Wealth of Art at the Naples Art Museum, Part 1

Expectations, as always, are a dangerous thing.  For months, I've been trying to get down to the Naples Art Museum to see the "Painting Women" show that was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.  I finally made it there--on the very last day of the exhibit.  The show was mobbed.  (Okay, I'll admit that "mobbed" by Southwest Florida standards--meaning there were maybe 20-25 people there to see the show--doesn't really compare to trying to see a show at the Met on its last day, but it was still pretty crowded.)  The docent who was scheduled was a no-show, leaving me to roam around and take in the exhibit on my own. 

Aimee Lamb's Snow Storm (1954)

I'm sorry to say that, despite a couple of nice Mary Cassatts and Georgia O'Keefes, I found the show pretty uninspiring.   My favorite painting was a small work entitled Snow Storm by Aimee Lamb, an artist I'd never heard of before.  There was  something very appealing about the colors and the mood in this work.  (In fact, the painting reminded me of a giclee I bought by Sam Toft at the Art Expo in New York a few years back.   You can check out her work at   http://www.samtoft.co.uk/)   I'm not wholly certain, though, why a painting from the 1950s--or the works by O'Keefe for that matter--were in the show, which focused primarily on female artists from the 19th century.  Nor do I understand why a show that consisted of only 80 works had a section of paintings done by male artists of their female counterparts.

Notwithstanding my disappointment in the paintings, I did find the commentary about the show interesting.  It was noted that the mere fact that a show about 19th century women painters is being held is a statement about what a rarity female professional artists were at that time.  There of course is no need for a show that focuses on paintings done by men, since that was the norm.  (This calls to mind the riddle about a boy and his father who are in a car accident.  When they get to the hospital, the doctor says, "I can't operate on this child.  He's my son."  It's baffling, isn't it?  Eventually, though, you realize that it's the mother who's the surgeon.  Perhaps our expectations about gender roles haven't progressed quite as far as one would hope.  But I digress.)

Any number of obstacles faced women who did paint during this era. Needless to say, it was difficult for women to pursue their creative aspirations at a time when they were expected first and foremost to be wives and mothers.  But have you thought about the restrictions that women's clothing put on their ability to paint freely, especially on a large canvas?  Or about the fact that women didn't have the opportunity to take anatomy or other classes that would have helped them hone their craft?  Or that those women who were brave enough to be artists were generally encouraged to paint domestic scenes that focused on children and flowers?

Pas de Basque by Philip Jackson

So, while "Painting Women" wasn't the thrill I had hoped it would be, it wasn't a total bust.  And I took the opportunity to explore the rest of the Museum's shows while I was there, each of which had works that sparked my interest.   The Museum sits in a complex with the Naples Philharmonic.  Unbeknownst to me, the Philharmonic building has some galleries as well, one of which currently houses some stunning sculptures by Philip Jackson.   I came upon this life-sized bronze in the hallway outside the gallery, and it really got my juices flowing.  If I had an extra $98,000 lying around, I would have snapped it up!  It has such a wonderful sense of elegance and movement; it's really a perfect sculpture for an arts complex.

Gale Force Nun II by
Philip Jackson

Once I entered the gallery, I was surrounded by Jackson's sculptures, some of which were cast in bronze and others of which were made from fiber glass.  There were both  small bronze and full scale fiber glass sculptures of Gale Force Nun II.  The works immediately called to mind Sally Fields as the Flying Nun.  Jackson is Scottish, however, so I suspect that she wasn't his inspiration.  Jackson also did some Darth Vader-like sculptures that weren't my cup of tea.  Overall, though, his work was a very cool discovery.

In my next post I'll tell you about the other exhibits that I had the chance to view.  As you'll see, it was an extremely varied day of art, with something for everyone's taste.

Cosette's Tribe by Leah Griffith

I met Leah Griffith a few months ago, and I immediately liked her.  She's warm and funny and very down to earth.  I knew that she'd written a book--Cosette's Tribe--but I hadn't gotten around to reading it yet.  Meeting her moved it up on my list, but it still didn't make it to my night side stand.

Fast forward to late February when Leah did a reading from Cosette's Tribe at Copperfish Books.  It was the first reading she'd ever done, and she was more than a little nervous.  Leah calls the book a work of "faction;" not a memoir exactly, but not fiction either.  It's a story she says she's carried with her her entire life.

As Leah began reading, her voice morphed into that of ten-year old Cosette.  I was enthralled as she read the opening paragraph of the book:

                                                          "1965

Sometimes I feel like there's too much room inside of me, and that things are knocking around in there.  I got a lot of secrets knocking around inside of me for a kid.  Things I can't tell anyone.  Ma would die if she knew some of the stuff I've been up to.  I wish I could feel happy again like when I was little.  I didn't have any worries back then because my soul was still white like the truth."

I left the reading with a signed copy of the book and started it immediately, the voice of Cosette still in my head.  (None too coincidentally, "Cosette" is Leah's middle name.)   The book tells the story of a young fatherless girl whose dream is to build her own tribe of friends and family.  When Cosette meets Ken, the uncle of a friend, she thinks he might be a good addition to her tribe, not to mention a good companion for her mother.  Things don't quite turn out as Cosette had planned, however, when Ken's attentions fall to her, leaving Cosette with the secrets referred to in the opening paragraph.  (Note:  This occurs within the first few pages of the book, so I'm not divulging too much of the plot.)

The book is both heartbreaking and joy-filled as we follow Cosette through a year of her life.  We learn about her relationships with her sisters and her first boyfriend and the hippie who lives across the street.  Leah's writing is full of metaphors that bring the words to life.  Take, for instance, a winter day when Cosette runs to a wall "piled with snow, like the meringue on Ma's lemon pie" or the time when she's being pulled from under a bed by Ken "until [she] popped out . . . sideways, like a piece of toast."   The primary thing that struck me about Leah's writing, though, is the sense of honesty that shines through.  It's the story of her childhood, for better or for worse, and she's put it out there for others to read.

It takes a lot of courage to write so frankly about incidents that others would sweep under the rug.   Leah shared that she realized during the writing process that there was a lot of "light mingled with the darkness" of her childhood.   When asked about her family's reaction, she told us that she waited to write the book until her mother had passed away.  The rest of her family has been incredibly supportive.  We also learned that the cover of the book is a picture of Leah from circa 1965 or so (taken by her hippie friend), which is kind of cool.

I'm sure that my appreciation of Cosette's Tribe was enhanced by my new friendship with Leah and by having been to her reading.  I strongly suspect, however, that if I had read Cosette's Tribe on the recommendation of a friend, I would have enjoyed it for the well-written and compelling story that it is.  The only way for you to find out is to grab a copy and read it yourself.  I look forward to hearing what you think.
 

Shifting Roles at Asolo Repertory Theater

I have been to Sarasota so frequently of late that I wish I had Barbara Eden's ability in "I Dream of Jeannie" to transport herself with a nod of her pony-tailed head.  It's been worth it, though, to learn more about Asolo Repertory Theater's inner workings and to see some great theater.  One cool thing about Asolo Rep is that it is a true repertory theater, with multiple plays going on at the same time.  In a 36 hour period, you can see three different productions!  This week I saw two of their current offerings, Venus in Fur and Clybourne Park, with quite different reactions.

Venus in Fur:  If I could subliminally write "Go see Venus in Fur" throughout this post I would.  Instead, I will just be direct:  GO SEE THIS PLAY, which is running through April 28th.  I went into the show knowing nothing other than the most basic description:  "Vanda is an unusual young actress who arrives to audition for the lead in playwright Thomas' adaptation of the erotic novel Venus in Furs.  During their reading, realities being to shift and Thomas finds himself heading into dangerous territory.  Does art imitate life?  Or is it the other way around?"  Frankly, it didn't sound like something that I would enjoy, but my friend Andrea was visiting from New York and a theater outing was in order.  Am I ever glad that I saw this show!  The play captivated me from the first moment.  At times it was so intense that I found myself literally holding my breath.   Both Scott Kearns and Sarah Nealis are outstanding.   Kearns plays the role of the playwright who is persuaded during the audition to read the actor's part, a role he was obviously meant to play.  Nealis plays the scattered actress who is transformed when she assumes the role of Vanda during the reading.  The pair move seamlessly in and out of these roles throughout the play in a way that is truly remarkable.  

The programs for Asolo Rep's shows are always chock-full of information that gives deeper meaning to the production.  The program for this show contained an extensive description of playwright David Ives' inspiration for the show--Venus in Furs written in 1870 by Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch.  (Yes, the word "masochism" is derived from Sacher-Masoch's name.  He preferred to think of himself as a "supersensualist.")  The program also contains some wonderful reproductions of Venus in art over the ages, from Botticelli's The Birth of Venus to a picture of Marlene Dietrich in the 1932 film Blonde Venus.   Very fun. 

I don't want to reveal more about the show, but I could not recommend it more highly. It is playing at the Historic Asolo Theater (inside the doors of the Ringling Museum), which is a beautiful theater seating only about 200 people.  If you miss this production, Venus in Fur is on Florida Repertory Theater's schedule for next season.  It will be put on in the small black box theater and is bound to be a powerful theater experience there as well.  GO SEE THIS PLAY!!!

Clybourne Park:  Sadly, my feelings about Clybourne Park are not nearly as enthusiastic.  The play, which is an extension of A Raisin in the Sun, won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2012 Tony Award for Best Play.  Knowing that likely raised my expectations--never a good thing--but I feel that playwright Bruce Norris tried to cover too much territory and ended up diluting his message.  It almost felt like someone with ADHD had written the play.  "Here's an idea. I know that the heart of this play is about race, but wouldn't it be better if I brought in a little bit about religion?  And how about gender issues?  And what about the ethics of real estate transactions?  Oh, and let's have some serious family drama as well."   Whew.  As my friend Bruce politely said, the show was very "content-heavy."   

While the actors in Clybourne Park were all quite proficient in their portrayals of different characters in the first and second acts, I just didn't get the intensity that I suspect Norris was going for when he wrote the play.  In addition to the numerous themes, there were extended stretches of dialogue that were so off point that I wanted to scream, "Just get on with it!'

On a positive note, the program notes about the show were wonderful.  (Lauryn E. Sasso is the dramaturg who is responsible for these sections of the program for all the shows and, as noted above, does an amazing job.)   In "Tracing the Roots:  From A Raisin in the Sun to Clybourne Park," we learn that playwright Lorraine Hansberry was the first African-American woman whose work was produced on Broadway when A Raisin in the Sun opened in 1959.  The play is based fairly literally on Hansberry's personal experience.  Her family purchased a home in Chicago in the 1930s in a community with a restrictive covenant preventing racial integration.  Her father litigated the issue, and the covenant was eventually overturned.  Hansberry remembers that, "The fight required that our family occupy the disputed property in a hellishly hostile 'white neighborhood' in which, literally, howling mobs surrounded our house... I remember my desperate and courageous mother, patrolling our house all night with a loaded German luger [pistol], doggedly guarding her four children, while my father fought the respectable part of the battle in ... court."   Apparently one draft of A Raisin in the Sun ends in this manner, as opposed to with the feeling of resolve and hope that Hansberry eventually settled on.   

Every show can't be wonderful, but my "hit" ratio has been much higher of late than when I lived in New York and would have happily left at least half of the shows at intermission.  I have tickets for two more productions at the Asolo to round out the season--Noah Racey's Pulse, a new dance musical, and My Brilliant Divorce.   I can't wait.  

Tampa Museum of Art presents To See as Artists See: American Art from the Phillips Collection

Last week I headed up to Tampa to see a friend from my law school days.  As long as I was going to be in the neighborhood, I decided to make a stop at the Tampa Museum of Art and see the traveling show from the Phillips Collection in DC:  To See as Artists See.  It would have been worth the trip just to see the show.

Although I've spent a lot of time in DC, I've never been to the Phillips Collection.  I learned that the Phillips was the first museum of modern art in the United States, pre-dating MOMA by almost ten years.   Duncan Phillips fell in love with art when he went to college at Yale in the early 1900s.  Being a member of the lucky sperm club (he was heir to a steel fortune), Duncan persuaded his parents to give him a $10,000 stipend for art collection upon his graduation.   His collection grew, and in 1921, Phillips converted his house into a museum and opened it to the public.  Today the Phillips owns approximately 2400 works of art.  To See as Artists See contains a mere 100 of those pieces, but they are gems.

The show is broken into ten themes ranging from Romanticism and Realism to Nature and Abstraction to Modern Life.  That's obviously way too much to chronicle here, but I wanted to share a few of the highlights.

Whistler's Miss Lillian
Oakes (1890-91)

Whistler's "Miss Lillian Woakes" is the opening work of the show and is housed under the Romanticism and Realism theme.  While I liked the painting, I loved the description of the work because it gave me a sense of the negotiation that can go on between portrait artists and their subjects.  Whistler assured Miss Woakes that it would take him no more than three sittings to complete her portrait.  It took 25.  I hope she was happy with the finished product! Whistler signed his pieces with a butterfly logo rather than a traditional signature.  This work was signed twice--once in the bow of the dress where Whistler wanted it and once above Miss Woakes' right shoulder where she thought it was appropriate for him to sign.  (Even knowing where the signatures are, I couldn't find them.)

This portion of the show also contained paintings by Homer and Eakins and, again, the descriptions of the works contained some interesting tidbits.  I wasn't aware that Homer began his career as an illustrator on the battlefields of the Civil War.  This puts his recurring theme of man versus the sea in perspective.   Nor did I know that Eakins was fired from his job as an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia because of his "insistence" on using nude models.  This was not to the liking of the Philadelphia Main Liners at all.

John Marin's The Sea Cape Split,
Maine (1939)

John Marin's work "The Sea, Cape Split, Maine" really captured the sense of the roiling sea with his dark palette and thick brushstrokes.  This work appeared under the heading of Forces of Nature.  I was struck by how many of the works were set in Maine and its Canadian counterpart Nova Scotia.

Georgia O'Keefe's works were included under the theme Nature and Abstraction.  O'Keefe said, "Nothing is less real than realism.  Details are confusing.  It is only by selection, by elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things."

Georgia O'Keefe's Ranchos Church,
No.II, N.M. (1929)

Ranchos Church No. II, N.M., is the second in a series of eight paintings that she did on her first visit to the state that provided so much inspiration for her.  I just love this work, with its deceptively simple lines and wonderful colors.  Even though the building is rock solid, it invites the viewer in like a big easy chair.

Arthur G. Dove's Red Sun (1935)

While the exhibit primarily contained paintings by artists whom I am familiar with, there were some new names as well.  (Isn't it fun to discover a new artist--even if the artist is only "new" to you?)  Arthur G. Dove is one example.  I was quite taken with his work Red Sun, which was inspired by the sunsets near his home in upstate New York.   Adjacent to this work was his Morning Sun, creating book-ends to the day.

Jacob Lawrence is another artist whom I "discovered" at the exhibit.  The Memory and Identity portion of the show included several paintings from Lawrence's "The Migration of the Negro (Series)", and they were extremely powerful.  The folk art-style series contains 60 paintings.  The Phillips owns the odd-numbered paintings and MOMA owns the even-numbered paintings.  Here's a link to the Phillips' website if you're interested in checking them out.  http://www.phillipscollection.org/research/american_art/artwork/Lawrence-Migration_Series1.htm  (The website is wonderful, with detailed descriptions of many works and teaching ideas for the classroom.  The works that I had the chance to see are numbers 7, 59, 23, 15, and 3--in that order.)

Milton Avery's Girl
Writing (1941)

I could go on and on but I'll leave you with one of my favorite works from the show--Milton Avery's Girl Writing.  There's something captivating to me about Avery's work in general and in this painting specifically.  Again, the lines are simple but there's so much beauty.  I particularly love the way he captures this girl--his daughter March--doing her homework; the foot hooked behind her ankle is a small detail but it's so true that it brings her to life. (This work appeared under the theme Legacy of Cubism.)

The show will be on at the Tampa Museum of Art through April 28th, so get there if you can.  A visit to the Phillips Collection is now on my list for my next visit to DC.  So much art, so little time!

Asolo Rep Presents Ken Ludwig's "The Game's Afoot"

Opening night at Asolo Rep is quite a production--and I'm just talking about in the lobby!    Dorrit, Bruce, and I found ourselves in the midst of the glitz last Friday night when we took in the premiere of Ken Ludwig's "The Game's Afoot."  Almost as soon as we arrived, we ran into Eduardo Sicangco, costume designer for the show, whom we had heard speak the previous day about the process of dressing the actors.  (He was quite gracious when we pounced on him and told him how excited we were to see his costumes on something other than a mannequin.)  As we were settling into our seats, we saw Vic Meyrich, production manager for Asolo Rep since 1969.  Meyrich was one of the guides on "Halo Day" when we toured the Koski Production Center where sets and props for the Asolo's shows are built.  It was beginning to feel like old home week.  Dorrit and I were chattering feverishly about all of our inside information about the production when Bruce expressed some concern that we would talk throughout the show.  We assured him that we would communicate with our elbows during the performance and, with that, the curtain rose.

The lead character in the play is William Gillette, a real actor from the 1930s who popularized Sir Conan Doyles' Sherlock Holmes on the American stage.  (Gillette played the role for 30 years in over 1300 performances.)  "The Game's Afoot" opens with a theater troupe taking a bow at the end of a performance, with actress Brittany Proia (Aggie) wearing the gorgeous hat that we'd seen at the talk the previous day. (This was cause for the first of many nudges.)  In the next scene the troupe gathers in Gillette's home for a Christmas Eve celebration.  The plot of this farce is way too circuitous to explain but suffice it to say--SPOILER ALERT-- that a theater critic joins the festivities and ends up with a knife in her back.   The remainder of the play is a good old-fashioned whodunit, with some wonderful physical comedy by Gail Rastorfer (the critic), Bryan Tofer (Gillette), and Eric Hissom (the Watson character) and quite a number of belly laughs.

Dorrit at the disappearing bar.  It's an optical illusion
that she's touching the set!  

It was a lot of fun to watch the actors parade around the set of Gillette Castle, which we had seen being created during our visit to the Koski Center.  (The Castle, located in East Haddam, CT, is open for tours during the summer and is apparently quite the destination.  In one of those "this was meant to be" things, director Greg Leaming grew up near the Castle and spent summer afternoons on the grounds as a child.  So when he and set designer Judy Gailen visited the property last summer, he was actually returning to his old stomping grounds.)   In this picture, Dorrit is in front of a bar that plays an important role in the story.  The painting that's behind her appears at the top of the stairs on the set.   And the walls of the Castle are adorned with three very large murals that were being worked on during our tour.   You're probably starting to get a sense of why we had such a blast seeing this show!

Prop master Jeff Dean with his
seance table 

Some of the props that we saw in production also made an appearance during the show.  There is a seance in the first act, and just as the spirits began responding to the call, I realized that we had seen the table that the actors were sitting around being built.  (I don't think it's giving too much away to tell you that the table is made of styrofoam for easier levitation.)   That realization definitely warranted a good jab in Dorrit's side.

All in all, it was a great evening. The play was entertaining, the actors were top notch, and the costumes and set were fabulous,  And while I'm sure I would have enjoyed the play without our recent tours of the Asolo, there's no doubt that knowing a bit about the different aspects of the production made me appreciate it all the more.  On our way out the door, we snagged some sweets from the opening night post-play party to fuel us for our ride home.  We were already on a high from the play, but a little sugar never hurts!