In what remains my favorite Ibsen play, Peer Gynt (1867), Peer is a
man without a self. He gets on by imitating others—a slave trader, a
great lover, a woodsman, a troll, a married homesteader, an emperor, a
businessman—all of them illusory, and all of them ending in failures.
Toward the end of his life, Peer is confronted by the “Button Molder,”
who carries with him a giant ladle in which he melts men without
selves into the indifferent stuff out of which future men will be
made—much as a contemporary Norwegian wife might have melted down a
metal button in order to make a new one.
The Button Molder challenges Peer to find his essential “self,” but
Peer cannot. And he can no longer escape into his idle dreams. So he
picks up an onion and, reciting the many “selves” he has put on, peels
away its layers, looking for its central kernel. However, an onion
has no central kernel—just as Peer has no true self, and, at the
play’s end, Peer hovers on the edge of disaster.
Ibsen was sick of the stupid, illusion-driven, self-absorbed stuffed
shirts he saw around him in Norway. So he left Norway for Germany and
Italy, and turned to writing “realistic” fourth-wall dramas like A
Doll’s House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, and The Wild Duck
(recently on the boards as part of Bard’s SummerScape Festival).
However, his concern with empty selves continued.
The plays leading up to The Wild Duck all deal with
self-illusions–each one from a different angle
In A Doll’s House (1879), probably Ibsen’s best-known play, a woman
walks out on her stuffy, oppressive fool of a husband This was an
unthinkable action at the time, and one that made what Ibsen liked to
refer to as the “upright” members of proper Victorian society so
furious that most theaters refused to stage the play. Even Ibsen was
forced to re-write its ending.
So, in the next play, Ghosts (1881), Ibsen responds to the “upright”
people who attacked A Doll’s House—this time by depicting a woman who
does what such people would have had her do and stays married—only to
discover that her (now dead) husband has been a womanizer, that the
local vicar (her former suitor) is a moral windbag, that her maid is
her husband’s bastard daughter, and that her son has inherited
syphilis from his father (Ibsen thought this was possible) and has
come home a dying, “worm-eaten” (Ibsen’s term) shadow of his former
self.
Syphilis—on a stage, perhaps in front of young women? Not on your
life! And so Ibsen continued to scandalize and to attack those who
wore false fronts and preached social conformity.
Ibsen’s next play, An Enemy of the People (1882), takes a
proto-muckraker not unlike Ibsen, one Doctor Stockmann, a health
officer who tries to tell the citizens of a small provincial town that
the very tourist hot springs on which their livelihood depends are
poisonous. In return, Stockmann’s house is stoned by the “upright”
people of the town, his children are attacked, he is publicly declared
an “enemy of the people,” and—at the last—he learns that his own
prosperity is based on stocks his family owns in the hot springs
themselves.
Finally, in The Wild Duck (1884), Ibsen takes the realist/reformer
Dr. Stockman and turns him into Gregers Werle, a man who has made
“truth-telling” his own self-illusion, and whose actions destroy all
that is good in the lower-middle-class family to which he attaches
himself.
The play is dated, and making it succeed on a contemporary stage is
no easy task. This is partly because the very characters Ibsen (and
others) invented to attack society’s foolishnesses have come down to
our own time as the common stuff of family dramas and sitcoms,
characters such as the out-of-it father, the sensible wife, the
precocious child, the doddering grandparent, the drunken neighbor, the
crazy man down the street, the meddling busybody, and the contented
older couple.
So, while in Ibsen’s day the play was much more nearly a tragedy,
today, it comes at one as if it were a comedy. Indeed, Bard publicity
referred to it as a “comic tragedy.”
Despite the challenges, translator David Eldridge, director Caitriona
McLaughlin, and a fine crew of actors pulled off an absorbing and
effective production, one made all the more impressive when compared
to the poorly received over-modernization of “A Doll’s House”
currently playing in New York.
They also succeeded in finding that middle ground in Ibsen
characterization—someplace between realistically human and satirically
exaggerated. Playing with a Nixonian hunch, Sean Cullen made a fine,
easily led Hjalmar Ekdal; Mary Bacon, a perky, feet-on-the-ground
Gina; Liam Craig, a world-weary philosopher/skeptic Dr. Relling, and
Rachel Cora, an excellent 14-year-old Hedwig. And further praises
could go to practically any other member of the cast—truly an
impressive show.
And finally, one must note Ibsen’s brilliant use of the Ekdal attic,
filled as it is with remnants of the sorts of the forest Grandfather
Ekdal (Peter Malony) used to hunt in—and the unable-to-fly titular
wild duck. This attic represents the Ekdal psyche and, as such, the
illusion of freedom—for people who, like most of us, possess fragile
outer selves and cannot take too much truth. Old Ekdal spends most of
his day there, daughter Hedwig (who is still innocent) visits the wild
duck there, and the illusion-destroying “realist,” Gregers Werlel
(Dashiell Eaves), wants nothing more than to destroy it.
Does this brilliantly realized play have anything to say to today’s
world? I mean, do we have any among us who are boxed in by the
“selves” they have chosen to put on? Of course not. Here, in
21st-century America? Unimaginable!
–Ernst Schoen-René

It has to do with a little-remembered 1871 meeting of various left-wing groups at an equally little-remembered London pub called Jack Straw’s Castle.  The subject might seem inauspicious, but what happened there (and at other occasions drawn into the play), had world-shaking results.  It also has surprisingly compelling messages for our own time.

Jack Straws Castle

Norinsky focuses equally well on two aspects of the events taking place—first, the local color and characters of those present, and, second, the essential battle taking place between two significant political systems—Anarchism, as represented by the Russian Anarchist Michael Bakunin, and Communism, as represented by the Prussian-born Karl Marx—both of whom are present.

The resolution of this larger conflict, as well as the local color and the engaging characters draw one in.

Jack Straw Castle’s publican (bartender) and his wife, Tommy and Maggie Atkins, are likable British working-class types.  She sings left-wing songs as she bustles about, while he converses with all comers, including a deliveryman for a local brewer, an American reporter (Robert Landor, of the New York World), and a young 20-year-old, who comes from the telephone company and asks if it would be possible to place a telephone pole on the pub’s property.  This latter, it turns out, is none other than a youthful George Bernard Shaw.

Others include Bakunin, Marx, Marx’s youngest daughter, Eleanor, who is an aspiring actress and who will have a stormy affair with Shaw in years to come, George Odger, a British labor leader, Elizabeth Dmitrieff, a survivor of the bloody put-down of the Paris Communes in 1871, and Sergei Nechaev, a young anarchist terrorist—with an itchy trigger finger, and a price on his head.

The tensions among such characters drive the action, and the Battle between Marx and Bukanin slowly takes center stage and plays out in action that is at once tense and politically informative.

There is a distinct difference between Anarchism and Communism as political systems.  Anarchism’s primary thrust is for the breaking down of individual entities—farms, governments, factories—and the re-creating of smaller communes that carry on in respectful harmony with one another.

Marxist Communism, on the other hand, deals with society on a grander basis—arguing for a so-called “dictatorship of the proletariat” that—of necessity—calls for a “leader” who will govern until a utopian society is created.  Bakunin understood what this meant all too well:

“They [the Marxists] maintain that only a dictatorship—their dictatorship, of course—can create the will of the people, while our answer to this is: No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.  While both social anarchists and Marxists share the same final goal, the creation of a free, egalitarian society without social classes and government, they strongly disagree on how to achieve this goal.

Anarchists believe that the classless, stateless society should be established by the direct action of the masses, culminating in social revolution and refusing any intermediate stage—such as the dictatorship of the proletariat—

on the basis that such a dictatorship will become a self-perpetuating fundament.”

For Bakunin, the fundamental difference between the two is that, for the Anarchists, “anarchism or freedom is the aim,” while, for the Communists, “temporary” dictatorship is the means, and so, in order to free the masses, they have first to be enslaved.

Me, I would side with the Anarchists on this one.  Nonetheless, it is Marx who connives—by means of several slippery tricks–to win the battle and get Bakunin thrown out of the major labor organization of the time, the International.  And this is what we see take place in Norinsky’s play.

One is left wondering how Communism won the battle and came to be the leading leftist force of the Twentieth Century.  Personally, I feel Communism’s later success derives from human laziness.  While Anarchism calls for individuals to undertake their own individual struggle for freedom—in shops, in local governments, in smaller collectives—Marxist Communism promises to save the individual all that trouble by turning the movement for change over to a dictatorship.

History and millions of deaths have shown us how well the latter works.  And history has also shown us how easily human laziness combined with simplistic political idealism can lead to enslavement and disaster.  Does that fact not have a good deal to say about our political situation today?

As Montaigne observed, roughly 400 years before our time: “Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known.”  Look about you and see the ignorant believers that surround you.  Or, find a home for Norinsky’s excellent study of the subject.

Art Collaboration: Ross Bleckner Re-Defines Crystal for Steuben

 Glass

Artist Ross Bleckner Stands in the Foreground of His Steuben Designer Collaboration Piece, Interaction

There is a time-honored tradition of artists working together with fine craftsmen to create beautiful art. Old Masters such as Peter Paul Rubens partnered with engravers and modern masters such as Pablo Picasso collaborated with top artisans in a variety of media to create ceramics, prints and sculptures. In this spirit, Ross Bleckner has undertaken his first art collaboration in glass with the venerable crystal house Steuben. The confluence of the brilliant crystal glass medium and Mr. Bleckner’s luminous art is a powerful addition to Matisse, Cocteau, Dali, O’Keefe, Noguchi and other 20^th century artists whose designs have already been commissioned by Steuben since its inception in 1903.

Ross Bleckner’s work has long dealt with fragility of life, with light, and abstraction through extreme representation. His paintings convey poetry, luminosity and an attention to technique that has earned him the respect as a modern master. Mr. Bleckner’s subject matter shifts from the micro-cellular level to the vast stellar cosmos bridging the gap between large and minute. His message is the experience of the mind grasping what is too large or too small to see and the fragility of human consciousness that is dependent on these unseen forces for its existence. Together with Steuben’s unique prismatic crystal glassmaking that captures, reflects and refracts light and the ironic fragile nature of the crystal’s solid weight, the art collaboration is well suited to Ross Bleckner’s aesthetic preoccupations.

"Forgotten" designed by artist Ross Bleckner

The artist was commissioned by Steuben to create three designer collaboration pieces: a sculpture for Steuben’s permanent museum collection, a limited edition series, and an accessible line of small glass figurines. The main piece is a huge 200lb slab of crystal entitled “Interaction”. This sculpture maps the human DNA in layered glass depicting the building block of life as entrapped molecules floating in a luminous red sea. Ross Bleckner’s crystal glass sculpture “Pharmakinetic”, cast in an edition of 12, is an enlarged molecule of a psychotropic drug imposing in its transparency, capturing and amplifying the surrounding light as its form shifts in a surreal optical interaction with its encompassing glass cube. The Ross Bleckner engraved crystal figurine “Forgotten” is a coffin lid in solid crystal. The small scale (2.25” x 4.75”) belies the immensity of its tragic message ennobled by the seemingly insubstantial glass form.

Pharmakinetic- An artist collaboration with Ross Bleckner and Steuben

Artists collaborating with master craftsmen create new opportunities for expression both for the art and for the medium. Because of its heavy nature, crystal forms have size limitations, yet Ross Bleckner pushed the physical constraints of glass with his immense “Interaction”. Instead of working with crystal as a functional art (for example, etching the surface of a plate or vase as artists have traditionally done with glass) Mr. Bleckner has created sculpture whose only purpose is to interact with its environment. The power of Mr. Bleckner’s art overcomes the fragile nature of the glass medium rendering it invincible, while Steuben’s crystal craftsmanship discovers a new facet of modern expression through this art collaboration with Ross Bleckner.

An encounter with Adrian is always memorable as is any encounter with his art.  At first, one is struck by the “arte povera” qualities: chipped plexiglass, broken planks, plateglass ”mended” by masking tape  but on closer examination everything is beautifully crafted, deliberate and secure.  The appearance of fragility is purely deceptive as the strength of the artist’s message emerges.

"those who know speak not..." by Adrian Frost upright view courtesty the Image Factory

Adrian’s next show “Introducing Furies: The Erinyes, Cthonic Deites Supernatural Personifications of the Anger of the Dead” opens September 3, 2011 3-5pm at The Art Colony Eureka Springs , Arkansas.

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Lion by Clint Matheny

Steuben Holds Silent Auction to Help Endangered Species

African Wildlife Conservation doesn’t seem to have much to do with the public arts or art exhibits. Most art exhibits are well-publicized public events that last for a few weeks and are kicked-off with an opening party attended by friends and art patrons. But there is also another kind of art exhibit that is a bit more ephemeral lasting only 24 hours and the gala opening serves as the closing as well. These one-nighters are silent art auctions for charity and one has to be lucky to find out about the event in order to attend. Generally speaking, the silent auction is not advertised to the public but to a targeted select list of collectors and it isn’t easy to find out where they may be happening. But in the case of a recent show at Steuben on behalf of the  African Wildlife Foundation, the search was worth it! 

Endangered Animals in Africa Protected by Crystal

The theme of the evening was wildlife conservation and protecting endangered species. As makers of the world’s finest crystal and glass, Steuben has a long history of recreating the natural world in crystal and its collaborative relationships with artists such as Kiki Smith, is an appropriate fine arts sponsor for the African Wildlife Foundation Fundraiser. The AWF is dedicated to rebalancing the relationship between mankind and the endangered animals found in the fragile landscape of Africa and the silent auction artists were chosen for the expression of their empathy with the animal world in their art. And the roster was impressive!     

Photography of Wildlife & Original Art

Upon first entering the Steuben gallery, one was confronted by Gina Magid’s large watercolor on paper of a ephemeral tiger and his powerful reflection in the water below. Next, was Hunt Slonem’s vigorous painting of a parrot and a Karen Heagle nude being suggestively visited by a snake rendered in ink wash. The Hilton Brothers (Chris Makos and Paul Solberg) created a visceral sensation with their photo diptych of a massive horse’s chest paired with a fragile stem of eucalyptus. John Huba, Jean DeBartolo and Robin Rice donated magnificent images of endangered elephants and the wildlife photography of Sheila Metzner, Richie Williamson and Clint Metheny were represented by lions in their natural African habitat. Wayne Maser, Marie Havens, Peter Bogardus and William Coupon turned their camera lens towards the people of the endangered African habitat, capturing the fragile harmony of mankind with his environment.     

Gina Magrid painting on paper hanging in the Steuben Gallery

The artists who donate to a charity fundraiser, such wildlife preservation, offer an opportunity for the buyer to not only purchase their work at a discount (if they are lucky) but also receive a tax-deduction from the IRS. Non-profit organizations depend on the generosity of artists who believe in their causes as an important resource in their fundraising. In exchange, the artists get to donate to causes they find compelling and the union of cause, ethics, and belief creates a powerful event that echoes long after the evening is over. In an interview with Lesley Hauge and Sian Ballen for the New York Social Diary, Hunt Slonem says about animals “They’re here to comfort us….they are here to help us.” And it is imperative that mankind helps endangered animals and contribute to wildlife preservation.     

A good online resource for finding out about upcoming charity events in the New York City area is by checking:   

Additional Wildlife Protection Efforts

In addition to the silent auction to support African Wildlife conservation Steuben has introduced The Big 5 Collection. To support these endangered habitats of these species, from September through December 10% of all proceeds from these designs will benefit the African Wildlife Foundation. Steuben has also begun a social effort to bring awareness to the need to protect the Big 5 on Facebook with a cause campaign. More information regarding theCause to Protect the Big 5 can be found on the Steuben Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/SteubenDesign 

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October 9th, 3:00-6:00pm

Born in 1937 in New Haven, Ct, Mr. Gregan has painted, planted, and thrived on the southern slope of Ulster County’s Catskill Mountains since 1970. Working from his mountaintop home, studio, and gardens outside Napanoch with his wife Beverly, his paintings have long reflected the magic and quietude of their surroundings.

A graduate of, and later an instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design, Gregan has also taught at Yale and Brown Universities, Parsons School of Design, Trinity College, and the Naropa Institute. His graphic and commercial design background includes work with I.M Pei, Herbert Matter, Norman Ives, and Joseph Albers, and many of his illustrations, corporate logos, and album covers are widely familiar.

Noted private collectors of Mr. Gregan’s work include John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Miles Davis, Robert Mitchum, John Steinbeck, Julie Christie, Bill Cosby, John Simon, Calvin Klein, Ram Dass, Alan Gerry, Eric Booth, Marty Raynes, Jeff Witty, Robert Osgood, Paul Guenther, Gerry Celente, and Jason Spears of the Scissor Sisters.

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Photography by Fionn Reilly & Paintings/Drawings by Nadja Petrov
Do to an illness with a member of the 11 Cross Gallery staff, we regretfully have to cancel the artists’ reception this Sat 7/10 from 5-8.
We will schedule a new date as soon as we can!
Thank you for your enthusiasm and support for this show, “6 of 1 Half Dozen of the Other” We will be open by appointment next week by calling: 845.399.9751
Jen Dragon

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“Another Circle”, an art exhibition by area artists will be on view Fri, Sat & Sun 11-6 from June 4 thru June 27th at the Emerson Resort, Mount Tremper, NY.   “Another Circle” derives its theme from a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
“The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end /Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth,that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning”

Exhibition Artists:
Adrian Frost
Ben La Rocco
Claude Carone
Fionn Reilly
Garry Nichols
Heather Hutchison
Ian Laughlin
Jeff Leonard
John Stalling
Mark Kanter
Nadja Petrov
Ric Dragon
Robert The

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Work in Progress on Nadja Petrov's drawing table

On her drawing table was one of the pieces she was working on for “6 of 1 and Half Dozen of the Other” , the upcoming installation at 11 Cross Gallery with Fionn.  It was not a large drawing but across its fine surface was a series of beautiful ink lines, almost etched into the paper with the kind of precision you would imagine a glass engraver would utilize.  But its the lines themselves that are so amazing- each one having what I like to call a “noun and a verb” – in otherwords, the lines have a particular character and they move in a specific manner.   Like artful traffic, they swerve carefully in their appointed directions and designated velocity until they form an active pattern of a bigger world.  It would be like a weaving except there isn’t a concrete form that is loomed but rather the white of the page itself is carved and suspended, the small irregular negative spaces sparkling like stars or rippling like waves on a windy lake.  I remembered the black and white photographs I had seen earlier in the week at Fionn Reilly’s studio/gallery on 212 (the old Lucky Chocolate’s building)- the abstract textures created by buildings and vegetation, the vibration that comes from restraint and suddenly the vision for “6 of 1 and Half Dozen of Another” was all coming together.  This upcoming show has truly been  created by these two artists- in this instance, at the opening this Sat June 5, 5-8 and during the entire run thru June 27th, I will be merely the enabler!

Nadja Petrov's Studio

As if all of this wasn’t enough, the night before Nadja and Fionn’s opening, 11 Cross Gallery is sponsoring another show at the Emerson Resort about 20 miles away in Mount Tremper.   Not only will this opening showcase area artists but it will be an inauguration for a new tradition of art presentation and exhibition for this luxury hotel.   So it has been like going holiday shopping to visit artist studios and find work to fill the two enormous gallery spaces combined creating about 2000 square feet of space!  Fortunately, Nadja did her part and is loaning me 2 large paintings about the color red and all its harmonies.  I shared with her that my son had recently told me women have evolved to be much more sensitive to variations in the color red than men are.  Scientists supposed women developed this ability as gatherers of berries and this sensitive  knowledge would keep their families from getting sick from fruit that wasn’t ripe enough or berries that could be fatal.  These paintings are richly in tune with this evolutionary predisposition of understanding of red and can be viewed starting this Friday, June 4 (Opening 5-9) thru June 27th at the Emerson Resort on Route 28.

image courtesy of John Davis Gallery, Hudson NY

I met Claude for the first time at the opening of North of New York: The New York School Generation in the Hudson Valley Region . His father, Nicolas, is in the Kleinert exhibiton as he is an early New York School Abstract Expressionist and is part of the New York School circle that also maintained a studio in the Catskills.  I am always intrigued to see the artwork of painter- families like Orazio and his daughter Artemisia Gentileschi,  Giambattista Tiepolo and his son Domenico, or Sir Terry Frost and his two sons, Adrian and Anthony.  It is a natural progression as painting is in essence an apprenticeship best learned as an immersion experience and what can be more total than a child growing up in a parent’s studio?  But although there may be similiar themes as parents and children live in the same century and share the same temporal cultural vibe, the soul is often very different because of person and experience.

The paintings of Claude Carone, like his father’s, are abstract but the similarity ends there.   While Nicolas seems to embrace the freshness of post-war America (New York City in particular), Claude evokes a timeless Italian classicism.  Looking at his work, I felt the same kind of environmental honing that is only produced by centuries of living in the same place: the continual perfecting of the land by plowing, planting and building only to be torn down again by war or weather and re-asserted in a more precise way again and again.  The result is a perfect balance of what is and what was and a vitality that is charged by the interchangeability between a form and its space.  Some  paintings have a measured pace in the calm breathing of large gently tumbling forms,  and some a more panting excitement as color ricochets off one edge onto another – either way, there is never an awkward imbalance or irritable inconsistency but always a rational resolution between shapes and a comforting energy generated by a true love of pigment.

Claude Carone's Studio

Claude will be showing in “Another Circle” at the Emerson Resort opening Friday, June 4, 5-9 thru Sunday, June 28th