Fortune’s Pawn

Pawn just read this over at the Gray Lady:

Kristen Stewart, the 19-year-old co-star of the “Twilight” blockbusters, plays a New Orleans stripper in “Welcome to the Rileys,” which also stars James Gandolfini as a damaged businessman. Mr. Cooper noted that Ms. Stewart also has a noncompetition entry: in “The Runaways,” directed by Floria Sigismondi, Ms. Stewart plays a young Joan Jett.
Sundance, With a New Leader, Hones Its Indy Edge – NYTimes.com

Pawn has a warm place in his heart for Ms Jett.  Not only for her great contributions to Rock and Roll music, but for her stand up performance back in Iowa during the 2004 Presidential campaign.  As I journaled then…

Jeneane Garofalo is in town, as is Joan Jett. They are doing a show, kind of an Iowa Perfect Storm USO show to thank and bolster the Dean faithful. Seems that just one floor up is a meeting of the Young Republican’s Caucus Organizing Committee. You have to ask yourself if the facility scheduler had thought this through or not. Anyway, once the YRs find out that the Dean people are downstairs they take a vote of the organizing committee and have a unanimous vote of seven yeas (I’m not making this up, the head of the organizing committee boasted about it on TV) to go down to the Dean rally and do what they can to disrupt it!

Jeneane Garofalo addresses the crowd (photo courtesy RedPeg.com)

This is unreal, these guys have taken compassionate conservatism to a whole new level! They head down to the rally, armed with Bush/Cheney campaign signs (so there is no doubt who to blame…) and start trying to inspire a melee. The Dean folks simply block the B/C signs with their own, not a tough task given the numbers involved. There is a large contingent of Planned Parenthood folks and “Stand Up for Choice” there as well, which further skews the balance of power.

No one is taking the bait, however, no one is rising to fight, nor do anything other than try to block the B/C signs. Then, Joan Jett starts to play the National Anthem. This is apparently too much patriotism for the YRs and much like the effect of Slim Whitman music on the Martians in Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks, their heads simply start to explode.

Well, okay, not exactly, but it’s almost the same thing. One of the more compassionate conservatives decides to give Ms Jett a really good shove, while she is playing. Our portly protector of family values seemed to have misjudged his target, however, as Joan (about one third this guys size, and more than twice his age) shrugs off his shove and then comes back swinging. She manages to land a few good ones before Dean people separate the two.

Joan Jett immediately after the altercation (photo courtesy RedPeg.com)

This is all captured by several TV cameras, including that of Joe Jensen, the guy who trained us on Friday. This is a lead story on all of the local news. You just can’t make this stuff up!

Okay then, the gloves are off in the Republican camp at least.

I haven’t rushed out to see the Twilight films, but I can’t wait to see Miss Stewart in The Runaways.

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I just posted this review on the New York Times website in response to A. O. Scott’s review

I saw this film at the recently concluded Milwaukee Film Festival, and found it one of the best movies of the festival.  It is quite violent, but as A. O. Scott notes, that violence is most operatic in presentation.

While it is easy to leap to comparisons to “Clockwork Orange,” “Bronson” aspires both to much less and in some ways more.  I found myself comparing it as much to “Chicago” and some of Davind Lynch’s oeuvre.

While director Refn romanticizes, to some degree, the violence of his subject, “The Most Famous Criminal in England,” he does not apologize for him or ever ask us to forgive him.  He lets us, to the extent we wish, view the world as Michael Peterson (later renaming himself as Charles Bronson, after the American cinema star) sees it.  Through the spectacle of the music-hall scenes we are able to experience the bizarre vision Peterson has of his own place in the world.  We witness as he progresses from the “most violent” criminal in his prison, to the most violent in England, to the “most famous” criminal in “Her Majesty’s Pleasure,” and it is with relish that Peterson climbs these imagined rungs on his career ladder.

Ultimately Peterson, played by Tom Hardy, envisions himself as a performer, with a perceived audience comprised of the nation, even though it is really just him, and his jailers, who really see what he has become.

The asterisk?  Do not see this film if you cannot stomach the highly stylized violence.  If “Kill Bill” and its cartoonish violence shocked you, then this will do worse.  If you can get past the shocking violence, you will find a gem of a performance by Hardy and a beautifully crafted film from Refn.

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This evening Pawn found himself wandering over to The Jazz Estate on Milwaukee’s East Side for a little respite of delightful music.  The bookings read “Jeanne Woodall w/ The Jim Poalo Trio”  I have never heard them, but what the hell.

On the walk over the nice man sitting outside Beans & Barley says, “Hey white nigger!”  It’s always pleasant when strangers take it upon themselves to break the ice with a friendly greeting.

At the club, $5 cover paid, I settle into a seat at the bar and crack open my New Yorker under the dim green bulb for a little read whilst I await the trio.  The night unfolds with a wonderful journey through the mid-century songbook of American jazz.  Ms. Woodall favors Sarah Vaugn with some lovely renditions of old standards.  The pianist is inspired, Poalo on bass is steady and smooth.  Krause on drums is just the right prescription.

The arab in the corner nurses his Beck’s and speaks in resonant tones.  The hipster on the end works his Guiness and worries his mustache.  The black trombonist in the middle, his torso a short cubic yard of flesh, sipping a Cosmopolitan, the stem of the Martini glass impossibly small in his hefty mitt, mediates between them.

After two sets I strolled back home, towards Jupitor as he marches across the sky, my appetite for jazz sated for one night.  I’ll be back again soon.  I had forgotten how much I love this club.

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Last night found Pawn and escort at the premier performance of Youngblood Theatre’s inaugural season: David’s Redhaired Death. The script, by Sherry Kramer, is a train wreck. It is full of forward references, flashbacks, speeches to the audience, and other atypical theatrical conceits. The story has barely any narrative to it, but rather we in the audience are given stuttering glimpses into another train wreck; the love affair between two redheads, Jean (Tess Cinpinski) and Marilyn(Jazmin Vollmar).

Action begins at an open mic night. Jean takes the stage and begins the first of many speeches to the audience.   Next comes a rather twee bit about the sisterhood of read haired women and their supposedly extraordinary qualities.  This provides a thread which weaves in and out of a budding relationship between Jean and Marilyn, her paramour. David’s Redhaired Death is a production starved for silences, nowhere more than in this first third of the one-act.  Jean and Marilyn hurtle forward (and sometimes back) propelled by the fever pitch of their dialog and monologues.   You may find yourself dazzled by the rapid fire dialog, Pawn found himself numbed.

The best parts of a drama are often found in those spaces between and around the words.  We are given no such room here, neither are the actors.   They seem at times to strain against the sheer volume of text through which they must chew in any given scene.  But just as the audience is given little or no time to reflect upon the text, the characters at times seem to lack reflection as sentence after sentence spring forth from them and fall, unconsidered, onto the stage floor.

The final third of the show does bring us a moment or two of pause, as well as one truly moving scene between Jean and Marilyn.  Cinpinski and Vollmar shine in this part of the show, and the spare setting melts away from our vision as the intensity of the acting increases.  Jean’s exit speech in the penultimate scene was quite nearly profound.  Had she been allowed to slump down into one of the empty seats, taken a moment and found her motivation for continuing after the psychic body-blows she has just taken (and dealt out) this whole scene could have gone a long way towards reclaiming an otherwise problematic effort.

One hopes Youngblood continue their work, but that they consider more carefully which shows to produce and how frantically they stage them.  This production  disappoints; a defter hand could have tamed this unruly script and presented us the heart hammering story buried within it, without hammering our heads in the process.  This kind of herky-jerky forwards/backwards, repetitious, staccato, reflexive script can be rendered into a moving theatrical experience, as Pawn found with Simple 8’s production of Monsters at Arcola Theatre back in May, but not like this.

In retrospect, given some more time to consider both the script and the performance, I have tamed some of my earlier comments.  I do look forward to seeing the rest of Youngblood’s season.  If nothing else I am impressed by the sheer audacity of their repertory effort.  Also, the more I think about it, and despite its complexity, I really did like the script for DRD.  The problems in the production made that hard to appreciate at first blush.

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Any visitor to Trafalgar Square cannot help but notice the four large plinth or platforms which mark the corners of the square.  Erected in the mid nineteenth century, these hold statuary of the lion and Generals type.  All but one, that is.  The plinth in the northwest corner, directly in front of the National Galleries stands empty, or has for most of its existence.

A couple of years ago a contest was staged which solicited ideas for what to put on the fourth plinth.  This is really rather difficult at this stage, as London have gotten quite used to it being empty.  Many responses to the challenge were received, and a select group of these have been getting their day, as it were, for the past year.  When Pawn visited Trafalgar this past May there was a sort of post-modern deconstructivist piece up there, involving metal and perspex and some lime green stuff.  Rather distasteful if you ask me.

Anthony Gormley has a different idea.  His piece, One & Other invites regular folk to mount the plinth, assisted by a cherry-picker, for an hour each, 24 hours a day, for 100 days.  These 2400 people were selected by lot, and within reason are allowed to do what they wish with their time on the plinth.

Jill Gatcum, above, made an eloquent gesture with a baloon release.  She had solicited 60 of her friends and family members to each make a donation to charity which they would not normally have done.  She then assembled 60 helium baloons, each bearing a card comemorating her friend’s donation and soliciting whomever eventually found the baloon to similarly make a donation they would not otherwise have made.  During her hour up on the plinth, cheered on by her friends and family below, Jill released one baloon every minute, and then came back down to earth.

The Independent Online have published a photo gallery celebrating the begining of this audacious project.  Check it out.

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A trip to the Racine Art Museum last night provided insight into the monumental work required to exhibit monumental work.  In this case the program was the first 2009 installment of “Meet Me on the Patio,” a summer series of members and visitors events.  The subject of the program last night was Living Large – backstage at RAM, which focused, through the compelling tour discussion of David Zaleski, on the issues and labors involved with producing an exhibit like Bigger, Better More: The Art of Viola Frey, currently on display in RAM’s gallery 3.

Zaleski’s talk provided wonderful insight into the suffering of a curatorial assistant and great enlightenment as to the procedures, methods, and issues involved in dealing with any large exhibit, but especially in dealing with an exhibit of the large.  Some of Frey’s pieces are so large they may require 30 or 40 or more crates just to move.  Several semi-trailers were involved with this show, not to mention the flights back and forth for the specialists involved, the couriers, etc.

All in all a lovely evening at RAM|Art.  Programs like this are an invaluable part of the mission of any art museum, but especialy one which, like RAM, focuses on crafts and their more accessible nature.  It also engenders thoughtfulness on the part of the casual visitor when they know more of what goes on behind the scenes to get great art in front of them.

Hats off to RAM|Art and to David Zaleski for his great talk.

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Don’t have time for a long post, but just wanted to fill in the gaps of the last few days.  Went shopping with L during the day, then to the Ceremony Of The Keys at Tower of London Tuesday night with L and her brother and sister in-law.  Lovely time.  Some pictures here.

Yesterday had work to do, but then got together with A for another visit to the St. Pancras Church Crypt Gallery, and then a lovely long stroll through Regent’s Park where A played with the digital SLR and took gobs of photos of the flower gardens.  I took plenty as well.  They’re all here, not sufficiently edited for A’s taste, but that’s life.  I’ll get around to editing when I get back home.

Had nice dinner at Base, on Baker street, and then walked back east on Marylebone Road/Euston Road, viewing public art and public spaces along the way, to the British Library where we said our farewells.  It’s always nice to make a new friend while travelling.

This morning meant packing and tidying up, and then some errands.  First back to get some shots of some of the places A and I went last night, to get better shots in the daylight.  Then down to St. Pans Crypt again to settle the purchase of a print by Emma Gregory

Emma Gregory - Wish You Were Here (2008)

and a sculpture by Claire Plamfreyman.  There are some shots of Claire with her lovely piece, Short Story: Volume One, 2009 in today’s gallery here.

Clair Palfreyman with her piece Short Story: Volume One (2009)

Short Story: Volume One (2009)

Now off to meet L for some shopping at Harrod’s.  I’ve never been there.  Later dinner with L and her sibs, and a visit to Embassy Row to see the fancy homes.

Tomorrow I leave my Original Home Town, and my new friends, A and T & J behind again, hopefully not for too long this time.  I hope to be back in autumn…

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Nothing like a little light theatre to cap off an exceptional day of art in London.  Well, light theatre is not what the Old Vic had in store for L and I last night.  The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov is currently in repertory with The Winter’s Tale by Shakespeare as part of The Bridge Project put together by Sam Mendes, director, and Kevin Spacey, Artistic Director of The Old Vic, along with Brooklyn Academy of Music and Neal Street Productions.

The large international cast includes people Americans would find familiar, such as Ethan Hawke and Rebecca Hall, as well as those familiar to Brits, such as Simon Russell Beale and Sinéad Cusack.

The script, in a new version by Tom Stoppard, is accessible and fluid.  The acting is superb and top notch.  The costumes, by Catherine Zuber were an absolute delight.  Paul Pyant’s lighting lovely.  Anthony Ward’s set, however, left me cold.  The house at The Cherry Orchard, where all of the action takes place, is as much a character in the play as anyone on stage, and yet in Ward’s set it is cold and distant.  Why, I find myself wondering, are these people so in love with this house?  I would be glad to be done with it.  Oh well, write it off to the constraints of repertory, I suppose.

It was a brilliant night at the theatre, in any event, and well worth the price of admission.  We had tenth row seats, which were a great vantage point.

I must mention the creative use of an “Aluminium Harp” by the musical team.  This instrument is basically a selection of aluminium rods of varied length and is played by the harpist sliding their resined finger tips up and down along the lengh of the rods.  This produces a ghostly continuous tone, used to great effect within the soundscape of the production.

Homeward after the show, stopped for a quick pint at the Lord John Russell before last call.

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A gallery favourite of mine is the Wellcome Collection. They have opened some new galleries and expanded others. Last year featured an extensive exhibition on the science and social norms of sleep. This year brings us madness, specifically Madness & Modernity: Mental illness and the visual arts in Vienna 1900 as well as Bobby Baker’s Diary Drawings: Mental illness and me, 1997-2008.

Madness & Modernity examines the role that mental illness had in the arts and architecture associated with the Secessionist movement in Austrian arts arising in Vienna at the turn of the last century.  I really took to this exhibit, which included some wonderful examples of the architecture of Otto Wagner, specifically St. Leopold’s Church:

The final church was not quite to this spec, but quite impressive.

Also featured were some of the furniture, fixtures, equipment and textiles.  I love this textile by Joseph Hoffman, called Sehnsocht or “Longing”

Here is some of the therapy equipment:

There is also a large selection of artwork by patients and of patients, in The Pathological Artist and The Pathological Patron sections of the exhibit.  Here is a sample, Portrait of Lotte Franzos by Oskar Kokoschka:

Next door is the Bobby Baker diary drawings, and they are something else!  This is an exhibit that X would have loved to see, and I wish they had an exhibit catalogue that I could bring back, but alas there is none.

Bobby Baker is a performance artist, and quite a successful one.  Over about a decade, from 1997 to 2008, however, she battled mental illness.  During this time she filled dozens of sketch books with daily drawings and paintings as a sort of therapy.  About one or two hundred of these are on display in this exhibit, and they provide a chilling and yet affirming window into the soul of someone sick.  Here is a small sample.  I really recommend checking out the rest of the images online:

Ta!

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“The Best Art Exhibition in London” is what I enthusiastically wrote in the guest register at Tales From The Electric Forest in the Saint Pancras Crypt Gallery. On display only until May 31^st, this is a must see exhibit for anyone within the 30 boroughs. Please check out the website as well.

I visited St. Pan’s crypt last year and quite enjoyed both the space and the art. Black Apple and Cactus Productions have teamed up with 15 artists to present an exhibition of painting, photography, sculpture, mixed media, prints, etc. which embrace and embellish the special venue the crypt provides.

I knew from the first, when I saw one of Clare Palfreyman’s pieces in a small alcove in the crypt entryway

I next encountered the works of sisters Claire Benson and Amy Nightingale:

“These winged spirits seize the jewellery of human adulteresses, and leave their prizes in the bedrooms of those who have been deceived” says a small plaque. We see several more of the sisters mythical beings trapped under glass throughout the crypt. Check out their website.

There are large grey plants growing out of the rubble in another small alcove in the crypt entry, sculpture by Lizzie Cannon which looks for all the world like it is, or recently was, a living plant.

Other pieces by her are spread about the exhibit space.

Emma Gregory offers up a selection of screen prints including Wish You Were Here

Katharine Fry produced a live performance for the opening, which I unfortunately missed, but left behind a mystery of flower petals graffiti and a birdcage in one of the inner crypt chambers. The graffiti, especially, caught my eye. On each of the three walls of the small central chamber the same phrase would be repeatedly scrawled. One wall read, “Every day I write your name on a piece of paper and eat it.” The next read, “One day I’ll be a murderess” and the last reads, “I count to a thousand but think of you again.”

Tom G Adriani presents us with paintings and small etchings accompanied by verse. I was particularly touched by this one, The Cat Hag:

The bedraggled form of the old cat hag

in her tattered dreaded locks

A blackened crumbling wedding dress

in a washed out Tiffany’s box

We see her every now and then

with flowers in her hair

A flash beside the motorway

or spiralling subway stairs

Pushing her shopping cart

gazing at the stars

Weaving slowly and gingerly

through lines of smoking cars

I wonder why cats follow her
I wonder where she sleeps
I wonder why when she smiles

it looks as though she weeps

Tom G Adriani – The Cat Hag

He has many other pieces up, including several large narrative pieces.

Lucy Harvey has made an installation in one of the inner chambers, The Backstreet Dentist and Other Stories

which is a little frightening, if you ask me, but captivating as well. I had the pleasure of meeting Ms Harvey during my visit, and purchased one of her booklets featuring her work.

Nazir Tanbouli has a wide selection of paintings up, including some large cubistic wall hangings in the final chambers of the crypt, which are quite stunning (I know, I know, I was saying some anti-cubism things just days ago).

Okay, I’ll stop. I just had to share my joy at having seen this show. I will be watching some of these young artists as their careers develop.

Ta!

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