Plaster Casting in the Bronx

I associated plaster casting with groupies more than artists until I saw a superb exhibition of work by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres at the Bronx Museum.  Their subjects for the past for the past 50 years have mostly been people of color who live in the neighborhood. 

Joe Conzo at 17 by John Ahearn (2020)

Omar by John Ahearn (2011)

The Graduates: Bashira and Princess by John Ahearn (1989-90)

Torres began as Ahearn's assistant but soon became a full collaborator.  Born in Puerto Rico, his ethnicity helped Ahearn gain access to an overlooked community that may have been suspicious of his motives.

Maria by Rigoberto Torres (1993)

Perhaps it's projection, but Ahearn's preferred subjects appear to be attractive young men.

The sculptures are so realistic that the faces can change dramatically in profile.

BB by John Ahearn (1979)

Scorpio by John Ahearn (2008)

Willy by John Ahearn (1985)

Corey by John Ahearn & Rigoberto Torres (1988)

Raymond and Toby by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres (1991)

Julio, José, and Junito by Rigoberto Torres (1991/95)

Julia de Burgos by Rigoberto Torres (2021)

Melissa Maycock by Rigoberto Torres (1997)

Maria by John Ahearn with Rigoberto Torres (1981)

Janelle and Audrey by John Ahearn with Rigoberto Torres (1983)

 Selena by John Ahearn with Rigoberto Torres (1985)

Carmen and Erica by Rigoberto Torres (1998)

The curators gave the galleries a community feel by setting up a domino board and a face painting station.

More elaborate sculptures enhanced the feel.

"Uncle Tito at the Liquor Store" by Rigoberto Torres (1983/1995)

Orlando the Donut Man by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres (1987)

Fortune Teller by Rigoberto Torres (1995)

A video shot by Ahearn's twin brother, Charlie, provides insight into their process and the excitement their work generates among their subjects.

Luis and Virginia Arroyo by John Ahearn (1980)

I can't say for sure, but I think Shorty may have helped them create their collaborative art, too.

Shorty Working at the C&R Statuary Corp." by Rigoberto Torres (1985)

The Magician (5*)

"After Einstein, you are the most important German alive," a U.S. government agent tells Thomas Mann near the end of his life, in Colm Tóibín's fictional biography.  Imagine that! And oh, how he has, and then some, against the panoramic sweep of the twentieth century.

Mann, born in 1875, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature between the two world wars but in Tóibín's telling, he left the politics mostly to his left-wing brother and six (!) children while under the care of his assimilated Jewish wife, Katia, who tolerates, even facilitates his attraction to men because she had been appalled by her own father's serial philandering.  If the real Katia was anything like Toibin's compelling creation, then the world owes her an enormous debt for enabling Thomas to shut the door to his study and write such master works as Buddenbrooks, Death in Venice and The Magic Mountain, which was inspired by Katia's stay at a Swiss sanitarium.

Tóibín smartly identifies the location and year of each chapter to pinpoint the historical context of his mindset.  Born in Lubeck to a Brazilian mother, he is disinherited by his burgher father.  Mann marries way above his station in Munich where, as a young writer, he concludes this about his country just as it is about to declare war:

Germany, despite the strength of its military, was, he thought, fragile. It had come into being because of its common language, the language is shared with these poems. In its  music and its poetry, it had treasured things of the spirit. It had been ready to explore what was difficult and painful in life. And it was hemmed in now, isolated and vulnerable, by countries with which it had nothing in common.

Mann initially treats current events as annoying interruptions to his writing, which has earned him both fame and money.  His refusal to use his influence eventually drives a wedge between him and his older, more politically engaged brother, a less committed novelist who gets all the best lines:

"This is how empires end, “ Heinrich said, “a mad old bat being treated obsequiously in a provincial hotel. It will all be swept away.“

“Eternity will be bourgeois.”

Unfortunately, he can't ignore the real world as Germany rises from the ashes of the first world war.  First the communist revolution in Munich (who knew?) followed by the relentless rise of Naziism.  Here, as the Manns are first forced to flee to Switzerland, and then to the United States, The Magician turns into a thriller, one with a twist that will resonate among gay readers when the shipping of Mann's private diaries is bungled and he fears international exposure.

Tóibín treats Mann's appreciation for classical music--the mostly German kind--almost as a sublimation for his sexual orientation.  This becomes most explicit in a Manhattan record store where his interaction with two simpatico clerks reads almost like a seduction.  Near the end of the novel, while Mann is California dreamin', Tóibín also uses classical music to indict the German character.  His Mann accuses it of releasing passions that can be as destructive as they are sublime which seems a bit of a stretch for a philistine like me.

Refugee life (first stop: Princeton) affords Tóibín the opportunity to examine American insularity prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and Mann's ambivalent relationship with Agnes Meyer (mother of Katharine Graham, the eventual publisher of the Washington Post), who did more than anyone else to keep him and his family safe, and living in the style to which they oh-so-luckily had become accustomed prior to their flight from Europe.  During a dinner party at Meyer's house, Katia speaks her mind for the first time, giving an early, articulate voice to the "never forget" strategy adopted by so many Holocaust scholars and reminding me just how far Germany has come from its ugly past.

The Magician would be a great book even if Thomas Mann had never actually existed.  That he did, and that Tóibín has credibly resurrected him from dim recollections of his work, is its own bit of magic:  I can't wait to re-open Death in Venice and read Buddenbrooks for the first time.

Kimberly Akimbo (5*)

Sweet, tuneful, funny AND serious--what's not to like about his unanticipated delight? Something about the weird title and a review of the off Broadway production put me off. Who wants to see a high school girl trapped in the body of a woman who said goodbye to 50 at least a decade earlier applying to the Make-A-Wish Foundation?  Me, it turns out, especially when Victoria Clarke impeccably captures the mannerisms and vocal cadences of a teenager while singing her defiantly unbroken heart out.  Justin Cooley, her adorable partner in anagrams,  accompanies her on a bittersweet journey that leaves her dysfunctional family behind, including a criminal aunt (Bonnie Milligan) who comes close to stealing the show.  

Keys to the Kingdom

When Zoltan mentioned he planned to visit New York in April, I told him he could stay in my apartment for several days before I returned from Florida.  

Although he already had begun peeling the Big Apple,  I suggested he catch the Gerhard Richter show in Chelsea.  Audrey and I had been blown away by MoMA's major survey of the artist in 2002.  Zoltan liked the "mood" works best.

That reminded me he had been obsessed with this mood indicator on my refrigerator as a child.  I re-set it as soon as I got back to 47 Pianos.

1998

We made plans to meet in midtown and got a sneak preview of a new work going up on the High Line.

"Old Tree" by Pamela Rosenkranz

At the Whitney, the colors of this painting drew us both in, separately. I wasn't familiar with the artist.

"Out in the Country" by Gertrude Abercrombie (1939)

If I hadn't read a puzzling story by Rachel Cusk in The New Yorker earlier this month, I wouldn't have known Norman Lewis, either.  Mostly unheralded by the art establishment in his lifetime--he died in 1979-- Lewis was a rare Black abstract expressionist.  His later work moved toward the figurative; this disturbing piece obviously alludes to the Ku Klux Klan.

"American Totem" by Norman Lewis (1960)

I knew Zoltan would enjoy the incredible views from the museum's multiple roof decks. He graciously agreed to point at another landmark building in our meta photo shoot:  tall guy, even taller building.

In this shot, I'm pretty sure he's checking to see if his elusive friend Aaron had gotten back to him yet.

Among other things, Josh Kline: Project for a New American Century examines the plight of the American worker.  After people get fired, they typically pack personal items from their desks in boxes to take home.  In "Contagious Unemployment," Kline displays the contents of these boxes inside plastic containers that resemble viruses under a microscope.  Very high concept.

Has automation or AI made this bagged lawyer's work obsolete?  She's life-size, BTW, and not the only capitalist casualty on display.

A multi-ingredient IV drip enhances overtime efficiency!

I have no idea what Kline was aiming for in this piece but it photographed well.  Eerie video interviews of actors or avatars--I couldn't tell which--impersonating Whitney Houston and Kurt Cobain make the point that entertainers are just as affected by commodification as other workers, if not even more so.

The things you find out about people when you visit a museum together--apparently, Zoltan is addicted to shredding, and not the kind St. Vincent does on her guitar.  Who knew the detritus could be used to stuff a couch?

Even though Zoltan is happily employed and I'm retired, we share the same philosophy about the 9-to-5 grind, working to live rather than living to work.  That probably inoculates us from some of the threats that Kline so creatively exposes.  The wall behind us is covered in Patagonia-branded fabric.

After leaving the Whitney, we checked out Little Island, just across the street.  When Zoltan told me how lucky I have been to live in New York City all my life, I let him know it wasn't always this picturesque.

The waterfront was a lot more industrial when his mother and I used to ride our bikes on the elevated West Side Highway.  Audrey stood on a pier close to Little Island when I took this uptown view in 1979.

Zoltan treated me to dinner at Gennaro, my go-to Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side, where he ordered the risotto and oxtail.   He was pleasantly surprised when I told him to get a spare set of keys made so he could have a place to stay whenever this snowbird flies south.

All it takes for Uncle Jeff to give you the keys to his kingdom, is a nice bottle of cabernet sauvignon and some very tasty orecchiette with broccoli & provolone.  As I texted his father, "to be 33 and in Manhattan!"

Thanks again, Zoltan!

"Breaking the Buckskin Ceiling"

"Fierce" is probably a loaded word in describing a Native American woman because of its association with warriors, but Jaune Quick-to-See Smith might not mind given what the 83-year-old artist had to say about the genesis of this work which "was painted when women were running for office all over this country in unprecedented numbers. You see a woman standing on rocks, like a mountaintop. She is holding something called a talking stick, but this is actually a tool that women use at home to dig bitterroot and camas roots. I made it a symbol for her speaking her mind. I also put a mask on her, and above her head is a form that looks like a snake but it represents her speaking loud and strong. Could this be me? Maybe, sometimes."

"The Speaker" (2015)

"Memory Maps," her current retrospective, is the first mounted by the Whitney devoted to an Indigenous American.  Born on a reservation in Montana, Quick-to-See Smith has worked mostly in Albuquerque.  A backwater in the art world for sure, but less so now that major museums have frantically been playing catch-up.

    

"Petroglyph Park" (1987)

"Cheyenne Series #5" (1984) 

"Rain (C.S. 1854)" detail (1990)

Quick-to-See Smith obviously didn't create in a vacuum.  I see influences as varied as Jasper Johns and Jean-Michel Basquiat, but she filters them, often humorously and almost always politically, through a perspective based on the raw deal that white America has given her people.  Quick-to-See belongs to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation. Europeans called them "Flatheads" because some of her 19th-century ancestors practiced body alteration by pressing flat objects against the skulls of infants, perhaps to bestow instant recognizability, a low-tech form of tribal security.

 

"I See Red: Snowman" (1992) 

"Rain, I" (1993)

Quick-to-See Smith, who proudly claims to have "broken the buckskin ceiling," hasn't limited herself to a single medium.

"Urban Trickster" (2021)

She and her son, Neal Ambrose-Smith, collaborated on this "Warrior for the 21st Century" in 1999.

They're still collaborating two decades later, with each other, and with other Indigenous painters and sculptors who have established a communal alternative to the art world establishment.

"Trade Canoe:  Making Medicine" (2018) 

Bison and horses often appear in Quick-to-See Smith's work.

"Spam" (1995)

"War Horse in Babylon" (2005) 

Quick-to-See Smith reflects the environmental concerns of Indigenous peoples whose stewardship of their land is threatened by factory farming, forest fires and climate change.

"The Rancher" (2002)

She also has an extraordinary color palette.

"Who Leads? Who Follows? (2004)

The work from which the show's title has been taken is my favorite.

"Memory Map" (2000)

"Survival Map" (2021)

"The Natural World: A Thousand Drops of Dew" (2002)