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)