Keira Naughton, Jake Robards in ‘The dining Room’ All photos courtesy: Carol Rosegg

Sometimes it just all comes together, and when it does there’s magic on the stage. Such is the case with The Dining Room, A. R. Gurney’s nostalgic look back at a way of life—a way of thinking, a way of dining—currently on the boards at the Westport Country Playhouse. The production, under the sure directorial hand of Mark Lamos, the Playhouse’s artistic director, satisfies on many levels, and although it may initially generate a bit of confusion amongst the audience members as to who is who, the smart theatergoer should simply sit back, not worry about such trivialities, and just soak it all in. artes fine arts magazine

The amazing thing is that The Dining Room, first produced in 1982, succeeds without having a plot, or at least one that follows the traditional rising action/climax/falling action of traditional dramas. Instead, what Gurney gives us is a series of vignettes as various families interact in a single room, a formal dining room that is done up in a ghost-like, pale blue motif created by scenic designer Michael Yeargan. The set is apropos, for Gurney’s thrust is that what we are seeing has passed from view and become wisps of memory. It is only in the final moments of the play that the setting itself comes to vivid life, and we are given a tableau vivant that is touching and heartfelt.

Some may quibble that what we are watching is the slow demise of dinosaurs (aka WASPs), and good riddance; and yes, Gurney captures much of the pretentiousness and “soft” bigotry inherent in the tribe. But, the playwright is not interested in pillorying; this is not a strident attack, but rather a gentle nudging. For, whatever their faults, the WASPs Gurney chronicles lived by a code and, in their own way, we’re as concerned about their own as were any of the untermenschen they frowned upon (and hired as servants).

The ensenble, l to r: Chris Henley Coffey, Jake Robards, Jennifer Van Dyck, Charles Socarides,Keira Naughton, Heidi Armbruster

In a commentary by Gurney, written for the Playhouse’s program, he acknowledges that the lack of clear, linear presentation may present problems for the audience, for it is often difficult to determine exactly which family we are viewing and at which stage in the family’s life the scene is taking place. But, although this is initially troubling, the bother passes, and much of the credit for this must go to the stellar ensemble of actors Lamos has gathered, in number six – Heidi Armbruster, Chris Henley Coffey, Keira Naughton, Jake Robards, Charles Socarides and Jennifer Van Dyck – who together, over the course of the evening, take on over 50 roles!

To accept and embrace what is going on you have to understand that, added to the 50-plus characters, there is one other: the room itself. And, if the audience members take the position that they are, in fact, the room, then the comings and goings, the different familial and related designations—Mother? Daughter? Husband? Grandfather? Maid? Cook?—simply don’t matter. The people change. The room is eternal, accepting all that happens and does not judge. The room simply provides the venue for life to unfold, to act out its little moments, be they birthday parties, assignations, fraught father-daughter conversations or torturous meals, where the proprieties must be observed and finger bowls must be used.

‘The Dining Room’ cast member, Jennifer Van Dyck

A lot is asked of these six actors, and all deliver, though (given the nature of the script) it is the three women who seem to shine the most. It’s a delight to watch Van Dyck change from gawky adolescent to sophisticated, sexy matron to terse, arthritic servant; Armbruster to morph from frigid, rule-bound matron to saucy teen to Irish factotum; and, most delightfully, to watch Naughton shift from obstreperous teen to troubled wife, to a grandmother suffering from Alzheimer’s, to a perplexed cook…and many of these transmogrifications are done in mere moments.

In the end, I come back to the play’s final moments, which Lamos has crafted with a deft hand, for what we are given is a scene of civility and congeniality, lit by candlelight. People gather together to share what, in fact, tribes have always shared, which is feasting by firelight, be it in caves, castles or dining rooms, creating an environment that—at least for the moment—tells us we are among friends. Whatever demons may lurk in the shadows are being kept at bay by the warmth and light that shines around us, a warmth and light we ourselves create…because we are family, we are the tribe known as… (fill in the blank).

By Geary Danihy, Contributing Writer

The Dining Room runs through May 19. For tickets or more information 203-227-4177 or go to www.westportplayhouse.org

 Read more theater reviews at: www.ctcritics.org

“We find ourselves faced with the only reality—despite ourselves we encourage our painters to reproduce us on their canvases just as we are, with our costumes and customs.” ~Émile Zola (1868)

Does life imitate art, or art imitate life? Addressing that very quandary, a stunningly-curated show at the Met demonstrates how to pull out all the stops, with the depth of a collection being parlayed in the interest of a good story. The exhibit, Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity takes a revealing look at the role of fashion in the works of several impressionist painters. More than 80 major figure paintings by the most notable of the period are assembled from the Met collection, along with some key loans. Paintings are presented in concert with examples of period dress, accessories, fashion plates, photographs and prints, highlighting the vital relationship between artist and subject, the vastly divergent worlds of painter and patron, and the mise-en-scene of bourgeois Paris—between 1860-1880—just then emerging as the style and cultural capital of the world.

Above, left: Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) Camille (1866), Oil on canvas, 90 15/16 x 59 1/2 in. Kunsthalle Bremen, Der Kunstverein in Bremen. artes fine arts magazine

Les Grands Magasins du Louvre (1887). From Bernard Marrey, Les Grands Magasins (librairie Picard, 1979).

With the rise of the newly-invented ‘department store,’ the advent of prêt-à-porter (ready-made wear), and the proliferation of inexpensively-produced, illustration-rich fashion magazines, those on the forefront of the avant-garde—from artists like Manet, Monet and Renoir, to writers like Baudelaire, Mallarme and Zola—turned a fresh-eye to contemporary dress, embracing la mode as a harbinger of la modernité.

The mad scramble for social notoriety in Europe’s most urbane city played well into the hands of artists struggling to make names for themselves in the face of dramatic shifts in painting styles. By 1860, Impressionism was already making a mark on public consciousness, however controversial, as it emerged from the inertial influences of Romanticism and its proponents—the various art academies and juried events—who acted as gatekeepers for traditionalist methods of painting. Keep in mind that this was the very generation of urbanites who had personally witnessed the Prussian siege of Paris, during the humiliating Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). Deprivation, disease and death had become a daily reality for rich and poor alike, in the City of Light, as enemy troops surrounded the city to starve them into submission. After France’s eventual surrender and the people’s Paris Commune uprising that followed, newly-evolving political and social forces had much to prove about French resilience and the power of commerce and culture to reinvent themselves. Bourgeois society was soon seen on the fashionable boulevards and in the parks that defined the newly-conceived urban landscape, under the autocratic direction of architect, Georges-Eugène Haussmann. Impressionist painters, too, scrambled to ingratiate themselves with the growing merchant and industrial classes, applying those same en plein air methods of color application and rapid brush strokes, to capture the distinctive, momentary light-filled effects in studio portraiture, as well.

Left: Édouard Manet (French, 1832–1883) The Parisienne (ca. 1875) , Oil on canvas, 75 5/8 x 49 ¼ in. Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, Bequest 1917, of Bank Director S. Hult, Managing Director Kristoffer Hult, Director Ernest Thiel, Director Arthur Thiel, Director Casper Tamm.

As Impressionism gained credibility and authenticity in the minds of the social elite, the well-to-do sat before some of Paris’s best known artists, resolutely and patiently posing in settings that conspicuously reinforced their status. One important marker for visually representing one’s social standing was the choice of dress. According to one curator, Susan Alyson Stein, “Artists from Monet to Tissot gravitated to contemporary dress as the key to invigorating threadbare traditions with modern sentiment.”

In their various bids for capturing a distinctive treatment of their wealthy patrons, they chose full-length formats which privileged the latest styles over individual facial features, and, inspired by Charles Baudelaire’s definition of modernity—‘the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent—they sought to capture the ‘look of the moment.” Their guide was to consult popular carte-de-visite photographs and fashion illustrations,” Stein explains. “Such practices held sway as artists refashioned figure painting and set forth their own renditions—some designed to please, others to provoke—of the ‘women of our time, the French women, the Parisienne.’”

Right: The Latest Fashions, Expresssly Designed and Prepared for Le Moniteur de la Mode. March 1, 1887. Lithograph with hand coloring. Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

The exhibit is arranged in a series of suites, designed to read like a narrative of rapidly-changing tastes, design sensibilities and quirky fashion details (the abdomen-defying beehive corsets, alone, stand as testament to feminine objectification; the range of top hat styles seems equally unlikely, today, as a useful accessory). The combination of perfectly-preserved, floor-length, bustled dresses from the museum’s Costume Institute, along with key loans from other institutions shown in combination with the paintings, have the effect of animating both! Wandering among the displays of day dresses and evening wear—positioned in such close proximity to the figurative portraits—offers a sense of timelessness and immediacy to the personalities and players of this multi-color masquerade of affluence, so far removed from our own ‘modern’ world .

The grand scale of history seems reduced (though not diminished), but the realization that these life-sized portraits and their delicately-styled, size-four garments are just that: history on a human scale. This re-alignment of our assumptions about the masters of Impressionism and their subjects places them at eye level with us, leaving little room for aggrandizement or mythologizing. Becoming immersed in the exhibit—say,if a display case were to be opened—one might easily imagine stepping into the wardrobe on display, reinforcing a timeless, humanizing link between past and present.

Left: Claude Monet (French, 1840–1926) Luncheon on the Grass (central panel)  (1865–66), Oil on canvas, 97 7/8 x 85 7/8 in, Musée d’Orsay, Paris, Acquired as a payment in kind, 1987.

One critic asked Claude Monet: “And what, sir, is the subject matter of that painting?” – “The subject matter, my dear good fellow, is the light.” And this show is filled with light. Light flows through the windows of the salons, irradiating the jewel tones of the striped dress of Monet’s Camilla (1866); dappled light rains down like confetti on the figure in Monet Luncheon on the Grass (1865-66); it filters through rainy skies onto the broad, anonymous and sterile thoroughfares of Paris, in Caillebotte’s Paris Street, Rainy Day (1877); it blasts through the window—becoming the de facto subject of the painting—cascading over the frills of the figure‘s dress in Renoir’s casually-posed, Lise, Woman with Umbrella (1876) ; it moves like an unseen phantom to fix the images on numerous film plates on display, of men and women whose true personae are frozen for all time by this unforgiving, industrial-age invention.

Gustave Caillebotte (French, 1848–1894), Paris Street; Rainy Day (1877), Oil on canvas, 83 1/2 x 108 3/4 in. The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. S. Worcester Collection.

Light and color truly are the subjects of this exhibition, as the various galleries are organized by fashion statement, highlighting the colors and detailing that helped distinguish them: the white dress for day; the black dress for evening; the bold stripes and colorfully-contrasting adornments—pink slippers, feathered hats, ribbon-trimmed corsets and a range of newly-invented synthetic dyes (aniline) making bold color statements fashionable in a range of the most exclusive settings. But color and frills remained the privileged domain of the gentler sex. Men’s fashions of the period maintained the austerity and severe lines of the black frock coat and gray trousers. Calfskin gloves, a top hat and cane were de rigueur for the gentleman on the street, at his place of business or in the gilded theater boxes and clubs at night. The masculine image bespoke urbanity, power and emotional detachment—the “noble grief, the ephemerality of modern public interactions,” according to Baudelaire—”of exquisite, but unexplored, encounters required of any successful city dweller.”

Edgar Degas (French, 1834–1917), The Millinery Shop (ca. 1882–86), Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 x 43 5/8 in. The Art Institute of Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Larned Coburn Memorial Collection.

Women, on the other hand, remained subject to the constantly changing whims of fads and fashion, underscoring their role in French society as a misogynistic showcase for sexuality-just-beyond-reach, a work of artistic perfection and, more pragmatically, as a highly-visible symbol for the prosperity of family and spouse. Once again, Baudelaire—indulging in a bit of fantasy of his own—writes insightfully about the place of women in the social strata of the male-dominated world of ‘modern’ Paris: “Fashion should therefore be considered as the symptom of a taste for the ideal…like the sublime deformation of nature, or more like a permanent and repeated attempt at the reformation of nature.” Regarding the ritual of powdering the skin, he suggested that makeup on the face functioned like the maillot worn by dancers and actresses: both brought the female wearer nearer to the statue, that is, to “a divine and superior being.” Black kohl, which transformed the eye into a “window open to infinity,” and rouge, which added to a woman’s face, “the mysterious passion of a priestess,” were not, according to Baudelaire, attempts to imitate nature, but rather “to lift the wearer above it.”

Henri Fantin-Latour (French, 1836–1904), Édouard Manet, (1867). Oil on canvas, 46 5/16 x 35 7/16 in. The Art Institute of Chicago, Stickney Fund.

The novelty, vibrance and fleeting allure of the latest trends in fashion proved seductive for a generation of artists and writers seeking to express the pulse of modern life in Paris, with all of its nuanced and conspicuous richness. Without rivaling the meticulous detail of society portraitists like James Tissot or Alfred Stevens, or the graphic flair of fashion plates which had become a ubiquitous fixture of society, the Impressionists nonetheless engaged in successful strategies in the making (and marketing) of their paintings of stylish men and women, seeking to reflect the spirit of the age.

The last Impressionist exhibition took place in 1886. Seurat debuted the, A Sunday on La Grand Jatte, and his pointillist technique. The Met’s version, a final study (1884), gives dramatic form to the striking, bustled silhouette of the day, also represented by two silk day dresses from the museum collection. This painting, with its static figures and frozen action, gives voice to the tenor of the time—an embodiment of dislocation, ambiguity and social isolation—an ‘as if’ world defined by fleeting images of poise and universal definitions of beauty, only attainable in a pointillist world. It is a fictional place where time seems to stand still and the human condition remains unfractured—but only when viewed from a distance. This painting announces the topical end of an era in art. The next generation of artists—the Post-Impressionists—would champion evocation over description, imagination over observation and timeless, emotional themes over the fleeting whims of fashion and social propriety.

Left: Georges Seurat (French, 1859-1891), Study for ‘A Sunday on La Grande Jatte’ (1884),.Oil on canvas, 27 1/4 x 41 in. The metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

But, in its time and place in history, Paris and its fashion statements became bell-weathers for understanding the full impact of modernism on human nature, the rapidly-shifting grounds under societal norms and the profound reach of commercialism into a newly-receptive population of conspicuous consumers. It also stood as testimony to the resilience and tenacity of artists of the day to document the facts and foibles defining a generation living in a world, where high art and high fashion would, ever-so-briefly, move hand-in-hand.

By Richard Friswell, Managing Editor

Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Now, through May 27, 2013

1000 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10028

Visit the Met at: http://www.metmuseum.org/

Purchase the catalogue (left) for the Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity exhibit at:

http://store.metmuseum.org/history+culture/impressionism-fashion-and-modernity/invt/ifmuchicago/

Gamble House, front elevation, after the completion of the 2004 conservation project. Photo © Alex Vertikoff.

Experiencing the creative work of architectural brothers, Greene & Greene, is like sipping a rare, richly-made wine—offering sensory delights from the firm of two authentic American Arts and Crafts masters. As the brothers Greene—Charles and Henry—worked primarily in California, they created the ‘gold standard’ for the Arts and Crafts design style. Their work, both as entire projects and in the detail found there, serves as an exquisite example of design, presented in clear, concise and elegant terms. artes fine arts magazine

Arts & Craft-style stained glass panel detail,  Created by Greenes for Jennie A. Reeve House, 1904.

The American Arts and Crafts Movement grew out of the writings and philosophy of British social essayists and artists, John Ruskin and William Morris. They wrote in reaction to a rapidly-expanding industrialized society, which was increasingly based on machine-made and mass-produced goods. They claimed this trend was dehumanizing, leading to the creation of inauthentic products. Instead, they advocated for a production model that relied on handcraftsmanship, as exemplified by members of time-honored medieval guilds.

Their goal was to encourage the creation of elegant—but simply-enhanced—everyday objects of practical design. According to MFA Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts, Sculpture and Art in America, Nonie Gadsden, “The Arts and Crafts Movement was not a specific style, but a philosophy about a way of life, in which art played an integral role.”

Exhibition announcement, Arts and Craft Society (1897)

This philosophy—espousing the connections between nature, art and society—was attractive to many prominent and influential Boston architects, designers, educators, arts patrons and craftspeople. The group included General Charles Loring, the first director of the Museum of Fine Arts; Charles Eliot Norton, the first art history professor at Harvard University, who was a friend of Ruskin; collectors; and MFA trustees William Sturgis Bigelow and Denman Ross, among others. Architect H. Langford Warren, founder of the architecture program at Harvard University, and its first dean of architecture, was a major proponent of the Arts and Crafts movement in America. Warren worked under architect, H.H. Richardson, before setting up his own practice. This Boston group went on to form The Society of Arts and Crafts, in 1897. They pledged “to develop and encourage higher artistic standards in the handicrafts,” through mentoring, education and exhibitions.

Saturday Evening Girls Club, Vase, completed by Ida Goldstein (1911-12)

Some of the advocates of the Arts and Crafts style focused on fostering its back-to-basics philosophy for social reform, including the establishment of utopian artist communities and craft training for immigrant girls. This initiative led, for example, to the formation of the Saturday Evening Girls Club (1899), providing income for Boston’s Italian and Jewish community. These young women produced inviting painted pottery and tea sets, based on Paul Revere-inspired designs—works that are shown in museums today and are highly prized among collectors.

Regional variations on the Arts and Crafts movement can be seen in Gustav Stickley’s furniture, produced by his utopian, United Crafts Workshops, in Eastwood, NY. Influences can also be seen in the designs of architect, Ralph Adams Cram, who drew upon medieval European styles. Cram designed many buildings for Princeton University and Boston’s Roxbury-Latin School.

At the same time, many other initiatives, trending toward a rejection of Victorian design embellishments and a return to simpler times, were underway around the country. Some architects and designers in the Northeast were inspired by the lean Colonial Revival style. Their counterparts in the Midwest developed a rectilinear asymmetric, an aesthetic that promoted simplicity and harmony with the landscape. Frank Lloyd Wright and the Prairie School, most notably, espoused this approach–one that included a total unification of architecture and design, and that included a distinctive horizontal design and the use of color, texture and repetitive patterns to enhance the natural setting surrounding the structure. The architecture firm of Greene & Greene helped shape the California Arts and Crafts aesthetic, integrating the West Coast region’s Spanish and Mexican legacy into their designs. Greene & Greene were particularly known for their regionally-inspired “bungalows.”

Adhering to a design philosophy of the creation of useful beauty—or beauty with a purpose—the architecture and decorative arts designs of Charles Sumner Greene (1868-1957), left, and his brother, Henry Mather Greene (1870-1954), below right, are now recognized among the best in the American Arts and Craft movement. The Greene’s work demonstrates careful attention to detail in every building, piece of furniture or functional object they created. This included thoughtful consideration of geographical setting, climate, landscape and client lifestyle, along with a particular sensitivity to natural setting.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Greene brothers spent their early, formative at the progressive Manual Training School at Washington University, in St. Louis. Yet, with Boston Brahmin and generations of New England ancestors as a family legacy (as their individual middle names, Sumner and Mather, suggest), the Greene family had a sophisticated upper-class attitude toward education and training of their children. Though living in the Midwest, their parents had schooled both of their sons at experimental and practically-oriented secondary schools. Though the family was not wealthy, Charles and Henry were certainly fostered by their parents to achieve creatively.

They attended MIT’s School of Architecture together, then the oldest and most prestigious formal school of architecture in the United States. The Greene’s grandfather had been an architect as well. While in Boston, they took in prominent exhibitions of Japanese prints and decorative objects at the Museum of Fine Arts—where they also took drawing and watercolor classes. This had a strategic influence on their work. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, ‘gentlemen’ often did not complete degrees, but took enough courses and study to develop skills. This seems to be particularly true of engineers and architects. After three years of training at MIT, receiving only a certificate of architecture study, not degrees, the brothers decided to start their practical training for their professional practice by apprenticing to established small firms. (Frank Lloyd Wright, for example, was notorious for bragging that he did not receive a degree in architecture, disdaining university training over much of his career. Actually, he attended the University of Wisconsin for almost three years taking engineering courses, primarily).

Greene-designed exterior wall lantern, Arthur A. Libby House, 1905.

The Greene brothers’ early professional apprenticeships were with various Boston architectural firms, many of whose staff had been formerly employed by, or apprenticed to, the prominent master architect, Henry Hudson Richardson, thus laying the groundwork for their innovative and elegant style, which was to follow later in their careers. They resided in Boston from 1888 to 1893. After that they moved to California to start their own practice.

The legacy of the Greene brothers’ most productive period included distinguished architecture and decorative arts objects and furniture. These included exquisitely inlaid furniture, furniture crafted in exotic hardwoods, colorful, but restrained stain glass, and extraordinarily elegant metalwork and fittings.

Several years ago, a traveling exhibit was developed to celebrate the centennial of the Gamble House—a Greene & Greene design (1907-09), in Pasadena, California (ironically, one of the ten stops for the exhibit was Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts). The Gamble house is the pinnacle of Greene & Greene design.

Tree of Life design on the front door, shown partly open. Photo © Alex Vertikoff.

The Gamble House was designed for the visionary and sophisticated family that founded the Proctor and Gamble Corporation. In 1966, heirs of Cecil and Louise Gamble donated the house and its furnishings (all by Greene & Greene) to the City of Pasadena, and to the School of Architecture at the University of Southern California (USC). The structure and its contents are the best-preserved and most comprehensive example of any of the Greene’s major projects. The house is now operated as a historic site and research facility. It is open to the public for tours. In 1980, a permanent exhibition of Greene and Greene decorative arts was opened at the Virginia Steele Scott Gallery of American Art, in San Marino, California.

If there is a conceptual laying-on-of-hands in the Arts and Crafts Movement, the Greene brothers probably were influenced significantly by Scotsman, Charles Rennie MacKintosh. His work impacted many European designers, as well. In fact Charles and his wife traveled to Great Britain and throughout Europe, visiting many architects and designers and viewing their built projects. Even Frank Lloyd Wright acknowledged their work, although he tried to credit himself for influencing them, rather than perhaps the other way around! Design and architecture was widely published, read, and studied in that period. So, architects and designers had to be knowledgeable about contemporaneous work, if they wanted to remain current.

Hand railing of main staircase, with front entryway in background. Photograph © Mark Fiennes.

The traveling exhibition includes 120 objects, showcasing the range and quality of materials that Greene & Greene selected, working collaboratively with some of the finest artisans and craftsmen in California. The exhibition is presented chronologically, featuring 25 of the brothers’ best-known commissions. The first gallery examines the influences of the Greene brothers when they were in Boston, including Japanese decorative objects with ceramics, metal work and prints.  This contact with in the museum’s extensive collection—would later reveal a strong, almost pervasive Japanese influence, on their refined style.

Another Greene design, with stong Asian influence.

The second section of the show explores the peak years of the brothers’ collaboration. Functional objects demonstrate their unique design vocabulary, their use of traditional, spare, but sometimes decorative wood joinery, as well as their interest in metal as structure and form-giver. These elements combine with the creation of the very California aesthetic which seems to reflect the climate, landscape and available materials, while, at the same time, underscoring the lifestyle of the client or property owner. Every detail, structural element, fenestration, light fixture, textile, piece of furniture and tile was part of an aesthetic whole—created a unified work of art.

Living room, with each piece of furniture designed to occupy a specific location within the space. Photograph © Mark Fiennes.

Unlike their contemporary, Frank Lloyd Wright, Greene & Greene gave great credit to their collaborating craftsmen. California-based firms like that of furniture makers, Peter and John Hall, were not only credited, but were truly part of the Greene & Greene design team. The Halls were often inspired by the Greenes’s vision to fabricate some of the finest pieces produced during this period. These pieces of furniture are treasures in themselves.

Yet, the Greenes’ architectural and design collaboration lasted only a few years. The brothers only worked together from 1894 until 1916. After that, they went their separate ways.

Charles was a dreamer, the artist, who joined an aesthetic and spiritual community. Henry was the more practical one, but needed Charles’ aesthetic vision. The two were much greater together than either alone. The firm, Greene & Greene, was dissolved in 1922.

Gamble House, Pasadena, California, Covered Front Porch

Their designs had fallen out of fashion, but were luckily rediscovered, and eventually honored, after WWII. In 1952, they were cited by the American Institute of Architects as pioneers in modernism. Sadly, only one of the brothers was healthy enough to attend the awards ceremony. Since that time, the work of Greene & Greene has been venerated and held up as the epitome of unified beauty.

The work of Greene & Greene is the gold standard of American Arts and Crafts, unified design and brilliant collaboration. Here is simple elegance, justified by beauty and purpose—function and form at its most appealing.

By Mark Favermann, Contributing Writer

There is a wonderful catalogue of the Greenes’s work, A New and Native Beauty: The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene, edited by Edward R. Bosley and Anne E. Mallek, written for the 2009 traveling exhibition.

Bill Camp stars headlines in, In A Year with 13 Moons. All Photos © Richard Termine

There are those who say that the Yale Repertory Theatre often dabbles in post-modernistic-theater-of-the-absurd-nihilistic-surrealism, that those in charge of the venerable establishment conceive of their audience as a blend of the Marquis de Sade and Krafft-Ebing, that what is sometimes offered fulfills only the needs of those who dwell in dark attics reading Henry Miller as they sit naked, sucking on lemons, and fantasizing about Lolita, but to these people I say nay! And I offer up as rebuttal to such calumny the Rep’s current production of “In a Year With 13 Moons,” an adaptation by Bill Camp (who also headlines) and Robert Woodruff of the 1978 film written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. I mean, ‘13 Moons’ is the essence of Hollywood cliché: boy wants to become girl; boy becomes girl; boy rues becoming girl and suffers the consequences. Can there be anything more mainline, Main Street, Mom and apple pie than that?

artes fine arts magazine

Look, you’ve got this simple guy who works in a slaughterhouse who just wants to be loved and, as we all know, love makes the world go ‘round, so he runs into another guy named Anton Saitz (Christopher Innvar), whom he falls in love with, and Anton (his last name is spelled with an A and an I— don’t forget that—it’s important! Why? Well oranges are important, aren’t they? What? What do oranges have to do with…? (To that I say, sauerkraut!), and Anton says, well, it would be better if you were a girl, so the cow-killer rushes off to Casablanca and has a sex-change operation and emerges as Elvira, all because he loves Anton, who will eventually emerge as a man with a Jerry Lewis fetish (don’t ask).

Bill Camp and Babs Olusanmokum

The play has many hi-tech, multi-screen diversions and a two-piece pit orchestra that, I do believe, includes a cat being electrocuted, all of which are appreciably provided by director Robert Woodruff, just in case you don’t want to watch what is actually going on up there, (two ladies to my right didn’t, they fell asleep – Philistines!).

As the play opens, Elvira has a slight problem—after being beaten up by some low-lifes, she has tried to find comfort with, her lover of long standing, Christoph, (Babs Olyusanmokun) thinks she is fat and brainless, and so also beats her up a bit…think of it as a lover’s quarrel. He packs. She begs him to stay. He opts out. What’s a girl to do? Well, there’s always your prostitute friend, Red Zora (Monica Santana) to turn to, a young lady who knows how to display the merchandise and just happens to have a video camera that allows her to capture Elvira in her various moments of angst, self-reflection and self-hatred, all projected. You can see why Hollywood would love this.

Bill Camp, Monica Santana, and Joan MacIntosh

But why is Elvira this way? Well, there’s the Catholic Church and the nuns…much convenient whipping girls, so there is an extended scene in which Red Zora brings Elvira back to the orphanage where he…before he became a she…was raised, for a meeting with Sister Gudrun (Joan MacIntosh) who attempts to explain Elvira’s childhood, but the good sister has a problem…she wanders, not verbally but physically. She disappears from the stage, walks dark, unseen corridors as her voice fades, then reappears through a door, only to disappear again, still babbling plot points. It’s gripping. This is what theater is all about.

Monitors flash—an interview with Fassbinder is projected—the play becomes a film then reverts back to a play—there’s trouble in Chile (Allende is elected, but President Nixon doesn’t like that)—Jean D’Arc is about to become a martyr—and Elvira wanders into an arcade where males, whom she desires (Oh, love sweet love!) are playing violent video games, their “guns” in their hands, shooting and killing.

It’s all an odyssey of sorts, a travel-through-demonic-times that leads the confused Elvira to the office building where Herr Saitz, with offices on the 16th floor, now reigns supreme. But, before she can confront him (in an “I-did-this-all-for-you” scene), she finds herself on the 15th floor, where a man with a well-equipped briefcase is set on committing suicide. They have a trenchant conversation about being and nothingness and then he blows his brains out, but we’re used to the blood, because we’ve already been to an abattoir where blood has dripped from the ceiling and bloody pig-people have been carried hither and yon. Oh society, oh Bartleby!

Bill Camp and Monica Santana, In A Year with 13 Moons.

We also get Elvira’s daughter (yes, he fathered a child before ‘he’ became a ‘she’) reading an extended passage from Kafka’s ‘The Castle.” Why? Well…it’s relevant, you see, because, well, all of life is relevantly irrelevant, so you might just as well pull a tie tightly around your throat as you masturbate because that’s the only pleasure life offers…the possibility of ecstatic death, the petite morte.

So if, of late, as you have been driving (well, crawling) home from work on I-95 or been standing in line at the local supermarket thinking you want to decapitate the check-out person; or have been struck by a sudden sense of ennui; if the BIG questions about life, love and the meaning of it all have been recently bedeviling you, I urge you to hasten down to the Yale Repertory Theatre where it will all be explained to you. All will become clear as the human condition is laid bare for you. Unfortunately, the theater doesn’t provide strychnine, so you’ll have to bring your own supply.

By Geary Danihy, Contributing Writer

In a Year With 13 Moons runs through May 18. For tickets or more information, call 203.432.1234

or visit: www.yalerep.org

Read more critical reviews by Mr. Danihy and others at: http://ctcritics.org/ 

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Left: Mary Hrbacek, Woman Withheld (2011), 22 x 30″. Courtesy CREON Gallery.

The following conversation was conducted with Mary Hrbacek on the telephone, as well as via email, by Edward Rubin on April 23, 2013. artes fine arts magazine

Edward Rubin: Why Trees? What is it that made you decide to start painting trees? Give us a little history of how you came to switch from painting rocks to painting portraits of trees.

Witchy Woman (2012), 8 x10″, acrylic on canvas.

Mary Hrbacek: Good question! After creating the intricate Southwest rock series, I needed a respite from working abstractly. Because of my asthma, I couldn’t use oil, turpentine or acrylic, so I chose a heavy textural surface on which I dripped inks. Eventually I realized I needed an image to work from to make my art convincing. At that time, I had no studio and spent my time in Riverside Park, an area full of Sycamore trees. The peeling bark and natural patterns attracted me, and I began to draw the trees, at first not realizing their anthropomorphic possibilities.

ER: I have heard people refer to you as a “curator of nature,” a moniker I rather love. How do you choose the trees that become your subjects?

MH: Actually, I don’t select my subjects– they choose me! When I find a particular tree that rivets my attention, I cannot ignore it. I photograph various views, choosing evocative, human-like forms often suggesting gender. I frequently produce several drawings and paintings of the same compelling subject.

ER: Many of your early tree paintings appear to be anthropomorphic. Is this something that you consciously realized, or perhaps even just sensed, at the time?

Dark Monarch (2008), acrylic on linen, 42 x 48″.

MH: In 1997, I started to walk in Riverside Park every day and would sit down and work on my pencil drawings. At that time, I also was drawing from live models. One day my vision changed! I saw the trees in a new way, their limbs and other characteristics closely related to human anatomy. I realized that the trees attracting my attention appeared to be anthropomorphic. I was astounded when my vision changed, as the tree limbs and human anatomy merged in my psyche. The anthropomorphic quality set these trees apart, making them powerful and memorable.

The subject of trees evokes lore from the earliest human experiences. The Egyptians believed that “souls” rested in Sycamore trees before their long journey across the desert to the next world. Trees’ roots can penetrate as far down as 70 feet beneath the earth’s surface, bringing nutrients (produced by photosynthesis) deep into the earth. I view them as objects of significance and interest. I admire trees. They matter to me in the way that a friend matters. Exploring their forms in my art nurtures my life and sustains my intellect and imagination.

ER: This may sound silly, but in your travels around the world, you have painted all kinds of trees. What is it that attracts you to a particular tree? If they can be said to have individual personalities, have you found any differences among the various types of trees that you have captured? Do they talk to you, so to speak, and if so, in what ways?

Hanging Suspended (2008), acrylic on linen 42 x 46″.

MH: Your question isn’t silly at all! I am especially attracted by trees that bring the anthropomorphic vibe out strongly. For instance, to me, my painting Dark Monarch looks exactly like a king seated on a throne; Hanging Suspended, especially, evokes an upside down male torso. Trees can actually be as different from each other as humans: they come in all of shapes and sizes, and their personas or personalities strongly differentiate their unique identities.. Once in Riverside Park, I actually heard a faint whisper. When I looked up to see where it had come from,I noticed a tree with sap seeping from a broken limb. Go figure!

ER: When you see a tree that you know you want to paint, do you draw it first or take photographs? In other words, what is your process, from first seeing a tree that you’d like to paint, to the finished piece, itself?

MH: If I could sit on the spot to draw every tree I find in my travels, I would.

Since I move from place to place, country to country, I find I must take photographs so that I can later explore the forms in my highly intuitive charcoal drawing process. I then translate the image into an acrylic painting on linen. I am very particular about the forms. I do not stop working on a painting until I get to a point that satisfies the excitement I derive from clearly- honed forms.

ER: In this exhibition you are showing your charcoal drawings– a first, as far as I know. When do you use charcoal, and how did you come to create such black charcoal drawings?

MH: I’ve shown my charcoal drawings before, though not lately, I admit. Curator Elga Wimmer liked these drawings and thought they should be seen alongside my paintings. Charcoal is the oldest medium used by humans. It is also made from tree bark. I have used Stonehenge printmaking paper for years. One summer the manufacturer sealed the sheets so that I had to press down very hard to make the charcoal adhere to the paper. I knew instantly that this was an important development in my work.

ER: I’ve seen a number of your exhibitions– the most recent being Covert Narratives, a group show this past February at the Tenri Institute here in New York City– and now this solo exhibition. Each time, just when I wonder “what can she do now and where can she take this,” you surprise me by adding new elements, an odd twist, or a change in the size and shape of the canvases you use. At Tenri, you added human and animal figures to your paintings. I loved this touch. In this exhibition at CREON, we are greeted by a wall of very small paintings and then, we meet all six by nine feet of The Wanderer, which you said is your largest work to date. What are the process, challenges, and adjustments that you have to make in going from a small work to a large work such as this?

Left: The Wanderer (2012), acrylic on linen, 6 x 9′

MH: I think I am becoming less of an “outsider” in my life, which is having an impact on my imagery. Unconsciously, I have been adding several figures that relate to one another, instead of focusing on a lone tree. I am less afraid of people now, than I was for a long time. I feel more safe and confident than I once did. It is hard to fathom the fact that a small work can be even more difficult to resolve than a larger piece. The brushes one uses are very tiny, but the image must be convincing, done “just right” to be both established and believable. My eyes were quite strained from working on the small pieces. The large work took everything I have both physically and emotionally to complete. I had to go back in to deepen the forms to resolve and elaborate on areas that I had thought were done. It takes a lot of tenacity to work large, but I intend to expand my repertoire in the near future by working on large pieces in both horizontal and vertical rolls. I like having The Wanderer hang loosely from the top. To me, it looks very playful and organic. It is challenging, but it is also exciting to break out of the “usual” rectangular format. I am ready for the change and the challenge, thanks to my new audience whose responses are inspiring me.

Creature Camouflage (2012), diptych, 46 x 72″.

ER: The backgrounds of your paintings appear to play a very important part of your paintings. Can you speak to this? Can you tell me how you select your backgrounds, as far as color goes? Is the time of day involved in what colors you select?

MH: I paint the backgrounds in a flat graphic mode in order to separate the image from naturalistic references. I want to accentuate the personality of the specific tree to elaborate its unique forms and attributes. The color is related to the form by either harmonizing or contrasting tone. A color from within the tree may work to unify the image when applied to the background space. I often change the area surrounding the tree form many times to get the right hue and tone, but it doesn’t relate specifically to time of day, location or season of the year.

ER: Mary, tell my why you don’t place your trees in a more naturalistic setting?

MH: I want to present my subjects in an isolated, symbolic space that sets them apart from their environment and from art historical associations. The tree becomes the total focus of the painting. This choice gives me the freedom to accentuate the tensions, gestures and emotions that specific tree forms evoke.

ER: I see that you like to use flat colors as a surrounding ground.

Imploring (2012), acrylic on linen, 8 x 10″.

MB: The flat, harmonious colors I use in the background are intended to highlight the sculptural character of the shapes, providing a slightly disjointed aura to transport the pieces from conventional time and location.

ER: Your paintings have an animated Disneyesque quality to them. On one hand they appear cartoon-like, say a still from a Disney film– while on the other hand, one also thinks of the naturalism of Audubon, admittedly, though, with a lot less detail, of course. Is this a quality you aim for?

MH: Good point! The Disneyesque quality arises from the simplicity and cartoon-like animation of the movement in some of my tree forms. Because my vision is not figurative but representational, I tend to omit realistic detail. It doesn’t interest me. I just want to establish the authenticity of my images. Perhaps these factors account for the “cartoon” character of some of my works. I don’t relate to, or think about, Audubon at all. However, because nature is the source of the works, they may conjure thoughts of Audubon.

ER: All of your paintings have titles that seem to be part of your whole presentation. How do you go about naming them?

Woman Entwined (2010), acrylic on linen, 42 x 48″.

MH: I choose titles suggested by the works themselves. For instance, The Wanderer strikes me as a figure that is in a perpetual state of searching for meaning for what matters in life. This does suggest a myth like that of Sisyphus, but to me, it also makes sense in an everyday way. The piece Woman Entwined is one of my repeated power images that reflects the feelings I have had of being “trapped” in my life. This tree-woman is bound by nature to the vines that surround her. The piece called Imploring refers to what appears to be a female tree, with arms outstretched, pleading to the departing “male” figure, who has apparently had enough! All of these interpretations are obviously metaphoric and symbolic, of course, and I hope they illuminate my art for the viewer.

ER: What’s Next? Can you tell us what’s coming down the pike? What to expect? Or is this something that you only know when you arrive at it?

MH: My art is totally intuitive. I don’t think about “theory” or concepts. Because my images are driven by motifs, I never know what to expect. I am open to the configurations and networks that originally attracted me to the subject. I do find that I am focusing more on multiple tree trunks with clear figurative elements, whose underpinnings hint at drama or relationships. I find my work is more prone now, than ever before, to establishing fables and myths about anthropomorphic figures from the woods. Witch and Bewitched is a good example of this direction.

By Edward Rubin, Contributing Writer

Mary Hrbacek: Peopled Forest of My Mind

Curated by Elga Wimmer

CREON Gallery 238 East 24 Street, 1B, NY, NY 10010

Norm Hinsey, Gallery Director: 646-265-5508

www.creongallery.com

HOURS: Wed. & Thurs. 6:30 -8 p.m., Sat. 12 – 6 p.m. or appt.

www.maryhrbacek.com

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left: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, Salome Receives the Head of Saint John the Baptist, c. 1606–10. Oil on canvas. The National Gallery, London.

There are other portraits in this painting on loan from the National Gallery, London, of the aftermath of John the Baptist’s killing. One of them is a Salome, not willing to test her bored composure with a direct look at what’s bleeding on the plate. Or, is it her at all? Instead, could she and the other woman in the background be from among the palace’s foundation of servants, arranging the details of the imminent presentation to the king’s table? And then there is the rictus face of John, where Caravaggio finds the vanishing of the self that is death’s clearest presence. It is impossible not to imagine Gericault recalling this portrayal in those later, fearful documents that are his studies of guillotined prisoners. artes fine arts magazine

The Denial of Saint Peter, 1610. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY. Gift of Herman and Lila Shickman, and Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1997.

But it is the executioner who is the center around which this picture turns. The bleak humanity of his expression is not a caricature of violence. He might be one of Beckett’s woeful tramps, wondering if there is any way that he can be saved. The same uncertainty and dismay mark the face of the apostle in the Denial of Peter, as the sparks of an unseen fire spit towards him like a hint of damnation. There is a self-awareness to his betrayal even as he pronounces himself ignorant and a stranger. A soldier, his profile perfect even in darkness, is audience to the two competing testimonies of Peter and the insistent woman, adjudicating in silence, but never heard to pronounce his decision.

What makes a wilderness? In the largest scale of the Caravaggio paintings among the five in this show, the one from the Nelson Atkins Museum, in Kansas City, shows the young John the Baptist, eyes darkened by some fantasy of his dying, like an unthroned king, or the exiled duke of Shakespeare’s As You Like It, considering the possibility that he has not been punished, but rewarded. Oak leaves form the cloudy pageant of the background, while at John’s feet, two fleshy mullein plants wait like temptations to escape from his future.

In Martha and Mary Magdalen, the Baptist’s’ wilderness has become a single flower in the Magdalen’s hand, while in Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy, the Caravaggio owned by the Wadsworth, the botanical catalogue of the foreground presents the saint as a genius loci of the natural world, at the same moment that he is receiving the marks of Christ’s passion.

left: Martha and Mary Magdalen, c. 1595–96. Oil and tempera on canvas, Detroit Institute of Arts, Gift of the Kresge Foundation and Mrs.Edsel B. Ford; below, right: Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness, c. 1604–05 Oil on canvas. Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, William Rockhill Nelson Trust.

But in the background of the Francis painting, with its darkness broken only by a fragment of distant bonfire and the lines of what might be either dawn or sunset in the unstable time frame of religious ecstasy, there is a story hidden. In the near distance is a cowled figure who might be a monk companion to the saint or some tempter in religious disguise, while further away, a group of figures are pointing to some other history outside the frame as if completely unaware of the divine making itself, visible in the foreground.

What narrative painting since Caravaggio can escape him as a point of reference? In Picasso’s Guernica, the inheritance is as clear as any, given the way that the painter has found to depict a terror which transforms the ordinary world into a stage for agony, and which creates a distance for our visual resolution of the image that keeps us from being distracted by technique. Caravaggio’s insight is not a matter of chiaroscuro, but of storytelling.

Left: Francisco de Zurbarán, Saint Serapion, 1628. Oil on canvas. Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT. The Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection Fund

This is why the gaggle of followers assembled here—with the significant exceptions of Francisco de Zurbarán (above, left) and Georges de la Tour—read as unintentionally comic parodies. They simply do not struggle to believe, as Caravaggio does. He is the damaged, faithful servant desperate to find the sacred in the midst of an unruly, fierce world. But his only discovery in the end is the detail of the broken comb on the table in front of Mary Magdalene. Here the closest that the painter can get to the truth of it all is to be found in a perfectly rendered imperfection. What other story does this world tell?

By Stephen Vincent Kobasa, Contributing Writer

Burst of Light: Caravaggio and His Legacy: through June 16

Wadsworth Atheneum

600 Main Street, Hartford, CT

860-278-2670

www.wadsworthatheneum.org

Jason Craig as Beowulf. All photos: Evgenia Eliseeva

There is always a bit of an edge to any production at the A.R.T. and by extension its satellite Oberon. This is true of Beowulf—A Thousand Years of Baggage now at the Oberon. This version of the English/Danish epic poem uses song and silliness to tell the story of the hero and the blood-thirsty monster. In this production, like some less than sterling stanzas in overly long epic poems, the parts are much better than the whole. artes fine arts magazine

The premise of using Beowulf as a theatrical event is rich for mining narrative devices, potential humor, and even fantastic music. Full of smiling pretense, the problem with this Beowulf is a lack of passion and theatrical cohesion. Perhaps, the ensemble had an off-night? Perhaps not.

The story goes a little like this: Beowulf is a medieval epic about a superhero that was handed down by word-of-mouth, The story is set on the ravaged realm of the Danish King Hrothgar. His mead hall has been under attack by the monster Grendel for 14 years, and his warriors have been ruthlessly slaughtered. As with any good superhero, Beowulf comes to his aid to slay the beast and restore peace. He fights and rips off Grendel’s arm, kills Grendel’s mother and then battles a dragon.

But this being the American Repertory Theatre’s version, things in this adaptation are not a straight forward telling of the Old English tale. Instead, it is a musical play that combines severed limbs gore, wetting of the audience, a couple of toy action figures and a lot of academicspeak. And all of this is done with musical accompaniment and backup girl singers. Counter male-dominated stories, the matriarchal aspects of the story are emphasized by Grendel’s mother who is front and center as her son’s avenger. And the monster Grendel is a mama’s boy.

Jessica Jelliffe as Grendel’s mother, Rick Burkhardt as Grendel

As Gendel’s mother, singing and emoting well, Jessica Jelliffe gives a strong performance. But her water fight with Beowulf pulled too many verbal and physical punches to be theatrically meaningful, or to be in the least bit stirring.

The dragon fight scene was a vampy song duet, with Beowulf and Lisa Clair. She could have turned into more of a dragon lady to make a theatrical point, or had a large dragon tattoo, but she didn’t. Instead of being clever, it was just another nicely performed song. But the narrative resolution was unresolved. All of the stagecraft seemed too austere or simple and not clever enough. The passion in the production never percolated.

However, various aspects of the production were outstanding. The musicianship displayed was first rate. And the lighting by Miranda Hardy gave a visual wholeness to the performances.

What was also lacking was a true sense of humor, wit or even whimsy. The occasional potty mouth phrasing should not have been the only humorous notes. Except for the multitalented Rick Burkhardt (Grendel) and an academic panelist), there lacked any sense of cleverness or irony in the characterizations. By the way, his best line was about an intimate anatomical space that the name Grendel could be used for.

l to r: Rick Burkhardt, Lisa Clair, Jessica Jelliffe, Jason Craig

To be fair, Jason Craig’s Beowulf’s very physical presence was humorous. An everyman, he was the antihero in physicality, hairstyle, glasses and general looks. He started off right with a funny floating dance around the back of the audience, on the bar. But his character could have generated many more comical lines and actions, but didn’t. Clothed like a Viking tricked out from a thriftshop, his Beowulf was not epic in any way. However, he did have a nice voice. In fact, all of the singers had very good voices.

The strength of the production was its musicality. Jen Baker’s trombone was superb, and the rest of the six piece band were great. Brian McCorkle’s King Hrothgar’s singing and accordian playing were fine. His crown was the best costume element in the show.

Many aspects of the show were very well done. Clearly, there was a lot of talent on the stage. And there were a lot of good song lyrics. But in the end, this Beowulf lacked sustained strength and real poetry.

By Mark Favermann, Contributing Writer

American Repertory Theater presents

A Banana Bag & Bodice SongPlay

BEOWULF — A Thousand Years of Baggage

Now, through May 5, 2013

Text by Jason Craig

Music by Dave Malloy

Co-Directed by Rod Hipskind & Mallory Catlett

At OBERON

2 Arrow St. Cambridge, MA 02138

(617) 496-8004

The company includes Jen Baker (Trombone), Rick Burkhardt (Grendel/Music Director), Lisa Rafaela Clair (Performer), Jason Craig (Beowulf), Anna Ishida (Performer), Jessica Jelliffe (Gendel’s Mother), Sam Kulik (Guitar), Mario J. Maggio (Clarinet/Bass Clarinet), Brian McCorkle (King Hrothgar), Blake Newman (Bass), Andy Strain (Trombone), Shaye Troha (Performer), and Peter Wise (Drums). Lighting Design is by Miranda Hardy and Sound Design by Charles Shell.

www.americanrepertorytheater.org

Read more revies and comments about the arts at: http://berkshirefinearts.com

“The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.”   ~Francis Bacon

Left: Yoshitora (active circa 1840 – 1880)  Lovely Beauty Design (1870). Private collection

Losing Your Head in New York

ARTES, a fine arts magazine, is always on the lookout for cool images that could fit the old adage: art is where you find it. Readymade art has a long and illustrious history, beginning with the Dadaist and surrealists, who fashioned artistic statements out of unlikely material, combining them in unique and quirky ways, like Marcel Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (1913, 3rd version, 1951), or his Fountain (1917) right, making the statement that art is personal and doesn’t depend on the usual combination of ‘artful’ subject matter and the institutional validation of the museum/gallery culture. It caused quite a stir at the time…and still does–during this year, in particular, the 100th anniversary of the famed Armory Show in New York. artes fine arts magazine

Wrangling the dozens of images that come over the transom at ARTES, for the select few that might be considered news worthy, is a day-to-day challenge. Occasionally, a story piques the editor’s attention: first, because it’s eye-catching; secondly, because it raises lots of questions. This one has to do with a massive foam and fiberglass head, found floating in the waters of the Hudson River, above New York City. The image itself, was eye-catching—inadvertent found art—not simply because it was accidently discovered by the Marist College rowing team during practice on the river, but because the image, itself, had its own surreal, readymade ‘feel’ to it. Art caught in the act of being artful. Go figure!

I was immediately reminded of its assonance to a piece by Joseph Wheelwright, Listening Stone (below), found in the sculpture garden at the deCordova Museum, in Lincoln, MA. Like Wheelwright’s sculpture, appearing as a disembodied mythic being or nature spirit in communion with the earth, the Hudson River discovery also seems to have his ear finely tuned, as he rides the ebb and flow of tidal shifts on one of the world’s great waterways. Any resemblance to a massive plastic knock-off of Michelangelo’s David becomes irrelevant, as the search for the ‘owner’ of the discarded Leviathan presses onward. The mysterious floating head has already succeeded in ways it never could have, had it remained attached to its pseudo-corporeal body. Its sealed lips, badly-damaged nose and ears, and blank, staring eyes communicate a wealth of sensory data to anyone who cares to pay attention: our rivers and other fragile environmental resources are not  dumping grounds. The power of art to ‘speak’ to us with this important message, at the most unexpected moments, should never be underestimated.

To the person or persons who discarded this itinerant version of Listening Stone into the Hudson, with all its attendant verisimilitude, we say, Thank you!

Thanks, too,  for reading ARTES,

Richard J. Friswell, Publisher & Managing Editor

Like us on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/ARTESmagazine

 And Tweet a comment at: https://twitter.com/#!/ARTESmag

These now iconic images represent the essence, power, controversy and conundrum of China’s most dangerous and threatening dissident, one of the world’s most celebrated and influentioal artists.

As a variant on the truism that “In order to make omelets you have to crack eggs” this action, a willful act of vandalism, is essential to an understanding of Ai Weiwei: According to What? the riveting exhibition now open at the Indianapolis Museum, the next stop on a five-museum tour.

A vintage Mao-era re-education poster

There are many ways to interpret the symbolism of smashing a priceless, 2000 year-old urn, a sacrosanct artifact, and signifier of China’s ancient cultural heritage. It is an act of violence and disruption which might be compared to the revolution which created Mao’s People’s Republic of China in 1949. Like that urn millions were smashed under Mao. Millions like Ai’s father a poet, were humiliated, banished to the provinces, and forced to do menial labor during the Cultural Revolution. Ai’s father, an artist and intellectual, was assigned to clean latrines—compared to which, smashing an urn is a benign metaphor.

It conveys that an artist must be willing to let go and make a sharp break from the weight of heritage in order to create reenergized art.

Nothing about this is particularly new other than the context.

As far back as the early 20th century, Italian artist, F. T. Marinetti’s 1909 Futurist Manifesto stated that “We want to demolish museums and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and utilitarian cowardice… To admire an old picture is to pour our sensibility into a funeral urn instead of casting it forward with violent spurts of creation and action.”

Marcel Duchamp with his iconic ‘readymade’ Bicycle Wheel (1913).

It is more than speculation to locate Ai’s art practice within the matrix of modernism, the avant-garde, Marcel Duchamp, the trajectory of the found object, ready-made, assisted ready-made, through the social sculptures of Joseph Beuys, the neo-realism of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, the media tropes of Andy Warhol, or the conceptual performances of Chris Burden and Marina Abramovic.

Even before they left China for long residences in the West Ai, his friend Xu Bing, and others of their circle were circulating texts and information about the avant-garde. They later collaborated to publish Black Cover Book (1994), White Cover Book (1995) and Grey Cover Book (1997).

His decade in the U.S. is documented by “New York Photographs” (1983–93). While enrolled as a student at Parsons the young artist roamed the streets of Manhattan and became an integral part of the downtown art scene. He also enjoyed frequent gambling excursions to Atlantic City. In 1993 Ai’s father, Ai Qing, became ill and his son returned to a swiftly-modernizing China.

Reviewing a 2007 exhibition of work by Huang Yong Ping at Mass MoCA, we wrote “Entering a small constructed space we encounter a work from 1994, The Wise Man Learns from the Spider How to Spin the Web, by the artist, Huang Yong Ping, who was born in rural Xiamen, China, in 1954. There is a small, simple writing table with several Xeroxed copies of texts in Chinese with images by Marcel Duchamp. Suspended above is a cone-like structure with thin ribs covered by metal screening. Inside is a low wattage bulb and, at the bottom of the fixture, a transparent plastic bottom on which a tarantula is observed. A trap door is carefully concealed through which the spider is removed or fed. The lighting casts an elaborately patterned shadow on the surrounding walls creating a soft and meditative mood.”

As a part of that retrospective Ping “laundered” avant-garde texts in a washing machine reducing them to pulp. It was an allegory of how these artists literally masticated avant-garde theory and regurgitated it as their work.

The shattered urn of Ai channels Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (1915-23), right which we revisited recently at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The work in lead and dust sandwiched between sheets of glass was dropped and shattered. The artist reassembled the shards creating in the process a more spectacular object and icon of modernism.

We don’t know what happened to the shards of Ai’s smashed urn. Were they simply tossed in the dust bin of history? They don’t appear to survive as the relics of a performance in the manner of Burden.

Perhaps it is closer to the 1953 action when Robert Rauschenberg asked Willem deKooning for a drawing which he meticulously erased. Was the drawing destroyed and defaced? Did it cease to identify as a work by deKooning and become a work by Rauschenberg? There is the question of value. Was its worth in the art market diminished or enhanced?

Ai Weiwei, Han Dynasty vase with Coca Cola logo (1994).

In 1978 Richard Nixon “opened up” China just as Commodore Matthew C. Perry had by visiting the isolationist Japan in 1852. Following Nixon’s diplomatic initiative the first American product to be imported by China was Coca Cola. In 1994 Ai painted a Coca Cola logo onto a Han-period ceramic vessel. Subsequently, he created a series of antique ceramics dipped, like glazing a pot, into bright colored paint.

Again there are many layers to this action. It plays upon issues of value and provenance in the thriving market for Chinese antiquities. Forgers have become skilled and sophisticated. So we have to wonder whether Ai has “recycled” real, expensive antiquities or forgeries. It underscores the thriving industry in China of mass producing cheap knock offs of Western goods. So there is a tweaking of intellectual property in Ai’s subversive works.

As a very rich artist, Ai is able to play with notions of value. At the Hirshhorn we encountered two, meter wide cisterns Bowls of Pearls , Chris Burden (2006), right. Like cash registers our minds calculate the net worth of what we are looking at. Such displays of conspicuous wealth are not unique in contemporary art. Burden displayed a small pyramid of solid gold bars. He has also used coins in his installations. As a conceptualist operating on a shoestring budget Burden returned the “materials” to the bank after an exhibition.

In June, 2007 the British artist Damien Hirst exhibited For the Love of God, a human skull recreated in platinum, then encrusted with 8,601 diamonds weighing a total of 1,106.18 carats. Approximately £15,000,000 worth of diamonds was used. The asking price for the object was £50,000,000 ($100 million or 75 million euros). It was sold to a consortium that included Hirst and his gallery White Cube.

Ok. I know. Hirst is crass and should not be compared to Ai, who has social and political strata to the work.

In Map of China (2008),  left; Table with Two Legs on the Wall (2008); Grapes (2010), below right, and other works the artist disassembles and rejoins stools, chairs and furniture from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911). These works and the ring of stacked and joined bicycles of Forever (2003) trace their genealogy to Duchamp’s 1913 Bicycle Wheel and Stool.

What is unique about the most successful Chinese artists is their ability to create enormous, complex works employing factories and legions of assistants. For Ai this also entails numerous architectural projects. It started with the design and construction of his studio in Beijing. He is best known for collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron on the design for the main stadium—the “Bird’s Nest”—for the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing (see last image, bottom of page).

For a 2010 installation in the vast Turbine Hall of Tate Modern in London the artist commissioned 100 million handmade, porcelain, sunflower seeds. Initially, visitors were allowed to walk over the vast work. Eventually, the dust from crushed porcelain became a health hazard. So that was halted but not before many pockets full of seeds were scooped up by fans. Check eBay for their availability.

On the occasion of the government ordered destruction of his then recently built Shanghai studio, Ai was under house arrest for “tax evasion,” he hosted a feast of 10,000 river crabs which he was unable to attend. This led to He Xie (2010), left (detail), a recreation of that event expressed as 3,000 precise, porcelain crabs. The title literally means “river crab” but is also used as a homophone for the word “harmonious.” The slogan of the Chinese Communist Party is “The realization of a harmonious society.” On the internet it refers to censorship.

Ai’s widely read blog was shut down by the government. With his passport revoked the artist remains under house arrest.

Like Warhol, a part of his art entails access to the media. Fluent in English from a ten-year residence in the U.S., Ai is always willing to grant an interview. They reveal an engaging, inventive, humorous, Dada prankster and trickster. Although he has been assaulted and arrested by Chinese police, he conveys a casual disregard for his own safety. This was poignantly captured in a video as a conversation with his mother.

Far right: Ai WeiWei standing in an array of porcelain sunflower seeds, at the Tate, London; near right: individual porcelain sunflower seed.

This very real threat to his life was exacerbated by the relentless search for truth in the cover-up that followed the May 12, 2008 earthquake, in Sichuan. As the result of cost-cutting “tofu construction,” a school was demolished, resulting in the death of 5,000 students and teachers. The government repressed the release of the names of the victims.

Since 2009, Ai has become increasingly known for outspoken political activism in the wake of catastrophes such as this, resulting in a home invasion and beating, as well as an 81-day detention, in 2011, by Chinese authorities. “I’ve experienced dramatic changes in my living and working conditions over the past few years,” Ai has stated, “and this exhibition has been an opportunity to re-examine past work and communicate with audiences from afar. I see it as a stream of activities rather than a fixed entity. It is part of a continual process in self-expression.”

Using the Internet and Twitter, Ai organized a massive effort to identify the lost children. A wall in the exhibition displays their names and vital statistics. The artist has organized readings of the 5,000 names.

Snake Ceiling fabricated from back packs in memory of earthquake victims

When he visited the site, Ai was struck by the imagery of many back packs of the fallen children. He has used back packs as the material for a number of sculptures commemorating the students. At the Hirshhorn, we observed a giant snake coiling its way above us.

In the wreckage of the earthquake were twisted iron rods used in reinforced concrete construction. Sold as scrap metal, the artist purchased tons of the material. A team of assistants using torches and hammers to laboriously straightened out the bars. A stack (40 tons) is displayed as Wenchuan Steel Rebar (2008-2012).

The piece was inspired by the 2011 reconstruction of a 72,000 square-meter school on the site of the destroyed building. It is an official way of saying that the disaster never happened. That, like Ai’s simple but dramatic piece, the government can straighten out the twisted, broken lives of 5,000 children.

Wenchuan Steel Rebar (2008-2012)

Of the earth’s current population of 6.7 billion, some 1.3 billion people reside in China. There has been enormous growth and change since the end of the reactionary Cultural Revolution. During a week in Shanghai, several years ago, was saw this dramatic progress with our own eyes. While still a communist country today there are entrepreneurs and billionaires in China. Recently 60 Minutes profiled China’s real estate mogul, Zhang Xin. She is the fifth richest self-made billionaire woman in the world. A second part of the broadcast focused on the disaster of an about to burst real estate bubble which will have global impact.

Like that crashing Han Dynasty vase, it begs the question of what China we are dealing with. Is it the totalitarian, communist monolith of Mao? Or, like Ai, Xu Bing and other artists, is China today a confluence of Eastern heritage infused with Western ideas and the corruption of capitalism?

The work of Ai Weiwei is compelling precisely because of the fusion of ancient heritage and post modernism. It speaks to us with a readily understandable vocabulary of imagery. In this galvanic exhibition, nothing is lost in translation. It is also a conundrum and false positive of very dangerous ideas. The oeuvre is a challenge to look deeper and wonder whether what see is what we get?

National Stadium (“Bird’s Nest’) at 2008 Beijing Olympics-obstructed view.

While we embrace China as the world’s fastest growing economy and culture, never lose sight of the fact that it is a police state. Beware of complacency…and stepping on the tail of the seemingly benign dragon.

By Charles Giuliano, Contributing Writer

Ai Weiwei: According to What? Is at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana, through July 28, 2013. It was organized by the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo and Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C., where it was recently on view.

After its current run in Indianapolis www., it will travel to:

Art Gallery of Ontario

Toronto, Canada

August 31 to October 27, 2013

Perez Art Museum Miami

Miami, Florida

November 28 to March 15, 2014

Brooklyn Museum

Brooklyn, New York

April 18 to August 10, 2014

Read more of Charles Giuliano’s views (and others) at: www.berkshirefinearts.com

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Left: Kathleen Elliot, We’re All On the Same Tree (2008) Glass, 12″ h x 11″ w x 3″ d, (display base). artes fine arts magazine

Elliot takes observed, naturalistic representation to another level through her sensitive consciousness of harmonious color relationships and intricate textural details. These features infuse her works with both a feeling of strength and an aura of wonder. Her branches and fruits seem dewy and fresh, as if they were still in their pristine native environment.

Right: Kathleen Elliot, Blue Moon Pods (2007) Glass, 11″h x 13″w x 6″d, (display base).

Technical intricacies and challenges notwithstanding, this genre lends scope for Elliot’s imaginative, yet subtle enhancement of natural plant forms. She has a lyrical poetic vision of form and content, providing a playful yet careful approach to her narrative interpretation of each work. The pieces are expertly mounted on linear metal stands or they are wall mounted. Elliot’s commitment to her craft is evidenced by the care with which she renders each shape. Every formal detail and part is clearly expressed, carefully composed, and solidly adhered to the piece as a whole. She has mastered the craft of flame throwing glass, resulting in pieces of great finesse.

Her works are reminiscent of the forms to be found in the film “Avatar,” in which natural botanical shapes are accentuated in an animation format that express both sweetness and fantasy. Sometimes Elliot’s articulation of the vines suggests ropes or jewelry chains; in this way, an unconscious sense of multiple meaning emerges from her works. They are rarely as straightforward, or as naturalistic as they might appear at first glimpse. While her works are carefully observed, they go beyond visual appearances to take the pieces to a realm of personal expression. The artist displays special sensitivity in rendering leaves with a geometric subtext that is especially captivating when the leaves are almost square in shape, or are very much rounded. Her works are never ostentatious; they are refined, yet she teases the viewer with witty, reloaded ideas of nature’s possibilities in a recent expanded vision that embodies human qualities with botanical features.

The artist employs an intuitive creative process that allows her the freedom to change the course of a piece, as its inner necessity requires. Sometimes her works are inspired by environmental phenomena as diverse as patterns of shadow or light reflected on a surface, or even the memory of a conversation. The pieces explore a range of metaphoric imagery that yields symbolic meaning on themes from personal growth to emotional responses to life’s demands, to dancers and infants. Her process develops over weeks or even months. Recently, Elliot has become engaged with the symbolic possibilities inherent in the cyclone form, as it expresses life energy in a spiraling cone of expanding metaphoric personal growth.

Left: Kathleen Elliot, Acorns (2007) Glass, 11″h x 13″w x 6″d, (display base).

Elliot’s glass works transcend the tradition of decorative glass objects, blurring the boundaries the medium traditionally suggests, to create signature glass sculptures of a unique and personal vision, in a genre that is growing in universal appeal. While her works recall Dale Chihuly’s glass pieces, her art has its own unique expression, scope and direction. Elliot’s affinity for botanical forms enables her to convey a heightened level of spiritual energy to glass art forms that project a subtle yet convincing radiant transformation of nature’s everyday state. In this respect, the sculptures give a symbolic optimistic message.

Paul Stankard, Golden Orb Floral Triptych, 8″x 4″x 2″

Paul Joseph Stankard (b. 1943), whose work is also on display at the Morris, is considered the father of modern glass paperwights. His driving desire was to “be on the creative side”, starting production on glass paperweights in his garage while working in industry. It was when Stankard displayed his early paperweights at a craft exhibit on the boardwalk of Atlantic City, New Jersey, that an internationally respected art dealer saw his work, thus allowing him to move full-time into making glass art.

In the early 1960s, paperweights made by other American artisans showcased brightly colored  flowers that were not botanically accurate. Stankard labored to make his glass floral designs look more natural and botanically lifelike. His glass flowers were so authentic looking that many people mistake his florals thought for actual encased flowers in glass. Soon thereafter, paperweight makers (mostly American) were following Stankard’s lead. Stankard, is now an internationally acclaimed artist, largely credited with changing the status of glass paperweights from that of “craft” to that of “fine art”

Paul Stankard’s glass art presents intricate combinations of botanical matter composed of glass seeds, moss, vines, or non-specific organic fragments, embedded in small scale clear glass cubes. Some of the works suggest archeological remnants that have been preserved unscathed for millennia within the earth. The pieces raise universal questions about survival, regeneration and renewal in all earth’s life forms.

Left: Paul Stankard, Orb Series, Fecundity Boquet.

Stankard is interested in integrating mysticism with botanical realism giving the glass organic credibility. Through his work, he references the continuum of nature, by portraying and exploring the mysteries of fertility and decay. The work celebrates the primal beauty of nature on an intimate level, influenced by the poetry of Walt Whitman. Stankard’s vision creates a new perception of the possibilities of paperweights as fine art.

By Mary Hrbacek, Contributing Writer

“Reflections: Contemporary Studio Art Glass” is on view until April 28, 2013

Visit the Morristown, NJ museum at: http://www.morrismuseum.org