Lou Reed: The King of New York (3*)

 

It's been said "Never meet your heroes."  Or read long, detailed biographies about them, either.

Will Hermes obviously spent a lot of time interviewing musicians and reviewing Reed's archives at the New York Public Library; if nothing else, Lou Reed: The King of New York offers the textual equivalent of a lifelong stan's voluminous scrapbook.  It thoroughly documents every phase of his life.

But is asking a biographer to offer some considered judgment about his subject too much? What made Lou such an asshole?  It can't just have been his less-than-affectionate father or shock treatments in the early 60s.  

Transformer brought me to Lou my sophomore year in college; I loved "Perfect Day" and "Satellite of Love" almost as much as "Walk on the Wild Side."  The singer-songwriter's gay vibe contributed to the album's allure as much as the music and transgressive art work (Hermes reveals that the male model on the back cover stuffed a banana in his jeans).  

Rock and Roll Animal, one of the few live albums I ever have loved, sealed the deal for this young fan, still struggling with his own sexuality.  Not only did it introduce me to Lou's greatest work with the Velvet Underground; the buzzcut, lipstick and leather-encased crotch blew my mind.  This (sexy) renegade isn't kidding! 

But maybe he was, or perhaps my understanding of human sexuality is too binary. He did, after all, end up marrying three women, two of whom contributed more to his mental health and career than anybody else, as Hermes makes amply clear. Perhaps only Sylvia Morales or Laurie Andersen are able to provide the insight I crave and it would be fully understandable if they said "mind your own fucking business!"  Lou certainly would have, although if Duncan Hannah's claim is accurate--here dismissed as a goof--perhaps ignorance is bliss.

I stuck with Lou for more than a decade.  With the exception of Metal Machine Music, I bought every subsequent album through The Blue Mask before deciding he just wasn't my cup of tea any longer.  The farther he got away from Andy Warhol and David Bowie, the less I liked him.  And the book.  It doesn't help that when Hermes does offer critical judgment--In death, as in life, Reed was a few steps ahead of David Bowie--he's dead wrong about the latter.

Lou Reed:  The King of New York proves that few people in rock 'n roll sneered better or behaved worse ("King of Self Sabotage" would have been a more accurate subtitle). But my time would have been better spent listening to "Coney Island Baby," arguably the song that struck the greatest chord with this listener, on repeat.  At least I have Hermes to thank for solving the mystery of Rachel.

You know, man, when I was a young man in high school

You believe in or not, that I wanted to play football for the coach

And all those older guys

They said that he was mean and cruel but you know

I wanted to play football, for the coach

They said I was a little too lightweight to play lineback and so I'm playing right-end

Wanted to play football for the coach

'Cause, you know some day, man you gotta stand up straight unless you're gonna fall

Then you're going to die

And the straightest dude I ever knew was standing right for me, all the time

So I had to play football for the coach

And I wanted to play football for the coach

When you're all alone and lonely

In your midnight hour

And you find that your soul

It has been up for sale

And you're getting to think about

All the things that you done

And you're getting to hate

Just about everything

But remember the princess who lived on the hill

Who loved you even though she knew you was wrong

And right now she just might come shining through

And the

Glory of love

Glory of love

Glory of love, just might come through

And all your two-bit friends have gone and ripped you off

They're talking behind your back saying "man, you are never going to be no human being"

And you start thinking again about all those things that you've done

And who it was and what it was

And all the different things that made every different scene

Ah, but remember that the city is a funny place

Something like a circus or a sewer

And just remember, different people have peculiar tastes

And the

Glory of love

The glory of love

The glory of love, might see you through

Yeah, but now, now

Glory of love

The glory of love

The glory of love might see you through

Glory of love, uh, huh-huh

The glory of love

Glory of love, glory of love

Glory of love, now, glory of love, now

Glory of love, now, now, now, glory of love

Glory of love, give it to me now, glory of love to see you through, huh

Oh, my Coney Island baby, now

I'm a Coney Island baby, now

I'd like to send this one out to Lou and Rachel

And all the kids at P.S. one-ninety-two (Coney Island baby)

Man, I'd swear, I'd give the whole thing up for you

Hood Paintings

The art world has been more than a little skittish about Philip Guston during an era of acute political sensitivity.  After George Floyd's murder, a traveling show organized by museums in London, Washington, DC, Boston, Houston was postponed because the artist's late-career "hood paintings," obviously alluding to the Ku Klux Klan, were included.  Now the Jewish Museum has paired some of these paintings with those of Trenton Doyle Hancock, a contemporary African-American artist who identifies strongly with the older Jewish artist.

"Close-Up" (1969)

If nothing else, the discomfort with Guston's late-career works proves yet again that image overpowers reality.  Born to parents forced to flee Ukraine because of antisemitic progroms, Guston incorporated white hoods into his work as readily identifiable symbols of oppression.  Reacting to news of a lynching, he sketched this drawing at age 17.  If I hadn't visited the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, I would have been surprised that lynchings took place as late as 1930.

"Drawing for Conspirators" (1930)

Shortly afterward, Guston, who had moved with his parents from Montreal to Los Angeles, and two other artists created murals for a Marxist organization in Los Angeles that believed art could be a powerful agent of social change.  Within two years, an anti-Communist squad of the police department, assisted by the local KKK chapter, destroyed the murals.

Mural for the Los Angeles Headquarters of the John Reed Club (ca. 1931)

In his mid-twenties, Guston travelled to Mexico where muralists Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros influenced him and other politically-minded colleagues.  After returning to America and re-locating to New York, he began creating murals for the Works Progress Administration.

"The Struggle Against Terrorism" by Philip Guston, Reuben Kadish & Jules Langsner (1935)

Spurning the conformity of the 50s, Guston eventually earned fame and critical acclaim as a member of the New York School.  But by the late 60s, he broke with abstract expressionism and began painting works that recalled his early enrollment in a correspondence school for cartooning.  His aesthetic switcheroo initially befuddled art critics but most eventually came around.  Guston's hoods and cigars look less ominous than ridiculous, a symbol of what today might be called "toxic masculinity." 

"Riding Around" by Philip Guston (1969)

"Cigar" by Philip Guston (1969)

Significantly, Guston, who had changed his name from Goldstein to disguise his Jewishness (a potential impediment to success), implicated himself in the hood paintings, too, essentially saying we are all members of the Klan if we're not actively confronting racism and antisemitism in our politics.

.

"The Studio" by Philip Guston (1969)

It's no wonder I became instantly enamored of Hancock, even though I'd never heard of him prior to this exhibit.  He acknowledges Art Spiegelman, the artist who took on the Holocaust in Maus, in my mind the greatest graphic novel ever.  Hancock took a similar tack with white supremacy in Step and Screw (2014) which features Torpedo Boy, his alter ego, and looks back to Philip Guston, whose birth and death is recorded in hard-to-see cut outs below the cartoon panels.

JUNE 27, 1913
A BOY NAMED PHILIP GOLDSTEIN IS BORN IN MONTREAL CANADA
TO LOUIS AND RACHEL GOLDSTEIN 

This particular panel recalls the cliche "passing the baton" as Guston's alter ego hands Torpedo Boy a light bulb, suggesting their continuity as artists struggling to deal with a racist and antisemitic world.

JUNE 7, 1980
PHILIP GUSTON DIES

Hancock takes the idea and runs with it, later adding a Biblical allusion to a painting that comments on the dubious social contracts that Black Americans have been forced to make as a result of white supremacy.  He conveys a conversation between the Klansman and a skeptical Torpedo Boy by cutting out words from the solid color areas.

 

"Schlep and Screw, Knowledge Rental Pawn Exchange Service" (partial, 2020)

In another, enormous work, Hancock reaches even further.  He retrofits Loid, another character from his crazy vegan sci fi/superhero universe as the lynching victim from Guston's "Drawing for Conspirators" (above).

"Coloration Coronation" (2016)

But the artists share more than hood imagery.  For Guston, this ladder refers to the infirmity of old age.

"The Ladder" by Philip Guston (1978)

It almost can seem as if Hancock is "sampling" Guston.  Here, he nods back to Guston, his "spiritual" father, by alluding to his stepfather, who worked as a carpenter.

"The Former and the Ladder or Ascension and a Cinchin'" by Trenton Doyle Hancock (2012)

Guston's sense of humor is evident in Hancock's work, too, particularly in this recent homoerotic riff on the pottery scene in Ghost.

"The Boys in the Hoods are Always Hard" (2023)

Hancock renders his themes in felt, too.

"Step and Screw: West End Scrap (Four Foot Furry Face Off)"  (2021)

Food for thought stimulated by this painting and label text which quotes Hancock:  When people talk about code switching, it's often just along racial lines. But my understanding of code switching runs deeper.  It becomes a superpower at the end of the day, to be able to weave in and out of a range of social situations.  Is Hancock's invocation of Guston itself a form of code switching that enables him to be taken more seriously by the art world while at the same time providing cover for Guston's most controversial works?  If so, it's a win-win for both artists!

"Step and Screw: The Star of Code Switching" (2020)

Sunset Blvd. (3*)

Stripped down just doesn't do it for me, especially when the subject is Hollywood glamour, no matter how faded.  Sure, there's a lot to admire about the high concept production of Sunset Blvd. that now has much of the audience at the St. James Theater jumping out of its seats, and yes, Nicole Scherzinger's pull-out-the-stops vocal performance of "As If We Never Said Goodbye" does induce goosebumps. But in the final analysis the show is "a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing." 

Or perhaps I'm just too literal.  Let's start with the casting.  As talented (and hunky) an understudy as Diego Andres Rodriguez is, he's WAAAAAAY  too young to play the sneering, seen-it-all Joe Gillis, and featured performer Tom Francis (whom I didn't see) is only 25, too.  The age (and attractiveness) difference between Rodriguez and Scherzinger, whose own youth significantly undercuts the premise of Billy Wilder's 1953 masterpiece, needs to SEEM a lot greater than it does.  And no knock to Grace Hodgett Young, who sings beautifully and delivers the only believable dramatic performance as Betty Schaefer, but she ain't no ingenue. Even if exploding convention is the point of this adaptation, Broadway's third, doesn't the story have to be SOMEWHAT believable for the audience to empathize with its disillusioned and deluded leads?  And despite the unexpected reality induced by the gimmick that opens the second act (IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING!?!?), West 44th Street is no Sunset Boulevard.

Now for the intriguing concept rigorously executed under PERFECT lighting in which a couple of chairs are the ONLY props, and the ONLY costume changes occur on stage (SELDOMLY):  silent films, Norma Desmond's comfort zone, WERE black and white and over-emoting WAS the thing.  But the former gets old pretty quickly and the latter, especially when blown up to movie screen-size close-ups on an otherwise bare stage (making the microphones look as big as drones), evokes ridicule, not pathos.  Director Jaime Lloyd, who's not shy about promoting his Svengali role, also wants it both ways, with a blood-red Grand Guignol finale that recalls the prom scene in Carrie, minus the heartbreak.  

We gave the world/New ways to dream/Somehow we found/New ways to dream sings Norma, more than once, about the birth of the movies.  Call me old-fashioned, but Lloyd is more successful in conjuring nightmares which, in our current political climate, makes his show more resonant than entertaining for people who prefer traditional musicals. 

Childhood Wonder Renewal

It took "Ice Cold: An Exhibition of Hip-Hop Jewelry" to get me back to the American Museum of Natural History.  I last visited shortly after the Rose Center for Earth and Space opened at the turn of the millennium.

Drake's "The Crown Jewel of Toronto Pendant" by Alex Moss (2023)

I entered the Gilder Center for Science, Education and Innovation on Columbus Avenue.  It opened last year to much acclaim.  Modern architecture grafted on to a building that opened in 1869 doesn't sound like a great idea, but it works, evoking a sense of wonder as soon as you step inside.

A small darkened gallery houses the bling.  Each piece is identified by who owns it, who made it and when.  T-Pain designed this ten-pound necklace in response to an anonymous challenge.

The pieces can get pretty elaborate.  Tyler, the Creator can open his bellhop's suitcases.

Necklace by Alex Moss (2021)

A$AP Rocky's EXO Grenade Pendant by Alex Moss (2023)

Joey BadaS$'s Capital Steez Necklace by Greg Yuna (ca. 2016)

If you're as fond of color as I am, look no farther than the adjacent Mignone Halls of Gems and Minerals. My father returned from Australia with a gift of opals for Lois, his wife.  I don't recall them looking like this.

Decades earlier, Ken also brought back a green ring from Japan that I passed along to Zoltan.  When he had it appraised, we discovered the stone was jadeite, not jade, which also comes in a variety of colors.  Zoltan's ring most resembles the green on the far left.

My "Abstraction" photo file expanded considerably as a result of my visit to the hall, and reminded me that as a child I used to collect unusual stones which Ken would help me mount and label on framed white poster board which hung above my slot car track in the garage.  A fossil from the Loire Valley and a chunk of the Petrified Forest were two of my most prized possessions.

Dawn Redwood (Cascade Mountains, Washington)

Orbicular Granodiorite (Western Australia)

"The Singing Stone" (Azurite & Malachite, Arizona)

Rhodonite (New Jersey)

Calcite and Aragonite (Arizona)

Elbaite (Brazil)

You can glimpse the Solomon Family Insectarium from outside the museum.

If you like creepy crawlies, it's incredible.

Ever wonder what goes on inside a beehive?  Wonder no more!  There's an ant farm, too.

Insects of all varieties are beautifully displayed, like these that belong to the Phasmatodea order.

Who knew mosquitoes and cockroaches could grow so big?

Lifesize Mosquito (Culex pipiens)

Giant Cave Cockroach

When my parents returned from Munich in 1957, we stopped to visit relatives in White Plains.  Ken awakened me before dawn one day and we drove down to the Fulton Fish Market, then located in lower Manhattan.  Our adventure continued at the American Museum of Natural History.  It's one of my earliest childhood memories.  But the funny thing is I don't recall the dinosaurs, just the squid.  

Tyrannosaurus rex

Protoceratops 

Stegosaurus 

Constantin Astori painted this pterosaur mural in 1942 for the Hall of Late Dinosaurs.

This flamingo mural is even older.  Louis Agassiz Fuertes, painted the birds in 1902.

Fuertes worked with Frank Chapman, the museum's first ornithologist, to create the stunning dioramas in the Sanford Hall of North American Birds.  They're the oldest in the museum and predate the birth of my mother and father by more than a decade well over a century ago.  In addition to funding the hall, Leonard C. Sanford donated many of the specimens from his own collection.  

Wood Storks

I paid special attention to the birds I've personally photographed in the wild.

Sandhill Cranes (Winding Waters Natural Area, FL)

Desert Birds

Roadrunner (Yucca Valley, CA)

This random display reminded me that the first charitable donation I ever made was to the Bat Conservation International in Austin, Texas, when I learned the critters with bad reps pollinated banana trees and feasted on mosquitoes.

The Gilder Center looks pretty cool from the outside, too.