Category Archives: Art

Filmic Wonder and Balling At The McKittrick

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Monday brought us to the Museum of Modern Art for the final day of their exhibit, “Quay Brothers: On Deciphering the Pharmacist’s Prescription for Lip-Reading Puppets.” This retrospective of the twin brothers’ 40 year career creating some of the most iconic and beautiful animated films in existence. We’ve both been fans for some time, X and I, but never thought we’d get to see something like this. This exhibit was the catalyst for the trip, to be perfectly honest.

It would be impossible to explain the Quay’s work in any way that would convey the beauty and magic of it, so best to send you off to search for some of it on YouTube and the like. That’s okay, do it now, we’ll wait…

Welcome back. This exhibit was quite thorough, featuring about 20 of the miniature sets used in making the films, as well as models and sketches, 2D artworks, such as a Blood, Sweat & Tears album cover produced long ago (who’d’a thought?) and reels of the short films and commercial work, such as Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer. Some longer work was shown in its entirety, such as their most famous work, Street Of Crocodiles, based loosely on the Bruno Schultz book. There were separate screenings, in Theater I, of the new The Metamorphosis, based on the Franz Kafka work.

We spent about 2 hours in the exhibit, enjoying it greatly, and after a brief sojourn to the book store (50% off sale!) and acquiring tickets to the 4:30 showing of Metamorphosis, repaired to the flat for a well earned nap.

Back uptown for the film. It was not just a simple screening, but featured live piano accompaniment by Mikhail Rudy. Here’s the museum’s description:

…these screenings of The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka mark the North American premiere of the Quay Brothers’ newest film. Commissioned by Russian-born French pianist Mikhail Rudy in affiliation with Cité de la musique in Paris, where it premiered last March, the film is screened with live piano accompaniment by Rudy, performing the music of Czech composer Leoŝ Janáček.

The accompaniment was fabulous, and the film good (but repetitive and obtuse in places) but the entire experience was more than this, as it really delivered a sense of completeness to the exhibit and our experience of it.

We drifted across town and back down to Chelsea for our evening’s entertainment, Crescent City Stomp, a performance of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band at the McKittrick Hotel. First, though, a quick stop in at Son Cubano for a cocktail (quite good). The McKittrick is the fictional hotel which serves as host for Punchdrunk/Emursive’s production, Sleep No More. This environmental non-performance experience, based upon Shakespeare’s Macbeth, has been packing ’em in since early in 2011. Our show was in a new space, a speakeasy separate from the performance space used by SNM, on the west end of the warehouse block.

Served alongside the New Orleans riffs of PHJB was a menu of light appetizers and cocktails inspired by the Crescent City. We sampled most of the menu (having expected a proper meal here), and had wonderful corn bread, crisp muffalata croquets with tappanade, fried hominy, Brussles sprouts with pancetta and pomegranate seeds and shrimp-stuffed deviled eggs. Yum to all!

The music was stomping all right, the septet (piano, drums, tuba, saxophone, clarinet, trumpet and trombone) was tight, upbeat and having a good old time. The two sets, about 50 minutes each, were followed by a 2 song encore, by which time many of the tables had been pushed back and the floor was hopping.

The hall holds about 275 people and was full to the gills. There are an assortment of tables, from a dozen or so deuces arrayed around the stage (centered against one long wall), then 3 and 4 tops, and then larger tables and banquettes for 6 & 8. The bar fills one of the short walls of the room, and is well appointed with a good choice of liquors, liqueurs, wines and beers. Table service is fast and entertaining, the waiter and waitresses all embracing the roles of working a speakeasy.

The musicians were a treat to watch. The trumpeter, Mark Braud, looks like a more corpulent and dissolute Marsallis cousin, and belts out some grand vocals, too. The clarinetist, Charlie Gabriel, carries the aire of the old man of the troupe, while delivering some fine tunes and song. But our favorite was Clint Maedgen on tenor sax and vocals. His saxophone is painted white with fine black detailing, his hair slicked back, he could be Crispin Hellion Glover‘s louche and wayward younger brother.

Clint Maedgen & Charlie Gabriel

Clint Maedgen & Charlie Gabriel

All in all a fabulous night out!

Our Gossamer Gotham

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We’re presently staying in a short-term sublet in Chelsea, which is bedecked with no end of shear curtains and faux lace. It is quite the thing, not really stunning (as I’m sure it was meant to be) but rather too, too. Not much in the way of privacy, either, when one has shears in place of walls. Cest le vie!

This afternoon X joined the visit, and off we went to Ann Hamilton’s The Event Of A Thread at Park Avenue Armory (nee Armory of the Seventh Regiment). Opening on December 5th of last year, today brought the last day of this most public of public artworks. Occupying the whole of the armory’s vast Drill Hall are a few dozen large plank swings, suspended from the ceiling high above by sturdy chains from which emanate ropes in a wild and dizzying web which spans the great expanse, but all seemingly meeting along a central axis of the room — midway between west and east — where a large fabrc sheet is hung, itself spanning the room from north to south. As people swing in the swings, this elaborate web of ropes, chains, pulleys, block and tackle are all set in motion, pulling and tugging, releasing and dropping, the top edge of this huge sheet. It billows in the breeze it creates, and bobs up and down.

Thankfully we have tickets, for there is a line of people surrounding the entire armory, which fills an area of 2 city blocks, between Park Ave. to the west, Lexington to the east, 66th to the south and 68th to the north. This is the longest queue I’ve ever seen here, for anything, but quite civil and almost even festive. It surely helps that it’s a bright sun-shiny day, and warmish for the date. Having tickets, however, we skirt the line and enter directly into the west end of the hall, at 65th & Park.

A Reader

A Reader - The Event Of A Thread

When one first enters the drill hall, one finds a large library table upon which are a dozen or so wooden cages of pigeons (all look asleep), two long scrolls of text (with what looks like a stripe down the middle) and in front of each scroll sits a reader and an old fashioned microphone. The readers, wearing coarse wool jackets, slowly and in even voices read from their scrolls. We cannot really hear what they’re saying too clearly, but nearby a paper bag, bound in twine, sits on the floor and buzzes and squawks. Upon closer examination, we find it contains a speaker through which one or the other reader may be heard. There are many of these bags around the hall, and listeners snatch them up, walk with them a bit or simply sit with one on their shoulder, and then put them back down.

Paper Bag Radio

Paper Bag Radio - The Event Of A Thread

Swingers swing on the swings, while other swingers queue on line at each swing for their turn. Some swings have very long queues, while others — even near by — may have few people, if any, waiting turns. Watchers line the periphery of the hall, either along benches against the walls, or along catwalks one storey up. Dreamers lay on the floor beneath the great curtain, like a great spine of humanity bridging the hall from north to south. Some watch intently the fabric dipping and swooning above them, others with their eyes closed, listen to the paper bags and the readers beyond them. At the eastern end of the hall, another large library table is topped by a large parabolic mirror which tilts fore and back, and beneath it, surrounded by a collection of the paper bag radios is a writer. Wearing the same coarse woollen wrap as the readers, he is transcribing their words out, in longhand, into spiral bound notebooks.

Wanderers amble amongst the watchers, readers, writer, listeners, swingers and dreamers.

Dreamers beneath the drape

Dreamers beneath the drape - The Event Of A Thread

Above all of this is that incredible, inscrutable, intricate web of chains, ropes and wires which strings this all together. Many myths and stories tell of amazing machines of time or horology, intricate mechanisms which power the world or keep the universe in check and in operation. If such things exist, this is how they look and feel; of that I am sure.

Heavenly Machinery

Heavenly Machinery - The Event Of A Thread

Is it art? Indisputably. But it is more than that. The Even of a Thread is an experience, a public, shared, magical experience of such beauty and power that it takes one’s breath away. Kids and adults, couples and friends, families and loners, all are engaged by this. A man gingerly rises from his wheelchair and mounts a swing, then his friend pushes him to and fro. A small girl in her fuchsia tutu scrambles up beside her father and sister to swing, the father pushing with his feet to get them moving — squirmy little girls and all — while a third sister, holding hands with the dancer — runs alongside.

A woman in her twenties with long braids down to her waist, bold garish makeup and a small entourage, moves about the room, seemingly trying to make her own bit of art by her mere presence here. Cameras are everywhere (no flash) trying to find some way to record this most unique experience. I do likewise with my meager camera phone. Some videos and stills are here.

If we were to end our visit now, seeing nothing else, this would be enough. Ann Hamilton has made something amazing here, and I thank her, and all involved, for it. I cannot even begin to imagine what has gone into the making of this. There is a 24 page newspaper which serves as a guide and talisman for the event, there is a small army of people wired and loosely uniformed, patrolling, there are sound and light technicians, pigeon wranglers, singers (each night ends with a song sung from the west balcony. Beneath the balcony an antique record lathe records the song, which is then played back the following morning) etc. I spent some time on the south catwalk standing near the southern end of the drape, next to me a swing cop, whose job it was to carefully monitor the floor looking for people engaging in unsafe swing behavior, and alert floor patrols.

A Bigger Crowd

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A Closer Winter Tunnel - David Hockney

We stood on queue for well over an hour at the Royal Academy for David Hockney: A Bigger Picture. The show itself we saw in considerably less time. There was much to appreciate in this exhibition of Hockney’s scenes of nature, mostly from the recent past, but on a whole I believe it was oversold. The crowds were so large it was hard to manoeuvre the galleries, and, not trusting us gawkers to behave ourselves, rope barriers kept one from moving freely between otherwise connected galleries – forcing us to follow the curator’s chosen path. Boo on that! Allow me to escape an over-crowded gallery and return to it later!

Arrival Of Spring - Davind Hockney - 2011

One entire gallery was filled with The Arrival Of Spring, 51 prints and one large painting recording the transition from winter to spring in Woldgate, East Yorkshire, in 2011. Each day, roughly, Hockney would venture to this or that favourite vantage point in the woods and paint the scene on his iPad with a stylus. These were later printed and painted upon, following specific notes he had made about how to properly scale them up. The effect was profound. The large prints, each about 5 feet tall, were stacked two tall, and ringed three walls of the capacious gallery. The fourth wall was covered with a 32 canvas painting depicting one scene.

Arrival Of Spring - David Hockney - 2011

In my mind, the most effective works, other than the lovely charcoal studies which seemed to be shown more for elucidation than admiration, were those in the ultimate, Recent Work gallery. This feature large iPad prints from Hockney’s 2012 visit to Yosemite Valley. These pieces are printed out in immense form, easily 10 or 12 feet tall, where Hockney’s sure and perfect capture of the majesty of these natural wonders is best able to play upon the user.

Yosemite Valley - David Hockney - 2011

For an interesting take on the exhibit, check out Elinor Olisa’s blog post about it.

Wiring For Freud

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The early bird gets the worm, or in this case the tickets. Following a typically fitful first-night’s sleep in travel quarters, Pawn was first to rise and after breaky of eggy~weggs and a rasher, with croissant and pot of forgettable coffee, was off blazing trails through Jubilee Park (home of the Eye) and across the footbridge to Trafalgar Square, the National Portrait Gallery and the same-day ticket queue for Lucian Freud Portraits, the enormous show (with some enormous portraits of some enormous bodies and some enormous egos) which just opened.

Lucian Freud - Evening in the studio - 1993

“…we tried going to that yesterday too! No luck. Our first ticket is 21 March… too many people in London.” wrote CP, yesterday, when I whined about a lack of tickets via the online ticket site.

Allow me a moment to rant about crap online ticket sites. This one, for NPG, is run by Ticketmaster, who with their monopoly and all you’d think would know how to run such a thing. But you’d be wrong. Their site is crap, and not at all easy to operate if you’re looking for an available ticket to a long-term event. One must keep drilling down into a date, and then back out again, with no opportunity to simply ask, “how `bout the next day?” Crap, utter, useless crap!

So with the gallery opening at 10, and the knowledge that they hold back tickets for same-day sales on-site, I head off and get on queue. Send a message to X, back at the flat (no comment here on her early rising record…). What I wrote was “Queuing for Freud: They’re saying 30 minutes but definitely tickets for today.” but what my inaptly named “smart phone” decided I meant was “Wiring for Freud…” Gotta love technology.

That was at 10:08. Turns out they had let people start queuing at 9:00, so I wasn’t exactly at the start of the queue, but by 10:33 I wrote, “close to counter. Will ask for 12:30 entrance time.” which would leave time for lunch prior to entering massive exhibit of massive portraits of massive people and massive egos. I’d been warned, “130 works! wow. Give yourself plenty of time for that one…” D wrote, jealous of my opportunity.

Lucian Freud - Nude with leg up - 1992

A few minutes later, tickets in hand, I strolled out into the BRIGHT SUNSHINE of Trafalgar Square and took my perch near the Fourth Plinth to wait for X to arrive fresh from her restorative ablutions. Lunch in a strange little diner (“MD’s where we don’t hide our ingredients behind a second slice of bread!”) and then we’re in, in amongst some of the largest canvases of some of the largest naked bodies you’ll ever see.

Lucian Freud - Benefits supervisor sleeping - 1995

Okay, in all seriousness, it was a fantastic show. While it’s easy to joke about Freud’s willingness – hell predilection – to paint large people, that’s really quite beyond the point. What Freud has taught us, perhaps more than any other portrait artist, at least in the 20th century, is how to see the human form for what it is. Freud’s portraits are almost entirely de-eroticized, lacking any prurient aspect and though stylized, fervently true. He will worry a face or a shoulder or… anything, to the point of nearly obscuring it beneath the many layers of paint, but he will pierce through to the core of that thing, and that person whose thing that is.

Lucian Freud - Naked girl with egg - 1980-81

Take women’s breasts, for example. Many painters (and photographers, sculptors, etc.) will pose their female subjects such that their breasts, if exposed, will be flattered, if not idealized. Freud, however, seems almost to strive for poses which show the breast in its most elastic, uncontrolled form. Pressed against the arm of a sofa, or flopped to the side, or cupped atop a sleeping subject’s arm. There is no romanticizing here, “Just paint it like I see it, “ one can almost hear him saying.

But the same fervour for authenticity carries over to all aspects of his portraiture – chins have waddles; foreheads, bony promontories; dimples, unflattering asymmetries; feet, bunions. Freud’s subjects, he tells us time and again, are normal people, just like us. When The Brigadier, 2003-4, sits for 200 hours for a portrait, Freud has him wear the same uniform he wore when he retired, some twenty years earlier after a victorious military campaign. An older man now, the uniform no longer fits as comfortably as it once did. The man cannot breath for these long, repeated sittings, so Freud suggests he unbutton the tunic. The result? The Brigadier’s paunch is prominent, it draws the eye, and what we see is not the idealized heroic figure, but the relaxed, retired and all too human man who lead others into battle and was brave or skilled or lucky enough to make it back in one piece so that twenty years later he could pose for this portrait looking like the relaxed, retired and slightly corpulent man that he has become.

Lucian Freud - The Brigadier - 2003-4

Freud has made us like this man, has found that part of ourselves, our everyman, within this man.

In his early work (which the exhibitors have thoughtfully but not rigidly arranged to make the most sense of an artist who’s work has matured as he has, not linearly but with parallel tracks, echoes forward and back, ripples which reflect off the mileposts of his own life) we see an artist who is working within constraints of the form as society understands it, before he begins to find his stride and his own true path. His wide-eyed portraits of the Girl in a dark jacket posed quite artificially, with unnaturally situated objects at once show him strain against the form of pose meets still life, yet also find new figurative language which suits him. He starts to break away in earnest with some self portraits, “Reflections” which are often truly that, from mirrors.

Lucian Freud - Girl in a dark jacket - 1947

By the time we get to the large commissioned and non-commissioned work for which he is best known, we are looking at iconic and iconoclastic work. There is no more Francis Bacon here, unless he chooses to show us that, there is no more of anyone else – just Freud and his models – even when the model is his dog, Eli.

Lucian Freud with Ria Kirby upon completion of Ria Naked Portrait - 2006-7

Something which merits mention is that until witnessed in person it is hard to appreciate just how much paint Freud slathers on to the canvas in his later work. In Ria Nude Portrait, 2007, the model’s right eye bulges out from the canvas so far she appears, under close examination, disfigured. Of course one doesn’t routinely view the great canvas up close and obliquely, so it may well go unnoticed. Faces, profound musculature, and genitalia are most likely to receive this treatment. I’ve mentioned already how de-eroticized Freud’s work is, and yet genitalia receive much attention under his brush. Women’s pubic areas are almost sculptural, three dimensional, in many of his works. Not surprising, perhaps, given his well earned reputation for prolific appetites, shall we say.

One last note, and then this essay shall close. Freud painted many self portraits, but his sense of reflection seems to go beyond this. When one considers the length of his sittings, into the hundreds of hours in many cases (some canvases took years) it’s easy to understand why he would make himself the subject so often, as he developed techniques or understanding. One thing which struck Pawn, however, is how often his own work figures in his work. He painted almost always in his studio, and often the studio itself is as much a subject as his models. It is not at all unusual to see one or more earlier, or incomplete canvases in a piece. For example, Two Men in the Studio, 1987-9, prominently features Standing by the Rags, 1988-9, made more interesting by the fact that the included painting was not started when the including work was.

Lucian Freud - Two men in the Studio - 1987-89

The Rags, of the latter pieces title, are well featured in both. Freud used recycled hotel linens for his paint rags, a fact which the unobtrusive but helpful exhibit text points out to us.

Lucian Freud Portraits is a exemplary exhibition, and well worthy of the crowds and praise it is thus far receiving. National Portrait Gallery have done themselves proud, and we were much the happier for having seen it.