Artist Bill Viola has a show of work from two decades titled Bodies of Light, at James Cohan Gallery, through Dec 19. He sat down to talk about his work last week.
You had a residency at WNET a long time ago?
The first time I did something at WNET was in 1976; I did a piece called Four Songs that had to do with the passage of time, death, resurrection, but in a slightly different way than I deal with those topics now. It was broadcast on television. The first time my work was seen by large numbers of people, it was not in a museum, it was on NET, then it got syndicated and went to other public TV stations. I was involved with the TV Lab from around ‘75 thru maybe ‘81. That’s how I learned how to edit with high end professional equipment.
So many people have large format HD screens at home now… it’s a readymade format for your work.
I totally agree. The advent of flat screens have reconnected video to the art forms that since the beginning of video I’ve felt it was connected to. The flat screen confirmed all that, and the connection between the moving image and painting. That’s what plasma screens have allowed. And people like Jim and Jane Cohan (of James Cohan Gallery) get artists’ work on a wall in a portable format, which is what the original notion of painting was—frescoes, or cave paintings. People in the late middle ages were able to travel much farther than ever before, and they wanted to take their little icons with them. So artists painted icons, and the paintings started to grow, and eventually it eclipsed fresco. read more
I want to say that words fail to describe Miguel Gutierrez’s latest work at DTW, Last Meadow, because it is humbling to think about its sheer scope, even more so to reduce it to a bunch of words after watching one performance. And yet, even though it is foremost experiential, there is a generous amount of structure to deliberate as well. It meanders, barrels ahead, stops for breaks, flows lyrically, evolves, and devolves over the duration of its packed 90 minutes.
Gutierrez somehow creates work that you feel in your gut and your heart, and at the same time your brain works feverishly to process the layers of text, subtext, examination of the performance form itself, and endless experimentation with the powerful, often overlooked areas of sound and lighting. The loose pretexts for this show involve James Dean’s films, the father figure in America, as America, and confusion as “a potentially transformative, sensory-enlivened state,” per the program. Gutierrez has never lacked for ambition, and at first glance, these topics would seem far too large and disconnected to allow for any cohesion whatsoever.
And yet Gutierrez links the opening scene ramblings of a depressed Cal, Dean’s character in East of Eden (the amazing Michelle Boulé in a tour de force performance), with his own straight-laced father character by means of his own long, rambling monologue whispered into a mic. read more
There is such an wealth of culture in New York, particularly in the fall season, that it’s often difficult for presenters to make their offerings stand out. French Institute (FIAF), however, with its Crossing the Line festival (video here), has managed to both expand its genres and refine its mission to create a sort of core sample of contemporary French culture. This year, that includes culinary arts—so integral to France—in addition to many other events, most of which elude genre pigeon-holing. They blend varying strands of dance, art, film, and performance with one certain element—French essence. The festival is curated by Lili Chopra, FIAF’s artistic director, and Simon Dove, director, School of Dance at Arizona State University.
Festivities kick off in Central Park on Saturday, Sep 12 with Le Bal NYC, a mash-up of choreography, audience participation, and picnic outing. French choreographers (“established and emerging”) will teach short dances to the public, which gets a first-hand look at the dance performing process. Meanwhile, chefs—including NY’s David Chang and Wylie Dufresne, reportedly—will be prepping bento boxes of edible treats. read more
Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’re by now well aware of Glee, the new Fox TV show whose first full season starts this fall. The comedy centers around Will Schuester, a young high school teacher played by Matt Morrison, who tries to resuscitate the school’s ailing show choir, and judging from the one promo episode that aired last May, it is riotously funny—P.C., the show is not. (The creator of the show is Ryan Murphy of Nip/Tuck and Popular fame.) Fox has waged an unusually long, intense P.R. campaign that started with the airing of that single episode, followed by relentless advertising, online contests, and other promos. It certainly doesn’t hurt that Jane Lynch, who plays a wickedly cutthroat cheerleading coach at the fictional high school, is in the cast—my kids have been endlessly repeating her waterboarding and hepatitis jokes all summer. Yes, in the middle of the most serious economic mess we’ve seen in a long time is an extremely silly television show about … singing. Interesting.
A few weeks before Glee was set to air on television, I spoke with Ralph S. Opacic, who is the founder, president, and executive director of the Orange County High School of the Arts. Matt Morrison graduated from OCHSA in 1997, and went on to do music theater, including South Pacific, Light in the Piazza, and Hairspray.
Opacic and I spoke about how he went about starting an arts school back in the 1980s, the ongoing effort to get funding for his school, what Matt Morrison was like as a high school student, and what on earth “show choir” singing is. Full disclosure: I am old enough that when I attended public high school “show choirs” did not exist. read more
That old stereotype of classical music and snobbism—it just won’t die, will it?
I got ruminating on this old question after seeing the scabrously funny Armando Iannucci political farce In the Loop, currently playing in theaters in New York (see theaters and showtimes). (Warning: Spoiler alerts ahead) Poking fun at the stuffed shirts who populate the British government ministries involves several classical-music bits in the film, most of them in the offices of a middle-aged foreign service minister who (naturally) blasts classical music. This first prompts his assistant to beg him to turn down the racket, and later, a tirade by Malcolm, a Scottish press officer with film’s funniest, most foul-mouthed lines. One of his tirades begins as the aria “Erbarme dich” (“Have mercy, my God”) from Bach’s St. Matthew Passion plays in the background. “It’s only vowels, subsidized f***ing foreign vowels!” he shouts. There’s a government report whose last-minute improvised fake “secret source” is Debussy, and the film ends with Bach’s peaceful, ruminative first Prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier, following a misbegotten rush to an unnamed foreign war in the Middle East. read more
It seems fitting that an exhibition of Nigerian-British artist Yinka Shonibare’s work is being shown at the Brooklyn Museum, located in a borough where more cultures meet daily in the Atlantic/Pacific subway station than in high season in a trading port of call.
A signature of Shonibare’s work is the use of Dutch wax fabric, African-inspired, vibrantly colored and patterned yardage goods produced in Europe and sold in Africa and elsewhere. The fabric is a rich and effective symbol for the intersection of cultures, from a sociological standpoint and commerce-wise. Shonibare (who, not insignificantly, uses the honorary title MBE after his name) creates elaborate colonial costumes with the prints, boldly mixing them and sparing no detail. read more
As the last days of school approach and the sounds of “school’s out!” ring out near the exits of New York City’s schools, music-lovers are giving a hurrah of their own. Yes, it’s summer—or nearly so—and the sounds of music increasingly can be heard outdoors in parks and bandshells and plazas throughout the city. And for the cheapskate that exists in all of us (yes, all of us: how do you think the upper classes got to be “upper” in the first place?), it’s always a welcome season for finding ways to sample as much music as possible, for as little money as possible.
This year is bittersweet, however, with arts organizations throwing one-time or annual free events for financially strapped concertgoers that crowd into Central Park and Prospect Park and Lincoln Center Plaza to hear the sounds made by performers from the city’s top music organizations—even as some of those ensembles struggle to come up with funds to keep doing what they do. read more
Robert Wilson traffics in memory, controlling the passage of time and playing around with it—with us—by juxtaposing temporal spheres. In a fascinating tribute to his collaborator, Judson movement alum Suzushi Hanayagi, Wilson created with choreographer Carla Blank KOOL: Dancing in My Mind, which premiered at the Guggenheim’s Works & Process series last weekend. It was mounted in conjunction with the museum’s thought-provoking exhibition, Third Mind. The just-closed show focused on direct and implied Asian influence on Western art over the last century. KOOL is the perfect example of this in performance.
Hanayagi, immobile and incommunicative, suffers from advanced dementia. When Wilson visited her in Japan recently, he found that by making old gestures or small movements of hers, he elicited some reaction. KOOL incorporates imagery of Hanayagi’s face and gnarled hands and feet, expressive symbols of a long life approaching its end. There’s also footage of her in early performances and rehearsals. read more
Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and Arvo Pärt’s compositions rank among the most inspirational for choreographers, at least in my neck of the woods. Reich and Glass are beloved for their muscular propulsiveness, their vigorous rhythms, their hypnotic threads. But it is Pärt’s compositions that invite collaborators into a shared space, a helium-filled elysium, or on Earth — in the earth, rich with dirt, minerals and other creatures. The Guggenheim Works & Process series focused on Pärt as a muse for artist Sophie Calle, choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, and another composer, Tarik O’Regan.
Wheeldon, artistic director of Morphoses, has done some of his finest work to Pärt, and it is perhaps not a coincidence that NYCB ballerina Wendy Whelan — another of Wheeldon’s muses — is usually the star. Two duets done for NYCB were performed at the Guggenheim: Liturgy (2003), featuring Whelan with Albert Evans, and the pas de deux from After the Rain, which she danced with Sébastien Marcovici. read more
When it comes to movie musicals, some directors are auteurs and others are doers. In the former category are the likes of Vincente Minnelli and Stanley Donen, who put their stamp on their material. Films by Minnelli, in particular, are so his and his alone that you cannot mistake his stamp—and even when he made a drama, it felt and look like a musical (cf. the overheated emotions and choreographed camera work of The Bad and the Beautiful and Some Came Running, or the balletic precision of the sublime Kay Kendall’s body language in The Reluctant Debutante).
In the latter category is Robert Wise, who made West Side Stories, The Sound of Music and Star!, among other films. Wise was a typical product of the old studio system; like directors such as Raoul Walsh, he was a master craftsman who could step up to a higher level of artistry when he connected with one of scripts that were sent his way. Was it the case with West Side Story? read more
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