got from the class, and since then it's been a matter of absorbing what I can from the museums I visit and the books I pick up along the way.

So when The New Republic complains about the Picasso exhibit at the Met being unwieldy and unfocused, I don't really have any response. If I was better versed in the Spaniard's body of work, I suppose I would agree. As you can see here, there is a lot of material crammed together.




But given my limited background, I was more than happy to have so much of it there for me to take in. I had a vague idea of Picasso's range, mostly due to the masterworks at MoMa, but I never knew just how many styles the man went through in his life time, as all that schoolchildren are ever told about is Cubism. To the layman, it's not immediately obvious that creator of Pipe Rack and Still Life on a Table, above, had earlier painted The Blind Man's Meal:




or this self-portrait:



and would go on to make something like Las Meninas and Gentlemen in the Sierra



Discovering all this, in roughly chronological order, was a joy, and so I'm going to call this a win for egalitarianism.

Discipline and Punish

I went into Crystal Skillman's The Vigil, or The Guided Cradle, with high hopes. The subject matter, torture, is of keen interest to me, but also one that would lend itself to easy polemics. The parallel story premise--in modern-day Prague an American Girl and a Translator meet before a beautiful clock tower there was blinded by the king and his son tried to bomb it in revenge, "while" in the 15th(ish) century, the king's torturers and a new one who specializes in sleep deprivation are assigned to deal with the bomber--suggested a more tactful approach. As far as the subject matter goes, this is true. Instead of lecturing on the evils of torture, the theme is integrated naturally into the construction of the play. The play itself, however, is more problematic (as far as writing goes. The direction was fine throughout, the actors generally well-cast—and good at covering for a curtain that was accidentally ripped down—and the staging simple and effective).

The 15th century storyline is written in modern everyday--which is to say graceless--English, which makes for a lot of attention-drawing anachronistic idioms; the word "cock" stands out like an actual one, and F-bombs are dropped indiscriminately throughout these scenes, perhaps even more than the ones set in modern times. Too often the characters sound more like typical movie thugs than inhabitants of a world that valued the richness of the spoken word, even in normal encounters. The modern ugliness of the language then collides with unsuccessful attempts to be poetic later on, during a scene when the sleep depriver, Ippolito, has a change of heart due to the purple-prosed protestations of an accused witch's daughter. Also hurting the play is a bumbling sidekick character that constantly sabotages the ostensibly somber mood of the piece. The best moments (Ippolito's introduction, in which he carries out the simple act of eating with menace, and a transition during which the Girl is tied up on a torture rack) are, not surprisingly those involving silence.

The modern story thread has its own problems, in the form of bizarre, melodramatic plot twists; the Girl's father, we find out, is a CIA torturer who has the Translator's brother in custody, and so the Translator kidnaps her. She manages to kill him, and then later ends up visiting the brother in custody (he's hooded and bound) to deliver the play's denouement and strain the play's remaining plausibility to the breaking point.

While the action of the two storylines ended up blending/overlapping well--thanks to the smooth direction--there were no real reasons outside the thematic that they should be connected at all. The program listed some eight or ten development programs the play went through (I'm not even exaggerating), and my hunch is that too much tinkering diluted the original idea, which already had some problems (irreconcilable differences in the stories) to begin with.

Marathon Man

This afternoon I went to the Brooklyn Museum. Their big draw is their Egyptian collection, which is one of the largest in the nation if not the world. Impressive as it is, I'm just not into it.



I likes my Western art, what can I say.




I arrived later than I had planned, 4 PM, and did not get to spend as much time there as I would have liked--I may well return again and pretend (again) that I'm still a student, to be able to take in the art on a less harried schedule. They closed at 6, giving me two hours to get to the Brick Theater to see a show. It should have been more than enough, and was, I guess, but by a much slimmer margin than I'd hoped.



My New York City map only includes significant Brooklyn streets and so I spent 45 minutes trying to get to Fulton from the museum: up Hanson and back, down Flatbrush, backward, forward, through an absurdly large C Train station, and finally to the Fulton Street G Train. I should have been in the clear, but the train only went three stops, to Norstrand-Bedford-Lafayette, before we were all told that was as far as the train would go and many of us swore loudly.

Up top I asked one of my fellow travelers how to get to Metropolitan Avenue, and he said the best bet had been the subway. There were a couple buses pulled up, but I didn't know where they were going (I don't have a bus map, and the routes confuse me), and they were going the wrong way besides. I tried to call a friend who lives in Brooklyn for help, but to no avail.

And so I headed north. I walked. And then I ran. And got tired and walked. And ran some more. I tried to flag a cab, but they are shockingly scarce in Brooklyn, and those that did pass me were either occupied or aloof (one of them waved to me). So onward I jogged, down Nostrand, until I ran into Flushing, which I knew was significant. Across a bit and then up another street, probably Marcy or Wallabout. Then I happened onto Lorimer, which I knew was very significant (the Brick is between Lorimer and Union), and followed until Grand Street, whereupon I called a friend to ask if I was close. He gave me the Metropolitan address, but said I should ask for directions to the street. Escaping the wind in a restaurant as I was, I asked a girl at the register how to get to Metropolitan. She pointed yonder down Lorimer and said four, holding up as many fingers to see that I got the message. I thanked her, and found it a couple minutes later, some 27 minutes and 2 miles after I had started, and still with a half hour to spare. I had made damned sure I was going to see my show, because I had bought my ticket ahead of time, because it sounded like it would be good. Sounded.

Last Night and Today

The first thing that happened when I got into the city and off the A Train yesterday, I randomly ran into one of my friends from the Seven Devils Playwrights Conference. He had a little show going up that night at Playwrights Horizons, which I attended. Afterwards, we and some of his friends went to a Japanese restaurant that had the worst service I've ever had. The waitress insisted we had to buy more food or go ($8 per person minimum), she didn't get us the Sake we ordered until we asked her about it 20 minutes later, and she breezed by when my friend wanted a glass of water. When we paid for the check I asked him if he was going to tip her, whereupon I learned why the service was so awful: the tip is included in the check. I only wish I had the name of the restaurant so I could dissuade others from patronizing it. At least during Happy Hour.

Today I'll be making trips to the Museum of Jewish Heritage (a Holocaust museum) and the Shepard Fairey (he's the creator of the Obama CHANGE image) exhibit at Deitch Projects. I'm going to swing by the Drama Book Shop, as I didn't get a chance to do so last time I was out here. Later tonight I'll be having Chinese food with some alums. Good times.

I also see that today is the first day in a two week showing of the newly restored cut of Fritz Lang's Metropolis at Film Forum. I'll definitely be seeing it while I'm here.

Here are some of those cloud images I promised.

Return to New York

I'm going to New York for an interview with one of the schools I applied to for a Playwriting MFA program, Pace University. The interview is on Monday, but I'm flying in today and will be spending the weekend there to make the most of my $400 plane ticket. I'll be taking lots of photos, seeing some museums and shows, and giving accounts of my escapades here. Stay tuned. Or don't.



("Follow me, don't follow me," get it?)

New York Photos

Alright, I've finally got every single one of them up. To all who aren't following this on Facebook and still care:

Day 1
Day 2, Part 1
Day 2, Part 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6, Part 1
Day 6, Part 2
Day 7, Part 1
Day 7, Part 2 and Day 8

Photo albums

For those of you still checking in:

Day 1
Day 2

Going, going, almost gone

I'll be hailing a cab to take me to the airport in a few minutes. Once again, I'll start posting photos en masse in the near future, and I'll also be doing some write-ups on the trip that will be more detailed than the real-time dispatches.

Until then, however, take care.

Interesting Times

I went to Barnes and Noble on E. 86th St. this evening accompanied by some friends I had dinner with, to see New Yorker writer George Packer speak about and read from his latest book, Interesting Times, a collection of essays he's written about American foreign policy and new media. We arrived about 15 minutes early and were surprised to find John Oliver from the Daily Show standing at the bottom floor with a camera nearby. I got a little giddy, and we decided to hover in the distance for a bit. I took out my camera and had one of my friends point it at my other friend and I, in order to get a picture of John Oliver, who was behind us. A little weird, yes, but this was my first celebrity sighting.



I was still antsy, however, and so I soon approached Oliver, now upstairs, and shook his hand, told him I'm a fan of the show. I asked if he was shooting a segment, and he said they were, about the release of Sarah Palin's book, and they just had one more shot to get. I went back over to Jonathan and Rachel across the way, and while talking to them noticed they had started filming. There was red light on a couple cameras trained vaguely in our direction, and so I alternated between watching and acting natural as John Oliver shouted at some woman. The clip is going to air tomorrow, and I'm hoping that we'll be visible in the background.

On top of that, George Packer answered a question I had during the Q&A session after his talk, and he signed an issue of the New Yorker for me. I heart NY.

More Pics

Hard to believe this...


...was once this:


Amazing when famous paintings that have been sold as posters end up being quite small in real life.


It's a long way to the top of the Empire State Building.


I'm done visiting major sites. I'm meeting some friends for dinner, and then I think I may go see George Packer read an excerpt from his new collection of essays. As I said, I'll hopefully have the time and means in the airport tomorrow to start mass uploading my hundreds of photos onto Facebook, which will be available for viewing by everyone. Until then, I'm out.

Quick recap

I stayed out much too late at a bar last night with my host, so I'm already behind on my itinerary for the last day, so this will be brief. A good deal of time was spent at Ellis Island yesterday, followed by the Museum of Modern Art (I was in awe of the many masterpieces they had on display), and then a reading with the Seven Devils folk. Today it's the Empire State Building and Chinatown, and then a movie and mingling with friends. Last time I jetted all over the city at the end of a trip I got hit by a bicyclist, so I'm going to take things easy today. Tomorrow I fly back, and hopefully the Denver airport will have free wireless to busy myself with, so I can put some more photos up.

Our Town

I ended up changing my evening plans to see Thornton Wilder's Our Town based on the urging of my friend who's putting me up in my new digs for the remainder of my trip. I'd never seen or read the play before and was in fact a little wary; the strangeness of Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth was a bit too much for me to wrap my head around when I was in it a few years back, and so I had let it pass by. Apparently this is something of an accomplishment, because the play is a perennial favorite of high school theatre.

This made everything about the play that people know so well--the interactions of its characters, its deceptively straightforward narration--an interesting surprise for me, enhanced by the 3/4 thrust staging that puts much of the action in the midst of the audience. I was intrigued and carried by the story as it unfolded, and touched and taken by the grim musings of the third act. Then came a much ballyhooed twist--which even I, a lowly blogger, dare not write--that made the play's ending the biggest gut-punch I've ever felt in a theatrical production.

It also, additionally, made for a nice corrective to last night's drearily disappointing Kitsch, or Two for the Price of One.

Bringing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Life

I caught T. Schreiber Studio's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead tonight, and honestly I can't find anything to complain about. The cast is uniformly engaging--the lead Player, portrayed by Erik Jonsun, has an absolutely stunning speech about acting and being watched--the set design and costumes marvelous, the lights nicely underscoring punch lines. The play is set in the round, with the actors moving, standing, sitting in front, behind, next to, and in the audience (I exaggerate not; the seat next to me was the only one open, and Guildenstern sat himself down in it as he said, "I feel like a spectator."). Certain lines are delivered directly to audience members ("Would you rather be alive in a box, or dead?"), and so the play's winking theatricality is given a much greater workout than it would be on a large proscenium. At $25 this is an absolute steal.

Caption This

Notes on an Apple

Gotta get to bed, rising early for a trip to Rutgers campus tomorrow. A few notes:

- In exiting the Natural History Museum on West Central Park Ave. and going through the park, I somehow came out on West Central Park Ave., some 5 blocks or so above where I started. Damn place has too many exits.
- I had to ask directions on how to get out of the Metropolitan Art Museum, it was so huge. I also bought a book on Andy Warhol.
- The Lily's Revenge is totally sold out, and the only way one can get tickets now is to show up at 3 or 4 in the afternoon and wait until 5:30 to get one of maybe 15 rush tickets. I might do it on Sunday, if I can manage.
- Circle Mirror Transformation was pretty good, although its concept strained credibility.
- Times Square is a neon nightmare, while Rockefeller Center, loud rap music aside, is marvelous. I never knew Prometheus was that big.
- At night the subways turn against you and will prolong your trip as long as humanly possible. Took me damn near an hour to get home.

Some pictures forthcoming.

In the City

After a couple days in Wisconsin I landed at LaGuardia without incident yesterday afternoon. I then caught a bus into the city with Rick, the guy who's letting me crash at his apartment. Entering New York's urban jungle was a little surreal, in that it brought to mind memories of the video game Grand Theft Auto III, whose Liberty City was modeled after the Big Apple. This was most acute when crossing the RFK Bridge into the city--the video game begins with a bomb being tossed at your character's prison convoy while crossing a similar-looking bridge. Life imitating art imitating life.

Today's itinerary begins with the American Museum of Natural history, followed by a walk through Central Park to the Metropolitan Art Museum. Things get a little looser after that; I'll probably head downtown and explore, and then tonight is the mad epic The Lily's Revenge.