Boozing in the Empire City

Beer Here: Brewing New York's History at the New York Historical Society

            Alcohol plays a greater role in all societies than anyone would care to admit.  However, at Beer Here: Brewing New York’s History, a new exhibition at the New York Historical Society running through September 2^nd, though the point of the exhibit is how much beer and its brewing has influenced New York City, beer seems almost incidental in comparison to the great events going on around it.  When the Erie Canal was built, brewers chopped up its ice to cool the beer.  During prohibition, drinkers protested, but not on behalf of beer specifically.  A good brew seems irrelevant to the twists and turns of the Big Apple’s history as charted by the exhibit.

            Still, Beer Here is well laid out and pleasant to walk through.  It’s a bit threadbare, but that’s welcome after some of the more overwhelming exhibits at New York’s history museums, and the show is easy to follow.  It’s fun to see some of the more creative advertisements for the Brooklyn brewing companies (Schaefer, Rheingold, and Piels) and older ale bottles (some were even found by archaeologists in digs downtown).  Beer Here is no more than an exploration of the history of beer in New York, not beer and New York.  But that’s okay.  It’s equally as interesting.

            Beer Here takes a basically chronological journey through metropolitan beer’s story, beginning with its recipe and early influence.  (In the early 17^th century, many thought beer was safer to drink than water because its creation involved boiling, which kills bacteria.  It was served to men, women, and children alike.)  From there it moves to the New Amsterdam colony in the 1630’s and 40’s, where, when the Dutch realized beer’s popularity, it was heavily taxed.  Then on to DeWitt Clinton and the Erie Canal (beneficial, as I’ve stated, for its icy film), then to the hops farmers of the early 1700s, then to beer’s modernization, prohibition (and repeal), and eventual popularization and public advertisement upon Jimmy Carter’s law allowing homebrewed beer.

            It’s a short but entertaining walk through history, ending with a beer hall that serves the exhibition’s focus during the museum’s open hours.  It’s a seemingly legitimate bar that happens to be connected to a historical annex detailing the rise of its fare.  It’s funny the impact an alcoholic beverage can have, but beer does technically spur man to action in a way no normal activist could imagine.  The Anti-Saloon League and its ilk protesting alcohol itself in the 1910’s could not at the time imagine the power alcohol had over men (and it was mainly men).  When the men fought back, protesting themselves (not to mention bootlegging), it was to be expected.  It wasn’t exactly an addiction—though it could have been—it was a loyalty of sorts, of a man to his drink.  The exhibition doesn’t go into the emotional connection New Yorkers could have had to the bottle, but perhaps it should have.

            In fact, Beer Here skips a lot.  The sections about prohibition, the modernization and canning of beer, and especially Carter’s home-brewing law are especially short, and the museumgoer is left wondering what he’s missed.  That’s a good thing in itself, though, that such a short exhibition, when it cuts corners, can inspire regret.  That being said, Beer Here is unique, not winding or overlong like some other exhibits, but not too short either.  Well, not necessarily.  If it had only expanded in a few ways it would have been an epic of the human race’s relationship with fermented hops, but instead it’s a essentially a beer hall with some artifacts to one side.  Oh, well.

There's Nothing Like It

Closer Than Ever at the York Theatre Company

            The revival of Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire’s Closer Than Ever (at the York Theatre Company at 54^th and Lexington through August 25^th) is very, very good.  But then, that simple a description is never enough.  To elaborate, the music is great, the lyrics are fine, and the actors (Jacquelyn Piro Donovan, George Dvorsky, Julia Murney, and Sal Viviano) are pretty good at what they do.  Somehow, though, that combination results in a very, very good revue, reminiscent of the eighties but firmly cemented in the now.

            Let me go further.  David Shire has a nearly unmatched talent for musical composition.  (Mr. Shire actually attended the same performance I did, looking remarkably well for a man of 75.)  He writes for the piano and bass magnificently, and his arcing, pleading tunes are quiet and brooding, while his fast-paced, comedic numbers are equally excellent and appropriate.  His music is impossible not to play well, and the pianist (Andrew Gerle) and bass player (Danny Weller) at Closer Than Ever seem virtuosos thanks to his talent.  He also worked frequently with Sondheim early in his career, and it shows.  His music is deep and introspective and seems always to be setting up for an increasingly complex rhyme scheme.

            Now onto the fabricator of that scheme, Richard Maltby Jr.  When Mr. Maltby is good, he’s brilliant.  Songs like “The Bear, the Tiger, the Hamster and the Mole” (cut from an earlier Maltby and Shire hit, Baby) and “Back on Base” are on-the-mark, speedy and smart, and Maltby can work with smart.  He knows how to manipulate the language to its core, which is why it’s disappointing to be exposed to some of the less engaging numbers, like “Patterns” or “Fathers of Fathers,” because the audience knows he can do so much better.  It’s good, however, to experience less-than-genius work in a revue that includes genius, because it’s such a relief to return to it.  (Why do you hit yourself in the head fifty times with a hammer?  Because it feels so good when you stop!)  That’s all well and good, but when comedy is completely drained from the show halfway through the second act, it can seem an avalanche of melodrama and depression.  The show is meant to represent adult lives, which anyone can tell you are not exactly rosy all the time, but a musical can only lose so much rosiness before it begins to resemble a wilted dandelion.

            The actors veer back and forth between transcendent and confusing.  Sal Viviano is a cartoonish man, full of vim and vigor, who can seem overtly comic even in dramatic numbers, but his eagerness is entirely paid off when he belts by far his best solo number, “What am I Doin’?” and respecting applause is his reward.  Julia Murney is a great singer who played Elphaba in Wicked for a while, and has few flaws but for, in contrast to Viviano, her constant attempts at humor.  Murney often lowers her voice to a pitch far beyond her scale, and after one or two mannish swings, the audience has had enough.  We want to hear her sing, and thankfully we do.  Murney is the one actor who ought to be less comedic on stage, and eventually, along with, unfortunately, the rest of the cast, she drops the charades for the tragedy of the songs leading to the finale.

            Jacquelyn Piro Donovan and George Dvorsky, oddly for actors and singers of their caliber, were actually subject to, respectively, a lyrics blank (for Donovan, during one of the best songs in the show, “Life Story”) and a false start (for Dvorsky, at the beginning of the health freak-targeting “There’s Nothing Like It”).  Otherwise, the two are funny and fun to watch.  They’re the ones who should stay funny, too, but Act II drags them into the dumps along with everyone else.

            Regardless of the slips and slides and nitpicky flaws, when Viviano, Murney, Donovan, and Dvorsky work together along with Maltby’s best lyrics and Shire’s always-great tunes, there is magic on the York’s stage.  During the closing (and title) number, the cast does seem to get “closer than ever” to perfection, as kitschy as actually using that phrase to describe them might seem, and what does it matter if the bricks are a little cracked as long as the house looks beautiful when you’re done?

EDIT: After an extension, Closer Than Ever will now close on September 30^th.
EDIT: Closer Than Ever has been further extended through November 25th.

Going a Long Way to Avoid Being Tied Down

Yayoi Kusama at the Whitney

            The Whitney Museum at 75^th and Madison is known for celebrating today’s art, so perhaps a career retrospective, like the one running there now (through September 30^th) in honor of Japanese pop artist Yayoi Kusama, may seem out of place.  However, Kusama is still very much alive, producing new and original artworks from within the Japanese psychiatric hospital where she’s been living voluntarily for the past 35 years.  Is she crazy?  Well, who can speculate?  But Kusama’s work is unique and original, and for an art museum, this is the part that matters.

            Kusama left Japan at a young age after finagling her way into art school and making a living painting with whatever she could find—often using house paint and sand to paint pictures on seed sacks.  When she made it to America, she fell in with the pop crowd of New York, becoming acquainted with noted artist Georgia O’Keefe and a disciple of the minimalist Donald Judd.  She fabricated chairs covered in phalli, collages, paintings, clothes, and furniture.  The only thing one can conclude about Kusama’s art as a whole is that she was—and is—ceaselessly avoiding being defined as an artist.  It’s clear Kusama doesn’t want anyone to think of her as a fashion or interior designer, but for that matter one wouldn’t think her to be a sculptor or painter either.  It’s hard to pin Yayoi Kusama, and that’s exactly how she likes it.

            There are few common themes among the pieces at the retrospective, which, so says the museum, are meant to represent the “highlights of her career.”  (A full rather than career retrospective, the Whitney insists, would take up all six of its floors.)  One underlying idea, though, is dots.  Kusama seems to love dots, creating many of her best frescoes with pointillism, and dotting her collages (many of which she created with the help of her friend, collagist Joseph Cornell) with pink dots that seem to eradicate the message of the piece.  Kusama loves dots, and wears and sells dresses (many sold by Louis Vuitton, which also sponsors the exhibit) covered with them.  One of the museum’s docents suggested that Kusama thought of the earth itself as a dot among the galaxies of the universe.  Depressing, certainly, but true, and a truth that many great artists see as the center of their worldview.

            Kusama’s works are also all bright and conspicuous.  Even her canvasses painted all in white with gray dots—and yes, there are many of these—dominate the room.  Color plays a huge role in her work, as evidenced by some small, early works she made with India ink.  Most noticeable of these is The Coral Reef in the Sea, in which the background, as in many of Kusama’s best pieces, is black, and a multicolored, violin-shaped reef emerges from the darkness, suffused with an incandescent glow, and seeming to vibrate with life as a real reef does.  For a young woman in rural Japan who had never scuba dived or snorkeled, it’s an amazing view of an underwater paradise rendered with lifelike strokes.

            Not all the pieces are meant to mimic life, but most do.  They represent things we know about our lives that Kusama has inadvertently brought to the surface.  Some of her works are crude, some ridiculous, and some just plain eyesores, but she knew what the point behind each one was.  She is an artist who creates with the knowledge of the meaning of each piece, and even now, at 83, she is still painting pop masterpieces that will last for years to come.

            However, the most beautiful Kusama artwork on display at the Whitney is a timed-entry mirrored room on the first floor, which the artist calls “Fireflies on the Water.”  One person at a time enters the booth for one minute at a time.  Walking down a short plank into the middle of a flooded room, the entrant is besieged by wonder.  Lights hang from the ceiling in all conceivable colors, at different heights and different brightness.  Every wall is a mirror, and multiplies the lights out into eternity, giving one the feeling of observing an endless city, or for that matter a universe, from above.  Not only does it bestow an imagined power on the museumgoer, it also reminds you how small you are, and yet that your smallness is not necessarily such a bad thing.

Wishes Come True

Into the Woods at the Delacorte Theater

            Shakespeare in the Park, veering slightly from the path of the Bard, has chosen to honor an ingenious work by James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim: an unstoppable collision between the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.  Yes, Sondheim’s ode to the child, Into the Woods, is playing in the relative woods of Central Park through September 1^st, and, in a production so utterly satisfying as to draw a simultaneous sigh from its audience, it continues to dominate in its position as the superior fantasy musical—better than anything by Disney, Barrie, or (shudder) Weber.

            This Into the Woods boasts the talents of bright but unimposing Academy Award nominee Amy Adams as the Baker’s Wife, Donna Murphy as the Witch, and the voice of Glenn Close giving life to a marvelously built Giantess.  These and an all-star cast of theater legends (including a few actors from Into the Woods’ original cast) participate generously and with all of their considerable talent in the surprisingly engaging if complicated storyline.  The Baker (Dennis O’Hare) and his Wife are childless thanks to a curse placed on their house by their next-door neighbor, a hunched and ugly Witch.  Turns out the Baker’s father (Chip Zien, the Baker in the original 1986 production) stole a bit more than was good for him from the Witch’s garden, including several magic beans, which the Witch’s mother had warned her never to let leave the garden.  When the beans were stolen, the Witch was cursed into ugliness.  In exchange for lifting the curse (the curse on the Baker, not on the Witch), the Witch instructs the Baker to collect four items for a potion which would cure her—the cow as white as milk, the cape as red as blood, the hair as yellow as corn, and the slipper as pure as gold.  (You with me so far?)  So begins a whirlwind adventure that brings the Baker and his Wife face to face with all the folktale heroes and heroines that we—and presumably Sondheim and Lapine—grew up with.  A few even take the spotlight for a while for entertaining star turns.  Sarah Stiles is a fantastically brash Little Red Riding Hood, facing off against a wolf who feels uncomfortably like a very hungry pedophile, and Ivan Hernandez and Paris Remillard are hysterical self-centered princes whose respective loves are bestowed to—depending on the time of day—Cinderella (Jessie Mueller), Rapunzel (Tess Soltau), Snow White (Victoria Cook), and Sleeping Beauty (also Soltau).  Such is the life of a prince, evidently.

            This production is staged so ingeniously (by director Timothy Sheader and scenic designers John Lee Beatty and Soutra Gilmour), that one truly descends into the woods during its course, in a significantly different way than in July’s production of As You Like It.  In that play, the forest seemed nearly interchangeable with the fortress where Duke Frederick ruled.  Certainly, one duke was evil and the other good, but the antics in each situation were much the same, and the movements of the set, though beautiful, did little to further the plot.  Here the set stays immobile, and yet the cottage home of the Baker and his Wife seems a world apart from the wood.  When the story, told by a young and frightened narrator alone in the woods himself, begins, we feel a change.  Excitement?  Fear?  It could be either, but then that’s the point.  In this journey through the tales that have done their part to make us who we are—to teach us morals, kindness, not to talk to strangers or to stray from the path—Sondheim and Lapine wish to bring us back to childhood, and to learn what it is to be a child and what it is to leave that state forever.  “Be careful what you say,” sings the Witch in the closing number, “Children will listen.”  Well, whatever they listen to, the music of Into the Woods would be a welcome addition.

Observing an Odd Set From a Safe Distance

Spiders Alive! at the Natural History Museum

            Spiders Alive!, the new exhibition in the live animal hall of the American Museum of Natural History (former host of Frogs: A Chorus of Colors and Lizards and Snakes: Alive!), urges you repeatedly not to be worried.  Don’t be afraid, claim the curators of this fine and informative exhibit (among them noted invertebrate zoologist Norman Platnick), for spiders get a bad rap.  They are relatively unobtrusive and clear the countryside of countless insects who would otherwise bite at our flesh and devour our crops.  There are not nearly so many poisonous or even dangerous spiders as to legitimately inspire widespread arachnophobia.  Still, as you traverse the long, dark hall in which Spiders has taken up residence, it’s hard not to worry that there will be a sudden power failure, or that all the enclosures will break at once, and like some ridiculous SyFy channel horror movie we will be trapped within along with our eight-legged friends.  Am I allowed no neuroses?

            It is to the credit of Spiders (running, speaking of which, through December) that it refuses to go that route; that is to say, the route of the ridiculous gore flick.  There are not too many stories of venomous critters to spoil the dreams of any of the younger members of your party, just good old-fashioned fact.  And yet, as they always do, the museum manages to pull off fact in such a very entertaining way.

            Spiders is not unlike other AMNH exhibits exploring some of the smaller members of the animal kingdom, including Creatures of Light: Nature’s Bioluminescence, which is currently running at the museum as well.  As in Creatures, there are tiny critters blown to 70 times their proportion and hanging off the ceiling, well-lit handfuls of information dotting the walls, and designed creatively and artistically to invoke both a cave and a maze.  In doing so, Spiders uses the dark similarly to Creatures, but seems so much brighter, and seems, in contrast to its bioluminescent brother upstairs, to be dealing with much more science than beauty.

            Spiders are beautiful, sure, but in a different, more concrete way than sea jellies and glowworms.  We are treated to this odd arachnoid beauty by the live specimens that serve as the main attraction in the long, straight hall off the Grand Gallery that will serve as their home for the next five months.  They are small, mainly stationary, and strange—not majestic in the way that some lizards and snakes are, nor bouncing back and forth (no pun intended) between reclusive and caffeinated like many frogs.  They have their own otherworldly approach to life behind the glass.  They carry on with their routines, as evidenced by their intricate webs, but they remain stubbornly still and silent, if such a creature can be described as silent.  It is a unique experience to see these creatures up close.  Many could wound or even kill with a bite, but, so assure the placards, they just aren’t interested.  “Their venom,” said a museum worker running a presentation in the hall; “is a last resort.”  Not a last resort as it is for a bee, which dies after a sting, just because arachnids haven’t the time or the energy.  Their lives are too hectic.

            Spiders (and scorpions, included in the exhibit, though not as prominently) are in a constant race with nature, eating, building, and procreating before the end of their preternaturally short lives.  Their hustle and bustle is now contained to one atrium of one building in a massive city filled with similar bustle, in which it seems their human counterparts are racing with the clock themselves.  Spiders, which seem to operate on an entirely different plane than the human race, have something in common with us after all.

I, Robot, and My Numerous Friends

Ghosts in the Machine at the New Museum

            The New Museum at 235 Bowery Street, dedicated to contemporary art, has chosen now to tackle that most contemporary of subjects—technology, that is to say, technology and its impact on humankind, which evidently is not always positive.  The new exhibition Ghosts in the Machine, running through September 30, explores the good and evil of the human race’s dependence on our various devices in extremely inventive and often incredibly intricate ways.

            The star of the exhibit, and perhaps a representation of everything it stands for, is Stan VanDerBeek’s Movie-Drome, a 1963 converted silo roof plopped smack in the middle of one of the New Museum’s Japanese-designed galleries.  (The galleries themselves are confusing and maze-like, but artsy in a Nouveau kind of way.)  Projected onto the inside of the silo is an overwhelming assortment of images in varying stages of motion and stasis, creating a dizzying and plot-devoid motion picture reminiscent of the early IMAX dome films.  VanDerBeek’s initial intention was to install Dromes like these all over the world through which to broadcast information specific to each region.  When this plan (for obvious reasons) did not pan out, he instead used the Drome to display his multimedia presentations to his legions of fans.  The Drome could be used to broadcast propaganda to the masses, or to display entertainment.  Either use is threatening, but in different ways.  Technology threatens to take over the world, and also change it in ways that can never be reversed.  Is it any wonder some fear its advances?

            Ghosts is simple and well organized, if futuristic in an unfamiliar and slightly unnatural way.  A few of the films shown can make one feel as if one is experiencing a continuous intense migraine, and the pieces displayed are not applied to practical usage, as in a similar exhibition, Talk to Me, at MoMA last year.  They are merely meant to represent technological impact, not cause it.  A prime example is Hans Haacke’s 1964 piece Blue Sail, in which a household oscillating fan blows back and forth, causing a thin blue sheet hanging and counterweighted from the ceiling to ripple back and forth like a wave.  Clearly, unlike the Movie-Drome, Blue Sail was never meant to be used for a real-world purpose, it was only meant to enjoy.  So what constitutes tech, or even tributes to tech, is difficult to say.  It’s a general definition of the term that allows any kinetic artwork with a battery-powered fan as one of its components to be classified as a comment on the current state of technology.  Still, many of the pieces on display are truly impressive and simply fun to look at, like many of the New Museum’s permanent installations.  The museum is interested in new art, and much of new art is inspired by technology, since much of the present century is inspired by technology.  This exhibit is just more specific than most.

            And specificity is one great part of the exhibit, which focuses on (but doesn’t strictly include) machines that can pinpoint the end result of their programs within minutes.  Ghosts gets right to the point, explaining the What, When, Where, Why, and How in terms of how the piece applies (however loosely) to the museum’s point—that man’s quest to bring himself ever closer to the machine will never end.  The exhibition’s online description claims that Ghosts “brings together an array of artworks and non-art objects” to achieve its goal.  The New Museum, like me and other visitors, understands that not all of its pieces on display here apply to one ideology.  But it also understands that in order to make a statement, art from every side of the question on hand is required.  Here the artists, the curator, and the museum make their statement loud and clear.

Patchwork History, Sewn with the Bonds of Great Art

The Cloisters at 99 Margaret Corbin Drive

            John D. Rockefeller, Jr., in his infinite wisdom and near-infinite bank account, established in 1938 a magnificent castle on some of his land north of Manhattan (land which later became Fort Tryon Park).  Nine years into the Depression, the heir to a vast New York fortune was deep in the process of creating a beautiful museum of medieval art on an outcrop overlooking the Hudson River.  He donated almost his entire art collection and funded expeditions to the Mediterranean to retrieve entire portions of buildings—apses from Spain, Gothic windows from France, columns from foreign monasteries—to add to the American altar to artwork of the Middle Ages.

            The result is a relatively small but seemingly colossal collection of art from all over Europe and springing from the age of the fall of Rome through the Renaissance.  Mainly religious and depicting thousands of versions of the birth, life, and death of Christ, each painting, statue, and wall decoration seems nonetheless unique and beautiful in individual and different ways.  Tapestries and stained glass in all imaginable colors, revealing shade and depth despite being made of only glass and thread, adorn the walls.  The light, filtering through said windows and reflecting off artifacts up to 850 years old, is almost as beautiful as the artifacts themselves.  It is a fantastic experience to wander a building that is as much a piece of art as the exhibits within.

            The history that pervades the Cloisters is undeniable.  Every stone, every brick carries the air of a different time, a time when kings and queens still reigned and the feudal system was considered entirely fair.  The collection is incredibly impressive, ringed by gold leaf and performing actions considered necessities in the 1200s—decoration fit for nobility, bedecked in royal purples and reds, and glorifying the wealthy and faithful in a time when these traits were looked up to above all.

            The most famous works at the Cloisters (as not even the museum will deny) are the Unicorn Tapestries, depicting a fairy tale of the hunt and capture of a pure and innocent unicorn.  The story can be looked upon as allegory for the story of Christ or simply a fable told in a way similar to that tale, but either way the tapestries are beautiful in a special and distinctive way.  From the hunt to the trickery of the virgin to the eventual capture and murder of the beast, every moment, every betrayal, and every glorious, colorful detail is portrayed wonderfully.  The tapestries, donated by Mr. Rockefeller, Jr. in 1937, recall a time when artwork was taken extremely seriously and artwork such as this was the outcome.  What a terrible time, but what art derived from it!

            Travel to such a removed location is never a moot point.  If you should be convinced that a scenic bus route, watching the city change before your eyes, is your racket, be advised that you will see interesting scenes, but spend a less interesting two or so hours on a stop-and-go bus ride up past 190^th Street.  The subway (the A to 190^th, then the M4 right to the Cloisters’ front door) is the way to go in this case.  It’s quick and easy, and a good plan for a good day wandering the beautiful halls of this castle on the hill.

            Another advisory—catch a tour at the Cloisters, leaving at 1 pm (for the Gardens) and 3 pm (for the Collection) and chock-full of information you won’t find printed on the museum’s walls.  This is a sensational way to take in the sights of a bygone era; a time which perhaps could be called the Dark Ages but certainly, recalled here among such masterworks, could only be viewed in the brightest of retrospective lights.

Gifts of Oratory, First Bestowed, Then Wondered Upon

Churchill: The Power of Words at the Morgan Library

            Sir Winston Churchill, with all his wit, with all his power to amuse and rile up the public, was greater still at leading them.  The source of his power, and even, it could be said; the source of his success was his magnificent talent for public speech.  That talent is explored in depth in Churchill: The Power of Words, a new exhibit at the Morgan Library at 36^th and Madison running through September 23^rd.  From his childhood spent with a Brooklyn-born mother and a distant, admired father to his death at age 90 after a lifetime of public service, it is safe to say you can see more of Churchill in one room of the Morgan Library than practically anywhere else.

            Despite having to overcome a speech impediment early in life, Churchill was (as much of the world well knows) one of the greatest speakers of the twentieth century, and perhaps in history.  His gravelly, rumbling voice spoke truths the world could not deny.  As Edward R. Murrow once said, “He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”  The exhibition follows Churchill’s development as a soldier, when he wrote numerous books about his experience, through his time as a war hero eventually elected to Parliament, when he really began to hone his speaking ability.  The Power of Words, however, doesn’t just focus on how Churchill speech and speeches became great, it also focuses on Churchill’s finest moments as a warrior, an elected official, and especially a leader.  Here one can see his Nobel Prize in Literature, his honorary American citizenship, and awards recognizing his impact and brilliance.  He is a man who will never be easy to forget.

            The Power of Words is curated beautifully for a space so small.  Artifacts line the walls, each described intricately and satisfyingly.  One of Churchill’s paintings, a magnificent view of a seascape, adorns the section dedicated to his later years.  In the exhibition’s movie theater, a museumgoer can enjoy all of Churchill’s most famous radio speeches, with which the Prime Minister reassured his people during the beginning of the war and the hell of the Blitz.  Everything is laid out simply and majestically, so that the exhibit is easy to enjoy and even easier used as a place of learning. 

The Morgan Library is dedicated to stockpiling information and relics to promote human knowledge, and does so with great success.  Beyond its beautiful architectural façade, the Library hosts thousands of both physical pieces and tidbits of information.  There is no museum better to tackle such a monumental historical figure as Churchill.  At the entrance to the exhibition, the Library even lays out one of Churchill’s pens and a typewriter used by one of his secretaries (almost all of Churchill’s speeches were dictated).

If possible, take the docent-led tour of the exhibit (departing from its entrance every day at 2).  The guides are well-informed and entertaining, and it heightens one’s experience to hear the history both from their and the Library’s points of view.  Travelling through the exhibit with them is much like travelling through Churchill’s life along a straightforward timeline.
           And what a timeline it is!  Churchill was a vastly interesting man and a symbol of hope and strength during one of England’s most difficult periods.  Among the confusion of a world war, Churchill remained a powerful and patriotic Prime Minister both at home and abroad.  Retaining just as much of a connection to America as to England, Churchill could be said to be the uniting factor between the new and the old worlds, bringing them together to fight the good fight and bring the world forth into a newer, brighter age.

A Plan for All of Us

Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan at the Museum of Modern Art

            Alighiero Boetti, the Italian conceptual artist whose work is currently showing in a retrospective, Alighiero Boetti: Game Plan, at the Museum of Modern Art at 53^rd Street and 5^th Avenue (and running through October 1^st), once said he considered manual skill to be secondary.  It was Boetti’s belief that the artist’s job is to take things from reality, to illuminate that which already exists.  Said Boetti, “Everything, however small and humble, always has a beginning and stems from reality.”  However little manual skill is necessary in the creation of Boetti’s work, it could be said that he is certainly in excess of skill in areas within and beyond experimental art.

            Boetti created art based on systems—intensely complex systems of numbers, geometry, coded words, and movable type.  He was interested in what he called “Order and Disorder,” what might at first seem to be the chaos of the human mind metamorphosing through art into something carefully planned and undertaken.  Whether hand-shaped concrete balls in a sunbathing self-portrait or a boxy light that illuminates for 11 seconds once every year (not even the artist knows exactly when), order and disorder, along with systemic pre- and post-planning, give Game Plan much of its mystery and flair.

            Not all of Boetti’s work is about the nature of the human mind.  Most, if not all, could be said to be about the artist himself.  Not many of the works labeled as “portraits” really resemble Boetti, but his soul-searching goes beyond outward appearance.  For one, in an interesting if grisly experiment, he sent two dates to two separate embroideries to be sewn onto two cloths each.  The two dates?  December 16, 2040 and July 11, 2023, the first being the day the artist would turn 100, the second being the date he predicted for his death.  (Boetti actually died in 1994.)  The difference between the two sets of embroidered squares is huge, especially since he gave no instructions other than the dates.  This is a common theme with Boetti, leaving much of his work up to chance to punctuate his belief that the artist’s calling, as he says, is “bringing the world into the world.”

            Another interest of the artist is duality, and the belief that his two personalities, Alighiero and Boetti, represented order and disorder respectively.  (He would often sign his pieces Alighiero e Boetti, or Alighiero and Boetti.)  He fabricated a picture, which he called Gemelli (Twins), of the personalities holding hands with each other (in fact just a clever duplication in which the artist holds hands with himself).  It is interesting to survey the artist’s communications, so to speak, with himself about the nature of his two personalities.  He even went so far as to draw with his right hand as Alighiero and his left as Boetti.

Beyond the introspection of his earlier years, some of Boetti’s greatest work is embroidered, including a series of his most famous creations, the Mappe (Maps), on display in both the museum’s atrium and the exhibit’s continuation on the sixth floor.  For each Mappa (one is seen above), Boetti obtained a traced world map and filled each of the countries with its flag, creating a beautiful image of the world as divided into borders and nationalities.  He made 150 of these Mappe, each one slightly different from the last, always improving, tweaking, and changing small bits of the work from one to the other.  One thing he always did, though, was leave the color of the oceans up to the seamstresses who produced the Mappe.  It is the one piece of this work he left up to chance, but, like much of the things Boetti leaves up to chance, the pink and black and blue oceans are beautiful.  What one comes away with is that Boetti, though he does venture occasionally into the mundane and uninteresting, is just as great an artist whether he controls his final product or not.  It takes a talented man to achieve that distinction.