Aboriginal Art

Who knew Australian bark painting could be so beautifully abstract?

"Yalanbara" by Dhuwarrwarr Marika (2019)

The genre wasn't exactly new to me; I'd seen a comprehensive survey at the Art Gallery of New South Wales when I visited Sydney in 1983, before circumnavigating the country in a VW camper van with my father.  Our route included every city marked on the map!

I even bought a small bark painting from a shop in Alice Springs (in the Red Center, blocked by my head above) which obviously catered to the tourist trade with this simple kangaroo. It has hung between the bay windows at 47 Pianos ever since. 

There was a long-forgotten provenance glued to the back.  Although I couldn't quite make out the artist's name in the lower left corner, the typewritten information indicates he--most were men back them--belonged to the Gunwinggu tribe in the Oenpelli area.

We didn't get to Arnhem Land (the darkened area on the map above) where my painting and those now on view at the Asia Society originated.  Many of the works in "Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Aboriginal Australian Bark Painting from Yirrkala are taller than I am.

"Sand Sculpture for Yirritja Mortuary Ceremonies"
by  Narritjin Maymuru (before 1972)

"The Marawili Tree Ranga (The Possum String Story)" 
by Narritjin Maymuru (partial, 1968)

A video installation emphasized the relationship between painting, singing and dancing in Aboriginal culture.

The earliest work in the show, painted by a tribal leader and his sons, dates back to a pivotal moment in the relationship between the Aboriginal tribes of Australia and its colonialist government.  

The 1935 bark painting of sacred clan designs was among those given by Wongu Munungurr to Donald Thomson, an Australian anthropologist, who sought to improve relations with the tribe after the Caledon Bay crisis.  

Wonggu Mununggurr by Donald Thomson (1935)

For the most part, the earlier works in the exhibit appealed to me more than the later ones.  

Despite its lack of animals, I liked this painting best of all.

"Gurrunawuy" by Yäma Munungirritj (1961)

The symbolism of the animals such as saltwater crocodiles and serpents isn't easily grasped by the uninitiated despite detailed explanations on identifying labels, just as Australia's indigenous peoples might find Greek mythology or the Bible perplexing for the first time. 

"Nalarrwuy" by Mungurrawuy Yunupinu (partial, 1961)

Further complicating a naive viewer's comprehension of the art are the orthological differences conjured by the transcription of Australian Aboriginal languages which, until the arrival of colonists, had never been written.  Look no further than the titles of the works and artists names for evidence of this; the language uses just three vowels.

"Naypinya" by Mithinari Gurruwiwi (partial, 1963)

"Wuyal at Yanawal" by Mithili Wanambi (ca 1972)

"The Birth of the Djang'kawu Children at Yalanbara" 

by Wandjuk Djuwakan Marika OBE (1982)

"Dhuwa Honey Ancestor" by Dundiwuy Wanambi (partial, 1994)

"Dhalwanu Clan Designs" by Yinimala Gumana (2019)

Another gallery included contemporary paintings influenced by Aboriginal art.

"Untitled (Alhalker)" by Emily Kam Kngwarray (close-up, 1993)

"Rockholes Near the Olgas X" by Bill "Whiskey" Tjapaltjarri (2008)

Dhambit Mununggurr, another contemporary Aboriginal artist in the show abandons the use of traditional colors in her "bark blues."

 

"Ocean" (2019)

She had her own show at Salon 94, a gallery on the Upper East Side.

"Birrinydhi" (2024)

"Wakwak II" (partial, 2024)

Our Class (5*)

 

Our Class starts innocently enough.  Primary school students, seated tightly side-by-side, some Catholic, some Jewish, announce their names and (mostly working class) aspirations on a simple stage, behind an enormous blackboard.   Needless to say, none of the kids say survivor or murderer.

A lesson is announced, with a dozen more to come. The kids, now teens, sing a few songs with some anachronistic help from the internet.  Their cheerful, flirtatious vibe is at odds with what the audience knows is coming due to the place and time:  the Polish village of Jedwabne, between the twentieth century's two world wars.  For the next two-plus hours you are about to be put through the wringer of history.

I could not have seen Our Class at a better time, after recently spending ten days in Poland, a visit that inspired me to read Primo Levi's account of his confinement at Auschwitz and Mila 18, a thrilling, 1961 novel by Leon Uris that fleshes out much of what I'd gleaned from the country's very serious and comprehensive historical museums.  But my travel and reading only obliquely addressed Polish complicity in the Holocaust; Tadeusz Słobodzianek's 2009 play confronts it head on in profound ways that reflect the controversy generated by a government investigation begun in 2000 concluding that 40-50 Polish men set fire to a barn where they had herded at least 300 Jewish citizens to their deaths, encouraged by the Gestapo.

How could this happen?  Our Class shows you exactly how, in an incredible shorthand of dramatic vignettes, called lessons.  These explore romantic rejection, class resentment, communist sympathy, propaganda, group think and fear, all incendiary elements that combine in a monstrous kind of circumstantial anti-Semitism that feels absolutely true, as do the superb, uniformly empathic if occasionally self-delusional performances.  Although Yad Vashem eventually awards Zocha Righteous Among Nations status, there are no heroes in this play, despite their proliferation in Polish culture.  And certainly no selflessness in the religious conversion, sexual denial or Hollywood rescue that take place during its increasingly grim course.

It's nearly impossible to imagine an off-Broadway production capable of making you feel like you are experiencing eight decades of a tortured, tumultuous century, but the Classic Stage Company, directed by Igor Golyak,  does it with harsh lighting and a few simple props. Bicycle handlebars, ladders, balloons and sheets create environments both evocative and terrifying. In addition, the aforementioned chalk blackboard, a symbol of the premium Jewish culture places on education, doubles as a screen for video projections that remind the audience no matter how much technology has changed, the impulse to communicate and maintain connection with friends has not.  

Our Class isn't for people who are out for a good time at the theater.  Yet its probing exploration of humanity at its worst does have a bright side:  one class member emigrates to America in 1937, marrying and becoming a rabbi, while also serving as a critical structural element of this searing drama.  

Abram teaches us that procreation is the best, perhaps only, revenge.  

Maybe Happy Ending (3*)

 

What if artificial intelligence turned out to be as goofy as humans?  Will Aronson and Hue Park explore the possibility in Maybe Happy Ending, a gentle musical starring Darren Criss, exuding his Glee-like charm and sincerity, and Broadway first-timer Helen J. Shen, who could have comfortably joined her co-star's hit television show.   They play butttoned-up, jazz-loving Oliver and the more spontaneous Claire, "helpermates" who have been junked by their flawed password creators.  When Claire, a later model than Oliver, needs to be re-charged, they "meet cute".  Geek metaphors are cloyingly plentiful.  

You can't deny the brilliance of Michael Arden's direction and innovative stage craft;  the production design, in particular, shines through its multi-level deployment of neon-ringed screens and enormous video projections that reinforce the defining isolation of our real and virtual worlds.   And there's a lovely number when fireflies, Claire's animating passion, take over the stage that makes you wish the songs were more memorable and the book (deeply indebted to Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun) less twee.  Semi-sleazy Dez Duron (a Voice finalist) croons well and delivers some welcome light jazz distraction from dialog that too often sounds like regurgitated self-help.  

I hate to say it, but Chat GPT's reported wickedness might have been more entertaining than this overly sentimental take on fake love.

House Of Doors (5*)

If you're nostalgic for colonialism, author Tan Twan Eng can satisfy that politically incorrect craving with his latest novel, although fully appreciating his meticulous descriptions of British expatriate life will likely require frequent dictionary consultation for anyone who grew up outside of Malaysia.

In the garden below the kebun was resting in the shade of the casuarina tree, puffing on a kretek and scratching his groin through the folds of his shorts with an abstracted, canine pleasure. Looking at him, a longing for the man’s simple life gripped Willie.

Envious of a native fiddling with his balls under a tree, he thought. How the mighty have fallen.

Willie is none other than W. Somerset Maugham whose work and biography are major sources of inspiration for this ingeniously constructed book that skillfully anchors the not-too-distant past in the early 20th-century present.  Peripherally,  The House of Doors is also a historical novel about the rise of Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese revolutionary revered in both the People's Republic of China and Taiwan.

Robert, Maugham's former (fictional) roommate and Lesley his much younger wife, host the peripatetic writer and his male secretary at their home in Penang, after she has discovered the rather obvious reason behind the sexlessness of her marriage.

And I relished the nights when he slipped into my bed. He was a considerate lover, and he never outstayed his welcome . . . Robert’s nocturnal visits to my bedroom tapered off and eventually ceased completely. I missed him in my bed, but I had a handsome and loving husband and two beautiful sons, and we lived in a house by the sea. What more could I ask for?

Lesley soon finds out in a steamy scene that recalls Sigourney Weaver's passion for Mel Gibson in Peter Weir's sensational political thriller of 1982, In the Year of Living Dangerously.

Despite her understandable homophobia and her awareness of Maugham's professional reputation for spilling the tea--sometimes without even changing people's names--Lesley takes an enormous risk:  she weaponizes her marital disappointment and her close personal link to the 1919 revolution in China by sharing details about both with her houseguest in the context of her friendship with an actual woman in nearby Kuala Lampur on trial for shooting her husband.  The latter tale becomes the basis for The Letter, a 1927 play by Maugham and one of author's biggest successes, especially after it became a Hollywood hit for Bette Davis.

Surprisingly, Maugham keeps Lesley's secret, perhaps because of the bond they form during some midnight skinny dipping that reduces her homophobia and his defenses in an otherworldly encounter that practically demands to be filmed.  It's a good thing, too. Despite their infidelities, Lesley has remained married to Robert (not a spoiler), content in old age if not entirely happy:

What sustained a marriage, kept it going year upon year, I realised, were the things we left unmentioned, the truths that we longed to speak forced back down our throats, back into the deepest, darkest chambers of our hearts.

And then, in the book's truly romantic masterstroke, Tan rewards the long suffering Lesley with a gift of true love, unlocked by her knowledge of the colophon that marks each of Maugham's books:  a hamsa, a Middle Eastern symbol to keep evil at bay.  

I was completely unaware of the symbol before a visit last month to the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.  "What is this?" I asked a gift-shop employee before purchasing a hamsa on a t-shirt.  Now that's what I call evidence of literary woo woo!

Cinema Speculation (4*) by Quentin Tarantino

The director of three of my favorite movies--Inglorious Basterds, Django Unchained and Once Upon A Time . . . . in Hollywood--deconstructing the films of the 70s?  I'm in!  Who doesn't want to know what Taxi Driver would have been like if Brian de Palma had directed it?

But Cinema Speculation turns out to be more than a master class, it's a circuitous look back at a film geek's formative years, when Quentin Tarantino still needed an older adult to accompany him to the theater.  The book brims with kindness and respect for his mother, stepfather and an African-American man whose influence he regrets not acknowledging when he won his second Oscar for screenwriting.  

Tarantino, a fan of Pauline Kael, also seems to have been as obsessed with reading movie reviews as seeing films--every film--as many time as possible, often in theaters where he was the sole Caucasian.  He devotes an entire chapter to Kevin Thomas, a second-string critic for the Los Angeles Times, whom he credits with giving many directors--including Jonathan Demme--their start by praising their early low budget productions.  

In short, Tarantino's generosity--already evident from his penchant for reviving forgotten actors' careers-- comes through again as well as the sense that he learned how to write and shoot movies almost through osmosis, which included exposure to audiences and critics in equal measure.  He shamelessly wants to please both people who talk back at the silver screen and those who analyze and study what's being projected. 

His trademark quirkiness (and access to a number of Hollywood greats, including Martin Scorcese and Paul Schrader) is evident as well.  I mined two nuggets with particular resonance.

I eagerly read his chapter on The Getaway with Steve McQueen (about whose stardom he's particularly perceptive) because I remember how upset I had been to miss its scandalous filming in El Paso (the "king of cool" was reportedly hooking up with his co-star, Ali McGraw) my first year away from home.  Talk about bad timing!  But he never mentions the Sun City in his gossipy account of the movie's casting and shooting.  Instead, he mentions it in an entirely different but hilarious context several chapters later:

[Producer] Ray Stark was also one of the town’s biggest bullies, and he was responsible for mangling more films than an El Paso drive-in movie projector. 

WTF?  That's almost as bad as my mother calling El Paso "the cultural crotch of the nation"!

And then there's his surprising familiarity with the demimonde of my youth and gay male porn:

Even though Schrader uses many real (now defunct) sex districts, store fronts, and massage parlors, his depiction of the adult entertainment industry of the 70s [in Hardcore] never strikes the viewer as completely authentic .  .  .  Schrader's tour of the porno world can’t hold a flickering birthday candle next to [William] Friedkin’s tour of the New York all-male S&M leather bars in that same year’s “Cruising” .  .  . Friedkin’s film, not only strikes the viewer as authentic, it’s also a sexy/scary phantasmagorical sensory experience like no other in cinema (not even 70s all male porn). 

Not that there's anything suspect about Tarantino's obvious heterosexuality.  His multiple, non-judgmental references to gay topics are yet another indicator of his voracious appetite for all things film.

Al Pacino in "Cruising" (1980)

And just FYI:  Getting to watch Friedkin shoot scenes from Cruising in Central Park's Ramble more than compensated for missing The Getaway in El Paso almost a decade earlier.  It also taught me how boring film sets can be when you're not part of the action, just like sports and porn.

Six (4*)

Had I done my homework (or read the Playbill!) I would have had a much greater appreciation of Six: The Musical, Broadway's rollicking assertion of female empowerment that also can be seen on cruise ships.  My dim recall of Hilary Mantel's vibrant Wolf Hall trilogy provided enough information about Henry VIII's first four wives, but I remain clueless about Katherine Howard and Catherine Parr, the last two, although both actresses (Aryn Bohannon and Gabriela Carrillo) perform vividly.

Despite my ignorance, watching their take on Anna of Cleves more than proves that Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss have contemporized Tudor history to show online daters how to get even, not mad.  Henry rejected his fourth wife (and intended political alliance) when Anna didn't look like her portrait (by Hans Holbein no less).  Winking at the queen's Germanic heritage, Olivia Donalson appears to commanding the techno dance floor at Berghain even as she sings about all the perks solitary castle life provides.  

Anne Boleyn's decapitation jokes are just as amusing as the six wives compete among themselves for the title of queen who suffered most during their marriages to merry old England's most famous king.  Henry is probably more widely known for their number than the religious schism he caused to marry Anne who, prior to her beheading, gave birth to the consequential Elizabeth I. 

Still, history is irrelevant when Jasmine Forsberg, a vocal powerhouse playing Jane Seymour, the only queen to marry for love, takes the stage and belts "Heart of Stone."   Thom said he'd see the show a second time just to hear the song again.  This stand alone show-stopper ranks up there with Chiffon's other favorite torch songs from Broadway musicals: 

"My Man" (Funny Girl)

"What Did I Have That I Don't Have" (On A Clear Day You Can See Forever)

"If He Walked Into My Life"  (Mame)

"I Don't Know How To Love Him" (Jesus Christ Superstar) 

"I Know Him So Well" (Chess)

"Heart of Stone" (Six)

Did someone say playlist?  For queens of all ages and genders!

Vote (As If Your Sanity Depended Upon It)!

Impatient to do something, anything, to forestall four years of additional corrupt, self-interested chaos I voted by mail today.

Photo by Ruth Freeman

Not even the Upper West Side of Manhattan, America's most liberal zip code, is immune from the incomprehensible fever that reportedly has infected half of the country's likely voters.

Left On Tenth (3*)

Spending an afternoon with Julianna Margulies and Peter Gallagher didn't turn out to be as pleasant as I expected.  There's the kind of engaging senior citizen romantic comedy banter you'd expect from Delia Ephron, but it's sandwiched between an interminable complaint about Verizon--the set up for which begins before the actors ever appear--and a lengthy exposition of the playwright's ultimately successful survival from the same type of leukemia that killed her more famous and talented sister (who also seems not to have been as lucky in love).  

Margulies and Gallagher are terrific and director Susan Stroman employs every trick in the book to keep the static story moving, but when a medical device projection provides the most dramatic moment in the play, and you have to resort to not one but two dogs on stage, you know it's a lost cause.  While I'm really happy for Ms. Ephron and am thankful for her illustration of Jungian therapy at work, she picked the wrong medium to tell her story.

 

& Juliet (4*)

Jukebox musicals aren't normally my thing, but Swedish pop meister Max Martin compelled me to overcome that bias with "& Juliet," certainly the cleverest and perhaps most tuneful example of the genre that ever has graced a Broadway stage.  Never mind that Stephen Sondheim, for whom the hosting theater is named, probably would shudder over the audience's domination by ear worms.  As Noel Coward once observed so astutely:  "Extraordinary how potent cheap music is."  Especially when it includes "I Want It That Way," "Since You've Been Gone" and "Teenage Dream," all three of which made my "Chiffon Spins A Lifetime" playlist.

Of course one could argue that the English language is dominated by Shakespearean ear worms, a conceit that fuels this delightful romp, performed by a youthful cast as energetic as it is diverse.  Book writer David West Read has reversed engineered a plot that incorporates both William his his wife, Ann Hathaway, who insists on making his centuries-old, tragic tale of two star-crossed young lovers into a contemporary story of pun-filled female empowerment.  Insipid song lyrics--written by a man for whom English is a second language--adapt startlingly well to this approach and even manage to wryly comment on a creaky classic that remains an essential part of our now threatened monoculture.

Although "& Juliet" may appeal most strongly to people who grew up with Martin songs, Read was savvy enough to realize that their parents probably were forced to listen to his hits on the car radio by their children in the same way that high school English teachers have forced their students to read Romeo & Juliet.  He gives the best number to Juliet's nurse, Angelique, and a new character, Lance du Bois, the father of Romeo's replacement, whose name provides the show's funniest gag.  Jeanette Bayardelle and Paulo Szot, equally fine, turn "Teenage Dream" into an hysterical bedroom lament that had every old geezer in the audience, including me, grinning from ear to ear. 

Everyone Lives In Their Own Reality

The exhibition space, beneath Fort Jay, once housed munitions.  Oysters shells and other environment-themed art had replaced ammo.  That's a good thing, no?

Tim had never been to Governors Island.  I had visited only once before, also to see some contemporary art.  Jenny Kendler's "Other of Pearl," was the draw this time.  She "grew" pearl sculptures (above) inside these display cases and auctioned them off after the exhibit closed to benefit the Billion Oyster Project.

Kendler and her collaborator used fossilized whale bone as clappers to fabricate these bells.  They're intended to draw attention to species extinction but only a careful read of the exhibit label apprises you of the artists' intentions.  

"Whale Bells" by Andrew Bearnot & Jenny Kendler (2023)

Kendler maps her nervous system in this one, using thousands of freshwater pearls.  Too bad it reminded me more of Halloween than our interdependence with the environment and women's traditional work.

"Mother, of Pearl (Nervous System)" (2024)

Here the artist creates the inside of a sperm whale's head, fashioning the organs that give it voice and enable its echolocation from a variety of materials, include antique whale oil. No sperm whales were harmed in this unusual work's creation!

"Sperm Whale Instrument (Part I)" (2024)

Eye-rolling was even more characteristic of Tim's reaction to this exhibit than mine.  He works in the musical instruments department of the Met, and is an artist in his own right. "You've got to open your heart more," I teased.  "Or close my eyes!" he retorted.

He found Governor's Island itself more interesting.  A National Park Service ranger on autopilot told us it's shaped like an ice cream cone, with landfill from the construction of the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel forming the scoop.

A moat surrounds Fort Jay.  It's always been dry.

Housing for Army officers who once served at Fort Jay and their families has been turned into art galleries.

You would not have believed the number of bees buzzing around these flowers.

Tim had as little patience for art exhibited inside one building as he had for "Other of Pearl."  I didn't get the name of the artist who created this ironic sculpture from a school notebook.

Another building displayed the work of the formerly incarcerated.

"The Republikklan Supreme KKKourt" by Karen L. Thomas

"Verdict" by Jairo Pastoressa

Tim took a picture of my eye before asserting that photos aren't reality because they capture only a moment in time and a single person's point of view.  I argued that's exactly what makes them "real."  The photos I took reflect what I saw on a glorious Sunday afternoon with a friend on an island in the middle of New York harbor.