Thursday, December 29, 2005
Step outside and into adventure: Christmas in NYC; analysis of Fra Angelico exhibition
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Having written this in anticipation of a short subway strike, I was not disappointed, although my Bangladeshi cabbie, son of a wily Southeast Asian village politico, warned me that the resumption of service might be a ruse. Clever Mayor Bloomberg may have engineered a truce, to save the Christmas business and tourism; the real thing may come afterwards, when the mediation fails. Nothing daunted, let's be positive.
This is the multi-holiday city, bar none, particularly musically. Just step into the subway: at Union Square, and you may find two plastic-pail drum artists, concurrently, at the IRT and BMT ends, with a Vietnamese duo mid-station playing keyboard and an amplified lute, western tunes with an eastern cast. They alternate with Andean flutists and a doo-wop quartet, In Tune, of four middle-aged men, singing with obvious pleasure and cracking jokes between numbers. Their "oh yes, I'm the Great Pretender" tenor has world-class voice and style, or am I letting the spirit of the season carry me away?
In my rush to get photographically set, I subwayed to Herald Square, then west to B&H photo for SmartMedia magnetic cards, the only source in town. At 34th the BMT features a Caribbean steel drum artist, with an amplifier and tape accompaniment background, quite a step beyond the traditional form. And, surprise, he has a twin in the Times Square BMT station, battling the established Drumaniac, who dominates the large IRT/BMT crossing, surrounded by an octet of like-minded musicians, alternating with squads of hip-hop athletes, Scientologists and Lyndon LaRouche fanatics. Drumaniac was the originator of the current subway drum style, of massacring large white plastic pails.
My real favorite is an Asian operatic baritone, who sings operatic arias while accompanying himself on a keyboard. He was last seen in the 79th Street station of the #6 local, the exit point of visitors to the Metropolitan Museum. We were there to see the Fra Angelioco exhibit, the best loan collection of his works. On the way, we stopped to admire Ferdinando Botero's wicked fat attack cat sculpture in the entranceway of 79th and Park Avenue By the way, note the modern white marble torso with a hole in its stomach, on corner 20th Street and Irving Place, a generous owner's gift for the enjoyment of Gramercy Park denizens and visitors. If you happen to know of the sculptor and the theme, let me know (wally@ix.netcom.com), the building does not return phone calls. And do not forget to visit the local parks, Stuyvesant Square, Union Square, Madison Square, as well as Gramercy and Stuy Town Oval, to enjoy their Christmas and Hanukkah displays. Madison Square was the first to put up a municipal tree with lights, in 1911, a custom that spread through municipalities all over the country in short order (wish I could find my Jane Crotty-inspired article of 1996 on that topic).
On to the Met pleasures. To begin, the long row of parkside art peddlers, 79th to the museum entrance. You can enjoy imitation modern styles, nearly all high quality lithographs (the best is the expensive giclee process). Another picture row, mostly photographs of city view and framed reduced size New Yorker covers, is found parkside at Columbus Circle. Art goods are also in the Holiday Markets, Union Square and Columbus Circle. Noted a seller of autographed literary photos, probably reproductions (the best can be found at the venerable Argosy Books, on 59th west of Lex. but if you want a genuine Oscar Wilde signature, in a limited signed first edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, do a search in Abebooks, which lists 60 million books for sale by 12,000 dealers).
To get to the Fra Angelico, finally, you must pass the Met's own Christmas Tree, a venerable institution with its Baroque Neapolitan crèche, decorated with miniature sculpture (until Jan. 8, 20006). The Fra Angelico exhibit (till Jan. 29) is memorable, not just as an assemblage of lifelike portraits of pious virgins (note that the true artist caught the tinge of boredom in the faces of his patient models), fierce bearded martyrs and saints and adult-faced babies, in the midst of which, amazingly, St. Thomas Aquinas looks senatorial, ca. 20th Century. It also exemplifies the transition from the two-dimensional Byzantine art tradition to modern Renaissance, with perspective. The prolific Fra Angelico (1395-1455, beatified 1984) had few challengers, except for the short-lived genius Masaccio (real name Tomasso Guidi, 1401-28), who invented foreshortening (his ground-breaking portrayal of a dead soldier tapers toward the feet) and worked on perspective. One sees how the older Fra, hampered by tradition that made him paint figures in sizes according to rank (note the small angels in front of the large madonnas), bravely struggled to join the movement, sometimes successfully. His best three-dimensionals are of people of equal rank (haloed saints, or mortals struggling upwards to heaven, or in court or at funerals or executions), but buildings other than long hallways receding to a point remained a puzzle. It took a Leonardo, a few years later, to originate chiaroscuro, putting distant objects in a realistic haze.
Holiday greetings to all, go see the Fra.
Having written this in anticipation of a short subway strike, I was not disappointed, although my Bangladeshi cabbie, son of a wily Southeast Asian village politico, warned me that the resumption of service might be a ruse. Clever Mayor Bloomberg may have engineered a truce, to save the Christmas business and tourism; the real thing may come afterwards, when the mediation fails. Nothing daunted, let's be positive.
This is the multi-holiday city, bar none, particularly musically. Just step into the subway: at Union Square, and you may find two plastic-pail drum artists, concurrently, at the IRT and BMT ends, with a Vietnamese duo mid-station playing keyboard and an amplified lute, western tunes with an eastern cast. They alternate with Andean flutists and a doo-wop quartet, In Tune, of four middle-aged men, singing with obvious pleasure and cracking jokes between numbers. Their "oh yes, I'm the Great Pretender" tenor has world-class voice and style, or am I letting the spirit of the season carry me away?
In my rush to get photographically set, I subwayed to Herald Square, then west to B&H photo for SmartMedia magnetic cards, the only source in town. At 34th the BMT features a Caribbean steel drum artist, with an amplifier and tape accompaniment background, quite a step beyond the traditional form. And, surprise, he has a twin in the Times Square BMT station, battling the established Drumaniac, who dominates the large IRT/BMT crossing, surrounded by an octet of like-minded musicians, alternating with squads of hip-hop athletes, Scientologists and Lyndon LaRouche fanatics. Drumaniac was the originator of the current subway drum style, of massacring large white plastic pails.
My real favorite is an Asian operatic baritone, who sings operatic arias while accompanying himself on a keyboard. He was last seen in the 79th Street station of the #6 local, the exit point of visitors to the Metropolitan Museum. We were there to see the Fra Angelioco exhibit, the best loan collection of his works. On the way, we stopped to admire Ferdinando Botero's wicked fat attack cat sculpture in the entranceway of 79th and Park Avenue By the way, note the modern white marble torso with a hole in its stomach, on corner 20th Street and Irving Place, a generous owner's gift for the enjoyment of Gramercy Park denizens and visitors. If you happen to know of the sculptor and the theme, let me know (wally@ix.netcom.com), the building does not return phone calls. And do not forget to visit the local parks, Stuyvesant Square, Union Square, Madison Square, as well as Gramercy and Stuy Town Oval, to enjoy their Christmas and Hanukkah displays. Madison Square was the first to put up a municipal tree with lights, in 1911, a custom that spread through municipalities all over the country in short order (wish I could find my Jane Crotty-inspired article of 1996 on that topic).
On to the Met pleasures. To begin, the long row of parkside art peddlers, 79th to the museum entrance. You can enjoy imitation modern styles, nearly all high quality lithographs (the best is the expensive giclee process). Another picture row, mostly photographs of city view and framed reduced size New Yorker covers, is found parkside at Columbus Circle. Art goods are also in the Holiday Markets, Union Square and Columbus Circle. Noted a seller of autographed literary photos, probably reproductions (the best can be found at the venerable Argosy Books, on 59th west of Lex. but if you want a genuine Oscar Wilde signature, in a limited signed first edition of The Picture of Dorian Gray, do a search in Abebooks, which lists 60 million books for sale by 12,000 dealers).
To get to the Fra Angelico, finally, you must pass the Met's own Christmas Tree, a venerable institution with its Baroque Neapolitan crèche, decorated with miniature sculpture (until Jan. 8, 20006). The Fra Angelico exhibit (till Jan. 29) is memorable, not just as an assemblage of lifelike portraits of pious virgins (note that the true artist caught the tinge of boredom in the faces of his patient models), fierce bearded martyrs and saints and adult-faced babies, in the midst of which, amazingly, St. Thomas Aquinas looks senatorial, ca. 20th Century. It also exemplifies the transition from the two-dimensional Byzantine art tradition to modern Renaissance, with perspective. The prolific Fra Angelico (1395-1455, beatified 1984) had few challengers, except for the short-lived genius Masaccio (real name Tomasso Guidi, 1401-28), who invented foreshortening (his ground-breaking portrayal of a dead soldier tapers toward the feet) and worked on perspective. One sees how the older Fra, hampered by tradition that made him paint figures in sizes according to rank (note the small angels in front of the large madonnas), bravely struggled to join the movement, sometimes successfully. His best three-dimensionals are of people of equal rank (haloed saints, or mortals struggling upwards to heaven, or in court or at funerals or executions), but buildings other than long hallways receding to a point remained a puzzle. It took a Leonardo, a few years later, to originate chiaroscuro, putting distant objects in a realistic haze.
Holiday greetings to all, go see the Fra.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 11:07 AM 
