David St.-Lascaux
MARIE PONSOT is one of America's most esteemed poets and recipient of the 2013 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection is the National Book Critics Circle Award-winner Easy (Knopf, 2009). Except as noted, excerpts are from her poems.
DAVID ST.-LASCAUX is a poet, critic and author of the cultural/epicurean/erotic New York diary My Adventures with la Femme Charmee. His website is Interrupting Infinity.
ARTS OF ANCIENT VIET NAM: FROM RIVER PLAIN TO OPEN SEA
By David St.-LascauxIts an occasion to celebrate, even in New York, when heavy, fragile cultural treasures arrive from the other side of the worldespecially from a culture with which we have little exchange. Current case in point: the multi-millennial cultural and religious artwork from Viet Nam at the Asia Society.
BILL ALBERTINI Space Frame Redux
By David St.-LascauxQuestion: Whats beige, 216 cubic inches, sits on a table, defies you to try to describe it in words, scares the hell out of you, and your corpus callosum wants to take out on a date to a sci-fi film festival in another dimension? Answer: One of Bill Albertinis futuristic numbered Space Frame sculptures, at the Martos Gallery through April 24, 2010.
GEORGE CONDO Mental States
By David St.-LascauxmWatchers of stock markets and world governments these days well understand the word volatile. Increasingly, patrons of the New York arts must patiently apply this term to the ever-inconsistent New Museum.
JUDY LINN 69-76 Photographs of Patti Smith
By David St.-LascauxPicture this: Its 1969, youre just out of art school, and youre with two friends, born under a star. Of the two, your girlfriend is ambitious and hardworking. Both definitely like to have their pictures taken, which is good, because youre an aspiring photographer.
ANDREW MOORE Detroit Disassembled: Photographs
By David St.-LascauxFact: You will not be able to view Detroit Disassembled without being impressed withand depressed bythe extent of Americas humiliating, elite-inflicted decline.
BRIAN JUNGEN
By David St.-LascauxJungens latest show at Casey Kaplan Gallery represents an evolution of his anti-consumerist message. The works themselves comprise two variations: sculptures and flat-ish wall art.
NAN GOLDIN Scopophilia
By David St.-LascauxScopophilia, a sumptuous, three-course banquet, is Goldins first foray into empathic socialization and positive humanity.
Algorithmic Unconscious
By David St.-LascauxDespite the long-established and pervasive presence of the digital computer, computer artuntouched by human hands, if not by human mindshas somehow failed to gain traction, except in circles of affinity, while abstract and conceptual art have been thoroughly integrated into the art-cultural canon.
BILL JACKLIN Recent Work, New York
By David St.-LascauxBritish artist Bill Jacklin, who moved to New York in 1985, has been making dynamic-atmospheric paintings of New York life ever since. His subject matter in these colorful, moving pictures includes people eating pizza, mid-bite, in Little Italy; ice skating in a massively larger-than-real-life Rockefeller Center; populating Times Square; sunbathing in Battery Park; and standing in the surf, a pair in starlight.
TALK TO ME: Design and the Communication between People and Objects
By David St.-LascauxTalk to Me teems with the usual suspects: games and toys, urban planning, ergonomics, and random creativity. Its a strange, small show whose interestand commonalityseems to be that it represents mostly experimental art school work from a wide range of First World Western societies, including the Western satellite nation of Japan.
Winter Break
By David St.-LascauxIt would be nice to be able to write a storys worth of criticismor encouragementabout a four-person group show by underexhibited artists. But first there has to be a there there. Case in point: Winter Break at Momenta Art in Brooklyn, featuring either 11 or 25 works (depending on how one counts a set) by Marina Adams, Peter Hopkins, Robert Janitz, and Brooke Moyse.
Nose Bleed
By David St.-LascauxHaving just arrived from Mars, I found myself woefully out of depth visiting Nose Bleed, a group show curated by Erik Foss at Fuse Gallery. The show, featuring over 40 works by mainly Lower East Side and Brooklyn artists.
TAYLOR DAVIS
By David St.-LascauxTaylor Daviss show at Dodge Gallery features two- and three-dimensional works, most incorporating text.
Hey, Ho, Let's Go: YOSHITOMO NARA at the Asia Society
By David St.-LascauxYoshitomo Nara is pumped, and it shows. Ascending the wall-clinging stairs of the Asia Society with a billboard-sized, captioned Nara Girl above and to your side, you enter the Mall of Childhood Malaise, followed by the auto showroom, shiny Disney dog (Dont touch me! chirps the sign on its posterior), and then the music room, with recent ceramics resembling Matryoshka nesting dolls with black babushkas, reverse Buddhist swastikas and Ramones lyrics.
Nueva York (16131945)
By David St.-LascauxFor those willing to venture to the end of New Yorks museum mile, El Museo del Barrio offers an education in local Hispanic cultural history with its groundbreaking exhibition, Nueva York: 1613 1945. To say this show is eye-opening would be an understatement.
HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON The Modern Century
By David St.-LascauxResister Camus on the streets of Paris in 1944. Gandhis ashes on a train. China in transition, 1948-1958. The military in Iran in 1950. A non-judgmental camera, maybe, but a trenchant triggerman.
ELLEN HARVEY in Dust to Settle
By David St.-LascauxAround the time Goethe wrote his first bestseller, The Sorrows of Young Werther (and Thomas Paine Common Sense), a bizarre device became popular among tourists in the natural world: William Gilpins Claude glass, or black mirror.
JIM NUTT
By David St.-LascauxJim Nutt is back in New York, sans straightjacket. Once a wildman, he was part of Chicagos Imagist/Hairy Who movement, back in 66 when Hairy meant huge, when Ed Big Daddy Roth was customizing petroleum-powered hot rods with giant ratfinks, chrome pipes, metalflake paint jobs and two-tone flames, shortly after which S. Clay Wilson introduced the maniacal Checkered Demon and the ravishing Star-Eyed Stella.
THE DAWN OF MODERNISM: Early Twentieth-Century Mexican Photography
By David St.-LascauxGiven todays death-dealing, drug war headlines about life south of the border, its strange to recall that there was a similarly lethal revolution going on in Mexico one hundred years ago (1910 1917, and well beyond).
ALLORA & CALZADILLA: Gloria
By David St.-LascauxFirst, theres the tank, lying upside down in the gravel. Then theres the architrave: STATI UNITI DAMERICA, in Trajan column capitals. And then theres the 76 copy of the U.S. Capitols crowning Statue of Freedom, in blackened bronze, lying inside the Solaris 442 sun bed.
New! Improved! Mainstream! Conservative!
By David St.-LascauxIt takes courage, or perhaps pure foolhardiness, for a dilettante to review Philip Glass, his Avant-Garde Establishment Gray Eminence, especially in the realm of the classical.
Fluid Improvisation
By David St.-LascauxThere is a certain kind of music that not only takes the listener to new places, but also produces a night of intense and lucid dreaming. Thats the kind of music one hears at the Stone, John Zorns intimate Lower East Side avant-garde house of aural thaumaturgy.
Third Stream Symphony: Mr. Hos Orchestrotica at Barbès
By David St.-LascauxThe Hornbostel-Sachs system of musical-instrument classification includes four types: idiophones (struck), chordophones (strings), membranophones (drums), and aerophones (winds). (Moderns will also note the later-added electrophones, including synthesizers.) Many ensembles include three types, presumably to present listeners with a pleasingly complex acoustic range and solo sonic diversity.
An Auspicious Beginning for Elliott Sharp's Seventh Decade
By David St.-LascauxLets be clear: To say that Elliott Sharp plays guitar is akin to saying that Bach wrote down some notes. Whatever it is that Elliott Sharp does to and with guitars while we, mere mortals, gape in stupefaction, is truly transcendental, and profoundly stimulating, and pleasurable beyond words.
Spacewalking Together, Under the Vault
By David St.-LascauxIn a world where unpredictability and chaos seem overwhelming, its reassuring to have moments of coherence and community. John Luther Adamss brilliant 2009 Inuksuit, which had its New York premiere at the New York Armorys recent Tune-In Music Festival, provided an ironic oasis of noise, cancellation, and serenity.
Synaptic Virginity, Lost
By David St.-LascauxWith so many genres represented, it’s not possible to say anything coherent about the 2011 Unsound Festival, the annual conclave of experimental, electronic, and otherwise avant-garde music and ancillary media.
ADVANCED CONCEPTS IN THE VOCAL ETHER
Quince Vocal Ensemble and Parias Ensemble
By David St.-Lascaux
Avant-garde music continues to be a source of delight, especially when performed by talented new voices. In the Contagious Sound Series, curated by Vicky Chow and presented by Neke Carson at the Gershwin Hotel, a recent program of vocal music by Quince Vocal Ensemble
Shamanic Rites on Wall Street
By David St.-LascauxThe curious nomads wanderings are frequently rewarded: Exotic trumpet flowers bloom behind deserted streets, in darkness. The trickand luckis finding them.
The Thunder Sheet, the Zither, and the Mousepad
By David St.-LascauxIm not deaf yet, but Im working on it. Having attended Oceans of Noise, a segment of the Unsound Festival at Littlefield in Brooklyn this spring, my expectations were set by White Out with Ikue Mori, a trio participating in the Stones summer No Fun Fest, curated by Unsound organizer and musician Carlos Giffoni.
A LITTLE BRAIN SURGERY: Sonic Festival
By David St.-LascauxThat emerging composers are recognizing and incorporating voice and video is hugely encouraging, given the emotive power of the human voice and the potential for interweaving visual imagery and music in pure art in an age when music is routinely used to disingenuously manipulate viewers of cinema and broadcast content.
Riffing On Schoenberg: Fieldwork's Hypnotic Virtuosity
By David St.-LascauxThe celebration of the John Cage centennial in 2012 will certainly owe a debt to Cages mentor, Arnold Schoenberg, one of the most influential innovators of modern music. Schoenberg said (and Cage repeatedly recounted) that Cage was not a composer, but an inventorof genius.
A Stageful of Toys
By David St.-LascauxJust as its pointless to list the accomplishments of the Kronos Quartet, which is approaching its 40th anniversary, its impossible to describe the diversity of its repertoire, which has included far-reaching collaborations with everyone from Inuit throat singer Tanya Tagaq to sound artist Walter Kitundu to Noam Chomsky, Allen Ginsberg, and David Bowie.
Music of the Sphere
By David St.-LascauxThe utopian world of New York music continues to amaze. All over town freefreeconcerts of world-class and emerging talent are to be found, one of which is the Friday Tri-Institutional Noon Recitals series at Rockefeller University, which regularly plays to a packed and enthusiastic house.
Previously Unreleased Footage of BoulezCage Tennis Match Discovered
By David St.-LascauxGiven the Googlanche of words elicited by the John Cage centennial, I knew Id need a ruse to get you to read even the first sentence of this review.
Hell, Set to Music
By David St.-LascauxDies iræ! Dies illa. So begins the brimstone Sequentia proper of the Requiem Mass.If you find this, or Americas current sociopolitical state, unfathomable, you may be in denial that, according to a 2011 Gallup Poll, 92 percent of Americans believe in God.
A Chance Meeting of Words and Music
By David St.-LascauxWe all know what happens when poets can sing or play an instrument. The enterprising onesChuck Berry, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Madonna, Kanye Westbecome superstar troubadours, modally rhyming about youth or sex or status.
Just Add Rain
By David St.-LascauxMaywhich, unlike March, isnt famous for going out like anythingwent out in warm weather and raindrops, which provided a fitting atmosphere for pianist and impresaria Vicky Chows performance at the Stone. Chow, who recently curated an avant-garde series at the Gershwin Hotel, played a ranging, mostly minimalist set by ten mostly contemporary composers.
Musical Dissonance, Cognitive Strain
By David St.-LascauxAfter brash beginnings as a precocious student, Sergei Prokofiev left Russia shortly after the revolution for America. Bad timing and too-ambitious projects there forced him to depart, luckless, for Paris, where he fared better.
A Night at the Opera
By David St.-LascauxWhile we have many tangible examples of early visual and literary arts, our knowledge of vocal and instrumental music begins rather late. It seems that early cave-painting and female fetish-carving artists were pragmatic, creating representational art; authors were more creative, writing rhyming poetryan inherently musical formearly on, alongside now-forgotten quotidian prose.
REALLY GOOD VIBRATIONS: Harry Bertoia's Sonambient Sound Sculptures
By David St.-LascauxHarry Bertoia first gained fame as an industrial designer, creating the wireframe diamond chair for Knoll in 1952. Its success enabled Bertoia to pursue his passion as an artist, which took an immediate turn with his creation of sound sculptures, which he named Sonambient.
FOUNTAINS AND FIREWORKS
The New York Philharmonics Concerts in the Parks
By David St.-Lascaux
The New York Philharmonic Orchestra’s free Concerts in the Parks, a sometime summer feature of city life, has returned for its 47th season to appreciative applause and literal éclat.
SHE MUST BE DREAMING: REGINA NEJMANS SURREAL DELETE/HER SEPTEMBER 9-10 AT DIXON PLACE
By David St.-LascauxAnd then we awoke. As from one of Regina Nejmans friends vivid dreams, the ones she had after she was abandonée after a lifelong relationship. The ones she related to Regina, her friend the dancer.
The Balletomane, Slaked: EIDOLONS DECOLOGY
By David St.-LascauxMy favorite muscle in sixth grade was the gastrocnemius. A cohort of boys had become interested in sex, and I purchased a copy of Grays Anatomy, which had a complete catalog of images of human musculature, including the ischiocavernosus and bulbocavernosus...
Traveling in Time, to the Pear Garden: HAN-TANG YUEFU ENSEMBLES THE FEAST OF HAN XIZAI AT THE JOYCE THEATER, November 3-8
By David St.-LascauxEarly in his epistolary romance The Sorrows of Young Werther, Goethe paints a scene in which the doomed, noble hero encounters a servant girl at a well. The year was 1774, a mere two centuries or so ago. But that bucolic, pre-industrial scene is as unimaginable to our modern minds as the day before e-mail.
East Meets East Meets West: A MODERN DANCE MASHUP
By David St.-LascauxSynchronized gangstas catapult into your minds living room á là Michael, Britney, or Madonna. A surreal table set for four evokes Magritte cum Chaplin.
ONE PLUS ONE EQUALS WONDERMENT JUDITH SÁNCHEZ RUIZ AND SOULEYMANE BADOLO AT DANSPACE PROJECT
By David St.-LascauxIt doesnt get much more personal than this. Dancer/choreographers Judith Sánchez Ruiz and Souleymane Badolo performing solos at St. Marks Church, low lit, spotlit, and minimally, yet poignantly accompanied.
WHIRLWIND WORKOUT IN A TIGHT SPACE: BACKHAUSDANCE AT JOYCE SOHO
By David St.-LascauxEnergy, we are told, equals mass times the speed of light squared. Watching Backhausdance at Joyce SoHo in March, the audience encountered a convincing demonstration of this formula, with emphasis on energy and speed.
A Nice Night for Narcissism FAYE DRISCOLLS THERE IS SO MUCH MAD IN ME
By David St.-Lascauxi>Mad in me is Driscolls latest work, purporting to investigate the physical [i.e., dance] and theatrical narratives that drive our misplaced need to be seen.
TRIBHANGI, MUDRA, NATYAM, NAUTCH: A SOUTH ASIAN DANCE LEXICON
By David St.-LascauxAnyone looking for a simple answer to the question What is South Asian dance? would be overwhelmed by Tongues Untied, a sprawling showcase recently performed at Symphony Space.
Dancing Dulce Et Decorum Est
By David St.-LascauxOn October 17, 1967, an American battalion marched into decimation at Ong Thanh, Vietnam. Almost 40 years later, American journalist David Maraniss wrote They Marched into Sunlight, a record of the event as recalled by its participants. Now, choreographer Robin Becker is turning the tragic lessons, seemingly unlearned, into a different kind of educational event
Lost in Space
By David St.-LascauxThere is a sector in the microverse of contemporary choreography in which the kids arent alright. Its not that they cant dance (they can), but rather that they are aggressive and dissociative. Choreographers Juliana F. May and Natalie Green illustrated two aspects of this phenomenon in their recent split bill at Dance Theater Workshop
Unto the House of Words
By David St.-LascauxIf one loves poetry in New York, St. Marks Church is the place to be on New Years Day. Even if, as lead-off poet-impresario Bob Holman observed (echoing a recent Daylight Savings poem by U.S. Poet Laureate W.S. Merwin), measured time is an arbitrary arrangement, its good to know that so many New York poets will show up and read on this date certain.
TINA CHANG with David St.-Lascaux
Tina Chang is the Poet Laureate of Brooklyn. Her new collection, Of Gods and Strangers, is slated for release in the Fall of 2011 by Four Way Books.
In Conversation
MARIE PONSOT with David St.-Lascaux
In which Marie Ponsot tells David St.-Lascaux about the good world, the utility of idleness, language and fable, the sacred, the doing of things, and the pleasure principle of life.