In the hardworking staff’s desk drawer is a 5 1/2″ x 4″ x 2 1/4″ black wood box with a ceramic top (crafted in 1970 by our great friend Margaret Ahlrichs – hey! we have all these friends in common!) featuring a black-and-white profile of Bob Dylan and this quote from 4th Time Around:
And I, I never took much
I never asked for your crutch
Now don’t ask for mine
(The headscratching staff has spent the last half-hour trying to figure out how to transfer a photo of said box to this post. We have failed miserably.)
Whatever.
We see the box every day. And last night it sent us here (sorry for the butterfly video):
A middle-aged Upper-West-Side doctor’s wife is devoted to mornings at the Whitney, afternoons at MOMA, and evenings at BAM. Plunged into a mid-life crisis of Medea-like proportions, she’s shaken out of her lethargy by the reappearance of a fascinating and somewhat mysterious childhood friend. Filled with passion and humor, the New York Times called The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife a “window-rattling comedy of mid-life malaise.”
The production lives up to the Chaucerian echo in the play’s title: It’s broad, bawdy, and biting throughout.
Not entirely accurate YouTube trailer:
Full quote from the Boston Globe:
Charles Busch is not known for holding back, and he certainly heaves a lot at the wall in “The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife.’’
Enough of it sticks to generate some raucous merriment in a production at Lyric Stage Company, but it’s not sufficient, ultimately, for this unwieldy comedy to succeed.
The Globe’s estimable theater critic Don Aucoin ultimately called the Lyric production “sporadically entertaining.” And there’s no question Marina Re, in the title role, chews so much scenery in the first act she needs to floss during intermission. But that’s sort of the point.
As one local wag noted, it’s a play only a New York Jew could really love. (Full disclosure: I grew up in Manhattan and I’m Jewish by attraction.)
Regardless, it’s running through December 20. Do a mitzvah and go see it.
Budget Problems? Kentucky and Elsewhere Find Answer in Bottle
LAWRENCEBURG, Ky. — Alcohol may not be single-handedly saving state and local budgets from the red, but it is certainly helping.
Consider Kentucky. Coal mines in parts of the state are struggling to stay open, but here among the gently rolling hills of horse country, bourbon is booming.
At the Wild Turkey plant, a new bourbon distillery is rising, the first built from the ground up here since Prohibition. Visits to the company’s tasting room, where guests can sip bourbon and gaze into a gorgeous valley, have doubled in the past few years.
The company paid over $778,000 in real estate and property taxes to Anderson County this year, twice what it paid in 2010, making it the biggest taxpayer by far. “We’re lucky to have them,” said Brian Stivers, the property valuation administrator for the county. “Without their expansions we would have probably had to raise the tax rate.”
Elsewhere, “changing consumer tastes and changes to state regulatory and tax policies have created a bull market in booze-related businesses.”
Chalk up another hostage to stealth marketing: the debut of Entertainment Weakly.
Adweek reports that Time Inc. has launched EW Lightbulb, “an interview series featuring conversations with today’s leading creators about how they work and where they find inspiration.”
This month, Entertainment Weekly introduced Lightbulb, a new web series sponsored by Glade that features one-on-one interviews with actors and other creative types like Morgan Spurlock, Tavi Gevinson, Rashida Jones and Patton Oswalt. (Time Inc. first previewed the show during its inaugural New Fronts presentation this past spring.) While Lightbulb is officially an EW product, episodes will be pushed out across multiple Time Inc. brands, including People, InStyle and Essence, depending on the content. (For instance, InStyle will be promoting the episodes starring fashion-savvy Gevinson and Jones.)
Well the Missus and I trundled down to the Big Town for the weekend and, say, it was swell. (Not to mention All Pablo All the Time.)
Here, in roughly chronological order, is some of what we caught.
FRIDAY
• Picasso & the Camera at the Gagosian Gallery (Chelsea) through January 3, 2015
This exhibit, curated by Picasso biographer/friend John Richardson, is a stunning display that “explores how Picasso used photography not only as a source of inspiration, but as an integral part of his studio practice.”
Spanning sixty years, this show, which includes many photographs taken by Picasso but never before seen or published, as well as related paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, and films, [provides] an unprecedented survey of his unique relationship with the camera. David Korins, acclaimed scenic and production designer for stage and screen, has transformed the 21st Street gallery with an innovative exhibition design that seamlessly incorporates the vast array of archival materials with Picasso’s own works in a variety of media.
Of course, it never hurts when Man Ray takes your home movies for you.
Yeah, this exhibit tries hard, but it’s a bit, well, domesticated compared to Gagosian’s photyricon.
From the website:
New York—Opening on October 31, 2014, the Pace Gallery in New York presents Picasso & Jacqueline: The Evolution of Style, featuring nearly 140 works by Pablo Picasso created in the last two decades of his life while living with his muse, and later, wife, Jacqueline Roque. With many works from the Picasso family and Jacqueline Roque’s estate on view to the public for the first time, plus loans from private collections and major museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, this exhibition is the first to examine Picasso’s late transformation in style, as seen exclusively through the portraits of Jacqueline, his last and perhaps greatest love. Picasso & Jacqueline features painting, sculpture, works on paper, and ceramics, all depicting Jacqueline in a myriad of ways—from odalisque to bride—that would immortalize her arresting beauty.
And . . . kind of meh.
To be fair, Pace would get another shot – at its midtown gallery – the next day.
• A Delicate Balance at the John Golden Theatre through February 22, 2015.
On the one hand, before I say anything about the current Broadway production of “A Delicate Balance,” I should mention that the Missus and I saw the vaunted 1996 production of the Edward Albee play described here by legendary New York Times theater critic Vincent Canby.
As staged by Gerald Gutierrez and acted by a splendid cast headed by Rosemary Harris, Elaine Stritch and George Grizzard, “A Delicate Balance” is now revealed to be almost as ferocious and funny as — and far more humane than — “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” It makes “Three Tall Women,” Mr. Albee’s 1994 Pulitzer winner, look as bland and unthreatening as a Saturday night dinner at your average upper-middle-class country club.
On the other hand, I should also mention that neither of us remembers all that much about the play itself, except that Rosemary Harris was a lot better than the current production’s Glenn Close (who flubbed about a dozen lines). Ditto George Grizzard vs. John Lithgow (who did a lot of scenery-chewing in the denouement). And Elaine Stritch – well, someone should have invoked the mercy rule for Lindsay Duncan’s performance.
Current Times theater critic Ben Brantley agrees with us (or vice versa – we read his Friday review after we saw the play).
(Grace note: Broadway went dark at 7:45 to honor the legendary Mike Nichols. Everyone in line outside the theaters applauded.)
In the late 1940s, Henri Matisse turned almost exclusively to cut paper as his primary medium, and scissors as his chief implement, introducing a radically new operation that came to be called a cut-out. Matisse would cut painted sheets into forms of varying shapes and sizes—from the vegetal to the abstract—which he then arranged into lively compositions, striking for their play with color and contrast, their exploitation of decorative strategies, and their economy of means. Initially, these compositions were of modest size but, over time, their scale grew along with Matisse’s ambitions for them, expanding into mural or room-size works. A brilliant final chapter in Matisse’s long career, the cut-outs reflect both a renewed commitment to form and color and an inventiveness directed to the status of the work of art, whether as a unique object, environment, ornament, or a hybrid of all of these.
Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs is a groundbreaking reassessment of this important body of work. The largest and most extensive presentation of the cut-outs ever mounted, the exhibition includes approximately 100 cut-outs—borrowed from public and private collections around the globe—along with a selection of related drawings, prints, illustrated books, stained glass, and textiles. The last time New York audiences were treated to an in-depth look at the cut-outs was in 1961.
The Heart Is Not a Metaphor is the first large-scale survey of Robert Gober’s career to take place in the United States. Gober (American, b. 1954) rose to prominence in the mid-1980s and was quickly acknowledged as one of the most significant artists of his generation. Early in his career he made deceptively simple sculptures of everyday objects—beginning with sinks before moving on to domestic furniture such as playpens, beds, and doors. In the 1990s, his practice evolved from single works to theatrical room-sized environments. Featuring loans from institutions and private collections in North America and Europe, along with selections from the artist’s collection, the exhibition includes around 130 works across several mediums, including individual sculptures and immersive sculptural environments and a distinctive body of drawings, prints, and photographs. The loosely chronological presentation traces the development of this remarkable body of work, highlighting themes and motifs that emerged in the early 1980s and continue to inform Gober’s work today.
I’m not smart enough to understand this stuff, but others seem to like it.
The prints and drawings in this other Pace exhibition are more interesting than the paintings in Chelsea. (Over all, Picasso was kinder to Jacqueline than to his many galpals. See especially: Dora Maar). But not especially compelling.
This is the first exhibition to explore the ideas, innovations, and influence of the legendary cosmetics entrepreneur Helena Rubinstein (1872 – 1965). Madame (as she was universally known) helped break down the status quo of taste by blurring boundaries between commerce, art, fashion, beauty, and design. Through 200 objects Beauty Is Power reveals how Rubinstein’s unique style and pioneering approaches to business challenged conservative taste and heralded a modern notion of beauty, democratized and accessible to all.
Best story: Madame wanted a particular Manhattan apartment but was told Jewish tenants were not welcome. So she bought the building.
The exhibition represents the artist’s first solo show in a New York museum, features 30 works by the artist, and is the first retrospective to include Marisol’s work on paper in conjunction with her sculptures. The exhibition reestablishes Marisol as a major figure in postwar American art, fosters a broader understanding of her work, and positions it within a larger historical context. The various phases of Marisol’s career are explored, beginning with her early carvings, cast metal works, terracottas, large, complex sculptures, and a broad selection of works on paper.
McCauley (‘Mac’) Conner (born 1913) grew up admiring Norman Rockwell magazine covers in his father’s general store. He arrived in New York as a young man to work on wartime Navy publications and stayed on to make a career in the city’s vibrant publishing industry. The exhibition presents Conner’s hand-painted illustrations for advertising campaigns and women’s magazines like Redbook and McCall’s, made during the years after World War II when commercial artists helped to redefine American style and culture.
And check out this interview with the 100-year-old artist.
• Indian Ink at the Laura Pels Theatre through November 30
This Roundabout Theatre Company production of Tom Stoppard’s play was compelling from start to finish. Rosemary Harris was, as always, superb (and she remembered all her lines, unlike a certain much younger actress we won’t name again). And Romola Garai (of BBC’s The Hour) was luminous as her 30-year-ago sister, a poet who drifted to India and became planted there.
(Also deserving mention is Firdous Bamji in a thoroughly winning turn as an Indian artist. But really, the entire cast was terrific.)
Just a splendid night of theater.
SUNDAY
On the way out of town, we swung by The Met for a few parting gifts.
This exhibit will make your head explode for one of two reasons.
1) It features 81 different Cubist works;
2) They all belong to one guy.
Cubism, the most influential art movement of the early twentieth century, still resonates today. It destroyed traditional illusionism in painting and radically changed the way we see the world. The Leonard A. Lauder Collection, unsurpassed in its holdings of Cubist art, is now a promised gift to the Museum. On the occasion of this exhibition, the Collection is being shown in public for the first time—eighty-one paintings, collages, drawings, and sculpture by the four preeminent Cubist artists: Georges Braque (French, 1882–1963), Juan Gris (Spanish, 1887–1927), Fernand Léger (French, 1881–1955), and Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881–1973).
It’s really quite stunning.
(Requested reading: If anyone can tell me what Julian Bell is talking about in his New York Review of Books piece on the exhibit, I’d very much appreciate it. Cheers.)
This is the kind of thing The Met does better than virtually any other institution.
This exhibition of paintings, drawings, and watercolors by Paul Cézanne (French, 1839–1906) traces his lifelong attachment to Hortense Fiquet (French, 1850–1922), his wife, the mother of his only son, and his most painted model. Featuring twenty-four of the artist’s twenty-nine known portraits of Hortense, including Madame Cézanne in the Conservatory (1891) and Madame Cézanne in a Red Dress (1888–90), both from the Metropolitan Museum’s collection, the exhibition explores the profound impact she had on Cézanne’s portrait practice.
Twenty-four out of twenty-nine – nice batting average. The Missus and I agreed that the two Met portraits are the best of the lot.
Most delightful renaissance in the NFL right now? Easy.
Gronk.
As in Gronk, Rob Gronkowski, New England Patriots tight end, Bill Belichick’s human bouncy castle. Six-foot-6, 265 pounds, galloping straight at you in the open field like a pony who just broke loose at a children’s birthday party.
Tackle him if you can. Better advice: Hide under a picnic table.
Best advice: Read the whole piece.
Our favorite part:
People love the Gronk’s, well…Gronkness. Gronkowski shows up for every NFL game looking like they let him out of school early for a pool party. Brady this week referred to Gronkowski’s “positive enthusiasm,” but that’s blandly selling it short—Gronk enthusiasm is the kind of big-eyed enthusiasm that’s reserved for sneaking all of the principal’s office furniture out onto the 50-yard line, or making it to 8 a.m. in Vegas. (”Hilarious too-muchness” is how Grantland’s Wesley Morris once described it.) Part of me would love very much to drive across the country in a bus with Gronk. The other part of me would jump out as we were pulling out of the driveway.
Us? We want to drive cross-country with Jason Gay.
Native advertising is growing at The New York Times
Capital New York give us a look at The New York Times’ native advertising business in a profile of Meredith Kopit Levien, its executive vice president for advertising, and it appears to be growing. Since launching earlier this year, it’s struck deals with 32 different brands — from Netflix to Thomson Reuters — to create ads that cost from $25,000 to more than $200,000 just to create.
And the Times’ in-house content studio, T Brand Studio, is up to a staff of 16 — up from nine when my colleague Justin Ellis wrote about the Times’ approach native advertising in June.
And those madcap T Brandniks have been plenty busy creating online stealth advertising like this Googlepitch:
The New York Times has been producing increasingly elaborate native ads online, and now it has gone a step further by extending the format to print for the first time.
The ad, for Shell, is set to appear in print and online Wednesday, and it’s a far cry from the advertorials of days past. First, the size: The print component is an eight-page section that’s wrapped around home-delivered copies. (In the case of newsstand copies, the ad wraps the business section.) The top sheet is opaque vellum, for extra effect. The print creative extends the Web version, with infographics that show the urbanization of the world’s population. In what the Times called “icing on the cake,” the print ads are enhanced by augmented reality, so that people using the Blippar app can initiate a video by holding their phone over the page.
The hardworking staff has always had a thing for the great Anita O’Day. (She chose that stage name because it was pig Latin for “dough,” which is what she wanted to make.)
And lately we’ve been hitting Replay on her version (with Stan Getz on tenor) of Man with a Horn.
Of course, that leads us inexorably to her classic, extravagant hat performance at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival (via – ! – RoundMidnightTV).
Granted, Anita could never displace any of the Big Four (Ella, Sarah, Billie, Dinah).
But to us, anyway, she’s definitely the Big Fifth.
Campaign Outsider 