Gossip Central

George Lois at MOMA/ Jeff Koons Rooftop at the MET

A bald bear of a guy in his '70's, art director George Lois can tell you a story for every cover of Esquire he did in the '60's. He doesn't have to. As exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art: Sonny Liston in a Santa hat, Andy Warhol drowning in a can of Campbell's tomato soup, Mohammed Ali with arrows in his body a la St. Sebastian, Roy Cohn with a halo over his head, a cemetery with John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. photos collaged over gravestones, writers Jean Genet, William S. Burroughs, Terry Southern and John Sack in Chicago--each one informs the historic moment, be it about race, anti-war, pop art, the McCarthy era of the 1950's. Overwhelming is the realization that we don't see magazine covers like these any more. We have instead, the top few movie icons that force us to pay attention to things that don't matter. What mattered in George Lois' time were ideas. And people bought Esquire simply to collect the excellent cover art. When did that stop? He says in his heavy Bronx brawl: “Ideas work and have worked from the time of the caveman.”
Three pieces from Jeff Koons' Celebration series compete with the Manhattan skyline rooftop at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In stainless steel to withstand the elements, Balloon Dog (Yellow) and Sacred Heart (Red/Gold) in primary color, and Coloring Book in vivid pastel rival the pale buds of spring in Central Park below. Last Monday, Jeff Koons, an artworld giant, fielded questions from foreign journalists in a gray, very smart, sharkskin suit from Gucci, finding it ironic that as an American he mostly shows in Europe and Asia. How fitting that he now is here high up at the MET where Sacred Heart with its resemblance to a giant candy engages in a dialogue with religious themes in medieval and early Catholic painting and sculpture housed below. And Balloon Dog resembling that done by a clown entertaining at children's parties can be seen to reference Greek and Roman myth. Eeyore of Coloring Book rises to meet the challenges posed by Pop where Roy Lichtenstein's sculpture was exhibited just a few seasons before. “The journey of art is acceptance,” said Koons addressing questions related to the seeming simplicity of his subject matter, “first of oneself and then others.”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Standard Operating Procedure

You don't want to think of that pixie-ish woman with the shit-eating grin in the famous Abu Ghraib photo as more than a sadistic little bitch as she points to a hooded man on a leash. But, Errol Morris's documentary probe, “Standard Operating Procedure” affirms: that picture, and others: the naked human pyramid as well as the wired figure on the box, is more than meets the eye. Imagine this: the woman in question, Lynndie English, a teen when she enlisted for duty in Iraq, falls in love with MP Charles Graner and simply acts in thrall, a girl with a girlish crush who ends up pregnant (with his child while he is carrying on with another woman involved in the scandal) and facing some serious charges, a Rumsfeldian “bad apple.” Who are these people and why do they have so much time on their hands? That is a question addressed by Morris in the film and in an accompanying book co-authored with Philip Gourevitch. No wonder the Rummy-Cheney-Bush triumvirate, is embarrassed, but, in the words of Desi to Lucy, this administration has some 'splainin' to do. The seven “bad apples” have been prosecuted, for taking the photos but not for their content. That justice will no doubt never be served for these crimes against mostly ordinary Iraqis has been shown in this excellent and disturbing documentary as it was in Alex Gibney's “Taxi to the Dark Side,” the Academy Award winning film investigating the untoward fate of a young man taken to a sister prison, Bagram in Afganistan, and tortured to death. Although he deserved to win the award for his "Thin Blue Line," Errol Morris received his Oscar for “The Fog of War” with its central interview portrait of Robert McNamara, the architect of the Viet Nam War. In this new film, said Morris in a recent interview, he reveals a “crazy war of humiliation.” Here is an interesting tidbit gleaned from “Standard Operating Procedure:” as a method of torment, forget water boarding. Certain music blasted in prisoners' ears proved more torturous. After awhile the victims began to groove to Metallica and Hip Hop. They broke at Country Western.

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Standard Operating Procedure (trailer)

Meryl Streep Honored at Film Society of Lincoln Center

Will the real Meryl Streep please stand up! Last night Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center was packed with well-wishers, benefactors, friends and family to pay tribute to the premier actress of our time. As Uma Thurman, a speaker in a string of co-stars and directors that also included Robert Deniro, Christopher Walken, Jonathan Demme, Garrison Keillor, and Stanley Tucci, said of Streep, “There's Meryl and then there is everyone else.” Robert Redford spoke about her commitment to craft. Amy Adams mentioned that she taught her how to knit on the set of the upcoming film of “Doubt.” And Mike Nichols quipped about her perfect nose, so much like his they cannot be onstage together. Between speakers, clips of Streep's performances in one classic after another were projected: the heart-wrenching choice scene in “Sophie's Choice,” as Ethel Rosenberg confronting the dying Al Pacino's Roy Cohn in “Angels in America,” a begoggled blond in a two-seat prop plane with Redford, a red-head in “The French Lieutenant's Woman” with Jeremy Irons, silver coiffed in “The Devil Wears Prada,” a Hillary Clinton clone in “The Manchurian Candidate,” singing in a pub in “Ironweed,” singing in the Tuscan landscape in the upcoming film of “Mamma Mia!” It is clear there is nothing she cannot do, no one she cannot be! Taking the stage in an elegant black silk shirt-waist she kept tugging down Streep flashed her sense of humor. Claiming she dreaded this tribute, she spoke about a time studying acting at Vassar, when in an exercise intended to practice the art of crying the fledgling students each conjured up sad images: mothers, dogs, boyfriends dying. Not la Streep, who imagined herself in tears: approaching 60 (she's 58), the premier actress of her time at a tribute, onstage before her immense body of fans, announcing her retirement. “I am not crying tonight,” she said, “because I am not retiring.” And then she danced and pirouetted off the stage.
     At the elegant supper across the way in the New York State Theater, the celebrants included playwright Tony Kushner, director Robert Benton, Sylvia Miles who played her mother in “She Devil,” wives and widows Kathryn Altman, Rose Styron, Hannah Pakula. I had my own Streep moment: complimenting me on my outfit, she mocked interest in the designer, to wit I countered, who was she wearing. “Oh I just picked this up at the Short Hills mall,” she laughed.

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Jellyfish and Other Surreal Tales

This year's excellent New Directors/New Films series, a yearly collaboration of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and MoMA that ended last week, had many films you will see in theaters in the coming months. One, “Jellyfish,” directed by Israeli fiction writer Etgar Keret and Shira Geffen, his wife and the movie's scriptwriter, is already out: in this fine, intimate film, the dislocation and suffering taking place in their home country among a group of recent immigrants is reflected in water, in places where it is welcome, healing and mysterious, as in the beach in Tel Aviv and unwelcome, as a rising flood in a young woman's apartment caused by a leak. At one point she stands mouth agape, water pouring down from the ceiling quenching her thirst. Such surreal images dominate Keret's fiction. His new book,   “The Girl on the Fridge” features a tale called “Crazy Glue” in which a girl is stuck on that substance “so pretty, and so incongruous, hanging upside down from the ceiling that way. . . . I climbed onto the pile of books and kissed her.” The image brought to mind lovers in a Chagall painting. The stories, some one-pagers, can be selected like bonbons out of a chocolate assortment, each offering a peculiar, offbeat yet surprisingly satisfying center. In the title story, a couple breaks up for no better reason than the girl liked being alone, as when in childhood, she stayed perched atop a refrigerator. Her lover even tried to fuck her there, to no avail. I asked Etgar Keret which he prefers, making film or writing stories. “Writing,” he said, “I have all the control.”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Shine a Light

This Rolling Stones' concert film, "Shine a Light", directed by Martin Scorsese made me feel, how shall I put it, not so bad about ageing. Something about Mick Jagger jumping about the stage, his six pack intact, his act a fine-tuned workout. Drummer Charlie Watts has gone completely gray and Keith Richards has facial crevices to rival the Grand Canyon. Still, the archival footage of this iconic band going back to their beginnings made me feel less, those were the days, and more, the time is now, especially seeing Jagger in fantastic duets: “Live With Me” with Christina Aguilera, “Loving Cup” with Jack White, and “Champagne and Reefer” with Buddy Guy. Early on in this engaging film you see legendary documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles milling about, one of the 18 cameramen shooting backstage footage at the Beacon Theater to make “Shine a Light.” Albert had directed the Stones in “Gimme Shelter” (1970). I interviewed Albert for Andy Plesser's Beet.Tv last month at a show of his photography at the Steven Kasher Gallery:

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Happy Art

How to say this without sounding sappy? In fashion, the trend is away from black, that thinning and existential hue that has dominated the New York hip look for decades. Color works on people for spring, as the style meisters tell us pushing kelly green, canary yellow, and Barbie pink. And so too in museums and galleries where vivid color now holds sway: in “Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today” at MoMA, featuring work by Ellsworth Kelly, John Chamberlain, Jim Dine, Frank Stella, and others, a show  guaranteed to swing your mood upward. Color even works in absentia, as in the Metropolitan Museum's exhilarating Jasper Johns's Grays. But nowhere does it pick up the inner child with Disney-esque cutesy characters, the spirit of round-faced Hello Kitty, the uplift of effective retail therapy-the possibility of unloading a month's wages on a Louis Vuitton wallet, the subversive thrill of adult themes-pastel figures spouting jism from sexual organs, and the sheer pleasure of ecstatic flower-lined environments as in the Murakami retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum. Much has been made of Murakami's reputation as the Japanese Warhol-and, by the way, for a view of this master's commercial portraiture of prominent Jewish art and political figures like Golda Meir and Franz Kafka, Albert Einstein and Sarah Bernhardt, catch the exhibition, “Warhol's Jews: 10 Portraits Reconsidered” at the Jewish Museum. The extensive Takashi Murakami show with his signature DOB's, Super Novas, variations on Chaos, ko2s, and Jellyfish Eyes, finally explained to me those bewildering and kitsch dancing cherries on brown that distinguished the Vuitton luggage and bags in luxury shops and street vendor fakes in 2002, as in “Life is just a bowl of . . . .”

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura

Gypsy

On opening night, Broadway producer Ted Hartley stood on the corner of 8th Avenue and 47 Street looking for the giant tour buses that would take the star-studded audience to Chelsea for the “Gypsy” after party. A ten-minute standing ovation at the St. James Theatre not withstanding, he worried how the economy would affect this new production of the legendary show. (A visit to the Lincoln Center branch of the New York Public Library will give you a sense of the history; the exhibition of choreographer Jerome Robbins' memorabilia includes a “Gypsy” strip drop.) Of course, no one can predict how the future looks, but now starring Patti LuPone as Mama Rose, clearly a role she was born to do, this is the show to see. With her monster chops --that must convey uber-mom Rose's fragility and overbearing obsession-LuPone comfortably inherits a tradition begun by Ethel Merman. The cheering crowd, a former Rose, Angela Lansbury among them, included Lauren Bacall, Marisa Tomei, about to open in a new production of  “Top Girls,” Marty Richards, Liz Smith, Celia Weston, Stephen Root, funny in George Clooney's Leatherheads opening this week; designer Zac Posen came with Stella Schnabel who told me her father is now scouting locations for his next movie in Morocco.
             One person was confident. Arthur Laurents wrote the original book in 1961 based upon Gypsy Rose Lee's 1959 autobiography. At 90, he has directed the new production. We caught up with him having a pre-show cocktail next door with David Saint, the artistic director of George Street Playhouse, with whom he is planning to direct “West Side Story” later this year. Mr. Laurents assured me he was not 91 as reported. He also claimed, this was the best “Gypsy” ever. And who could argue otherwise?

Regina Weinreich            

Graphic Design: Salpeter Ventura