Spring Trauma

It took me a day or two after returning from the Folly to realize why 47 Pianos seemed even sunnier than I recalled.   The enormous old tree that had shaded my living room for the past four decades had been cut down.  Bummer!

 

The gorgeous eastern redbud tree around the corner took some of the sting out of that arboreal trauma.

I don't remember ever seeing so many eastern redbud trees, but they certainly do brighten up Central Park.

Not that there's a big need for that.

Look how the cherry tree trunks frame the fountain in the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir.

The protests at Columbia against the war Israel is waging against Hamas in Gaza injected a little modest trauma into my own life.  Initially, my gym ID provided me with access to the closed campus.   This photo and video were taken after Columbia cleared the first tent encampments.

A few days later, the protesters had settled in again.

It took a week for Jewish students to symbolically demonstrate their support for Israel with a Jewish star fashioned from the national flag.

Elsewhere on campus, student life continued as usual.  Of course that all changed when Columbia enlisted NYPD to clear the tent encampments, a development that had this alumnus, Class of '75, shaking his head in bewilderment.  Since the demonstrations against the war in Viet Nam--during which I witnessed cops on horseback bludgeoning students with billy clubs--Columbia and cops have gotten along as well as . . . Israel and Hamas.  Worse yet, alumni, including those with gym memberships, were barred from campus for nearly a month, ostensibly because of outside agitation.  It made me want to organize a protest of my own:  "Let my people swim!"  Meanwhile, Columbia's glorious university-wide graduation ceremonies were cancelled for the Class of '24 (who also lost their high school graduations to covid, poor kids) and the situation in Gaza remains unresolved, as does the war in Ukraine.

As usual, long walks and museum visits took my mind off the awful state of the world although Si Lewen's devastatingly  relevant "The Parade" only re-enforced my disgust for nationalism and warmongering in general.

Who knew that antique Caddies came in Tiffany blue?

The PC aspect of the Whitney Biennial left me colder than usual but I enjoyed the broken-door effect on art appreciation.

 

NADA, which has moved from Staten Island to Chelsea, introduces artists from all over the world. 

"Where Birds Don't Cry" by Jongwan Jang (2024)

Few artists have ever integrated colorful depictions of sports and culture as well as Ernie Barnes who finally seems to earning the accolades he deserves.

"Homecoming" (1994)

A fiftieth anniversary exhibition finally introduced me to the International Center of Photography's downtown location.

The visit also turned me on to the work of David Seidner, another casualty of the AIDS pandemic, at a serendipitous time.  I'd recently watched The New Look on Apple TV in which Christian Dior and other designers revitalize the French fashion industry after World War II in part by designing haute couture for a traveling exhibition of wire dolls with plastic heads.  When the dolls were resurrected in 1990, Seidner photographed them in real Parisian locations.

Not shy about his talent, he included himself in this grid of artists' portraits, in the lower right hand corner.

Here's what Seidner told the New York Times Magazine about his final photographic obsession, not long before he died in 1999 at age 42:  "[Orchids] represent the idea that adversity can be a great motivator-they can adapt to anything. They're survivors, and they're beautiful survivors."

"Orchid," 1999

It was all about "Statement Sleeves" at the Fashion Institute of Technology, including a pair (right) designed by Stephen Burrows.

The "Treasures" exhibit at the New York Public Library documents that our fondness for dogs goes back at least four centuries.

"Grotesque Animal" from Neuw: Grottesken Buch (1610)

New York's street art never gets old.

This sign pretty much sums up my attitude about Manhattan after nearly a four-month absence, trauma notwithstanding.

Cooper Union

American Academy of Dramatic Arts

Jefferson Market

Soho Fire Escape

Fifth Avenue Scaffolding

Madison Square Garden Entrance

Diamond Center

Abandoned Citibike

I gotta admit, the narcissist in me was tempted when I stumbled upon this store in Soho which produces three-dimensional selfies on site.

They definitely know their demographic!

"The Parade"

These hollow-eyed women could be the victims of any war.

That's the point of "The Parade," a powerful suite of work by Si Lewen,  a Polish Jew born shortly after World War I who fled the Nazis with his parents to New York where an anti-Semitic cop assaulted him in Central Park.  He recovered from an attempt to poison himself shortly afterward in 1936, eventually enlisting in the US Army where, as a member of the Ritchie Boys, he witnessed the liberation of Buchenwald, which precipitated another mental breakdown.  Lewen went on to produce "The Parade," one of the 20th century's great indictments of nationalism and war, largely under the radar because of the medium he chose, a precursor to today's graphic novels.

  

Lewen traces the phases of war in 63 black and white drawings, without a word.  Excited crowds waving flags line the streets in the first surge of patriotism prior to the commencement of battle.  The recurring dog seems to function as a witness.

Goose-stepping soldiers hold their rifles at the same angle as their legs.  

Lewen's approach reminds me a little of Civil War, a controversial film directed by Alex Garland.  These soldiers lack ideology, too.  They could be Israelis or Palestinians.

A parent holds up a child with a flag in support of whatever the cause, inculcating a new generation with hatred.

I can't tell if this child is gazing into a parent's eyes.  Or a nun's.  Or death's.

Despite everything he saw and endured, Lewen kept his sense of humor.  In this scene, which recalls the absurdity of the war in Viet Nam for my generation, medical personnel examine conscripts to ensure they're healthy enough to kill people. 

Basic training, just like in Full Metal Jacket, an equally powerful anti-war film by Stanley Kubrick who also directed Paths of Glory, which examines the inhumanities of military decision-making.

The high velocity of civilian death is inevitable and propulsively illustrated.  

Lewen had to flee home three times during his life.  First, as a toddler, after his family's home in Lublin was burned to the ground in a progrom, then as a 13-year-old to avoid increasing anti-Semitism in Berlin and finally, a miraculous escape to America in 1935, when Jews weren't permitted to immigrate. 

Battlefield horrors vary.

These people are the lucky ones.  If you're injured, at least you're alive.

"The Parade" comes full circle with the veterans' return except this time a parent shields their child from the hoopla.  

In 1951, when Lewin first exhibited his drawings in New York, Albert Einstein, then a Princeton professor, took notice and wrote him a fan letter:

I find your work "The Parade" very impressive from a purely artistic standpoint. Furthermore, I find it a real merit to counteract the tendencies towards war through the medium of art. Nothing can equal the psychological effect of real art—neither factual descriptions nor intellectual discussion.

It has often been said that art should not be used to serve any political or otherwise practical goals.  But I could never agree with this point of view.  It is true that it is utterly wrong and disgusting if some direction of thought and expression is forced upon the artist from the outside. But strong emotional tendencies of the artist himself have often given birth to truly great works of art. One has only to think of Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Daumier's immortal drawings directed against the corruption in French politics of his time. Our time needs you and your work!

Lewen died in 2016, at the age of 98.  It's doubtful that the decades-long peace dividend Europe experienced after the fall of the Soviet Union fooled him.

Kudos to Art Spiegelman for curating this powerful exhibit at the James Cohan Gallery in New York City.