Archives for May 24, 2004

Who said anything about a summer break? I had way too much to do in the past few days, and I’m feeling it–in fact, I think I may be on the verge of being officially under the weather, which is particularly uncool given the fact that I have to hit four deadlines this week.

At least I racked up a lot of art before white smoke started pouring out from under my hood. To begin with, I saw three plays in three days:

– Here Lies Jenny, Bebe Neuwirth’s Kurt Weill revue.

– Chinese Friends Jon Robin Baitz’s new play (which I saw with the v., v. cool Sarah, who was in town momentarily).

– The Manhattan Theatre Club’s revival of Donald Margulies’ Sight Unseen, starring Laura Linney.

All will find their way into The Wall Street Journal sooner or later.

I also visited four gallery shows in quick succession on Saturday:

– Richard Diebenkorn: Works on Paper, up at Artemis Greenberg Van Doren (730 Fifth Ave.) through Saturday, is a museum-quality exhibition of paintings and prints from Diebenkorn’s “Ocean Park” and “Clubs & Spades” series. I would have missed this splendid show had Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes not called my attention to it. See Tyler’s right-hand column (he’s an artsjournal.com blogger) for details, then get right over to Artemis Greenberg Van Doren and see the show while you still can.

– Neil Welliver: Oil Studies, up at Alexandre Gallery (41 E. 57th) through June 18, is an exceptionally beautiful show of preliminary small-scale studies for some thirty-five of Welliver’s large-scale paintings portraying the woods of Maine. The difference between the two formats is one of size, not finish, though the effect is different as well: Welliver’s oil studies, like Jackson Pollock’s small drip paintings, have a concentrated focus that I find especially appealing. (The comparison isn’t at all absurd–Welliver, like Fairfield Porter and Nell Blaine, is a committed representationalist who was nonetheless deeply influenced by abstract expressionist, an approach I find hugely sympathetic.)

– Mood Indigo: The Legacy of Duke Ellington, up at Michael Rosenfeld (24 W.57th St.) through July 30, is an interesting but spotty show that purports to provide “a look at jazz and improvisation in American art.” In practice, this means a mixed bag ranging from the real right thing (a Stuart Davis gouache from 1947) to pale imitations (a trio of faux Mondrians by Charmion von Wiegand and Burgoyne Diller). Among the interesting curiosities are Hans Hofmann’s Composition No. 9, a 1953 oil that incorporates elements suggestive of musical notation, and a painting by jazz drummer George Wettling, who studied with Stuart Davis (you can tell, too). Also on display is Ellington’s very own white baby grand. More fun than illuminating, but still worth a peek.

– Jacob Lawrence: Prints and Selected Paintings, up at DC Moore (724 Fifth Ave.) through June 30, is a nice but not thrilling show devoted mostly to Lawrence’s late graphic work. His flat planes of color lent themselves to lithography, but by the time he embraced the medium in earnest, his creative fire had ebbed, and though he was recognizably himself, repetition had all too clearly set in.

– Now playing on iTunes: Bob Brookmeyer’s Get Well Soon, about which I’m writing later today for this coming Sunday’s Washington Post.

Enough for now, and probably for the rest of the day. I’ve got to husband my energy if I’m going to get through this week in one piece. I promise not to vanish altogether, though–there’s lots of stuff about which I want to write.

UPDATE: I spoke a little too soon–I’m definitely out of order. Looks like a spring cold (at best). Headed for bed, will see you all later.

“No writer ever truly succeeds. The disparity between the work conceived and the work completed is always too great and the writer merely achieves an acceptable level of failure.”

Phillip Caputo, A Rumor of War

Hello, it’s me. I hope and plan to be back blogging in earnest later this week or right after Memorial Day, I really do. For now, while I scramble–and try to recover from last night’s wonderfully crushing “Sopranos” ep–here are a few interesting elsewheres to wander:

– In the NY Observer, Hilton Kramer writes about Constable’s Skies, the gallery show that Terry so enjoyed–heartless coblogger!–a couple of weeks ago. Here’s Kramer:

It’s another remarkable feature of the “skying” paintings that, from our historical perspective, so many of them seem to have anticipated the pictorial syntax and emotional tenor of 20th-century Abstract Expressionist painting. They were not, of course, conceived as abstract paintings, yet to our 21st-century eyes, they often bear such a close resemblance to certain modalities of painterly abstraction that it’s sometimes difficult to “see” them as scrupulously faithful pictures of the natural world. My guess is that they will be an inspiration for our painters for a long time to come.

As Terry guessed, I am going to miss this show, which closes all too soon. I feel relatively all right about it, however. A few years ago on a putative research trip to London, I spent almost all my time looking for Constables, and found the mother lode of sky paintings in an outer reach of the vast Victoria & Albert Museum from which I was able to find my way back by means of a trail of bread crumbs. Someday, when time allows, I’ll write here about why I heretically persist in preferring Constable to Turner.

– Meanwhile, in The New Republic, Ruth Franklin offers a measured assessment of The Believer magazine:

The magazine expresses an enthusiasm for books that most other publications too often either bury or take for granted. This enthusiasm, it must be said, isn’t a valid end in itself; it’s also anti-intellectual, despite the ongoing search for the perfect syllabus. What The Believer offers is essentially a book club, and no one goes to a book club to talk seriously about books. It’s a gathering for fans, and while there’s nothing edifying about fandom, there are worse things than books to be a fan of.

– Old news by now, but good enough that I don’t care, is James Wood’s London Review of Books autopsy of current standard-issue academic lit crit (doubling as a review of Randall Stevenson’s Oxford English Literary History, Vol. XII: 1960-2000). No wonder it isn’t breathing: it’s filled with sawdust.

Stevenson never reflects on a writer’s aesthetic intentions, but this may be a blessing in disguise, for in those rare moments when he considers intention at all, he is crudely materialist. An interesting discussion about the way short stories, in this period, ceded ground to novels, and novels in turn became more like short stories, yields to a mystifying generalisation about novels becoming shorter: “Declining economic confidence among publishers, and dwindling stamina or leisure time among readers, encouraged some novelists almost to usurp the short story’s usual dimensions. When Ian McEwan moved on from short-story writing, it was to produce a first ‘novel’, The Cement Garden (1978), not much in excess of one hundred pages.” Ah, so that is why McEwan’s novels are so short. What layers of evasion are hidden in that careful verb “encouraged”.

I like Wood all the time, but this essay made me do a little dance.