pt at large

"Degas and The Nude": An Artist's Obsession With The Female Form

“Degas and The Nude”

Museum of Fine Arts
465 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115

October 9, 2011 - February 5, 2012

NOTE: Wednesday nights after 4 pm, admission is by voluntary contribution (suggested donation $22. And...your General Admission ticket includes one free repeat visit within 10 days!)

For an artist who never married and became a recluse in his later years after 1890, Edgar Degas saw more naked feminine derrières and bosoms than most lucky Frenchman would see in a lifetime. Nearly 1/5 of his 1200 paintings were of nude or semi nude women. While most men might have hormonal urges on their minds when lounging about in saloons, dance halls, and brothels, Degas was intrigued with depicting ballerinas, prostitutes, and other working women whom he befriended, in their sitting rooms, toilettes, and bedrooms in moments arguably more intimate than their couplings with men.

“Degas and the Nude,” combines the formidable holdings of The Musée d’Orsay in Paris with the robust collection of The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The exhibition includes paintings, etchings, pastels, drawings, mono-prints, and sculpture.

The basement, no other polite way of phrasing it, of the MFA’s new Wing of the America’s seems an unlikely location to hang such a heralded exhibition. No natural light penetrates the gallery, perhaps to protect the pigments and dyes and inks on the artwork. The whispers of spectators in the serpentine traffic that winds its way through the show and the subdued lighting evoke a spirit of veneration as viewers pause thoughtfully in front of each painting.  The hush inside turns the exhibit into the Chapel of Edgar Degas.

The show’s shrewd setup is designed to fit into six viewing spaces: “The Classical Body: Degas’s Beginnings;” The Body In Peril;” “The Body Exploited;” “The Body Observed;” “The Body Exhibited;” and “Bodies In Motion.” Each section is introduced by printed panels explaining the room’s theme. The reward of the combining the Orsay (a third of the exhibits contents) and MFA holdings is the inclusion of dozens of Degas’s preliminary sketches, mono-prints or charcoal drawings for many of his works.

The first section of the exhibit shows Degas’s first paintings in the early 1860s. He was aspiring to become a historical painter and employed austere classic compositions and metaphorical themes - the kind of artwork you read about in Art 101 texts and walk right past with a cursory glance in other MFA galleries. His transformation from Neo-Classic to Impressionist is a testament to the artistic upheavals going on in Paris in the late 1800s.

One of the benefits of his early art education is that Degas was a deliberate worker, a work ethic derived from his training in classic art schools in the mid-1800s in which he was required to copy classic art works. Dozens of his monotypes and paintings are accompanied by drawings, sketches or etchings that preceded the final product and show Degas’s endless sense of inventiveness and artistic curiosity.

Degas’s talent is reminiscent of neo-classic Jean-August-Dominique Ingres and romanticist Eugene Delacroix. But while Degas could match their muscular approach to color and drawing, the works that made him a major Impressionist painter are more visceral and play with light and composition more freely. While Ingres and Delacroix were informative, Degas was evocative. Degas painted from his heart.

Edgar Degas was the chronicler of the quiet moments women spent well out of view of the men in their lives. The fleshy paintings and monotypes that make up the bulk of the exhibit focuses on these. Degas rarely painted his female subject’s faces. The female face and its expression would have derailed his intention to capture the simple grace, the universal mystique, of an everyday moment.

Well, mostly. The room “The Body Exploited,” is Degas in tabloid mode. He slips into a bawdy documentary style showing naked or semi-naked prostitutes in unguarded moments, pleasuring themselves, cleaning up after a business call, or indolently lounging around during inevitable lulls in the hours of the day. But even these mono-prints are more in the spirit of chronicling than titillating.

For most of the pictures in the exhibit, he preferred to paint views from the side or back, his subjects toweling off after a bath, combing hair or appraising herself in a mirror. You can almost smell the soap, the body odor, and the damp towels in the instants he captures. Time after time, you become aware of Degas’s classic sense of composition, his palette of richly muted colors, and his insistence on portraying ordinary female figures.

Maybe depictions of these unguarded private moments of solitude and reflection resonate with us because we’ve lived them ourselves. Maybe we just like looking at images of naked women. And I’m endlessly grateful that Edgar Degas’s obsession with female nakedness resulted in beauty that was more than skin deep.

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Gallery note: The multimedia guide , an iPhone type device, is worh the five buck rental charge.

"The multimedia guide for the exhibition includes video of pastel and printmaking techniques, plus perspectives from a figure model, a pastel artist, and others. With extensive commentary by George T. M. Shackelford, chair, Art of Europe and Arthur K. Solomon Curator of Modern Art at the MFA, the guide is narrated by Amanda Palmer, singer/songwriter and formerly of The Dresden Dolls."

"Degas and The Nude" will be shown at the Musee d'Orsay from March 13- July 1, 2012.

"Divine Sister" - Devilishly Funny Romp From SpeakEasy Stage Company

THE DIVINE SISTER
Play by Charles Busch
Directed: by Larry Coen
Sets, Cristina Todesco. Lights, Daniel H. Jentzen. Costumes, Charles Schoonmaker. Original music/sound, Arshan Gailus.
Presented by SpeakEasy Stage Company.
At: Roberts Studio Theatre in the Calderwood Pavilion, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston.
Through Nov. 19. Tickets $30-$55, 617-933-8600,
www.speakeasystage.com
140 Minutes, no intermission

Here’s the first clue that “Divine Sister” will not remind you of an Audrey Hepburn movie. Writer Charles Busch’s other creations include “Die, Mommy, Die!,” “Psycho Beach Party,” and “Vampire Lesbians of Sodom.”  And the Divine Sister, Mother Superior, is played by Jeffery Roberson, better known from audiences from Provincetown to Broadway as Varla Jean Merman.

Now that we have that straight, or shall I say understood, we may begin. The show is an absolute romp.  

The actors, Jeffery Roberson (Mother Superior/Susan), Paula Plum (Sister Acacius/Lil), Kathy St. George (Sister Walburga/Mrs. MacDuffie), Sasha Castroverde (Agnes), Ellen Colton (Mrs. Levinson/Timmy), and Christopher Michael Brophy (Jeremy/Brother Venerius), chew up their scenes with sheer gluttony. If overacting were a sin, they’d all spend eternity in hell.

Remember those seven bad words that got George Carlin in trouble? Well, they are lingua franca here.  So are dastardly slang words for Catholics, Jews, and numerous ethnic and cultural groups. I stopped counting gasps from the audience because laughter, at first nervous, then hearty, followed the raunchy lines that began exploding like over-heated kernels of popcorn.

Mother Superior's first entrance: unconventional from the first scene.

1966: Sister Superior hatches a plan to rebuild the crumbling edifice of St. Veronica’s Convent School in Pittsburgh. A visit to possible benefactress and Jewish atheist Mrs. Levinson uncovers the byzantine, hilarious history they share. Other plots include the mystery of a drama-queen young postulant, Sister Agnes, who sees holy visions in undergarments, and the arrival of Sister Walburga from Germany, who is intent on overthrowing Mother Superior and sanctifying the remains of Jesus’ long lost sister that are interred under St. Veronica's Convent.

The element of camp humor is elevated to that of a holy sacrament. Mugging and eye-rolling asides to the audience reach vaudevillian heights. If you’re a movie buff, you’ll understand writer Busch’s references to nearly every movie about Nuns ever produced.

The staging and sets are delightful, imaginative and low-budget. Each plot twist, and there are many, becomes more absurd. I felt like we reached the saturation point well before the uber-outlandish final scene. But what the heck, the point was to have a good time spoofing sacred cows and Busch has spoofed of herd them.

If you want to see a bunch of really good actors having a helluva good time, “Divine Sister” is for you.

Photo courtesy Craig Bailey, Speakeasy Stage Company

"In The Red and Brown Water," Part 1 of "The Brother/Sister Plays" in Boston

IN THE RED AND BROWN WATER
Play by: Tarell Alvin McCraney
Directed by Megan Sandberg-Zakian
Sets, Erik Diaz. Lights, David Roy. Costumes, Sarah Nelson. Sound, Aaron Mack.
Presented by Company One. At: Plaza Theatre, Boston Center for the Arts, Boston. Through Dec. 3.
Tickets $33-$38, 617-933-8600
www.companyone.org


Every so often a play with smashing reviews comes to town, I witness the show and walk away scratching my head. Such was the case with “In The Red and Brown Water,” the Company One production now at Boston Center for the Arts Plaza Theatre.
 
Perhaps the entire fabric of the story is knitted together tighter in “The Brothers Size” and “Marcus; Or The Secret of Sweet,” the two plays that complete Tarell Alvin McCraney’s trilogy “The Brother/Sister Plays,” now playing in repertory at the theater.
 
McCraney draws on the culture of the Yoruban people of West Africa for inspiration. The play’s characters are named after Yoruban gods and goddesses and, like Greek and Roman deities, represent particular powers.
 
The theater program contains an unprecedented 16 pages of interviews, artwork, and back-stories about the playwright, Yoruba culture, and a Family Tree diagramming the characters in “The Brother/Sister Plays”.
 
Do your homework: read this before you see the play. I suppose if this were an Anglo play, we wouldn’t need the back stories and family tree diagrams because the playwright would assume the audience already knew that Zeus was the King of the Gods, Diana the Goddess of the Hunt and so forth. Not so here.
 
“In The Red and Brown Water” characters Oya, Aunt Elegua, Mama Moja and Nia, Shun, Elegba, Egungun, Shango and brothers Oshhoozi and Ogun Size are also the names of West African spirits. The West African deities, like these characters, are the same mix of nobility, fractiousness, connivance, conviviality, and loyalty as any bunch of Greek or Roman gods and goddesses.

Hampton Fluker, Miranda Craigwell, Michelle Dowd - as Marcus, Shaunta, Shun

The setting is San Pere, a small community deep in a steamy Louisiana bayou, where Creole culture mixes with McCraney’s infusion of Yoruban and Vodon (including belief in Voodoo) cultures in which ancient West African beliefs became woven into the Roman Catholicism introduced by white missionaries.
 
Tarell Alvin McCraney’s dialogue and characters refract this stew of history with the intensity of a mirrored disco ball - often with the same disorienting result. Several story lines run on parallel tracks.
 
The acting is fierce. Characters often recite their cues or tell back-story along with their lines…”Ogun enters with a pained look on his face…” Ogun says as he enters a scene. This was a useful storytelling device, perhaps similar to that of an African storyteller dramatizing a tale for his audience and McCraney didnt overdo it.
 
Family life in San Pere is light years away from The Huxtables. Characters swear, lie, gossip, cheat on their vows, and follow their urges. Morality is shifty territory. Fidelity might be taken for strength or foolishness. Forgiveness may or may not be granted but second, third, or fourth chances usually are.
 
Interpreting dreams and premonitions is serious business in San Pere. Early on in the play, Elegba tells Mama Moja his dream about seeing her daughter Oya standing in the water, her blood turning the water brown. Whether it has to do with death, infertility, or something to happen in the next two parts of the trilogy, I have no idea.

I could see the characters’ emotional pains and pleasures but didn’t have enough cultural context to feel them. Themes of fidelity/infidelity, loyalty/betrayal, community/self-interest, obligation/opportunity, didn’t reach the level of universality.
 
For me, one of the best reasons to see this play is to witness a company of black actors work at high levels of dramatic excellence. McCraney’s “In The Red and Brown Water” may have been difficult for me to interpret but the young playwright is an authentic voice unafraid to dig deep into disparate roots of African American culture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cast photo

Back: Miranda Craigwell, Johnnie McQuarley, Hampton Fluker, James Milord. 
Front: Natalia Naman, Juanita Rodrigues, Michelle Dowd, Jerry Goodwin. 
Not pictured: Chris Leon.

Occupy Starbucks

With this brew of corporate chicanery, Starbucks belongs in the same parade as fee-crazed banks that take advantage of the fine print... or in Starbuck's case, no print at all.

Forget Citibank. Starbucks climbed to the top of the corporate greed-heap with the discovery that they’ve had their latte-flavored thumb on the scale, fleecing caffeine starved customers for the past couple of years.

A story in the Boston Globe says the Seattle company has been adding $1.50 to the price of their ½ pound bags of coffee.

The Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation says no disclosure of the extra fee was listed on the packaging or on Starbucks' premises. So, you if you bought a half pound of an $11.95 per pound coffee, you were getting pounded for $7.45. Starbucks transparency policy was as opaque a cup of Skinny Caramel Macchiato.

Apparently, Starbucks customers are so used to paying inflated prices for their java, they never caught on. C’mon. Is the Costa Rica Terrazu or the Guatemala Antigua that good? Or are Starbucks customers out of their beans (sorry if this includes some loyal readers)?

A spokesman for Starbucks said the company charged for half-pound bags to cover “the additional labor and packaging needed to accommodate those customers’ unique request.” 

Really?  Asking to purchase a half-pound of coffee is “unique”? I suppose paying around $5 for a Starbucks "hand- crafted" Mocha Caramel Frappuccino Grande is unique, too (although the message has not been lost on franchises like Dunkin' Donuts).

The hidden fee, my friends, was corporate greed at its most haughty, exceeded only by corporate chutzpah.

Exposed to the piracy, a Starbucks spokesman announced, “We are pleased to be able to now offer our customers alternative sizes of whole-bean coffee in all of our US stores, free of any service charge.”

This is a "Venti" sized cup of corporate bombast.

Note to the Occupy Wall Street protesters.  Now that you’ve been booted out of Zuccotti Park, consider deploying your tarps and tents outside Starbucks. And BYO coffee, preferably Eight O’Clock Bean Coffee, a bargain at half the price.

Before I Leave You: A Boomer Pens A Bittersweet Boomer Comedy

BEFORE I LEAVE YOU

Written by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro

Director: Jonathan Silverstein

Credits:
Sets, Allen Moyer, Lights, David Lander, Costumes, Michael Krass, Original music and sound, David Remedios

Presented by the Huntington Theatre Company
At the Calderwood Pavilion’s Wimberly Theater
Through Nov. 13

Ticket price: Starting at $25

Whether you think this play is a boom or a bust may depend on your age. For the boomers in the audience, the shadow of advancing age and the certainty of tomorrows, once taken for granted, take on an eerie edge. What is the latest medical scare? How have friendships endured? What is the cost of roads not taken?  If you’re a boomer, you are familiar with this kind of terrain.

The play crackles with a sense of urgency.  Playwright Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro wanted to write a play “about four friends on the cusp of old age,” she knows what makes them tick, what consumes them, and the secrets they keep from one another and from themselves. The play is funny, dark, mordant, and sweet. Yamagiwa has lived this stuff.

Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro has resided within walking distance of Harvard Square for forty years. She graduated from Radcliffe around the time JFK was elected and has been writing short stories and poems since then. Harvard Square is as good a place you’ll find to witness human condition and the playwright has been paying attention.

The play opens with four friends – Emily (Kippy Goldfarb), a 61 year-old painter, Koji (Glenn Kubota), her 62 year-old writer/professor Japanese husband of forty years, Jeremy (Ross Bicknell), a 64 year old professor and novelist, and Trish (Karen MacDonald), his 58 year-old out-of-work sister who’s moved in with Jeremy - sharing dinner in the Chinese restaurant they’ve met at for decades. Their conversation centers on a medical problem Jeremy has just experienced.  

“This is the first time anything like this has happened,” Jeremy says. “It’s funny – when you’re young, ‘the first time’ means something great, but when you’re our age ‘the first time’ means a heart attack or a stroke.”

Thus begins a series of life-changing events that test the bonds this quartet of friends have with one another. Some pass the test, some don’t.

Within minutes, two things become abundantly clear. Their levity as they consider Jeremy’s episode is a bridge to deal with the fact that they are now officially “old,” and that Trish is going to be the lightning rod that will charge the temper and tenor of the play.

Kippy Goldfarb, Glen Kubota, Karen MacDonald, and Ross Bickell in Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro’s “Before I Leave You’’

Trish obliviously keeps the plot careening along as she hilariously gives voice the truths about vulnerability, marriage, careers, and friendships that lurk beneath the affable veneer at dinner this night.  She may not have the academic or artistic credentials the others have but she has a Ph.D. in analyzing character and there’s no filter from her thoughts to her lips. She's the Greek chorus in a short skirt and low cut blouse.

"Before You Leave Me"’s stew of ideas- race, class, love, fidelity, and mortality - can bounce around like ping pong balls but it’s riveting nonetheless. The introduction of Koji and Emily’s 22 year-old son Peter (Alexis Camins) and his relationship with a Vietnamese woman he's met as he works as a bagger in a local market adds the issue of green cards to the mix. Oy.

The play is a series of vignettes that flesh out back stories - Emily’s artwork being dominated by Koji’s ego fueled sense of self, Jeremy’s honorable nature and loyalty while grappling with an ominous white spot an MRI has found in his brain, Koji’s infatuation with a young intern, Trish’s triangulated relationship with Emily and her brother Jeremy, and why son Peter is so estranged from his emotionally distant father, Koji.

Koji’s frequent pronouncements - egotistical, harsh, and judgmental - during the two-act play make you wonder what the glue is that has held the four together for decades. The series of surprises in the last act reveal the answer.

The challenges that Emily, Koji, Jeremy, and Trish navigate are not age specific but definitely time stamped. These characters realize it’s time to face them or forever keep their peace. And forever is not an abstraction anymore. Before I leave you, indeed.

Somewhere in the middle of Act 2, Emily, Koji, Jeremy, and Trish spontaneously sing “September Song” (Maxwell Anderson/Kurt Weill). The lyrics poignantly fit the scene. It has the impact of a freight train. By the play’s last heart-warming scene, we discover who will be aboard.

Photo courtesy of Huntington Theater: T. Charles Erickson