{"id":1674,"date":"2019-07-01T16:54:51","date_gmt":"2019-07-01T16:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1674"},"modified":"2019-07-30T13:57:49","modified_gmt":"2019-07-30T13:57:49","slug":"hot-nights-at-the-barbican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2019\/07\/hot-nights-at-the-barbican.html","title":{"rendered":"Hot Nights at the Barbican"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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The hottest tickets in London last Saturday coincided with the hottest day in London for at least forty years. Both events were at the Barbican Arts Centre, which now has some claims to being one of the world\u2019s best and most lively arts venues.  Despite the spectacular traffic, the  near-impossibility of navigating that area of London to find the sole entrance to the vast Barbican car park (owing, I think, to chaotic road closures for Cross Rail), and the brand-new London penalty charge for high-emission diesel-engine cars, we still managed to arrive in time to see the first major European retrospective of the work of Lee Krasner (1908-84), at London until 1 Sept., then at Frankfurt, the Zentrum Paul Klee in Switzerland, and finally at the Guggenheim Bilbao. A bit shockingly,  Krasner\u2019s first survey show was at London\u2019s Whitechapel Gallery in 1966, organised by Bryan Robertson, followed by Barbara Rose\u2019s great retrospectives of 1983-85 at Houston, San Francisco and MoMA, NY. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

      I have to declare not only my close friendship with Barbara Rose; but also that my wife and I gave dinner to Lee Krasner at our house in Oxfordshire, 35 or 40 years ago. I suppose we ought to put a Blue Plaque on the chair on which she sat. But I also have to make another disclosure, as the other hot ticket for Saturday was for the Peter Sellars production of Jan\u00e1\u010dek\u2019s The Cunning Little Vixen<\/em>, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. My wife and I have been to so many of Peter\u2019s productions in the last few decades that he must feel we are stalking him. (The most memorable time we encountered him  was at the first-ever Ruhr-Triennale in Bottrop, Germany, in 2003,  where he was staging Euripides\u2019 The Children of Herakles<\/em> in the local Gymnasium, and the audience was given a splendid dinner cooked by a large group of Kurdish refugees.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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LONDON, ENGLAND – MAY 29: Lee Krasner: Living Colour exhibition at Barbican Art Gallery on May 29, 2019 in London, England. The exhibition is on view 30 May – 1 September 2019. (Photo by Tristan Fewings\/Getty Images for Barbican Art Gallery)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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        Though it probably wasn\u2019t very good for her career, Lee Krasner was the widow of Jackson Pollock. Comparisons being odious, let\u2019s just say that on the evidence of the magnificent, generously installed  Barbican show, she was a very great painter. The superb catalogue, edited by Eleanor Nairne, and Gail Levin\u2019s exemplary 2011 biography of Krasner, give plenty of visual back-up to this judgement; and also make it clear that Krasner developed her talent and genius independently of her association with Pollock. Which is not to say that you don\u2019t find parallels in their work, but Krasner\u2019s artistic imagination was very much her own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

         Starting with some academic nude studies of the early 30s, and carrying on with them into 1940, you can see her working out the principles of cubism for herself, and then, in her post-War work, she made her \u201cLittle Images\u201d with a new feeling for colour, until in summer, 1956 she had the breakthrough of the \u201cProphecy\u201d paintings, with their fleshy, looping brushstrokes, tinged with black and pink. You can\u2019t help but think of Les Demoiselles d\u2019Avignon<\/em>. On 12 August she received the terrible telephone call telling her of Pollock\u2019s fatal car crash. Moving into Pollock\u2019s barn\/studio, she began working on the huge-scale. paintings we see at the Barbican. Most everything she touched became magical, even (or especially) the late 70s collages she made using a rediscovered portfolio of charcoal studies from art school. With the aid of a pair of scissors, she made them new. Unmissable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • \"\"
    Jan\u0087cek: The Cunning Little Vixen (semi-staged performances, sung in Czech) performed by the London Symphony Orchestra with Sir Simon Rattle: conductor,\nPeter Sellars: director, Lucy Crowe Vixen in the Barbican Hall on Wed. 26 June 2019.\nPhoto by Mark Allan<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n

             You\u2019ll almost\ncertainly have missed The Cunning Little Vixen<\/em>, as there were only two\nperformances in London with the London Symphony Orchestra under Simon Rattle.\n(The production, but with the Berlin Philharmonic, was seen in Berlin in October\n2017 \u2013 and doubtless elsewhere that I can\u2019t now discover.) The LSO is on the\nstage, with a platform in front for the singers, which gives a fullness and\nresonance to the music, but also heightens the role the orchestra plays in the\nproduction. Of course Jan\u00e1\u010dek himself reduced the score to a suite for orchestra,\nbut, though I must have seen (and admired) more than a dozen different\nproductions of this piece, until Saturday I don\u2019t think I realised that it is\nmore than half purely orchestral.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

             We don\u2019t\nnotice this in the opera house because there is usually so much (what we might\ncall) pantomime, dance and stage-business during the many, many orchestral\ninterludes. Peter Sellars\u2019 semi-staged version makes you wonder why we think of\nthe Vixen<\/em> as opera at all? All the singers (and the groups of child\nactors, singers and dancers, plus the (I make it, counting those listed in the\nprogramme) 64-member chorus, are dressed in basic black. The props, aside from\nthe Forester\u2019s and the poacher\u2019s rifles, are one table and three chairs. There is\na screen above and behind the orchestra, which begins with the metamorphosis of\ntadpoles into quite fetching frogs, carries on with the mating of dragonflies,\nand injects a note of humour when the vixen massacres the hens in the farmyard,\nshown by having the title singer, Lucy Rowe, savaging a chicken kebab. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

             The remainder\nof the action, such as it is, is cleverly mimed by the troupe of 25 children (more-or-less;\nplease forgive me if the two wearing kitten heels are old enough to vote).\nAmong them is Olivia Solomu, whose concluding solo as the granddaughter of the\noriginal frog who ate the mosquito was bell-clear and stunning. When all 80-something\nof the chorus filled the Barbican Theatre from the aisles and wings, their writhing,\ntwisting dance movements were a sight to behold (and caused me a deep intake of\nbreath, imagining the cost of getting them all there). The mimed bottom-wagging\ndog, hopping frogs, buzzing mosquitos, cricket and grasshopper caused me no\ncrisis of belief-suspending, and the dramatic economies of using mime and screened\nanimation simply allowed me to concentrate on, and hear the gorgeousness of the\nmusic. The platform was spacious enough for Sir Simon to move from one section\nof the band to another \u2013 and I noted with pleasure that Jan\u00e1\u010dek has given the\nviola section a good cut of the action. Fair\u2019s fair, and these middle voices increase\nthe fun of hearing the piping treble of the kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

             The score,\nwith its reminders of the  composer\u2019s\nother much beloved operas and the Glagolitic Mass, was (so far as I\u2019m concerned)\nconducted flawlessly, and brought many a tear to my eye \u2013 though the two\nprincipal performances were almost unsentimental.  Lucy Crowe\u2019s luscious soprano contrasted beautifully\nwith the earthiness, the appetite, the occasional gentleness, and the absence\nof self-pity of her Vixen. Gerald Finley\u2019s burnished, rich bass-baritone makes\nhim an ideal Forester, with just enough pain and the right amount of cynicism.\nWith his unpleasant wife, who wouldn\u2019t prefer the love of a good vixen?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    The hottest tickets in London last Saturday coincided with the hottest day in London for at least forty years. Both events were at the Barbican Arts Centre, which now has some claims to being one of the world\u2019s best and most lively arts venues.  Despite the spectacular traffic, the  near-impossibility of navigating that area of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1674","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-r0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1674"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1681,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1674\/revisions\/1681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}