Vulture for Culture

Cultured leisure

Had a great time at the museum yesterday... The jewelry and adornments exhibit in the Asian Art Museum was good -- lovely netsuke, Tibetan gzi stones, a corker of a Manchu headdress... Some ornaments I couldn't for the life of me figure out what portion or the body or apparel one could possible hang them on... A quite frightening "corpse plug" in the shape of a pig...

The "Masters of European Art" exhibit was also great, but really crowded. One had to be a skilled barracuda to glide in the moment someone left a particular painting. It was organized in a novel way -- instead of by country or period, they had all the landscapes in one room, all the portraits in another, all the genre pieces or allegorical pieces or Christian pieces grouped together. A wonderful Velasquez of his Moorish servant girl polishing a table, with a "Yeah, yeah, tell me about it, Franco, I'll live forever for posterity this way -- you want to stop putting hot drinks on the good tables? We do own coasters, you know" look on her face. A great Hogarth of "the Western Family", a lovely collection of ditzy women in hoops making exaggerated moues of delight at the head of the household coming in from the hunt with the smallest game bird in creation hanging on a string. Can't, alas, remember who painted the enormous portrait of the young man in the pouffiest pink satin suit in human history, topped off exquisitely by a hat that looks like an enlarged and elaborated paper cuff for a lamb shank.

Can you believe that the two Poussins were both religious subjects? A muddy pieta, and a high-school-glee-club-yearbook-photo grouping of the Holy Family. A messy crowd scene by David, and a somber and uninspiring Crown of Thorns by Titian.

As it sometimes took a while to be able to get close enough to the work to see who it was by and what it was titled, one could amuse oneself with speculations in the interim. A Virgin Mary, tremulously Bambi-eyed and clutched an enormous phallic shilleagh, standing on some crushed decapitated heads with more disembodied baby-heads floating in the background -- "Massacre of the Innocents"? "Our Lady of Sorrows"? Imagine my surprise when it turned out to be "The Immaculate Conception" -- "But she's standing on bleeding heads!" Faith, Hope and Charity, the caption avowed. Masters of Sarawak Painting?

My favorite piece was a Judith and Holofernes by Mantegna in silverwash... incredible detailing, a group both serene and sensual.

After I was done there, I sat out on the grass again and read The Semi-Attached Couple until the music was ready to start. The band was quite good -- the only problem was that they were WAY over-amplified for the space. I mean, this is the DeYoung Garden Court, not the Cow Palace! The guy kept saying, "Let's sing, everyone together now!" when you couldn't hear a single word of the lyrics. They might have been singing in Tagalog for all any of us knew.

And at least once they strayed into the John Denver Songbook. (There are survivors of Auschwitz. There are survivors of incest. I am a survivor of my mother's extensive John Denver repetoire.)

Well, if you went fifty yards away into the Asian Art Museum or fled back into the American Impressionists, you could enjoy the superb fiddling and not worry your pretty little head about the Tagalog version of "Snowbird." Headed home in the twilight.

Smashing Pumpkins

Brenda had been to the opera of "The Man Who Fell From Grace with the Sea," which includes the thespian talents of a kitten named Pumpkin. She reported that at least ten minutes of an hour-long pre-opera lecture were devoted to explaining that Pumpkin does not actually get swung against a brick wall while in the school satchel. A Pumpkin stunt-dummy is cunningly substituted while one of the spear-carriers nonchalantly conveys the real Pumpkin offstage, and the fluff that you see on impact is merely a special effect. Pumpkin does not appear for a curtain call at the end of the opera because it is past his bedtime.

There is also a giant disclaimer in the program: "PUMPKIN DOES NOT ACTUALLY GET SMASHED AGAINST A BRICK WALL."

The boggy man will get you

NY Times Book Review essay is pretty hysterical -- "A New Literary Hero: The Limp Silent Type," about literary treatments of all those bodies found in peat bogs, Lindow Man et al. A section on Seamus Heaney (whom the author describes as "the closest the world will ever come to a living bog man") made me scream aloud. "But Mr. Heaney more than made up for the insults he heaped on his relatives when he wrote 'Tollund Man,' possibly the sexiest tribute to a man strangled and dumped in a bog."

La Tiggy Winkle

"On Tuesday 1st December the Royal Opera House's 'In Focus' looked at the staging of 'The Tales of Beatrix Potter.' This is one of the Opera House's regular events to give an insight into works in the current repertory, and those attending were greeted by Mr. Jeremy Fisher and one of the red squirrels in full costume. Although, as the two dancers were performing in 'Swan Lake' that evening, they could not remain for the event they introduced the problems of dancing in a fur coat or with a pot-belly and the nightmare for a dancer of performing in a mask...

Once the dancers had learnt the basic coreography, rehearsals with the masks began... Early rehearsals of this section [The Mouse Waltz] led to 'multiple pile-ups' as the mice floundered into each other trying to grasp one another's tails.

Tails altogether present challenges as they get in the way of the steps, and for animals such as the squirrels and Mr. Tod alter the weight of the dancer's body. Other technical factors had to be considered. The men cast as pigs were given the benefit of special pointe classes... The role of Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle is regarded as a particular challenge.

Some adjustments have been made to the ballet for the stage... Mrs. Tabitha Twitchett (whose late inclusion in the film always seemed a mistake, and her scene with Mrs. Tittlemouse absurd in character and scale) has been discarded; eight little mice (played by Junior Associates of the Royal Ballet aged 8 or 9) added. Originally they were brought in to help with the elaborate scene changes, but apparently their roles have been developed."

(Theatre review, Beatrix Potter Society Newsletter, 1992)

Betsy Windsor

Taped the Elizabeth II documentary last night. Only intended to start the taping and then go off and write while it was running buuuut... when the first mise en scene materialized... a lone piper in the mists of dawn stalking somberly around the perimeter of Balmoral, the reverent accents of a BBC narrator enjoining us to remember the unbroken lines of tradition surrounding and guiding the British royal line, the piper swinging sharply around the corner, then a sea of plump corgis foaming out of the entrance hall and streaming into the carriage circle with glad cries... Well, I was spellbound.