Naples and the ghosts of Herculaneum (September 2023)

A hint of claustrophobia gave me pause when the “Napoli Sotterranea” tour guide described the very narrow and dark passage that was coming up and which we were supposed to cross in single file and with our flashlights on. I'm sure I'm not claustrophobic, yet I decided not to proceed along with the other visitors. Maybe the real reason was the desire to enjoy the gigantic, cool subterranean “arcade” on my own and in quiet -something otherwise impossible during a group tour.

After having spent seven days in the heart of Naples, on the eve of my departure, I finally enter the... inner sanctum. With roots spreading thousands of year ago, underground Naples and its maze-like network of huge caves encompasses three primary uses: ancient Greek quarries, Roman aqueducts, World War II bomb shelters. In the “lower” city, in the monster's belly, I'm given the opportunity to “digest”, to mentally organize the overwhelming impressions from the “upper” city with the thousand faces.

COUNTLESS CHURCHES

Necks ache from a week's worth of gazing up at the stunning interiors of the countless churches (there are literally hundreds of them): the dazzling frescoes, golden arches and incredible splendor in Gesù Nuovo's dome; the breath of David and Jeremiah's sculptures (you think they're about to detach themselves from their niches and take flight) in the same church; Perugino's “Assumption of the Virgin” in the Duomo; the masterful marble sarcophagi in San Lorenzo Maggiore; the deliciously delicate decoration in San Giovanni Maggiore, with the pastel motifs curling around capitals and ceilings like fragile paper wrap of luxury pastry.

Architectural movements and historical layers pile up not only in churches but also in palaces, theatres, towers, obelisks, castles, monastic complexes, while the momentum of the contemporary city keeps you alert, since the ceaseless flow of pedestrians and vehicles is exhausting and often dangerous (every night I thank God that I didn't get hit by any of the motorcycles that rush day and night at a hair's breadth by the tourists on the bumpy, preserved cobblestone narrow streets of the Centro Storico).

LAUNDRY AND SOCCER

Striped awnings and colorful loads of washed laundry blow eternally in the wind, but now on the clothesline ropes that connect one historic residential building to the other have been added thousands of white and light-blue celebratory ribbons, as an homage to the recent Napoli soccer team's championship, accompanied by libations of Maradona Spritz at the bars and the Argentinian's portrait bearing a halo featured on graffiti and banners.

But here in the earth's guts I also have the chance to recall yesterday's archeological excursion: the first thrill once you arrive at Herculaneum (modern-day Ercolano) on the Circumvesuviana train – just a twenty-five minute ride from Naples – comes from reuniting with the sweetness of the Mediterranean summer thanks to the reconnection with nature: the bright green of the familiar pine trees, the accompaniment of the cicadas, the dear pink of the oleanders. Even the afternoon sun feels milder in the open country of Campania than in the thick Neapolitan urban matrix.

UNTOUCHED CITY

The Herculaneum archeological site introduces itself very straightforwardly to the visitor: skulls and skeletons belonging to the inhabitants of the once-upon-a-time thriving Roman city “greet” you at the facade. Those people had sought refuge in the boat sheds situated at the edge of the city, along that era's coastline, when Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD. They perished right there, buried under the volcanic ash which, ironically, proved lethal to their individual existence, yet offered immortality to the material aspect of their organized social life: thanks to the otherwise deadly to mortal humans tephra, their exceptionally developed city remained astonishingly untouched for 2000 years.

I walk along the House of Argus colonnade and I picture the symposia it would have framed. I caress the deep-red wall of a nearby room and I marvel at the playful “reflection”, since the painted decoration depicts a peristyle.

Little dolphins, an octopus, a squid, all of them are “swimming” around a Triton: the immaculate joy of the Mediterranean summer jets out of the two-thousand-year-old spectacular mosaic floor and inundates the Thermae. All my imagination needs to supply is the water. I place my (imaginary) aryballos on the perfectly preserved little shelves of the apodyterium and I get ready to “dive in”.

Fully immersed by now, I exit the frigidarium and I pay a visit to the House of the Wooden Partition. I sit by the impluvium (a basin for collecting rainwater) at the center of the enormous atrium and I gaze at the splendid fresco. I wonder whether this luxurious villa's former inhabitants too loved the same tiniest detail -a small strange blossom. The house is packed with guests, that's why the hosts have retired in the special area which, thanks to two sliding wooden doors, is separated from the imposing reception room. I'll ask them some other time about the little flower of their fresco...

BREAD AND CIRCUSES

Now I have to go to dinner to the nearby house. But is it ever possible to focus on your food when the wall is adorned with the most exquisite mosaic that can ever be? And yet, right here, where Neptune and Amphitrite are posing extremely shiny, used to be the open-air summer dining area of this wealthy family. A sea shell spreads like a fan on the upper part of the composition, exalting its glorious palette (royal blue, light blue, burgundy, aquamarine, almond green), graced by twining sea and vegetal motifs.

Unfortunately the guards lock the space before sunset. Although I did not spend the night at Herculaneum, I do feel as if I've lived there, since its inhabitants opened their houses to me and granted me the freedom to dream their life.

Return to the underground cave: having reminisced both on the throbbing city above as well as on the dolce vita of the neighboring Herculaneum, I hope tomorrow I will be able to board the goodbye train, taking in the Gulf of Naples, towered by Vesuvius in the background.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on September 2, 2023.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 2 Σεπτεμβρίου 2023.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com.

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Let's take a stroll in Hopper's city (June 2023)

The first person that came to my mind as soon as I heard about the exhibition “Edward Hopper's New York” was Greek songwriter Loukianos Kilaidonis. An ardent fan of the American's, he had asked me to bring him the exhibition catalogue the previous time Whitney Museum had organized a retrospective dedicated to the artist, back in 2013. “Lucky girl”, had exclaimed the employee. The books had been sold out by the time I had arrived at the museum store, but an order had just been canceled, so the last remaining copy had just become available. The revered Greek was meant to receive his present.

It was not unexpected that this year's exhibition (at the New Whitney this time) would be a popular one. However, I would never have imagined that New Yorkers would be elbowing each other to come face to face with the waitress arranging the fruits on the display window of the Table for Ladies (1930) restaurant. Is there any accuracy in the improvised statistic that crowds cluster not so much in front of the dreamy Seventh Avenue or Village drugstore depictions but rather in front of landscapes that also include the city's heroes?

First, there are the solitary “stars” of the mythical public “sets” of the metropolis. The woman with the green coat and the yellow hat is gazing at her coffee, absorbed, sitting alone at the Automat table. (Those early self-service establishments, wildly popular with 1920s New Yorkers, including Hopper, were immortalized by Marilyn a few verses before she concluded that “diamonds are a girl's best friend”.) Equally engrossed, but in this case by the office objects, is the elegant employee of a corner-building business with a window wall that allows us to take in from the street the delicious geometry of the scene (New York Office, 1962).

Then, there are the duets, at times unaware of each other, as in the case of the woman in the blue, deep décolleté dress and the man smoking turned towards her. They are seated at different tables, alone, yet covered in the same mystery shroud, in spite of the fact that we're in broad daylight. The “movie” is not realistic. We are in some cafeteria, but we are at the same time in a memory (Sunlight in a Cafeteria, 1958).

In Room in New York (1932), she, in her orange dress, is up to something at the piano, while he, seated in the red armchair, is reading. They have been “caught” voyeuristically by the painter, who is peeking into their electrically-lit private life from the window.

These heroes seem to be comfortably seated in their “set”, their urban moment settled. And then, there are the Restless ones, those who seem to be looking at something unknown and perhaps threatening approach, or at least visible in the horizon.

The light is splendid, the light blue of the sky and the green of the park in the background is shining in Sunlight on Brownstones (1956). In spite of their relaxed poses -the man is smoking leaning against the entrance wall, the woman is seated on the stair railing-, something seems to be keeping the couple at the brownstone stoop alert. They are turning their faces to the right: what are they seeing? The sun? The future? Three other heroines, each one in her individual universe -the woman standing naked in the bedroom, with the unmade bed behind her; the other one in the pink camisole seated on the bed; the one seated at the dining table- all of them are turning their heads, their bodies and their whole being toward that Something in the direction of the window.

Meanwhile, I have long ago “embraced” the crowdedness: since they're pushing me, I will let myself get carried away by the swarms. (Exhibitions don't take place in a vacuum -whoever wants to be left alone with Hopper should come to the museum at nine in the morning or go to a private collection.) Realizing that the New Yorkers who are blocking my view are themselves a subject the painter would have utilized, I decide to make them part of my “frame”.

He, at one edge of the bench, is wearing a jockey hat that leaves part of his snowy hair exposed. Definitely in his eighties. She, at the other edge, must be in her seventies, chic, seated with her legs crossed. Behind their backs there is a display case with the colorful theatre ticket stubs from shows the Hoppers attended between 1925-1937. (Take heart, collectors: Edward and his wife, Josephine -“Jo”- Nivison Hopper, also a painter, kept all the ticket stubs, cut in two, and neatly wrote on them the title of the show.) On the wall in front of them, the “couple” I am watching (strangers to each other, united by fate just now, at the exhibition bench) are watching a slideshow of photos of the exquisite interiors of that era's Broadway theatres, as well as snapshots from the actual shows.

Next to me, the attractive blonde usher of New York Movie, in her costume and stylish 1939 shoes, is standing lost in thought in the liminal side-aisle space, suspended between the dark room (a corner of the screen is visible, as well as part of the spectators) and the red curtain that leads majestically to and from the magical world of the movies. (“Starring” in the role of the usher is, of course, Jo, Edward's permanent model.)

I head toward the museum large window wall, with the unbeatable view to the landscape that gave birth to the beloved paintings, grateful that I was granted such a city. It never feels too tight.

This essay first appeared in Greek in HellasJournal.com on June 19, 2023.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στο HellasJournal.com στις 19 Ιουνίου 2023.

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In the land of melancholy faces (March 2023)

The name “Gold Museum” is somewhat misleading: the renowned institution located in the heart of Colombia's capital is actually an anthropology museum. Upon entering the modernist 1960s building in the heart of Bogotá, the video explaining the technique of turning metal into a sheet so that it can be hammered, introduces you to the marvelous (and wonder-bearing) world of goldsmithry of pre-Columbian people, where metals, and gold in particular, symbolize the fertilizing power of the sun.

But the initiation takes place in a dark gallery where jewelry and minuscule figurines glimmer, while sounds of birds transport you to some South American forest. The shaman is a channel between heaven and earth, as well as between humans and animals. The golden exhibits, objects of worship or artifacts depicting shamans, lead us into discovering the societies in which those sacred creatures played a central part and show us the path to a more spiritual and holistic view of life (and death).

Proceeding to the “Cosmology and Symbolism” gallery, the metallic little frogs move the spectator in the magical way the honest depiction of animals and plants by humans who lived centuries ago, in another continent, can always prove moving.

The dazzling, smooth containers with the perfect curves evoke Brancusi, whereas masks suspended in black display cases are positioned like a sparkling Greek drama Chorus comprised of acephalous Agamemnons. Beyond the vizards on golden sheets, more eyes, holes in geometrical breastplates or tiny eyes in anthropo-zoomorphic chubby ceramic vases with small hands or wings are looking at us.

But where have I seen similar faces staring at me so intensely from another world? Oh, but of course, nearby, just the other day, at the Botero Museum!

The dancer with the little mustache, tightly embracing his partner (though both overweight, like the rest of the couples in the ballroom, they seem to levitate as they swirl, and so does his gaze which contemplates melancholically the beyond); the woman looking at us unabashedly, even though we intercepted her standing stark naked in front of her bathtub, yet “dressed” in all her jewelry (earrings, bracelet, an elegant small watch on her plump little hand); the other bather, this one not of the bath but of the sea, lying on her towel in the sand, naked as well, also wearing her jewelry; all of them have something captivating. You want to laugh, but you can't; something grips your heart, and you smile bittersweetly.

Though portly all of them, it is not so much the bodies that unify Fernando Botero's paintings' heroes, but the faces: round, rather expressionless, definitely unsmiling, with wandering gazes and, in my opinion, melancholy. After seeing dozens of paintings with variations of these characters, you are convinced they live in a land of their own, and we, the spectators, gain access to their realm through the Colombian artist's work. Like a shaman, Botero opens a gate to another dimension, where the rotund inhabitants eat ice cream and oranges, go pick-nicking, pose for family portraits while apples fall in the background, in a reality that looks a lot like ours, but is, at the same time, elusive, diluted.

But it is in sculpture that the apotheosis of curves awaits: black, greenish, reddish, deliciously glossy, the bronze works clearly reach the sphere of myth – the bird that is “harvesting” a juicy female figure brings to mind immediately Leda and the Swan, and, indeed, nearby, can be seen another sculpture with precisely that subject and title.

I feel ashamed that, until visiting his museum, I had lightly filed Botero as “that visual artist with the oversized little people.” Maybe it was because his figures are so famous and recognizable. Two of his enormous sculptures, Adam and Eve, stand in the ground-floor lobby of the busy Columbus Circle shopping galleries in New York City. Poor Adam has not simply been reduced to an easy meeting point (something like the historical “Bakakos” pharmacy, a popular meeting point in downtown Athens, back in the day); he has also been subjected to the humiliation of having had the most... protruding part of his body get worn off, since the crowds, tourists and New Yorkers alike, do not simply want to have their picture taken in front of the naked male progenitor, but also to touch his genitals.

Back in Bogotá, the mountain, steaming after the afternoon storm, is just a hair's breadth away: a part of the Andes is suspended above the mega city. If you cast your gaze up, you can picture the golden geometric creatures and the rounded people live on, somewhere beyond the mountain range.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on March 21, 2023.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 21 Μαρτίου 2023.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com.

Για να διαβάσετε το ελληνικό κείμενο, κάντε κλικ εδώ.

Chroma (December 2022)

Red – as far as your eyes can see. And orange, and yellow. I'm crossing Central Park at the best time of the year, chasing the ochre palette before it's gone with the wind, since at every gust hundreds of leaves swirl around. Anne Bogart's warning echoes inside my head: “You blink, and the opportunity is missed.” Run before it's too late! The autumn shades' choreography carries along not only eyes but also feet and ears – the brick-red crunchy layer subsides at every step, chratch chroutch, chratch chroutch.

I arrive at the Met Museum with no agenda – I let chance lead my way through the wondrous castle of the arts. I take the Greek and Roman Art Galleries, where I am “greeted” by a dazzling, dark-brown haired Kore, dressed in a bold orange-red chiton, while the first word I read is... Chroma (“χρώμα”, the Greek word for “color”, transcribed into the Latin alphabet)!

After detecting and identifying with cutting-edge technology (including ultraviolet and infrared photography) remnants of pigment on ancient sculptures, Dr. Vinzenz Brinkmann (Professor, Head of the Department of Antiquity at the Liebieghaus Sculpture Collection in Frankfurt) and Dr. Ulrike Koch-Brinkmann created copies in the colors they suppose the original works had been made. The polychrome archaic Kore is one of those reconstructions, as part of the exhibition “Chroma: Ancient Sculpture in Color”.

I knew in theory that the white marble treasures we “worship” and admire used to be -in their previous lives- multicolored. But it's a completely different story to make eye contact with the dark-eyed young Phrasikleia, who is shining in her glittering jewelry and in her chiton with the scattered gold and yellow meanders and rosettes. (I would call her chiton's color vermilion, according to what Mrs Epi Protonotariou had taught us in art class at the Mina Aidonopoulou Elementary School in Athens, back in the 1980s; but, as I now find out, an actually “Greeker” word is also available - “κιννάβαρι” [=cinnabar].)

I would never have imagined an Attic sphinx's adorned bust as a red and blue jacquard, and yet the mythical creature looking at us with the characteristic archaic smile on her face is actually dressed in these colors! Her golden wings make her even more majestic than she already is, while her beige torso fools you into thinking you could caress the feline.

Picasso's saying that, when Matisse dies, then Chagall will be the only painter left who truly understands what color is, comes to my mind. Realizing that all three of them are somewhere nearby, I manage to detach myself from the red and black-figured vases, and I climb the stairs towards Modern Art.

Of course I do not remain faithful to my destination, since, on the way to the three modernist artists, I get carried away by Frederic Leighton. The suntanned rosy model/muse sleeping at high noon in “Blazing June” (1895) looks like a descendant of the brunette beauty of the ground floor. Her titian mane is entwined around her archaic-looking peach-colored garment with the delicious ruffles, while the sun is mirrored on the sea in the background.

In the vicinity, I am engulfed by an interior shot: as if on a traveling sequence, the female figures of the scene, with their garnet dresses and light auburn hair, seem to float in an earth-tone symphony, with burgundy and yellow flowers overflowing from vases and floral wallpapers, and springing out through brownish furniture, so that you can't tell where the house ends and where the garden begins – a feast arranged around the central object (and title) of Edouard Vuillard's composition titled “The Album” (also 1895).

On the following day it rained so much and the wind blew so hard that all the leaves finally turned into a deep red, like dried blood, to step on.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on December 21, 2022.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 21 Δεκεμβρίου 2022.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com.

Για να διαβάσετε το ελληνικό κείμενο, κάντε κλικ εδώ.

Himalayan art and Modernism (November 2022)

Doubts or disease, desire and attachment, anger, greed, wrong views, ignorance, jealousy and envy, pride: here are the eight fears Tara can help you overcome. I'm standing in front of the 19th-century Tibetan painting, studying the details: the Buddhist deity is seated in the pose of “royal ease”, with her right palm extended above the knee in a gesture signifying supreme generosity, while in her left hand, placed at the heart, she's holding a pink lotus blossom. Her blue, green, orange and red flowing garments intertwine with blossoms and decorative motifs on the impressive lotus throne, while an orange and a red disc (nimbus and aureola, respectively) are encircling her.

The fears Tara can protect you against are depicted in specific forms (e.g. envy as snakes, anger as fire, and attachment as drowning), in scenes developed circularly around the powerful deity with the serene, trusting face. As I let myself identify with each and every one of the fears -the “external and internal threats that can cause physical and mental illness and prevent our spiritual progress”-, I simultaneously glance right and left at the other visitors: they seem to me equally absorbed by the artworks of the exhibition titled “Healing Practices”. I wonder if they, too, face similar fears. The reassurance (and relief) that “you're not alone” is activated, and you start viewing with new eyes your fellow travelers, not only on this journey to this specific museum, but also on the street, the subway, the whole city...

Perhaps thanks to the unexpected context (you're not lying on the shrink's couch) or the colorful, “exotic” medium (a Tibetan thangka, painting on cloth) or the space (a museum, i.e. a place where you go precisely to see and explore something outside yourself), well, perhaps thanks to the format of the journey, you are pleasantly surprised, and you dare face your fears in the eye.

The Rubin, the only NYC museum devoted entirely to Himalayan art, covers a broad geographical (India, Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia), religious (Hinduism, Buddhism) and artistic-medium range (from embroidered silk rolls and sculptures to a buddhist shrine installation, with all its accompanying devotional objects, sounds, lighting and scent).

I first visited the museum in 2008, when I was directing a new play on Alexander Scriabin, written by Anna Forsythe. The ultimate vision of the avant-garde composer was a... multimedia work, intended to be performed in the Himalayas! (Yes, the Russian synesthete had already envisioned in the early 1900s a symphonic music concert not simply combined with color projections but also as a site-specific piece, since he believed that this holistic art event should exclusively take place in the “Roof of the World”.)

Wisely designed to encourage those ignorant in mantras, Tantras and stupas, the Rubin invites you like a big board game to “unlock” the primer of the geography, the cultures and the artistic outlets it encompasses. The exhibition “Gateway to Himalayan Art” is key. Thanks to the spiral unfolding of the building, you are able to go up and down via the central staircase from Himalayan 101 -where beginners are introduced to symbols, codes and, most importantly, heroes (Buddhas, Bodhisattvas, deities, human beings)- to select historical masterworks and contemporary projects alike, all inspired by the Himalayan sphere.

Descending through the spire to the ground level, I exit the capsule of the dizzying feast of colors and shapes, and of the videos of mandalas in three-dimensional animations. As soon as I set foot on the street, I am engulfed by the humidity of the metropolis, and its inevitable stink. I resort to Tara and try to suppress my rage against those who urinate on the sidewalks (and are therefore accountable for the foul smell), and to keep steady course towards ataraxia -and towards the magic of nocturnal Manhattan.

And then, images from last week's museum visit start to emerge in waves. Just seven days ago, I had been captivated at the Whitney (a few blocks down) by the utter beauty and loneliness of a snowy mountain landscape by Rockwell Kent, and by the unhoped for apotheosis of a New Jersey valley thanks to Oscar Bluemner's stunning colors and geometric viewpoint, as part of the exhibition titled “At the Dawn of a New Age: Early Twentieth-Century American Modernism”.

Are these two worlds in conversation? I wonder whether the, abounding in ceremonial bells and intricate motifs, Himalayan art (and worldview) comes to complement the bare doric landscapes of the Americans; whether Nepal and Mongolia come to unveil Vermont's and Alaska's snowy slopes, and to expose the hidden demons – mind's and soul's torments that the modernists strove to cleanse with their bold, rough strokes.

The answer is probably yes – the two worlds are in conversation, based on Kent's statement that he wanted to “paint the rhythm of eternity”, and on the fact that he titled “Nirvana” one of his paintings.

I hope to continue to seek composition. With Tara's help.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print) on November 8, 2022.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη έκδοση) στις 8 Νοεμβρίου 2022.

Rehearsing in Times Square (September 2022)

Legions of donuts swirl in winding screen crawls, anthropomorphic candy mascots jump up and down on gigantic digital billboards, smoke from vendor grilled sausages impairs even more the already blurred from the unbearable steamy heat vision, and, as I'm praying not to faint while waiting for the green light at the final crossing that will lead me to 48th Street and Broadway, I ask myself for the nth time why on earth mid-August finds me in the middle of Times Square and not on my Cycladic island. The answer is not simply “because my collaborators and I have rehearsal”; it's “because my collaborators and I have not had a rehearsal in New York since 2019!”.

In principle, New Yorkers go to great lengths to avoid the chaotic emblem of superficial consumerism, yielding the square condescendingly to the hordes of tourists. However, most studios for theatre, dance or any other type of rehearsal are located in exactly that area, making it impossible for anyone who has some sort of rehearsal to avoid the intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue, and the human swarms that stroll around, hang out, eat and shop, while the continuously multiplying advertising billboards spurt like waterfalls from the surrounding “mountain chains”, bathing pedestrians in colored lights day and night.

I artfully maneuver, avoiding Spiderman, Mickey & Minnie, and several other cartoon characters that want you to have your picture taken with them and whom I don't even recognize (clearly, I'm not in the target group), yet I almost get emotional when I bump into the Naked Cowboy. The muscular blond-maned troubadour and guitar player, dressed rain or shine only in his cowboy hat, boots and white briefs, seems unchanged to me since I first saw him in 2005 (so much so that I wonder if it's the same guy or a successor, like Broadway actors succeed each other in the same character). The only difference is that now another attraction has been added nearby: the Naked Cowgirl.

Upon entering the cool, pristine, minimalist studio, you feel as if transported onto a floating isle, and time seems to come to a halt. Looking out from the big 12th floor windows -and from the safety, the quiet and the distance from the earthly that the rehearsal space offers-, you see the human river down below with new eyes. “Imagine that a string on the top of your head is pulling you upwards...”, calls a familiar acting exercise. In this landscape, where the soaring glass and metal “trunks” disappear higher and higher in the heavens (Manhattan architecture trends have gone wild, with newly built super-skyscrapers rising at, or exceeding, the inconceivable heights of 1,200 feet, and comprising 70, 80, or even more than 90 floors), any height-related image acquires a different dimension.

THE END OF NATURE

The subject of our play is the end of nature, and associations flow in the same way the view extends from one glass surface to the other, and in the same way skyscrapers are reflected on each other's windows. The end of nature is visible and obvious, you would think; and yet, nature (or at least a version of it) seems to be going strong, even here, in the “glass forest”, since several kinds of birds fly in front of us, while the ubiquitous pigeons have, of course, nested in the most unimaginable architectural niches. And some rooftops are green – real trees pop out between water tanks and slices of concrete.

One afternoon after rehearsal I decide to proceed deeper toward the... “reactor”'s heart – to walk in the center of the square. Amidst the usual pandemonium, I discern -to my great surprise- an art installation that looks like a burned forest. As I approach, I realize that these are actually inverted tree trunks - the exposed upside-down roots look like branches. In “Roots” artist Charles Gaines showcases the impressive root system of the American Sweetgum, a native east coast tree (which, perhaps, would have once upon a time dominated Times Square...). Who knew: all these days, high up there in the glass forest, in the building right across, we had been in direct contact with this kindred spirit, down here on earth.

I had said “never again summer in New York”. Never say “never again”.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on September 17, 2022.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 17 Σεπτεμβρίου 2022.

Michelangelo's “David” as a hero in a new musical (July 2022)

Thanks to a stroke of luck, I have found myself again in Florence exactly three years after my first visit. Upon exiting on Via Santa Reparata, the huge, heavy door of the 16th century palazzo closes with a thump behind me, like a sound cue that prompts me to pick up the exploration from where I left off back in June 2019. The familiar San Lorenzo dome at the end of the street offers instant orientation, whereas from the very first step my feet remember the unbelievably bumpy and slippery cobblestone. Barely have I walked half a block, when the realization is taking shape: this trip may have in store its own discoveries and thrills, but it will be a continuous comparison to “last time”...

Joyful as a small child I reunite with a decorative detail which, when I had first discovered, I wanted to stop all passers-by and share it with them: I couldn't understand why they were not raving as much as I was at the view of the cast iron turtles that stand on the base of Palazzo Fenzi's balconies on Via San Gallo (the palazzo now houses University of Florence departments). Placed at pedestrian eye level, the turtles and I would come face-to-face several times a day, for three weeks. (Later I started locating turtles at other spots as well -like on the bases of the Piazza Santa Maria Novella obelisks-, until I finally found out that they are actually a Medici symbol.) Reuniting with such a tiny but tangible detail makes a difference -it stimulates memory and grabs you by the throat!

But I also realize something else: I feel as if I'm accompanied by the gaze (or the spirit) of a Law School student from 1890 Saint Petersburg. Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929), legendary founder of Ballets Russes and modernism archpriest (he collaborated with and championed figures ranging from Stravinsky and Nijinsky to Chanel and Cocteau), was initiated early -and irreparably- to the Cult of Beauty. A pivotal spot in his initiation was his Grand Tour -the de rigueur trip for every young Russian (or European for that matter) aristocrat to the ancient monuments of the Mediterranean, to Renaissance Italy and also to the major European cities.

In the new musical MANIFESTO: The Diaghilev Project (which, incidentally, I directed at the Robert Moss Theatre in New York in 2018), the Grand Tour sequence was central, culminating in the meeting of awkward 18-year old Sergei with Michelangelo's "David", symbol of the Renaissance, and of Florence. Thanks to the ingenious writing of Nathan Wright, the exhilarating music of electro-pop composer and classical pianist Dustin Gledhill, and the sensual choreography of Brad Landers, we breathlessly watch Diaghilev's (Marc Sinoway) revelatory contact with Renaissance -literally, since the ideal sculpture is embodied on stage by Deon Releford-Lee.

"MANIFESTO" attempts to answer the question "How do you live your life according to your ideals?". Diaghilev fought hard to remain faithful to his doctrine -a lover of Beauty till the end. This is actually the narrative vehicle of the play itself, since the visionary impresario's life unfolds through the voices and the bodies of his eight lovers.

Impossible by now for me to separate “David” (therefore Florence) from "MANIFESTO", and, as I'm wondering "are we what we see or do we see what we are?", I arrive at the Palazzo Strozzi. I enter the shady, atmospheric ground floor and I look up at the immensely tall floors of the bankers' dynasty former palace. A barely heard other-worldly music draws me toward the center: in the atrium an AI (Artificial Intelligence) visual art installation turns out the be the closest I have ever come to a hallucinatory artistic experience. On a 27-by-18-feet LED wall, emerging colors -something between lava and powder- explode and melt into hypnotic combinations, like tongues that devour you and uplift you. The sense of time is shuttered in the bursting powders, and I turn into a pillar of salt. No surprise when we find out that Turkish media artist Refik Anadol's work is titled “Machine Hallucinations – Renaissance Dreams”. Maybe the 1890 young pioneer who was aspiring to become a musician is floating somewhere in the air, attracted by the feast of color.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on July 22, 2022.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 22 Ιουλίου 2022.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com.

Για να διαβάσετε το ελληνικό κείμενο, κάντε κλικ εδώ.

On Diego’s trail (February 2022)

The Palacio de Bellas Artes (Fine Arts Palace) seems unreal to the first-time Mexico City visitor. Even if you didn't know what the splendid, white marble building is, chances are “palace” would be the first word to come to mind, as you marvel at columns, curves, carved snakes framing arches, floral motifs meandering on metallic gates, with the whole twined in an organic Neoclassical and Art Nouveau ensemble, culminating in a sparkling yellow-orange dome that glows in the January afternoon light. Ethereal sculptural female figures are swaying by the entrance, inviting you in.

Writing a year ago about Diego Rivera's mural “Man at the Crossroads” (1932), which I had seen in a temporary exhibition at New York's Whitney Museum, little did I know that, exactly one year later, I would find myself again face to face with Lenin and the rest of the figures depicted in the celebrated composition, this time at its headquarters. (Originally destined to grace the newly erected Rockefeller Center, the work was rejected by the American organization because of the addition of the Russian Revolution leader's portrait; however, it did find housing in the architectural jewel of Mexico's capital.)

Surprises keep piling up, since, upon entering, I find myself immersed in the most luxurious Art Deco interior I have seen in my life! Floors, staircases and walls are all made of glossy black, pink and beige marble. Exquisite geometric fixtures rise vertically like columns or sculptures, while shiny metallic banisters, railings and balconies lead to the three floors comprising murals by the “tres grandes” (José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros), but also other works as well. The esthetic surprise between exterior and interior is explained by the two construction phases (1904 and 1932) of the building. (Ironically, the Art Deco splendor brings to mind Radio City Music Hall, which is part of the aforementioned Rockefeller Center...)

So, here I am, meeting again with “Man at the Crossroads” (who, to be precise, has been renamed “Man, Controller of the Universe”), and I discover new details, like the fascinating depiction of the natural world. The plants' roots on the base of the human crowd trigger obvious yet vital questions around the crisis facing humanity today -a crisis brought about precisely by man as “controller of the universe”...

On the opposite side of the floor the spectator is drawn in by Orozco's “Catharsis or humanity's eternal struggle for a better world” (1934).

The next day we set out to explore the Financial District, but on our way there, we bump into the Museo Mural Diego Rivera. Although the museum is closing in ten minutes, the super-polite employees welcome us warmly and, after the by now standardized trio of temperature-taking, disinfecting of hands and shoes, and spraying of clothes, they leave us alone with the “Dream of a Sunday afternoon at Alameda Central Park” (1947). (We actually have just crossed Mexico City's central park, Alameda, which also happens to be the oldest park in America.)

In the 50-foot-wide work Rivera unfolds a panorama of moments and persons from his country's turbulent history but also from his own life. The clock is ticking, both for the museum's closing time as well as in the sequence of scenes and of faces, making the experience even more effervescent as we're rushing to take in the feast of colors and images. Suddenly, Frida Kahlo’s piercing gaze catches my eye! The painter has captured his legendary colleague and companion in his mural embracing tenderly (maternally, perhaps) his nine-year-old self. Beyond the dissolution of “realistic” ages, the dreamy landscape provides freedom for amusing scale reversals (Kahlo's wedding painting “Frida and Diego” comes to mind, where the muse-wife appears microscopic next to a giant Rivera). In her other hand, Frida is holding the Yin-Yang symbol in front of her heart, while the chubby little boy is giving his own hand to another iconic figure, the Calavera Catrina, from José Guadalupe Posada's drawing for the Day of the Dead.

Impossible to absorb every detail, to observe every facet of the mural, in the same way it is impossible to relax in this city of esthetic wonders, where architecture blows your mind so that you don't know where to turn your head to (there is no color, shape or style you do not encounter!). You simply surrender to the power of composition.

Our third encounter with Rivera (at the SHCP Art Museum) brings about a sense of intimacy, thanks to both the medium as well as the topic: the painting is titled “The artist's studio or Lucila y los judas” (1954). It's like transitioning from the monumental works into the painter's private space. Though intimate, the studio is almost as “crowded” as the murals, a scent of surrealism permeating the whole: strange, at times monstrous, constructed creatures, grotesque animals and birds, are suspended around an elegant woman posing sensually. We learn that she is the actress Lucila Balzaretti. As for the cardboard constructions (“judas”), they are typical of Mexico's popular art and form part of a Frida-Diego beloved collection. The couple thought of “judas” as the “highest expression of the spirit of Mexican civilization.”

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on February 22, 2022.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 22 Φεβρουαρίου 2022.

From the Baroque crèche to the Chinese serenity (January 2022)

The 13-foot tall Bodhisattva, lavished with layers of wondrous jewelry, is staring at me in an enigmatic way. I have found myself in the shadow of the larger-than-life 6th-century Buddhist sculpture because a little earlier I felt another shadow -that of the Omicron variant- approach in a menacing way, giving rise to familiar uncertainties about what we would be able to do in the (perhaps not so distant?) future. “Christmas is no Christmas without Met!”, I thought, and, revitalized by the booster shot, I ran outside, rushing to the Metropolitan Museum of Art before restrictions are imposed.

The holiday “pilgrimage” involves the Christmas tree and the Baroque Neapolitan crèche displayed every year in the atmospheric Medieval Sculpture Hall (with Christ Pantocrator -copy of the Hagia Sophia mosaic- “supervising” the scene from above). Little angels, with their faces, wings and colorful silk robes rendered in exquisite detail, hang from the tree's branches, whereas on its base, besides the classic Nativity figures, are depicted numerous scenes from urban and rural 18th-century Naples.

Last year I missed the installation because, although I did go to the museum, I did not see it at its usual spot. I assumed that they had wisely decided not to set up the popular attraction, since traditionally all visitors flock to gaze at the miniatures and to have their picture taken in front of the Christmas staple. I subsequently found out that it had actually been set up, but at another, more spacious spot. This year I read that the tree has returned to its place. Yet I decided to extend the suspense and not go directly to my “rendezvous” but first wander a little. Guardian and harbinger of the Asian Wing, the humongous Bodhisattva (enlightened being who postpones his or her own entering into nirvana in order to show the awakening way to others) exercises a mysterious power over me -I'm all alone with him in the vast room!- and pushes me to proceed deeper into the East.

As if hypnotized, I float through halls with carpets of all possible colors and sizes, hung on walls or spread on floors, while greenish porcelain vases gleam in the semidarkness. Passing under a vault guarded by two lions on either side, the Asian river carries me to an atrium with a fountain, rocks, greenery and a pagoda-shaped pavilion. The gurgling water and the bamboo are real, therefore the equally real cool of the place sends me to find refuge in the rooms spreading in the perimeter of the Ming-style courtyard. Here the warmth of wood prevails, showcasing the artistry of traditional Chinese architecture, decorative arts and woodcraft, ranging from sturdy closets to elaborate ceilings.

Moving on, I enter a dreamy snowy landscape: a Chinese painted handscroll unfolds -literally, since the work is destined to be unwrapped, unrolled slowly and “read” from right to left- a riverbank. The surrounding slopes and rocks are covered with snow, while the tree branches are bare. With ink and pigment applied onto the silk sheet, the 12th-century master captivates the spectator with the idyllic winter image, while simultaneously directing our gaze to the human figures and structures “hiding” in the heart of nature. From the embrace of the boundless scenery, the painter focuses on a small bridge leading to a plain residence (or, according to another interpretation, a hostel) with a straw roof. Again close up on the interior: an officer is enjoying his meal with his wife and son. Nearby, a gentleman on a boat is headed toward another, equally appealingly isolated, residence or shelter.

The work is part of the exhibition titled “Companions in Solitude: Reclusion and Communion in Chinese Art”, investigating the twofold theme of withdrawing from, as well as of blossoming within societal life. Stepping away from organized society is considered the ideal condition for one’s intellectual and mental cultivation, as well as for overcoming the weariness caused from this world’s pains. The question “alone or together” has puzzled Chinese culture for thousands of years, in conjunction with each era’s political circumstances. For example, we learn that retreating into nature evolved into a central theme for Tang dynasty poets and artists, as the status quo was collapsing. Faced with the human structures’ failure, the intellectuals turn to the natural world.

The medium of the (unfolded) handscroll bestows an exquisitely narrative dimension on the whole experience since, in order to follow scenes and details, you have to take small lateral steps, as in the case of a 17th-century work where women and children play music and games in the marvelous garden of an aristocratic house. Leaping over time, we dive into solitude: in a 1921 fan painting the artist depicts a woman contemplating, alone, in a garden.

In a hanging scroll, underneath towering trees a scholar-gentleman turns to his assistant who is following him carrying wine. We learn that the bright green and blue colors dominating the landscape symbolize an elusive space and time, and that the image captures the quintessence of reclusion, with man turning his back on society in favor of contact with nature.

When the guards (in the flesh, not Buddhist statues) show me the exit, I realize I, once again, failed to reunite with my beloved Christmas tree! Still, I encountered the minds of the Chinese masters through their landscapes. I hope I'll catch the crèche next time.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on January 18, 2022.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 18 Ιανουαρίου 2022.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com.

Για να διαβάσετε το ελληνικό κείμενο, κάντε κλικ εδώ.

At Noguchi, the museum of fluid matter (November 2021)

Upon entering the Noguchi space, you soon realize that the museum has been conceived as a rhythmical, flowing “house” for the works to exist. Gliding through the barely divided galleries, you have the impression that you are in the sculptures’ private space, where they live and breathe. Nevertheless, you feel absolutely welcome –it’s as if the geometrical “creatures” have put on their Sunday best, polished the floors and turned on the most exquisite lighting in order to warmly welcome the visitor. Even though you have found yourself at their home, you too belong there!

 The “unseen” host is Japanese-American Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988), one of the preeminent 20th century sculptors, whose activity spans a broad range of techniques and styles, extending, beyond sculpture, to architecture and design. The conversion of the former industrial Queens space into a museum-garden is his own creation. The Noguchi Museum, where everything seems so simple and natural, so harmonic, was inaugurated in 1985. And, of course, there’s nothing harder to achieve than “simple and natural”: it took the prolific internationalist artist eleven years to open his “house” to the public.

 A strong current leads you lightly but firmly between the works, from one level to the other, as if invisible threads are keeping your body in motion, your senses alert and your soul uplifted. Don’t be fooled, though, into thinking that the world here is always soft. The same civilization that gave birth to ikebana and bonsai -the fragile arts exalting nature’s poetry and miniature art-, also gave birth to hara-kiri, where, with equal dexterity, you have to dryly thrust the dagger deep into your entrails.

 As soon as you enter the museum, you find yourself in a high-ceilinged semi-enclosed cement ground-floor, reminiscent of something between a Greek apartment building piloti and a construction site. Rocky gray-brown volumes of indefinable shapes, bearing the signs of insertion (cuts, holes, curves, rills, “intrusions” of metal) stand scattered here and there, occasionally paired with arched luminous objects, while from the openings in the upper parts of the walls a slice of sky is visible. Outside, the birds are fluttering and tweeting so loud that I can’t tell if they are real or a sound installation. The smell from the concrete blocks and the cool of the rocks stimulate the senses and memory, creating a cleansing vestibule for the visitor. Particularly for those of us hailing from the Cyclades, the setting transfers you somewhere between a quarry and an ancient temple.

 Catharsis and Aegean associations had actually started a little earlier for me, since I chose to travel from Manhattan to Queens by ferry. The trip may barely last ten minutes, yet the waves and the sea breeze (yes, East River is salty!) suffice to give your outing the taste of a real excursion -and to prepare you for ecstasy.

 We learn that the light tubes accompanying the basaltic works in the “piloti” rooms, as well as several other objects strewn throughout the museum, are interventions by Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis of design studio Objects of Common Interest, active between New York and Greece. It’s worth noting that Noguchi maintained close ties with Greek culture and Greek people all his life.

 In the following galleries, countless studies on material, shape, perspective, composition and juxtaposition unfold; and yet, in whichever work you devote your attention to, you encounter the power of geometry and of texture. And a strange wisdom. And often a sense of humor.

 Deliciously smooth surfaces that you can barely resist caressing stand out, like “Magic Ring” (1970), a sectioned curve made of Persian travertine with reddish and cream-colored veins, coiled on the floor. Nearby, “Sun at Midnight” (1973), a black granite standing circle hypnotizes the visitor. The six-feet tall framework which I would describe as a “snaky window”, is actually titled “The Void” (1970), and is made of Portuguese Rose Aurora marble (the names of the materials are a parallel poem).

 Rarely have I felt better “installed” than on the wooden bench of the garden, where I arrived without realizing how. At the center sits a majestic, noble tree, still holding some of its leaves (it’s November). The gravel under my feet, mixed with the fallen leaves, connects me not only to the overgrown tree roots but also to the stone “creatures” all around me.

 A complex composed of four gray round-shaped rocks embracing each other emits a sense of security and reminds me again of the fatherland. (Here, though, the rocks are smaller than those in the world-renowned “moon landscape” of the Volax village in Tinos.) The eternal question arises: “Is it the Cycladic rocks that look like sculptures or is it the sculptures that imitate the Cycladic rocks?”

 Headed toward the exit, I return to the concrete vestibule. Magic sunset hour is here, and the birds’ flutter is louder than ever. The light has changed (and perhaps so have I). Now it clearly seems as if the basaltic volumes have eyes looking at you! Like Michelangelo’s “Slaves”, the volumes seem ready to emerge from the stone, to take their full shape. Though stelae, they contain movement--like the entirety of this house of liquid limits.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on November 30, 2021.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 30 Νοεμβρίου 2021.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com.

Για να διαβάσετε το ελληνικό κείμενο, κάντε κλικ εδώ.

From the enchanted village to the haunted city (October 2021)

Upon arriving at Cold Spring on a balmy October day, I couldn’t wait to explore the renowned village that attracts many New Yorkers, both as a quick get-away destination, as well as a place of permanent residence. At a little over an hour on Metro-North from Manhattan, Cold Spring is situated in Hudson River Valley, which spreads north of New York City and comprises numerous small towns, parks, universities, monuments and remnants of the early industrial US history, all vitally intertwined with the water artery that connects the metropolis to the rest of the state. The railroad line that runs just parallel to the river offers a breathtaking trip through stunning natural landscapes, and through North American history.

(Besides, Cold Spring itself is literally historic: its foundry did not only fuel the country with steam engines and water system pipes but also played a crucial role in the outcome of the Civil War thanks to the cannons it produced.)

I had heard that Cold Spring’s galleries and restaurants were worth visiting, but I couldn’t have imagined the unique way in which the “village” combines the suburban chic with the most fairy-tale-like country quaintness. The dreamy houses with the flawless little gardens transport you somewhere between the Playmobil Far West Town and the “Beautiful Sunday” (Japanese) stationery. Sure, the Main Street cafés are trendy and sell design objects while serving exclusive espressos, but once you turn around the corner, you are awaited by dollhouse-like yards, and you think Grandma Duck will pop out of the window! On top of that, there’s an additional, seasonal layer of quaintness: the Halloween spirit, which I had not planned to seek, and which yet seized me in broad daylight.

In a big part of the Western world, the night of October 31st is dedicated to commemorating all saints as well as all the departed. Though originally Christian, the feast day has incorporated pagan roots and customs of diverse origins, with symbols like skulls, witches and spider webs.

In Greece, the holiday used to be considered “foreign” –prior to globalization, that is, and prior to the immense success of the “Little Kook” café-bar, which sports extravagant Halloween decorations spanning several Athens buildings and streets. Now you can celebrate away Halloween downtown as early as September! My own early associations of the holiday with splatter 1980s blockbusters were appalling. There was, however, a distant but fond memory burning magically: at a central Greece seaside village, together with the kids next door (also Athenian vacationers like ourselves), we came up with the idea to celebrate that “eerie pumpkin Carnival” in the middle of Greek summer. The carving of the pumpkin -culminating in the placement of the lit candle inside!-, had left me enchanted.

Here in Cold Spring, like Alice in Halloween-land, I discover black cats drawn on walls and I bump into skeletons popping up from (fake) graves. But the glossy pumpkins rule, bestowing even more color on the already colorful antique shops and vintage boutiques, as well as on the elegant mansions bordering the forest. Mixed with the red-and-yellow leaves that fall gently but steadily all day long, the landscape comes together into a dazzling whole, bringing forth an essential Halloween aspect: the celebration of harvest and of autumn.

Back to New York, I decide to embark on a post-midnight quest in my neighborhood, Harlem, in order to capture the urban Halloween. The trend here is high-tech spooky lighting designs installed in the (already spectacular) Hamilton Heights townhouses, yet the gigantic spiders climbing the facades steal the picture.

At one building entrance, you are cheerfully greeted by a duo of skeletons, while the (apparently very arts-and-crafts) residents have set up a whole graveyard construction. As I’m taking a picture of the sign that reads “LAST STOP CEMETERY”, I catch from the corner of my eye a man standing on the opposite sidewalk. Not a soul is around, and cars rarely pass from this remote street. I slowly put the phone in my pocket, and start heading to the nearest central street. “Hey!”, I hear the man shout. Trying to exhibit calm, I turn around and pretend to be indifferently looking toward his side. “Come here!”, he yells, waving at me. Within a split second, I make the decision to play dumb: I smile at him, say “Hi!” and keep going the other way. Now I have to walk as fast as I can, but not to run, so that I don’t let my fear show. Breathing deeply, I walk on the actual road, since the sidewalk in this spot is pitch-black. I do not have the courage to turn around to see if the guy has followed me. After a few blocks that seem to me as endless as Hudson River, I reach the noisiest and busiest part of Harlem. The normally repulsive crowdedness and deafening music now seem to me like an oasis. I think in the future I will only take pictures during the day –and only photograph the innocent (?) pumpkins…

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (online) on October 31, 2021.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com and by neakriti.gr.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 31 Οκτωβρίου 2021.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com και από το neakriti.gr.

Return to New York (October 2021)

After a few months’ absence (or maybe infidelity?), I return to the metropolis. And I’m nervous. My anxieties range from the realm of the existential/metaphysical (“Will I remember how I behave here? Will I feel uplifted again? Will I feel that I belong?”) to that of the utterly mundane/practical (“Is my husband really telling me the truth when he says that our apartment has not been affected by the trio of invaders that no exterminator or pandemic can deter?”). My Bermuda Triangle is not located in air routes but in kitchens, bathrooms and mattresses. I’m talking about the triple threat roaches-mice-bedbugs, that strikes even the best of families.

Arrival

But the Body remembers –before the Mind even has the chance to think: as if on autopilot, I successfully pass the first circuit, since I manage to catch the last bus (it’s 11PM) from Newark to NYC. Jumping joyfully into the first cab (or Uber, okay) you see in front of you, may be a beloved filmic cliché, but it does not necessarily apply to struggling artists who know there’s an express bus that drops you directly at the heart of Manhattan at 1/5 of the price of a cab ride.

As soon as I set foot on Big Apple grounds, my New Yorker status is automatically activated, like a smartphone that just detected Wi-Fi. My visual arts wanderings commence literally upon arrival, since the very wall of Port Authority at 42nd Street & Eighth Ave (where I get off) is covered by an exhibition organized by Chashama, the arts organization that connects artists to perhaps the fiercest real estate market in the world. Since 1995 Chashama offers a solution to artists’ need of both studio and presentation space, by providing them access to vacant commercial and office spaces. (Incidentally, I get connected to my past, since it was with Chashama that I completed both of my grad school internships.) In front of me now, in two rows of round “frames” reminiscent of both ship portholes as well as washing machines, Basia Goszczynska has placed photos of marine debris collected off of NYC shores, pointing towards the need for clean seas.

Day 1

First morning, and the first thing I see looking out the window are some glossy yellow/green fruits, some fallen on the ground, others still on the branches. It’s our fifth autumn in this prewar Harlem building, and yet never before had I noticed the apple tree in the community garden across the street. The unexpected encounters with nature continue, since during my walk I “converse” with two cats in Morningside Park. The cat colony volunteer pops up smiling, and asks if the semi-feral felines had come to say hello –and I’m pleasantly surprised by her effortlessly natural and friendly tone (I had forgotten this blessed feature of every day life). Peeking in at a nearby vegetable garden, also run by volunteers, I in vain try to locate the roaming chickens. Another volunteer’s friendly voice says I can come in if I want to. I politely decline, and keep going.

The murderer returns to the crime scene, so my steps lead me to my alma mater campus, where I spent three years studying at the MFA Theatre Directing program. The light-blue sky with its fast traveling clouds shines above Columbia University’s Low Library, while the splendidly clear light bestows on the surrounding neoclassical buildings the maximum grandeur. Surprised to see that my favorite bench is not taken, I rush to install myself. (After graduating, I heard that it’s nicknamed “Obama’s bench”, since it was the President’s favorite too, when he was an undergrad here.) Of course the thing to watch is the flocks of students, given that the current semester is the first on-site since the fateful 2020 spring.

It is well known that on the isle of Manhattan the only way to go up is… vertically, but nowhere do you realize this more fully than when you see a giant cast its shadow on the Gothic Revival tower that once upon a time used to house your humble dorm room, and which now looks like a dwarf next to the under construction 42-story high-rise. The brand new luxury mammoth devoured half of the unique quad of Union Theological Seminary in order to secure the institution’s survival. Even prime affiliates of the Ivy League university are forced to sell their air rights for development, in order to stay alive.

Day 2

The magnificent weather persists, so there is no reason why not to walk from West 137th Street down to West 29th in order to catch yet another Chashama exhibition. I walk along the Central Park wall, so that I can observe both the Beaux-Arts entrances and the Art Deco motifs of Central Park West’s buildings, as well as the squirrels chasing each other up the oak trees. I only briefly enter the park, just to verify that it has its usual traffic of runners, bikers and walkers, but mainly to enjoy the ever-changing Midtown skyline, with the “slice-skyscraper” at 111 West 57th Street (the world’s most slender building, with a height-width ratio of 24 to 1!) approaching completion, thus making the nearby “caterpillar-like” One57 look… short, in spite of its 75 (!) stories. Times Square does not display its pre-COVID era level of madness, but it does come close to it. Given the travel restrictions and, therefore, the limited number of foreign visitors, you can check out the American tourists.

After two hours of walking, I finally get to the group exhibition “Do write [right] to me”. Debora Rayel Eva’s newspaper-made planes and boats steal the show, transforming the slop sink and staircase corner into some sort of gate or starting point. Appropriately, the Brazilian artist has titled her work “Where do we go from here?”, and she encourages us to write her our answers on the post-it notes provided on her “fleet.”

In “Amazonia”, Fernanda Froes, also from Brazil, has filled her frame with images of an endangered butterfly species, demonstrating the gradually diminishing colors that display certain insects, as a consequence of climate crisis. A crack of hope opens up thanks to the information that, when the catastrophic conditions are lifted, the butterfly resumes its lost colors. Repair is (still) possible. And through that crack of hope, we may welcome the metamorphoses of the city, and of the season.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on October 16, 2021.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 16 Οκτωβρίου 2021.

Hide-and-seek in the spiral (May 2021)

Like snails after the rain, on what felt like you could safely call ‘first spring day’, New Yorkers stormed the ‘great outdoors’: on foot, by bike, by scooter, the human crowd swarmed parks and sidewalks with such a determined air that you wondered whether there was some sort of competition going on, and you had been left out! Pushed by my fellow citizens’ drive, I did not even realize how I walked the fifty blocks between Harlem and 89th Street. I bid farewell to the brightest blue sky that has ever existed and, as the Guggenheim Museum door shuts behind me, I let myself get swallowed by the ‘great white’.

The quiet of the six-story spiral is riveting. I start my climb up the helical ramps and it feels as if I’m sucked in by a living organism or some magnetic phenomenon. Suspended from the arched skylight, a gigantic white screen is hanging in the middle of the cone. Though unfinished (since it’s part of an in-progress upcoming exhibition), this rectangular ‘slice’ seems perfectly organic -I accept it as part of the belly of the beast in which I’m floating.

Due to an imposed trajectory in order to regulate visitors’ circulation, I, unfortunately, have to break my pilgrimage and not walk continuously all the way to the top: the meditative spiral ascent -which reminds me of the visit to the Buddhist Borobudur temple of Indonesia- has to be interrupted by taking stairs and even elevators. (And yet, I subsequently read that legendary Frank Lloyd Wright, Guggenheim’s architect, wanted visitors to take the elevator to the top, and then walk down the interior of the truncated cone.)

The first gallery I miraculously land in heightens the uplifting sensation generated by the coiling building. It’s unbelievable how psychotropic getting lost in a work composed solely of painted thin pinstripes can be. Gene Davis’s monumental canvas, with its pink, mauve, yellow and green vertical lines, has this ability. Next to it, Wojciech Fangor’s green circle with the light-blue halo looks like a color-radiating planet, while across, the yellow, orange and pink of Jules Olitski’s ‘field’ invite you to dive in it. Combined with the relatively small size of the white room, the pastel glow of the works makes you feel as if you’re inside a magical bright cocoon. Seeking an explanation why color and geometry can be so stimulating, we learn that the exhibition is titled The Fullness of Color: 1960s Painting, highlighting ’60s and ’70s artists who moved past the Abstract Expressionism of the previous decades and experimented extensively with acrylic color and its ability to create space and motion on the canvas.

Taking again stairs and elevators (and feeling as if I’m hiding from the spiral!), I reach another small gallery. At first glance, the twenty off-white sheets of paper hung in two rows on the wall look like a simple composition of pages. But upon approaching and taking a better look, you discover that each sheet is different and that it comprises numerous tiny holes that Zarina has painstakingly opened (in 1977) on the paper in multiple combinations with variously sized needles. Detail reveals the handmade aspect of the work and automatically brings you closer to the artist’s position -which is part of what the exhibition Marking Time: Process in Minimal Abstraction aims at.

Abstraction has elevated me, for sure, but as I begin my descent, I still have the feeling I’m craving something. Hermitage at Pontoise appears in front of my eyes to fill that gap. The 1867 Pissarro painting has remained almost as vivid in my memory as the last time I saw it a few years ago. I reunite with a piece of myself, gazing at those same ‘mundane’ details –the curtains of the village houses, the two women with the little girl taking a pause from their walk to chat, the winding path, the glorious grass. The work preserves the inexplicable power to transport the viewer –I think I hear the sounds of a summer afternoon.

I may have found it hard to part with the parks a few hours ago, but now I find myself in the most delightful ‘playground’: across from the French countryside, there’s a wall with all the Kandinsky you can ever desire! These 1920s works, with their whimsical, ‘childlike’, fantastical, at times space-like combinations of color and geometrical shape, are pure generators of joy. The later Accompanied Contrast (1935) makes you approach and wonder how planes and ‘figures’ appear to somehow project from the canvas. We learn that the slightly three-dimensional sensation is accomplished through the mixing of pigments with sand, which results in rich, textured surfaces. (God is in the details, and obviously the Russian who knew how to transition from Bauhaus to French surrealism was aware of that.) The label sheds light on the historical dimension: “Kandinsky did not allow the mood of desolation pervading war-torn Europe to enter the paintings and watercolors that he produced in France, where he lived from early 1934 until his death in 1944.”

‘The bell rings’ and time’s up. In a typical NYC weather reversal, the city I exit onto is in a different season than it was when I entered the Guggenheim: as the sun sets across Central Park, the wind is so chilly that it feels as if we’re back to winter. Oh, well: I have the memory of Pissarro’s summer day to keep me warm; and Kandinsky’s playground to keep me uplifted.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on May 20, 2021.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 20 Μαΐου 2021.

On the High Line: A futuristic traveling shot in the wild grass (May 2021)

Upon exiting the Whitney Museum on a weekday night, I could not believe my luck that the nearby High Line was open!  I was about to bypass it, since I had read that visitors to New York’s most original park (?) were admitted only with timed-entry, in accordance with COVID-19 capacity limitations.

Feeling as if I had just won an extra round in the endless amusement park that any expedition in this city of wonders may turn at any moment (right when you think the outing is over, here you go, they offer you a token to an extra ride!), I impatiently climb the stairs of the elevated former rail line that, since 2009, has been converted into a unique park / mixed-use space.

(I hesitate only momentarily, thinking that I would have to “sacrifice” my night stroll through the hip Meatpacking District, which combines industrial remnants with luxury fashion brands and trendy bars and restaurants. I’m curious –what’s open?)

Both the greenway and the surrounding streets feel deserted (it turns out I didn’t have to sacrifice anything, since from up here I have the best possible view to the neighborhood). The atmospheric lighting is strong enough so that you don’t trip over the rails that have been smartly left on the landscaped floor, while leaving room to darkness so that you can comfortably see the night city and its reflections. Flashes from Stalker race through my head, but I don’t remember it very well. (The Zone?...) The set here is futuristic but not outer space-like.

Still, why do I feel as if I’ve found myself in another dimension? But because I’m in a hanging garden! All sorts of wild grass, bushes and low trees spring between the main path and the bridge’s railings or cover green beds of land strewn here and there or romantically frame the -much sought-after in the sweet summer- wooden permanent chaises longues. The linear park occasionally widens on either side of the basic artery, making space for landings full of greenery, benches and art installations. The vegetation alternates with tunnels painted in mauve lighting, since today’s walkway cuts through former industrial buildings, exactly the way did the freight train until 1980 in order to directly load and unload cargo inside factories like Nabisco.

The (carefully designed) wild grass looks as if it’s taken over the construction and goes into contrast with the urban backdrop -the Empire State Building in the background and the sleek Armani offices pop up through wild flowers and grass tufts. The High Line is a “wild park.” The planting design was based precisely on what the visionaries who fought for the preservation of the slated for demolition abandoned… “zone” saw in front of their eyes: nature thriving in the out-of-use tracks.

(I wish it were possible in a parallel universe to also materialize another one of the totally 720 proposals submitted at the reuse competition: that of the repurposing of the weedy rail trail into a mile-long lap pool.)

Of course there’s ground for the filmic feel; but I’m not in the movie, I’m in the movie set. The tracks under my feet drive the traveling shot. On top of that, due to the pandemic, there’s special marking on the flooring indicating the imposed circulation: this is a two-way path. KEEP RIGHT AND KEEP MOVING. (The future is here.)

The fashionable eighteen-story Standard Hotel and the historic, also eighteen-story, London Terrace apartment complex grow on either side of the promenade, but at a certain distance. Other buildings, though, stand within arm’s reach! No matter how discreet you try to be, it’s impossible not to catch glimpse of the tenants as they do their evening workout or prepare dinner or wait for their load to be done at the building’s laundry room. It is not us who are voyeurists - it’s them who are exhibitionists, since they have their curtains drawn (in fact, some don’t even have curtains), and since apartments as well as lobby areas are as intricately lit as the plants on the High Line. These tenants are paying a fortune to live here, so we may assume that they want us to look at them… (I didn’t notice anybody looking out, except for a cat seated majestically by the window and gazing at the handful of passers-by.)

It isn’t hard to guess the macabre past of the now chic Meatpacking District (and it isn’t easy for a vegetarian to disregard it): the meat-processing plants and butcher shops, although in decline already since the 1960s, were definitively removed rather recently. (A New Yorker friend has narrated to me first hand how, until as late as in the 1990s, every day he got out of his -now worth millions- Greenwich Street apartment, he would encounter huge drums filled with skinned sheep's heads.)

But I didn’t know how blood-drenched High Line itself is. Originally positioned at the level of pedestrian and vehicle traffic, the freight railroad cut through Lower Manhattan since mid-19th century transporting food. By 1910 it had caused so many accidents (more than 540 people had lost their lives) that Tenth Avenue (along which the line ran) had been nicknamed Death Avenue! To reduce accidents, men on horses were recruited to ride ahead of the trains warning pedestrians with red flags. The “West Side Cowboys” were gradually withdrawn, when in 1934 the line was elevated.

I have a feeling Tarkovsky would utilize that…

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (online) on May 6, 2021.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com on July 24, 2021.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 6 Μαΐου 2021.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com στις 24 Ιουλίου 2021.

“Roosevelt”: Around the president’s hotel (March 2021)

Like Proust’s madeleine, February’s first snowflake always throws me back to a specific place and time: Midtown Manhattan -the heart of New York- in 2005. We had just crossed the Atlantic for the first time and, from the moment I set foot on Madison Avenue and East 45th Street (to check in at the Roosevelt Hotel) until the following morning, I thought I had found myself simultaneously in Gotham City (all you needed to do was to look up to the skyscrapers vanishing into the cloudy yet brightly lit night sky, to be convinced), in a Woody Allen movie (eating hyper-delicious dinner in the hotel room picked up from the nearby deli is a scene that must exist in a movie of his) and in a “Law & Order” episode (the two cops sitting next to us at Central Café holding their iconic white-and-blue “Greek” Anthora cups give me the impression that at any given moment they might turn to me and say: “You have the right to remain silent”). It did not snow on the first day, but one week later. Dazzling and festive, the snow started to fall on the eve of our return flight, after the end of the audition, and as our first (and, who knows, perhaps also the last) trip to New York was coming to an end. 

Dutifully, this year’s big snow arrived at dawn on February 1st. In a surge of enthusiasm to combine the personal with the collective, I grab the simplistic association that my anniversary with the city coincides approximately both with Presidents’ Day and with Saint Valentine’s, and, given the additional coincidence that my anniversary hotel is named after a president, I embark on a pilgrimage tour of my old neighborhood. (Anyone who wants to find signs will find them: in Athens, I’ve lived all my life across from the President Hotel.) I do recall that the Roosevelt was named after the president, but which of the two? Theodore, or his, junior by twenty-four years, distant cousin, Franklin? I bet that my sister –my fellow traveler and an incomparable adventurer (she’s the one who discovered the above mentioned nearby deli) - must remember the answer.

Taking off from Times Square, I head east, walking past piles of shoveled snow. I feel like I’ve never seen before the figure made of horizontal steel ‘slices’ standing in the pocket park on West 41st Street, just before Sixth Avenue. The sculpture (a cross between Don Quixote and the beloved monumental contemporary Greek sculpture “The Runner”) is either new or the layers of snow breathe fresh air into it. (It turns out it’s titled “Guardians: Superhero” –I wasn’t that far off-, and it’s been standing there since 2013.) With its chairs half-buried in the snow, Bryant Park looks like an open-air glyptotheque, while the surrounding view encapsulates NYC’s entire history of architecture. The American Radiator Building (23-stories tall, built in 1924, and considered by some to be the most beautiful early Art Deco skyscraper) stands out with its black brick and golden decorative details set against the vivid blue of the winter late afternoon. Further back, “painted” tonight a dreamy mauve, the Empire State Building’s top adds a romantically modern finish to the picture. 

I arrive at Madison Avenue. I had read that the hotel had been unable to survive the crisis and was forced to cease operations. Well, the Roosevelt is dark, indeed, and its majestic East 45th Street entrance with its golden revolving doors and marble staircase leading you spectacularly into the magnificent lobby, is shut off with construction panels.

Built in 1924 (same year as the Radiator), the -now literally- historic 19-story hotel’s exterior is classic and elegant, but not extravagant. But anyone who has ever found themselves just once in its interior will forever remember its old New York flavor. If you were strolling around during the holidays (in the good old days, prior to the coronavirus), you were welcome to have some rest in the hotel’s lounge, gazing at the Christmas tree in the center, at the exquisite clock hanging from the ceiling and at the chandelier, while all around you unfolded pillars, balconies and ceilings flooded in marble and lustrous golden touches. Goodbye, “Roosevelt.”

I keep heading east, circling Grand Central, which I do not yet enter, although I do pause to pay tribute to a beloved detail: the (metallic!) rats climbing above the Lexington Avenue entrance. Now one detail succeeds the other, as the limits of the pilgrimage begin to merge with subsequent layers of experiences, since fate would have it that, three years after that stay at the Roosevelt, I did my grad school internship at the ‘chashama’ arts organization, on East 42nd Street and Third Avenue, just a few blocks away… (From the 32nd floor office windows we could see the luminous “triangles” of the glittering Chrysler Building across the street!)

I pass Pfizer’s headquarters and, as I’m saying a prayer that they save us, I come across an unfamiliar oasis: I did not remember that the Ford Foundation possessed the most impressive garden I have ever seen in an indoor atrium. (The plaque informs us that it has been there since 1967.) I climb east, all the way up to the historic Tudor City complex -the first residential skyscrapers in the world. In the background, the UN. (Three things about Franklin Roosevelt that you remember from high-school history: the Great Depression, the New Deal, the Yalta Conference –i.e. where the UN’s creation was decided –here goes History!)

About-face, now heading west and towards the capstone of my promenading, which I had been strategically detouring from all this time: after taking a moment to admire the Art Deco façade of the News Building (also designed by Raymond Hood, the Radiator’s architect) and the gigantic globe in its lobby, I finally arrive at Grand Central.

The conscious and unconscious images drawn from the iconic central railroad station are numerous, but I am sure I will see Cary Grant rushing to buy a ticket (he is being chased from the UN, where I’m actually just coming from, and will continue to be chased all the way up to Mount Rushmore –here go the presidents, including Theodore!). High above, on the turquoise dome, the zodiac constellations are sparkling. Two sides of the imposing space are so artfully covered with scaffolding and with a thin fabric that my mind immediately races to a potential successor of Christo’s. The circle closes as the indefatigable visual artist’s “Gates” had just been installed in Central Park that February of 2005.

(For the record, the fabric covering Grand Central is not an art installation but actual restoration work.
And the Roosevelt was named after Theodore.)

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (online) on March 5, 2021.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com on May 5, 2021.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 5 Μαρτίου 2021.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com στις 5 Μαΐου 2021.

Introspection with a panoramic view (January 2021)

Wandering through the exhibition “Vida Americana” at the Whitney Museum

You know Whitney Museum’s mission as the defining museum of twentieth- and twenty-first-century American art, as well as its belief  in the value of history have both been accomplished, when you come home after seeing “Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945” and you realize that what made the greatest impression on you was Lenin. (“Why are you so surprised?” asks your Russian –immigrant to the US for twenty years now- husband. “For a big part of its history, America has moved in a way parallel to Russia.”)

In this case, the connection with the Communist leader comes via Central America. After the end of the Mexican Revolution in 1920 the country’s national art went through a radical transformation and spoke directly to the Mexican people about its indigenous identity and social struggles. The American neighbors (artists and intellectuals) are stimulated and rush to take pictures of Mexico, write about Mexico, live in Mexico. Public monumental muralism is the aspect of Mexican Renaissance that most captivates Americans’ imagination, while the three leading muralists («los tres grandes») José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros come to work on both the East and West coasts and in Detroit. (Here we are, exploring Mexican-American muralist art, while for the past few years we have been talking non-stop about the wall that should be built / is being built / should be demolished on the Mexico-United States border.)

It is hard for “Man at the Crossroads” not to catch your attention, and for Lenin’s portrait to go unnoticed amidst the multitude of figures and images included in this mural by Rivera. Intrigued, I approach (like many other visitors) to read the label: the piece was commissioned to the star painter (championed by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, the founder of MoMA) by the Rockefeller Corporation in 1932, destined for its newly developed Rockefeller Center in the heart of Manhattan. The assignment was to portray “man at the crossroads, uncertain but hopeful for a better future.” The Russian Revolution leader’s portrait was not part of the sketches originally submitted. When Rivera added it, they asked him to remove it. The Mexican muralist refused to do so, and he was dismissed from the project. However, “Man at the Crossroads” was indeed completed and exhibited, not in the most famous American millionaire’s tower, but in Mexico City.

“Flower Festival: Feast of Santa Anita”, another work by Rivera, but of different scale and aesthetics, seduces with its clear lines, earthly palette and the symbolism exuded by the abstract female figures and the lilies. Right across, Frida Kahlo, with her cigarette in hand and with four green parrots sitting on her, fixes you and makes you stop in your tracks. Nearby, another Russian steals the show: in the excerpts projected from Eisenstein’s surreal, unfinished “¡Que viva México”, the ideal harmony and beauty of the peasants’ life and of their ancient traditions emerges dreamily.

The most fascinating element of a visit to Renzo Piano’s new Whitney (the museum opened at its current location in the trendy Meatpacking District in 2015) is the flow it provides between the indoors and the outdoors. I confess that, whenever I’m about to go to the Whitney, the thing I most look forward to is to find myself on its fantastic balconies, which span over four levels and offer almost 360º vistas to New York and New Jersey, and to the Hudson River. This constant possibility of choice between in and out does not simply help refresh your eye and brain between exhibits and exhibitions; it also fuels the experience of perceiving the content of the museum by reminding you of the context –the ever-evolving metropolis stretching literally around you.

As I continue to wander through “Vida Americana”, I have the impression that I’m traversing endless images of human beings fighting against each other in all possible variations of conflicts and struggles –civil, colonial, class. With the awareness of the social aspect of life exceptionally awakened (of course, when you live in Harlem, it is hard for this awareness to hibernate anyway) I step one last time out onto “the veranda” to take in the superb panoramic view, and I'm taken with the city's irresistible magic-hour charm (the early evening is so mild, you can’t believe it’s mid-January). Still in love with NYC (I’m neither the first, nor the last), I continue to try to solve the riddle of the city, the country, the continent, and apparently I’m at the right place, since it was exactly in this museum that, a few years back, the exhibition with the very eloquent title “America Is Hard to See” was presented.

As I descend towards the exit, I “run into” Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, posing semi-reclined but serious, looking at us, visitors to this unique home for American art that she –an arts patron but also an artist in her own right- created in 1932. I’ve seen that portrait before, but tonight Mrs. Whitney, a possessor not only of a great fortune but also of a strong vision, seems to me more radiant than ever. And rightfully so, since her groundbreaking choice to offer shelter to the artists of her country and of her time manages today to explore the definition as well as the evolution of American identity.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on January 30, 2021.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com on February 23, 2021.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 30 Ιανουαρίου 2021.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com στις 23 Φεβρουαρίου 2021.

Για να διαβάσετε το ελληνικό κείμενο, κάντε κλικ εδώ.

The museum as companionship (January 2021)

Impressions from the landmark exhibition “Making the Met”

Last week’s first NYC snow had almost melted, so, on Christmas Eve, I sailed (on my two feet) for the Met, in hopes that my fellow citizens would have chosen Midtown’s storefront displays over the museum’s indoor space. I was wrong. The museum was pretty packed, given a pandemic.

I’m one of those people who treat the Met (also) as office space: I grab my book or notebook, and, using the distance to Fifth Avenue and 82nd Street as a decompressing walkway to clear my brain, I install myself facing the American Wing, or in the European Sculpture Court, or on any convenient bench, and read or write. The Temple of Dendur, with its artificial “Nile” and unobstructed view to Central Park, has offered me refuge in blizzards, and the rooftop, with its much awaited yearly installations by contemporary artists, has hosted me at summer sunsets. I’m also one of those people who have a floor plan of the Met hung next to their bathroom mirror: I take virtual tours through the Parisian salons of the European Decorative Arts while brushing my teeth. 

This time though I really am at the museum, and I have a very specific task: “Making the Met”, the institution’s signature exhibition to celebrate its 150th birthday (1870-2020), is closing on January 3rd. The exhibition’s spirit and vocabulary captivate you upon arrival, since you are greeted by a Marilyn Monroe portrait. The label informs you that photographer Richard Avedon has not simply donated one of his major collections to the museum, but he also spent many hours here as a child studying works by Goya and Roman Egyptian painted portraits. 

The exhibition unfolds the conception, materialization and growth of the Metropolitan Museum as a full organism, from its literal first seed to its blossoming into one of the world’s leading arts institutions (“We started with no art, staff, or building. How did we get here?”). It highlights directors, donors, architects, urban designers and other visionaries and their teams, and invites us to see how each generation interprets the museum’s mission to collect and display art from all cultures. In chronological order but also following a thematic threads logic, “Making the Met” spreads out the evolution and transformation of the institution’s collections and horizons, leading to unexpected encounters. 

If the archetypical blonde’s black-and-white gaze (and décolleté) surprises you in the gallery entrance, the canvas you see upon entering the first room appeases and moves you: The Parthenon was painted by Frederic Edwin Church, celebrated landscape painter and founding trustee, who visited the Athenian Acropolis in 1869. 

The magic of the breadth of such an organization’s collections lies with the unexpected encounters –and emotions- it has to offer: how many times didn’t you (think you) had set out to refresh your knowledge of European painting, only to find yourself standing in awe in front of a 1930s chrome-plated copper coffee service, as a deviation led your steps there? 

“Making the Met” crystallizes numerous unexpected encounters of that type, using the organism’s biography as a springboard. It wisely yet playfully builds a microcosm of the treasures comprised in such a vast museum. Yves Saint Laurent’s iconic “Mondrian dress” sparkles in front of a masterwork panel painting from a Kyoto Zen temple. 

Surprise encounters do not only involve the mixing (through juxtaposition) of collections and departments; they also expand into encounters with visitors from other eras –and with ourselves. Looking at a photograph of 1910 female New Yorkers looking at art, I can’t help think that their hats are themselves an exhibit. But I also run into myself in an Athens upset by the waiting lines for the exhibition “From Theotokopoulos to Cézanne”, since I re-encounter now Chardin’s “Bubbles”, whose mundane theatricality had made such an impression on me, back in 1992!... 

The stunning video (projected in the exhibition but available online to all) dramatizes in just 6.5 minutes the history of the building itself. Although the museum’s site in Central Park was proposed even before the Met was founded, it was actually originally housed in two mansions further south, before definitively settling down in the metropolis’ preeminent park on Fifth Avenue. The building’s development and expansion –from Victorian Gothic to neoclassical and modern- encapsulates 150 years of American architectural history and weaves in it the evolution of esthetic perceptions. 

Rushing to make “Making the Met”, you find (and refresh) a piece of yourself. Wandering through a museum in person is a full bodily experience –and, precisely because of that, a risky one (for how much longer museums will remain open, I wonder). In any case, it is a kind of companionship – even if you’re terrified the moment you realize that another, equally enthralled, spectator, is standing less than six feet apart.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (online) on January 3, 2021.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com on January 13, 2021.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 3 Ιανουαρίου 2021.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com στις 13 Ιανουαρίου 2021.

The theatrical universe of Viewpoints (December 2020)

Theatre director Nadia Foskolou talks about the original actor training technique on the occasion of the publication of her translation of
The Viewpoints Book (Athens: Patakis Publishers, 2020)

“When directing a piece, start with the assumption that you can create an entirely new universe on stage: a Play-World. Rather than take for granted that the reality of the play will be the same as our everyday reality, work with an attitude that anything in this Play-World can be invented from scratch.” (The Viewpoints Book: A Practical Guide to Viewpoints and Composition)

For example, the characters may always enter stage right and always exit stage left, or they may hold their cigarettes the way people were holding them in imperial Russia, or they may… stay at least six feet apart, no matter what!

In the classic for actor/director training Viewpoints Book, writers Anne Bogart & Tina Landau have included the chapter “Viewpoints in Unexpected Places.” There, students of the renowned technique enthusiastically describe how they started recognizing Viewpoints’ elements in surprising aspects of everyday life –from serving drinks in a jam-packed bar to baseball to Animal Planet.

I think that, until we were hit by the pandemic and therefore forced to grasp (?) the notion of social distancing, I had never before observed such an extensive and conscious application of one of the Nine Physical Viewpoints in everyday life: that of Spatial Relationship, i.e. where the actor stands or moves in relation to other actors…

Viewpoints is a philosophy translated into a technique dealing with the fundamental notions every performer has to face: space and time. The technique is used in actor training, ensemble building and in generating movement for the stage.

Although Viewpoints is taught around the world and has been igniting the imagination of numerous choreographers, actors, directors, designers, dramaturgs and writers for decades, its theory and practice had rarely been documented until 2005, when Bogart & Landau created a practical step-by-step guide to the use of Viewpoints as a training and rehearsal technique. But through the practical exercises, the Viewpoints Book also distills the philosophy from which the method springs. The innovative directors and teachers clearly “warn” us from the very first pages: “These ideas are timeless. We have simply articulated a set of names for things that already exist, things that we do naturally and have always done.”

In describing their own first introduction to Viewpoints, the writers mention that they felt that “the world had been named.” It was precisely this feeling I had the rare luck to experience myself, when I first came into Viewpoints through a revelatory theatrical –but also broadly artistic- immersion, while auditioning for the Columbia MFA Directing Program in 2005 (from which I graduated in 2008).

The Greek translation which I have the honor to sign (Athens: Patakis Publishers, 2020) is the result of the vital need to share the invaluable experience (I trained for three years with Bogart) but also of the duty to disseminate it as far as possible, while, at the same time, inviting my colleagues –practitioners and theoreticians alike- to a dialogue around the question of how we practice our art. As a big part of this past year was dedicated to the struggle around whether we can and/or should “make theatre” (the art where you normally sweat while rolling on the floor with your fellow players –a nightmarish image in light of COVID) via Zoom, the opportunity for that dialogue appears now even more pressing.

The additional circumstance of Mary Overlie’s (1946-2020) passing on June 5th provides even more material for contemplation. A choreographer, a dancer and a teacher at NYU Tisch School of the Arts Experimental Theater Wing, Overlie invented the original Six Viewpoints in order to structure dance improvisation. Later on, her close collaborator Anne Bogart expanded the Six Viewpoints and applied them to the world of theatre.

The “simplicity” of Overlie’s approach is a refreshing starting point for further dialogue:

“The seed of the entire work of The Six Viewpoints is found in the simple act of standing in space. From this perspective the artist is invited to read and be educated by the lexicon of daily experience. The information of space, the experience of time, the familiarity of shapes, the qualities and rules of kinetics in movement, the ways of logic, how stories are formed, the states of being and emotional exchanges that constitute the process of communication between living creatures.” (Overlie)

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on December 17, 2020.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com on December 29, 2020.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 17 Δεκεμβρίου 2020.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com στις 29 Δεκεμβρίου 2020.

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I ♥ NY (September 2020)

Intoxication -that’s the first word that came to my mind after visiting the recently reopened MoMA. I record the feeling raw, before it fades away with the return to reality (or New Normal). At last, I’ve found again the familiar drive that moves me (used to move me?), along with the millions of my fellow citizens, to the rhythm of the metropolis.

For months now, I’ve been seeing the characteristic Manhattan skyline, and missing it: although we are just eighty blocks away (from the corner of our block you can see the Empire State Building!), never before had Midtown seemed so distant. As beloved Tennessee Williams says, “Time is the longest distance between two places.” Because of COVID, I don’t take public transportation or cabs, and, like most of Manhattan residents, we don’t have a car. So, for months now, I have only been going wherever my feet can take me in the stifling NYC summer.

But now it is almost fall, the best, sung far and wide season for the Big Apple. So, I walked to MoMA: from our 137th Street Harlem apartment to 53rd Street, exactly one hour and thirty minutes – provided that you’ll resist the temptation and you’ll walk the entire Fifth Avenue Museum Mile without pausing to take a single picture (okay, I couldn’t hold myself and did take one picture, the new, sliver-like highriser, popping up behind the Plaza).

Two timelines unfold inside my head: one, the comparison between the Collective Before (as in before the pandemic) and the Collective Now; the other, my personal fifteen-year anniversary with this city, and, more specifically, a visit to MoMA exactly at this time of the year, early fall 2005, with my professor, Anne Bogart, and my five classmates at the Columbia University MFA in Theatre Directing –yes, that day’s class did not take place on campus but at MoMA. The same way in 2005 I could not believe my luck at having been admitted at the prestigious graduate program, the same way now I am grateful to still be here –at MoMA, in New York, and –most importantly- in life (for the time being, at least), amidst the New Normal.

The second I enter (after the classic temperature-taking and mask protocol), I am greeted by the outer-space like sound from the high-tech light and sound ceiling installation of the lobby. The moving mechanism, combined with the eerie emptiness of the normally crowded and noisy ground floor, creates an almost metaphysical effect. I glance through the window at the beloved sculpture garden, but I resist the outside –I can’t wait to get deeper inside. I impatiently climb up the stairs and almost run to get to the center of the atrium, which, with its breathtaking height, forces you to look not only at the works in front of you but also around you and up, to take in the interior balconies of the six floors, as if it’s telling you, “Hey, look at me, I’m MoMA!” I turn at the corner and am grabbed by Dorothea Lange’s enigmatic America. I pause in front of the captivating “Migrant Mother”, but I also discover the lighter, yet melancholy beauty of “Union Square.”

But the feeling of a relative cram in these rather small photography rooms pushes me to the escalator. Purring from the joy of recognition, I apply my old technique: I go nonstop up to the sixth floor, and then continue my visit to the individual floors going down. There, at the “penthouse”, awaits me the quintessence of the vast space which you would think was built precisely for the apotheosis of the geometry and the polychrome of Donald Judd’s “sculptures”/constructions/installations. An orgasm for the lovers of form –especially if you can be on your own in this playground of metal, plexiglass and wood, and in this feast of color, shape and perspective games!

I painfully bid farewell to the colorful shelves (I would love to stay forever there, entranced), and I start my descent. My steps lead me to the Early Photography & Film Room, where, once again thanks to the capacity limitations, I enjoy a rare privilege: seated at my bench, I can observe the details of Atget’s black-and-white 1900 Parisian apartment buildings, while having an unobstructed view to the “Demoiselles d’Avignon”, dominating the adjacent room! (Occasionally, I can also peek outside, at the exquisite architecture of the buildings across -my husband and I share the perversion to often prefer the view of the city over the exhibits themselves…)

Impossible to turn off the switch of timelines and threads: shortly before the museum closes, I accidentally land in the “Water Lilies” Room. A lump climbs up my throat, as this was the work I had selected then, on that chilly October 2005 morning, when Anne Bogart had dispatched us to wander around the museum and to then share a work that had stood out for us. I chose it then for its cinematic quality –as if Monet had tried to capture something from the motion of painting. I spend the last minutes (until the familiar museum closing announcements start playing in a variety of languages, a staple that makes you want to learn them all) seated in front of the “Water Lilies”, and I let my gaze get lost in the melted paint and all the timelines to blur.

The Museum is now closed, and I am the last visitor, but because I politely thank the guards, I think they’re not looking grumpily at me (or maybe I can’t see it because they’re wearing masks?). Last but not least, at the exit, “lurks” for me the iconic –the term has been overused recently, but I think it is required in this case- “I ♥ NY”. (If this is not iconic, I don’t know what is.) If reuniting with MoMA is intoxicating, living in New York is addictive.

This essay first appeared in Greek in the TA NEA newspaper (in print and online) on September 26, 2020.

It was reproduced by HellasJournal.com on October 11, 2020.

Το κείμενο αυτό πρωτοδημοσιεύτηκε στην εφημερίδα ΤΑ ΝΕΑ (έντυπη και ηλεκτρονική έκδοση) στις 26 Σεπτεμβρίου 2020.

Αναδημοσιεύτηκε από το HellasJournal.com στις 11 Οκτωβρίου 2020.

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Writing about Viewpoints now + here (July 2020)

To Zoom or not to Zoom?

A text for the Patakis Publishers’ blog about their 2020 publication of The Viewpoints Book in Greek

Theatre is the art of live and fast action. Whether actor or director, you have to make quick decisions on the spot and act fast –most of the times. (Yes, we do train for years in order to become actors and directors, and we may prepare for months –even years- for a specific production; but when actually in rehearsal and in performance, quick response and decision-making is key.) Writing about theatre, and about the training of actors and directors, gives one the opportunity to reflect. In the summer of 2020, that opportunity appears surprisingly amply given to us, since the next available chance to rehearse or attend a show is not clearly visible.

Writing from the strange actual moment I am in, I have time to reflect on the Viewpoints technique; and I have an unusual space to practice it: not a rehearsal room or training studio, but an online platform.

I first came to know Viewpoints through a revelatory immersion –when auditioning for the Columbia University MFA Directing Program in 2005. Everything was new anyway –crossing the Atlantic, being in New York City- but the immersive experience of being in the room with 29 other candidates and legendary director Anne Bogart, the founder of the famous technique, topped all other levels of newness.

Viewpoints is a philosophy translated into a technique that deals with the fundamental questions any theatre artist faces: time and space. It is used for training performers, for ensemble building and for generating movement for the stage. Viewpoints is points of awareness that any theatre artist makes use of while working. Anne Bogart and Tina Landau, the authors of The Viewpoints Book (the Greek translation of which, published last February, I have the honor to sign), when describing their experience of coming into Viewpoints themselves, say that they felt that “the world had been named.” Through their theatre-making and teaching over the past few decades, they have made of Viewpoints a rehearsal and training language that has marked the development of numerous theatre artists around the world.

Tadashi Suzuki, the great Japanese director (and close collaborator of Anne Bogart), in an effort to identify theatre’s uniqueness, has said that it “offers a live communal space” –in this over-digitized world of ours. As of August 2020, the live communal space Suzuki talks about is only available online –not in a room. One of the gifts of Viewpoints is that it teaches you to play off what you are given. It forces you to utilize (and value) limitations. The question then arises: as I am preparing to conduct my first virtual Viewpoints workshop, am I applying the Viewpoints principle of utilizing limitations or am I actually destroying, playing against the basis of theatre –the “live communal space” Suzuki talks about?

I turn to Anne and Tina, who write: “We’d all love an answer, a guarantee, a shortcut. […] It’s deadly for any artist to mechanically try to follow the steps without wrestling with the questions, adjusting the process, and earning their own discoveries.” (And in this they remind us of Plato’s insistence on the absolute primacy of the living word over the dead letter.) 

In hopes that this “new normal” would not last forever, let’s try for now to practice Viewpoints (and theatre, for that matter) online. Life will (should) eventually go back to normal. Or not really? Heraclitus says that no one enters the same river twice. Then we risk being tempted by the idea that theatre can, in fact, be replaced by online platforms!...

In my foreword to the Greek edition (written several months before the pandemic) I was inviting fellow practitioners and theoreticians alike to a dialogue around the way we practice our art. The current circumstances offer even more so the opportunity for that type of a conversation –and reflection.

One more reflection from the strange current moment:

Our collective tank of visual experiences is inevitably filled with screen (film, television, social media etc.) data, since these are the media by and large prevailing in our every day life and entertainment. However, when you actually enter the room to stage a show or when you sit down to attend a performance, you are automatically reminded that the experience of watching or generating theatre is closer to dance than film. There is no camera to move around –there are only bodies.

Mary Overlie, iconic choreographer, performer, teacher at the Experimental Theater Wing of Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and the inventor of the Six original Viewpoints, on whose theory and teachings her student Anne Bogart based her own technique and philosophy, passed away on June 5th.

It is refreshing, precisely at this moment in time, as we keep on ‘Zooming’, to (re)discover the striking simplicity of Overlie’s fundamental approach to structuring dance improvisation:

“The seed of the entire work of The Six Viewpoints is found in the simple act of standing in space. From this perspective the artist is invited to read and be educated by the lexicon of daily experience. The information of space, the experience of time, the familiarity of shapes, the qualities and rules of kinetics in movement, the ways of logic, how stories are formed, the states of being and emotional exchanges that constitute the process of communication between living creatures ... Working directly with these materials the artist begins to learn of performance through the essential languages as an independent intelligence.” (Overlie)