A Bierstadt Moment

The Mattatuck has several wonderful exhibits right now, calling for your attention.

Alex Katz, The Green Cap, 1985, Whitney Museum of America Art, New York; Purchase with funds from the Print Committee_MED.jpg 2014-02-25 15.42.33

 

 

 

 

Alex Katz works from the Whitney, with my favorite–the self portrait on aluminum, standing up center gallery.  Isn’t he a charmer?

 
Rhythm in Blues 2013 14 x 11 inches_LR.jpg

The contemporary photo-realist landscape paintings by Charles Yoder are the perfect compliment to the wonderful Albert Bierstadt show.  Yes, Yoder works from photographs, then blows up the image in oil.

Moonlight.  Shadows.  Eerily beautiful.  Familiar.  Other-worldly.  Meditative.  Awe-inspiring.

To be awe-inspiriing was one of the goals 175 years ago for Hudson River School painters like Bierstadt, and this exhibit is about how he used photography as inspiration, too.  Hunting for good locations and images for his brothers’ photography business (they made and sold “3D” stereoscope images), he would often paint the scene, in his burgeoning Romantic mode.  These paintings are from his New England period, while he was in his late 20s and early 30s, before the great and huge Western US images that made him so famous.

I think he’s already yearning for the West.  Here’s my art history moment for the day, shared during my visit with the Mattatuck curator Cynthia Roznoy in our catch-up chat.  The show features two paintings of one location, very exacting as you can see.  One was painted in 1862, the other 1868.  So during and before the Civil War.

AB

Albert Bierstadt, Mt Ascutney from Claremont, NH, 1862

 

AB_CT river valley_unframed.jpg

Albert Bierstadt, Connecticut River Valley, Claremont, NH, 1868

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The wall label for the 1862 work says its motivation was to show what the war was being fought for–the peaceful and plentiful countryside.  For the 1868 painting, the label discusses how the splintered tree was typically used as a symbol for civilization encroaching on the countryside and in this work, also refers to the destruction of the war.  Here’s my New Britain Museum of American Art blog post on the blasted tree symbol.

I wonder if even more is going on with the two paintings.  The earlier painting seems almost wistful in its golden tones, while the post-war work is brighter and more verdant.  Can you see how the 1862 painting has a fence dividing a great swath across the painting from lower right to upper left, which Bierstadt emphasizes even more with sunlight?  The same fence in the 1862 image is in shadow, not nearly so important, or so divisive.  What’s in the nation’s conscious in 1862 is the split, while by 1868, reconstructing unity is paramount.

The mountains in the 1862 painting are forbidding and uncrossable.  I’m projecting that we are facing north, so those mountains block the West, making that mythic place inaccessible.  By 1868, the railroad is being built West, and one year later, the transcontinental railroad will be complete.  Look at how much easier those mountains would be to forge.  As re-unification is happening, so is expansion, a deep identifier in this country’s white history–to face challenges, conquer, and expand; face challenges, conquer, and expand; all the way to the moon and back.

These two paintings, made just 6 years apart, tell that story quietly, side by side, in this beauty of a show.  I hope you can get there to see it.

 

 

Monumental and ordinary

The everyday made monumental, the monumental made small.  That was my small day in big New York.

While the typically bloated Guggenheim show on Futurism may take you there, the Carrie Mae Weems exhibit is the real reason to go.  Known for her photographic commentaries on racism and the debilitating stereotypes of African Americans through American history, this show has several of her masterworks.

 

Her famous series “From Here I Saw What Happened and Cried” is a natural extension of Elizabeth Keckley’s experiences, dramatized yesterday, brought to an incisive and bitter cultural critiqilue.  I knew the series and seeing it as a whole is powerfully painful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Its message gets summarized in this one image “Looking in the Mirror,” the first image that introduced me to Weems.

LOOKING INTO THE MIRROR, THE BLACK WOMAN ASKED,; “MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL, WHO’S THE FINEST OF THEM ALL?” THE MIRROR SAYS, “SNOW WHITE, YOU BLACK BITCH, AND DON’T YOU FORGET IT!!”

1987-1988

 
Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled (Woman playing solitaire) (from Kitchen Table Series), 1990

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had no idea the effect the “Kitchen Table” series from 1990 (above is the last image in the series) would have on me.  The Guggenheim has the entire narrative interspersed with all the images.  Each has the interrogation light and the table.  What’s on the table tells the story that mimics the written narrative’s words.

We go on a novelistic journey with the heroine, while Weems dissects a relationship–its rise, flowering, and decline–and the way community helps restore the heroine to hero status, after it’s demise.  Weems takes the ordinary, the everyday joys and pains, and monumentalizes them.  Don’t miss the chance to see this one.

When I left the exhibit, my chest literally hurt.  What better place for a healing balm than the beauty of The Frick?

In exchange for the jewel-like exhibit from The Mauritius, The Frick has responded in kind, sending its most famous works, including all three Vermeers, to Holland.  Hmmm. I thought Mr. Frick specified no loans, and The Frick was notorious for refusing to participate in the Vermeer exhibition that brought together all his other works.

Well, whatever.

If you know the collection, then you’ll enjoy seeing how the paintings are rearranged.  We now get a delicious room of Whistler’s, filled with works I had heard about but not seen.  This gallery is worth the trip alone.  Thank you, touring works!

But there’s more.

The focused show of Renaissance bronzes bring the monumental down to miniature, making them all the more impressive to my eye.  Not only can you walk all the way around the pieces, but you can get in close, study the details.

How does that rearing horse not fall over?  Hercules greatest feat may be defying gravity, in the model by Antonio Susini, who copies the original by his master Giambologna. Surely, Bernini studied these models or the fully-scaled sculptures.

Giambologna, Rape of Sabine Women, 1574-1582

Bernini, Hades and Persephone, 1621-2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

Yes, I’m geeking out on you again.  Makes me want to go do some homework on Mr. Bernini!

The curators comment about Giambologna’s “vibrant syncopation of contour and form.”  Yes!  Bernini might have learned a thing or two from him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
It was time for me to go downtown.

After grabbing my favorite lemon peel pizza at Keste, I finally got to see Michael Urie in “Buyer and Cellar.”  He’s leaving the show next month to tour it, so you may want to get over to Barrow Street to see him while you can.  His over-the-top energy suits this outrageously plotted show about the coming together of a little man and the monumental Barbra Steisand.  The play is full of laughs, some at the expense of stardom, most at the absurdities of people just trying to make it through life.

In the play, Barbra doesn’t know what to do with a Sunday afternoon. I don’t have that problem.  Even without all my stops today, Washington Square Park would have been enough on this glorious, faux-spring day.  There were the men playing chess, the protesters, the hippie guitar player, the black dudes tumbling, the pianist wrapped in his coat, scarf, and hat, the blue-haired girl walking a dog, by shuffling along on her 8″ black and white, zig zag, platform-heeled boots, the pyramid of bodies getting their picture taken.

We are all monumental in our tiny universes, intersecting at unexpected moments.  It’s all there to see, in the park, as well as in the museum and the theater.

Photos of the day:

Central Park

Central Park

Park Avenue Letting Off Steam

Park Avenue
Letting Off Steam

 

They Called Me Lizzy

The library brought East Haddam Stage Company actor Stephanie Jackson for a one-woman show about Elizabeth Keckley.  Jackson has been performing the role around the US and Canada for about 8 years, but nothing about her today seemed like a performance.  She embodied the soul of this historical figure and mesmerized the packed house.

Keckley was a slave, who through her industriousness, bought her son’s and her freedom.  But not before suffering the violence and indignities we’ve come to associate with woman slaves. The audience was so still during this part of the show, it seemed like we were chained to the actor.  Then through the re-telling of her emancipation, the audience noticeably relaxed, chuckling and talking back to her.

Through Keckley’s smarts and hard work, she networked her way to becoming the dressmaker for Mary Todd Lincoln throughout her White House years. Their growing friendship and Mrs. Lincoln’s emotional reliance on Keckley were challenged after Lincoln’s assassination.

Keckley documented their relationship, which she hoped would be a justification of the First Lady’s behavior, in a book published in 1868.  Instead, the book brought Keckley derision, cost her the friendship of Mrs. Lincoln, and essentially ruined her dressmaking business.

This remarkable life was also documented in a historical novel called Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, by Jennifer Chiaverini, published last year, which focuses just on the Keckley-First Lady relationship.  The source for this show is Keckley’s work Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, her memoir.

In a timely and related note, tomorrow’s New York Times Book Review features a new historical novel that takes place inside Lincoln’s mind, primarily during the Civil War years, called I am Abraham, by Jerome Charyn.

I hope you can catch a performance of “Call Me Lizzy,” but if not, check out one of these intriguing books.

A Cultural Look at Blue

The Beinecke Library has a new exhibit Blue: Color and Concept, showing a new way of organizing materials instead of by author.  They culled their collections for blue ephemera to tell a different kind of story.

Given the kind of winter we’ve had, no wonder I waited until a bright, sunny day to go see it.  Next winter, the Beinecke curators might consider yellow or orange instead.

So yes, the exhibit, which wants to explore the cultural history of the color blue in the 19th and 20th century, has the requisite sheet music, posters, and such of blues artists like Miles Davis, Ethel Waters, Joni Mitchell, and the “Heroes of the Blues.”

Wait, you don’t know the 36 trading cards of the “Heroes of the Blues”?  My favorites are Memphis Minnie and Barbecue Bob.  Move over baseball…I’ll trade you for the Mississippi Sheiks.

And there’s the blue mood.  Sheet music of ‘Mood Indigo’ by Duke Ellington and the “Basement Blues,” blues poetry by Langston Hughes and the Harlem Renaissance writer Arna Bontemps, and the handwritten anonymous “I’m so blue, I’m blue black.”  Don’t forget the blue period by Picasso.  It’s there, too.

What makes any exhibit a kick for me is learning something new or making a frBlueMovie.jpgesh connection.  So move past the obvious, and we come to Andy Warhol’s “Blue Movie.”

That title got associated with porn, but Warhol insisted that the film was really a protest about the Vietnam War.  Whatever.

How much more interesting to learn that the source of the lurid connection comes from a British expression.  “Blue Gown” refers to clothes worn by convicted prostitutes.  Don’t you love the source of sayings?

 

And then there’s the “Blue Book,” a New Orleans photographic directory of the city’s brothels, published from 1905-1915.  Really.

Here’s a quote from the entry on Mme. Emma Johnson’s “Home of all Nations,” located in the Tenderloin District at 331 and 333 Basin.  “Everything goes here.  Fun is the watchword….There are never less than twenty pretty women of all nations, who are clever entertainers.  Remember the name.”  Some advertising!

Now, that book is not to be confused with the “Blue Book.”  Apparently a common enough name.  But this Blue Book is a series for children.  There are 19th century primers, storybooks, and toy books.  Look for a tiny version of The Little Match Girl from 1862, Puss ‘n Boots, The Sailor Boy, and an adorable version of Whittington and His Cat.

Although they are tiny, the children’s books are not to be confused with the “Little Blue Books,” a run of 2000 paperbacks in pocket size, featuring translations and reproductions of all kinds of works–the Rubiyat of Omar Khayyam, Sherlock Holmes, “Electra,” Buddhist Philosophy, card games, the Life of John Brown, electronics, Alice in Wonderland, the Lincoln-Douglas Debate, Freud, “Hamlet,” and Rip Van Winkle.  Great subway reading, for just 5 cents each.

 

 

The ‘everyday’ from the exhibit was fun, too.

Airmail letters were on blue paper, remember?  The exhibit documents the correspondence between H.D. a famous poet “discovered” by Pound.  H.D. turned out to be Hilda Doolittle, who published by hiding her gender, and the exhibit features her airmail correspondence with the literati of Europe.

Edith Wharton’s Parisian driver’s license is on display.  It’s about 8 1/2″ x 11″ and features her picture.  Somehow, this just looks classier than our laminated cards.

Of course, there were lots of architectural blue prints, the blue from an iron-salt process that is no longer used, even as plans are still referred to as blue prints.

The same technique was used to create cyanotype photographs.  These wistful blue-tinged images were most popular in the late 19th and early 20th century, because they were low cost to produce, and the process was simple.  Much of the American West was documented using cyanotypes, to the chagrin of the photographer Peter Henry Emerson, who considered the blue tone as “vandalizing the landscape.”

The remarkable thing about cyanotypes is that they fade when exposed to light, then the blue is restored when put back into the dark.  Amazing!  The curators are running an experiment in the exhibit to try to better understand this “curious phenomenon.”

I really liked seeing Robert Henri’s color and composition experiments with blue, and other colors.  Never published, the papers are at the Beinecke.  Now if those curators could just focus on the more cheery colors!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow, Snow, Snowbama

New Haven is an artist-haven in many ways.  Gallery openings happen frequently, on any day of the week.  My artist friend Suzan and I are going to one later today.

square_with_four_circles

 

 

Art appears in unusual venues, like Felice Varinii’s Square and Four Circles.  It’s not only on the side of a parking garage, but also on two unrelated buildings.  You have to stand just here to see the whole.

 

 

So perhaps it’s no surprise that an artist would find inspiration in that abundant, free material–snow.  Known for his dinosaur “Snow-asaurus” from last year, David Sepulveda decided to make a big snow man this year.  Here is Snowbama:

David Sepulveda Photo

In progress, before paint was added.

Gina LaRoche Photo

Apparently, this 7 foot portrait of Obama has been stopping traffic.  We’ll be checking it out for ourselves later today…

A little farce here, a little farce there…

In between a generally funny sex/New York real estate farce and an earnest play about the founders of the NAACP and their possible sexual attraction, I took in two photography shows exploring the artistic possibilities of the photograph.

The shows at MoMA and ICP were spookingly similar.  What curators are having coffee or otherwise kanoodling?  Wait!  This isn’t a sex farce!

Still, you might forget which bed, um, museum you’re in.  The ICP show has a clear focus on digital, with lots of photos mimicking abstract art movements.  Doesn’t this image by James Welling look just like a Mark Rothko?  Yawn.  I can do that on my iPhone.

Walead Beshty, Three Color Curl, 2008

 

 

To make the point, this piece is from the MoMA show.  Not that the works aren’t lovely.  Just what are they saying about “what is a photograph?”  That it can be just like a painting?  Okay…

 

 

 

 

 

How much fun are the Polaroids by Lucas Samaras from the 1970s?  So how did he do that?  He started with a selfie, a self portrait using a regular Polaroid camera.  Before the chemicals setup, he could manipulate the image.  Let the experiments begin.  Make sure you see this tiny series downstairs at ICP.

Upstairs is a better show overall, I think.  Robert Capa was well known for his black and white images of war, but he worked extensively in color, too.  Covering exotic locations for Look Magazine, taking candids on movie sets, capturing the British Queen’s coronation, and more, I was most taken by the unexpected stare, the casual twist of a body, a glance at a party.

 

 

 

 

Doesn’t this just look like Paris?

 

 

 

 

Capucine at cocktail party in Rome, photo by Robert Capa, Rome, Italy, August 1951

 

and Rome in 1951.

 

 

 

 

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MoMA did what MoMA does–pulls out some greatest hits mixed in with some of-the-moment contemporary. While the crowd may gather around a video or lie down on the floor to gaze at the surround-screen-experience, I like the old stuff.

 

 

 

 

Harold Edgerton always amazes me, with his slow motion studies from the 1930s.  A drop of water.  A golfer’s swing.


 

 
Who knew Berenice Abbott did these kinds of experiments?

Robert Rauschenberg worked with cyanotypes.  Beautiful!

Bill Wegman up to his ol’ tricks.

William Wegman. Dropping Milk. 1971

William Wegman. Dropping Milk. 1971

Edward Weston plays with our perception, too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Both are Edward Westin,  Nude, Mexico, 1925

Today, I was really attracted to the hard edges of Charles Sheeler, Paul Outerbridge, and even Man Ray and Robert Mapplethorpe.  Beyond beautiful.

Charles Sheeler. Cactus and Photographer's Lamp, New York. 1931

Charles Sheeler. Cactus and Photographer’s Lamp, 1931

 

Images de Deauville

Paul Outerbridge, Images de Deauville, c. 1936

 

Man Ray. <i>Laboratory of the Future</i>. 1935. Gelatin silver print, 9 1/16 x 7" (23.1 x 17.8 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of James Johnson Sweeney © 2013 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Man Ray, World of the Future, 1935

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert Mapplethorpe, Hermes, 1988

A classic Nadar, two by Julia Cameron.  Irving Penn and Richard Avedon. It’s good.

Nadar, Pierrot Laughing, 1855

Julia Margaret Cameron. Madonna with Children. 1864

Julia Margaret Cameron. Madonna with Children. 1864

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Irving Penn, Ballet Theater, New York, 1947

Richard Avedon, Carl Hoefert, unemployed blackjack dealer, 1983

Richard Avedon, Carl Hoefert, unemployed blackjack dealer, 1983

 

The show is all over the place, but still worth a look.  Then maybe you can figure out how two curators got together in a Manhattan location…, no, no, that’s the making of a sex farce, with a New York real estate twist…

 

MoMA Sculpture Garden at dusk, 2-8-14

MoMA Sculpture Garden at dusk, 2-8-14

 

 

Pins and Needles

Congratulations to Suzan Shutan, who curated the new show at the Housatonic Museum of Art called “Pins and Needles.”  When you go, make sure you travel the halls outside the gallery.  2014-02-04 15.44.33You’ll catch a show on hard-edge abstraction and a few master works, like a Roy Lichtenstein, unassumingly hanging there, while students rush by unaware.

In Suzan’s show, women artists transform the ordinary into mystery, beauty, pain, and whimsy, commenting on women’s work and women’s lives overall.

Starting with such a tight concept–working with pins and needles–these ten or so artists each create something distinctive to her voice.  Erwina Ziomkowska’s work is unmistakable, and ouch! painful!.

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You don’t have to tell me that these shoes would hurt!

 

 

 

 

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Karen Shaw works with words, tagging the image with layers of meaning.  Three of her “Arcade” series are in the show,   Make sure you look closely to see how Shaw plays with ideas with words, you got it, stuck on with pins.

 

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I like Kim Bruce’s sculptural figures made out of cast beeswax, straight pins, and cloth.  My maternal grandparents both worked with pins and needles for a living, and her work reminds me of a sewing dummy or a pin cushion figurine.  But she is likely to be commenting on something much more serious.

 

 

 

Suzan has done a great job installing the show to create a lot of visual interest beyond the obvious.  She has included large wall works and pieces on the floor, busting the gallery walls open.

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Hands down, or pins and needles in hand, my favorite works were by Suzan.  Who can resist her pom pom series “Homage to Ellsworth Kelly”?  Not me!

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The opening is tomorrow night, if you can make it, and the show runs through February 20.

A New York kind of day.  The weather warmed up for a Groundhog Day thaw, and people had a more relaxed demeanor–the gracious offering of a seat on the subway, easier smiles on the street.

Still, there’s the opposite, too, in the New York experience, evident when I had to resolve an argument.  Two street vendors were vying to get me to buy their $4 pashmina/silk scarves.

“He doesn’t care about color.  Just buy, buy, buy!  That’s all.”

“She’s mine.  Over here!”

“My quality is better…look!”

The scarves were exactly the same, probably off the back of the same truck.  The happy and quieting solution was to buy from both, after some dickering.

New York also means the micro local neighborhood spot.  I met my friend for brunch at Calliope, with its warm host at the door and its bubbly, tattooed waitress.  The East Village  restaurant attracts the pre- and post-show crowd by donating 5 per cent to charity from the bill of the New York Theatre Workshop-goers.

Opposite from the street vendors, our meal started with a quiet catch-up, before steadily increasing in volume.  Soon we were having a multi-table, anticipatory conversation about the show we were all going to see.

What’s It All About” is a theatrical concert of Burt Bacharach songs, inspired by a young guitarist Kyle Riabko’s meeting the genius songwriter.  I love those songs, made popular through the first three decades of my life by Tom Jones, The Fifth Dimension, Dionne Warwick, The Carpenters, B. J. Thomas, and multitudes of pop singers doing their own versions.

Here, the songs get a fresh treatment, in some cases more hip, others hard rock, like a rousing 70s throwback version of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose.”  Here, its  cheery blandness morphs into an existential query by a lost and angry youth.

But most renditions crossed between folk and a torchy soulfulness.  Although familiar words were always attached to familiar melodies, the pacing might be slowed down, the harmonies lengthened.  A version of “Walk On By” with that treatment brought out the true sadness in the lyrics.

For a taste, check this out:

A male duet of “I’ll Never Fall In Love Again” elicited snorts of bemused recognition.  Without the relentless pop beat, Bacharach’s lyrics took on new importance, humor, poignancy, wisdom, resignation.

Performed by a talented and very young cast led me to remember where I was when those songs were first popular.  “That’s What Friends Are For”–my friends and I sang that song to each other very loudly at a slumber party.  “Close To You,” performed wistfully here, was probably my first slow dance with a boy.  I don’t remember the boy, but I know every word of that song.

Playing with the over-familiarity of the numbers brought out their poetry for re-feeling:  “one less bell to answer, one less egg to fry” and even an excerpt from the prosaic “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”:

“But there’s one thing I know,
The blues they send to meet me won’t defeat me.”

Its familiar words and tune were inserted into other songs, making more meaning in each.

Most of the numbers were mash-ups, showing how Bacharach returned over and over again to similar lyrics and the same theme: love–its struggles, its resilience, its desirability, its obsessiveness, and sometimes, its satisfactions.  Having the theme teased out by a generation so far removed from my own was wonderfully heartening, creating a sweeter connection than I have felt previously.  I also realized that the songs hold meaning for a certain time of life, one that I have in my rearview mirror.

Now I think more about the complexities of place and ideas of home–part of what today’s  New York kind of day brought to mind.  A sense of belonging that is the New Yorker in me.

Photo of the Day: Cooper Union

Photo of the Day:
Cooper Union

Happy New Year

I hope you’re out celebrating the Year of the Horse–Happy Chinese New Year!  I celebrated by going to festivities today that were celebrations of Chinese culture.

Perhaps I’ve been most intimidated by Chinese opera, which seemed strident and opaque and made me feel very much the foreigner.  What a pleasure to have Barbara Chan, a noted performer deconstruct these mysteries.  Here are some highlights.

Chinese OperaThere are about 300 regional opera styles, although Peking is the most popular form.  Barbara performs a Cantonese style.  She explained that with royal beginnings, opera, over time, became more accessible by being performed in tea houses.  Soon dedicated opera houses were being built out of bamboo, springing up all over the country.  Families like Barbara’s would center on opera performance, and her uncle performed for 70 years until his death at 96.  He looked half that age, perhaps from the makeup described below.

Performers were required not only to sing (Barbara sings male and female parts, requiring her to lower her vocal range an octave), but also deliver speeches of poetry, like rap she said, act, dance, and do martial arts and acrobatics.  Pretty incredible.

Barbara explained that the opera only has four character types, though one actor might play more than one role and type in an evening.  Sheng-m is a male, old or young; dan a female, often a married woman; jing – who have painted faces, often a fighter; and chou – wicked characters or perhaps a comic figure also with painted faces.

Key props, costumes, and gestures tell character and advance the story.  Pom poms on the heads of men or women indicate a fighter.  A bit counter-intuitive for us, since pom poms seem playful or for cheerleaders.  Long stalks of straw on a stick, serving as a broom, might be a prop for a fairy, whose responsibility is to dust the clouds! Stage props are kept very simple, generally just a table and chair, so that ornaments, costume, and makeup advance the story.

Remember that a white stripe down the nose indicates the character is wic2014-02-01 12.59.29ked.  Red means loyalty, black courage.  Gold or silver suggests the supernatural.  Men always wear high heels, even when fighting.  Women fight, too, but may also perform fan dances, which Barbara demonstrated.

Hair on women–essential.  Generally, very long hair wigs are part of the make-up process.  The hair is divided into 7 equal parts.  Long sideburns can go down to mid-calf.  The central hair, instead of falling over the face, is wiped up to 30 times with glue made of sea cucumbers or tree bark soaked in water.

The glue smooths the hair and allows it to be put on a form.  Extensive pictures of Barbara’s makeup and hair being dressed showed her wig being formed into circles crowning her face, then ornaments placed in each form, before a piazi–a very large head ornament which also holds the hair bun–is placed on her head.

All this after the extensive makeup session.  Most notable: creating the “phoenix eyes” which are considered pretty.  Traditionally, a ribbon is wrapped around and around the performer’s head, very very tight.  So tight, that some performers fainted from the stress.  Regardless, the method is painful, says Barbara.  Now, transparent tape is used to achieve the same effect.

What effect, you ask?  Pulling the eyes up into intense slants, smoothing out the skin above and below the eyes, before red, oil-based makeup is applied and smoothed.  This standard of beauty is finished off with “cherry lips.”  You got it, bright red lipstick.  And perhaps the secret to the youthful, 96-year-old uncle’s face.

Needless to say, the makeup and dressing requires assistance.  The one face works for any parts the performer may play, so that only a change of costume is required.  Still…

Barbara slipped on this beautiful, but according to her, inexpensive costume, to perform for us.

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Men's shoes and ornamented hat

Men’s shoes and ornamented hat

I mentioned that men wore heels, to achieve height.  Women wore flats, often with tassels, as worn by Barbara, especially when their partner was short.  Other women wore heels.  What’s intriguing and disturbing is the way these heels are formed.  It’s placed in the middle of the shoe, so that when the costume covers the performer’s foot, all that can be seen is the performer toddling along on these very tiny “feet.”  Like bound feet, which had been banned, but was still a standard of grace and beauty in women.

Gestures are symbolic.  When you see a character leaning over and whipping his or her head around so fast that the hair starts to twirl, this means the character is frustrated or sad.  The act is so difficult, that the audience usually bursts into applause.  Other gestures are like mime, like the act of drinking, covered by a modest hand to politely prevent others from seeing.

Barbara performed a sampling of the talking style and freestyle song of placing words within a certain beat, plus demonstrated a bit of the dance and acrobatic style.  You can get a taste in this video.

Musicians playing instruments generally sit on the sides of the stage for opera.  At the pipa

The master is on the left

The master is on the left

performance, of course, the master and her student were center stage.  Pipa is the English name for the sound that results from plucking this stringed instrument that resembles a classical lute.

Min Xioa-Fen played traditional songs with her student, but also demonstrated a jazz piece inspired by Theloneous Monk and Kansas City Swing, which was very influential in China in the 1920s.  Who knew?  You can hear a bit of their new year commemoration on this video.

Finally, I gave calligraphy a whirl.  Oh my.  I can see how people practice for a lifetime.  First, the way you hold the brush.  Lightly between your middle and ring finger.  Vertical.  With you elbow off the table.  Try that for awhile, and see how steady your strokes are.  Hmmm.

Just so you know, you read the Chinese characters from top right down, then the next column down.  But you write your characters from the top left.  One explanation: the tyranny of right handers, taking over from traditional left-handed writing.

Calligraphy means beautiful writing, and the Chinese have it, whether from the earliest, “tall” form — geometrically carved from stone to the cursive “grass” style, so named because it’s “like grass blowing in the wind.”  Poetry is everywhere, except perhaps in my calligraphic attempts!

 

 

“Fu” means fortune.  May your new year be full of blessings and happiness!