|
Blaming the audience
Re: “When a playwright blames his critics ,” by Dan Rottenberg (Editor’s Notebook)—
Who is blaming his audience? I don’t see Itamar Moses blaming his audience, just people who call themselves critics. One place I do remember an audience being blamed is from something you said to me…
"I hope I’ve made it amply clear over the past three years that ours is an experimental process, that we don’t really know what we’re doing, and that nobody should trust us implicitly. But as I’ve discovered in my long career in alternative media, the more you warn people not to trust you— the more they trust you. The more you urge people to think for themselves— the more they demand that you think for them. The more you tell people you’re not an authority figure or a high priest— the more they insist that you be one. “
We misunderstand you and what you are doing, but is it our fault? You are blaming your audience for expecting you to express yourself candidly and responsibly at the same time. Why do we do that, do you think? Is it too much to ask?
I expect the same standards from artists. I expect them to say what they say candidly and openly, but I expect them also to take responsibility for what they say. As a matter of fact, I expect anybody to speak candidly, but responsibly. It is part of being a grownup.
You ask us to stop mistaking you for something you are not, but you call yourself a critic, and you call what you write a review. You ask for free tickets because you have an audience that will read your opinion. Doesn’t that make you a critic? Shouldn’t we expect you to behave like one? Or is it our mistake?
What if I set up an office, put up a sign with some intertwined snakes, took appointments with people who were sick, gave them advice, and then got in a huff because everyone was expecting me to behave like a doctor?
Please don’t blame us for expecting you or anyone else writing on this site as a critic to be responsible for their criticism. It’s what you call yourself. It’s the Broad Street REVIEW! Live up to the title!
David O’Connor
South Philadelphia
March 18, 2009
Editor’s comment: We practice commentary and criticism, not medicine. Our definition of review differs from yours. Arts organizations that give us free tickets accept (and sometimes even welcome) our idiosyncratic nature. Why can’t you?
All the correspondence on the role of critics reminds me of my old friend Clive Barnes. When he was appointed, I think in the 1960s, theater critic of the New York Times, he declared in his first column that his first priority would be to destroy the power of the theater critic of the New York Times.
I couldn’t agree more enthusiastically that the idea of a critic’s “power” is a regrettable one. Our function is, surely, not to make people think one way or another, but to offer illumination— as it were, to connect dots for the reader in a way that is more readily achieved from what is, hopefully, broad and thoughtful experience. Anything beyond that is vanity.
Bernard Jacobson
Bremerton, Wash.
March 18, 2009
Editor’s note: The writer is the former music critic of the Chicago Daily News.
What a bizarre response to my letter (below). From what I’m able to tell through sarcasm so dripping that it almost entirely obscures your meaning, your point is that, in suggesting that the debate in the BSR was not, in fact, about whether artists are fragile (which of course they are) but rather about the basic professional standards to which critics should be held, I am in some way “blaming my audience”? Where in my letter did I say anything at all about me or anyone receiving good or bad reviews and deserving them or not?
Everyone is entitled to their opinions about my work or anyone else’s. Critics are required to publish those opinions publicly. My point was simply that, spiderman-like, the power critics have comes with a responsibility to wield it appropriately. Once again, though, the debate has been shifted onto an irrelevant tangent that has no bearing on the question at hand.
You’ve also conveniently failed to mention the fact that I only spoke up in the first place because I was personally cited in defense of Jim Rutter’s position. I would never have gotten involved otherwise. It wasn’t bravery. Jim Rutter used me as a cudgel to bludgeon other writers and I objected.
More to the point, I would never “blame an audience” for its reaction to my play, and frankly I’m insulted at the completely unwarranted suggestion that I did anything of the kind.
Typically, though, because critics are so unaccustomed to reading any public response at all to what they do, they cannot permit anyone else to have the last word, even if responding requires a total and, as far as I can tell, intentional misreading of what I said.
Itamar Moses
Brooklyn, N.Y.
March 17, 2009
Editor’s comment: I think our quarrel, to the extent that there is one, concerns your notion that critics should be held to professional standards. I don’t think they should— any more than artists, actors, writers and audience members should. Let folks express themselves and let the chips fall where they may. Come to think of it, the very word should strikes me as antithetical to creative and artistic endeavor.
Editor’s note: To read a subsequent colloquy between Itamar Moses and me, click here.
Jurowski’s Orchestra ‘audition’
Re “The Jurowski watch,” by Robert Zaller—
A lucid, informative and unpretentious review; so unlike what we are accustomed to locally.
Bernard Cohen
Center City
March 18, 2009
Women artists
Re “Women Forward“ in Brooklyn—
Well said, Robert Zaller. To your stated set of afflictions to women’s voice and art of women, one could add the marginalization of work well done by the female hand. And in this, sometimes women can be the worst of enemies to other women.
Men have their own reasons for ignoring or marginalizing the work of females, but it is from women to other women where that betrayal can run deepest and indeed be the most insidious.
Victoria C. Skelly
Wayne, Pa.
March 23, 2009
Critics and playwrights
Re “Playwrights and their critics” (Dan Rottenberg’s Editor’s Notebook)—
The search for an objective Archimedean point from which critics can pronounce judgment on theater is never going to be very fruitful. Even your basically even-handed approach focused on what you learn and how you can share it assumes that the primary function of theater is to educate, an assumption that many theater artists, myself included, are coming to reject.
In fact, most theatergoers already tend to agree with each other on most issues. They tend to share a moral compass that’s reinforced each morning on NPR.
In a forthcoming essay for the New York Theater Review, I talk a lot about fun, enjoying each other’s company, and theater as event rather than object. The shows that my company, Blue Box Productions (founded in Philly in 2000), produces in this vein are not reviewable given the current critical outlook on theater— which is fine: It actually allows us in many ways to focus on a developing new audience, rather than winning our share of the current theater audience.
I think you must consider though, that when you give pre-eminence to the educational or moral purposes of theater, you are making a judgment as to what is best for the theater community, or at least as to what is the best use of their time and resources.
David Marcus
Brooklyn, N.Y.
March 11, 2009
Editor’s comment: In my column I specifically rejected the job of cultural high priest (I can’t take the pay cut). So why do you insist on viewing me as one? Well, OK, if you insist: I hereby absolve you of all guilt and sin. You are free to do whatever you like on stage, with my blessing. All I ask in exchange is that you let me derive whatever I like from your plays and discuss my reactions with my friends— which isn’t the same as passing judgment.
I described BSR as a blog because of what is written in the writers’ prospectus you sent me, and when I read the sentence, “It’s a bit like a blog, but without the anarchy,” I had a striking shift in perception about BSR, and I thought it might be useful to other readers who were confused in the same way I was.
I am no longer confused, and really appreciate both your experiment and your description of it. I think what you are looking for in this experiment— a place where thoughtful and passionate people can directly speak their mind on any topic— is an enlightened goal.
And I agree that while your goal is not to support the arts, by promoting a free exchange of ideas, the goals of BSR cannot help but support the arts. I don’t think anyone is interested in shutting down a free exchange of ideas.
But “exercising our constitutional right to talk and listen to each other about any subject we damn please” does not excuse you, me or anybody in the conversation from behaving responsibly. Maybe the word “critic” or “review” doesn’t hold the same significance to you as it does to me, but I believe if you-self identify as a critic and writing what you call a review, you are subject to certain expectations of behavior.
I think it is clear that Blanka Zizka was not asking for Jim Rutter’s review of a work-in-progress to be pulled down because of its content, but because of its existence. How do you have a review of something that has not been created yet? It is disingenuous. Maybe the word “review” on your site should be reconsidered?
With that idea in mind, I share your observation about the future of discussion of the arts on the Internet, and as evidenced by our conversation, that different future is here. I am optimistic about it.
David O’Connor
South Philadelphia
March 8, 2009
Re “The case for cantankerous critics,” by Jim Rutter—
Since I am cited in support of a position with which I don’t even begin to agree, I thought I’d speak up.
What is at issue here, if I understand correctly, is the question of whether or not it’s appropriate to “review” a one-time reading of a play. Leaving aside for the moment the question of what this might or might not “do” to the writer and also the question of how “finished” the play in question was at the time (good questions both, that I’ll return to):
What on earth is the point of such a review? Since there will never be another incarnation of this event, which is to say a reading of this play, in this form, with these actors, with scripts in hand, what possible use is such a review to anyone?
(NB: Any critic who believes there is no appreciable difference between what is clear from a reading and what is clear from a full production ought to quit his or her job today. This is tantamount to the belief that hearing a recipe aloud is the same thing as tasting food.)
Oh but but but. If the playwright is in fact still working on the play, isn’t criticism useful? Might not some constructive comments, if the playwright is not too insecure to take it in, actually improve the play?
First, to suggest that this is, or ever could be, the intent of publicly publishing a review of a reading of a work in progress strikes me as disingenuous. The intent of such a review can only be an attempt on the part of the critic to influence the season scheduling of the theater in question. In other words, it is (in my humble opinion) a relatively transparent power grab.
Second, the notion that a play will not receive the “help” it requires unless a critic, unbidden, publicly chastises it after a one-time reading is really pretty arrogant and presumptuous.
As for the idea that, because, hey, one review of one reading could never really damage a writer (especially a good one) or a play (especially a good one): please. What Gary Garrison and others are rather obviously objecting to here is the precedent. And the precedent is dangerous. Period.
Jim Rutter refers to me as an accomplished playwright who “understands” that writers should be able to take criticism because what really matters is our own belief in what we’ve written. Well, thanks. And I do believe that.
But what’s at issue here is not how fragile or infantile playwrights are or should be. It’s how fragile and infantile critics are about the slightest suggestion that they, like us, can do their work well or badly; that they, like us, can raise what they do to the level of art or turn out hackwork; and that they, in other words, should be held to the same standards that they, whether we ask them to or not and whether it is professionally appropriate or not, are constantly holding us to.
Itamar Moses
Brooklyn, N.Y.
February 28, 2009
Editor’s note: To read my reply, click here. For a further colloquy on this subject between Dan Rottenberg and David O’Connor, click here.
Scorched at the Wilma
Contrary to Dan Rottenberg’s take, Scorched playwright Mouawad creates an extraordinary play, and through Blanka Zizka’s direction, one that appeals to both the intellect and emotions. They both value Rottenberg and the audience more than Rottenberg does himself and others.
He would prefer to be the manipulated product of a theater experience, where he can, as in his Hersey experience (The Wall), cheer the good guys and curse the villains, rather than feel the intensity of emotional cross-currents that challenge the viewer and maybe reveal truths about life and art that his manipulative melodrama model, rarely offers.
The intellectual and emotional heft of this work was almost overwhelming. With television, Broadway and the Walnut Street Theatre, I think melodrama is sufficiently available for those who want to cheer or boo from the seats.
Jonathan Stein
Center City
March 11, 2009
33 Variations
Re Toby Zinman’s review of 33 Variations—
Toby Zinman should be grateful that she’s so very wrong about groundbreaking academic papers being unequal to sublime musical compositions. Just as the full complexity of a composition may not be accessible to everyone, the content of a research paper may be similarly incomprehensible to those outside the field it covers— but I’m sure Ms. Zinman has benefited from research published in countless papers, whether she’s aware of it or not.
Michelle Sipics
Fairmount
March 11, 2009
Toby Zinman says that the Diabelli Variations “are generally considered to be Beethoven’s supreme contribution to the piano repertoire.”
They are? What about the late sonatas? The late Bagatelles? The “Waldstein” Sonata? (I think it can be argued that the “Waldstein” is Beethoven’s most revolutionary piano work. I plan to do just that one of these days in BSR.)
The “Diabelli Variations” is rarely performed; I personally find listening to it, great though it may be, akin to what I imagine spending a few nights without oxygen at the Mount Everest base camp might be like. In a word, demanding.
Maynard Solomon, the distinguished Beethoven biographer, puts the “Diabelli Variations” in the context of Beethoven’s other revolutionary late piano music, as I think he should.
I have no argument with Zinman if she herself finds the Variations to be Beethoven’s “supreme contribution.” But, I think, it’s certainly not the way most people feel about the work.
Dan Coren
Queen Village
March 14, 2009
Chicago’s O’Neill Festival
I didn’t see nearly enough Chicago theatre while I was out there for college, so I enjoyed Steve Cohen’s article about the Goodman Theatre’s O’Neill Festival in Chicago.
However: “It’s been ages since a Philadelphia theater company staged an O’Neill opus.” Really, Steve? As I write this, to my left is a banner ad on BSR’s website for Simpatico’s production of Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which runs through March 29. Also, Villanova Theatre did the same play last fall.
I agree that O’Neill should be produced more often around here (The Iceman Cometh? Somebody? Please?). But implying that he never is isn’t the whole story.
Liam Castellan
Center City
March 11, 2009
Steve Cohen replies: It has been a long time between productions, and I’m glad that Simpatico’s Long Days Journey has opened (March 12).
A world without the Inquirer
“Newspapers and the Internet,” by Richard Carreño, is a completely idiotic argument. The idea that there would be a “Philadelphia” edition of the New York Times is just so far off base that it is not worth talking about. The New York Times has significantly cut back its outside-of-New York regional coverage. It now has one full-time reporter in all of New Jersey. Its Sunday “New Jersey” section is now a section that covers the entire suburban area from Connecticut to New Jersey to Westchester to Long Island.
A couple of non-profit or semi-profit newsgathering sites have come up in recent years, but I would bet that the entirety of them employ about what the Rocky Mountain News did alone.
It’s sad that major newsgathering operations did not figure out how to “monetize” the Internet, but that is a big problem.
As a former reporter for the Philadelphia Daily News, Sports Illustrated and other places, and someone who has had more than 1,000 stories in the New York Times, I can tell you that it is increasingly difficult to find anyone of credibility on the money side to finance good journalism, be it sports, news or features. Lamentable as this might sound to my compadres at the Philly papers, Brian Tierney and his group are, indeed, our best hope. Even if they have been shortsighted in many ways, at least they care about maintaining a Philadelphia presence.
To talk about the founders of more than 200 years ago reading weeklies is so much hooey. If you talk about how many people were actually literate then, would you have gotten to maybe 10,000 in the city? Further, the great majority of the media then were political rags, hardly worth reading. It’s just not relevant to what we need today with a 300-million-person country reaching 3,000 miles across, with regional differences and a willing professional cadre of journalists to be hired.
Will something replace the really good, well-financed, print-based system of journalism we have enjoyed for the last 30 years? I certainly hope so. If not, we are the big losers.
We can’t just survive on non-paying places like Broad Street Review.
Robert Strauss
Haddonfield, N.J.
March 4, 2009
There’s no question that the Inquirer has become a second-rate reporter of news. But that’s not why I treasure it.
The high point of my day is my lunch hour, when I read the Inquirer sports section. The New York Times sports section really sucks, but Bob Ford, John Gonzalez and their Inquirer sportswriter colleagues write beautifully. Then I do the Sudoku and cryptogram and— the greatest pleasure of all— read the comics.
The physical presence of a newspaper has always been one of the great pleasures of my life. A world without the Inquirer is, for me, a very sad prospect to contemplate.
Dan Coren
Queen Village
March 4, 2009
You seriously expect the New York Times or Variety to expand into Philadelphia if the Inquirer folds? That’s foolish. You base that on what economic model? What reporting have you done to support that idea? Whom have you spoken to? If the Inquirer goes, all we have left are opinion pieces that, like your piece, are as light as air.
Murray Dubin
West Philadelphia
March 4, 2009
"Fact based journalism” represented by the Inquirer and New York Times? Does anyone still believe that?
Hey, I read the Inky daily, love some of it, hate some of it. But the demise of the Inky, while it would be tragic, would not affect the amount of “objective” reporting available.
Bourne Ruthrauff
Center City
March 4, 2009
With print media taking major hits, we’re seeing too many glib and facile pieces like this suggesting little downside from the demise of papers like the Inquirer and Daily News here. A Philadelphia edition of the New York Times or an expanded Internet, although welcome initiatives, are no substitute for daily newspapers, which, however imperfect and compromised, provide a depth of diverse coverage and a community of communication, that these other forms will never duplicate.
Let’s support and find ways to save these important papers, which might mean alternatives to their current structures of private ownership.
Jonathan Stein
Center City
March 4, 2009
I agree that middle-sized papers such as the Inky may have to transform themselves. My local paper, the San Jose Mercury News, serving a similar market, seems lighter every morning. Its headlines are old news by the time the paper hits our driveway because I’ve already heard the news on NPR and read it online.
What I would/will miss is the local news, the local ads, the local classified section, the funnies, the crossword and the five-day forecast, often in color. And the feel of soft paper that opens like the wings of a constant guardian angel. So much more grown-up than the rolled up weeklies I peel open to find a local roofer.
Who shall bring our important messengers? Whom shall we trust?
Reed Stevens
Campbell, Calif.
March 4, 2009
The best paper I ever read was I. F. Stone’s Weekly, a one-man operation miraculously sustained (without advertising) by a single journalist of integrity and genius. It wasn’t a blog, and it didn’t demand your 24/7 attention in a world of frenetic competitors— it had no competitor, just as its quality had no equal.
There are only four remaining newspapers in the U.S.: The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. All are under intense financial pressure; all have lost quality and heft. The Philadelphia Inquirer has some value as a purveyor of city and regional news, but that is limited and to a serious degree compromised by its right-wing ownership. Looking at the vendetta it’s been conducting against Vince Fumo is like reading Pravda on Trotsky; nor do I have much sympathy for its 50-year war against the Barnes Foundation, which dates back to Walter Annenberg and continues unabated. As with Pravda, one must often read between the lines to see the story being delivered (or withheld) behind the official message.
Steven Wells makes the good point in the current Philadelphia Weekly that, in our financialized society, the delivery of timely, accurate and reasonably unbiased news (news, that is, that isn’t simply disguised propaganda) has become a commodity rather than a public trust. If a commodity doesn’t sell, or even if it does but at a profit that disappoints investors, eliminate the product line.
Newsgathering has been a commercial enterprise since its inception, which has been both its limitation and its salvation. A model like The Christian Science Monitor’s might be viable, but look, of course, at what happened to the Monitor. I certainly wouldn’t want to be getting my news courtesy of a private foundation whose interests would be concealed from view.
Too bad we didn’t clone Izzy Stone while we had the chance.
Robert Zaller
Bala Cynwyd
March 12, 2009
While it’s true that blogs are less rigorous in their fact checking and neutrality, here’s another point in favor of blogs and online media: more freedom of speech.
Newspaper editors and execs often censor many aspects of journalism if it conflicts with their interest or if the tone is “inappropriate.” Anyone who has had an article mutilated by an editor knows what I mean.
Beeri Moalem
Palo Alto, Calif.
March 15, 2009
Editor’s comment: More than a century ago, newspapers discovered an ingenious idea: Instead of charging readers directly for information, they could sell advertising to defray the cost of news coverage. Today, thanks to Internet ads and other “clickables” beyond my comprehension, Google delivers whole libraries worth of information at no cost to the consumer, and Amazon sells books below cost. Michael Bloomberg, starting from scratch, became a billionaire by conceiving a way to monetize financial news on the Internet that hadn’t occurred to his entrenched competitors like Dow Jones and Reuters. Until the 1980s nobody dreamed that a free alternative weekly paper (like, say, Philadelphia Weekly or the City Paper) could be a viable business model. Is it not possible that, should the Inquirer fold, some visionary will conjure up a better (and more profitable) idea for replacing it— if not within a year or two, surely before the end of time?
Vita Nuova at Alice Tully Hall
Re “Dante meets Alice Tully,” Robert Zaller’s review of Vladimir Martynov’s Vita Nuova—
Dante’s resurrection in the Age of the Internet seems everywhere now: as if we are all ascending into some new territory of our overworked souls. Thank you, Robert, for your erudite guidance: the lamp you are holding is still burning strong and true.
Margaret Chew Barringer
Narberth, Pa.
March 4, 2009
Overlooked dance network
Thanks so much for increasing dance coverage. Broad Street Review offers so much more in the way of in-depth description, comment, etc. than the limited, column-restricted coverage in the Inky and elsewhere. I for one greatly appreciate it.
May I respectfully request that you include the context in which the performances have taken place? The recent performance of Shinichi Iova-Koga was part of SCUBA, National Touring Network for Dance, which was the finale to Philadelphia Dance Projects Presents ’09. We work hard to curate and support Philadelphia Dance Projects Presents artists, and it would be nice every now and again to be visibly acknowledged.
Terry Fox
Executive Director
Philadelphia Dance Projects
Center City
March 4, 2009
Live opera on screen
Re “Opera at the movie house,” by Steve Cohen—
I can’t afford to travel to see operas at the Met in New York, as I live in Brazil. So it was like a dream come true when I knew they were going to have these live broadcasts on our local theater!
Rogerio Focatto
Vitoria, Brazil
March 8, 2009
Milk and gay reality
Re ”Milk and gay reality,” by Reed Stevens—
These are a few examples of the gay reality I know which don’t fit into dated stereotypes.
The gay reality that I know is a diverse GLBT community from every walk of life that refuse to live in the closet.
The gay reality I know is evident when the gay/straight alliance leads faculty and students in protesting the hate speech of Fred Phelps and his “church” who carried their “God hates fags” signs outside North Central High School last month.
The gay reality I know is the work of the Human Rights Campaign, which, state by state, fights for GLBT civil rights every day.
The gay reality I know is in the hundreds of anti-Prop 8 rallies that took place all over the country.
The gay reality I know is a community that continues to take care of its own with HIV/AIDS education and services throughout the world.
The gay reality I know are people who are living their truth, not looking to mirror straight life.
The gay reality I know are people who know how to talk about sex without apology to made up mores.
The gay reality I know in Philadelphia is out in the thousands at the gay pride parade, OutFest and Equality Forum celebrating the accomplishments of their community
The gay reality I know doesn’t rely on movies or culture to reflect who we are, although it’s always nice when it happens with some modicum of accuracy.
For straight people who need to define us as sad, hedonistic, self-loathing and destructive: You need to revisit Oz. And guess what? You may have friends there.
Lewis Whittington
Center City
February 25, 2009
Reed Stevens replies: Well, he wasn’t born then.
Lewis Whittington replies: Reed, I’d love to say that I wasn’t, but I’m 55. Actually, I would never try to talk you out of your experience or perceptions. I’m offering another perspective that might be a little broader, more accurate and more relevant. Many gay people, all though the last century, have fought to define their lives outside the constructs of cultural, social or internalized homophobia. T’amo.
Reed Stevens replies: What’s he saying? I was wrong but he loves me anyway? Plow me over with a friendly blade? This sounds a little too close to “Straights can’t write about gays” to me! Women can’t write about men, people can’t write about dogs, mice should keep their little mouths shut. At least you’re getting mail, Dan.
Editor’s comment: Submissions from mice are always welcome here at Broad Street Review, as long as they’re compelling and insightful.
Cultural diplomacy
Re “The real soft power: Cultural diplomacy, by Gresham Riley—
We could not agree more. My husband, sculptor Robert Roesch, and I have served as cultural advisors to U.S. embassies in Egypt, Syria, Argentina, Ecuador and Myanmar. Much of this was through the former USIA programs.
We’ve exhibited our artwork, lectured, curated exhibitions and made lasting friendships. Through the Fulbright Senior Specialist Program, we’ve worked in Japan, and we have experienced the truth of your article’s position.
Suzanne Reese Horvitz
Fairmount
February 25, 2009
Death of a restaurateur
Re “Death of a restaurateur,” by Merilyn Jackson—
This is certainly the most resonant, interesting restaurant review of the season. Even though I have found Vetri’s too rich and too overpriced, I may try it again.
Nancy Herman
Merion, Pa.
February 25, 2009
As a self-proclaimed “foodie,” with a relative who is with a fine dining restaurant in New York City, I totally enjoyed reading, although with sadness, the article about René Blaschke, and Vetri. It was clear and forceful– and mouth-watering when it came to the North Philadelphia restaurant. And unlike the others that are posted on Broad Street Review. Thank you for sharing René Blaschke’s story with your readers.
Winnie Atterbury
Newtown Square, Pa.
February 25, 2009
Public TV explains the Crash of ’08
Re “Public TV explains the Crash of ’08,” by Robert Zaller—
Dead on, Mr. Zaller! The only way, though, there’ll be rioting in the streets is if cable television fails and credit cards are no longer legal tender. We are, finally, a nation that will put up with the worst of systematic and systemic abuses as long as we are regularly lullabyed by the authors of our eminent demise.
Bob Ingram
Burleigh, N.J.
February 25, 2009
Cézanne and beyond
Re “Cézanne and Beyond”—
My colleague Andrew Mangravite “welcomes” Cézanne back to town in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s exhibit of “Cézanne and Beyond.” But Cézanne never left. Andrew seems to have forgotten that Greater Philadelphia is the permanent home of the world’s largest collection of Cézannes— the Barnes Foundation— and that Cézanne’s influence on Matisse and Picasso, among others, is abundantly documented on the Foundation’s walls.
I’m not saying that Joe Rishel’s exhibit is entirely superfluous— simply that anyone wishing to appreciate Cézanne’s legacy (as well as the master himself) need only take the R5 train or the 44 bus year-round for a trip of less than half an hour— 15 minutes by car.
Is the Barnes so invisible that even local art critics seem to miss it? Is that why some people think it worth $400 million— more than half of it the public’s money— to move the Barnes five miles while Philadelphia closes libraries and fire companies? Maybe a few sodium vapor lights pointing the way to Merion would do just as well.
Incidentally, I don’t think it’s correct to call Cézanne an Impressionist, although some people have loosely associated him with the movement. Questions of nomenclature are probably the least interesting subject in art, but Cézanne is certainly closer to Corot or Courbet than Manet.
Robert Zaller
Bala Cynwyd, Pa.
February 25, 2009
Andrew Mangravite replies: I think Robert has written enough columns of his own to recognize a standard opening gambit when he reads one. The truth of the matter is, I don’t really welcome Cézanne back. What I would welcome would be an exhibition of some artist whose works we never get to see— say, Otto Dix or Mikhail Vrubel. And for what’s it’s worth, I have no problems with the Barnes Collection remaining in Lower Merion.
Cézanne and Beyond
What is the integral relationship of a bubble-wrapped Cézanne still life “authored” by Francis Alys to the body of Cézanne’s work? Why is the inclusion to the exhibition of Sherrie Levine, who states: “I engage the idea of removing the artist completely from the artwork, so that it becomes a kind of group project with audience participation” necessary when an artist like Elizabeth Murray, who adored Cézanne, is excluded??
Ironically, we the audience could spend a lot of valuable and enjoyable time making connections between Cézanne’s and Murray’s work, in terms of subject matter, surface and palette, for example. While the Levine pales next to its source material and deadpans to itself… Brice Marden’s “Grove” series is luckily represented, but not by one of his better pieces from that series. Two later works of his with loopy lines seem less relevant to the discussion.
A highlight for me was the juxtaposition of the Jasper Johns Drawer painting next to one of Cézanne’s still lifes on a table with a similar knobbed drawer and leaden gray cast. Marsden Hartley, Matisse (of course) and Mondrian also come off particularly well in these comparisons.
I was surprised to discover Gorky’s early imitation of the Cézanne style.
Another quibble would be the inclusion of Jeff Wall, who, unlike Levine and Alys, is at least involved in pictorial composition. My complaint, however, has to do with how his medium of the light box photo tends to dominate any room and, hence, any painting it happens to share space with. With one exception, most of the other comparisons with Cézanne seem like a reach.
Richard Briggs
Brooklyn
March 11, 2009
Honor and the River
Dan Rottenberg’s take on Honor and the River is interesting. I found the text quite absorbing, and rather than berate the playwright, I would suggest that the director is the one who requires taking to task, in that the actors took far too many beats. The first act, spoken with alacrity, would have resulted, I suspect, in a far different impression and would have given the play substantially more impact.
Alan Hewson
Washington, D.C.
March 2, 2009
Curtis grads play Schubert
Re “Curtis grads play Schubert,” by Tom Purdom—
I’m always glad when somebody calls attention to Schubert’s chamber music and, especially, to the piano trios. Not to take anything away from these miraculous works, but I must respectfully disagree with Tom’s dismissal of the Beethoven Piano Trios at their expense.
You can be sure Beethoven thought long and hard about what works should be the first to be given an opus number. He gave the honor to the three Op. 1 piano trios; there are few better representatives of brilliant early Beethoven than these works. And the Archduke Trio, Op. 97, the last great work of his middle period before the great silence between 1812 and 1815, is one of his most renowned pieces. If I had to pick my five all-time favorite compositions, the “Archduke” would be among them.
Dan Coren
Queen Village
February 24, 2009
Tom Purdom replies: This is probably a matter of temperament. I’ve been writing about music for more than 20 years, but I’m still, at the core, a fiction writer, with a fiction writer’s preoccupation with feeling, drama and personality. Beethoven’s piano trios may contain all kinds of musical virtues, but Schubert’s make a big jump in emotion, color and sonic sensuality. The trios by Brahms and Shostakovich have the same kind of impact.
Dan Coren replies: Tom seems to imply that “emotion, color and sonic sensuality” are qualities somehow lacking in Beethoven, at least for him. I find it amazing that anyone could write this after hearing (to pick one of hundreds of examples) the slow movement of the “Archduke” Trio. Also Tom seems to draw a distinction between these qualities and “musical virtues.”
I think I know what Tom means: That lush, sweet sound that Schubert gets in his chamber music will never be mistaken for Beethoven. But for me, there’s no distinction between musical virtue and sonic sensuality. I find the tensions of musical architecture to be emotionally charged. Conversely, I’m bored by music that lacks a satisfying underlying structure.
Hell, I find the asymptotic approach of the branches of a hyperbola to the x and y axes to be sexy, like an endlessly unresolved dominant, or an orgasm that lasts forever.
Orchestra seating
Re Steve Cohen’s review of the Vienna Philharmonic at Verizon Hall—
I may be remembering incorrectly, but I believe the first and second violins were seated to Mehta’s left and the violas were closest to the audience on his right.
Michael Rissinger
Center City
March 2, 2009
♦
Respond to this Article
|
