Archives for November 1, 2003

“I was forced to know what it is like to feel oneself the prey of demonic powers, in both the Greek and the Christian sense, stripped of self-control and self-respect, behaving like a ham actor in a Strindberg play.”

W.H. Auden (on jealousy), in Modern Canterbury Pilgrims

I ventured out in the golden sunshine this afternoon to look at art, and went straight to the best show in town, Joseph Cornell: The 100th Birthday, up at Richard L. Feigen & Co. (34 E. 69th St. between Madison and Park Avenues) through Jan. 16. It consists of 20 objects by Cornell–mostly the boxes that brought him fame–from the collection of Robert Lehrman.

Rather than try to describe what a Cornell box looks like, I yield the floor to Fairfield Porter, who did the job once and for all in a 1966 review collected in Art in Its Own Terms: Selected Criticism 1935-1975. Here’s an excerpt:

The boxes are 12 by 15 inches more or less…A sheet of glass in front is held in a carefully and imperfectly made frame, whose mitered corners do not fit tightly. The finish looks worn and handled, and a foreign newspaper may be varnished over the surface. The inside is usually white, clean, cracked and peeling. The contents vary greatly. There may be a round column on one side establishing the space of the room, and a horizontal bar from which hangs a piston ring. There are actual objects like wooden parrots on a perch, coarse screening, springs, cork balls like fishing rod floats, wine glasses whole or broken, clay pipes, a bearing plate of a pocket watch, a dried starfish, bits of driftwood whose shape indicates that they were once part of something used, nails, coins; sand colored navy blue, pink, yellow, white….

A list of the contents is misleading, because it does not tell about Cornell’s sense of how little is enough, like an actor’s sense of timing or the Japanese sensitivity to the value of emptiness and the isolated object. As composer he is director and stage designer both, with the director’s feeling for the emotional value of each actor’s part, and the most efficient use of the space allotted to him.

I don’t much care for surrealism, but I’ve always loved Cornell’s little universes, at once troubled and serene, into which one peers raptly at a parallel world where nothing is as it seems. I’ve looked at a lot of Cornell boxes over the years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many at one time, and most of these are incredibly choice examples. Go, and go again. Don’t be oppressed by the fancy address and locked door–buzz and you’ll be admitted, even without a jacket and tie–and don’t be fazed by the Monday-Friday hours on the Feigen gallery’s Web site. At least for now, the gallery is open on Saturdays, and if you bring along a couple of hundred thousand dollars you can even take a box home with you. (Which reminds me to mention that one of the most intriguing aspects of the show is the price list. Why do some Cornell boxes cost more than others? As far as I can tell, the ones with more stuff in them are the most expensive.)

“Joseph Cornell: The 100th Birthday” coincides with the publication of Joseph Cornell: Shadowplay…Eterniday, a staggeringly well-done coffee-table folio containing an all-about-Cornell DVD-ROM that’s worth the price of the book all by itself. I can’t even begin to recommend Shadowplay…Eterniday strongly enough.

I also went to a Helen Frankenthaler show, “Prints: A Survey,” up at Jim Kempner Fine Art (501 W. 23rd St. at 10th Ave.) through Nov. 29. Frankenthaler is one of the greatest printmakers of the postwar era, and several of her very best efforts are on display, including Broome Street at Night, a deceptively simple, wonderfully involving aquatint from 1987 which I’d happily hang over my fireplace if some well-to-do reader of “About Last Night” would care to buy it for me, or for OGIC. We get along quite nicely and would be glad to consider a joint-custody agreement.

Dear OGIC:

As you know, I haven’t read The Human Stain, nor am I likely to. I’m one of those unfortunate folk who is allergic to most of the Major American Novelists who came of age in the Fifties. Bellow, Mailer, Updike, Roth: they all leave me cold. But my guess is that the makers of the film version have made a good-faith effort to preserve the essence of Philip Roth’s novel, and that this is part of the problem with the movie.

None of the characters, after all, are actual human beings–they’re all symbols made as flesh, the usual Rothian walking archetypes. And therein lies the chief obstacle to filming The Human Stain, which is that you can’t cast it. If you had to pick a movie star to play the part of an aging American classics professor who pretends to be Jewish but is really black, Sir Anthony Hopkins is obviously the last person on earth you’d choose. But…who would you choose? Who could you choose? You can write about a character like Coleman Silk, but you can’t put him on screen.

This fundamental implausibility–the inability to believe in the existence of any of the major characters as embodied by the cast–sinks the film before the first reel is over, in spite of the best efforts of a whole bunch of talented actors. They’re so good, in fact, that they almost make you believe what you’re seeing. The emotions seem real, but the dramatic framework that holds them in place is absurd. (If it were any more plausible, of course, you’d be forced to confront all those awful Portnoy-redux clich

Good news! Last Halloween, Cinetrix and the ‘Fesser prudently clipped and saved the Onion list I alluded to below, and have sent it along in its entirety:

Top Halloween Costumes, Women 18-34

1. Sexy French maid

2. Sexy cat

3. Sexy witch

4. Sexy hobo

5. Sexy ketchup bottle

6. Sexy prostitute

7. Sexy Mother Teresa

8. Sexy bus driver

9. Sexy Teenage Mutant Ninja turtle

What was life like, anyway, before the Onion? Can anyone remember those dark, mirthless days? I don’t even want to try.

Dear TT:

Please share! Your thoughts on the film version of The Human Stain, that is. It’s part of my long-term moviegoing plan, but not particularly high on the list. A good word from you will bump it up a few places, while your disfavor could give me an unimpeachable excuse to give it a miss until video. So I’m eager to hear what you thought.

I also took in a movie among the costumed tonight. The women mostly seemed to subscribe to the Onion school of dressing up: sexy witch, sexy nurse, sexy cat, sexy hobo…. (Alas, I could not find a link to the old Onion list of the top Halloween costumes for women 18-34–but I do have some advice: don’t google “sexy hobo.”) The clear standout was a guy with an expertly drawn phrenological map on his shaved head. The jury’s out on whether it was a sexy phrenologically mapped head.

As for the movie, that was the suitably scary 28 Days Later. Not spooky, mind you, but scary in that special way reserved for rapidly traveling viruses that make the people you love into flesh-eating zombies. Believe it or not, I enjoyed myself, especially during some early scenes that let you feast your eyes on an utterly deserted but mostly intact London, a great unruined ruin. The real saving grace, though, was that this flesh-eating zombie movie had a sense of humor, as did my gallant companion and the audience at large.

So, any zombie action in your movie?