Art 2011: The Best of Further Wanderings

by Stephen Cummings

In a year that felt abundant with looks back at great artists my biggest regret in terms of seeing art is not having made it to New York for MoMA’s first ever retrospective of Willem de Kooning. Of course no one can be everywhere, and while I was fortunate enough to be in a lot of places this year, the trouble with being all over is that you’re bound to miss a lot from any one place in particular. So again I offer a selection of the best new works and exhibitions I managed to see over the past year. My route was at times directed by art, and at others by the whims of my life, but having bounced up and down both coasts and through several cities in between, I hope the list presented here can provide some kind of useful sample of the best the country had to offer in 2011.

A Small Self-Portrait

The year got off to a strong start with three exceptional pieces on display simultaneously at UCLA’s Armand Hammer Museum. Roberto Cuoghi's untitled self-portrait is a rare achievement in the practice of drawing. Far from feeling academic, this small piece is a staggering turn of realism with a figure as viscerally present as any painted by Manet or even Rembrandt. Coughi's portrait is unpretentious and uncanny, and reinforces realism's place in contemporary discourse — though given the rest of the portraits in this body of work, Cuoghi certainly doesn't subscribe to the school of though that prizes it above all else.

The Cutters

In adjacent galleries could be found the Hammer's All Of This And Nothing, featuring, among other works, Gedi Sibony’s The Cutters. The language of this piece was so concise, and its feeling of completion so thorough, it was clear from the beginning this would likely be one of the best things I’d see. Sibony is truly one to traffic in arrangements. As reported in W magazine a few years back, “He avoids altering his finds from their original state [...]. Before an opening he’ll spend days arranging his works so that the light will energize them, creating rich ‘situations’ for viewers.” The richness of The Cutters was, as mentioned, a quiet and powerful thing to behold.

Anticultural Positions

Also part of All Of This And Nothing was Paul Sietsema’s Anticultural Positions, a thirty-minute, looped film featuring black and white stills of the artist’s working surfaces interspersed with text from a lecture he reportedly presented in 2008. The effect was disjointed and abstract, a gorgeous visual experience complimented by the mesmerizing rattle of the projector. Literally readable in parts, but overall quite bewildering, Anticultural Positions nevertheless created an atmosphere to be savored.

The End

In Pittsburgh, another video piece proved even more enthralling. Ragnar Kjartansson’s The End, on view at the Carnegie Museum, enveloped its audience in a visual and and auditory landscape like nothing I’ve ever encountered. The weird, warped music and vast, white wilderness combined to create an environment both serene and exhilarating, and Kjartansson’s odd mix of exuberance and flippancy make him a joy to watch.

Picasso: Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris

Another collection of greatly varied styles came from an in-depth look at a single artist in the de Young Museum’s Picasso. It was the same traveling show that left Seattle earlier in the year, drawn from the currently renovating Musée National Picasso in Paris. Now, I’ve visited that museum, but something about the way this show was laid out made the work absolutely thrilling. While it felt a little thin in the early years — a number of Picasso’s best early works having been snagged by the Steins, interestingly — man, did Picasso take off as he got older. Still lifes, portraits, busts, bathers, and even some lesser known landscapes from the artist’s early days to his last made Picasso an unforgettable look at the master.

B. Wurtz: Works, 1970 - 2011

And maybe equally unforgettable was Metro Pictures Gallery’s retrospective of B. Wurtz. Little known outside the confines of artistic circles, Wurtz has been steadily producing smart, playful sculptures since the 1970s. Some of these are freestanding, some hang on the wall, but all incorporate surprisingly common objects to produce compositions of uncommon originality and wit. So light are Wurtz’s creations that they made even Richard Tuttle’s work, concurrent at the nearby Pace Gallery, feel leaden. Reviewing the show in June, Roberta Smith was quite right in her sentiment that, “Mr. Wurtz’s show may be, in its own quiet and eccentric way, one of the high points of the summer, if not the entire year.”

Opera at the Movies: Better Than the Real Thing?

by Forrest Jones

I just saw the New York Metropolitan Opera’s production of Wagner’s Das Rheingold. The singing was beautiful, the special effects were impressive, and set design was innovative. It was all of the things that we have come to expect from the richest opera company in the U.S., but there were a few things that you may not expect. First, it was only $22, and I only had to drive five minutes from my house in Reno, Nevada to see it. It was The Met: Live in HD at my local movie theater.

Opera companies are struggling to stay open and put on shows, and I am glad to see this move to reach out to new audiences. In an age of instant gratification and limitless entertainment opportunities, very few people are going to shell out $100 or more to watch a three or four hour opera. Not to mention the fact that you won’t see an opera of this quality unless you are in New York, San Francisco, or a handful of other major cities. Unlike the European state operas, American companies receive very little help from government funding. They are very heavily reliant on donations from individuals and foundations. They needed to make a move to change this downward trend and bring in some new revenue.

Here it is: live operas broadcast all over the country in movie theaters, accessible to both wealthy city dwellers and regular, rural Americans like me. Some may ask, “Is it really the same as going to see the real thing?” No, it isn’t the same, but neither is the price. 22 bucks seems like a lot for a trip to the movie theater, but a live opera would be at least three times as much for the cheap seats, and about 15 times as much if you want a view like the one you get on the movie screen.

And when I say it isn’t the same, I don’t mean it’s worse. In fact, there were some things that I enjoyed more than a live show. For one, the camera work is excellent. Using high-definition cameras, this production gets you closer to the singers than you could ever be in the audience of the actual auditorium. Watching the excellent acting of Bryn Terfel as the Norse god Wotan made the story much more compelling, and being able to see beads of sweat rolling down Eric Owens’ face (excellently portraying Alberich) makes you really appreciate how hard these singers are working up there.

Normally, the costumes and props are fuzzy because they are so distant, but tonight I could easily see the rippling muscles of the two giants and the fiery fingers of Loge, the God of Flame. The makeup and hair styles are also more easily appreciated. I was particularly impressed with the dreadlocks of Alberich that lit up whenever he cast a spell. These are all things I might have missed sitting in the back of the balcony of a live performance.

Another aspect of the filmed production that nobody in a live audience normally sees was the behind the scenes features before the performance. I enjoyed watching the three Rhinemaidens trying to learn to float across the stage on harnesses at an early rehearsal (“I’m F-ing Scared!” one of them said on her first try), and the pre-concert interview with Bryn Terfel, in costume and about to perform, was insightful and gave a personal touch to the show.

My final verdict on this experience? I thought it was incredible. There may be a little more excitement and electric energy in the actual Metropolitan Opera House, but you can’t see as well and you don’t get the behind-the-scenes look that you do in the movie theater. Most importantly, we have to look at the huge pocketbook advantage. If I went to the live performance, I would have had to spend $1,500-$2,000, including a plane to New York, a hotel, meals, cab to the show, and the show ticket itself. Not to mention missing work for a day or two. Instead, I had about 90% of the experience for 1% the cost. Sounds like a good deal to me. I recommend seeing the next one in a theater near you, and if enough people jump on this bandwagon (orchestra wagon?), maybe opera in America can make a comeback.

Go See A Play

by Nathan Wonder

Go see a play.

I recommend seeing a good play. This can be difficult.

If you are in New York, I recommend you see Martin McDonagh's A Behanding in Spokane.

"The play is incredibly funny and it’s really dark and it turns in unexpected ways all the time. I think it’s the most surprising comedy I’ve ever read." Zoe Kazan

McDonagh's new dark comedy runs 90 minutes with no intermission, and the play’s comedic and macabre energies, filled with foul language, racism, and violence, propel the audience into a world only he can create.

“It’s not a world I’m completely familiar with and I get a kick out of it.” Edie Falco

McDonagh has had four of his plays nominated for Tony Awards in the Best Play category, notably The Pillowman and The Beauty Queen of Leenane. He is also the writer and director of the film In Bruges which was nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Original Screenplay category.

“Any time Martin has a play on in New York it is an event.” Zoe Kazan

The play had a lot of buzz because of the star-driven cast and the pedigree of the playwright. Christopher Walken, who plays Carmichael, is an American acting legend still at the top of his game. Mervyn is played by Sam Rockwell, whose film credits include Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Frost/Nixon, The Green Mile, and many more while his theatrical credits are even more impressive. Zoe Kazan plays Marilyn. The granddaughter of Elia Kazan, she has made an impressive career for herself both on the big screen in It’s Complicated and as a stage actress and playwright. As Toby, this is Anthony Mackie’s fourth time on Broadway, and his film credits include The Hurt Locker, 8 Mile, and Freedomland.

”From my standpoint it’s about a guy who had his hand chopped off by some villains when he was a teenager and he’s spent the rest of his life looking for his hand.” Chrisopher Walken

The four character play stars Walken as a one-handed man. He encounters a pair of naive con artists who try to sell him what they claim is his hand. Rockwell plays Mervyn, the caretaker of the hotel.

“I’ve never been in a play that got this kind of reaction: the roaring laughter of the crowd and the ovations, it’s just intense to be up there. It’s great I mean we are putting out a lot of energy and we are getting it all back.” Zoe Kazan

The play is thoroughly entertaining with many moments that cause the audience to both laugh and shriek at the same time. It is a tightly-woven story that keeps the audience on edge, always wondering what could possibly happen next.

The play is not without its faults, though. There are a few lines that seem to be written purely for their surface joke value, as noted in the New York Times review by Ben Brantley: “Poor Mr. Mackie is required to describe the hotel room as ‘Hand Central Station.’” Brantley also feels the two con artists are written poorly, as though they are characters from a “Hollywood caper comedy about dopey, foul-mouthed crooks who keep tripping over themselves.” I never felt any of the characters became that broad, but the actors did seem to get lost in the wake of Walken’s “fabled eccentricity” as Brantley puts it.

“[With] Christopher Walken every day is new, every day is fresh. He’s truly a gem of the acting community.” Anthony Mackie

This is some of Christopher Walken’s finest work. Simultaneously familiar and revelatory, his charismatic creepiness is perfect for the role, which feels as though it was written specifically for Walken’s idiosyncratic line readings (surprisingly, he was actually the last actor cast). From the opening moment with Carmichael sitting alone on the dingy hotel bed staring into space all the way to the final curtain, whenever he is on stage he is a commanding presence. He plays the character with incredible ease and complexity; nothing Carmichael does is either expected or unbelievable. Perhaps the Times reviewer puts it best with: “[Mr. Walken’s] use of his signature arsenal of stylistic oddities has seldom been more enthralling.”

The rest of the cast, playing around Walken’s eeriness, serve primarily as foils. Carmichael wants desperately to find his missing hand while Mervyn has no idea what he wants. Carmichael’s energy is a black hole, while the con artists are abuzz with youthful vigor.

“This play is a true broadway experience. It’s a true theatre experience.” Anthony Mackie