Song of a Reformed Headhunter

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 exquis...

Built around a squarish stairwell, the interior of the museum presented to the eye a series of cuboid faces, which resolved, as one climbed up the stairs, round and round, into circular shapes at the very top, a metal bridge spanning the stairwell, leading to the final galleries. Martin Puryear's craft-like sculptures were on display at the top, and having seen them in New York MoMA I enjoyed making my acquaintance with them again, especially the "Circle" series.  Just below the top floor, a whole level was dedicated to participation art, which I am not interested in, and so did not visit. Another level for photography showcased images of microscopic specimens and telescopic sights. Walking through that space I felt I was looking at natural history, instead of art. The SFMoMA seemed to suffer from a multiple personality disorder. On the second level were the paintings and sculptures from the permanent collection. The exhibition space was not large, and so most painters we...

Albuquerque 7 after Richard Diebenkorn There is a figure in a landscape with no figure, if only because we look for him behind the elm, above the snow line, or along the marshy creek, or on the white sand polished by sapphire seas, if only because we look at it, and see the spur steering the mountain’s floating hulk a whaler’s helm, and see the fleeting torso of a marbled Greek in the cloud hurling the discus sun into our eyes, and wide in its deliberate curvature, the river bend its bow till the ends clap, palm to shining palm, despite the thunderstorm, despite the cracked and bleak stumps, clap in blue applause manifest destiny. And you, love, turning fifty as around a corner, watching the vanishing point of every painted realm, you’re thinking of your fading father, as we speak of early hardships, breakthroughs, late discoveries. Paint, like its painter, must fade, but between the fir, cached in the middle of an unattended calm, there is a lake that looks nothing like a lake— no boa...

This exhibition, at the Phillips Collection in D.C., concentrates on a formative period of Richard Diebenkorn's art: the three years, from 1950-52, he spent in Albuquerque as a student at the University of New Mexico. The exhibition is prefaced by figurative and abstract compositions of a more mature period, exhibited in the museum's lobby. Particularly interesting to me was the juxtaposition of his Interior with View of the Ocean and Matisse's Studio, Quai Saint-Michel , which Diebenkorn saw at the Phillips: Interior with View of the Ocean, 1957 Studio, Quai Saint-Michel, 1916 Both paintings are interested in the interplay of interior and exterior spaces, in planes forming themselves into a corner, in the analogy between windows and paintings, in exposing and thinking about one's working process. The differences are striking too. Matisse is dedicated to the study of the human figure and its ground, whereas Diebenkorn decomposes the scene into its constituent triangles...