The Garden and the Cage

Good weekend. Met GH's nephew S over dinner last night, at a Lower East Side Italian restaurant called Tres. He and his wife are light and sound installation artists. After dinner, we migrated over to the neighborhood garden, where we toasted marshmallows over a fire, put them with chocolate between crackers, and ate far too many of them. They are called s'mores, so I was told.

This afternoon, GH and I saw La Cage Aux Folles at Longacre Theatre. Kelsey Grammer (Georges) was a strong stage presence, but the show belonged to Douglas Hodge, who played Albin, also known as Zaza in the cabaret. Hodge, a classical actor who worked with Harold Pinter, was very funny, and very moving. The dancers "Les Cagelles" were terrific. First show I watched with GH, and I am glad we both enjoyed it very much. Musicals are great entertainment, when done well. As Georges said of the cabaret, they are "rather gaudy, rather grand."

Not gaudy, not grand is the small but exquisite show of Durer drawings at the Morgan. The engraving Adam and Eve (1504) is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. The show I actually went to see was Romantic Gardens: Nature, Art, and Landscape Design. It was informative. I learned how the period prized the picturesque above the beautiful. One source of inspiration was actually Chinese gardens, descriptions of which were brought back by Jesuit priests. Instead of building strictly symmetrical gardens, the new designers tried "To consult the Genius of the Place," in Pope's formulation. However the hermit hut, designed for meditative retreat in many of these gardens, seemed overly precious from a modern perspective. Wordsworth was an amateur enthusiast of garden design. Olmsted and Vaux were influenced by the new ideas in their design proposal for Central Park.

LW, who went with me to the Morgan, told me about the collagist Anne Ryan at the Met Museum, and so I went to see her work. She was impressed by how much Kurt Schwitters could compress and evoke in his small collages, and so turned to that medium. I thought the works on display were uneven, although there were many beautiful ones. The one I liked best was most rhythmic, with brown verticals like tree trunks, green triangles, and red diamonds. Facing the Figure was a small show of American figurative painters. My favorite painting there was by Richard Diebenkorn. His painting of a reclining woman reminded me a lot of Matisse, in its composition and use of color.

So many things to see and do in New York but the summer is coming to an end. The green is tinged by yellows and browns. The campfire was an omen.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading Thumboo's "Ulysses by the Merlion"

I've just revised a poem written years ago, a poem that delineates the different responses of four readers, of different generations, to the seminal nationalistic poem by Edwin Thumboo . Thumboo is reckoned to be the first major Singaporean poet writing in English. First, Thumboo's poem, then followed by mine. ULYSSES BY THE MERLION (for Maurice Baker) I have sailed many waters, Skirted islands of fire, Contended with Circe Who loved the squeal of pigs; Passed Scylla and Charybdis To seven years with Calypso, Heaved in battle against the gods. Beneath it all I kept faith with Ithaca, travelled, Travelled and travelled, Suffering much, enjoying a little; Met strange people singing New myths; made myths myself. But this lion of the sea Salt-maned, scaly, wondrous of tail, Touched with power, insistent On this brief promontory... Puzzles. Nothing, nothing in my days Foreshadowed this Half-beast, half-fish, This powerful creature of land and sea. Peoples settled here, Brought to th
Read more

Steven Cantor's "What Remains: the Life and Work of Sally Mann"

Image
Sally Mann, The Perfect Tomato , 199 0 Since it is moving pictures, a film necessarily captures--produces--a process. It turns photographs into the making of photographs. It joins moments ("spots of time") into a Life. This I expected watching Cantor's documentary on Sally Mann's creation of the exhibit "What Remains." So photographs of a long-dead beloved greyhound "lead" to photographs of the Civil War battlefield of Antietam, to photographs of Mann's Virginian farm bloodied by the police killing of a runaway convict, to photographs of decomposing bodies in a forensic study site, as if each group of pictures forms an independent yet preparatory stage in the creative process. What I did not expect to see is the influence of the film-making on the photography itself. Mann begins to think of her exhibit as a "narrative," and wants the narrative of death to end on a more uplifting note. With such an idea in mind, she takes close-up pic
Read more

Goh Chok Tong's Visit to FCBC

Image
I am surprised by how much this incident is affecting me. I thought I have moved past my former religious life, left it behind in Singapore, but like tin cans tied to a dog it has followed me and is rattling me. I am posting the incident, and my response to it, here on this blog, because I want to remember that the past is not yet past. When Emeritus Senior Minister of Singapore Goh Chok Tong visited Faith Community Baptist Church on 13 January during a Sunday service, Senior Pastor Lawrence Khong took the opportunity to deliver a hateful anti-gay message . Among other things, he said: We affirm that the family unit comprises a man as Father, a woman as Mother, and Children. This is the basic building block of society, a value foundational for a secure future, a premise fundamental to nation-building. and warned ominously that We see a looming threat to this basic building block by homosexual activists seeking to repeal Section 377A of the Penal Code.   Examples from ar
Read more