Nathaniel Mary Quinn, “Not Far From Home; Still Far Away,” on view at Gagosian, presents an exploration of Quinn’s relationships in fourteen intense portraits, created in a range of media that includes oil paint, gouache, charcoal, oil stick and pastel. Distortion is the keynote of Quinn’s inner-based perception, expressed in a vision that transforms the artist, his friends and his female subject, apparently his mother. He disregards visually perceivable features, boldly executing truncated, layered, re-imagined, and spliced images that exude a sense of deep emotional anguish. Quinn’s impeccable inventive paintings compare with the visceral images Francis Bacon created in his portraits, and Picasso’s Synthetic Cubist women.
Just when you think Shakespeare might be too Old School for the 21st century, headlines pop up to remind us that WS was pretty clever about the constants of human behavior. ABC Network worked itself into a tizzy recently when the two anchors of “GMA3”, its afternoon spinoff of “Good Morning America,” were revealed to be romantically involved. GASP! The tabloids and social media had such a hot time revealing all that the president of ABC News “temporarily removed” the anchors from the air because their romance had “become a distraction.”
“You Will Get Sick,” currently playing Off Broadway at the Laura Pels Theatre here in NYC through Sunday, December 11 is the most riveting, and mind-stretching play that I have seen this season. The reason being, is that you really have to pay close attention to know where you are at any given moment, as there are more twists and turns then a frog in a blender. Blink and you are in another world.
What is it to become a word? To become or even create an emotion that doesn’t exist…at least not yet. How much power does the artist have to convince and make believe? The awesome power to make one believe. How much potential does movement theatre actually have? In this world? Now. These questions have been the driving force in writing this piece – Playwright Bridgette Loriaux
Every once in a while, a little-known theater company, usually from a distant city, mounts an amazing ground-breaking theatrical production, brings it to New York City for a limited run, and then returns to their home base leaving us all lusting for more.
The Art Gallery of Stanford in Washington, D.C., is currently hosting a photographic exhibition aptly named “The Unexpected Smile, 2022: Selected Photographs of Dario Zucchi.” Stanford Gallery Director Adrienne M. Jameson writes in the catalogue’s Preface, “Imagine our good fortune in encountering Dario Zucchi’s work at the precise moment we needed to experience it! His photographs not only draw us back into the museum after a seemingly endless hiatus, but also enable us to revel in what makes an afternoon in a gallery distinctive, the intertwining of art and viewer.” (Catalogue, 4)
I seem to remember reading, in all of the hoopla surrounding the Baryshnikov Art Center’s Production of Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, somebody saying “Unlike anything that you ever saw before.” This talking head could also have said, as audiences were soon to find out, that this production, adapted, created, reimagined, and directed by Kiev born Igor Golyak, and starring Mikhail Baryshnikov is a work of genius. Obviously, the great Chekov is embedded deeply in their bones.
Titled “The Orchard,” Golyak’s two-version production (both live and virtual), presented as a limited run, opened on June 16 and closed on July 3rd. Way too soon if you ask me. Hopefully, it will be brought back somehow, somewhere by a theater-loving angel.
To ensure that the audience’s eyes and ears were glued to the stage throughout, director Golyak cleverly chose to use what some critics deemed the star of the play, an imposing vertical 12-foot metal crane-like arm placed center stage on an all-blue set (Anna Fedora). It serves coffee, sweeps the floor, acts as a tree, a person, a bookcase, a place to hide from danger, and a beeping camera that films the play’s goings on. More importantly, it serves to direct our eyes to the play’s imminent action.
Darya Denisova, Jessica Hecht, Juliet Brett, Mark. Photo: Maria Baranova.
Brilliantly encasing the entire production is Carol Rocamora’s translation of Chekov’s last play, The Cherry Orchard (1904). Though most of the play’s original language was kept, a few scenes, though barely noticeable, were cut and rearranged. Eliminated was Dunyasha. the maid, and her would-be lover. Added to the play’s mix, quite effectively was a giant stage-covering scrim which intermittently featured on its surface live text, video, and close-ups of the actors in real time. Equally absorbing were several speeches delivered in ALS sign language, as well as in French, Russian, and German. Also, slipped into the play’s text, adding a touch of twenty-first century was mention of the Ukrainian cities of Mariupol and Kharkiv.
Trofimov played by John McGinty takes center stage in The Orchard. Photo: Maria Baranova
Another beguiling addition to the stage was a robotic silver metal dog that could be seen playfully scampering about the stage. Able to do tricks, as well as play dead, it was an audience favorite. Aside from Firs’ (Baryshnikov), the long-time estate’s keeper appearing to open up the house, the play truly begins with the arrival of Lyobov Andreevna Ranevskaya (Jessica Hecht) to the family’s estate in the Russian countryside. Ranevskaya had run off to Paris with her lover to escape the grief she felt over the loss of her young son. And now she is back.
Following in her fashionable entrance, we meet her brother Gaev (Mark Nelson), her adopted daughter Varya (Elise Kibble), her natural daughter Anya (Juliet Brett), and their servants. They are there to try and save the beloved home and cherry orchard from being auctioned off due to an unpaid mortgage. Rounding out the cast, each with their own intricate story which links them closely to the family, is Darya (Charlotta Ivanova, also Golyak’s wife), Pyotr (John McGinty, hearing- challenged in real life), a frightening Russian-speaking, Passerby (Llia Volak) in black military dress, another Golyak nod to the ongoing Ukrainian war, and Lopakhin (Nael Nacer), the now rich, former peasant who ends up buying the Orchard.
L to R – Darya Denisova, Nael Nacer, Jessica Hecht, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Mark Nelson. Photo:Maria Baranova
Lopakhin’s idea to save the orchard which unfortunately falls on deaf ears, is to turn the estate into a tourist attraction by creating rent-paying summer houses on the property. We realize that times are a-changing – the Russian revolution of 1917 which marked the end of the Romanov dynasty is only 11 years away – when Lopakhin gloats, after he buys the estate that he and his father were never allowed into the family’s home. His only regret is that the beautiful Ranevskaya does not come along with his purchase of the estate.
The virtual live production, with the same 2 hour running time, features the play’s most dramatic scenes, punctuated by performances by Baryshnikov as Anton Chekov, and Hecht as his wife and mistress. Here the viewer follows Chekov into a virtual replica of the Baryshnikov Arts Center building where we could enter various rooms where we hear both Chekhov speaking in Russian with subtitles, and his wife and mistress, often quoting letters, talking about their lives.
L to R – Darya Denisova, Nael Nacer, Mark Nelson, Elise Kibler, Jessica Hecht, John McGinty, Juliet Brett, Mikhail Baryshnikov. Photo: Pavel Antonov.
Happening at the same time we get to see the audience sitting in the theater, some who are participating in the estate’s sale, flashed on the scrim. The virtual performance ends outside the now sold arts center with Baryshnikov, this time as Firs, slowly walking away with his belongings. In the live theatre production, after everybody leaves, and Firs forgotten by the family he has served all his life is alone. Firs, hearing the sounds of the cherry orchard’s trees being chopped down in the background just before everything vanishes, he sadly comments to himself that, “Life has slipped by as though I hadn’t lived.”
For those lucky enough to catch either version of the play, both magnified by an army of design wizards and technical geniuses, from Scenic Design (Anna Fedorova), Costume Design (Oana Botez), Lighting Design (Yuki Nakase Link), Projection Design (Alex Basco Koch), Sound Design (Tei Blow), Robotic Design (Tom Sepe), Emerging Technology design (Adam Paikowsky). Interactivity Design (Anna Hrustaleva), to a ASL sign language expert (Alexey Prosvirnin), and a clowning coach (Alita West), the experience, hypnotic to say the least, was not unlike watching a giant aquarium filled with a frenzy of tropical fish. This, primarily due to the effect of the giant scrim which ironically both distanced ourselves, as well as brought us a lot closer to the play’s action.
By Edward Rubin, Senior Contributing Editor
Note: Masks required in building and theatre, along with proof of a vaccination, and a valid government issued photo ID.
Technical: Scenic Design: Anna Fedora, Costume Design: Oana Botez, Lighting Design: Yuki Nakase Link, Projection Design: Alex Basco Koch, Sound Design: Tei Blow, Clowning Coach: Aelita West, Music Composition: Jakov Jakoulov, Emerging Technologies: Adam Paikowsky, Robotics Design: Tom Sepe, Hair/Makeup: Anna Hrustaleva, Interactivity Design: Alexander Huh, Virtual Sound Design: Alexey Prosvirnin, Director of ASL: Seth Gore, Director of Photography: Leanna Keyes, Production Manager: Jason Reis, Associate Producer Virtual: Zachary Meicher-Buzzi, Production Stage Manager: Jennifer Rogers
The Orchard conceived, adapted, directed, and reimaged by Igor Golyak and based on Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard as translated by Carol Rocamora, opened on Thursday, May 16, 2022 for a limited run through Sunday 3rd at the Baryshnikov Arts Center at 459 275 West 37th Street in Manhattan. Running time is just under 2 hours with no intermission. For more info or to buy tickets call 617-942- 0022 x 1 or log on www.theorchardoffbroadway.com
The Romare Bearden Foundation in New York organized the traveling exhibition Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary currently on view at the Frick Museum in Pittsburgh. For over fifty years Bearden portrayed and commemorated in his art the life that surrounded him. New York, Charlotte, NC [where he was born] and Pittsburgh were the cities of Bearden’s childhood and each made an indelible impression on him that influenced his art for decades. He benefited from living in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance. Bearden’s family’s apartment on West 131st Street in Harlem was a hub where such cultural giants as W. E. B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and Countee Cullen, as well as artists Aaron Douglas and Charles Alston, and jazz musicians Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, and Andy Razaf frequently gathered. As an adolescent Bearden became immersed in jazz and blues—this was convenient given his home was only a few blocks from The Lincoln Theatre, Savoy Ballroom and other music venues.
The Frick Art Museum, part of the Frick Art & Historical Center at “Clayton” in the Point Breeze neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
What is distinct to the Frick’s presentation is Bearden’s connection to Pittsburgh. Melanie Groves, curator of the Frick’s presentation of this exhibition, expressed, “The opportunity to present Romare Bearden: Artist as Activist and Visionary, not far from where the artist first took up drawing in his early years, and in a city that inspired and informed much of his work, is an honor for the Frick.” In 1925, he moved to Pittsburgh to live with his maternal grandmother and graduated from Peabody High School in 1929. She operated a boarding house that provided rooms for black steel mill workers, many of whom had recently migrated from the South. Seeing and hearing the workers stories impacted Bearden perspective about the life of these workingmen, especially their dissatisfaction with working conditions and pervasive racial discrimination. Moreover Bearden’s artistic interests were developed in Pittsburgh when his boyhood friend, Eugene Bailey, taught him how to draw; though his interest in art waned for a while after Bailey’s premature death. Another connection of Bearden to Pittsburgh is an expansive tile mural bursting with color, “Pittsburgh Recollections” that he created it in 1984 for the original Gateway Center T station and reinstalled in 2012 the Gateway Center light-rail station downtown. It was water damaged in 2011 however was saved after its estimated worth was $15 million. A collage of this mural is on view at the Frick.
Although he graduated from New York University in 1935 with a B.S. degree in science (with thoughts of going on to medical school) Bearden persisted drawing as a cartoonist for the university’s magazine Medley, depictinghumor from the 1930’sandmade editorial drawings for the Saturday Evening Post as well as for the Baltimore Afro-American.
Romare Bearden, in his army uniform, a photograph taken by Carl Van Vechten, 1944
In 1935 he decided to become a visual artist after meeting a group of people who later founded the Harlem Artists Guild. African-American artists including Augusta Savage, Charles Alston, Elba Lightfoot, Louise E. Jefferson and Arthur Schomburg created the organization. By 1936 Bearden was a member of the 306 Group, named after the studio lofts at 306 West 141st Street, where colleagues frequently met to share ideas. Additionally Bearden enrolled at the Art Students League and it was here that he studied under the German artist George Grosz, known for his caricatural drawings and biting paintings of Berlin life in the 1920s. Grosz played a significant in Bearden’s artistic growth, introducing him to the works of Daumier, Goya, Breughel, and Köllwitz and such old masters as Ingres, Dürer, Holbein, and Poussin.
After his military service in theUS Army during WWII, Bearden decided to go to Paris in 1950 to study philosophy at the Sorbonne on the G.I. Bill. In the ‘City of Light’ Bearden met Georges Braque, Constantin Brâncu?i and other French and American artists and writers. Unsurprisingly, he spent time studying works in museums and galleries as well as travelling to Nice, Florence, Rome, and Venice.
It is this multifaceted exposure to the past that formed the core of Bearden’s understanding about the formal qualities of art in addition to how to meld his unique message into the rich vibrant paintings, drawings, collages, and photomontages where he beatified Afro-American experience in the United States.
The Frick exhibition begins with Bearden’s early work from the 1930s including the editorial cartoons previously mentioned as well as a painting titled “Soup Kitchen”, and several pieces of his commercial work. In these works one can see his early ability as a draftsman and a compassion for politics, race and social injustice.
A large section of this show titled Visualizing the African American Landscape highlights Bearden’s endeavors to portray a layered image of Black America, interconnected by social history, ritual, and a pursuit of justice. Bearden produced some of his largest and most innovative works between 1967 and 1969 though he continued to experiment formally and to engage in social issues throughout his career. Although many refer to his art as collages, Romare Bearden insisted his works were “paintings, not collages”, because he used the techniques and materials of collage to create the rhythms, surfaces, tones, and moods associated with painting. The civil rights movement also influenced his art prompting him to become more representational and socially conscious. Even though his collage work evinces inspiration from abstract art, it also displays traces of African American enslaved crafts, especially patchwork quilts, and the use of found materials.
“Throughout many of the pieces Bearden’s knowledge of Cubism is apparent. This is evident in his use of flattened space and angular forms with areas of bright color framed by black outline.”
Memories of Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, abound in his art confirming Bearden’s roots in the rural South. Inspired by improvisational jazz music, Bearden started creating collages in 1964 depicting African-American life in the rural South and Harlem. Bearden’s piece “The Piano Lesson”, 1983 inspired August Wilson’sPulitzer Prize-winning play, “The Piano Lesson”. Also from this series is Bearden’s lithograph “Homage to Mary Lou”(The Piano Lesson), 1984 in which he depicts a music teacher and her student in a Southern parlor. He dedicated this image to Williams a great jazz pianist, who, like Bearden, moved from the South to Pittsburgh. Both work are similar in color, composition and structure and were inspired by two Henri Matisse paintings “The Piano Lesson” (1916) and “The Music Lesson” (1917).
Another section titled Bearden and Women depicts strong images of women, who he portrays as healers, protectors, and goddesses. Black Women throughout the ages have played a vital role in the fight to cure many social injustices in American society. This includes the abolition of slavery; voting rights; education for all and the end of segregation. Resilient women in his life undoubtedly inspired Bearden. “Falling Star,” 1980 a vivid colorful image is an exceptional lithograph layered with meaning. Perhaps Bearden was inspired by John Donne’s poem, “To Catch a Falling Star” implies the impossibility of finding a truly good woman. The falling star against the vibrant blue sky outside the window may perhaps signify such a woman. A tall black woman, dressed in colorful attire confidently stands while sipping tea. She fills a large portion of this composition yet appears oblivious to the scene outside her window. Another striking work in this section is “The Woman”, 1985; collage and pigment on board. The frontal portrayal of a hefty, anonymous woman fills the frame in this colorful work. The strong woman is engaged in her own thoughts somewhat akin to Mary Cassatt’s portrayal of her mother, “Reading Le Figaro”. Throughout many of the pieces Bearden’s knowledge of Cubism is apparent. This is evident in his use of flattened space and angular forms with areas of bright color framed by black outline.
The final segment of this exhibition, “Li’l Dan: the drummer boy, A Civil War Story”, contains collages and watercolors from the only children’s book Romare Bearden illustrated and wrote. It is believed he wrote the manuscript and made the illustrations some time in the 1970s although, it was never printed. Simon & Schuster published the manuscript in 2003 along with the original paintings and collages that were found among Bearden’s papers. Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote the introduction. It is a memorable tale about a slave boy who loved to play his drum and used his music to save a company of Union soldiers. According to Robin Kelly who was married to Bearden’s niece, “At the time, there were a slew of books on African American history, an increasing number written for children. Bearden was hardly joining the bandwagon, but he must have seen a need for a book that resists the story of how oppressed we were under slavery but rather focused on how important African Americans were in bringing liberty and freedom to the entire country. The fact that black music and black people, in this sweet tale, quite literally save America, is precisely one of those metaphors that have driven much of his visual art.” The imagery in this historical fiction illustrates Bearden’s acute talent as an illustrator who tells a compelling story filled with compassion and optimism.
This exhibition provides viewers with only the tip of the iceberg of Romare Bearden’s in-depth oeuvre. He was immensely prolific yet not recognized as a major American artist because the art world in the United States maintained the same prejudices and segregation of society. Fortunately “the times they are a’ changin” for Afro-American artists as more people recognize the major contributions these artists have made. Moreover Sam Gilliam, a pioneering abstractionist, who has made work for six decades is finally getting the respect and exposure that is also long overdue. Artists as Bearden and Sam Gilliam are dissimilar from many black artists today who putsocialjusticeideology above their final art product. The earlier Afro-American artists had an ability to captivate and experiment with the cultural history that interested and shaped them. Jed Perl has written, “The erosion of art’s imaginative ground, often blamed on demagogues of the left and the right, is taking place in the very heart of the liberal, educated, cultivated audience—the audience that arts professionals always imagined they could count on. The whole question is so painful and so difficult that I have frankly hesitated to tackle it. It is relatively easy to point to the deformations of art at the hands of politically correct left-wingers and cheap-shot moralists on the right, as the late Robert Hughes did in the fast-paced, witty series of lectures that he published as Culture of Complaint in 1993…The challenge for everybody who is involved with the arts—with opera, dance, and theater companies, museums, symphony orchestras, newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses—is how to make the case for the arts without condemning the arts to the hyphenated existence that violates their freestanding significance.”
Playwright’s Note: Between the years 1848 and 1851 over four thousand Irish females took passage on ships from Ireland to Australia under the Orphan Emigration Scheme, established by Earl Grey. This action had the effect of relieving many of the workhouses and poorhouses of Ireland (already full to the brim with people seeking respite from the ravages of the ‘Great Famine’), and of providing ‘new blood’ for the Colonies – wives, servants, farm-workers. The women who left were more generally known as ‘orphan girls’, though many were neither orphans or, strictly speaking, girls. The most notorious and riotous amongst these – both in transit and on arrival in Australia – were known as the Belfast girls.
Centrally-located across from the White House, the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery (part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum) is the nation’s flagship museum of American craft and decorative arts. Opened in 1972, the museum is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year by showcasing widely-diverse perspectives of craft and design with the exhibition THIS PRESENT MOMENT: CRAFTING A BETTER WORLD. The museum launched an acquisitions campaign in 2020 to enlarge the number of Black, Latinx, LGBTQ+, Indigenous, and women artists represented in its permanent collection. More than 200 craft objects were collected, and over 130 of these newly-acquired works are among the 171 artworks on display in THIS PRESENT MOMENT. Nora Atkinson, the Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator-in-Charge for the Renwick helped organize the exhibition with Mary Savig, the Lloyd Herman Curator of Craft, and Anya Montiel, curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian.
Another Picasso exhibition? Yes, he was brilliant and there are new generations waiting to discover his significance—but is there really anything new to say? The Phillips Collection in Washington, DC, and the Art Gallery of Ontario think there is, and have co-curated a new exhibition whose ambitious purpose is revelation. To achieve this goal, PICASSO: PAINTING THE BLUE PERIOD showcases how X-Ray imaging reveals young Picasso’s emergence as a distinctive painter in his early career in Paris and Barcelona. There is always room for new ideas in art history, and Phillips Head of Conservation Elizabeth Steele believes that since much conservation work is done behind the scenes, sharing their work with the public “is a unique chance to spotlight the science of preserving art.”
